Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

More Creativity For The Delaware Art Museum’s Centennial

For a smallish museum, the Delaware Art Museum has gotten a lot of attention from me on this blog. That’s because it has often been creative, and over the weekend I learned of another example worth remarking about –partley becauses it gets visitors to focus on the permanent collection — thanks to Edward Sozanski, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s contributing art critic.

Sozanski’s story, Delaware Art Museum and How It Grew, outlines where and how the museum got parts of  its collections. The roots go back to the death of local illustrator  Howard Pyle, which a group of locals bought from his widow for what became the museum, and continue through other gifts, notably of Pre-Raphaelite paintings from the family of Samuel Bancroft Jr. and of a group of more than 5,000 works Helen Farr Sloan, the widow of John Sloan. They provide evidence for the simple fact that, as the article says, “the majority of acquisitions are gifts or bequests; few museums can afford to buy much of anything that’s worth bragging about. Furthermore, a few major gifts prove to be the catalysts around which the collection accrues, like a coral colony.”

But there’s more, and that’s the creative part — how Delaware has chose to display “100 Works for 100 Years,” in celebration of its centennial. When the museum announced the exhibition in April, I somehow missed this aspect. As Sozanski describes it (I obviously haven’t seen it myself), the exhibition is

… not gathered together in the special exhibitions space but distributed throughout the building, even overflowing into the Copeland sculpture garden.

As if on a treasure hunt, visitors proceed with a map-checklist. With one noteworthy exception, all 100 objects are found in the galleries where they normally reside; each is identified by a special label, easily recognized.

It’s these labels that explain how the museum acquired each object, through gift, bequest, or purchase.

Online, visitors will find a map listing the 100 works and their locations. They will also find audio clips about the works, recorded by “community members” including the First Lady of Delaware, the conductor of the Delaware Symphony, a charter school student, the state’s poet laureate, and others. One by Danielle Rice, the museum’s Executive Director, discusses The Return of Tobias, by Benjamin West, pictured here.

Something similar to that tactic, non-experts commenting on paintings was tried notably with Leonardo Live, the documentary made for Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, shown at the National Gallery in London several months back to mixed results. I know that other museums have done so as well. Some have had non-experts  write labels. When I’ve heard or seen these efforts, most seem to fall short, for me at least.

But the treasure hunt aspect of this show seems to be handled very well. It can be followed or, seems to me, ignored, as each visitor prefers.

Add this to previous posts, which include pop-up painting reproductions around the state and a battle of the sexes contest to see if people can really tell who painted a picture, and the Delaware Art Museum seems to me to be on a roll.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum

 

Stay Tuned: News Coming About MOCA This Week

The Los Angeles Times is back on the MOCA case. Over the weekend (today’s paper, I think, but online yesterday), they let director Jeffrey Deitch have another stab at telling his side of the story, which he has been unable to do successfully a couple of times in the past. Before we get to that, though, he did suggest that the week ahead would bring developments. The article’s penultimate paragraph says:

Deitch says that two “significant’ new trustees will join the board within days, and he intends to recruit new artists to the board to replace Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger and John Baldessari. The core of his board and staff, he declares, is now fully behind him.

I find his locutions amusing. Does he think other trustees are insignificant?

But let’s let that pass, and wait to see who these people are: their names will be telling. Would any artist sign up now? Would truly independent people, unbeholden to megapatron Eli Broad, sign up? We’ll see.

In the article, Deitch tries to defend his stance and his record at MOCA — noting that he has boosted attendance to record levels, is taming the museum’s budget troubles, and is generating scholarship for such exhibits as The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Andy Warhol (on view through Aug. 20).

But the article’s sources are very telling. On Deitch’s side, the paper cites “Aaron Rose, who co-curated “Art in the Streets,” MOCA’s exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art, for Deitch” and artist Shepard Fairey, who has a contract to develop a graphic identity for MOCA. Not exactly unbeholden to Deitch, are they?

On the other side, there’s Lenore S. Greenberg, a MOCA life trustee, who “says the museum’s problems stem from Deitch’s programming decisions as well as new board members who ‘are not familiar with what their responsibilities are’ ” and then added, “The board is dysfunctional, and I don’t think the director is functional either.”

She’s a significant trustee.

 

A Match? Dallas Museum of Art + Leonardo — UPDATED

Art in America magazine has a scoop: Dallas Museum of Art Director Max Anderson apparently wants to buy the Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, that has resurfaced over the last year and was exhibited at the National Gallery of London’s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan last year. 

