Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

The DIA’s Many Facebook Fans: Will They Show Up in Person? — UPDATED

The Detroit Institute of Arts sent me a press release today that, at first, made me chuckle. It wasn’t about art at all — it was about the number of people who “like” the DIA on Facebook — or, as the DIA says, its Facebook fans. They now number more than 100,000. In fact, when I checked this evening, they numbered 102,758 — are probably growing fast.

There’s a reason. The DIA is offering its Facebook fans free admission during the month of March. Furthermore, one such pass admits four people. Coming off a strong turnout for “Rembrandt and Jesus,” this is smart marketing. (see update, below.)

The press release cites Museum Analytics, a website that tracks museums’ social-media audiences, for comparison numbers. It says that, as of Feb. 28, only six U.S. art museums have more Facebook fans than the DIA, and they are all in New York.

The Museum of Modern Art has the largest number among museums worldwide, with 978,838 fans when I checked, while the Met has 610,000. The Whitney Museum of American Art has 145,317, the DIA said.

Detroit also stacked itself up against non-NYC museums (I did not double-check these):  Art Institute of Chicago, 97,095; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 56,280; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 32,612; Cleveland Museum of Art, 22,168; and Toledo Museum of Art, 31,545.

I checked a few others: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 20,633; Seattle Art Museum, 32,807; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a surprisingly low 78,818, and the Dallas Museum of Art, 28,748.

These numbers are changing all the time — and spending a lot of time and effort to build them is probably over-rated. But the DIA was enterprising when, on Feb. 24, it announced the free pass offer with a goal of reaching 100,000. On that day, it had just over 97,000 fans.

The point is conversion — I’ll look for press release that says how many fans took up the DIA’s offer and visited the museum’s stellar collection. Here’s what else they’ll see.

UPDATE: Here are some specifics on the “Rembrandt and Jesus” exhibition at the DIA:

–116,392 visitors to the show
–More than 4,800 new and renewed memberships were purchased during the run of the exhibition
–CaféDIA saw an almost 50% increase in customers.
–Visitors came from 48 states, including Hawaii and Alaska. Group sales were robust, and tours were booked as early as last spring. In addition to metro Detroit, groups came from Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Windsor, Canada.
–Private third-party rentals for the show: 22 bookings and a total of 1590 visitors. Some of the organizations that booked private events include the Harvard Club of Eastern Michigan, Archdiocese of Detroit, University of Pennsylvania, and the College of Wooster in Ohio.
–Both the hard and soft cover exhibition catalogs sold out, as did the postcards that feature the DIA’s Face of Jesus. Very strong store sales, period, especially for Dutch candies (!).

Photo Credit: The DIA’s Great Hall, Courtesy of the museum

 

 

The Städel Museum Expands: Four Reasons To Note

In the last few days, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt has opened its doors on an expansion that’s significant for a couple of reasons. 

First, the art: The Städel has long been known for its great collection of Old Masters. Now, with the completion of new galleries designed by the architectural firm schneider+schumacher (of Frankfurt), it is showing Western art of the past 700 years. The new space, almost 32,300 square feet, doubles the area available to show the Städel’s holdings. Although the museum has collected some contemporary art in the past, two recent acquisitions – 600 works from the Deutsche Bank collection and 220 photographs from that of the DZ Bank — plus many major donations and some purchases have added what the museum says is 1,200 new contemporary works to the Städel’s collections. About 330 works are on view in the current hanging.

Second, the locale: these new galleries are all located underground, beneath the museum’s garden. They’re invisible from the outside, yet they still soar more than 26 feet in some places, allowing the presentation of big works. The ceiling is supported by juts 12 columns, and the galleries are lit naturally by 195 round skylights, each nearly 5 feet to about 8 feet in diameter, that form a distinctive pattern in the garden. Not that many museums have pulled off such a feat — most just enlarge their footprint, which is not necessarily a good thing. The grassy garden remains pretty much in tact.

Third, the cost: how did the Stadel manage to build these galleries and renovate its old building for less than $72 million at today’s exchange rate? I couldn’t find an exact comparion, but that sounds low to me — especially because the construction was  underground.

