Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Here’s What Art Museums Need: A Selfie Ban

That’s not my idea, just in case you were rolling your eyes. It’s the brainstorm of U.K. Arts Council chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette; my only concern is the limit he placed on it — one hour a day.  Just kidding. 

LouvreBut Bazalgette has a point. Neither he nor I are against photography in museums; I take my own photos all the time in museums. Most of the time, what other people are doing doesn’t bother me a whit. But you see those photos of the Mona Lisa gallery at the Louvre (as at left), with some people riding piggyback on others to get a better view, it makes one wonder about how far people will go.

Hence Bazalgette’s comparison of a one-hour ban to the quiet car of a train. It’s not perfect analogy, obviously. I may not be able to go to a museum during the one-hour ban, but there’s a quite car on most trains nowadays. But it’s worth thinking about. Here’s what else he said, as reported by The Telegraph:

Clarifying it would rely on members of staff policing the galleries and reminding people, he added: “But at least people would understand there’s a rule. On the whole, I’m in favour of sharing it as widely as possible.”

Speaking on LBC radio, to presenter James O’Brien, he said galleries and museums had adapted to the ubiquity of technology.

“Their poor curators and people standing there in uniform have had this rule and they tell people not to take photos and they’re fighting a losing battle and they’ve just given in,” Sir Peter said.

“There are some issues, I believe, about flashes and the quality of prints and things, but that’s a relatively minor issue. Do you know something? I’m completely in favour.”

 

 

Matisse Cut-Outs, Records, And Making Art Seem Scarce

103698Back in late June, the Museum of Modern Art bought a quarter-page ad on page 2 of the Weekend section of The New York Times; it ran the full length of the left edge. It caught my eye because it announced that timed tickets were on sale as of that day for Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, which opens on Oct. 12.

The ad did not, btw, list prices for the tickets — just the web address for purchases — but MoMA simply charges general admission for exhibitions, with no added tab. General adult admission is $25.

At the time, I thought it was a bit premature to be selling these tickets. MoMA was probably trying to create scarcity, which drives up prices — not relevant in this case — and to cause that crazy phenomenon called FOMO — fear of missing out. (It worked incredibly well for MoMA last year with Rain Room.)

This instance, so far, it hasn’t. Today, when I sampled the website for tickets, I was able to access tickets for every date I tried and for virtually all times.

But I doubt it will matter. MoMA will undoubtedly have a hit on its hands: these works are, of course, gorgeous. Matisse is a brand name.

Besides, this show has a track record. This week, the Tate announced that it was its best draw ever:

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs received 562,622 visitors making it the most popular exhibition ever held at Tate and the first to receive over half a million people.

Matisse Picasso at Tate Modern previously held the record as Tate’s most visited exhibition with 467,166 visitors in 2002. This is followed by the Damien Hirst exhibition with 463,087 visitors in 2012. Open for five months from 17 April to 7 September this year, Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs was seen by 3,907 visitors each day.

It will be interesting to see if New York beats London.

Even if early buying didn’t work, MoMA will likely pick up new members once this exhibit receives its due. Members don’t need timed tickets and may enter the show whenever they choose.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of MoMA

Answer to the Ever-Present False Dichotomy About Museums

It’s very trendy these days to insist that museums should be visitor-centered, not art-centered. Most recently, I was called on the carpet yet again for suggesting that art comes first, but not just that; in fact, someone I do not know accused me a restarting the culture wars when I wrote here about the Portland Art Museum’s Parklandia. The blog post was called “The Value of Museum Selfies.”

WGriswoldI’m not going to provide the link, partly because the writer misconstrues and mixes up ideas illogically and uses as justification for selfies that they are “pretty awesome” (not to mention badly misspelling my surname and assuming a familiarity that we do not have). It doesn’t get better, and it’s not worth your time. (You can easily find it if you search for it.)

Whether a museum pays attention to art or visitors is a false dichotomy.  They must do both, and the questions are always: which is the driver and what is the balance. Some museums manage to do it well; others go astray.

But as I was reading the most recent publication sent to me from the Cleveland Museum of Art, I was taken by the way its new director, William Griswold (at left), framed the “issue.” Here is what he wrote:

Cleveland is simultaneously the quintessential connoisseur’s collection and one of the most community-focused museums in the country. At first, this might seem a contradiction; however, it is not if one embraces the premise that the greatest art is great, in part, because it embodies the most eloquent communication of the most universal human experiences. Cleveland has always demonstrated its faith in art to communicate and in audiences to “get it,” and the museum has seen its role as facilitating that connection through beautifully designed galleries, thoughtful interpretive materials, and–in recent years especially–the innovative and intelligent use of technology.

That is exactly right. If curators and museum administrators do their job well, art will do the rest of the job. We need to repeat this, or something like it, again and again.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cleveland Art Museum

What’s New About the New Greek Galleries at MFA?

Do people learn more at art museums when chronology governs a display or when a thematic narrative rules? It’s a perennial question, and traditionally many museums with extensive collections answer it with the former because, with a broad, deep array of art in a particular category, they can. Less well-endowed collections have often gone the thematic route simply because they can’t do a civilization or a period justice with their skimpy (or gap-filled) holdings.

