Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Progress On Museum Hours — They Are Changing

Even during this recessionary non-recession (the 2007-08 recession ended in June or July 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research), people are turning out for many exhibitions in very high numbers. So while not that many museums are adding night hours, which I think would help attendance (and some, like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, have cut them back), many are doing so for special exhibitions — perhaps not only to satisfy demand but also to create excitement.

Here are a few recent examples I’ve noticed:

  • For its fall exhibition Picasso Black and White, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum says it will remain open for about two additional hours on “select evenings for the full fifteen weeks of the exhibition,” from Oct. 5, 2012, through Jan. 23, 2013. The surprise is that, instead of the usual Thursday-Friday-Saturday nights, the extended hours will be on Sundays and Mondays, when hours will be from 10 a.m. through 8 p.m. (exception for the holidays on December 24 and 31). This is a good experiment — maybe there’s less to do, less competion on Monday nights, for example.
  • Last May, the Cleveland Museum of Art “due to popular demand,” added weekend hours for Rembrandt in America: Cleveland stayed open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday of its final two weekends, two hours longer than usual.  And it was open on Monday, May 28, Memorial Day, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
  • When that exhibit traveled to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, it “sold out” — 100,000 tickets, versus the anticipated 75,000 when the MIA planned the show. So, from Sept. 4 through Sept. 16th, it stayed open until 8 p.m. on the five nights a wekk whene it usually closes at 5 p.m. (It’s always open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays.)  And when I suggested to Anne-Marie Wagener, the museum’s director of public relations, that the MIA stay open 24 hours, she wrote back “We’re going to do just that for Terracotta Warriors and MORE REAL!”
  • In June, the Denver Art Museum announced that it was expanding the hours for Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective during the final 10 days of the show — 9 p.m. on most nights, instead of 5 p.m. And it was open on July 4.
  • Among the other exhibitions that got extended hours are the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise at the Seattle Art Museum, the Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō JakuchÅ« at the National Gallery of Art, and The Steins Collect at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which also opened early for members.

As for new regular evening hours, I’ll mention a few: the Walters Art Museum (Thursdays until 9 p.m.); the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (to 7 p.m. three nights and to 9 p.m. on Thursdays); the Cincinnati Art Museum till 9 p.m. on Fridays; and the Laguna Art Museum (till 9 p.m. on Thursdays).

This is progress.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum

 

The Met’s Economic Power: A Few Puzzlers

The Metropolitan Museum* released a report on Friday stating that its three spring/summer exhibitions had generated $781 million in spending for New York City; that’s what the regional, national, and foreign tourists who visited the Met spent, according to a visitor survey, while coming to see Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (below); and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. 

Then, “using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact,” the Met said they brought $78.1 million in direct tax benefits to the City and State from its out-of-town visitors. Pretty hefty.

The totals are a bit of a decline from 2011, when Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty; Anthony Caro on the Roof; Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective; and Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century were found to have generated $908 million — but credit the McQueen show for the bulk of that (it drew 661,509 visitors).

And the sums are up substantially from 2009 and 2008 (I couldn’t find a figure for 2010).

You can read more details — like spending in restaurants and shops — here.

I want to focus on two puzzles.

In 2011, “68% of the visitors traveled from outside the five boroughs of New York …38% were from other states, and 42% were international visitors.”

In 2012, “80% of visitors traveled to the Museum this summer from outside the five boroughs of New York…30% were from other states, and 47% were international visitors.”

Why has the percentage of foreign visitors gone up? Was it non-traditional Met visitors from the NYC fashion set who flocked to the McQueen show that made the difference in 2011? Or did, perhaps, the new Islamic galleries draw more foreign interest and also send visitors to the special exhibitions? Overall attendance at the Met was up in the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, partly because of those galleries.

The Met also disclosed that 339,838 people saw Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations; that 368,370 museumgoers visited Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City (through Aug. 31 — it will remain up through Nov. 4), and that 323,792 visitors went to The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.

The rooftop shows always draw big; they are aided by the fact that they’re outdoors in summer on a roof with spectacular views of NYC. But that Stein number, while fine, is a disappointment for such a fabulous show — both in a scholarly way and visually.

And here’s the surprise: The Steins Collect did better at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art than it did in NYC, according to a story in Friday’s Los Angeles Times. It said SF MoMA’s total was “360,588 visitors …the fourth largest in the museum’s history, even though there was a $7 surcharge on top of the regular admission price.”

Yes, the Steins had roots in the San Francisco area, but given the population disparity between the SF metro area and NYC, it’s still hard to see why it drew more people in the West than in NYC. Better marketing? Less competition? Hard to say.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

 

MOCA: It Depends What The Definition of “Within Days” Is, And Other Skewers

It has been more than five weeks since Jeffrey Deitch, the embattled director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, promised the world that the museum would announce two new “significant” trustees “within days.” But no announcement has come.

We are left no choice but to put his words in a Clintonian context — it depends on what your definition of “within days” is. Of course, Deitch and Eli Broad, the museum’s key benefactor and mastermind, could be having trouble getting “significant” people to commit to the wayward museum. I watch for the news regularly, but nothing has been forthcoming as I write this — except for the recent announcement that MOCA would not hold its annual fall fund-raising gala until spring.