The price tag would be about $200 million.

According to the article, published online:

Jill Bernstein, the museum’s chief communications officer, confirmed to A.i.A., “We have brought Leonardo da Vinci’s recently re-discovered masterpiece Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) to the DMA. We are actively exploring the possibility of acquiring it.” Measuring about 26 by 18 inches, the painting shows Christ holding a glass orb in his left hand, with his right hand raised in benediction.

Anderson sees the painting as a “destination painting,” the story notes. And who wouldn’t? Only one other painting by Leonardo is on public view in the United States — Ginevra de’ Benci, which is in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.

Where will Dallas get the money? And is the painting worth $200 million, given its condition? It was heavily overpainted and then cleaned too aggressively.

Some of Leonardo’s hand is evident, however, in the orb and the raised hand, and people may well flock to see the picture.

UPDATE: Robert Simon, one of the dealers who is handling the painting, sends a statement about the “overcleaning” remarks made by some people:

There is no doubt that the painting had been heavily overpainted — probably in the seventeenth century. That is essentially the reason why Leonardo’s authorship was not recognized until recently. But the statement that the painting was cleaned too aggressively is misleading. As Dianne Modestini (who cleaned and restored the Salvator Mundi) indicated in public presentations given at the Leonardo conference held at the National Gallery in January and at the Institute of Fine Arts in February (and soon to be published), damage to the painting was largely limited to the narrow areas along two very old cracks in the panel –neither of which go through the head of Christ. While there was localized paint loss there and some scattered abrasions elsewhere, the paint surface of the painting remarkably retains much of its original glazing — a fact confirmed by recent technical analyses. The removal of overpaint in the recent cleaning was undertaken delicately and at the highest level of conservation standards.

 

Beginning Of The Endgame At MOCA?

Charles Young, the former chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art, has urged the institution’s influential life trustee Eli Broad to remove museum director Jeffrey Deitch.

That’s from a story by Jori Finkel in the Los Angeles Times this morning. Young is a former chancellor of UCLA — no slouch.

Perhaps Deitch didn’t know what he started when he forced the resignation of Paul Schimmel — though he should have — but Broad, who has played hard ball in the business world with the best, should have known. They must have underestimated Schimmel’s support system and overestimated Deitch’s.

More the the LATimes:

[Young] questioned Broad’s “support for Jeffrey, when many about you are no longer willing to give him any credence as a Director of a world-class museum, indeed believe his tenure is likely to take MOCA into the abyss…”

Young’s friendship with Broad didn’t prevent him from saying:

“I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job for which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified…The resignation of dedicated, long-term trustees, and especially four highly respected artists of international acclaim should bother you, David [Johnson], Maria [Bell] and the other continuing members of the Board. The question is ‘What is now to be done?'”

This could be the beginning of the endgame.

 

Chasing Audiences: Too Much Emphasis On Youth?

It’s pretty obvious that museums — and most other places as well — chase the young. They see gray hair in their galleries and fear that no one will replace them if they don’t do something about it NOW. 

I’ve always had some doubt about that — many people, I believe, don’t have the time for art or the inclination for it until they reach a certain age, which — anecdotally — seems to be somewhere in the 40s, give or take, after most people’s children have developed some independence.

Now comes a survey which agrees that society is too youth-obsessed. According to a firm called Euro RSCG Worldwide, which survey people in 19 countries, “63% of consumers around the world believe that society’s obsession with youth has gotten out of hand.”  Results in the U.S. clocked in at exactly 63%, though the response ranged from 78% in Colombia to 45% in Belgium.

“Interestingly,” an article on Marketing Charts said, “this view is shared by 6 in 10 Millennials (aged 18-34).”

7,213 adults took part in the survey, but ages were not stated in the report, nor was the margin of error.

This survey was more about aging itself — e.g., “55% of the respondents said they look younger than most people their age” — than it was about choices. But it still makes me wonder. Older people — and here I mean 40s and above — seem to resent the attention given to young people, even perhaps at some museums. Museums have to deal with that, making sure that they present a balance of activities and, with luck, a lot of programming that appeals to all ages.

I really love it when I go, say, to the Frick or the Morgan and see people of all ages. And I dislike it when I see costume exhibitions full of young people who never set foot in art exhibitions. Likewise, with diverse audiences for both, say, Jacob Lawrence and, say, Titian.

Chart Courtesy of Marketin Charts