MenanderBut not always. Lately more museums are going narrative because they thing visitors find it more appealing. So it was not perhaps surprising that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will on Tuesday open three Ancient Greek galleries, encompassing about 230 objects, with themes: wine, in Dionysos and the Symposium; poets in Homer and the Epics; and performers in Theater and Performance. The three galleries have been renovated for the new first-time thematic displays, and many of the pieces have been conserved.

That’s dramatist Menander, c. 1st C BC – 1st C AD, at right.

I haven’t seen these displays, but I’m for the trial. Even if you look at the small selection of objects for these galleries online, you’ll notice a lot of painted red-on-black vases and marble sculptures. In many a museum, faced with a sea of them — particularly the vases — visitors naturally tune out of the details because there are so many. One must be really patient, truly study the vases, to appreciate them in full.

Here, perhaps themes will help.

According to the press release announcing this change, MFA is also deploying technology to help:

The MFA’s renowned collection of Greek art contains some of the most visually complicated objects in the Museum. iPads will be placed near two particularly detailed vases in order to explain the narratives and “unpack” their symbols. Visitors can discover details they may not have otherwise noticed (similar to “Looking Closer” interactives in the Benin Kingdom Gallery and Kunstkammer Gallery).  In the Homer Gallery, one iPad will focus on the Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with scenes from the fall of Troy (about 470–460 BC). Circled by a continuous frieze of episodes from the Greek sack of the city of Troy, depictions include images of the priestess Kassandra, King Priam of Troy and the Trojan warrior Aeneas. The iPad in the Theater and Performance gallery highlights the Mixing bowl (volute krater) with the Death of Thersites(about 340 BC)—an elaborate vase that was probably influenced by a lost play. Depicted are Achilles, who has just beheaded Thersites, as well as divinities and a number of characters from the Iliad.

Is this a populist move that will be criticized as pandering? It may, but — sight unseen, mind you — I don’t think, in concept, it should be.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the MFA, Boston

Crystal Bridges: The Anti-Whitney-Biennial

Saturday is the day. That’s when the art world, which has been wondering what Don Bacigalupi, president of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and assistant curator Chad Alligood have been seeing for the better part of 2013 and much of 2014 on their search for underappreciated artists, will find out. That’s when the museum unveils State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now — their selections. It is definitely an unconventional ride through art in America.

I say that even though I haven’t seen the show, though the press preview was today (I think), but I have gotten a little look. I have the illustrated checklist, and I’ve looked up several of the artists. I’ve also talked with Bacigalupi, talked with a couple of them, and selected five (which was really hard), to feature in an article. My piece, something of a curtain-raiser, is in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Crystal Bridges Museum Gives Underappreciated Artists a National Show.

Though Bacigalupi says there were no quotas, the 102 artists selected were spread pretty evenly around the country: 24 from the Northeast, 25 from the South, 26 from the West and 27 from the Midwest. Most have an arts education — many with advanced degrees. Most have local “support systems.” Nonetheless, Bacigalupis said, “many said it was their first studio visit.”

They picked 54 men and 48 women — even though Bacigalupi says they saw and spoke with more women artists than men. He acknowledges that “Not everyone will love everything in the show but I don’t think they should.” (A. Mary Kay’s painting is below; there are four additional artists’ works on the WSJ link.)

AMaryKay

A key question: did they avoid controversial works? He says no. “We’re not avoiding anything…but communication has to be in two directions,” he told me. Or, to cite the quote I used in my article: “We wanted work that would engage people, not push them away, so even when artists here are asking tough questions, they are doing it in a way to open a conversation, not shut it down.” I don’t ever hear that from other curators or dealers.

I didn’t get into this in my story, but the exhibition doesn’t have a theme, and the curators didn’t divide their choices into afterthought themes either. So as you might imagine, “Hanging has been a challenge,” Bacigalupi told me. “You have to make the works cohere as an exhibit, communicate what these works are about.”

He said they hung the works with an eye to “conversations, connections, resonances – but not themes.” So instead of paragraphs of text introducing a gallery, providing context, Crystal Bridges will have “pithy wall texts that will help visitors into the conversation,”  serving as “a point of departure.”

One gallery has these lines:

Human hands shape and frame the natural world.

Everyday stuff reveals grace and grit.

A stilled moment expands awareness.

Unexpected materials gain power and meaning.

Human bodies carry personal and historical significance.

Personal stories open avenues for empathy.

Another has these:

Materials and imagery can communicate heritage.

From a single image, complex tales unfold.

The stuff of daily life can reveal hidden stories.

Crystal Bridges also says that “There’s a great presence of the artists” in the didactics. In the catalogue. Bacigalupi wrote:

… one of the most meaningful things this project has presented is the opportunity to share much more about the artists themselves than a typical exhibition might. We hope that the faces of these artists, their voices and stories, the contexts and communities in which they make their art, and the intersections of their art and their lives will be rich additions to the guest experience. We want to incorporate as many of these layers as we can in our galleries, interpretive devices, and educational programs.

I imagine that some art world sophisticates will write off this show; I don’t think they should — at least not yet. I’m really looking forward to some thoughtful reviews.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges and A. Mary Kay