Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Colby College Jumps Into The Big Time

O'KeeffeBirchandPineTreesPinkThis is a big weekend for American Art, and as one of its stalwart fans, it is my regret (but that’s another story) that I am not on site for it: “It” is the opening today (to the public, following a few invitation-only festivities) of the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion at the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine. Peter and Paula Lunder announced in 2007 that they were giving a collection, valued then at $100 million, to Colby, and now we get to see what is in it in the first exhibition, The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College. The collection includes more than 500 works of art, most of which we’ve not seen for some time and never together. Nearly 300 are on view in this initial installation; it should be a revelation.

Earlier this year, I spent some time with Sharon Corwin, the museum’s director, and I asked her to pick out a few of the best works in the Lunder’s gift. She at first said there were too many, but finally picked five for me. Among them were Georgia O’Keeffe’s Birch and Pine Trees — Pink, painted at Lake George in 1925 (at left); Whistler’s Chelsea in Ice from 1864, an oil rendering of the Thames River (below right); Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s The Song, of two women in a garden (1891); John LaFarge’s Votive Wreath, from 1870, which she said “was almost modernist” (below left); and two from Homer — Girl in a Hammock and The Noon Recess, both from 1873.

WhistlerChelsea in IceThe Maine Sunday Telegram seemed to have asked the same question in mind, and printed more, and slightly different, answers — “key moments” in the show. If Corwin made these suggestions, I can see why — she probably wanted to include a few more modern works. She did mention sculptures by Judd, Chamberlain and Nevelson to me, to be fair, but only after the five (six, really — two from Homer) mentioned above.

The building, designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners Architects, has 26,000 sq. ft. of space, including 10,000 sq. ft. for galleries. That’s big — to give one comparison, the entire new Parrish Museum, opened last year, has 12,200 sq. ft. of gallery space. And  he addition makes the Colby museum the largest museum in Maine (35,000 sq. ft., all told, including existing facilities, to the Portland Museum of Art’s 22,000).

LaFargeWreathSmartly, Colby is taking advantage of this occasion to present six additional exhibitions:

  • Spaces & Places: Chinese Art from the Lunder-Colville Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • A Thing Alive: Modern Views from the Marin Collection: works by John Marin juxtaposed with early 20th-century photographers like Berenice Abbott and Eugène Atget
  • Nowhere but Here: Art from the Alex Katz Foundation (American art by the likes of Hartley, Dove, Murray, etc. donated by Katz
  • Alex Katz: A Matter of Light: his works in the Colby collection
  • a show of American weathervanes “from a distinguished Maine collection”
  • Process and Place: a design show explaining the evolution of the Lunder Pavilion, a minimalist creation of Fisher and Partners.

Colby already had an excellent college museum collection — now it has jumped into the ranks of major American art museums. And admission is free.

The Maine paper had some excellent quotes in its article about the opening:

From Peter Lunder, a 1956 graduate of Colby: “We knew that if we left our collection to Colby, it would be shown. If we gave it to a big-city museum in Boston or New York or someplace else, it would end up in storage. So we decided to give it to Colby.”

From Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.: “I think the Lunder Collection does for Maine and for the Northeast what Crystal Bridges did for Arkansas and the South.”

From Wes LaFountain, former director of the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art: “It’s a collection that any museum in America, if not beyond, would love to have.”

And from Corwin: “This is a gift to the college, to the community and to the state. I hope residents of the state of Maine feel real ownership. This collection is now part of the identity of our state, which already has a real legacy in the visual arts. This collection adds to that legacy, and enhances it in significant ways.”

I haven’t witnessed Colby in person, I am pretty sure it is a new gem.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Colby College Museum of Art via the Portland Press-Herald

 

 

 

 

A Scathing Resignation, And More Turmoil, At The Hirshhorn

Sometimes, the news just induces a cringe, and that is what happened to me today when I caught up with an article in yesterday’s Washington Post headlined Hirshhorn Museum’s board of trustees chairman resigns. Can it get any worse for the Hirshhorn?

constance-caplanThe last chair, J. Tomilson Hill, resigned last fall, and Constance Caplan, the new resignee (at left), is the Hirshhorn’s seventh board member to depart in this round of turmoil. The museum’s director, Richard Koshalek, “resigned” when the board did not back his concept for building a seasonal blue bubble atop the museum as a cultural think tank (his contract was not renewed, a board member told me). He left in May, and the Smithsonian — parent of the Hirshhorn — then named Kerry Brougher as Acting Director, while they look around for a new director.

