Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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The Fisher Folly: SFMoMA’s Bad Deal

We’ve never known exactly the details of the deal that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art made in 2009 with the Fisher family to get its collection (better described, actually, as access to the family’s collection–at first for 25 years and later changed to 100 years). And we still don’t. But an article by Charles Desmarais in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Unraveling SFMoMA’s Deal for the Fisher Collection, bares more about it than I’ve ever seen before. What he reports is troubling, very troubling.

FisherCollection-SFMoMAI urge you to read it. But because it is behind a paywall–and you may not have access to it–let me post some key elements here, counting down to the worst part, in my opinion:

  • A grouping of Fisher collection works must hang together in the galleries once every 10 years.
  • The museum’s partnership is with an entity called the Fisher Art Foundation, but Doris Fisher actually owns most of the works. Like any lender, she can recall a work on loan to the museum any time she wants. Only those owned by the Foundation can’t have “private use.”
  • Of about 1,100 works in the Fisher collection, about 260 are on loan now to the museum—and only five of them are owned by Doris Fisher. But how many others in the whole collection does she own? We don’t know.
  • The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection Galleries—occupying the museum’s fourth, fifth and sixth floors–are required to contain primarily Fisher works at all times. No more than 25 percent of what is on view may come from other lenders or donors.

The final bullet point is critical. As Desmarais wrote:

It means that something like 60 percent of SFMOMA’s indoor galleries (not counting free-admission areas that serve as combination lobby and exhibition spaces) must always adhere — or, at least, respond — to a narrative of art history constructed by just two astute but obdurately private collectors…

[Thus] for the next 100 years, [museum curators’] job will be limited in those galleries to a kind of scholarly embroidery, filling in around the edges of a predetermined scenario with works by other artists, such as women, artists of color or California artists.

Devoting that much space, 60 percent, to the Fisher collection is way too large a proportion of the museum. The Lehman wing at the Metropolitan Museum* is most analogous; the collection must stay together as it was at the time of the gift. But, while I don’t know what proportion of the Met’s total space the wing occupies, but it must be paltry by comparison with the Fisher deal–and yet it was controversial.

And at SFMoMA, the provision lasts for 100 years, no less–which creates another problem. The Lehman collection was older art; it had weathered centuries of exposure and criticism and emerged as museum-worthy. The Fisher Collection is contemporary art: who knows how it will be viewed in 100 years? Take a look at the list of artists written about by Vasari. Where are some now? And whom did he leave out?

Desmarais didn’t mention the financial part of the deal in his story, but at the Met, the Robert Lehman Foundation provides a substantial annual payment to help defray the cost of the wing.

I understand the pressure that SFMoMA director Neal Benezra must have been under to cut a deal with the Fishers. But it seems to me that he and the museum’s board were out-negotiated. I–and, I think, others–will have to look at the museum differently, knowing these details. I hope other museums do not emulate Benezra and the museum’s trustees.

I commend Charles, a friend, on his digging. We need more of it.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of SF MoMA

 

A Master, A Mysterious Girl and An Unsolved Question

Petrus_Christus_-_Portrait_of_a_Young_WomanWhen I traveled to Berlin earlier this summer, I spent about four and half hours at the Gemaldegalerie (not enough time)–a full hour of which was spent looking at Portrait of a Young Girl (1470) by Petrus Christus. It’s the subject of the “Masterpiece” column I wrote for The Wall Street Journal, and was published on Saturday under the headline The Girl with the Sidelong Glance (at right). (If you are not a WSJ subscriber, you can read it here.)

It is a great picture, clearly, but I wouldn’t have noticed all the details without the help of Stephan Kemperdick, the museum’s curator of Early Netherlandish and German Painting. He spent most of that hour with me, and two things in particular come to mind that I might have missed without him: the very thin “tissue” draped around her shoulders (easy to see around her neck, but not across her bodice) and her unmatched eyelids. He also pointed out the geometry of the painting, the molding that aligns with her mouth and the vertical axis, neither of which I mentioned. (I read catalogue and book excerpts about her, too.)

As if to demonstrate the portrait’s drawing power, while we were talking, comparing it with three nearby van Eycks, a man came into the gallery with a folding stool. Taking no note of us, he plopped his stool right in front of the painting and sat there staring at it for at least five minutes. And then he got up and left, cursorily looking at other works.

