Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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The Allure Of The New

The Miami art museum, now known as the Perez Art Museum Miami, released attendance figures for its first four months of existence the other day — they’re great. But they raise two questions.

Perez-Art-MuseumFirst the numbers: Since its December opening, the museum has welcomed 150,000 visitors. Massachusetts-based ConsultEcon had estimated 200,000 visitors for the entire first full year, according to Miami Today. One caveat: the projection was made in 2008, partly based on attendance in the old building. Nonetheless, congratulations are in order, and I agree with this quote from the article: “It’s fantastic. We’re very happy… and exhausted,” said Leann Standish, deputy director of external affairs. She also said that social media was spreading the word, and “I have never seen so much community ownership as there is here.” Also,  “the visitors love to shop,” Miami Today said, “PAMM’s retail shop has had to restock multiple times.” The museum is adding some staff to accommodate the crowds, as it probably must.

The two questions:

It would be prudent to question whether the current rate of attendance in sustainable — will the number really be 450,000 for the year? Or are people going to be one-time visitors, to see the building, take a look, and and that’s it? That is the pattern at most museum expansions; attendance often drops to previous levels. I wish the article had provided a membership number, in context with past numbers at the old building — individual membership costs just $55 a year, a reasonable number.

From afar, the upcoming exhibition schedule looks strong, so we’ll soon see if art is the draw or if the building/events are the draw.

Speaking of events: the article said “The museum fields 100 calls a day to reserve space for private events…” That is amazing, and obviously they are not all booking an event. So how many private events have there been? Is private event attendance included in that 150,000 total? Are attendees looking at art? Or spending all their time on the “sprawling outdoor plazas with lush vegetation”?

Event popularity can be good, too — I’m not complaining about it, just asking for clarification.

 

Oddly, Bush’s Art Gives Reason To Cheer

ad_131588191I’m sure you all saw coverage of the exhibit showing portraits painted by former president George W. Bush. The show at the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University was front page news, pictorially, in New York — here in The New York Times and here in The Wall Street Journal — and probably elsewhere too.

It was criticized as amateurish by some — most? — and I don’t disagree. So was Winston Churchill’s art, but it was still interesting that he could as well as he did, given all the other things Churchill did so well.

eeeeBush’s art, meanwhile, bears a lot of similarity, to me, to that of the overrated Elizabeth Peyton, whose work has sold for more than $1 million. Her portrait of Elizabeth II at sixteen, below left (versus Bush’s view of Angela Merkel, at right), fetched $518,500 at Christie’s. Others I know see Alex Katz in there and one misguided soul sees “a touch of Beckmann.” It would be a very tiny touch, imho.

So why cheer? The answer it in the NYT article:

Now on some days [Bush] spends three or four hours at his easel. The man who never much cared for museums — he rushed through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 30 minutes flat — told a private gathering the other day that he now could linger in art exhibits for hours at a time studying brush strokes and color palettes.

Bush’s newfound feelings underscore research findings that getting people to participate in art themselves leads them to visit museums. If we teach children to make art, no matter how primitive, a good proportion are likely to grow up to appreciate art and be museum visitors. That’s a better strategy for museums, it seems to me, than attracting those elusive young people with dance parties and other activities that have little, or nothing, to so with the art on view.

 

How Do We Feel About Killer Heels?

As the subject of an art exhibition, that is — not on what to wear. That’s the question I’ve been mulling since yesterday, when the Brooklyn Museum* sent out a press release announcing Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe, which opens there in September.

killerheelsFashion exhibits are popular these days, and many are fine considerations of costumes old and new. I’ve lauded some here, and panned others. With a name like Killer Heels, you know the marketing folks have been involved. That’s not a bad thing, depending on how deep it goes. Curators shouldn’t feel pressure to change what they’re doing for marketing reasons, though it’s fine to take marketing into consideration.

Which way will Killer Heels go? Hard to say at this point, but some elements of art — beyond the shoes themselves — are part of the show, which is billed this way:

Through more than 160 artfully-crafted historical and contemporary high heels from the seventeenth century through the present, the exhibition examines the mystique and transformative power of the elevated shoe and its varied connections to fantasy, power, and identity.

