Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Peter Singer Says: Never Give To The Arts

Back to the NYTimes Sunday Review: the really threatening (to museums) article published this weekend was not my piece, but rather Peter Singer’s Good Charity, Bad Charity.

PeterSingerIn it, Singer argues that philanthropists should never give money to the arts, that there are far more worthy causes, like trachoma, an eye disease caused by an infectious micro-organism that slowly makes people, mostly children in developing countries, lose their eyesight. He poses a question: which is better, giving $100,000 to an art museum that would use the funds to expand, or to an organization fighting trachoma.

You do some research and learn that each $100 you donate could prevent a person’s experiencing 15 years of impaired vision followed by another 15 years of blindness. So for $100,000 you could prevent 1,000 people from losing their sight….

Suppose the new museum wing will cost $50 million, and over the 50 years of its expected usefulness, one million people will enjoy seeing it each year, for a total of 50 million enhanced museum visits. Since you would contribute 1/500th of the cost, you could claim credit for the enhanced aesthetic experiences of 100,000 visitors. How does that compare with saving 1,000 people from 15 years of blindness?

It is never that simple, though Singer argues that it is.

But for one thing, the benefits of visiting art museums are not entirely quantifiable. Many years ago, I covered the environmental movement, and it had the same problem. When economists did cost/benefit analyses of environmental regulations, the cost always outweighed the benefits — because economics had no way to quantify the benefits of, say, clean air or clean water. Since then, economists have developed some measures — still somewhat crude, but better than nothing.

Art museums and all cultural institutions are going to have to learn to articulate better the benefits they provide society. This is not about high/low; elite/mass; old art/new art, etc. Singer and his ilk argue that whenever culture is placed in a contest with disease control, fighting poverty, etc., culture must lose. I don’t believe that. But I, and you all, have a job to do to refute him.

 

My Experience With, And Rationale For, “Experience Museums”

For those of you who may have missed it, the front page of the Sunday New York Times’s Review section this week carried an essay I wrote, headlined High Culture Goes Hands-On. Print readers also got a deck: “Visitor engagement and participation are changing the nature of museums. And not always in good ways.”

8168456020_c93e8bda73_cSo I’ve had a couple of very busy days. Everyone who has written or called me, naturally, agreed with my thesis, which is not easy to boil down to one sentence. If I had to, it would be something along the lines of this: Art museums are on the verge of making a grand mistake, luring visitors by giving them participatory art experiences rather simply providing them with the opportunity to experience viewing glorious works of art. As I wrote:

In this kind of world, the thrill of standing before art — except perhaps for works by boldface-name artists like van Gogh, Vermeer, Monet and Picasso (and leaving aside contemporary artists who draw attention by being outrageously controversial) — seems not quite exciting enough for most people.

Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, advocating for “experience museums,” put it this way in a speech in Australia:

…museums must make a “shift away from passive experiences to interactive or participatory experiences, from art that is hanging on the wall to art that invites people to become part of it.” And, he said, art museums had to shed the idea of being a repository and become social spaces.

Needless to say, most museum directors and curators are doing this with good intentions — they are trying to attract more people in an age of split-second attention spans and multi-tasking.

4845929129_efa9f7e6a4_oI think this is an important issue — and readers must have agreed, as my essay landed on the most-emailed list for a while. It’s important because museums — like businesses — “train” people to come for visits, and with these experience/participatory activities they are training people to come for reasons that are not core to the museum. When people don’t find those expectations satisfied, they won’t go.

Here’s a parallel: When museums trained people to come for special — often blockbuster – exhibitions, they soon discovered that many people didn’t visit their permanent collections. Now, in troubled economic times, as special exhibitions have become fewer and have lasted longer, museums have tried to retrain people to come to see their permanent collections — and it’s a tough slog.

It’s also important because looking at great art actually is an experience on its own — or should be. People may be losing that ability, given the current environment, but should museums hasten its demise? I don’t think so.

I could go on about this topic, but you get my drift.

The Times opened the piece to reader comments, and last I looked more people agreed with me than not — though there were some major dissenters, one of whom accused me of “sour grapes.” Another said I was “cranky.” Some thought I was being exclusionary. I’m not — I want museums to be open to, and attractive to, everyone, AND for the right reasons. Not, as one commenter put it, because the museum is a “playground.”

