Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Discovery In the Basement — A Picasso, No Less — Leads to Deaccession

Now it’s a museum in Indiana that has found a treasure lying around in the basement: Picasso’s Seated Woman with Red Hat, dated 1954-1956, has been in storage at the Evansville  Museum of Arts, History & Science since it was donated in 1963. Because of a mixup and misunderstanding, no one knew it was a Picasso — even though it was signed! 

Last week, deciding it was unable to properly secure and show the picture, the museum’s board voted to deaccess Seated Woman with Red Hat through Guernsey’s, the small New York auction house, which plans to sell it privately (about which more, below).

It’s hard to tell, judging by this picture, how good (or bad) this portrait of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter is — but it has an interesting provenance. The museum’s press release reveals  the whole story; here’s an excerpt:

Seated Woman with Red Hat was created using a layered-glass technique called “gemmail” (plural: gemmaux). Gemmail uses individual pieces of color glass overlapped and joined together with clear liquid enamel and then fired. …Picasso…produced 50 or more gemmaux masterpieces during his two years of study at the Malherbe Studio in France.

Picasso gave one-half of his collection to the Malherbe family in return for their expertise, training and collaboration, and kept one half for himself. The pieces in Picasso’s portion of the collection were sold to private collectors [including, the museum added later, the Emperor of Japan, Nelson Rockefeller and Prince Rainier of Monaco].

Raymond Loewy, an internationally known industrial designer, purchased Seated Woman with Red Hat in the late 1950s and gifted the piece to the Evansville Museum in 1963. …

…associated documentation indicated that the piece was created by an artist named “Gemmaux” – confusing the name of the technique with the artist’s name – and that it was a design inspired by a Picasso painting, which is how it was cataloged by museum staff. It was noted that the piece was signed by Picasso. The piece was placed in museum storage and never displayed. Earlier this year, Guernsey’s, in researching Picasso’s gemmaux works, contacted the Evansville Museum about the gift from Raymond Loewy. It was this contact from Guernsey’s that revealed the significance of the piece, prompting further research and study.

Loewy died in 1986, apparently never asking why his gift wasn’t on display.

Although the museum says it doesn’t want to pay the additional expenses associated with showing the picture, this is a curious excuse for deaccessioning. The museum also owns five works on paper by Picasso, and two are on view in an area it says is “devoted to portraits and figure studies.” It has what appears to be an extensive collection of art that requires security: “American and European painting, graphic works, and sculpture dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries.” It mounts temporary exhibitions. It owns, according to one published report, works by Rembrandt, Hopper and O’Keeffe. Its most recent 990, for 2010, shows net assets of more than $20 million and an operating surplus that year of $461,225. It’s accredited by the American Association of Museums.

Neither the museum nor Guernsey’s have placed a value on the portrait, which was based on Picasso’s 1934 Woman With a Red Hat. But that is what appears to be the motivation for selling, doesn’t it?

The message to patrons is clear: don’t give this museum anything too valuable; we’ll have to sell it. Not a way to build a collection.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Evansville Museum

Breaking News: Indianapolis Gets A Director

The Indianapolis Art Museum has just announced a successor to Max Anderson: Charles L. Venable is the new Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Museum. Venable is currently the director and CEO of the Speed Art Museum.

From the press release:

Venable brings more than 25 years of museum experience to the IMA, having held senior positions at some of the country’s top encyclopedic art museums including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. During his five-year tenure as director and CEO of the Speed, Venable fueled tremendous institutional growth and initiated innovative programs that placed a special focus on the permanent collection and fostered deeper engagement with the public. He launched a comprehensive analysis of the Speed’s 14,000-piece permanent collection, acquired a series of significant works of art for the Museum, and expanded the role of adult and student education within the Speed’s overall programming. Venable also spearheaded a master plan to reinvigorate the Museum and enhance the visitor experience, which has led to the reconceptualization of the Museum’s current facility and a planned 200,000-square-foot expansion featuring a new building for modern and contemporary art designed by wHY Architecture of Los Angeles and New York

 Read the rest here.

I have written favorably about what Venable has done at the Speed three times: here, here and here (this one is most enlightening — he answers my Five Questions about his review of the Speed’s permanent collection). He will surely be different in style from Anderson. But Venable has been accessible to me whenever I asked, and I assume to others in the press, and that’s a very good thing for many reasons — one being a sign that he’s open.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Business First

 

Kids Say The Darndest Things About Modern Art

Get ready to laugh. As museums and parents try to figure out how to get kids interested in art, it’s amusing to learn what they think when they first see it. Can you guess whose paintings in the Modern’s collection these kids are talking about:

  • It’s just a big red piece of paper with four lines on it. It’s not very interesting. I’d rate it a one-star. I think it’s stupid.
  • It’s fun to look at because you see kind of like a target-shaped thing… There are little faces that could be like fake people peeking up and you could try and shoot them with a bow and arrow. They’re real people.
  • Make-up Girl. It’s too much eye shadow. I never saw a lady with pink skin. I think I saw a picture of her before but I’m not sure what her name is. I think she’s in the fashion show. I saw a TV commercial that have those same exact colors.

Those are a few excerpts from a new feature on AudioTourHack called MoMA Unadulterated:

an unofficial audio tour created by kids. Each piece of art is analyzed by experts aged 3-10, as they share their unique, unfiltered perspective on such things as composition, the art’s deeper meaning, and why some stuff’s so weird looking. This is Modern Art without the pretentiousness, the pomposity, or any other big “p” words.

The kids comment on 30 works of art — those above are by Barnett Newman, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, respectively — and they are both touching and hilarious at times. They don’t think some of these works should be in art museums. No one likes Jackson Pollock, and one of his critics believes he made No. 31 for the money.

