Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Uncategorized

Art First: A New Start in Cincinnati

CKitchinI’ve never met Cameron Kitchin, who began his job as director of the Cincinnati Art Museum today. He is making an interesting start: today, in the museum’s Great Hall, he met the public from 4 to 6 p.m., over light appetizers and a cash bar. Presumably, he walked the museum and met staff earlier in the day. Those are the right gestures to make.

Kitchin, you’ll recall, isn’t a first-time director (He came from the director’s post at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and has other interesting experience, which you can read about here), and it shows. His meet-and-greet, inside and outside the museum, is especially important because the Cincinnati museum was roiled by its last director.

There’s another reason I am hopeful about him, and it came in a piece by him that the Cincinnati Enquirer published on Sunday. The headline was not particularly promising: New director sees you at museum’s center. But it was not quite on target, thankfully–he said the beneficiary of museum activities was you, the public, and that’s different. Here is more (boldface mine) from his article:

Among the traditional fundamental responsibilities of an art museum, collecting and preserving the community’s cultural heritage is most certainly at the forefront; the 60,000 objects in CAM’s collection make it one of our nation’s most important museum collections. This work will continue with vigor and energy. As we look forward, the work of the art museum has grown in exciting ways, always mindful of our practice, scholarship and purpose. We now have the opportunity and call to integrate more deeply the strength of our collection, exhibitions, staff and the sublime power of great art with the city’s advancement and well-being.

Art first, in other words. And he sees the purpose of the museum as bringing people and art together, which is in fact in the mission statement (or used to be, I think–I can’t find it on the website), and that’s fine. He didn’t say bringing people to the museum, or making the museum serve the community, or any of those other popular mantras. Those goals are fine, but they be predicated on art at the center of initiatives, as the driver of attendance, education, conservation, etc.

So I’m hopeful about Cincinnati. No more, I hope, shows about things like wedding dresses. Or at least a preponderance of more serious, more art-centered scholarly exhibits.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum

“Sculpture Victorious,” Yes, But In What Way?

DameAliceI was recently at the Yale Center for British Art, where Sculpture Victorious: Art in the Age of Invention, 1837-1901, is on view through Nov. 30. It’s a fascinating exhibition in many respects, bringing together a very diverse assemblage of objects from a very diverse group of lenders.

Looking at one piece, an idealized, imaginary portrait of the first earl of Winchester borrowed from the House of Lords, Michael Hatt, an art history professor at the University of Warwick who is one of three curators of the show, said to me: “It is a mix of history and fantasy, as almost everything in this exhibition is.”

In fact, a few sculptures–defined for this show quite broadly (to include medals and coins, for example) are so quirky they could almost be called follies. (See, for example, “A Royal Game,” an imaginary game of chess between Elizabeth I and Phillip II of Spain, by William Reynolds-Stephens from the collection of Tate Britain.)

But the point of this exhibit, as I write in a review published in today’s Wall Street Journal, was that these artworks served the British empire:

Co-organized by Tate Britain, “Sculpture Victorious” demonstrates how the British used sculpture—as public monuments, in public institutions, at exhibitions like those in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and in coins, medals and other popular reproductions—to proclaim their political power and industrial prowess.

And so Sculpture Victorious is less about art and more about history, invention and craft.

That does not mean, however, that some of these pieces aren’t fascinating to look at. In fact, the exhibition serves as a reminder that exhibitions can, and often do, have more than one function.

That’s Dame Alice Owen (detail), 1897, by George Frampton, above.

Photo Credit: Courtesy, YCBA

My Verdict On The Met’s New Fountains

I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about the new fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art*; sadly, most are about their funding–with money from conservative David Koch, whose name, naturally (if belately) enough, is on them.

MetFountainsI wish that was the real problem, because that can be batted away as foolish talk. Who cares who paid for them? Koch is a Met trustee. If there was a mistake here, it was the museum’s promise at the outset that the plaza was not going to be named.

