Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

LA MOCA: The Coverage And The Debate Continues

Another day, another story about the sad situation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles — that’s the way it’s been going. So any hopes by “philanthropist” Eli Broad and his hand-picked director Jeffrey Deitch that the brouhaha over the firing/forced resignation of chief curator Paul Schimmel is going to blow over should now seem like wishful thinking.

That little dismissal, which no doubt was the culmination of long battles within the museum, is going to cost MOCA, short-term and probably long-term.

Deitch broke his silence, which as I’ve said before has shown him to be either a coward or a puppet, on Friday, giving a “wide-ranging interview” to the Los Angeles Times. I don’t know how long it went on, but — through I would bet no fault of the writer, Reed Johnson, Deitch managed to say almost nothing substantive. (He probably signed a nondisparagement agreement, as Schimmel assuredly did.) Sample:

Eli has been an absolutely great patron with us. He’s so totally supportive.I know that there’s this conspiracy theory. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s not the case.

Deitch also managed to say nothing in his own blog post. Sample:

We would like to reassure you of our commitment to extending MOCA’s legacy and international reputation as a preeminent contemporary art institution, to fulfilling the museum’s mission, and to ensuring that it has a secure future both financially and artistically.

And just why should anyone believe that reassurance? He doesn’t say.

Yesterday’s Guardian, in the U.K., published “LA aesthetes fight pop-art billionaire,” which provided a recap of the last few weeks, but, in my opinion, got a few things wrong. It mentions accusations that Deitch is dumbing down and says:

And behind that, many suspect, is a billionaire whose motives are not entirely clear. While Broad saved Moca and wants to keep it viable, he is also constructing a rival museum across Wilshire Boulevard [sic] to house his own collection.

Aside from that location gaffe, I think we know exactly what Broad’s motivations are: he wants larger attendance at MOCA and at his own museum, when it opens. That goal happens to coincide with Deitch’s ambition, which has often been more about being the center of attention as a creator of events, aka parties, than it has been about art. The Guardian story hits that point tangentially:

LA art critic Mat Gleason said: “Deitch is actually inoculating the museum from conflicts of interest with high-wealth collectors.” By putting on more pop-culture orientated shows, “he can go to low-level donors and say, ‘We throw really cool parties, why don’t you donate to us?’ “

And when the story says

Friends of Deitch say he’s tired of being criticised for placing pop art or shows about disco culture ahead of cutting-edge art. But they also say he’s perfect for Los Angeles because it is a city “wrapped up in celebrities and celebutantes”.

It’s the artists, then, who may have to accept that they live in an entertainment town. “But, of course, they’re freaked out that people like James Franco are getting exhibitions because it’s not serious and it doesn’t matter,” says a Moca supporter.

…I was surprised. I had thought, at least, that Pacific Standard Time showed that the art produced in southern California, at least between 1945 and 1980, was not “entertainment.”  

 

 

 

Where Pacific Standard Time Did Not Succeed

The Getty Trust’s chief executive, James Cuno, recently confirmed to The Art Newspaper what everyone has been thinking, that the Getty will organize a sequel to Pacific Standard Time, its broadly successful effort involving 68 exhibitions that changed perceptions of Southern California art.

He said it will be come “in “five or six years’ time,” and that conversations were starting with its lead partners on PST: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum at UCLA.

That’s about what Deborah Marrow (with Cuno at left), the director of the Getty Foundation, told me in March: “Everyone is eager to keep the collaboration going,” she said, “No one wants to lose momentum.” (To refresh: The Getty spent more than $11 million over the last decade on grants that started out simply preserving the archives of L.A. artists but ballooned to be much more, eventually involving performances, exhibitions at commercial galleries, and an 11-day festival as well as museum exhibitions.)

“It is a high priority to do it again, because it was such as success,” she said. PST exceeded expectations by many measures – the quality of the exhibitions, several of which are unexpectedly traveling to museums as far afield as Australia; the excellence of the catalogues; the luster given, or restored, to artists, some of whom are suddenly getting exhibits or representation in New York galleries.

