Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museums

Freezing Cold: Maybe You’d Like to Borrow A Down Coat For The Ice Museum

Maybe it’s because big parts of the U.S. (including where I am), plus London and Paris and other areas of Europe, are all having a really cold snowy winter, but I was amused to read the other day the Moscow has opened an ice sculpture museum. No more is it true that “The snow sculptor can impose his will but temporarily,” as the story says. 

Thumbnail image for PH2010121902902.jpgTwo artists — Pavel Mylnikov and Bagrat Stepanyan — have created an ice museum, where it’s really, really cold inside (between 5 and 12 degrees F), in Sokolniki Park, Moscow. It opened during the second week in December, according to the Washington Post, which wrote:

Mylnikov and Stepanyan assembled a variety of artists who attacked 800 tons of ice and 200 tons of snow with a variety of picks and saws. Fortunately, Russia has no shortage of raw materials – much of the ice was trucked in from Siberia, cut from frozen rivers. The snow was made locally.

The artists plans to change what’s in the galleries every year, and the initial offerings included “a huge dinosaur, a complete bedroom, a castle with armored guard, Joseph and Mary hovering over Jesus, a Vostok rocket ship, a bunch of grapes frozen in a small block of ice.” They are all illuminated by colored lights.

OK, maybe not high art — but hey, it’s Christmas and it’s slow in the art world. And in freezing cold New York, it’s fun to know there’s a place where people who arrive unprepared for the cold inside can borrow a down overcoat and enjoy the artistic offerings.

The Post has more here, and a slide show of the sculptures, too.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Washington Post

 

The Dulwich Picture Gallery Turns Its Birthday Into A Real Masterpiece

I don’t know Ian Dejardin, director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside of London, but either I’ve been channeling him or he’s been channeling me.

vermeer-music-lesson.jpgFor the Dulwich’s 200th anniversary year, which begins in January, Dejardin is borrowing one masterpiece a month from other museums to put on view, on its own. As he told Reuters:

Dulwich is recognised internationally as a really important museum in the history of museums. So I felt able to go and visit and write to directors of major institutions that we’ve worked with over the years to suggest to them that they might like to lend what I suppose is a glorified birthday card.

 

One loan, one masterpiece every month of the year. It’s like an unfolding calendar, it’s like a year long advent calendar of your dreams.

I’ve been advocating single-picture masterpiece shows for a while now (here, here and here).

So what works are coming to the Dulwich party? And who’s lending?

It all begins on Jan. 9, and here’s the line-up:

  • January: Portrait of Sir John Soane by Sir Thomas Lawrence, from Sir John Soane Museum
  • February: The Bafoon – Don Sebastián de Morra by Velazquez, from the Prado
  • March: A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman/The Music Lesson by Vermeer, from the Royal Collection (above)
  • April: The Vision of Saint John by El Greco, from the Metropolitan Museum
  • May: Venus and Mercury Present Eros and Anteros to Jupiter by Veronese, from the Uffizi
  • June: Titus As A Monk by Rembrandt, from the Rijksmuseum  
  • July: Comtesse d’Haussonville by Ingres, from the Frick Collection
  • August: Self-Portrait With Felt Hat, by van Gogh, from the van Gogh Museum
  • September: Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan by Gainsborough, from the National Gallery of Art 
  • October: The Leaping Horse by Constable, from the Royal Academy
  • November: Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy by David Hockney, from the Tate
  • December: The Adoration of the Shepherds by Domenichino, from the National Galleries of Scotland

Each month, the painting on view will be the subject of a bicentenary lecture, with the dates and speakers all set and ready to see at that link.

What a lineup of pictures, of artists, of lending institutions and of lecturers. All I can do is congratulate the Dulwich, and hope that its masterpiece a month “birthday card” program will inspire similar ideas at other museums.

Here’s a link to the Reuters article, which also contains a short history of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Royal Collection  

Trouble In Roanoke: The Brand-New Taubman Museum Shrinks

taubman museum.jpgAnother art museum is in trouble: the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va., which just opened in late 2008, announced its fourth round of layoffs in its less than two years of existence. Current staff numbers just 17, according to the Roanoke Times.

