Museums

It’s tough being a critic, especially a blogging one. No matter one’s natural tendencies to want to like something, you also tend to see the flaws and the disappointments, then end up coming off as a scold. So as the year ends, I thought I would mention a few of the many things going on in museum world that are worth applauding.

Here are a few I’ve noticed, in no particular order.

Let’s start at the Cincinnati Art Museum, which faced much turmoil a while back but has had a new director, Cameron Kitchin, for more than a year now (here’s a recent Q&A with him). Since October, the museum has been showing Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with A Unicorn on loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and if that’s not reason enough so celebrate, there’s also the fact revealed in a recent press release:

With the reopening of the third-floor contemporary gallery and the recent reopening of the Cincinnati Wing pre-Civil War galleries, Antiquities, and new first-floor galleries, there will be more for Art Museum visitors to see than ever before.

Second, an announcement from the Detroit Institute of Art this morning that it would grant free admission to a special exhibition called 30 Americans from Dec. 28 through Jan. 3, AND extend its hours during those days–noteworthy in itself–reminded me that I had intended to call out the museum for what is it doing to thank Michigan residents outside of Detroit for supporting the Grand Bargain. Last summer, it began a series of loan exhibitions, school programs, conservation and professional services for other museums, etc. throughout the state and it sent individual loans to a long list of museums around the state. It’s easy to forget to remember, and the DIA did not.

So many museums are offering performing arts nowadays, and I was pleased to see notice of a couple of exhibitions that combined the two–with one caveat, which is that I have not seen either one in person.

The Toledo Museum of Art‘s Degas and the Dance presents six of his dancer sculptures, plus other works (including the painting above), and since it “is presented in celebration of The Toledo Ballet’s 75th annual performance of The Nutcracker, it also includes a section of memorabilia and costumes lent by the ballet. Plus, visitors can see dance rehearsal, films and more.

The San Diego Museum of Art, meanwhile, is offering The Art of Music, which pays tribute to daily musical performances in Balboa Park, its locale. “Community” is a byword in museum talk these days, and here are two examples that connect museums to their community without losing sight of their art.

Last May, the Indianapolis Star wrote an interesting piece about an education program at the Indianapolis Museum of Art that began this past summer:

The IMA is partnering with St. Mary’s Child Center to create the nation’s first preschool at an encyclopedic art museum. The 16-student pilot program, which begins Aug. 3, invests in the idea that education focused on creative expression and material-based learning can make a lifelong change to 3- to 5-year-olds….

The museum is raising money to provide scholarships to eight students from families who rely on government assistance. Their families will also receive museum memberships.

Here’s the release with more details. It sounds promising, though the tuition is steep. I hope to learn more about how the first term worked out.

Photo Credit: The Toledo Museum of Art 

The other day the Broad Museum announced attendance since its opening on Sept. 20: it admitted 177,264 visitors in its first 12 weeks; by the end of this month, it expects more than 200,000 visitors.

Those numbers are against a projected annual number of 300,000, the museum says–which was definitely a low-ball number, I would think. New museums, especially those that are interesting architecturally, always attract big crowds–at first.

Admission to the Broad is free, which helps.

I asked the museum PR department what the new projection was for annual attendance, and this was the response:

We expect to have over 500,000 within our first 12 months of operation. We don’t plan to make any further or more specific projections until we have more actual attendance data. We have adjusted operationally to accommodate a higher visitorship than expected and will continue to do so as needed.

The Broad is open until 8 p.m. three nights a week, and regular readers of RCA know that I advocate for more evening hours at many museums. So I asked how they were working out–if the museum would disclose traffic patterns so that we could all learn from this. Not much, so far:

We share your enthusiasm for museum hours that allow visitors with a variety of family and work schedules to visit the museum…. Our galleries are at capacity every day and we are admitting visitors at roughly the same rate during all open hours, drawing from our onsite ticketing line as well as the line for advance timed ticket holders.

The advance tickets are sold out for December, January and February, the museum says. If you want to go, you have to take a chance on getting onsite tickets. Per the press release:

Admission for the onsite ticketing line is first come, first served, based on availability. The wait time in the onsite ticketing line is 30 to 45 minutes on an average weekday, and 60 to 90 minutes on an average weekend. On holiday weekends, wait time in the onsite ticketing line can be up to two or three hours.

The museum also said its public programming included several sold-out programs, and that it begins school visits, in hours before the museum opens to the public at 11 a.m. on weekdays, in January.

I regret to say that I have not been there since its opening, though I had a hard-hat tour in fall of 2014. This is only the beginning, and it’s a good one, but the key (as always) is what happens after the newness wears off.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Broad