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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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The Getty Lands Another Masterpiece, Plus Potts Is Replaced In Cambridge

We can quarrel with MoMA’s video game escapade, but everyone’s got to agree that the illuminated manuscript acquired by the Getty museum today is a masterpiece and a beauty. And it makes perfect sense for the Getty’s collection.

The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, by Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), was purchased at Sotheby’s today for nearly $6.2 million. Van Lathem is considered to be the most accomplished painter of secular scenes in the golden era of Flemish manuscript illumination, the museum said.

The manuscript consists of “eight brilliantly painted half-page miniatures and forty-four historiated initials” and, as the book was rarely copied. this “romance appears in only three other manuscripts.” The work had been lent to the Getty Museum for its beautiful 2003 exhibition titled Illuminating the Renaissance. 

According to the Getty’s press release:

The only documented manuscript by Lieven van Lathem, the Prayer Book of Charles the Bold, is already in the Getty Museum’s permanent collection, having been acquired in 1989. This primary work provides the basis for all other Van Lathem attributions. The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies is regarded as the artist’s preeminent secular work, and this acquisition represents an unrivalled opportunity to unite masterpieces of both secular and devotional illumination by Van Lathem in a single collection.

While this announcement was being made by Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, late of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, his replacement was being announced there: it’s Timothy Knox (right), currently the director of Sir John Soane’s Museum* in London. I was just there, and Knox has done a wonderful job of restoring that gem — and I’m far from alone in thinking that.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Getty (top) and the Soane Museum (bottom)

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Soane

Michael Govan And Affinity Groups: He’s Right to Raise Fees

Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been taking heat in the last few days about his decision to increase the membership dues for various art groups at the museum. I think he’s right to do so…though I am not sure he and the museum have put forth their entire case.

The outcry began last week, when the museum hiked yearly dues for members of 10 support councils to $1,000, plus a $250–level museum membership they must now buy. In the past, the dues for these groups, organized around art categories, like photography, decorative arts, European art, etc., were as low as $400 a year. The new fee was long overdue, Govan told the Los Angeles Times, adding: “This change will bring us more in line with other museums nationally,” he said, citing higher dues at other museums in Los Angeles, Boston and New York. “To have an affinity group that has direct access to curators and artists, even at the new number, you could call it a bargain.”

Members begged to differ. One interpreted the increase as a play to only large donors on the part of the museum, whereas Govan reportedly said at a meeting that “the changes [are] part of a larger rethinking of the role of these groups. They were instrumental in fundraising in the museum’s early years before it even had a development office. Now, he said, it was important to make the system ‘simpler’ and ‘more professional.’ ” The article continued:

The plan includes dismantling the boards of the councils, leaving only a chairperson in place to help the department curator and development staff organize events. He also described a change in what the councils would do: organizing public events instead of private parties and focusing “more on education and the sharing of enthusiasm than acquisitions.”

The next day, the LATimes reported that “Diana Gutman, chairwoman of the Art Museum Council at LACMA, says the group’s 40-member board has voted unanimously to stop volunteering at the museum next year” because of the change. And, the story said:

Founded in 1952 before LACMA even had its Wilshire campus, the Art Museum Council is LACMA’s oldest support group. Early on it acquired major paintings by Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian and Stuart Davis. It also commissioned an Alexander Calder mobile for the LACMA campus — called “Hello Girls” as a nod to the women on the council. One of its leading fundraisers was a yearly “Art and Architecture” tour taking visitors into collectors’ home.

Gutman ended her email by saying, “Our group is determined to stay together and to find another avenue that will allow us to continue to support emerging artists, beginning collectors and the art community at large. Our 60-year legacy of service to LACMA [can be] seen in the massive number of works we purchased that hang on the museum walls and the magnificent Calder mobile that cheerfully greets visitors.”

Govan has a PR problem on his hands, and he needs to take care of it. I think he may need to expand on his reasons — the idea of professionalizing development (Arnold Lehman at the Brooklyn Museum did something similar, you’ll recall) — may be true, but there’s a more compelling rationale, I am guessing.

My discussions with other museum directors suggests that these affinity groups — with internal parties and behind-the-scenes events, among other things — cost the museum more than they bring in. They require the time of curators. In the end, the museum ends up subsidizing them, rather than the other way around. Yet these members are better-heeled than the general public; they shouldn’t be getting the subsidy.

Govan may have to share more numbers with the public to make that case convincingly, and he may be reluctant to do it. Too bad.

 

 

 

Jim Cuno Takes On The Art History World

I’d never heard of an online publication called The Daily Dot until it was called to my attention yesterday because, of all things, the president of the Getty Trust — Jim Cuno — had written an op-ed piece for the site.  And in what seems strange to me, his piece has more Facebook likes (262 at this writing) than any other op-ed on the new opinion page – weird considering the esoteric subject.

But maybe, perhaps, not quite so weird because Cuno chastises art historians for being behind when it comes to digital technology, and the site is for web communities. His piece is headlined How Art History is Failing at the Internet. He writes:

…Of course we have technology in our galleries and classrooms and information on the Web; of course we are exploiting social media to reach and grow our audiences, by tweeting about our books, our articles, including links to our career accomplishments on Facebook and chatting with our students online.

