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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Opening Soon In Tacoma: New Wing, New Collection

Before everyone gets distracted by the opening of the new Harvard Art Museums later this week, let’s learn a little about the expansion set to open a day before, on Nov. 15, at the Tacoma Art Museum. I haven’t been to Tacoma in about 20 years, and the museum has moved to new quarters since then. Back in 2003, it moved to a $22-million Antoine Predock-designed building. Now it is opening a new wing and entrance to house a collection of Western art donated a few years back.

Albert_Bierstadt,_Departure_of_an_Indian_War_PartyThe gift came from a German supermarket mogul, billionaire Erivan Haub, and his wife Helga. They have “had close ties to Tacoma since the 1950s; the couple’s three sons were born there,” hte museum said. “They spent many summers in the Puget Sound region and still spend time there.” They also own a ranch in Wyoming.

In 2011, they donated 295 works from their family’s Western American art collection, which Tacoma says is among the top dozen in the U.S.

Much of it–more than 130 works–will go on view in the debut exhibit, called Art of the American West: The Haub Family Collection. This portion will remain on view until November 15, 2015 in four new galleries, 16,000 square feet in all, in the new wing.  The collection includes works by 140 artists, and spans 1797 through today. The oldest work is Gilbert Stuart’s Portrait of George Washington aned the two newest works are Barbara Boldt’s Galiano Island, 2009, and Clyde Aspevig’s White Cliffs of the Missouri, also 2009.

Among the other artists in the collection are Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Bird King, Thomas Moran, Charles Russell and Frederic Remington.

Bierstadt’s Departure of An Indian War Party (1865) is posted here. If you’d like to see what else you could see in the collection, click here for an Exhibition Checklist Art of the American West-The Haub Family Collection.

 

Zurbarán In The News!

St.SerapionSince 2012, when TEFAF celebrated its 25th anniversary, the Maastricht art fair has been awarding grants toward the conservation of objects held by museums that have attended the fair in that year. The other day, TEFAF announced the 2104 grants: the €50,000 annual amount from the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund will be split between two early paintings by Francisco de Zurbaran.

One, St. Serapion (1628) [at right], is owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Ct.; the other, Saint Francis of Assisi in Meditation (c. 1630-1635) [below], is in the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast, in Düsseldorf. According to the statement from the Fund,

The current condition of both paintings is severely compromised, both structurally and aesthetically. Although the paintings need specific individual treatment, both require extensive conservation and restoration; this includes the removal of previous poor restoration, old varnish and flaking areas as well as infilling paint losses and old abrasions to restore their former glory.

St.FrancisThe Atheneum plans to make St. Serapion, which it acquired in 1951, a centerpiece picture of its new European paintings galleries; they are being reinstalled and are set to open in September, 2015. The Museum Kunstpalast, meanwhile, is organizing a comprehensive exhibition of Zurbaran’s work in fall, 2015.

Announcing the grant, the Atheneum said:

Ulrich Birkmaier, Chief Conservator, will be performing conservation treatment on the painting, including the removal of previous restorations and old varnish, to restore the work’s former integrity. The restoration of St. Serapion will be a crucial stabilization, placing the work in a new light by allowing the viewer to fully appreciate the artist’s original intent.

In keeping with the trend to share conservation projects with the public, both museums are making videos of the process; they’ll be on view at Maastricht as well as on the web.

I’ve nothing but good to say about this TEFAF program and these two awards, which look very worthy.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of TEFAF

Detroit: Someone There Is Listening

Remember the political ruckus over the pay packages in the last years for Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Annmarie Erickson, his deputy?

Local politicians threatened to repeal the millage tax, which is supporting operations at the DIA for the next ten years, because of it. Even though I thought that the pair probably deserved the raises and bonuses as disclosed, I agreed that the optics of them–at the particular time, with the Grand Bargain hanging in the balance–had to be fixed. And I recommended a way out:

lbp_home_bioWay back when, you may remember, some rich board members of the Museum of Modern Art supplemented Glenn Lowry’s salary with their own funds. Mike Bloomberg did the same for some members of his mayoral staff. Perhaps that is what can happen here.

Now, it seems, the DIA board has listened to the complaints and changed the optics, at least somewhat. According to the Detroit News:

Directors of the Detroit Institute of Arts on Tuesday repaid the museum $90,000 as reimbursement for bonuses awarded to three top executives in 2013, according to a memo sent to suburban authorities this week and obtained by The Detroit News.

Apologizing for making “mistakes which we regret,” but emphasizing there was “no wrongdoing of any kind,” board chairman Eugene Gargaro wrote that the DIA directors were contributing the money to end a very unfortunate situation.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson (pictured), who’d criticized the pay packages, was assuaged. The News said he felt the board had learned a lesson and was satisfied that “this mischief won’t continue.”

Earlier this week, the DIA reported that 21 local Japanese businesses, all members of the Japan Business Society of Detroit, had pledged nearly $2.2 million to the DIA, about $1.6 million of which will go to the $100 million the museum must raise for the Grand Bargain. The rest will go to reinstalling the Japanese collection in a new gallery. Details here.

