Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Spalding Takes On Art’s “Self-Congratulatory In-Group”

I suppose I first became aware of Julian Spalding, the British art museum director, when I went to Glasgow some years ago and visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. I hated it, and I blamed Spalding, who was then the director of art galleries for Glasgow. Kelvingrove’s collections–which include Dali’s  Christ of St John of the Cross, Rembrandt’s A Man in Armour, and works by van Gogh and Monet, among other things–had been reinstalled for maximum tourist appeal, in themed galleries with dumbed-down labels. The lobby was like a playground for kids, who were running around, and the noise level was very high. Forget about a sanctuary; Kelvingrove was like a noisy New York City restaurant that required shouting for communication.

SpaldingNow I see that Spalding, who was said to be responsible for what people termed was this “populist” approach, is far from the knee-jerk person I suspected him to be. My apologies.

In his latest salvo, Spalding takes on the art-world powers in the U.K. In a speech he was set to deliver today, according to The Guardian, he is expected “to launch a ferocious attack on work that ‘rejoices in being incomprehensible to all but a few insiders’.” The article continues:

In a lecture on “the purpose of the arts today”… Julian Spalding...will say that the public purse should only fund work that is “both popular and profound, as truly great art is”. He will also criticise the supporting of works that appeal “to a self-congratulatory in-group”.

By 2015, the Arts Council will have “invested” £2.4bn of funds from the government and the National Lottery over a four-year period. According to Spalding, state arts funding should be restricted to subsidising “peaks in our shared culture” – such as King Lear, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – rather than the “rarefied delights” of artists such as Jeff Koons and Hirst, who he says create “sham, glittering ornaments of an amusement-arcade culture”.

And here’s a passage I like:

Spalding said that great art cannot be predetermined to tick boxes on funding application forms: “No government money should be spent on trying to influence the creation of art. The arts have to be personally felt.”

Right now, in this country, we have a lot of grants being offered to artists making socially conscious art, or art with a social purpose. I doubt, as I think Spalding would, that artists trying to please a funder on this will make great art.

Spalding goes on to blast a few works by name and artists. Read them here. I leave decisions on those works in particular up to each of you.

Overall, though the U.S. has a different system of funding for museums, mostly, I think he makes points well worth heeding here.

 

NPG Effort Raises Good Question Re: Crowdsourcing

About six weeks ago–and I missed it–the National Portrait Gallery started a crowd-sourcing initiative called Recognize that pitted three works in the collection against one another and asked the public to choose one. The other day, the Washington Post raised questions about it–appropriately, I think. The whole exercise seemed, my words not the Post’s, like a stunt in search of a mission.

Let’s  begin with the NPG’s description:

This November, the National Portrait Gallery will unveil a special crowdsourced wall in our galleries, called “Recognize,” as a place to highlight an important person in our collection. Every few months we will announce a new lineup of candidates for consideration and invite the public to vote on which one will be featured on the “Recognize” wall.

The first three choices:

James Meredith became the first African American student at the University of Mississippi. His admission to “Ole Miss” in 1962 was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement.

Georgia O’Keeffe became one of the most dynamic and compelling artists of the twentieth century, known for both her large-scale paintings of detailed, magnified flowers and her kinetic cityscapes.

Bette Midler has earned many accolades for her various musical, theatrical, film, and television performances, including three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, three Emmy Awards, a special Tony Award, and two Academy Award nominations.

npg-collage-update.jpg__800x600_q85_cropOn what criteria were people to be voting? “Who will be recognized at the National Portrait Gallery for his or her contributions to American culture?’ And mention about the merits of the twp photographs and one poster in contention? Nope.

And, asked the Post, “Why these three seemingly disparate images?”

Interestingly, the blog post announcing the “contest” did not evoke a single comment. Two weeks later, in another blog post, the NPG announced the “winner.”

Of these three outstanding contenders, Georgia O’Keeffe received 43 percent of the votes, and so Arnold Newman’s portrait of her will appear on the Recognizewall in early November! The installation will be announced here.

The NPG did not say how many voted, but nevertheless declared the experiment a success (the Post said 3,829 votes were cast). As to the Post’s question about why these three images were chosen, the NPG offered “connective tissue” that was “Kleenex thin”:

Each had an anniversary during the time of the project, although none is a milestone. O’Keeffe’s 127th birthday would have been Nov. 15 (she was born in 1887) and Midler turns 69 on Dec. 1. Meredith became the first African American student at the University of Mississippi — a significant event in the civil rights movement — on Oct. 1, 1962, 52 years ago.

There’s no real harm in doing this kind of thing (except for the opportunity costs), but it just seems like a real stretch, a cheap stunt to “engage” more people. But the NPG’s answers to the these questions make it look rather desperate for “engagement.” Nothing drives people away more than desperation.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Happy Thanksgiving, Courtesy of The Bruce

The Bruce Museum sent a seasonal greeting yesterday that I’d like to share. It’s Frans Snyder’s Still Life with Fruit, Dead Game, Vegetables, a live Monkey, Squirrel and Cat (c. 1635). It’s on view now there, as part of Northern Baroque Splendor: The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION from: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna.  Well, part of it is, anyway, through Apr. 12, 2015. Thereafter, the exhibit will travel to the Cincinnati Art Museum.