But the real problem is that the fountains are ungainly, at best.

I reached that conclusion after two visits, the second only reaffirming my initial impressions.

  • For a start, they are out-of-proportion–too big for the space they occupy.
  • Second, they are misplaced–too close to the steps and too close to the street. The should have been smaller and set back a bit further, closer to the museum building.
  • Third, their minimalist style clashes with the architecture of the Met. I wasn’t expecting a Trevi fountain, but couldn’t they have nodded somehow to the Met’s Beaux-Arts facade?
  • Fourth, the water spouts are underwhelming, even pedestrian. There’s no grandeur and they aren’t entertaining either. They were supposed to dance, in a “variety of water patterns,” but that doesn’t seem to have materialized; if it has, the patterns are fairly indistinct.

Met director Tom Campbell, announcing the project in early 2012, said the project would produce “majestic” plazas. That, they certainly are not. And we are stuck with them for decades.

How could this have happened?

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

A Museum Merger That Seems Sensible

From time to time, especially in times of economic uncertainty, the word “merger” gets bandied about as as solution to museum problems. In reality, art museum mergers are rare. I think (though I don’t have statistics on that). And they probably should be rare. But sometimes they make sense, and I was pleased recently to read of a merger that does.

Demuth_museumLast Tuesday, the Lancaster Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, which has a local-artist focus, and the Demuth Museum, dedicated to Charles Demuth (a native son) and also in Lancaster, said they are merging. The two locations will remain, but they will become “one museum with one mission.” The two have worked on this for two years, they say, which bodes well–even if it’s necessary ecomonically, it’s not a shotgun marriage. And it involved pre-announcement due diligence and discussion. Lancaster’s mayor, Rick Gray, and Sam Bressi, the president and CEO of the Lancaster County Community Foundation, were there at the announcement, showing local support.

Anne M. Lampe, currently the Demuth’s director, will become the executive director and chief curator of both museums.

I’ve been only to the Demuth, not the Lancaster, but from afar this union makes sense economically–there should be a fair bit of savings in administrative costs.  They may sometimes collaborate on exhibitions, but they intend to remain separate identities and curatorial programs.

Both are small places–the Demuth’s annual budget is $500,000, while the Lancaster’s is $750,000, according to local news reports.  Do they need separate adminstrations? Doubtful. Should they waste effort competing for donors? No. Can there be synergy between educational and outreach programs? I think so. Joint ticketing? I hope so.

Here’s more in the press release and in last week’s article on LancasterOnline.

 

Mission Accomplished: Another Delaware Deaccessioning

calder.black.crescentYesterday, the Delaware Museum of Art said it would retire the debt it acquired imprudently (my word), for an expansion, by the end of this month.

In part, that’s because it succeeded in deaccessioning its second work of art, Calder’s Black Crescent (at right), which it sold privately. The museum did not disclose the purchase price or the purchaser, but the Wilmington News Journal estimated the take at $10.6 million “based on the auction results and [Board chair Gerrit] Copeland’s estimate of the investment fund withdrawal.”

The paper added:

As for the third work selected for sale – Winslow Homer’s “Milking Time” (1875) – the museum is holding off for now after rejecting several low bids, Copeland said.

“Basically, there’s no interest in Homers,” he added.

Huh? American art, including Homer, has obviously not seen the large leaps that contemporary art has, but there’s a market for Homer.

Just to cite one quick example, a far less interesting painting called Peach Blossoms sold at Sotheby’s in 2010 for nearly $2.9 million. Milking Time is a much better picture.

It makes one wonder whether the officials running this museum are competent. Why would they sell a Homer if there’s no interest in his works?

The same could be said for its first sale, William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, which fetched £2.5 million, hammer price, against a £5 million to £8 million presale estimate. 

When they do retire the debt, and recruit a new director, I hope they also repair the governance of this museum.