PST, though, did not always lead to expected jumps in attendance. I did a survey of more than a dozen participating museums for The Art Newspaper, and discovered mixed results. From my story in TAN (which is not online yet):

Several had small or no increases, including:

  • Orange County Museum of Art: about 11,000 visitors, “about normal.”
  • Museum of Latin American Art: 17,685, visitors, up over 25% vs. the previous five months, but short of the 20,100 who came to see Siqueiros landscapes in 2011.
  • Palm Springs Museum of Art: 46,000 people, down slightly from 2011 period (which had more free days).
  • Laguna Art Museum: 7,374 visitors, up 35% vs. a year ago but level with 2010.
  • Fowler Museum: up 6%, compared with the same period the previous year.
  • Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens: 41,270, “among the best for a special exhibition in the past ten years, though the run was also a month longer than average.”

Others fared better:

  • Santa Monica Museum of Art: about 25,000, “more than we’ve ever had for one exhibit.”
  • Vincent Price Museum: 4,473 visitors, more than double the usual attendance.
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego: “It heavily outpaced typical attendance during that time period.”
  • American Museum of Ceramic Art:  5,358, “higher than usual,” which would have been about 4,500.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art: its five PST exhibits “definitely brought in more visitors,” but not evenly, and with no record-breakers.
  • Chinese American Museum, up about 8.5%.

Almost everyone I contacted was happy with PST, though, and they all underscored the added media attention. “One of the biggest benefits was having journalists like Roberta Smith from The New York Times and Peter Plagens from The Wall Street Journal come to review our PST exhibition,” Susan Golden, of the Museum of Latin American Art, said — echoing others. Bob Bogard, marketing director of the Palm Springs Museum, said coverage ranged as far as a Dubai inflight magazine and Brazil’s Elle. Several museums say they are now collaborating on marketing with nearby museums.

On attendance, Ron Nelson, director of the Long Beach Museum of Art, was the unhappy outlier. “I expected that we would have triple what we had,” he said –but got only a slight increase in visitors. “We were one of the original 13 grants, but the number kept growing and it diluted the effect. It was an embarrassment of riches.”

Interestingly, the lack of a universal attendance boost is not deterring the Getty (unlike some other museums we know). Although Marrow did not place a PST sequel above other top goals at the Foundation –like an initiative to train specialists to conserve panel paintings — she said it was a high priority. Since 2002, the Foundation has devoted, on average, about 10% of its grant money on PST, and I would guess that’s a good guide for the future.

But she dismisses the notion that PST could be staged every year, as some have hoped. It was the long gestation time, which allowed for solid exhibition research, that made PST a success, she said, a point echoed by museum directors. Still, she cites several exhibitions about modern architecture in Los Angeles, including “Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940—1990” at the Getty, as the next PST initiative, set to take place April through June of 2013. Last year, the Getty split about $1 million in research grants for these shows among seven museums, including the Hammer Museum at UCLA, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the A + D Architecture and Design Museum. It’s also planning for a month of “concentrated” programming on L.A. architecture.

It’s a no-brainer for the Getty to say that it’s not going to let the brand die — for all those reasons and perhaps one more, a point made by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, the author of “Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s. PST, she said, “has even silenced the critics of the Getty, showing that it is solidly connected to its city.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the College Art Association (top); of the Getty (bottom)

Visiting Bologna’s Artistic Treasures? Add The Gelato Museum

It’s boiling again here in New York City, as it is elsewhere, and readers can be excused for thinking of cooler things — like, say, gelato.

So we’re taking a little diversion today: I just learned about a soon-to-exist museum for the treat. I’m not kidding — the Carpigiani Gelato Museum, which bills itself as “a center of cultural excellence dedicated to the understanding and study of the history, culture, and technology of gelato and the expertise of the innovators who drove its evolution over the centuries,” opens in Bologna, Italy in 70 days — per its website.

The museum will have “more than 20 original machines…along with multimedia presentations, 10,000 historical images and documents, precious accessories and tools of the trade from ages past, video interviews, and workshops.” The history it’s telling goes back to the 12th century B.C.

Although I usually prefer visiting and talking about art museums to history museums, I enjoy history, especially when there’s more than expected. The Gelato Museum is trying to be serious, even as it promotes “the trade.” It says its presenting the history of gelato in five stages: 

  • From Snow Wells to Sorbet (12.000 BC to 13th century AD)
  • Gelato and the Birth of a Noble Trade (16th – 18th centuries)
  • Ascent and Global Diffusion of Gelato (19th – 20th centuries)
  • From Ice and Salt to New Technologies (1900-1950)
  • Gelatieri and Manufacturers Unite: Gelato Becomes the Flagship of Made in Italy (1950-1985)

Did you know that gelato was important to banquets of the royal courts, “enhancing the prestige of the noble families that offered it,” and that monasteries to welcome their important guests? Neither did I, but it’s all there in the history sections.