I had two favorite comments:

From David Underwood: “Does this mean when I go to a presentation of Salome, they are going to offer me a head on a platter? Or am I going to get burned at the stake instead of Azucena?”

And a limerick from Larry Eisenberg:

Museums must become interactive?
I wish they were more retroactive,
A Velasquez one views
Is a joy to peruse,
Museums will be counterattractive!

Photo Credit: Martin Creed’s Work No. 965: Half the air in a given space, Courtesy of Far-Flung Travels (top); Big Bambu, at the Met, bottom

 

 

 

 

Good News From A Great Lakes’ City Museum

Not Detroit, alas — Buffalo. The Albright-Knox is sending some of its best paintings on the road, with stops at the Denver Art Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR.

convergence-1952This is good for many reasons, starting with the fact that the marvelous collection of modern art owned by the Albright-Knox is not as well known by the general public as it should be — and this will get the word out to four cities/regions. Residents and visitors who may never visit Buffalo will see that art in an exhibit that is being called Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Then they might even go to Buffalo to see what else is there.

The show will be “organized” by the Albright-Knox but, if a few hints I have had in the past are correct, it was instigated by inquiries from the Denver Art Museum, where it will go first (March 2–June 8, 2014). It’s based on the Albright-Knox’s 2011 exhibition “The Long Curve,” which occurred at the time of the museum’s 150th anniversary, and will also feature works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dali, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still. Pollock’s Convergence, 1952, shown here, is part of the show.

That bring us to the next reason why this is good: Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, is curating the exhibition of about 50 works. Smartly, Sobel is mounting an exhibition at his museum at the same time called 1959. As you know, the Still museum can show only works by Still. But as it happens, the Albright-Knox is one few other museums that owns works by that artist.

1959, which Sobel is also curating, will re-create “Still’s landmark exhibition held at the Albright-Knox in the fall of 1959,” according to the joint press release issued by the DAM and the Still museum. “This exhibition was the largest of Still’s career and the first following his decision to break ties with the art world in 1951. He included works made during the 1930s and major paintings made in New York during the 1950s. These artworks were not well known at the time and had never previously shown to the public. Further connecting the exhibitions and institutions, Picasso to Pollock includes a strong example of Still’s work from this time period, PH-48, 1957.”

That’s the third reason: Sobel gets a special exhibit within his constraints. And the fourth, two neighboring museums are working together in a way that will benefit the public.

Fifth, the Albright-Knox will take in some money for its loans.

All good.

 

The Sunday Dialogue: What Didn’t Get Published — UPDATED

As I suspected, Frank Robinson’s “Invitation to A Dialogue,” the results of which are published in the Review section of today’s New York Times, elicited responses about the situation of the Detroit Institute of Arts in the midst the city’s bankruptcy, no matter what he later said his intentions were. And predictably, they only reinforced the false dichotomy he posed in his invitation. A chance to shed light on the issue has been lost.

Interestingly enough, Robinson wrote “ a private note (not for publication)” to me after my post, presumably by way of explanation. Why it has to be private is beyond me (you can imagine for yourself), but I will honor his request and say only that he might have got better responses in the Times had he stated his supposed goal more articulately. Instead, the Dialogue was, of course, headlined Sell Masterpieces to Help Save a City? So much for intentions.

The good news: of the five responses published today (including one co-authored by Timothy Rub, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and Christine Anagnos, the executive director, just two advocate a sale of DIA’s paintings. Read them at the link above.

A few RCA readers copied me on the letters they sent to the Times, and I told them that I would print the unpublished ones here, along with one of my favorite (of many) works in the DIA’s galleries.

UPDATE, 8/13– Scroll down for the letter just sent to me by Karen Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_bruiloft_dans_(Detroit)From Amy Whitaker, Art Business Faculty, The Sotheby’s Institute, and author of Museum Legs:

Regarding Detroit, it is a false choice between pensions and art.  Rather, it is a riddle of art and economics that can only be solved by the lever of governance.

If pension shortfalls truly represent a triage moment, where saving lives must triumph over making lives worth saving, then the sale of the collection is a form of amputation that requires surgical precision and governance: one group to set a dollar goal, another to set criteria for selecting art for sale, another with veto power, and time lines with consequences.  Process is the only base sturdy enough to support an outcome as risky as demolishing the original Penn Station.