Caplan’s resignation may actually be a good thing, because she was in favor of the bubble, which much of the rest of the board opposed (sensibly, imho). However, she didn’t go quietly. In her memo of resignation, according to the Post — which you can see here — she leveled this accusation:

…What disturbs me is the contentious manner and lack of inclusiveness with which a number of trustees and staff associated with the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian have behaved over the past year — factors that also led to the resignations of the prior Board Chair, the Director, and several key Trustees — and persistent indications that this behavior will only continue….

What I would expect at the Hirshhorn, however, is that as with all of the other leading nonprofit boards on which I have served, an open and candid decision — making process would prevail between our Trustees, as well as between the Board and the Smithsonian as the Museum’s parent organization.  Yet as we have all seen in recent months, this has certainly not been the case, as witnessed by the shocking breaches in confidentiality, inappropriate interruptions during Board meetings, and other negative behavior.  In terms of decision-making as well, I was also disappointed that the full Hirshhorn Board was not given the opportunity by the Smithsonian to carefully review and be apprised of the appointment of the Interim Director in advance — a routine courtesy at other leading institutions, and our board’s right as stewards of the Museum and finally the utter disregard of my involvement in setting agendas, meeting dates and Trustee activities of the Board. [That’s all verbatim from the Post; mistakes hers/theirs.]

If this is all true, the Hirshhorn is in an even worse position than I thought. But then Caplan continues:

…of even greater concern to me is the fundamental direction that I now see the Hirshhorn taking, with both overt and tacit approval by the Smithsonian:  a regression to programming that imitates a predictable pattern at many other modern and contemporary museums. …I see the Hirshhorn abruptly regressing from the vision of serving as “the nation’s museum of contemporary art” — a vision especially appropriate to its splendid, unique setting – retreating at a time when precisely because of the challenges at hand, this larger role is more important than ever.

Caplan did not refer to the bubble here, and if that’s what she’s hinting at, I beg to disagree.

HirshhornBubbleIt’s true, however, that the Hirshhorn does not really have a niche. It’s contemporary and it has some good things in its collection, but let’s face it, not very many great works of art. It has needed a better identity, a reason for visiting, for a long time. It has needed better programming. Clearly, it needs visionary management, but also realistic management.

Once again, Smithsonian management is not handling this well. Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin’s comments in the Washington Post — read them at this link — do not inspire. A search committee for the director’s job has yet to be named — though that is supposed to happen next week.

But there’s no time to lose here. A leaderless museum with a divided board is a disaster.

Photo Credits” Courtesy of the Washington Post (top) 

 

MoMA And The Rain Room: Fashion, Strategy — UPDATED

Well, gee, it was interesting, and kind of fun, to visit MoMA last evening. I was invited to experience the Rain Room, part of a MoMA-PS 1 exhibition called Expo 1: New York, which is about the environment.

RainRoomThe installation — for surely, I cannot call it a piece of art — consists of a rectangular field in which water pours, like rain, from the ceiling, except when the cameras and sensors discover a person and discerns his or her movement. Then the water stops within a small radius, allowing visitors to experience rain without getting wet. Or, as MoMA puts it,  “Rain Room offers visitors the experience of controlling the rain.”

I walked through it last night, and indeed — except for a few drops here and there — I remained dry. Don’t walk too fast, though, or the cameras and digital controls can’t adjust quickly enough. And don’t wear black or a reflecting material, which also confuse things. Also, no more than 10 people can be in the room at the same time — it’s too much for the controls to deal with in the limited space. Did I forget to say that it’s dark, except for a bright light shining across the water?

Rain Room isn’t by an artist; it’s by Random International, described this way on its website:

Random create artworks and installations that explore behaviour and interaction, often using light and movement. Founded in 2005 by Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch, the studio utilises raw fragments of artificial intelligence to encourage relationships between the converging worlds of animate and inanimate. The studio is based in a converted warehouse in Chelsea, London and today includes a growing team of  diverse talent.

Rain Room had its debut at the Barbican in London. In New York, Rain Room has been erected in an empty parking lot next door to MoMA, west of the museum’s entrance on 54th St. People have been lining up, sometimes for hours, to experience it, I’ve been told. At a certain point, they are turned away because they’re not going to make it that day.

What is going on here, really? Rain Room is yet another attempt to draw new audiences who really don’t care much for art. In this case, thank goodness, MoMA is not taking up any gallery space for this “immersive environment.” But of course since visitors are not in proximity to MoMA’s art, the museum can’t argue that these new visitors may wander into a gallery with art and decide they like it. That argument for such installations falls apart.

UPDATE: I did forget to say one thing here: To visit Rain Room, you must buy a ticket to MoMA — so it does increase revenues and, having bought a ticket, people may visit the galleries.

Rain Room has another fashionable rationale: it’s participatory, it’s an experience, and young people like that. They don’t like passive moments. The danger in that view is obvious: they won’t go unless there’s an experience. So who’ll be in the galleries looking at real art? And what are museums training people to visit museums for?