The museum, in downtown Roanoke, with roots going back to 1951, had high hopes. Read from its “about” statement:

At the heart of downtown Roanoke, the new 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art proves an arresting landmark for visitors…As Roanoke’s most contemporary structure, it provides an analog for the city’s evolution from industrial and manufacturing town to technology-driven city….evok[ing] both the drama of the surrounding mountainous landscape of the Shenandoah Valley and the lyrically gritty industrial-era building culture of the great early 20th century railroad boom, when Roanoke came to prominence as a switchpoint city of the new South.

taubman galleries.jpgIts exhibition schedule seems appropriate. But it sounds as if this museum is yet another example of hubris. Again, from the Times:

Since the $66 million art museum opened in downtown Roanoke in November 2008, the institution has struggled financially. The museum underwent two rounds of layoffs in 2009, and a third in February. Mickenberg, who was hired in September, has been working to craft a $3 million annual budget. According to its most recent audit and tax forms, the museum reported $6.8 million in expenses during its first year of operation.

The website refers to a “stellar permanent collection” but gives no details, no information whatsoever about what’s in it (though that press release to which I link describes it in generalities).

Roanoke sits in southwest Virginia, far from other museums. I wish its budget was in line with its expectations, or dreams. It wasn’t: according to an earlier article in the Times,

The radically expanded art museum’s expenses actually exceeded $6.8 million in its first fiscal year, according to a tax filing and external audit recently released by Taubman officials, far overshooting a projected $3.75 million operating budget.

The amount included one-time startup costs, but also payroll for 52 employees, likely more than the museum could have sustained even in healthy economic times.

“Reality began to set in pretty quickly after the opening,” said John Williamson, who was museum board president at the time. “And it’s been a struggle ever since.”

Read more of the oh-so-familiar tale here.

One could chalk this up to human nature: do we never learn?

UPDATE, 9/14/10: Jenny Taubman, who with her husband Nicholas has given millions to the museum — recognized in the name — has resigned from the museum’s board because “she couldn’t give the museum the attention it deserves” and evaded answering the question of whether she and her husband would give more to keep the museum alive. More here, courtesy of WDBJ.

Photo credit: Courtesy Taubman Museum of Art

Hallelujah: Brooklyn Museums Leads On 21st Century Hours

brooklynmuseum.jpgI am thrilled to report that the Brooklyn Museum just announced new hours: Beginning Oct. 6, it will remain open until 10 p.m. every Thursday and Friday.

Congratulations! This is something I’ve been harping on for a while, and it’s something with which director Arnold Lehman has agreed with me privately and now publicly. Today, he said:

This important and positive change is an institutional priority that will enable us to better serve a twenty-first century audience by providing greater access for visitors who work during the day, for families, as well as for those who prefer to visit weekday evenings.

And museum board chairman Norman Feinberg said:

The Board believes that the previous hours did not appropriately address the changing needs of its community. We are delighted, through this reorganization, to far better serve our visitors.

Hallelujah.

Lehman has been in hot water lately, with critics pouncing on lagging attendance at the museum and its “populist” attempts. I’ve agreed — up to a point, though I have always said Lehman has a tougher row to hoe than (almost) any other museum in the U.S. And attendance woes at other places, like the Whitney, have unfairly gone relatively uncriticized.

Under the new plan, the museum will open at 11 a.m. Wed.-Fri., instead of 10 a.m., and it will close on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Target First Saturdays will continue as currently scheduled.

Other changes: “Existing staff hours, particularly those of the security team, have been rescheduled. The Museum Café, which is managed by Restaurant Associates, will offer dinner options as well as light snacks and beverages, including wine and beer, in the Rubin Pavilion.”

This somehow seems hard to do, especially in the current environment, but it’s the right thing to do — I hope other museums follow. Closing doesn’t have to be 10 p.m., btw — it’ll be different in different cities. But closing a 5 p.m., or worse 4 p.m., as many museums do, can no longer be justified.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Brooklyn Museum

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