Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Colby College Jumps Into The Big Time

O'KeeffeBirchandPineTreesPinkThis is a big weekend for American Art, and as one of its stalwart fans, it is my regret (but that’s another story) that I am not on site for it: “It” is the opening today (to the public, following a few invitation-only festivities) of the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion at the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine. Peter and Paula Lunder announced in 2007 that they were giving a collection, valued then at $100 million, to Colby, and now we get to see what is in it in the first exhibition, The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College. The collection includes more than 500 works of art, most of which we’ve not seen for some time and never together. Nearly 300 are on view in this initial installation; it should be a revelation.

Earlier this year, I spent some time with Sharon Corwin, the museum’s director, and I asked her to pick out a few of the best works in the Lunder’s gift. She at first said there were too many, but finally picked five for me. Among them were Georgia O’Keeffe’s Birch and Pine Trees — Pink, painted at Lake George in 1925 (at left); Whistler’s Chelsea in Ice from 1864, an oil rendering of the Thames River (below right); Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s The Song, of two women in a garden (1891); John LaFarge’s Votive Wreath, from 1870, which she said “was almost modernist” (below left); and two from Homer — Girl in a Hammock and The Noon Recess, both from 1873.

WhistlerChelsea in IceThe Maine Sunday Telegram seemed to have asked the same question in mind, and printed more, and slightly different, answers — “key moments” in the show. If Corwin made these suggestions, I can see why — she probably wanted to include a few more modern works. She did mention sculptures by Judd, Chamberlain and Nevelson to me, to be fair, but only after the five (six, really — two from Homer) mentioned above.

The building, designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners Architects, has 26,000 sq. ft. of space, including 10,000 sq. ft. for galleries. That’s big — to give one comparison, the entire new Parrish Museum, opened last year, has 12,200 sq. ft. of gallery space. And  he addition makes the Colby museum the largest museum in Maine (35,000 sq. ft., all told, including existing facilities, to the Portland Museum of Art’s 22,000).

LaFargeWreathSmartly, Colby is taking advantage of this occasion to present six additional exhibitions:

  • Spaces & Places: Chinese Art from the Lunder-Colville Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • A Thing Alive: Modern Views from the Marin Collection: works by John Marin juxtaposed with early 20th-century photographers like Berenice Abbott and Eugène Atget
  • Nowhere but Here: Art from the Alex Katz Foundation (American art by the likes of Hartley, Dove, Murray, etc. donated by Katz
  • Alex Katz: A Matter of Light: his works in the Colby collection
  • a show of American weathervanes “from a distinguished Maine collection”
  • Process and Place: a design show explaining the evolution of the Lunder Pavilion, a minimalist creation of Fisher and Partners.

Colby already had an excellent college museum collection — now it has jumped into the ranks of major American art museums. And admission is free.

The Maine paper had some excellent quotes in its article about the opening:

From Peter Lunder, a 1956 graduate of Colby: “We knew that if we left our collection to Colby, it would be shown. If we gave it to a big-city museum in Boston or New York or someplace else, it would end up in storage. So we decided to give it to Colby.”

From Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.: “I think the Lunder Collection does for Maine and for the Northeast what Crystal Bridges did for Arkansas and the South.”

From Wes LaFountain, former director of the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art: “It’s a collection that any museum in America, if not beyond, would love to have.”

And from Corwin: “This is a gift to the college, to the community and to the state. I hope residents of the state of Maine feel real ownership. This collection is now part of the identity of our state, which already has a real legacy in the visual arts. This collection adds to that legacy, and enhances it in significant ways.”

I haven’t witnessed Colby in person, I am pretty sure it is a new gem.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Colby College Museum of Art via the Portland Press-Herald

 

 

 

 

A Scathing Resignation, And More Turmoil, At The Hirshhorn

Sometimes, the news just induces a cringe, and that is what happened to me today when I caught up with an article in yesterday’s Washington Post headlined Hirshhorn Museum’s board of trustees chairman resigns. Can it get any worse for the Hirshhorn?

constance-caplanThe last chair, J. Tomilson Hill, resigned last fall, and Constance Caplan, the new resignee (at left), is the Hirshhorn’s seventh board member to depart in this round of turmoil. The museum’s director, Richard Koshalek, “resigned” when the board did not back his concept for building a seasonal blue bubble atop the museum as a cultural think tank (his contract was not renewed, a board member told me). He left in May, and the Smithsonian — parent of the Hirshhorn — then named Kerry Brougher as Acting Director, while they look around for a new director.

Caplan’s resignation may actually be a good thing, because she was in favor of the bubble, which much of the rest of the board opposed (sensibly, imho). However, she didn’t go quietly. In her memo of resignation, according to the Post — which you can see here — she leveled this accusation:

…What disturbs me is the contentious manner and lack of inclusiveness with which a number of trustees and staff associated with the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian have behaved over the past year — factors that also led to the resignations of the prior Board Chair, the Director, and several key Trustees — and persistent indications that this behavior will only continue….

