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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Three Cheers For Nicholas Penny

In an interview given to The Art Newspaper for one of its Frieze editions last week, Nicholas Penny, director of London’s National Gallery, gave his view of a theme I’ve mentioned here once or twice — and went a step further. The topic? The similarity of contemporary art collections in U.S. museums.

Penny, lamenting the influence of the Museum of Modern Art, said:

… it has been hugely influential, so that almost all of the other museums in America have a modern wing attached to them. And frankly these wings impress me as deadly: the same white walls with the same loud, large, obvious, instantly recognisable products lined up on them. Nothing in the so-called academic institutions of the 19th century approach them in orthodoxy and predictability.

I agree, and have said so many times. He also took up another lament of mine — the lack of sharp criticism in the art world, saying:

There is a lamentable lack of critical debate about contemporary art. If you think about the way Modern and contemporary art was received in the 19th century, there was always a tremendous amount of critical defence and attack, far more than is the case today

And:

Exhibition in a museum—and, even more so, acquisition—is an endorsement which has become a substitute for critical appraisal. There seems to be a belief that the reputations of artists in museums will never be challenged. This is a valuable myth for the market. It may be that once a certain amount of public money has been invested in art it will be valued forever. But I doubt it.

So naturally, I want to highlight this interview — more of which will be published in the November Art Newspaper — as reinforcement.

Meantime, a hat tip to Charlotte Higgins, writing in the Guardian on Monday, for pointing me to the Penny interview. She focused more on what she called Penny’s “writing off” of performance, video and conceptual art — which is true. For example, he said:

The art form I don’t relate to – I’d put it more strongly actually – is video because it seems to me so often merely to be an incompetent form of film, made with the excuse that it is untainted by the professionalism associated with the entertainment industry. I’m not very impressed by conceptual art nor very often by performance art. I’m uneasy with some aspects of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp.

Agree or not, it’s the debate that’s important — it may well sharpen everyone’s perceptions.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the National Gallery

Surprise At The Met: What Tom Campbell Said At TED

Looking for completely different information on the Metropolitan Museum’s website today, I stumbled upon a blog post of the TED talk given by Met director Thomas P. Campbell last spring — it was just posted as a video on Friday, though he mentioned last March that he had made the speech.

So I watched.

Campbell performed brilliantly, even though he repeated that hoary old line about people finding museums intimidating. (Ok, maybe a few do, but I’d wager that the more appropriate adjectives for describing what reluctant museum-goers feel about museums include “boring,” “bewildering,” and “confusing,” because there isn’t enough way-finding information.)

But this post isn’t about that — it’s about Campbell, who shows wonderful passion in this speech. He’s so intent on breaking through to the TED audience that he drops the F-word in his opener. Not exactly what you usually hear around the Met.* But it sure got my attention and put me on notice that this speech might be a little different than I expected.

You should listen to the opener, at least, for yourself (or try here). Even if you don’t like profanity, the anecdote is quite funny and self-deprecating. And it leads to his main point: that it’s a curator’s job to suppress some of their academic, jargony training, to stop classifying art and start getting people to look at it.

Campbell reveals why he chose to focus on tapestries, why he went to the Met (so he could do really big tapestry exhibits), and how his career-making 2002 tapestry exhibit was written off by one senior Met staffer as “this is going to be a bomb,” despite the “experience” he created. (Obviously, it was  not.)

He likes the word “unpack” — as in, curators have to maintain the integrity of the art but unpack it for a general audience — and he unpacks how the Met created the oh-so-popular Alexander McQueen exhibit from 2011.

Finally, he suggests that one goal of the museum — he watches visitors enter in the Great Hall at times — is to create a zone where their curiosity can expand. He looks like he is having a good time, and it’s catching.

Although not every commenter agrees, most loved his passion, as did I. He could take this show on the road.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met.

 

 

 

What Do You Do As A “Mellon Curator-At-Large?”