Finally, the funding: 50% of that total came from foundations, corporations and individuals. The rest came from the city and the state. Private largesse may be traditional in the U.S. but it’s new to Frankfurt, new to much of Europe. It shows that, whether people like it or not, government support for the arts in Europe is not going to be enough in the future. The museums I speak with in Europe are all talking about emulating the U.S. model, which has its own problems.  

But Max Hollein, the Städel’s director, has worked in the U.S., at the Guggenheim, and he’s said he learned how to raise money here. “One shouldn’t take a ‘no’ as a ‘no,'” he told Der Spiegel. “Rather, it is a sign that the question has merely been formulated wrong.” That article continues:

In Frankfurt, the bankers and collectors like this attitude, even if they insist that the art culture in Germany is very different from the US. But the mindset comes across when they refer to the museum as a “good product” — a comment that many German art lovers would find profoundly profane.

One collector sent Hollein, who had been persistent in his requests, a postcard with a picture of a vulture on it. Nevertheless, she donated four important paintings. The approach clearly works here in Frankfurt, even if it would be unthinkable in other, similarly wealthy German cities such as Hamburg.

I commend the rest of that article to you, if you’re at all interested in Hollein’s thinking.  

Hollein visited with me in New York when he was here last year, and explained some of the legal questions/arrangements that had to be settled before various donations were accepted. Good for him for working things out. And he’s not shy about gimmicks either — selling yellow rain boots to supporters of the museum, who wear their support in public, for example. (He’s shown in some photos wearing the yellow boots.) So while this transition isn’t always easy, above and beyond asking people for money, it’s done.

And by the accounts I’ve read so far, it’s a job well done.

Here’s a link the the museum’s press releases on the expansion, which are full of more details.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Der Spiegel

 

 

Greek Antiquities Stolen in Museum Theft — Blame Greece’s Economic Woes?

It’s Friday, but this should not go uncovered until after the weekend, or even tomorrow morning. The Associated Press is reporting that about 60 priceless antiquities have been stolen from a small museum near the ancient site of the Olympics:

Two masked gunmen stormed into a small museum at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece on Friday, smashing display cases with hammers and making off with dozens of antiquities up to 3,200 years old, authorities said….

…Police said about 60 artifacts were stolen by the robbers, who tied up the only site guard, a 48-year-old woman.

Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos submitted his resignation after the morning robbery, but it was unclear whether it had been accepted by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. Geroulanos traveled on Friday to ancient Olympia, some 210 miles (340 kilometers) southwest of Athens….

…A culture ministry official said the stolen antiquities dated from the 9th to the 4th centuries B.C., apart from the seal-ring which dates to Late Bronze Age Mycenaean times and was found in another part of southern Greece.

“They took small objects made of bronze and pottery — figurines, vases and lamps — and the ring,” the official said. “The artifacts were behind reinforced glass panels which fracture like a car windscreen, and the thieves grabbed whatever small objects they could reach through the holes they opened.”

Greek officials blamed cutbacks required by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for the scant security — a handy excuse. Nonetheless, the AP said it was the second major museum breakin in as many months.

Read more here from AP and here from the BBC. We’ll need to learn more before we can truly judge what’s happening in Greece, I think.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of AP

 

Gary Tinterow Hits The Ground Running At MFAH

Quite by accident, because I went to the website of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston the other day, I ran across some pretty smart outreach.

It was only days after Gary Tinterow has assumed his new job as director of the MFAH, and across the top the website read “A Message From and Conversation With MFAH Director Gary Tinterow.” It’s fairly traditional for new directors at a museum to post a director’s message, but I clicked anyway.

I was expecting something I’d seen before: Max Anderson’s missive, posted after he moved to the Dallas Museum of Art in January, is representative of the standard form of a “Welcome.” I decided to check around and see what other new directors are doing. James Cuno, who took the reins of the Getty Trust last August, immediately wrote a blog post, Reflections on My First Day at the Getty – and What’s Next.” But he hasn’t posted anything since — even though he decided in mid-December to become acting director of the Getty Museum, too.