People continue to write about MOCA, though, and — sadly — it’s getting to be almost too easy to mock MOCA these days. Try to read this recent piece by Rochelle Gurstein in The New Republic without smiling or laughing out loud. A few excerpts:

..what prompted my familiar feelings of disbelief was reading John Baldessari’s explanation for why he decided to resign from the MOCA board of trustees. …Baldessari has made a career of appropriating photos from commercial, mass-produced entertainment and then altering or juxtaposing them with words and images in a deadpan fashion—…part of a larger movement dedicated to destroying the boundary between art and life—but it turns out, and this is what surprised me, there were limits to this project….Baldessari …objected to …[Deitch’s proposed exhibit on] disco culture…: “When I heard about that disco show I had to read it twice. At first I thought ‘this is a joke’ but I realized, no, this is serious.”

…I could only think, another fine example of the world turned upside down: Some of the most “progressive” segments of the art world, in truth, the very people who have devoted themselves to obliterating the distinction not only between art and life but also between the “media world” and the “real world” (Baldessari’s terms), feeling righteous indignation at the prospect of things overly commercial or lowbrow being shown in the museum. Concern about standards was showing up in the most unlikely of places.

…And then came the line [from Baldesari] that made me rub my eyes in disbelief: “It also makes me think that I’m a dinosaur, and Jeffrey Deitch and his ideas may be the future. But I don’t like it.” I couldn’t help feeling that there was something comic and a little poignant in a figure like Baldessari…finding himself in the same dreaded position as art lovers who have questioned the aesthetic value of the pop appropriation/“critique” he has made and championed all his life….

She has a point. Next, Gurstein takes on Deitch.

…Just as the vanguard artist could not believe he was becoming a dinosaur, the fun-loving, everyman museum administrator [Deitch] cannot believe his authority is being questioned. And so Deitch directs the reporter of the Los Angeles Times to open the catalogue of his current exhibition, Painting Factory: “How can people talk about the lack of seriousness? This is the heaviest book on new abstract painting that’s been published in a long time.” I wonder if he is talking about its seriousness—“the heaviest book”—or whether he is counting pages just like he counts paying customers at the gate.

There’s more, about art history, university trends, etc. Even if you disagree, you can’t help but smile. Here’s the link again.

I do not see how MOCA can survive much more of Deitch.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Art Reserve

Berlin Gemaldegalerie: Prussian Cultural Foundation Backtracks, A Little

Yesterday, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation took a step forward toward possibly resolving the contentious battle over the fate of Berlin’s Old Master collection. As you may recall from my previous posts (here and here), the donation of a large 20th century art collection and demands by its giver had led the Foundation to a specious plan: moving the older paintings into the already full Bode Museum and into storage (supposedly temporarily, but with no set timeframe and no money allocated for new quarters) to make way for the gift.

Opponents here and then in Germany launched petitions against this appalling plan. (See the petition, and sign it, here). The U.S. petition has more than 13,000 signatories.

Pressed by the outcry, the Foundation has now said it will begin a feasibility study to look at alternatives to its original plans, though it repeated its belief that the leadership’s original stance was correct. (It’s hard to admit when you are wrong.) If you can read German, the text is here. There is also a good article in today’s Berliner Zeitung. Just plug it into Google Translate and you can get the gist.

The study will ostensibly look at keeping the Old Masters in the Gemaldegalerie and at moving them to a new building near the Bode; better, the statement said it would commit to a binding timeline for a move to a new display of the Old Masters.

Jeffrey Hamburger, the Harvard professor who took up the cause, wrote and posted the petition here, and remains on the case told me last night that this is “real progress,” but remains wary. And I agree, the opponents must remain vigilant — or the Foundation will take it as a sign that all is dandy.

Here’s a statement Hamburger gave to Der Spiegel:

It is gratifying to see that the Foundation is taking steps to respond to its critics in a constructive fashion. Their willingness to explore alternatives represents progress, albeit compromised by their statement that they are doing so “in order to avoid any appearance of hasty decisions.” No less welcome is the commissioning of a feasibility study, although one is left to wonder what the need for such a study at this late date says about the years of planning that supposedly took place previously. The public recognition that any such study needs to take into account progress (or lack thereof) on the Foundation’s many other current projects also represents an important concession.

 The study is due by spring.

 

 

 

Come (Or Go) Celebrate: The Menil Turns 25

A change of pace — no complaints today,  just a congratulatory shout-out to the Menil Collection. On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Menil will formally celebrate its 25th anniversary. The date occasioned several efforts, none earth-shaking or innovative, but all an effort to reach out to people who will appreciate a museum that was started and conceived by Dominique de Menil as a quiet “place apart” for contemplating art. (Would that her view were prevelant today.) As you will all remember, Renzo Piano designed it, his first U.S. museum, and one that remains his best.  

First, as ever to me, are the exhibitions. How can you not love one called Silence? Opened in July, it contains  32 paintings (including Magritte’s The Listening Room, at right), sculptures, performances, and sound and video works, and they aim to “explore spiritual, existential, and political aspects of the absence of noise or speech.”

Nearby, the Menil remembers its history, with an archival exhibition called Dear John and Dominque: Letters And Drawings from the Menil Archives. They were sent by friends, artists, curators, and others, and the Menil is turning a gallery into a readin room so that people may have peek.

Second, the celebration on the lawn. It’s free, includes music, dancing, a scavenger hunt and birthday cake.

Before and after that date, there’ll be concerts by the likes of Yo-yo Ma and lectures by, say, Calvin Tomkins. Plus a cell-phone walk through the complex.

It’s solid, not-flashy but appropriate, perfect for the Menil.  

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Menil Collection