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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Dubai Ruler Orders Four New Museums

Before I was diverted yesterday to write about a Dubai auction, I was planning to share news of the Dubai subway system. It’s about to become a museum or, rather, a set of museums.

167896079-507x310The state news agency there recently reported that Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum wants themed museums in the subways as inspiration. As Gulf Business wrote:

“We want to inspire and communicate with every employee on his way to work, every student on his way to pursuing education and every tourist visiting Dubai,” said Sheikh Mohammed. “We want to transfer Dubai Metro stations to museums accompanying passengers to all destinations.”

The project starts with four stations, and each will have a theme:

Islamic arts and arabic calligraphy museum, inventions museum, contemporary art museum and visual art museum will be launched during phase one.

The Islamic art and calligraphy museum will include a collection of Islamic artworks and a display of manuscripts, ceramics and jewellery along with calligraphy paintings.

The Inventions Museum will highlight the most important human inventions in different fields such as engineering, mathematics, medicine, geography, astronomy and other fields. The Contemporary Art Museum will display paintings, design, graphic illustrations and models done by contemporary artists from around the world.

The visual arts museum will screen movies and documentaries highlighting the work of contemporary artists. It will also give visitors a chance to exhibit their work.

Gulf Business says that the Dubai subway systems handled more than 137 million passengers last year, and eventually this idea will be extended through the entire system.  It did not say who would design or implement this plan, or what artists might be involved.

But the sheikh wants it done fast: there four will be “completed within a year and will be launched during Art Dubai 2015.”

Yes, I know other subways systems have art — Paris and New York, to name two. This sounds more extensive. Could be nifty.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gulf Business

A Top Ten List In Dubai

I happened to turn to a publication called Gulf Business, which I plan to use in my next post, and then happened upon a very interesting list.

Samt-Lam-Yantehi-MadaWe think we know a lot about art in the Gulf States — hearing all the time of the Doha and Abu Dhabi museums, the big annual art fairs there and the (what looked to me from afar as pretty awful) massive Damien Hirst bronze sculptures of fetal development that went on display there last fall.

So the headline in Gulf Business drew me in: Top 10 Most Expensive Art Works Sold By Christie’s In Latest Dubai Auction. They’re not what you might guess. The sale was of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art. No Hirst or Koons here. (Middle Eastern was their term, for those of you who think I am being politically incorrect.)

The dollar amounts were small, with the top lot fetching $1,023,750 — it was a figurative painting of the construction of the Suez Canal by Abdul Hadi El-Gazzar, an Egyptian artist who died in 1965. The final price was about ten times the estimate, though.

And yet:

Global auction house Christie’s said that its latest auction in Dubai saw 140 art works raise a total of over $10.6 million (Dhs39.1 million), an increase of 65 per cent compared to last year’s sales total. …The Pharos Collection of Modern Egyptian Art, expected to sell for around $1.4 million, made $3.89 million, with the top lot of the sale also coming from the collection.

The picture I’ve posted here was the fifth highest lot, Dia Al-Azzawi’s Neverending Silence,  which fetched $207,750, more than double the high estimate, all in.

I shouldn’t be surprised, perhaps, but this all makes me wonder what really know about the art scene there. In fact, take a look at this website, Arts Qatar, and its “News and Events” section; it presents a far more well-rounded picture of the arts in the Gulf that we’re getting over here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gulf Business

What’s The Best Course For the Bamian Buddhas?

It has been more than a dozen years since the Taliban blew up the Bamian Buddhas in Afghanistan, but — as an article today’s New York Times outlines — there is no consensus still on what if anything should be done to the site. And there’s little money to do it. The article describes the split:

BamyanBuddha_Smaller_1The major donor countries that would have to finance any restoration say the site should be left as it is, at least for now. The Afghan government wants at least one of the statues rebuilt….The Afghan government craves the symbolic victory over a still-threatening Taliban that rebuilding would allow it to claim. Many of those funding the restoration fear that rebuilding when so little of the original pieces remain would not be reconstruction at all, and more reproduction than a true accounting of history.

And a German archaeologist working to stabilize the site, Michael Petzet, also president of the German branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, is siding with the Afghans — only to be opposed by UNESCO.

