Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Does Crystal Bridges Have A Collecting Strategy? An Answer

The 1960 Rothko that I revealed on Saturday as being purchased by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is not the only addition to the Bentonville museum’s collection since its opening last November. My article in the Wall Street Journal had room for me to mention a few others, but not in detail. And, in fact there’s even more than I was able even to hint at.

For a start, the museum has received about 20 works of art as gifts, mainly from artists’ estates and foundations. There have been some individual donors as well, including Donna and Arthur Hartman, the former ambassador, who gave a 1902 painting called The Midinette by Alfred Henry Maurer. (The museum declined to release the names of other donors.)

More important, museum director Don Bacigalupi and I talked about about the museum’s collecting strategy. He seemed a little tired by the expectations or suggestions made by others (including me) about holes in the permanent collection and said the museum is not filling gaps. “It’s more complicated than that,” he says. “We are not replicating any institutional story of American art. There’s a multiplicity of stories. So we don’t have a linear strategy for collecting or a checklist of artists we want to purchase. We are looking very broadly, and some names are blue-chip and some are at the margins.”

Bacigalupi said that the museum assessed the Pollock (as well as the $86.9 million Rothko) that was up for sale at Christie’s last spring,  but decided the Pollock wasn’t “the right Pollock.” Unfortunately, I spoke with him before Sotheby’s announced on Sept. 7 that it will sell another Pollock drip painting, Number 4, from 1951 (est. $25/35 million) in November, and could not ask about that.

That price would be a leap for Crystal Bridges so soon after the Rothko, however. The museum draws down about $15 million a year from its acquisitions endowment, and Bacigalupi said that — like other museums — it also depends on “friends” to contribute to purchases. He added that the museum “is working with a number of artists’ estates” on gifts or purchases (maybe even loans?).

Now a few details about the works I mentioned in passing in the WSJ article: the Thomas Hart Benton is called Tobacco Sorters,  from 1942/1944; the Theodore Roszak is 42nd Street (Times Square), from 1936 (above left); and the Miriam Schapiro is a collage from 1984 called A Mayan Garden (at right). 

The museum has also acquired Ammi Phillips’a Woman in Black Ruffled Dress, ca.1835. That large print collection I mentioned, with a few big names, also includes works by Martin Lewis, Benton Spruance, Ida Abelman, Minna Citron, Mabel Dwight, Jolan Gross-Bettelheim, Riva Helfond and Bernarda Bryson Shahn.

Here’s what curator Kevin Murphy wrote about that collection (in part):

The prints address subjects and themes concerning artists and society during the tumultuous years encompassing the roaring 20s, Great Depression, and World War II.  As Americans flocked to cities, printmakers depicted the promise and peril of skyscrapers, bridges, subways, and factories.  Artists were equally drawn to rural America, and documented the increasing industrialization of previously bucolic land.  The Great Depression loomed large in the consciousness of printmakers.  Artists, often on the margins of the workforce themselves, demonstrated their sympathy with the unemployed and those workers who protested against exploitative-sometimes deadly-labor practices.  Artists mobilized in service of America’s entry into World War II, creating uplifting images of soldiers and the home front.  As a whole, the print collection provides an unflinching look at the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, but foregrounds the dignity of human labor and achievement in an increasingly mechanized age. 

Bacigalupi said visitors who went to Crystal Bridges last fall would see different things today — some galleries have been rehung as works are acquired and others have moved from the first temporary exhibition, Wonder World, into the permanent collection galleries. 

Photo Credit: Courtesty of Crystal Bridges (btw, I think the color in Rothko’s No. 210/No. 211 reproduced here in Saturday’s post and in the WSJ is too red — but I can’t quite fix it.)

Portland Makes The Most of Winslow Homer’s Studio — UPDATED

On Tuesday, the Portland Museum of Art opens what will likely be a pride and joy: the 2,200 sq. ft. studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, of Winslow Homer, which it purchased in 2006 from Homer’s great grand-nephew, Charles Homer Willauer. The museum has raised $10.8 million in a national capital campaign to support the acquisition, preservation, interpretation, and endowment of the studio, which it has restored to its appearance during Homer’s lifetime, for $2.8 million.