It was in the spring of 2011, I believe, when the Indianapolis Museum of Art announced that it had appointed two “curators-at-large” funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. The museum selected James Watt, who had stepped down from his position as Senior Curator in the Metropolitan’s Department of Asian Art, and Mahrukh Tarapor as the first two.

Now it has announced another: Amy Poster (below), Curator Emerita of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum as well as an independent curator and consultant specializing in South and East Asian art.

For some strange reason, the museum is a little secretive about these posts. The press release announcing Poster says she began her work in July, 2012 — but it’s just announcing the appointment now. And it never mentioned Tarapor, who delayed her arrival in Indianapolis and then, last April, gave it up when the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, appointed her senior advisor for international initiatives there.

If Indy is embarrassed, it shouldn’t be — these things happen and it’s no reflection on the museum, in my mind.

The question is, what are they doing?

Watt, who began his one-year term in November, 2011, has been quite busy on his visits. According to the press release, he

has analyzed the IMA’s Chinese ceramics, jade and most of the bronzes in storage and currently on display. As part of his work, Watt certified the dates and periods on several works of art, and in some cases corrected dates of the objects. Through additional research in Hong Kong, Watt hopes to concretely authenticate some works from the IMA’s ceramics collection that may prove to be older and more precious than previously believed. Additionally, Watt is assisting Teramoto in planning for the reinstallation of the IMA’s permanent Asian galleries, opening in 2014.

Kathryn Haigh, the museum’s deputy director for collections and exhibitions, also said that he plans to reinstall the Chinese objects thematically, thus highlighting “the history of porcelain making in China among other things.” And “James is currently researching a pair of chicken cups that may rival similar objects in the imperial collection, which is very exciting.”

For her part, Poster will help develop a long-term collecting strategy for Indian and Southeast Asian art. She is also

studying the history of the IMA’s Lockwood de Forest wall. De Forest (1850-1932) was a partner of Louis Comfort Tiffany and was well known for establishing an Indian wood-working studio in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which produced items for the American market from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. One of the earliest Asian artworks acquired by Museum, the wall was purchased by the Art Association of Indianapolis in 1915 (a precursor to the IMA) from Lockwood de Forest. The wall has been shown in multiple manifestations over the last century.

If this was a trial for Mellon, testing the idea for possible use elsewhere, it seems to me to be a good one. With budgets stretched, some museums can’t afford full time curators in each department they have — sharing curators, using independent curators, and tapping into year-long scholars, like these, will probably spread. Kudos to Mellon for this experiment.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Indianapolis Art Museum 

Eastman House Hire Is Outside Normal Bounds: A Triple Risk?

Forget former gallery-owner-turned-museum-director Jeffrey Deitch as an outlier: The George Eastman House has gone even farther afield in hiring a new director: Bruce Barnes, whose appointment was announced last Thursday, has never served in a museum and has no formal art history education. He was, on the other hand, the CEO of Element K, a Rochester-based online learning company, and has worked on Wall Street. His PhD, from the University of Pennsylvania, is in economics, as was his undergraduate degree.

According to Business Week:

…From February 1997 to March 2000, he served as a Managing Director of Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc. and a Senior Member of its merchant banking group since September 1998. He served as an Executive Vice President of Ziff Brothers Investments, L.L.C. from January 1995 to June 1996. Prior to that, Dr. Barnes served at Ziff Communications Company, the holding company for a predecessor of Ziff-Davis, as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from September 1993 to December 1994 and as Vice President and Special Assistant to the Chairman from November 1992 to September 1993….

He has also, and perhaps still is, a director at a couple of companies.

What’s going on here? The Eastman House has been looking for a director since July, 2011, when Anthony Bannon announced his decision to retire in a year’s time. It’s unclear how they found Barnes — probably a search firm — but, reading between the lines, it seems that his vision sold the board. He wants to take the Eastman House’s fame international, which will build on Bannon’s work that made it national.

Barnes does have relevant experience. After leaving Element K, he founded  the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, a private foundation based in New York. He is the sole trustee, according to public documents, and works there 20 hours a week.

