Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Dallas Museum of Art Spreads Its “Free” Influence

Last week, the Institute of Museum and Library Services announced grant to museums worth nearly $30 million, and several of them have separately been announcing their grants. Today came news that the Dallas Museum of Art received “a National Leadership Grant” of more than $450,000 that will go towards taking its innovative “Museum’s Friends membership program”  to the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Stein-Portrait220Congratulations to Max Anderson, the director of the DMA, and his team there, especially deputy director Rob Stein (pictured), who moved with Anderson from Indianapolis — they really have done something new and, I hope, rewarding to museum-goers. As the Dallas museum explains its program, which is based on free admission to the permanent collection for members:

The free membership is available to anyone who wishes to join, and includes opportunities for increased access to Museum programs and staff through an à la carte rewards system determined by active participation. Since the DMA launched its Friends initiative in January 2013, more than 27,000 visitors have enrolled in the program.

That program was announced (here) in November, 2012 and began last January. Here is a New York Times article on the program from last March.

The program isn’t simple, however, and has to be modified to each museum — DAM, LACMA and MIA all have different economic models and audiences. So, the IMLS grant:

The grant, which will be accomplished in a two-year time period, will support the creation of replicable models of visitor engagement inspired by the DMA’s Friends program in each of the partner museums. After a year of research, the teams will refine and pilot aspects of the program at each partner institution with a goal of determining what activities and tools could work broadly across the museum field. The money will also be used to improve the system for compiling and analyzing data on visitor participation—gleaned from the program—and document critical factors that have an impact on audience engagement at museums. The research, which will be led by Rob Stein, the DMA’s Deputy Director, will establish a dataset that will yield important information on the strengths and weaknesses of museum programming and the degree to which audiences are connecting and engaging with an institution.

I like the DMA program, and I qualified my endorsement of it above for only one reason: it’s new, and early success doesn’t always lead to long-term success. Here, I hope it does.

 

More On That MoMA-Universities Link

Last April here, I spilled the beans on a new research program between MoMA and several universities called the Museum Research Consortium. It’s a four-year pilot program aimed at studying objects in MoMA’s collection.  Last Thursday, MoMA finally put out a press release with more details.

DubuffetJazzBandThe museum announced the personnel involved from Princeton, Columbia, Yale, NYU-IFA and the Graduate Center of the City of New York, all under the direction of MoMA curator Leah Dickerman. Here’s the key component:

The program will unite the Museum’s resources and expertise with those of the five partners through the initiation of two complementary programmatic features: semi-annual Study Sessions and pre-doctoral Fellowships.

The study sessions will also include faculty and graduate students from the university partner programs, and other experts invited by MoMA. What will they study?

The topic of the first Study Session, to be held in January 2014, will be the work of Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985). Joint research on objects considered during the Study Sessions will continue on an inter-institutional web platform designed to foster shared scholarship and to build, through the Consortium community’s common efforts, deep research files and commentary around studied objects.

MoMA owns many works by Dubuffet, including Grand Jazz Band (New Orleans), from 1944, shown here.

As I said when I broke the “news” on this, it’s great to put students in close contact with great works of art — not to mention a group of experts from different universities and outsiders with different perspectives.

It might even be called connoisseurship.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of MoMA

 

A Pet Peeve About Museums, Galleries…With A General Message

I was going to write to you here about some interesting mew contemporary art acquisitions, announced on Friday, by the Toledo Museum of Art. But I can’t, really — because what’s the point of writing about a piece of visual art if I can’t show it to you?

The press release from Toledo carried no images, just the line “For images or an interview …about the works, contact…” the museum’s PR department. Thankfully, the release listed two names and numbers, along with emails. Some releases I receive don’t even do that. But I couldn’t contact them, because I was traveling all day Friday until after business hours. Now here is it Sunday evening, and who am I going to call?

I am sorry to pick on the Toledo Museum, because it is far from alone in this practice of sending releases without photographs (or links that don’t require passwords set up and approved in advance). It’s surprising to me because this is visual art I’m writing about… how can I make a call about whether to write about something if I can’t see it?