That takes the DIA’s fundraising total to about $87 million for this effort.

Two “Transformative” Gifts That Actually Are

ManetTwo lucky museums made big announcements this week–“transformative” gifts of art. And these do seem to fit that bill, no exaggeration.

In Los Angeles, a reclusive billionaire named A. Jerrold Perenchio said he would bequest “the most significant works of his collection to LACMA’s planned new building for its permanent collection.” The trove includes “at least” 47 art works, including some by Degas, Monet, Bonnard, Manet (at left), Picasso and Pissarro. They would go into the new buildings, designed by Peter Zumthor, planned by LACMA director Michael Govan–Perenchio made his gift contingent on that, as some of the museum’s current buildings need extensive work.

Just yesterday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a$125 million bond issue to help finance that $600 million-plus project, but Govan has to raise hundreds of millions before it will be built.

Here are the details of the gift. The Los Angeles Times has the backstory.

I was in LA last week (to see this), and made a stop at LACMA. The museum undoubtedly has some strengths–it’s young, remember, celebrating its 50th anniversary next year–but this gift is sorely need. Perenchio’s collection is valued at an estimated $500 million, obviously not affordable to LACMA, whose collecting priorities seem to be in contemporary anyway.

So I can only say thank you to Perenchio, whose previous gifts have generally be anonymous.

Peale-GWMeantime, the St. Louis Art Museum just accepted the bequest of 225 works of art given by the late C.C. Johnson Spink and Edith “Edie” Spink. It consists of many American works, by the likes of  John Singleton Copley, Rembrandt Peale, Norman Rockwell and Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, and some 200 Asian works of art “that range from
Chinese ceramics of the Neolithic period to works from Meiji-era Japan.”

The Spinks’ Asian art collection was developed with the intent of filling major gaps in the Art Museum’s collection and with a specific goal of allowing the museum to present a complete history of Chinese ceramics from prehistoric times to the end of the imperial system.

The museum says the collection is worth at least $50 million. Some of them are listed in this release. Peale’s George Washington is posted here.

It’s interesting that both announcements were made in this week of the big auctions in New York, where many works are selling for such high prices. These two benefactors say they bought with giving to the museums in mind. I wonder how many buyers this November are thinking the same way.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of LACMA (top) and the St. Louis Art Museum (bottom)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“National Gallery” — The Film

Oddly, so soon after I wrote here about “Mr. Turner,” the British film about J.W.M. Turner, I just learned about a British documentary called “National Gallery” about that august London institution. It, too, was shown at last spring’s Cannes Film Festival and it’s on view in New York City from today through Nov. 18. It’s at the Film Forum, which describes it like this”

NatlGalleryFilmLondon’s National Gallery…is itself portrayed as a brilliant work of art in this, Frederick Wiseman’s 39th documentary and counting. Wiseman listens raptly as a panoply of docents decode the great canvases of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Turner; he visits with the museum’s restorers as they use magnifying glasses, tiny eye-droppers, scalpels, and Q-tips to repair an infinitesimal chip; he attends administrative meetings in which senior executives do (polite) battle with younger ones who want the museum to become less stodgy and more welcoming to a larger cross-section of the public. But most of all, we experience the joy of spending time with the aforementioned masters as well as Vermeer and Caravaggio, Titian and Velázquez, Pissarro and Rubens, and listen to the connoisseurs who discourse upon the aesthetic, historical, religious and psychological underpinnings of these masterpieces.

Now, the film is 181 minutes–very long for a documentary on one institutions, and even one by 84-year-old Wiseman, who uses a fly-on-the-wall technique, never straying into interviews, voice-overs or identifiers.

But, and this is where I learned of the film, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis on Wednesday called it “magnificent…at once specific and general, fascinating in its pinpoint detail and transporting in its cosmic reach.” And that’s just the first paragraph.

Dargis goes on to say that Wiseman delves into the NG’s history (including the slave-trade origins of a founder’s fortune) and, to her, the very important role played by money concerns at the NG. She concludes:

…the experience of watching “National Gallery” is pleasurable and immersive because he’s a wonderful storyteller. It is also unexpectedly moving. Because his other great theme is how art speaks to us, one he brilliantly expresses in the relay of gazes that finds us looking at museumgoers looking at portraits that look right back — at artists, art lovers and moviegoers — even as Mr. Wiseman, that sly old master, looks at all of us in turn.

Last May, the Telegraph also wrote a very positive piece, including the words:

The real joy of his film is that it never needs to strain for effect; it sits back. It’s like being lulled with intelligence. However long it is since you last climbed the gallery’s steps, you’ll watch this truly inspiring piece of work and rue the interval.

 The Guardian didn’t like it as much,

I have not seen the film, and though I hope to I’m not sure I can get to the cinema before Nov. 19. Perhaps it will move somewhere else in New York.

Meantime, here’s a short trailer.