In the course of the restoration, the museum learned a lot about Homer: some little, such as that he apparently ate clams and just tossed the shells (they were found under the floorboards along with some paintbrushes);, and some big, such as the fact that, instead of being a recluse, Homer and his family developed the Prouts Neck community using Easthampton as a model. As one catalogue essay says: “It is a rare hermit that who exhibits a flair for real estate, but Winslow and his brother Charles, Jr. were active developers, so much so that by the time of Homer’s death in 1910, six hotels and some sixty private cottages dotted Prouts Neck.”

The downside to this, if there is one, is that visitation is via a van from the museum to the studio twelve miles away and then by guided tour — just three a day, limited to 10 visitors each, from Sept. 25 through Dec. 2, 2012 and next spring from Apr. 2 through June 14. A bigger downside: they cost $55 each. 

Wisely, in planning this, the museum has gone beyond the studio, where Homer made some of his most iconic works. The Portland museum will be showing paintings that he created in that studio. Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine, which runs through Dec. 30, brings together 38 major oils, watercolors and etchings — many late seascapes — from museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.  For the first time since it was painted there, Homer’s  Fox Hunt (1893) will be in Maine, a rare loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

And Portland is putting a contemporary spin on this as well: It has commissioned five artists to photograph the studio using techniques available in Homer’s days, and they will go on view on Oct. 6 in a display called Between Past and Present: The Homer Studio Photographic Project. A few details:

They employed both historic, large-plate cameras and modern digital cameras, and a variety of print processes. The earliest method of making images of the real world with light—the camera obscura—is the technique explored by Abelardo Morell with his unique tent camera. Alan Vlach specializes in salted paper prints, the first form of prints made from negatives, introduced in England in the 1840s. Keliy Anderson-Staley developed her collodion prints outdoors using a portable darkroom at Prouts Neck, much like 19th-century portrait photographers. And the gum bichromate and platinum prints, produced by Brenton Hamilton and Tillman Crane, represent the type of fine art photography most used during Homer’s day.

The Portland museum has a real treasure here, and should make the most of it in a way that’s respectful of the property’s limitations. I suspect it will learn during the coming year, and perhaps make changes after that.  

For more on the Homer studio, see the Maine Sunday Telegram article from last Sunday and today’s piece here, the Associated Press story as published by the Washington Post, a travel story in The New York Times and additional articles listed here.

UPDATE: The Portland museum tells me that the previous top photo on this post, which I drew from the local paper, dated to 2006. They gave me a recent interior shot, which is now at top.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art (top), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (middle), Alan Vlach via the Portland Museum of Art (bottom)

 

Crystal Bridges Fills A Gap

Now it can be told: As I reveal in tomorrow’s  Wall Street Journal — online now — Crystal Bridges is the proud owner of a 1961 Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange). It should answer a few of the critics who complained that the museum’s postwar collection was weak (including me).

My little piece, an “Object of Beauty” on the Icons page, tells much of the story.

But I will be back with more details and more about the museum’s recent additions to its collection in the next day or so.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges

 

 

Tidbits: Unrelated Developments At A Few Museums

Every now and then, little bits of news come along that command attention, but not an entire post. So I’ve gathered a few into one:

  • Remember last June when I wrote here about the Worcester Art Museum’s campaign to raise $60,000 to reopen its historic doors? The money was raised lickety-split, and to celebrate the results — about $94,000 at the time — director Matthias Waschek offered free admission to the museum through August. Now the museum reports that the “Open the Door” campaign raised more than $100,000 and that attendance during July and August jumped 151% versus the same months in 2011.
  • The Dallas Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth are less than 40 miles apart, but they are nonetheless collaborating and planning to show the same exhibition in 2013: Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy will run in Dallas from May 26 through Sept. 15 and then in Fort Worth from Oct. 12, 2013, through Jan. 12, 2014. The exhibit marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and tells a story that today would seem odd (and I doubt would happen). According to the press release (which includes details on the art that was chosen and for where):

