Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Michael Govan And Affinity Groups: He’s Right to Raise Fees

Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been taking heat in the last few days about his decision to increase the membership dues for various art groups at the museum. I think he’s right to do so…though I am not sure he and the museum have put forth their entire case.

The outcry began last week, when the museum hiked yearly dues for members of 10 support councils to $1,000, plus a $250–level museum membership they must now buy. In the past, the dues for these groups, organized around art categories, like photography, decorative arts, European art, etc., were as low as $400 a year. The new fee was long overdue, Govan told the Los Angeles Times, adding: “This change will bring us more in line with other museums nationally,” he said, citing higher dues at other museums in Los Angeles, Boston and New York. “To have an affinity group that has direct access to curators and artists, even at the new number, you could call it a bargain.”

Members begged to differ. One interpreted the increase as a play to only large donors on the part of the museum, whereas Govan reportedly said at a meeting that “the changes [are] part of a larger rethinking of the role of these groups. They were instrumental in fundraising in the museum’s early years before it even had a development office. Now, he said, it was important to make the system ‘simpler’ and ‘more professional.’ ” The article continued:

The plan includes dismantling the boards of the councils, leaving only a chairperson in place to help the department curator and development staff organize events. He also described a change in what the councils would do: organizing public events instead of private parties and focusing “more on education and the sharing of enthusiasm than acquisitions.”

The next day, the LATimes reported that “Diana Gutman, chairwoman of the Art Museum Council at LACMA, says the group’s 40-member board has voted unanimously to stop volunteering at the museum next year” because of the change. And, the story said:

Founded in 1952 before LACMA even had its Wilshire campus, the Art Museum Council is LACMA’s oldest support group. Early on it acquired major paintings by Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian and Stuart Davis. It also commissioned an Alexander Calder mobile for the LACMA campus — called “Hello Girls” as a nod to the women on the council. One of its leading fundraisers was a yearly “Art and Architecture” tour taking visitors into collectors’ home.

Gutman ended her email by saying, “Our group is determined to stay together and to find another avenue that will allow us to continue to support emerging artists, beginning collectors and the art community at large. Our 60-year legacy of service to LACMA [can be] seen in the massive number of works we purchased that hang on the museum walls and the magnificent Calder mobile that cheerfully greets visitors.”

Govan has a PR problem on his hands, and he needs to take care of it. I think he may need to expand on his reasons — the idea of professionalizing development (Arnold Lehman at the Brooklyn Museum did something similar, you’ll recall) — may be true, but there’s a more compelling rationale, I am guessing.

My discussions with other museum directors suggests that these affinity groups — with internal parties and behind-the-scenes events, among other things — cost the museum more than they bring in. They require the time of curators. In the end, the museum ends up subsidizing them, rather than the other way around. Yet these members are better-heeled than the general public; they shouldn’t be getting the subsidy.

Govan may have to share more numbers with the public to make that case convincingly, and he may be reluctant to do it. Too bad.

 

 

 

Albright-Knox’s 150th Anniversary Year Ends With A Bang And A Question

2012 has been something of a momentous year for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo — and well it should have been, as its 150th anniversary. Tomorrow the museum tops the whole thing off with the opening of Universals Albright-Knox 150 (UN.0201–UN.0350), created by the artists Eric and Heather ChanSchatz with the participation of 150 Western New Yorkers. It was commissioned by the Albright-Knox for the occasion (Dec. 4 is the date of its founding 150 years ago) and the gallery is offering free admission and extended hours from Dec. 4 through Dec. 7. There’s a talk by the artists with Albright-Knox Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes on Friday evening.

Universals Albright-Knox 150 (shown, in part, at left) was a good idea — I haven’t see the piece — for a couple of reasons. For one, it “explores the future of abstraction and the gallery’s role within this important facet of art history,” the museum says, without exaggeration, I think.

Second, it involves the Western New York community: Last April, the Albright-Knox invited people to participate in the artwork — those who wanted to participate put their names into a lottery, from which 150 were chosen (plus 50 alternates –smartly). Those people filled out a questionaire and had one-on-one conversations with the artists, thus becoming part of the work, “which is conceived to embody the role an organization like the Albright-Knox seeks to fulfill in society and contemporary culture.”

Hughes has said, “Inviting Eric and Heather ChanSchatz to create this work of art has been an extraordinary experience for the museum, its staff, and, ideally, the project participants.” But she would, wouldn’t she? We’re left to her comments until the work is unveiled and reviewed by local critics.

According to the Albright-Knox, Universals Albright-Knox 150 consists of 150 unique, hand-painted works—one to represent each participant. It will be accompanied by a video installation, also made by ChanSchatz, incorporating footage of their meetings with the 150. And in 2014, the Gallery will finish off the commission with the unveiling of a large-scale sculpture by the artists, based on the imagery developed through the project.

