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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Denver Makes Three: Are More Coming?

DenverCaillebotteToday the Denver Art Museum announced the bequest of 22 Impressionist paintings from Frederick C. Hamilton, its long-time chairman of the board (though he stepped down from the position last year).  The press release (which is not yet up on its website) said it would elevate the museum’s Impressionist collection to one of the best in the West:

The gift includes a painting by Vincent van Gogh, Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, the first Van Gogh artwork to enter the museum’s collection; four works by the impressionist master Claude Monet including Path in the Wheat Fields at the Pourville, 1882, and The Houses in the Snow, Norway, that illustrate a range of output during the peak of Monet’s career; three paintings by Eugène Boudin, the first by the artist to enter the museum’s collection, including Scene at the Beach in Trouville, 1881; along with paintings by Paul Cézanne, another first for the museum’s collection, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, as well as those of their American contemporaries William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam. 

Hamilton is one of those trustees who dominated the board and the museum over the years, spearheading the fundraising campaign for the most recent expansion, for example, which built the Hamilton building — where these works will go on his demise. Read more about this in The Wall Street Journal story, which estimates the value at $100 million. The collection includes the Caillebotte I’ve posted at right.

bowdoin-steir_CPThe announcement follows last week’s news that the Philadelphia Museum of Art had been given 97 contemporary works, estimated at $70 million, from Keith and Katherine Sachs. And on Friday the Bowdoin College Museum of Art announced:

…its acquisition of 320 works of art from the celebrated collection of Dorothy and Herbert (Herb) Vogel—a gift that will dramatically enhance the Museum’s contemporary art holdings.  Comprising works by nearly 70 artists, such as Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Julian Schnabel, James Siena, Pat Steir [her Small White Waterfall with Pink Splashes is at left], and Richard Tuttle, Dorothy Vogel’s gift to the BCMA ranks among the largest contributions of objects from the Vogel Collection since their major gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1992.

…Works on paper compose the majority of the gift, in addition to photography by Richard Long, ceramics by Michael Lucero and sculpture by Merrill Wagner. Encompassing works dating from the mid-20th century to the early-21st century, the gift to Bowdoin will present the full history of the Vogel’s collecting — from Herb Vogel’s early acquisition of paintings by Giuseppe Napoli and Hank Virgona, to work acquired jointly by the pair during the past decade, such as drawings by Richard Tuttle and Lucio Pozzi.

So, three’s a trend, right? Philanthropy experts always say that big gift encourage other big gifts. Let’s hope for more this year.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum (top). Bowdoin College (bottom)

 

Woody Guthrie’s Sad End Revealed In Picture Book

If you’re a Woody Guthrie fan, you may know that he spent his last decade or so of his life in hospitals, a victim of Huntington’s disease. At the time — we are talking the ’50s — the ailment was completely misunderstood. In 1956, Guthrie was picked up in New Jersey as a vagrant, and sent to Greystone Psychiatric Hospital.

WardyFortyThat much, maybe you knew. But to see it illustrated in photographs and archival materials — in a new book called Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty — is something else. 

The book, by photographer Phillip Buehler, was published by the Woody Guthrie Archive in November, but has gotten little play. So I interviewed Buehler and Nora Guthrie, who was also involved with the project, wrote about it in an article published today on AlJazeera America. The article is headlined “The lost years of Woody Guthrie: The singer’s life in Greystone Hospital.”

It’s a tragic, yet heart-lifting story, in a way. Here’s one excerpt from my article:

One poignant vintage shot shows Woody sitting between his two sons, Joady and Arlo, beneath “the Magiky tree.” The Guthries chose that name for a huge, leafy tree outside Greystone to make their children’s weekly visits seem like fun. As Nora recalls, her voice quaking a bit, walking through the psychiatric ward to see her father “was an absolutely terrifying experience for me as a child.” So, instead, her mother entered Greystone alone to fetch her husband, leaving the kids (aged 6, 7 and 8 at the time) outside.

“We’d have a picnic and we’d play before the tree,” Nora says. “It was less frightening.” One 1956 note to Arlo, in Woody’s deteriorating handwriting, refers to the “magiky tree” and is signed “daddy me Woody Guthrie.”

Buehler specializes in capturing “modern ruins.” Here’s a look at one of his shots from Greystone’s Wardy Forty (Guthrie’s nickname for Ward 40, where he lived), courtesy of Buehler:

Greystone

German Legislature May Move On Nazi Loot

Is reclaiming a piece of art stolen by the Nazis about to get easier? It might be in Germany, if a law just introduced there is passed by the Bundesrat and then the Bundestag — it would amend the statute of limitations, barring its use when the property in question was not obtained by the current owner in good faith.