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Some people are bothered by that heavy strap around her neck holding the headdress in place. Christus used it as a pictorial device, as my article notes, but Kemperdick did not know of another like it in paintings for a female, though he did tell me that a picture of Philip the Good shows something similar. I found that manuscript page, painted by Rogier van der Weyden, which is the frontispiece to the Chroniques de Hainaut held in Royal Library of Belgium–it’s at left (for a larger image, click on it and click again on the next page).

Still, the girl is mysterious and neither Kemperdick nor any of the written materials I consulted knew anything about the loop in the bonnet. Imagine my surprise–and delight–when a read wrote to me this morning saying that long ago she had been told by “an expert” that the velvet forehead loop advertised that she had a dowry of some known quantify–perhaps “10..thousand? hundred? pounds? gold coins?”annually.

Can we solve that mystery? Does anyone reading this know about the loop?

 

Rewind: Another Look at William Merritt Chase

1895_1_lDo we need to become reacquainted with William Merritt Chase? I’m afraid we do. Many people I come across know him as an Impressionist, though he was the last of The Ten to be admitted to the group, or as that painter of fish, because he believed that anything could be made beautiful on canvas and chose fish as one way to prove it.

But that’s all and that’s why I traveled to Washington several weeks ago to see William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master at the Phillips Collection (take a look at several images at that link; I’ve posted two others here). I liked it very much (kudos to curators Elsa Smithgall at the Phillips, Erica Hirshler at the MFA-Boston, Katherine Bourguignon at the Terra Foundation for American Art and Giovanna Ginex an independent curator working for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia) and my review was published in today’s Wall Street Journal.

In the late 19th Century, the catalogue asserts, Case was, “next to Whistler, one of the most important personalities in American art.” Then he faded, as artists do, eclipsed by modernism. This exhibition, which will travel to the MFA in Boston after leaving Washington in September and then on to Venice, where Chase spent some time, is designed to bring him back.

chase_william_merrittWhen he died in 1916, The New York Times wrote an editorial–he was that big. After noting that he was appreciated by his own generation, the editorial went on to say that “the final estimate of his work” had yet to be determined, though undoubtedly it would be “high.” At the time, he was already viewed as an eclectic who could do many things well. His talent and industry had worked against him.

Carroll Beckwith, his friend, wrote in the next day (NYT-ChaseBeckwithLtr) to confirm his greatness. He concluded, “I predict that his works will grow greatly in value as I see few among us who will be able to take up the brush where he has laid it down.” When Chase died, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held a memorial exhibition of his paintings.

Today, Chase should be better known, I think. Here are a few quotes from the catalogue to remind us why:

…Chase was, and remains, the archetypal cosmopolitan artist, painting contemporary American life as lived by the growing leisure class in America in the late nineteenth century—and certainly the most New York City–centric artist of his day. In an address to the National Arts Club in 1910, he regretted that so many American painters chose to work abroad rather than in America, where he felt they were most needed.

…Chase believed that the artist’s job was simply to take the commonplace and make it interesting and beautiful—whether it be a pile of onions, a city park, or a sand dune.

“A wall should be treated as a canvas is,” he once said. “Real objects take the place of colors.” He imparted this sensibility to his paintings.

His work never wavered from its ties to the real world, even as it was being eclipsed by the developing currents of abstract art in the early twentieth century.

While was at the Phillips Collection–concurrent with a members’ preview–I stopped at a station the Phillips was using to better “engage” visitors. The museum had left postcards, each picturing a Chase painting, for visitors to record what they saw, thought, heard, etc. when they looked. If this encourages people to look more closely, I’m all for it. Here are copies of a few cards.

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Courtesy of The Phillips Collection (bottom three)

An Exhibition Not to Be Missed, And One I’m Glad Is Over

ur-nammaIn New York, I visited several special exhibitions this past week. Let me mention two here.

The first, Founding Figures: Copper Sculpture from Ancient Mesopotamia, ca. 3300–2000 B.C., is at the Morgan Library and Museum until Aug. 21. Don’t miss it, if you live nearby. Lucky for me, I had a tour of it from the curator, Sidney Babcock, but this small show in the Morgan’s cube gallery has real appeal to anyone interested in ancient art and the development of art, period.