Professor Petzet argues that rebuilding the Buddhas would be no different from past efforts to reassemble parts of the Roman Forum — another project criticized by some archaeologists — or repair damaged mosaics after the earthquake in Assisi, Italy. “It’s something human to want to do,” he said. “In France, whole cathedrals were reconstructed in Gothic style after they were blown up by Protestants in the 1600s.”

These magnificent figures were built about 1,500 years ago (having taken as long as 100 years to do it), and the Standing Buddha, at 174 ft tall, was the world’s largest. Petzet says he and his team have found and catalogued “as much as 30 percent of the surface of the smaller standing Buddha, enough, he says, to restore it persuasively.” UNESCO puts the figure at about 10 percent — and very little of the surface.

Looking at the pictures and video accompanying the Times article, it’s hard to see how the Buddha — it would be the smaller one — could be reconstructed, not that I have any specialized expertise in the matter.

But one look at the picture I’ve posted, of the smaller Buddha (115 ft tall), shows what was lost. It seems to me that, near-term, priority work should be stabilizing the site so that visitors could see the caves and passageways, some painted with murals and decorated with carvings and statues. That itself might bring back some tourists.

And the rubble, the “remains”? They could, as some are suggesting, go in an on-site museum, which would illustrate what the Taliban did. It could have, as some have previously suggested, computer-generated recreations of the Buddhas. By then, Petzet may have discovered more pieces, making the restoration more feasible.

Right now, UNESCO should let his team resume its work, which was stopped when it realized he was starting to recreate pedestals for recreated Buddhas — there’s no harm in that.

 

A Curator For Black Artists?

The Museum of Modern Art announced an interesting hire the other day: Darby English, who recently became the Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, will join MoMA (part-time) as a Consulting Curator (in the Department of Painting and Sculpture) for works made by black artists.

Darby EnglishWhile I perhaps understand the need for MoMA to make up for its lack interest in black artists (its term) in the past, I am not sure this is the way to go about it.

Here is where I give a hat-tip to Hyperallergic, which analyzed the move — and also worried about it — on Mar. 14 (the day of the announcement, which — for some reason — I did not receive). Hyperallergic raised several concerns, including the question of whether this ghettoizes black artists and the very definition/categorization of black artists.

With which I agree and add: Why should black artists be separated from contemporary art? It’s hard to imagine curators of women artists (look at the rightful complaints about Wikipedia categorizing authors as female authors and book stores using terms like women’s novels), or Evangelical artists, or gay artists, or for that matter white artists. Isn’t contemporary art in particular becoming ever more global, less subject to categories of nationality and race? Shouldn’t it all be judged by the same standards?

English’s initial tasks — “an analysis of the Museum’s collection of works in this area, as well as the publication of a critical reader bringing together key texts documenting black artists’ work and its historical reception” — are worthy ones that need doing, though, so I concur with some of MoMA’s goal here. He’ll also help with acquisitions.

But I worry about another: the “development of presentations within the collection galleries and the Museum’s exhibition program.”

MoMA is a universal museum for modern and contemporary art. Specialized museums like the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Jewish Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts exist to highlight such categories of art in isolation (usually). I see no reason to blur lines, as MoMA is doing here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Clark Art Institute 

“Nur,” About Islamic Art, Sheds Light On Broader Curatorial Goals

ALKEMIR1-blog427Museum exhibitions owe their existence to artist anniversaries, artistic discoveries, brainstorming, chance encounters, but rarely — I think — from corporations. But that was a hook I used to write about Nur: Light in Art and Science, a sweeping presentation of Islamic art organized by Sabiha Al Khemir, who signed on as a senior advisor to the Dalllas Museum of Art  in 2012.

The story, headlined Shedding a Light on Islamic Art’s Great Treasure, was equally about Al Khemir. a multitalented Tunisian who in addition to her art scholarship and curatorial activities, has also written two novels, including The Blue Manuscript.

One particular thing she said, which I quoted in the article, really hit home with me — and has relevance for the whole museum world:

There are days when I wonder why I do this, and then I see it in the eyes of people looking — sight becoming insight.

Sight becoming insight — what a great goal for curators to have when they plan their exhibitions.

Photo Credit: Karsten Moran, courtesy of The New York Times