Respond to the email, you say? I might — if it’s within business hours. But I receive hundreds of emails a day, and I can’t chase down images for everything that might sound promising. Better to push delete.

Sometimes I can find an image on the web, and I do so, but sometimes there are none — as is the case for one of these works puchased by Toledo, When I Last Wrote to You about Africa… by El Anatsui. Google that, and you get the exhibition of that name.

I once asked the PR rep at another museum about this, because I thought it might have something to do with reproduction rights. Sad to say, but they are a relic of the past with everyone taking pictures on their phones.

But not at all, he said. He is trying not to clog up reporters’ emails with images that take a lot of memory/space. Fair enough, but how about a small, low-res image? That’s all one needs for a blog anyway or a taste that would prompt a request.

Is there a larger lesson here, beyond dealings with the press? Maybe — maybe it’s that when museums fail to get notice for an exhibition, an acquisition, a conference, etc., it may have less to do with the merits and more to do with the way the message is delivered.

Now back to Toledo. In addition to the El Anatsui, it has acquired Homeless Child 2, a life-sized mannequin by Yinka Shonibare, Rubber Soul, Monument of Aspiration by South African artist Mary Sibande; Wall of Sea byJapanese painter and film artist Takashi Ishida; and Made in Porto-Novo, by Hazoumè, an African artist from the Republic of Benin.

 

A New Look In The Great Plains

GreatPlainsMuseumI smiled when I read this article in the Daily Nebraskan, and so thought I’d share it with you. Especially since I read the headline thinking something bad might be happening. It read: Great Plains Art Museum redesign aims to improve visibility, and the story began:

The Great Plains Art Museum was renovated over the summer in hopes of attracting more visitors and is now showing off its new design.

“We basically wanted to figure out a way to stand out from the other buildings in the area,” said Katie Nieland, publications specialist for the Center for Great Plains Studies. “Hopefully, as people are passing by, they will see it.” …It received a paint job and a new logo, with prairie grass embellishing the walls and windows.”

But the photo illustrating the article eliminated my fears — what sounded as if it might be kitschy is actually quite attractive (to me).

It’s not formal or classic in any way; but it suits the area.

Jon Humiston, the creative director for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Office of University Communications who designed the look, told the newspaper that he wanted to link the grass near the sidewalk to the museum, that the colors were chosen to recall a prairie sunset, and that the words “Great Plains depict the lines of the horizon, streams and trails of the Midwest.”

The museum focuses on art of the Great Plains, and gets a small number of visitors. Will this help? I hope so.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Daily Nebraskan

 

 

Herb And Dorothy, The Sequel

Remember Herb and Dorothy Vogel? Of course you do. They are the New York couple, the postal clerk and the school librarian, who collected art using only his salary for years — and eventually gave most of it away to the National Gallery in Washington and then to 50 museums, one each in every state. They were the subject of a documentary in 2009 called “Herb and Dorothy.” I wrote about it then for The Art Newspaper, and to this day it is usually one of the most-viewed articles on my personal website.

herb-and-dorothy-50x50On Friday, a second documentary by Megumi Sasaki about the Vogels (Herb has since died) will premier in New York at IFC Center: HERB & DOROTHY 50X50. It’s a sequel that follows the tale — “a continued look at the varying lives of the artists the Vogel’s adored and a new view of the curators, docents and museum visitors who were affected by this unprecedented donation.”

Here’s more:

A ‘road movie’ through the art world, the film takes the audience on a journey across the US to eleven recipient museums, from Honolulu to Fargo, meeting curators and visitors, and introduces famous (often controversial) artists, as well as unknown favorites of Herb and Dorothy.

Sasaki has revelations, she says in her statement about this sequel — including the fact that Herb initially opposed the 50X50 idea.

I haven’t seen the film, which lasts 87 minutes, but here’s the trailer. After IFC, it opens at 40 other theaters around the country.