It’s hard to get attention for small shows in New York, and this one did not receive the reviews or media coverage it deserved. It’s built around a figure of King Ur-Nama, ca. 2112–2094 B.C., that was purchased by Morgan (detail at left, but if you go to the link above, you can see not just the whole figure but a rotating picture of him) and borrows some works of the period from the Metropolitan Museum and other lenders, including a couple private collectors who are unlikely to lend these pieces again anytime soon.

IMG_5784-Just ten little works, including a couple of cylinder seals, can make a big impression. I’m posting two pictures of two of the other figures.

The first, at right, dates to 3300 to 3100 B.C. and is thought to be a male priest. It’s one of the oldest surviving cast-copper sculptures from Mesopotamia. Just look at the muscular chest, the asymetrical posture and, if you can see it, the foot tucked under his body.

Below him is a man balancing a box on his head, dated c. 2900 – 2600 B.C. He is traveling down a ramp, perhaps, and you can just see him trying to maintain his balance and his erect posture.

The exhibit I’m glad is gone is Martin Creed: The Back Door at the Park Avenue Armory. I had seen one of his balloon works, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, some years back, and I know he won the Turner Prize. I wanted to see more for myself, especially since this show won loads of publicity. ARTNews wrote of it, “against all odds, his deadpan Duchampian strategies spill over into profundity.” The magazine called him triumphant.

IMG_5790-I’ll say. The exhibition, despite positive reviews, is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  Trying to explain it, The New York Times said:

…viewers will encounter films of people vomiting and of people defecating, along with a piano that opens and slams shut, an array of metronomes ticking at different speeds, and a room whose lights go on and off at one-second intervals. All are outpourings from Mr. Creed’s psyche, a delicate but highly tuned instrument beset by odd compulsions and Freudian obsessions.

The Armory gave him its entire first floor, including the historic rooms.

But what a disappointment. I didn’t find any of the many parts moving, or exhilarating, or even entertaining. I found it to be provocative without originality (a video of a penis and another of a female breast?) and, far from “compelling,” to quote Nicholas Serota, I found it tedious.

In the NYT article, Creed said: “I feel bad to say I’m an artist, because I don’t really know what art is…I would say I’m a person who tries to do things and work in a field that is commonly known as art. I try and do things because I find life is difficult and I want to make it better. More bearable.”

I agree with the first half of that quote, but I find the second half hard to believe.

 

 

A Big Splash for A Little Museum

Winona, MN, is home to just 27,500 people, but it has an art museum worthy of a much bigger city. The Minnesota Marine Art Museum (below)–which is far more interesting that you may now be imagining–just celebrated its tenth anniversary. And an article that I wrote about it for The Wall Street Journal was published today.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe MMAM was the brainchild of a local collecting couple named Bob Kierlin and Mary Burritcher. They knew nothing about art when they started collecting, as I wrote:

Confronting a large blank wall in their living room, they mentioned their quandary to a neighbor, who soon handed them a stack of old art magazines. In a three-year-old ad, Mr. Kierlin found a marine painting he liked. He called the dealer and the painting was theirs, sight unseen. They bought other works like that, not looking in person and not even knowing that art prices can be negotiated.

But today they, with the help of others, have created something very worthy. For them, marine art includes any work with enough water to “float a boat.” And so the museum–which has beautiful, spacious galleries, is filled with works by many great artists. It has been expanded twice and most of it is filled with works on loan from the couple. They include Turner’s 1841 watercolor Heidelberg With a Rainbow, Gauguin’s Still Life with Onions, Heade’s The Great Florida Sunset and View From Fern-Tree Walk, Jamaica, Beckmann’s “Dutch Landscape with Bathers” plus paintings by Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, O’Keeffe, Hartley, Cole, Bierstadt and Homer. Plus many more.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe couple and the museum officials also did something else smart: They hired Annette Blaugrund, a former director of the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts, to edit a catalogue, Charting New Waters: Redefining Marine Painting. She was aided by dealer/art historian John Driscoll, who has been advising Kierlin and Burritcher, and she enlisted highly credentialed art historians to write the entries. They include Joseph Ketner, Barbara Novak and Leo Mazow.

By nature, traditional marine art (barring shipwrecks) tends to be romantic, and the MMAM leans toward unroiled waters, too. It’s not edgy. But it’s wonderful that it exposes so many people to art that might not otherwise get the chance–even in Minnesota.

Go visit!