To explain the riddle: My father, a scientist, used to get asked how he and my mother, an English professor, got along being in such different fields.  He would say that he was in the business of saving lives but she was in the business of making lives worth saving. In actual fact, he worked on quality of life issues like debilitating headaches, and she imparted life survival skills like being able to write in complete sentences.

Art and economics have this relationship.  They cannot be neatly untangled.  Museums are not justified by their impact on tax revenue but by their connection to human creativity—the same creativity that spurs innovation and its much larger economic impact (i.e., the whole reason America has been a great nation).

Museums harness the creativity of today by stewarding that of the past. Creativity is the only long-term engine of economic growth there is.

Public collections of art also represent the dignity of protecting things that cannot easily be measured, against things like budget shortfalls that can.

We would be served by thinking about funding the arts the way we think about funding basic science.

From Randall Bourscheidt, former Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and Chairman of the Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs in New York City:

Frank Robinson’s suggestion that works of art be weighed against human lives — the entirely false comparison he makes in the sad case of Detroit’s bankruptcy — reflects a misunderstanding of the value of both. How could a former museum director confuse the market value of individual paintings with the cultural value of public institutions like museums?

There are at least two good reasons to keep the Detroit Institute of Arts collection intact:  first, it is one of the reasons why tourists visit the city and spend money; second, its survival — like that of libraries and parks and community centers and houses of worship and schools and universities — will be a beacon of hope to the people of Detroit who are enduring this time of hardship.  The first value can be measured in dollars, like the sale of art works; the second can only be measured by the citizens of Detroit.  Let’s hope that Detroit does not set the precedent of selling off its patrimony.

From Jennifer Vorbach, art advisor and independent curator:

Picture this: I am standing looking at a vitrine of Calders next to a stranger, next to a young African American teenager whose outward appearance strongly signals rebellion and inner city toughness. He’s clearly come with his school, to the National Gallery, on a Wednesday morning, as the room is teeming with similar kids.  In front of us is a sculpture
entitled “Funghi Neri.” He turns to me and asks: “I wonder what Funghi Neri means.” When I tell him that it means black mushrooms in Italian, he beams and says “well, maybe I should learn Italian.”

Looking at art in public collections opens many portals for many people. It enhances the human experience, and tells of life by visual means, generation after generation. One cannot equate the admittedly vital but transient benefits of pensions with the enduring experience of culture.

From Brian A. Oard, writer:

In Frank Robinson’s letter of 8/5/13, “Invitation to a Dialogue,” he  correctly refers to the situation at the Detroit Institute of Arts as  “agonizing” even as he retails a thoroughly bogus, demagogic argument based upon  a false choice between art and pensions. The argument implies that selling the  DIA collection would be a panacea for all that ails Detroit. In reality, it  would likely be no solution at all. At best, the ‘worst case scenario’  mega-auction will give the city a one-time infusion of cash comparable to a  crackhead’s head-cracking rush. When the hit wears off, Detroit will be left  with yet another big empty building, and all the longterm problems that led to  this mess will remain unaddressed.
On Aug.6, the DIA released a statement predicting that “any forced sale of  art would precipitate the rapid demise of the DIA.” To read an  art museum’s prediction of its own imminent “demise” is a uniquely chilling  experience. There’s certainly nothing new or unusual about the traditional  American philistinism that looks at one of the world’s great aesthetic treasure  houses and sees little more than an overflowing chest of pirate’s gold, but the  actions of Detroit’s soi-disant City Manager are evidence of a truly  astounding stupidity. Instead of selling or leasing or loaning or whatever else the  auctioneers and authoritarians have in mind, Detroit should be using the stellar  DIA collection as a crystal around which the depressed and depressing downtown  can be reinvented. Instead of an auction, the city needs an ad campaign to  generate international tourist revenue by informing the world of all the  masterpieces hidden behind the DIA’s imposing façade. Here, off the top of my  head, are a few taglines for such a campaign:
  • “You don’t have to go to  Paris to see Van Gogh.”
  • “You don’t have to go to  Rome to see Michelangelo.”
  • “You don’t have to go to  France to see Cezanne.”
  • “You don’t have to go to  Mexico to see Diego Rivera.”
  • “Come to Detroit and see the  world.”
Most Americans, even most  citizens of Michigan, have no idea of the excellence of the Detroit collection.  The DIA is a large, encyclopedic museum containing countless artworks that would  be the envy of any art museum in the world, even the Met or the Louvre. It is  home to Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals, generally considered to  be the artist’s most important surviving work north of the Rio Grande. In the  European galleries alone, the DIA holds perhaps the best late Titian in America  (Judith with the Head of Holofernes), two of Michelangelo’s preparatory  sketches for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Breughel’s The Wedding Dance (one of only two major paintings by Brueghel in American collections), Fuseli’s  iconic masterpiece The Nightmare, four major paintings by Van Gogh,  including a self-portrait and one of the portraits of Postman Roulin, a late  Cezanne still life of three skulls, a small panel by Jan van Eyck, and many more  priceless works. If these works go to the auction block, they will likely be  lost to the public and hidden away in the high-security warehouses where Russian  oil oligarchs store their artistic investments. Such a sale will be an act of  cultural looting comparable to those that occurred in Europe during the dark  days of 1933-45. It will snuff out one of the last signal fires of hope still  burning in downtown Detroit. It will be an American tragedy.
UPDATE:
From Karen Hopkins, president of BAM:

