Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

What Have Leonardo, Aggie Gund, Sopheap Pich, Etc. Got In Common? News

I rarely do this, but  several smallish but interesting things have happened in the museum world recently, so I’ve collected them in one post.

From the Frick Collection, three pieces of news:

  • Director Ian Wardropper has lured one of the Metropolitan Museum’s* biggest stars, Xavior Salomon, several blocks south on Fifth Avenue to serve as chief curator; he’d been a curator in the European paintings department, “a prototypical and brilliant curator/scholar,” as one source who knows him well told me, and formerly chief curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. More here.
  • The Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting* has chosen the winner of the Sotheby’s Book Prize for a Distinguished Publication on the History of Collecting in America — it’s a team headed by Jennifer Farrell, the general editor, and essayists Thomas Crow, Serge Guilbaut, Jan Howard, Robert Storr, and Judith Tannenbaum. They collaborated on Get There First, Decide Promptly: The Richard Brown Baker Collection of Postwar Art. Details here.
  • The Frick usually closes at 6 p.m. (5 p.m. on Sundays), but to accommodate the crowds eager to see Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and the other paintings on loan for its special exhibition Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis, it will now stay open until 9 p.m. on Friday nights for that show. Better yet, thanks to Agnes Gund, it will be free on nine of those evenings, from this Friday until January 17, with the exception of Dec. 6 and Jan. 3, which are reserved for members.

131017-ARoom-model-1From the Dallas Museum of Art:

  • Speaking of free, the DMA recently received an anonymous $9 million gift. Of that, $4 million is unrestricted operating support for the DMA’s free general admission program. The other $5 million will support the digitization of the museum’s collection of 22,000 objects and the creation of a platform for free access to those digital images. In addition, the unnamed donor will give $2 million to match money the DMA raises, presumably in a one-to-one ratio, in the next five years. Details here. Now for pure conjecture on my part — I would not be surprised if this gift came about because DMA director Max Anderson went all out in fundraising last year in an effort to buy the recently rediscovered Leonardo, Salvator Mundi. He couldn’t muster the rumored $200 million price tag, but he did amass pledges of a very sizable total, I’ve been told. Perhaps he has turned convinced one of those potential donors to support greater access to the museum.

And speaking of the Leonardo:

  • It’s no longer available. It has been sold.  — or is in contract negotiations. To whom, I do not know. Again, pure conjecture based on rumors I’ve heard: it‘s going, or has gone, to a collector in Europe. Probably a private collector. Stay tuned to see if it is put on view in a museum.

Earlier this year, I saw a wonderful exhibition at the Met of work by Sopheap Pich, a Cambodian artist (images here), and now:

  • The Indianapolis Museum of Art has announced that it has commissioned an installation by Pich for its Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion Series.  Titled A Room, it “will consist of nearly 1,200 bamboo strips, extending 40 feet from the atrium’s ceiling to floor and occupying a 26-foot diameter circular space that museum visitors will be able to enter.” Based on what I have seen so far, not just at the Met but online, Pich is destined for more acclaim and this should help spread the word about him. A rendering of the new project is above.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum

 

Finally, A Look At The Legacy of Rogier van der Weyden

Do you know the work of the Master of the View of Saint Gudula, the Master of the Princely Portraits, or the Master of the Life of Joseph (also called the Master of Affligem)? How about the Master of Orsoy, the Master of the Saint Barbara Legend, or the Master of the Redemption of the Prado (possibly Vrancke van der Stockt)?

sc1066.jpgProbably not, but maybe you know Colyn de Coter? The Master of the Saint Catherine Legend the Master of the Embroidered Foliage? These three, at least, have been studied.

But now more of these (mostly) unidentified painters, who worked in Brussels between 1450 and 1520, all in the shadow of Rogier van der Weyden, are coming to light. They are the subject of an exhibition I wish I could see that is now on view at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. It’s main title is The Heritage of Rogier van der Weyden. According to the press release,

At that moment Brussels was a thriving town, the Coudenberg Palace being the favourite residence of the dukes of Burgundy. It was surrounded by the palaces of courtiers and noble families like the Nassau or the Ravenstein. They were all important patrons of the arts.

Building on the results of the recent research and the existing studies the exhibition presents an overall picture of painting in Brussels at the late 15th and first years of the 16th centuries, tackling the subject from various viewpoints, historical, iconographic, stylistic, technical, economic and in terms of work organisation and exact copying.

Dr. Griet Steyaert has been researching these painters, trying to answer questions (denoted in that press release) and one result is this exhibition.

Among the works on display, a few of which you can see here, is The Presentation in the Temple by the Master of the Prado Adoration, at left, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, a gift of the Samuel Kress Foundation.

The British papers have failed us, surprisingly — I couldn’t find a review of the show, which opened on Oct. 11. But I did find something in Studio International, which said:

The Heritage of Rogier van der Weyden is worth a visit, perhaps even two. The exhibition is set within the large, high-quality collection of the Royal Museum and offers a view of visual culture in Brussels in the 15th and 16th centuries as well as showing the rich historical context in which artists were employed, by elaborating on the patronage of, among others, the Dukes of Burgundy then residing at the Coudenberg Palace. The research is sound, the lighting perfect, the space allows generous viewing opportunities, and who knows, this exhibition may momentarily reunite Belgians from north and south.