Over the past several months, the Albright-Knox has presented several admirable exhibitions highlighting its past — The Long Curve: 150 Years of Visionary Collecting at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Living Art: A. Conger Goodyear and Sculpture; Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-garde in the 1970s; and DECADE: Contemporary Collecting 2002–2012. I’ve heard good things about all of them, though I’ve not been to Buffalo myself.

That said, Louis Grachos, who recently departed after ten years as director, left a mixed legacy. It is true, as Colin Dabkowski recently wrote in the Buffalo News, that in 2002, the gallery “seemed, after nearly 150 years, to be growing stale. During the previous decade, the gallery’s once-ravenous appetite for bold new work from the outer limits of the art world been reduced to the occasional nibble at the heels of more ambitious collectors and institutions.”

The article also hit the problem:

During his 10 years at the gallery, Grachos lit a fire under its collecting program, and integrated the gallery into the community through ambitious collaborations with rock bands, dance companies, poets and other museums and galleries.
But his tenure here will likely be defined by one thing: Grachos’ fostered the board’s decision in 2007 to sell more than 200 pieces of valuable pre-Modern art from the collection.

Dabkowski recounts several of Grachos’s achievements. The question to me, and to others who opposed the deaccessions, is whether he could have achieved as much, or more, without the divisive sales. True, he raised a lot of money, milions — it’s unclear if he spent it wisely on new art.

Though Grachos says he left voluntarily, I suspect that new director will be necessary to move beyond that past. Fortunately, the next director may, according to Albright-Knox board president Leslie Zemsky, may be selected by Jan. 1 — which would be both welcome and a surprisingly short search. He or she will expand the gallery’s campus – in October, the gallery hired Snohetta to develop a master plan for its campus — and he or she will determine whether the Albright-Knox truely gets its game back, or not.

Photo Credit: Holly E. Hughes, Courtesy of the Albright-Knox

 

 

 

Why The Smith College Museum of Art Is A Work of Art

Last week, I visited the Smith College Museum of Art for the first time — my loss — and it made me laugh as well as appreciate what I saw. The collection is fine — among college museums, it’s really quite good. But I came away with good feelings about it for a different reason: It’s the first museum I know that pushed the idea of art down to nitty-gritty details. And I mean nitty-gritty — those of you who have been there know what I’m talking about. The museum’s lower-level bathrooms were designed by artists, and I’ve never seen that before.

Ok, this isn’t new (except to me) — the museum opened in its current location in 2003. And maybe it received attention at the time. But the idea is clever and shows original thinking. Another example of that — Smith put 12 artist-designed, handcrafted benches in the galleries (sample below left). I love that. Last year, on another visit to New England, I discovered that the New Britain Museum of American Art also used hand-crafted seating in its galleries. The curious — some were truly lovely — could have obtained a list of those artists, as I recall (in case they’d like to purchase works from them? I’m not sure) from the receptionist/information desk.

At Smith, the benches merit labels just like the paintings and sculpture on view, except that they are outlined in yellow (which makes them easier to find).

At left, above, is a shot of the ladies’ room — the facilities were so beautiful that the pictures are not indelicate. At right is the men’s room — which I asked a staff member if I could visit, hardly an unusual request. (Still, I took the picture too quickly to focus properly!)

Ah, the artists’ names… I can’t find them at the moment.  If and when I do, I’ll update this.

But you get the point — what a fine idea to make visitors realize that art, real art, can be found throughout a museum.

 

East Meets West In Beijing, The Art Museum Version

About ten days ago, 15 museum directors from the U.S. went to China to meet their peers from Chinese museums, in a meeting organized by the Asia Society to lauch an effort it calls the Asia Society Arts and Museum Network.

The Asia Society issued a press release in advance (which I didn’t get), but it was China Daily, a government-funded English language newspaper (whose charms I once wrote about), that wrote an after-the-fact article I noticed. It reported that China wants more exchange in contemporary art. That’s a bit of surprise, considering that contemporary art is often politcally tinged (at least) and offers the potential for creating more tension between China and the West.

But let’s return to the beginning: the Asia Society launched this five-year effort to “strengthen arts communities across Asia and encourage collaboration and exchange between art institutions and professionals in Asia and the United States” in an attempt to “advance cultural understanding between the United States and China.” The directors — heads of the Asia Society Museum, the Whitney, SFMoMA, the Peabody Essex, among them (all are listed in the aforementioned press release) — met with the heads of the Shanghai, Hubei, and Wuhan museums, among others (also listed in the release) in Beijing on Nov. 15-17. Said Melissa Chiu, head of the Asia Society galleries:

There has been an enormous increase in the number of museums in China and there is a great desire on their part to build partnerships with American museums and understand more about how museums can become larger cultural centers in their communities. The launch of the Arts and Museum Network at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture is the beginning of a series of conversations between museum directors in the United States and in Asia.