Five days prior to the presidential couple’s arrival in Fort Worth, descriptions of the presidential suite at the Texas Hotel were released to the public. Unhappy with the couple’s accommodations, Owen Day, the art critic for the Fort Worth Press, proposed the idea of the installation to prominent art collector and leader of the Fort Worth Art Association Samuel Benton Cantey III. With the support of Ruth Carter Johnson (now Ruth Carter Stevenson), board president for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art; collector Ted Weiner; and Mitchell Wilder, the Amon Carter Director, Cantey conceived a three-part exhibition that would unfold in the parlor, master bedroom, and second bedroom of Suite 850.Drawing on local private and public art collections, each room of the suite was outfitted with works of art that befitted the tastes and interests of President Kennedy and the first lady (guess where Eakins’s Swimming {above} went).

  • Talk about collaborations (and captive audiences!): The Dulwich Picture Gallery is mounting an exhibition at the American Embassy in London this fall of the United States of America which “can be viewed by members of the public awaiting visa interviews in the Consular waiting room of the Embassy.” The show, called Across the Pond and inspired by the city of London, will display art created by young artists during a long-term programme sponsored by the Gallery at the Salmon Youth Centre – evening drop-in sessions that are part of the Gallery’s Urban Youth programme and that involves visiting artists including Erica Parrett, Liz Charlsey-Jory, Joanna Veevers and Ruth Dupre. The Dulwich Picture Gallery began its youth program a dozen years ago to offer cultural activites to at risk kids. For some silly reason, the Gallery does not allow the public to see its press releases, so I cannot link to it. (There’s a lesson there…)

 

Off the Wall? Not at All

It’s a trend, by the old definition, if there are three examples. And this is a good one.

Following Inside|Out at the Detroit Institute of Arts and Art is Everywhere at the Delaware Art Museum, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is planting high-quality reproductions of paintings from its permanent collection in parks, public and commercial venues around the city. The Walters calls its exhibition Off the Wall. (My last post on the DIA/Delaware efforts is here.) And each museum has had its own little twist.

Although Off the Wall doesn’t begin officially until November, the Walters says it has had a “soft launch” of three paintings. Another 20 will go up between the last week of September and the middle of October, and this display will be officially launched in November. Those reproductions will remain in place through next April; then the Walters will scramble them, moving each one to a new location, where they will remain on view officially from July through December 2013.

I’m not sure why installation takes so long, but the official launch date is important because the Walters publishes a map of all the locations, when all 23 are up. The first phase map can be seen here.

Among the first repro paintings (in “period-correct” frames) to go up was Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s Hope, on view at Patterson Park (above left) and Jean-Leon Gerome’s The Tulip Folly (right), on view at City Hall. Each reproduction is accompanied by a label describing the work and a QR code that Smartphone users can scan for a more detailed description, which is available on the Walters’ online collection.

“Walking past a beautiful painting while ‘out and about’ in the area will be a pleasant surprise for everyone,” the museum’s director, Gary Vikan said in a press release. He views this initiative as bringing art to the people.

The Walters is trying to lighten up with these pop-up paintings, stationing some in catchy places — Syria, The Night Watch, “a moonlit scene of ferocious lions among ancient ruins painted in 1880” by Briton Rivière, will go near the lion cages at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. The Tulip Folly, about the infamous tulip bubble, is at City Hall on purpose.

Another bit of whimsy, says the museum’s director of marketing  Matt Fry, is that “We are providing our community partners with printed treasure maps, featuring all 20 artworks and their corresponding locations and hope to explore fun tie-ins such as bicycle tours, geocaching and ‘check-ins’ on social media platforms. We encourage people to patronize the businesses hosting the reproductions, to enjoy those displays, and to visit the originals at the Walters the next time they’re in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood.”

Fry came to the Walters from the Detroit Institute, and brought the idea with him, according to an article last week in the Baltimore Sun. His quote above sets up the museum’s challenge very well: this shouldn’t be seen as too commercial and it works only if it prompts new visitors to the museum, or at least reminds past visitors that it’s time to return.

Still, I suspect this idea will catch on elsewhere. Maybe it already has.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum

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