FranzMarcI am no expert in German law, but the excellent Art Law Report has written about the twice this week. In the most recent post on the topic, it says — about the Gurlitt case, which is on everyone’s mind:

…that would have considerable importance to any claims against Gurlitt himself or Bavaria as the current custodian of the paintings.  It would still require a showing by claimants that Gurlitt took the paintings from his father in bad faith, but would presumably eliminate a defense potentially available to Gurlitt that even in bad faith, sufficient time had run to bar claims.

…Beyond Gurlitt, the implications would be even broader, since the law would apply to any claim to property anywhere in Germany.  As the Gurlitt case has shown, one simply never knows when a new discovery will be revealed.

Apparently, the German legislature is planning to take up this bill on Feb. 14.  How long it would take to be considered is unclear.

More on the Gurlitt case — a trove of some 1,400 works including some by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Renoir and the Franz Marc drawing I’ve posted – is here, in Der Spiegel. In November, The New York Times printed a list of some of them.

 

Vancouver Art Gallery Moves A Step Ahead

After 10 years, the new Vancouver Art Gallery finally seems to be moving along. The gallery just announced the short list of architects who are finalists in the design competion for the new building downtown (replacing the old one, pictured here): Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York), Herzog & de Meuron (Basel), KPMB Architects (Toronto), SANAA (Tokyo), and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York).

Vancouver_Art_Gallery_Robson_SquareThe Gallery said it received proposals from some 75 firms from 16 countries, and has been sifting through them since September. Except for the omission of Renzo Piano, the go-to museum architect (alas), and the addition of KPMB, this is pretty much the usual suspects.

The winner will be announced this spring.

This whole project has been controversial, but the city council approved the new site last spring, and designated a site. The new building will double the space of the old one, providing 310,000 square feet of space — much more of the collection will go on view. Read more here.

I’m not close enough to the city, or the situation, to know if this is the right way to go, in all honesty. My hope is that the building is not too big, not too expensive, not too much of a reach for the Vancouver audience.

 

Second-Rate Or “One Of The Greatest Ever”?

Veronese's Martyrdom of Saint GeorgeThe artist in question is about to get an exhibition at the National Gallery (yes, I’m still inspired by goings-on in London) — and he is Veronese. Apparently, when the NG bought Veronese’s The Family of Darius before Alexander (below right) in 1857, it was accused of squandering money on “a second-rate specimen of a second-rate artist.”

Of course, we don’t think of Veronese as second-rate today, though — and I hate to say this, as I love his work — he came off in third place a few years back, when the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston gave us the marvelous exhibition, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice. (Curators, by their choices, can make us believe what they believe.)

Anyway, the National Gallery will on Mar. 19 open Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice, the first monographic show for him in the U.K., and — thanks to The Guardian — we know the back story, including the 1857 contretemps and, more important, director Nicholas Penny’s position on it (he thinks it’s one of the greatest paintings in the NG’s collection).

Penny thinks another painting in the show, The Martyrdom of St. George, is “arguably the world’s greatest painting” — it’s above left. The remark gains weight when The Guardian adds that so does the exhibition curator, Xavier Salomon — who is about to leave his curatorial post at the Metropolitan Museum, where he moved from the NG Dulwich Picture Gallery just a couple of years ago, to the Frick, where he will be chief curator.

N-4250-01-000006 020Salomon told The Guardian: “Without Veronese there would be no Rubens, no Van Dyck.”

If only Salomon could bring his show to New York! Here is a description of part of it:

…the paintings that are coming will make an extraordinary exhibition, Salomon says. The show will reunite works not seen together since their days in the artist’s studio, including dazzling secular portraits and two altarpieces made for the same church near Mantua, now in London and Virginia, USA. Mars and Venus United by Love, coming from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, – and leaving the States for the first time since 1910 – will be seen with the National’s Four Allegories of Love, last seen together in the 18th century. Another National favourite, The Adoration of the Kings– one of its all-time best-selling Christmas cards – will be compared with another altarpiece on the same subject, painted in the same year for a church in Vicenza.

In a YouTube video, which is excellent, Salomon says he focused on Veronese’s most beautiful works — about 50 works in all, including the NG’s ten and paintings from Austria, France, Italy, Spain and the U.S. Some of the loans are still being negotiated.

You can also see the NG’s exhibition slide show here.

The press release makes no mention of the show traveling, though it does refer to its association with the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, and its exhibition Paolo Veronese beginning on July 5.

But, still, Xavier, couldn’t something, some part of it come here to the Frick?