I don’t see anything from Douglas Druick, new director of the Art Institute of Chicago, on its website (it could have come down by now) and something is wrong with the link to Ian Wardropper’s message at the Frick: when I clicked on “Director’s Greeting” on the information page, I got the index page. So I don’t know what he has done. I don’t see any welcomes or messages from Matthias Waschek at the Worcester Art Museum or Thomas Denenberg at the Shelburne Museum, both fairly new to their jobs.

But back in Houston, Tinterow not only wrote a Welcome message, but also taped five video messages — available on this page. In them, he talks about his roots in Houston and how it has changed since he left to go to college, about growing up in Houston, about making the transition from New York to Houston, about the role of museums today, and about his ambitions for the MFAH.

He made some excellent points, including a comment that he thinks of works of art as a mirrow that reflect your values back at you. He reveals himself as approachable, inviting visitors to give him pointers when they see him in the galleries.

It’s always hard to succeed someone like the late Peter Marzio, something of a legend at MFAH, and the man Tinterow succeeded. And I don’t want to make too much of this. But it looks to me as if Tinterow has hit the ground running.

And here, btw, is Houston Culture’s Map’s account of his first outing as director (above).

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Houston Culture Map

The Met Celebrates Lincoln’s Birthday With A Big Purchase

Just in time for Lincoln’s birthday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art* has aquired its first major image of the president — a rare and beautiful piece with a distinguished provenance to boot.

The bronze piece by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is one of only 16 known casts of the image, Abraham Lincoln, the Man (Standing Lincoln). Measuring 40 1/2 inches tall, it’s an authorized reduction of the large bronze monument that Saint-Gaudens created for Lincoln Park in Chicago between 1884 and 1887. It dates to 1911, the Met believes.

According to the Met, Saint Gaudens (1848-1907) planned and authorized the limited number of castings, and the terms of his estate alloed Tiffany Studios and Gorham Manufacturing Co. to make them under the supervision of his own mold makers, founders, and studio assistants.  His widow later sold the castings for museum, library, and domestic display. The Met’s says its version was likely one of the first two statuettes to be completed.

Here’s the provenance story:

The magnificently preserved cast was originally in the collection of Clara Stone Hay, the widow of President Abraham Lincoln’s onetime assistant private secretary, John M. Hay, who went on to co-author a 10-volume biography of Lincoln for the Century Company in the 1880s, and later served as U. S. Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay, who called Lincoln “The Tycoon,” kept a diary during his years on the staff of the White House (where he also lived from 1861 to 1865), considered by scholars as the most important source of first-hand recollections of the Lincoln Administration. During the “Great Secession Winter” of 1860-1861, and on through the Civil War, Hay also wrote pseudonymous newspaper articles supporting the President-elect, later the President—a common practice of the day.

The Met bought it from a private collector whose family has owned it since 1943.

This acquisition happens at a great moment, as the Met has recently reopened its renovated and reinstalled American paintings galleries — where this piece will go, in the gallery devoted to the Civil War and its aftermath. It joins more than 50 other works in the collection by Saint-Gaudens, but it’s the only major representation of Lincoln in the collection. Unlike George Washington, who’s represented in several major pieces.

For Lincoln fans, I will cite more from the Met, because the press release is not yet on the website and I can’t link to it.

The original bronze was dedicated in Lincoln Park, Chicago on October 22, 1887, in a setting designed by Stanford White. The statue was officially unveiled by Abraham Lincoln II, the President’s 14-year-old grandson and namesake, who would live only another three years. The dedicatory address was offered by Leonard Swett, a leading Illinois attorney who had ridden the judicial circuit with then-lawyer Abraham Lincoln for 11 years. Swett proclaimed that the statue revealed more of the man he knew than any sculpture he had ever beheld.

A replica was later created for Parliament Square in the shadows of Westminster Abbey, and presented to the British people in 1914 by the American National Committee for the Celebration of the Centenary of the Treaty of Ghent. An entirely different statue was originally designed for the prestigious site, but Lincoln’s son, Robert T. Lincoln (a close friend of John Hay’s), intervened and urged that the Saint-Gaudens sculpture be cast for London instead.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

Â