Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Should Art-Lovers Just Move To Maine?

What a great summer for Maine and art. I’ve mentioned (here) the opening of the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion at the Colby College Museum of Art, which in July unveiled the Lunder collection, about 300 of the more than 500 works of American art donated to Colby several years ago.

Screen-Shot-2013-04-29-at-2.42.51-PM4I’ve been looking for an excuse to mention Bowdoin College’s summer exhibition, Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea — I have the catalogue for it, and it look sumptuously wonderful.

And now a little thing that means a lot (hat-tip to Rosemarie van Otterloo via FB): The Maine Crafts Association is seeking just 2,000 Maine residents, “with cars registered in their name,” who will pre-pay just $29 for a specialty license plate, that says “Maine — The State of the Arts.” It shows Robert Indiana’s Love sculpture on a light blue background (at right). Indiana lives in Vinalhaven, Maine.

When that 2,000 goal is reached, the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles will release the plate to the those people and make the plate available for purchase to other residents. The money will support the arts, though the details are a little fuzzy. Here’s what it says on the MCA’s website about that:

The specialty plate will serve as a fundraiser for the Maine Craft Association and will have a direct positive impact on the arts in Maine through the organization’s marketing, business and outreach programming. The Maine Arts Commission will receive a portion of the funds to put toward their statewide arts initiatives.

What proportion goes where is unclear. Still the MCA support “craft artists” in Maine “with educational activities such as workshops and conferences, subsidized marketing opportunities, Haystack Workshop Weekend, Master Craft Awards, exhibition and demonstration opportunities, and access to markets such as wholesale and retail tradeshows and seasonal stores and markets.”

Not every state could say the same — but maybe they will think about it.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of MCA

On Site At The Turrell Show, Guggenheim Edition — UPDATED

Gugg1I stopped in at the Guggenheim Museum yesterday to see the James Turrell exhibition and to see how other people were observing Turrell. Surprisingly, there was no line to get in, even on Sunday mid-afternoon — it wasn’t raining, but it wasn’t sunny either. Just a normal museum weekend day. So maybe the show isn’t as popular as I had heard.

Inside, however, was another matter. The rotunda was jammed, as you will see in my pictures. Some people were clearly intrigued, and some people were not paying attention to the changes in the installation at all. They were Gugg3on their cell phones. It was definitely an “experience” for some people; others — fewer in number, I would guess, based on the noise, the running around, etc. — were having an experience with the art.

People wandered through the upstairs galleries far more quickly — no value judgment there, on my part — but it may have something to do with the fact that they are monochromatic and are not dynamic. The room with Ronin was empty. Some pieces, in my opinion, were better than others — I especially like the cube of light, Afrum I (White),  that hung in the corner of one room. At the top, experience kicked in again. There, the Guggenheim has hung a piece which can be seen by a limited number of people at once, and the line to see it was more than 45 minutes long. I didn’t wait.

Gugg5I found the centerpiece, Aten Reign, which fills the rotunda, to be less interesting than Turrell’s skyspaces. This seems more like a light show, less like a comment on perception, than the sky spaces. Maybe that had to do with the festival-like atmosphere, I don’t know. But I feel as if I don’t have to go back, sorry to say.

One oddity must mention: everyone was taking pictures with their phones and some even had large cameras, loaded with good lenses. Every now and then, a guard would holler out “no photos.” No one paid much mind.

I do wonder why the Guggenheim — or, if it’s Turrell, why Turrell — would saddle the show with that restriction. Last week, the Getty lifted all restrictions on the images it holds right to — people can use them for free. It was the first step to “open content,” the museum said.

UPDATE, 8/21: This subject was recently taken up on the blog of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Gugg7

Yeah, Me — Say Letter-Writers To The NYT

TokyoMuseumIn case you missed it, yesterday’s New York Times carried four letters from readers about my opinion piece in the Sunday Review section last week,  High Culture Goes Hands-On.

Here’s the link to the letters.

I’m pleased, and wrote that uncharacteristically hubristic headline for this post because since I last wrote about the piece, here, I’ve been beaten up on some blogs. I was disturbed by them at first, but it struck me as I read them that they made their argument, to a great degree, using ad hominem attacks of me. They complained about the tone of the piece — oddly, since it was quite unemotional and dispassionate. When my critics made other arguments, they were often off-target. One writer spent his entire article refuting something I never said — that contemporary art was bad. He dredged up historical references, like criticism of the Impressionists and much art since then — all facts that had nothing to do with my piece, which was about museums catering to the public that is in search of participatory, interactive experiences all the time.

Another said he was tired of reading all these conservative views in the Times. I wonder what he is actually reading, considering that Public Editor #1, Dan Okrent, answered the question, “Is the Times a Liberal Newspaper,” with the answer “Of course it is” way back in 2004.

One guy said I was taking the “fun” out of museums. For him, I am posting a sign I saw recently in the Tokyo National Museum, where they really take the fun out of visiting a museum. (It wouldn’t work here, would it? Please note that I am not advocating it.)

Still others confused my message with their worries about elitism. The two are not related, in my mind or in my essay.