FSnyders

Here’s the BG, drawn from the press release:

The Hohenbuchau Collection was gathered by Otto Christian and Renate Fassbender and has been on long-term loan to the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna, where it was exhibited in its entirety in the former LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM in 2011. A selection of some 80 paintings from The Hohenbuchau Collection was recently shown at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany (11/08/2013 – 02/23/2014), and paintings from The Collection are regularly being displayed alongside The Princely Collections, in the permanent exhibition in Vienna as well as on touring exhibitions worldwide.

Primarily comprised of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century paintings, the collection exhibits all the naturalism, visual probity and technical brilliance for which those schools are famous. While many modern collections of Old Masters specialize in a single style or subject matter, the Hohenbuchau Collection is admirable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Lowland artists – history painting, portraiture, genre, landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and flower pieces, animal paintings and hunting scenes.

I thought it was perfect to share on Thanksgiving.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Bruce Museum

 

Does Crowdfunding Work? Not So Far

Back on Nov. 6, the Phillips Collection sent me an email about a worthy effort: it had started a crowd-funding campaign for a micro-website about Jacob Lawrence. It would feature “unpublished interviews between the artist and museum curators in 1992 and 2000, including one conducted just prior to the artist’s death.” The point, obviously, was to engage people in learning about Lawrence, particularly because the Phillips plans to present the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series (one image at left) in fall, 2016, following its presence at the Museum of Modern Art next spring.

JLMigrationThe site will have high-resolution images of the 60 panels in the series–which depicts the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North between World War I and World War II–with text explaining each work. It will also present archival photographs, sound clips and videos of musical and theatrical performances, plus historical events, illustrating “the life and times of Lawrence,”  and a lot about Lawrence’s life.

But the Phillips needed $125,000 for the sight, and decided to launch a month-long, grass-roots campaign for the $45,000 it had not raised privately. It started the campaign on Nov. 10 on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo.

It’s not going well. With 15 days left, it has raised only $1,675–or 4 percent of its goal. That came from 34 funders.

Now, it may true that crowd-funders wait till the last minute, the way auction bidders do. But the Phillips has a long way to go here. What went wrong? Perhaps the name is not “popular” enough.

The Phillips has a long tradition with Lawrence:

In 1942, museum founder Duncan Phillips expressed great enthusiasm for Lawrence’s Migration Series upon seeing it at the Downtown Gallery. That year, Phillips gave Lawrence his first solo museum exhibition, and soon after purchased the odd numbered panels. The Phillips has remained deeply committed to sharing and expanding Lawrence’s legacy and achievements with broad and diverse audiences.

  • In the 1990s, the Phillips organized an eight-city national tour of the complete Migrations Series. It also led a major study of Lawrence’s life through symposia, conferences, and interdisciplinary panels.

  • In 2000, Lawrence personally selected the Phillips to organize his retrospective. The highly-acclaimed exhibition premiered at the Phillips and traveled to five other major cities.

  • In 2007–08, the Phillips launched a five-venue NEA American Masterpieces touring exhibition featuring selections from the series. The tour brought Lawrence’s masterpiece to underserved communities throughout the US and was accompanied by a major educational outreach program.

I hope it does not end up with egg on its face with this campaign.

What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve (Day)?

Many museums schedule plenty of holiday events in December, but probably not for New Year’s Eve. So the message from the Currier Museum (pictures) in Manchester, NH, caught my eye. It was for something called “Noon Year’s Eve” on Dec. 31, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. I think that’s a grand idea–the association between museums and holidays is a good one, in my mind.

Manchester, New Hampshire, Currier Museum of Art,Here is the description of the Currier event:

Northern New England’s biggest family-friendly New Year’s Eve event gets better every year. Ring in 2015 a few hours early at the Currier Museum of Art’s third annual Noon Year’s Eve party! Wrap up a day of celebrations with bubble-wrap fireworks and a huge balloon drop. Enjoy fun art-making activities, face painting and live entertainment. We’ll have a scavenger hunt around the galleries and you can take in the mind-bending blockbuster exhibition, M.C. Escher: Reality and Illusion. Enjoy all sorts of kid-friendly food, hot cocoa and more. Dress in your party best and celebrate the New Year at the Currier! Cheers!

A longer description is here. Tickets, which cost $19 in advance for adults and $22 at the door ($10 and $13, respectively for those 17 and younger), go on sale on Dec 1. The museum says it has drawn about 600 people in each of the two previous years.

Does your museum have a noteworthy New Year’s Eve event? Please leave a comment about it below if it does.

By the way, I still laud the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for remaining open 365 days a year, including for Thanksgiving dinner, which started in 2010. At this writing, Thanksgiving dinner this year is sold out. But there’s room for the Christmas dinner as of today.