But beyond the fun, AudioTourHack, whose previous effort “reimagined Chamberlain’s sculptures [at the Guggenheim] as an exhibition about the Transformers….” has a serious mission: “to use creative story-telling to send people on fun, interactive journeys, redefining the way they perceive art and their surroundings.”

MoMA cooperated with the team making the tour, and the tour’s website page includes a handy map of where to find these works of art in the collection.

The AudioHackTour people say on their website, “We sincerely hope it introduces a wider audience to the art and gallery and reinvigorates both adults’ and children’s love of art.”  As funny as the podcasts are — and they are worth a listen no matter how you know about art — they may just serve their purpose well. There’s a cute little trailer on the site, too.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of AudioTourHack.

 

 

 

Turkey Admits Theft, Fakes At Its Ankara State Museum

No sooner had I written about the looting and destruction of cultural heritage troubles in Syria  this week than the last lines of the article to which I referred, Syria’s ancient treasures pulverised by Robert Fisk, came to mind:

This is why it is so important to have an inventory of the treasures of national museums and ancient cities. Emma Cunliffe, a PhD researcher at Durham University, published the first detailed account of the state of Syrian archeological sites in her Damage to the Soul of Syria: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict, listing the causes of destruction, the use of sites as military positions and what can only be called merciless looting. Much of her work has informed the studies of archaeologists like Farchakh.

Then I read about a situation in Turkey, where the Hurriet Daily News published an article on Aug. 8 headlined, Ministry Admits Grand Theft from Art Museum. That article began:

Over 200 works of art are presently missing from Ankara’s State Art and Sculpture Museum, according to a report from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, which has pinned the blame for the losses on Turkey’s 1980 coup d’etat.

A recent report by the ministry, which was later shelved away from public view to avoid a possible backlash, claims that 46 pieces from the museum’s catalog were stolen and replaced with fake replicas, daily Milliyet reported. The authenticity of 30 more art works is also “highly suspicious,” according to the report.

Some 202 art works, now “missing,” are priceless works of art belonging to Turkish artists such as Şevket Dağ, Şefik Bursalu, Hikmet Onat and Zühtü Müridoğlu, among many others.

To which the minister replied:

The Ankara State Art and Sculpture Museum was founded in April 1980 and left significantly unattended and managed inadequately as a result of the Sept. 12 [1980] coup. During this time, the museum records were not kept, healthy inventory work was not done and necessary minimum precautions were not taken.

I’m with Fisk on this. The fact is, museums around the world, don’t have or don’t use good inventory systems and many lack the money to record what they own. I don’t know who has the money to support this, but it would be nice if some rich collector decided to begin to tackle the job, perhaps through the World Monuments Fund. I know, it’s difficult and some countries don’t want help. But others do.

Even in the U.S, some museums lack complete inventories. We’ve seen several recent cases where museums suddenly “find” things they barely know they have: for example here (where Yale found a Velazquez in storage) and here, where the Cincinnati Art Museum rediscovered its collection of musical instruments.

 Photo Credit: Ankara museum, courtesy of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

 

Detroit Institute of Arts Has A Future — UPDATED

Voters in Michigan have given the Detroit Institute of Arts a ten-year lifeline. Local reports, including this one in  the Detroit Free Press, say the milage tax passed easily in Wayne and Oakland counties, and by a very slim margin in Macomb county.

That’s good enough: the DIA will now receive about $23 million a year from locals, and Graham Beal, the director, told me two weeks ago that “the tax is levied in December, and we will start getting funds in January.”

It wasn’t easy, though: As Mark Stryker of the Free Press posted in an online story that when I read it was timed at 5:53 p.m. yesterday, supporters of the millage, which I explained here and here, were making calls seeking support among voters in Macomb — rightly so. DIA  Executive Vice President Annmarie Erickson, told Stryker: “We’ve been phone banking every day and every night for the past 10 days. Right now we have 13 volunteers making calls.” She said she was “really nervous” because the results all depended on turnout.

But the end — more about which in a minute — must have been sweet. The DIA had worked hard, getting endorsements from the Detroit News, Crain’s Detroit Business, the local Chamber of Commerce and dozens of unions, as well as the Free Press.

In July, it  had printed an editorial, Don’t Let the DIA Shut Down, that began, “Losing the Detroit Institute of Arts is not an option.” (That photo, above, was published alongside the edit online.) Later, it noted:

Consider the alternative. Michigan would have to live with the shame of mothballing a collection that still ranks among the top six in the country. Some of the museum’s finest pieces might travel as part of special exhibitions, accessible in distant cities but not in their hometown. Others, including the world-renowned Rivera Court, might simply disappear from public view or be available only on a tightly restricted schedule.

The edit recounts much of the back story (which I also covered) and then hits hard:

This is the time to commit, as a region, to maintaining more than a century’s worth of artwork, much of it in the form of gifts from some of the region’s most renowned families, and to ensuring that it can be viewed for as many hours a day as possible. More than 4 million people — young families just starting out, schoolchildren, senior citizens and many others with tight budgets — would be able to walk in freely whenever and as often as they choose to do so….

A great art collection like this can expand the horizons of children. Sometimes a single piece can rearrange how you see the world….

Adults, too. 

Of course, the DIA’s fundraising work continues — ideally, it should have a $400 million operating endowment, to throw off about $20 million a year. That now stands at about $89 million. The DIA has used $300 million as a goal, according to other press reports, but I hope it can aim higher.  

UPDATE: Today, the DIA website extends three big THANK YOUs to residents of the three counties — plus that Love button  — and is already offering them free admission and other benefits.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Free Press