Now to China Daily. It begins with a bit about Jay Xu, the director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, who grew up in China but has lived in the U.S. for 22 years. “China is leading the way in the speed of building museums. Nobody is building as many museums as China is now,” he told the paper, adding “Managing these museums and personnel training is extremely important, and that’s one of the areas where U.S. museums could offer assistance and help.” But he was careful to compliment Chinese museums, saying the U.S. can learn from them, particularly in the use of “cutting-edge technology and innovative ways to connect art to life.”

I was disappointed to hear Xu cite an example from the Shanghai museum, which employs “motion detectors at exhibits of ancient Chinese scroll paintings. When someone looks at one section of the scroll, the detector will sense the movement and turn on the light, and, when one moves away, that light would dim while others turn on.” While impressive indeed, they were in operation when I first visited China in 2002. I’d have liked a more recent example. 

It was Fan Di’an, director of the National Art Museum of China, who took the bolder, contemporary stance. “Chinese and American contemporary art are very active in commercial events, such as auctions and expositions, but not so much in public museums,” he was quoted as saying. “That’s something we should pay more attention to.”

With the politically active  Ai Weiwei being the best-known contemporary Chinese artist in the United States, that’s quite interesting. I wonder what happens next.

Photo Credit: From the Fu Baoishi exhibit at the Metropolitan, Courtesy AFP via China Daily

London Visit: On To The Tate, Which Is Expanding, Sort Of

On my recent trip to London, I also visited the Tate Modern — whose permanent collection galleries were pretty jammed on a Saturday. I discovered, or rediscovered, several artists that are too little known in the United States or too little shown in U.S. museums. Among them, I’d put Meredith Frampton, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Barkely L. Henricks, and Dod Procter. There were others.

The Tate’s play area for kids, all done up in red, with computers, was full not just with children but with teenagers who were sitting there using their cell phones. Now, they may have been listening to cell phone tours, but I doubt it.

They point to one criticism I have of the Tate — not enough seating. It’s a big museum, which takes a long time to visit if you’re going to look at more than a gallery or two. But aside from the restaurants — which are nice — there are few places to rest. Take a gander at the picture I took of the Turbine Hall. There were even more people in the foreground, sitting on the steps, when I dug into my purse to get out my cell phone, but they left before I could turn it on.

(Another pet peeve I have about the Tate and other UK museums: granted, they are free, but asking me to a pound for the gallery plan was annoying. I guess I dislike being nickeled and dimed.)

This was my first visit to the Oil Tanks, which opened in the summer. They are cool, no question — I didn’t love the installation of Sung Hwan Kim, which was commissioned by the Tate for the tanks; it is quite confusing to navigate in the dark. But I was glad I saw it, and it does show the potential of the tanks’ spaces.

An installation by William Kentridge was next door — and seemed more successful, to me. Suzanne Lacy’s Crystal Quilt was very clever.

In the special exhibition galleries, a show of photography by William Klein and Daido Moriyama was very cleverly installed — in a mirror image configuration. It’s actually two retrospectives, of one artist who inspired the other, displayed side by side. Visitors can compare and contrast.

But what about the growth I mention in the headline? Even if I had not just visited, I might have written here about the plan announced by the Tate on Nov. 2. That’s when it said it was starting a program to acquire more modern and contemporary African art and two-year project entitled Across the Board which will commence on Nov. 24 and will consist of a series of events featuring emerging African artists and exploring recent practices on the continent.

The release continues:

In summer 2013 Tate Modern will dedicate a wing of its galleries to two of the most important African artists working today. A seminal work in the recent history of African art, Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002 by Meschac Gaba (b.1961, Benin) has been acquired by Tate and will be displayed in its entirety for the first time in the UK next year. Consisting of twelve sections, including a Games Room, Marriage Room, Music Room and Salon, this work challenges preconceived notions of African art. This work has been part gifted by the artist and part purchased by Tate through the Acquisitions Fund for African Art supported by Guaranty Trust Bank plc.

The UK’s first major exhibition of painter Ibrahim El-Salahi (b.1930, Sudan), Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist will bring together approximately 100 works from across more than five decades of El-Salahi’s international career, this retrospective will highlight one of the most significant figures in African and Arab Modernism and reveal his place in a broader art historical context.

The Tate got this initiative financed by Guaranty Trust Bank — and bravo for that.

I bring this up as an example of how museums are struggling to deal with contemporary art made in places like Africa and the Middle East — Should be integrated with other contemporary art? should it be segregated by geography? Does it depend? We don’t have definite answers for that — or even a trend.