The ADA1900, according to the Eastman House’s press release, “works independently and in collaboration with museums across the United States to foster understanding and appreciation of American decorative art from the period around 1900.”  Barnes co-wrote The Jewelry and Metalwork of Marie Zimmermann (2011), which was copublished by ADA1900 and Yale University Press. And ADA1900 copublished The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs (2008), “an award-winning scholarly book that accompanied an exhibition of the same title co-organized by ADA1900 and the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Huntington Art Collections, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.” With his partner, writer Joseph Cunningham, listed as director of ADA1900 on its website, he has through the Foundation has given gifts of decorative art to 14 museums (listed on the Foundation’s home page).

Looking at ADA1900’s 2011 990, Barnes has also done a little dealing — the foundation sold four Charles Rohlfs dining room chairs that he had donated to a collector last fall at an appraised value of $90,000, for example.

Aside from his own donations, ADA1900’s notable financing came from the Fairfield County Community Foundation ($70,00o) in the year ended last Dec. 31. It has net assets of $1.6 million and expenses of about $325,000 last year. No salary for Barnes was listed, so presumably he took none.

Nothing wrong with any of this, but it is interestingly non-traditional. The Eastman House says it expects Barnes to create “more worldwide traveling exhibitions and an enhanced virtual museum online.” His own statement is included in the aforementioned press release.

The hirer in situations like this never knows how the hiree will turn out. Running a museums is different from running a business — not to mention working on Wall Street – but Barnes definitely has relevant skills. He seems to be entrepreneurial — and that’s good. He sold a vision, and that’s good. He has already lived in snowy Rochester, so he can’t complain. He might  be just the ticket.

I wish he had some notable interest in photography, however, which many people still do not accept as a fine art. That’s a place where Barnes’s past focus on decorative arts will not help.

However, Bannon was a risk 16 years ago, too: He has a BA in biology, a Master’s and PhD in English, had worked as a newspaper critic before joining the museum world as director of the Birchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo. He recently returned there, as director of a much large institution now.

For my hometown’s sake, I hope Barnes fulfills his promise. Kodak itself is in dire straights, and today came more news that the Rochester Philharmonic is also in trouble.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the George Eastman House

Art Institute’s Architecture Experiment: Studio Gang Architects

When I worked at The New York Times, tour groups would sometimes be escorted through the newswoorm, and the members would stand there watching reporters and editors work. We simply sat at our computers or talked on the phone — and I never understood why anyone would want to take a tour of the NYT (this was after the presses were moved out of W. 43rd St.). I felt the same way when I worked in television: basically, there’s not much to watch. What we do goes on mostly in our heads.

I was reminded of this when I read about the Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects exhibition that opened this week at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jeanne Gang, founder of the firm, MacArthur “genious,” and designer of  the beautiful, undulating Aqua Tower, an 82-story highrise in Chicago (among other things), is the subject of the show, along with her team. But most of what they do goes on inside their heads, too — doesn’t it?

Maybe a lot less than at a newspaper. The Chicago exhibition — self-described as “innovative” in the press release — is not a survey or retrospective. It promises to show the practice “in an engaging workshop-like environment that reveals the practice’s creative processes as they seek to answer pressing contemporary issues through architecture” and consists of two interrelated parts:

The first functions as a gallery with projects illustrated through a range of materials from sketchbooks and models to photographs, plans, and other drawings. This space will also feature a special series of installations, also designed by SGA, dedicated to the studio’s material research and formal explorations.

The second section of the exhibition replicates a workshop, complete with a large worktable, pin-up boards, full-scale mock-ups, and material samples. This space is a key component of the presentation and will serve as the location for two Archi-Salons–public programs that will further connect and place the work in the exhibition within the larger field of architectural discourse.

They are scheduled for Oct. 6 and Nov. 7 — details at that link above.

First admission: I haven’t seen the exhibition. But architecture exhibits tend to attract good crowds, and this one sounds to me like on worth paying attention to. I haven’t yet found reviews, but here’s one local article that gives an on-the-ground report.