The art additions (except for those of you who do not believe that film is art) are:

The exhibition also features six short films inspired by high heels that were specifically commissioned for this exhibition from artists Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh, Zach Gold, Steven Klein, Nick Knight, Marilyn Minter, and Rashaad Newsome.

And a few more details about the contents:

The objects [i.e. shoes], both traditionally made and conceptual in nature, explore and play with the elevated shoe’s sculptural, architectural, and artistic possibilities. Early shoes on view include mid-seventeenth century Italian chopines made of silk, leather, and wood, European leather and metal pattens from the eighteenth century, and nineteenth-century cotton and silk embroidered Manchu platform shoes from China. Other highlights of Killer Heels are Marilyn Monroe’s Ferragamo stilettos (1959); stiletto mules of silk, metal, and glass by Roger Vivier for House of Dior (1960); and a wool “heel hat” made by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dalí (1937-38).  Contemporary heels in the exhibition include “Printz,” from Christian Louboutin’s Spring/Summer 2013-14 collection; Zaha Hadid’s chromed vinyl rubber, kid nappa leather, and fiberglass “Nova” shoe (2013), made in collaboration with United Nude; Iris van Herpen’s 3-D printed heel, “Beyond Wilderness” (2013); a black leather platform bootie with an 8-inch heel designed by Rem D. Koolhaas for Lady Gaga (2012); and Céline’s fur pump (2013) covered in mink.

Need I say, this show will travel?  Destinations undisclosed at this point.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Brooklyn Museum

 

San Francisco Museums Land A Great Gift

There are at least three notable aspects of the gift announced the other day by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: the Thomas W. Weisel Family has donated about 200 objects of Native American art to the museum. They were amassed over three decades by Weisel, an investment banker who profited mightily as a pioneer of the tech industry in Silicon Valley.

  • NavahoSerapesIt’s a good match for the FAMSF. The gift includes works that span nearly a thousand years, “from 11th century Mimbres ceramics to 19th century works,” according to the press release (not yet posted on its website). FAMSF’s current Art of the Americas collection lacks many things that the Weisel gift has, such as two Navajo first-phase blankets (ca. 1820s‒1850s) and Plains ledger drawings. As a result, “the gift will enable a new presentation of the art of the Americas, including major pieces of monumental Northwest Coast art…” and those ledger drawings.
  • The gift came with an endowment that “will enhance our capacity to study these objects from a variety of perspectives and to develop educational and scholarly programs around the collection.”
  • The “carefully chosen artworks can substantiate the emerging scholarly theory that, through technical analysis, archival research and visual comparisons, it may be possible to recognize the hands of the individuals who created many of these works.” This is a subject I have written about, here in The New York Times in 2011 and in several places here on the blog (here, for example, and here, too).

About 70 of the artworks, said to represent the collection’s entire range, will go on view beginning May 3 in an exhibition titled  Lines on the Horizon: Native American Art from the Weisel Family Collection. Arranged “by culture and chronology,” it “explores important themes in Native American art including floral, animal and landscape motifs and symbolism, and examines the long history of changing regional styles throughout the American Southwest.”

Colin Bailey, the museums’ director, called this “a transformative gift of art, of an unparalleled depth and scope.” From afar, I tend to agree.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of FAMSF 

Betsky Asked To Leave Early?

The situation at the Cincinnati Art Museums gets stranger and stranger. Director Aaron Betsky, who was pretty much forced out at the beginning of the year, will leave on May 1 — instead of his earlier plans to stay until his successor was named.

betsky_aaron_jan07This move, my sources suggest, reflects deep turmoil within the museum caused by Betsky, who is a polarizing figure, if nothing else. His tenture there has been marked by turmoil.

In a statement sent by board president Martha Ragland to employees yesterday, she said: “The Director has asked us to leave on May 1 instead of Sept. We have granted his request.  Dave Linnenberg (the COO) will be the interim Director. Let us support him at this time, especially with our limited budget.”

But these statements rarely reflect the whole story, and one source tells me that the search firm looking for the new director “will not send candidates until he left and is not apart of the decision making process.” I hope that is not entirely correct — if the search firm, which in this case is Russell Reynolds, is driving the decision instead of trustees, that is a big problem.

I hope to have more on this later.

Meantime, here is the press release from the museum; here is my post from last May outlining some of the problems; and here’s what the Cincinnati Enquirer had to say.