I find it incredibly hard to understand why support for the arts is so undervalued in this country. It is especially difficult to grasp why culture is continually branded as elite, as it has been by Mr. Frank Robinson, Museum Director at Williams College – clearly an institution that may in fact specifically serve only the 1%. Having working in Brooklyn for 34 years, I can emphatically say that many arts organizations serve a much broader and diverse population and that it is unfair to pit the arts vs. hunger or the arts vs. world peace or the arts vs. social service programs. The arts have a unique and enduring value as seen in great works from Shakespeare to Picasso, from Toni Morrison to Marina Abromavic, from Amy Herzog to Werner Herzog.

The arts are one of the few aspects of civilization that stand the test of time. But, putting aside the transformational, enduring power of great art and just focusing on the practical side, creativity enhances education and the love of learning. The arts build communities and encourage connection among diverse groups of people in a positive way. Arts organizations and programs generate tourism and drive the economy of neighborhoods, breathing new life and energy into areas in need of revitalization (Brooklyn is a great example!). The arts build self-confidence and encourage thinking outside of the box.

When you think about it, for a relatively modest public and private investment, the arts are the best deal in town.

The debate continues.
Photo Credit: Bruegel’s The Wedding Dance 

 

Quotations From Kevin Orr And…A Sensible Critic

So much is out there re: the Detroit situation that I can simply give you a few excerpts for the flavor.

From a Reuters article published yesterday:

[Emergency Manager Kevin] Orr said he has never visited the DIA, though he has studied the museum’s art collection, which includes an 1887 self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh and a 27-panel fresco by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

“I actually took an art history course years and years ago, and the stuff I read about is there,” Orr said….

…Orr said he would make a decision about what to do with the art after Christie’s completes its review, perhaps by mid-October.

Despite the size of the DIA’s collection, only 5,000 or so works are on display at one time. Orr said about 35,000 works are not subject to bequests or other obligations that would limit the ability to sell them.

“Once we find out what we’re talking about, that’ll probably lead the discussion about what we can and can’t do,” he said. “I’m not being flippant, I’m just being very careful because every time I say something about the DIA it’s another three weeks of, ‘Orr the Luddite is getting ready to sell our family jewels.'”…

…The emergency manager said many works “may not have been seen for decades,” and that the city must determine what is worth selling.

“If you have to sell 10,000 pieces to get ten dollars, why would you do that?” Orr asked.

Oh, brother.

Meantime, James Russell, over at Bloomberg, is more sensible:

…What would it take to put Detroit on a sustainable footing? That’s the question that’s got to drive decisions, and it is appalling that it does not….

…Once disinvestment starts in an American city, it’s pretty hard to stop. When businesses leave because somewhere else is newer and accessible by a shiny new freeway, you lose the talent and investment that keeps cities healthy. You lose good leaders and have to settle for hacks. Of course Detroit is badly governed, as many other poor communities are. Who would want such a thankless job?…

…The primary counterbalance to the forces of disinvestment has been the historic-preservation movement, which has drawn millions of people and catalyzed the investment of billions of dollars in cities….

…So responding to the Detroit debacle by regarding art assets as monetizable for the purpose of paying off creditors is not only wrong, it is strikingly venal and cruel. Detroit’s assets need to be understood in terms of what they can do to revive the city, not on what cash they will produce at auction.

Amen to that one.