Ok, so this is a treat for kids and a boost to gelaterias everywhere… but while you’re visiting Bologna’s museum of medieval art, its paintings galleri, and the Morandi Museum, you might divert for some gelato.

It already has a Facebook page.

Feel a little cooler?

 

 

“Art Is Everywhere” — Or Could Be

Starting today, residents and visitors to Delaware will see reproductions of paintings from the Delaware Art Museum on main streets and other open-air spaces in three counties. This “pop-up” exhibition is part of the museum’s celebration of its 100th anniversary year, which began last November.

The reproductions  of Edward Hopper’s Summertime (at left), Winslow Homer’s Milking Time and 13 other works of art are printed to scale and framed. In a press release, the museum’s Executive Director Danielle Rice said that “By sharing reproductions of some of our most beloved works of art, we’re hoping Art is Everywhere will spark curiosity and inspire both new and current visitors.” A map of the installations is available online, and there’s a list on the museum’s website exhibitions page.

As long as the reproductions are good — the exhibition is sponsored by the printer,  Aztec Printing & Design — I like this idea. I have since the Detroit Institute of Arts did the same thing on a larger scale (40 paintings)  in 2010, and called it DIA:  Inside|Out. (More details are here.)

At the time, I criticized the DIA for missing the opportunity to solicit small donations via texting from passers-by. One commenter then told me that was too expensive (a surprise because other museums have successfully used texting, such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for its drive to purchase Lime Green Icicle by Dale Chihuly). And the DIA, if I recall correctly, did not comment publicly but told me privately that Inside|Out wasn’t used to fundraise because the museum had recently completed a large campaign and that the outdoor show, marking its 125th anniversary, was outreach. That’s fair.

At the time, the DIA said it was “the only museum in the country doing it, though the idea came from the National Gallery in London’s 2005 program where they posted reproductions of their masterpieces around SoHo” and said it was “wildly successful.”

So the Delaware Art Museum gets a pass on fundraising, thanks to the DIA. But I must quibble a bit with the selections. Although the museum says it is “best known for its large collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art, works by Wilmington-native Howard Pyle and fellow American illustrators, and urban landscapes by John Sloan and his circle,” how come five of the 15 selected works are by Pyle? And five by Pre-Rapahaelites?

Only one is by Sloan, a better artist than Pyle; and the Delaware museum owns “the largest collection of art by Sloan, as well as the John Sloan Manuscript Collection, a treasure trove of archival materials.” That’s Sloan’s Spring Rain at right.

I know the Delaware Art Museum is more varied than this selection, and while I believe in stressing one’s strengths, maybe this wasn’t the time for that.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum

 

 

 

Kimerly Rorschach Gets The Job

Just out now:  The Seattle Art Museum has appointed Kimerly Rorschach as the museum’s new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director.

Rorschach was the runner-up for the director’s job at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which went to Gary Tinterow.

Rorschach has been the Mary Duke Biddle Trent and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University since 2004. She moves to SAM in the fall.

Press release is here.

Rorschach recently became president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, succeeding Dan Monroe of the Peabody Essex Museum.

According to the museum’s release,

At the Nasher, Rorschach partnered with institutions from across the country and around the world to develop a program of high-profile and high impact exhibitions, from the 2008 exhibition El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918 in 2010, a partnership with the Tate Britain and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Among her current exhibition projects are The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, which includes works by David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Christian Marclay, Dario Robleto, and more and is currently on view at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery; and Wangechi Mutu: Walk This Wayopening in 2013 and traveling to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The strong exhibition program established by Rorschach has been accompanied by a series of in-depth scholarly catalogues that are distributed worldwide.

That’s a pretty good track record, especially for a university museum.

I wish her luck there. Her predecessor, Derrick Cartwright, resigned in May 2011 after about two years in the job amid rumors that the museum’s financial situation was worse than he was given reason to believe.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Duke