But many more people agreed and urged me not to be intimidated. The Times normally prints letters that represent the whole of what was legitimately said and this indicates to me that it received many more positive letters than negative ones.

A few articulated a point I did not make as well as I might have in my essay: viewing great art is, or should be, an experience in and of itself. Museums should be cultivating the ability of people to have those sorts of art experiences, rather than offering participatory experiences that are, to my mind, much less enlightening.

The Berlin Saga: A New Proposal Keeps The Old Masters Where They Are

It has been more than a year since the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage  set off a furor by deciding to mothball, for at least several years and possibly indefinitely, about half of the Old Master paintings now on view at the Berlin Gemaldegalerie. The other half would go to the Bode Museum, necessitating the storage of about half the Old Master sculpture on view there. This was all in the name of making space to display a 20th century art collection of uncertain importance, a condition of the donors, Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch.

524px-Jan_Vermeer_van_Delft_008Petitions were launched (read my previous posts here, here, here and here) and Berlin cultural authorities ordered up a feasibility study for alternatives to their plan. That plan did have the merit, eventually, of uniting Old Master paintings and Old Master sculpture in adjacent buildings on Museum Island. The problem was, and is, how long that was going to take — leaving the art off view. Many a project has been delayed in Berlin for lack of funding.

So although this was never a battle of old art vs. new art — at least  not to me — and it was always a matter of why put masterpieces out of circulation, that’s the way it was often portrayed. Especially because the donors were demanding control of the display of what some have said is a mediocre collection of 20th century art.  Their pressure to withdraw the collection if they were not satisfied was about the get them a building designed to show Old Masters.

That feasibility study was supposed to come out in spring; it still hasn’t. Now, according to an article in Der Taggesspiegel, there’s a new idea. Nothing is certain, it cautions — but there is a lot of  talk in the air.

Now, I don’t speak German and am relying on web translation and a little help from my friends who do speak it, but here’t the gist: The Old Master pictures will stay where they are in the Gemaldegalerie. The 20th century art will go in a new building, to be built on the open space at the Potsdamer Straße.

This is not a great solution: it leaves as is the separation of Old Master paintings and Old Master sculpture, which should be seen side by side. But at least the pictures will not be sent to storage.

The study is now set for release in December, when the Heritage Foundation next meets.

BTW, the petition launched by Jeffrey Hamburger of Harvard, opposing the mothballing, now has 14,430 signatures.

Photo Credit: Vermeer’s Woman With A Pearl Necklace, from the Gemaldegalerie’s collection

 

 

 

Cupid Strikes, And Worcester Gets A Great Gift

Hester Diamond, well-known as a collector of Old Masters, has made a nice gift to the Worcester Museum of Art — it’s a tale that shows both her and Matthias Waschek, the museum’s director, to be pretty crafty.

WAMVeroneseUnframedFirst the gift: it’s a painting by Veronese titled Venus Disarming Cupid, circa 1560, and according to the Worcester museum is “one of the few works by the famed Renaissance master still in private hands.” It shows a smiling Venus playfully taking away the bow of her son Cupid, stopping him in his tracks. The work is currently valued at about $3.5 million, according to a knowledgeable source.

Waschek, who became the museum’s director in fall, 2011, called the gift a “game changer” for the museum, because “While the Museum’s collection includes exceptional Italian Renaissance masterworks by artists such as Andrea Del Sarto and Piero di Cosimo, it has traditionally been stronger in northern European works. This Veronese shifts the spotlight to the south, and reflects our desire to grow and expand the scope and diversity of the Museum’s collection.”

Diamond has only one connection to the Worcester museum — her stepdaughter, dealer Rachel Kaminsky, who joined its board in 2012. She had no connection until then either, but Waschek smartly set out to expand the museum’s connections and increase its support base. He invited Kaminsky to become a trustee. She accepted. The gift ensued, as she and Diamond got to know the museum.

Diamond was also smart to acquire the work at Christie’s in January, 1990. It had been consigned by its owner as “Circle of François Boucher.” But before the sale, art historian and Veronese expert Terisio Pignatti reattributed it to Veronese. When he published it in 1991, he noted the collector’s stamp on the reverse of the canvas, which suggested that the painting was once in the collection of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, a county and principality in southwestern Germany.

At Christie’s, it was estimated at $800,000-$1,200,000, and Diamond paid $2,970,000. She placed it on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in late 2006, in the permanent collection galleries. It was also included in the exhibition Venus: Bilder einer Göttin (Images of a Goddess) at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 2001. (All this from the press release, which I will link to when it is posted online.)

Diamond said that aside from honoring Kaminsky she had another motive for giving this particular painting to Worcester: “I have always believed that the best public home for a work of art is within an institution where it adds something new to the collection and helps bring in new audiences. Over the years, my collection has evolved, incorporating art from many periods, genres and styles. The Worcester Museum’s willingness to explore new ideas for encouraging audiences of every age to think differently about art reflects the arc of my own collecting.”

Disarming Cupid will go on view at the Worcester Art Museum on September 20, as part of the upcoming exhibition [remastered] — a new installation of its Old Master paintings.

How sweet.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Worcester Art MuseumÂ