 

Oh My, Look What The Corcoran Threw Away, And Other Problems

Hammer column in trash pile Summer 2012What do you suppose the picture here, at right, is? Can you read the writing? If so, you may be as shocked as I was, not to mention the person who sent this to me and the person who took the photo one day last June. The photographer was Linda Crocker Simmons, curator emerita of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

It’s the column that recognized the contribution of Armand Hammer to the Corcoran, and apparently it stood near Hammer’s bust in the foyer for a decade.

Crocker Simmons, as I learned through an interlocutor, was walking on the public sidewalk and, curious to see what construction looked like on the Carr building next door to the Corcoran, spotted the stone Hammer column. It was on its side in the weeds on the platform at the top of the stairs to the main entrance on 17th street. Anyone who entered that way would have walked past it, and anyone familiar with the art world should know Hammer’s name — and any Corcoran staff member should have been “respectful of the symbolism of the piece,” Crocker Simmons thought.

Indeed, it’s hard not to interpret this throwaway as anything other than a lack of sensitivity to and disregard for donors, especially in the context of the Corcoran’s recent deaccessioning of the William A. Clark collection of carpets for $43.8 million.

We haven’t heard much about the Corcoran for several weeks now, not since the early April pact between the board and the University of Maryland. The preliminary pact between them means that they are exploring a broad partnership through which Maryland would share faculty, issue joint student degrees, cooperate in new course development, expand the student body and possibly share exhibition costs with the Corcoran.

The other day, Peggy Loar, hired to be Interim Director and President, sent a memo to Corcoran members saying that:

…we are making encouraging progress on our partnership discussions with the University of Maryland (UMD). As our goal is to create a sustainable future financially and operationally for our unique and historic institution, the Board remains extremely focused on our efforts to conclude our partnership arrangement.

The Corcoran/UMD Task Forces, as well as the Corcoran Board, Staff, and Faculty working groups are quite literally working around the clock to detail the specific program, content, and operational areas we will partner on. University officials, faculty and students have all visited for tours and presentations at the Corcoran, and we at the Corcoran have studied their curriculum offerings and programs towards the design of this unique partnership arrangement. These experiences have evolved into a creative dialogue that will play heavily into what we do together and how the Corcoran’s programs and creative teams will enhance UMD offerings on their campus, here at the Corcoran, and beyond.

To date, the Corcoran Working Groups continue to meet and will present final recommendations within the month. At the same time, the Corcoran/UMD Task Forces continue to meet to discuss strategic issues, while UMD and Corcoran Operational departments will present their recommendations on how the two institutions will achieve economies of scale. Our intent is to finish the facilities Master Plan for enhancing the technical capability of our environmental systems, complete the fundraising assessment plan, and agree on a set of recommendations to present to the Board of Trustees by the end of the summer.

Have you ever seen such non-information take so long to be delivered?

Worse, there’s not much there about the museum.

Loar has a lot on her hands, and I don’t want to be too harsh. The main culprit here remains the lame board.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Linda Crocker Simmons 

A Few Words About the Detroit Institute of Arts

I know some of you are all caught up in the goings-on in Detroit and are wondering why I’m not commenting. It’s simple, really: while this is serious to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and director Graham Beal must take it seriously, I’ve always believe that the DIA is simply caught up in a local political dance that, at some point (hopefully soon), will end without a single piece of art being sold. As it should. But the politics has to play out, and hang-wringing won’t help.

detroit-institute-ofA friend of mine has been sending me links to all the Detroit coverage, and unfortunately I don’t think reporters have yet figured out exactly what game is being played here behind the scenes.

Today, the Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette put out what Eden Burgess, a lawyer at Cultural Heritage Partners in Washington, D.C., said in the Detroit Free Press was “a strong opinion” saying that the state cannot legally sell the art in question. This is good, and welcome, though apparently it doesn’t end the legal issues. But it may be the beginning of the end, or at least the end of the beginning.

So what can one do?

Surprisingly, there’s no petition against the sale on Change.org, and not much support for the one I discovered at MoveOn.org, which currently has just 8,539 signatures, or the one at YouPower.org, which has just 243 signatures at the moment. You can sign it.

I’ve checked the public pulse at Facebook, where the DIA now has 223,000 “likes,” which is far about the nearly 116,000 it had in April 2012, after a concerted campaign. There, supporters are out. You can join them.

One big, seemingly untapped source of support is the business community is — I have not found any statements against the sale. But what if Ford, General Motors, and all the other companies, large and small, stated just how important it is to have a vibrant cultural sector for economic purposes? If you’re a shareholder, ask them.

Unfortunately, I still think it’s a waiting game for those of us who do not live in Detroit and can’t vote. But perhaps even a symbolic gesture would help.