That last link also has a slide show, which I am sure you will enjoy.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

A Short Shout-Out To The Queen, Sort Of — UPDATED

b4b0601c0f2614897c0ef7f9ce94a9e4Now on view in the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, is an exhibition called Castiglione: Lost Genius. It merits a little shout-out because it was co-curated by Timothy Standring of the Denver Art Museum. Standring, whom I’ve known for years, also curated the exhibition Becoming van Gogh, in Denver, which I wrote about here (as well as for the Wall Street Journal). That was a feat of persistence, as the Denver museum had no van Goghs.

He’s been working on Castiglione for years (not a complaint, Timothy, just noting your persistence…), and to have it shown at the Queen’s Gallery is neat. So I am thrilled.

Here’s the description of the new show:

One of the great artists of the Baroque, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-64) was perhaps the most innovative and technically brilliant Italian draftsman of his time. He practised as a painter, but won fame for his drawings and prints.

Castiglione worked in oils on paper to produce large, vibrant compositions, and combined drawing and printmaking to invent the technique of monotype.

Despite leading a violent and turbulent life, he produced works of grace and rare beauty, which were highly esteemed for a century after his death. But Castiglione unaccountably fell from fame in the modern era. The Royal Collection holds the finest surviving group of the artist’s works.

The Royal Collection website has all (I think) of the drawings in the show — not in a particularly new or fresh way, it’s true, but they can all be easily copied, as the presumed self-portrait etching at left shows I also like that it discloses the acquirer — this one was obtained by George III.

The catalogue will be out soon is now out!

UPDATE: The exhibition, which remains on view until next Mar. 16, will travel to the Denver Art Museum in 2015 and then to the Kimbell art Museum in Fort Worth.

And here’s a review from The Telegraph and its article on this scandalous murderer.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Queen’s Gallery

 

Ed Winkleman Has A Little List

When, about ten days ago, I briefly blogged here about ArtReview’s annual Power 100 list, a couple of readers took issue. They didn’t like the very concept of the list and blamed me for it. Others thought it said something about money and power, and a third commenter thought it was fun. I thought it was harmless.

AN0713_Cover1-226x300Nonetheless, there’s a reason these lists persist: readers like them. As the art dealer Edward Winkleman said recently, after he posted “The Top 10 Most Useless Art World Lists,” that very post turned out to be one of his very popular posts.

The ArtReview list didn’t come close to being the most useless, in his eyes. That would be the GalleristNY’s monthly review of ArtForum’s advertisements. GalleristNY also came under fire for its list of  ‘The 50 Most Powerful Women in the New York Art World.” But ArtInfo, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Barry”s Blog, and other outlets also produce useless lists in Winkleman’s view.

He is right on some counts. Many of these lists are silly, though some people take them seriously. Some are better researched and more fact-based than others. But I still don’t understand why people get so worked up about it.

Believe me, the lists peddled in other areas are often even sillier. Early this year, I was down at the NYU journalism school, where I had been helping some students get internships. One student had an internship at a well-known business website where, among his assignments, he’d been asked to make a list of “the ten ugliest fish.” How’d you do that, I asked. “I googled ‘ugly fish,’ ” he replied, and used his own judgment.

I think the lists on Winkleman’s list are probably better researched than that. I hope.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of ARTnews

 

More Nazi Loot? A Secret Is Revealed In Munich

If you can’t crooks on the crime, you can often get them on tax charges — and that appears to be what has happened in Munich. According to an exclusive story in the German magazine Focus, an estimated 1 billion euros worth of art, some 1,500 paintings by “dozens of classic modern masters” including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Nolde have been seized from a Munich apartment. They had been confiscated during the Third Reich and have been missing ever since.

If you read German, go right to Focus. (Focus also has a video on the story, also in German.)

article-2486251-192C420900000578-952_634x423If you don’t, some British news outlets have picked up the story. The BBC has a summary, including the following excerpt:

The magazine said the artworks were found by chance in early 2011, when the tax authorities investigated Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of an art dealer in Munich. He was suspected of tax evasion, and investigators obtained a search warrant for his home in Munich.

There, they found the cache of some 1,500 artworks which had vanished from sight during the Nazi era.The younger Mr Gurlitt had kept the works in darkened rooms and sold the occasional painting when he needed money, Focus reports….

…There are international warrants out for at least 200 of the works, Focus reports. The collection is being held in a secure warehouse in Munich for the time being.

One of the pieces is said to be a portrait of a woman by Matisse which belonged to the grandfather of French TV presenter Anne Sinclair.

According to the Daily Mail, which has a larger story, the trove was found in an “Aladdin’s Cave behind a wall of tins of beans and fruit in the decrepit flat [above] of loner Cornelius Gurlit in the Munich suburb of Schwabing.”  And:

…Dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt had acquired the paintings and sketches in the 1930s and 40s for a pittance from terrified Jews and reported them all to be destroyed at the war’s end during the ferocious bombing of Dresden.

Nothing was known about the collection until September 2010, almost 100 years later, when customs carried out a routine check on a train from Switzerland.

Stopping his sole surviving son – who had never worked and who had no visible means of income – they discovered he had an envelope containing 9,000 euros in cash, and a stash of empty envelopes.

…He appeared nervous and the officials issued a search warrant for his £600-a-month rented flat. It was entered in the spring of 2011 and the paintings discovered.

Since then, art historians have been looking for the owners.

Finally, this case may solve some of the mysteries left over from the war.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Daily MailÂ