But we aren’t conducting art historical research differently. We aren’t working collaboratively and experimentally. As art historians we are still, for the most part, solo practitioners working alone in our studies and publishing in print and online as single authors and only when the work is fully baked. We are still proprietary when it comes to our knowledge. We want sole credit for what we write.

Cuno then goes on to compare the ethos of conservation scientists versus that of art historians — citing the Getty’s Closer to Van Eyck project on the Ghent altarpiece.

In short, humanists largely work alone and on timelines with long horizons. Scientists work together, experimentally, and publish quickly.

Rather, he writes:

…we should be experimenting with ways of compiling archives of formal and iconographic incidents across hundreds and thousands of images and then organizing and reorganizing them in ways that ask new questions and suggest new answers from cross-disciplinary and international perspectives.

To a certain extent, what Cuno writes is self-serving. To a certain extent, he’s also right, I think. Even if he’s mostly wrong, he’s taken up a worthy subject, though I think he could have found a better forum for it than he did. It’s a speech made for the College Art Association.

Photo Credit: Mel Melcon, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

 

Are All Museum Directors Alike? Playing Comparisons

Kudos to the Boston Globe for an interesting Q and A it published on Oct. 20, anchored by Geoff Edgers. Edgers went to six new, or newish, museum directors in the Boston area and asked them all the same seven questions.

The crew, all guys but one, were John Smith, director of the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design; Chris Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis; Paul Ha, director of the List Visual Arts Center at MIT; Jonathan Fairbanks, director of the Fuller Craft Museum; Matthias Waschek, director of the Worcester Art Museum; and Wyona Lynch-McWhite, director of the Fruitlands Museum at Harvard.

They ranged in age from 35 (Bedford) to 79 (Fairbanks), and the softest question was “What’s your favorite museum in the Boston area (other that your own)?” Answers: Museum of Fine Arts (2 votes); Harvard; Isabella Stewart Gardner; De Cordova (1 vote each), and Ha declined to answer, saying “I would like to draw a Venn diagram because I think all of us do different things but cross over very little.” (Chicken!)

Ha also evaded the question “Is there one thing you wish people could see at your institution?” saying, “I would say the show-off piece for MIT is our public art collection. It’s all over campus. But it’s an open campus, so anybody just walking around, they can experience it.”

The others, in order, said: four Copley portraits, a terrific early David Smith, A cabinet that we bought at auction, Paul Gauguin’s “The Brooding Woman;” and the Alcott farmhouse.

I liked the question “What is the biggest challenge you face?” for the two answers that weren’t about outreach or profile. Rather, Waschek said:

We are an encyclopedic museum. We are covering all the centuries and all the cultures. How do you find a narrative that is interesting enough for people to come to us and see us a serious alternative to bigger museums with deeper collections like the MFA, which is just an hour from here?

And Bedford said:

One very interesting, compelling opportunity for us at the moment is a healthy untapped acquisitions fund. There was a period of time when obviously the museum was director-less. Those holding down the fort very generously and very sensitively decided to reserve the funds for the incoming director.

There’s much more. I hope that link works; the Globe is behind a paywall for some things now.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Boston Globe 

It’s Another Getty Coup: Big Acquisition

Buying an archive might not seem as sexy as buying a painting or a sculpture, but today the Getty Research Institute announced a wonderful acquisition: the archive of Knoedler & Company Gallery,  which is widely cited as New York’s oldest art gallery. It has operated here since the mid-19th century. The acquired records date from about 1850 to 1971 – comprising a “vast trove of diverse original research materials including letters, telegrams, albums, sales books, stock and consignment books, card files on clients and art works, rare photographs, reference photo archives, and rare books,” according to the press release.

Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute, called it an “invaluable American cultural resource” and that’s not hyperbole.

The press release does not mention the seller, but I believe it is Michael Hammer, chairman of the defunct gallery and son of legendary business man and somewhat controversial collector, Armand Hammer. Although Knoedler was shuttered earlier this year — in a move supposedly unrelated to the fraud cases pending against it and former director Ann Freedman, my understanding is that Hammer retained ownership of the archive separately. He has been trying to sell it for at least a few years — to places including the Archives of American Art, the Frick Art Reference Library and the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

The first two — at least — wanted it, but neither could afford the price Hamemr was asking, which was at one time said to be between $5 million and $10 million. No one was biting at that level, and I suspect the price has come down substantially. The Getty did not respond to that particular question asked by me.

Hammer was recently added to the suit filed against Knoedler by Domenico De Sole, chairman of Tom Ford International, and Eleanore De Sole, in an amended complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan. Knoedler closed in 2011.

Knoedler, of course, not only brokered the sale of many, many important European pictures to American collectors during the Gilded Age and since then, but also sold American art by the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Eva Hesse, to cite a few examples. Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, Robert Sterling Clark, and Catharine Lorillard Wolfe.

The Getty Museum has purchased more than a dozen paintings and drawings from Knoedler or which had passed through Knoedler’s hands at some point, including van Gogh’s Irises (right).

The Getty already owns archives of such galleries as Goupil & Cie, Boussod Valadon galleries, and the Duveen Brothers. Although Knoedler’s records are said to be in good order, the Getty must catalogue, process, and conserve them before making them available to researchers on site – and also digitizing them for online research. The latter is the only consolation to New Yorkers. The purchase is fantastic for the Getty, but not so good for New Yorkers.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Getty