What I would expect at the Hirshhorn, however, is that as with all of the other leading nonprofit boards on which I have served, an open and candid decision — making process would prevail between our Trustees, as well as between the Board and the Smithsonian as the Museum’s parent organization.  Yet as we have all seen in recent months, this has certainly not been the case, as witnessed by the shocking breaches in confidentiality, inappropriate interruptions during Board meetings, and other negative behavior.  In terms of decision-making as well, I was also disappointed that the full Hirshhorn Board was not given the opportunity by the Smithsonian to carefully review and be apprised of the appointment of the Interim Director in advance — a routine courtesy at other leading institutions, and our board’s right as stewards of the Museum and finally the utter disregard of my involvement in setting agendas, meeting dates and Trustee activities of the Board. [That’s all verbatim from the Post; mistakes hers/theirs.]

If this is all true, the Hirshhorn is in an even worse position than I thought. But then Caplan continues:

…of even greater concern to me is the fundamental direction that I now see the Hirshhorn taking, with both overt and tacit approval by the Smithsonian:  a regression to programming that imitates a predictable pattern at many other modern and contemporary museums. …I see the Hirshhorn abruptly regressing from the vision of serving as “the nation’s museum of contemporary art” — a vision especially appropriate to its splendid, unique setting – retreating at a time when precisely because of the challenges at hand, this larger role is more important than ever.

Caplan did not refer to the bubble here, and if that’s what she’s hinting at, I beg to disagree.

HirshhornBubbleIt’s true, however, that the Hirshhorn does not really have a niche. It’s contemporary and it has some good things in its collection, but let’s face it, not very many great works of art. It has needed a better identity, a reason for visiting, for a long time. It has needed better programming. Clearly, it needs visionary management, but also realistic management.

Once again, Smithsonian management is not handling this well. Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin’s comments in the Washington Post — read them at this link — do not inspire. A search committee for the director’s job has yet to be named — though that is supposed to happen next week.

But there’s no time to lose here. A leaderless museum with a divided board is a disaster.

Photo Credits” Courtesy of the Washington Post (top) 

 

Cleveland’s Unprecedented Misfortune

The euphoria at the Cleveland Museum of Art regarding its new purchase of Henry Bone’s enamel-on-copper copy of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne for less than half a million was, alas, overshadowed today by the cancellation of its upcoming exhibition, Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome, which is currently at the Getty. It is, and was to be, a blockbuster. Take a look at the check list — some 145 antiquities, including the phiale pictured here.

Getty-SicilianPhialeNow Cleveland has a huge hole in its schedule, beginning Sept. 29 — not very far from now.

Cleveland museum Director David Franklin spoke in diplomatic understatement when he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, “It’s very disappointing. These things don’t happen very often in the art world. This is unprecedented for me and I think unprecedented for all of us.”

Sicily had been complaining that the loan of so many ancient treasures was hurting its tourism. And in June, Mariarita Sgarlata, Sicily’s highest cultural official, had told The New York Times that the island’s government had never signed a contract for the show, which was approved instead by the Italian government. But Sicily enjoys some autonomy.

Franklin is trying to make the best of the situation. He also said in the Plain-Dealer: “In the end, we have to respect the decision Sicily made. And frankly we hope we can work with Sicily again. We don’t end with any acrimony here.”

Now what? Franklin is right to keep the temperature down. He has said he’d find something to plug the hole in the special exhibitions galleries, probably something contemporary.

I have higher hopes. Now is the time for another museum, or museums, or a collector, or Italy itself to come forward with an offer. Italy has been touting its Year of Italian Culture here, lending items such as The Boxer, a Third Century B.C. statue now on view at the Metropolitan Museum — let it step into the breech here, if not an entire exhibition, a stupendous loan from its many treasures.

Given the climate in antiquities, it would unlikely for an antiquities collector to lend his or her treasures, but — as ARTnews just revealed — there are 200 very active collectors out there, surely one or a group of them could step forward with the offer of loans.

Finally, yes, I know museums plan exhibitions years in advance. But is there no show out there that, with a little arm-twisting, might go to one more venue? Think!

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Getty

 

MoMA And The Rain Room: Fashion, Strategy — UPDATED

Well, gee, it was interesting, and kind of fun, to visit MoMA last evening. I was invited to experience the Rain Room, part of a MoMA-PS 1 exhibition called Expo 1: New York, which is about the environment.

RainRoomThe installation — for surely, I cannot call it a piece of art — consists of a rectangular field in which water pours, like rain, from the ceiling, except when the cameras and sensors discover a person and discerns his or her movement. Then the water stops within a small radius, allowing visitors to experience rain without getting wet. Or, as MoMA puts it,  “Rain Room offers visitors the experience of controlling the rain.”

I walked through it last night, and indeed — except for a few drops here and there — I remained dry. Don’t walk too fast, though, or the cameras and digital controls can’t adjust quickly enough. And don’t wear black or a reflecting material, which also confuse things. Also, no more than 10 people can be in the room at the same time — it’s too much for the controls to deal with in the limited space. Did I forget to say that it’s dark, except for a bright light shining across the water?

Rain Room isn’t by an artist; it’s by Random International, described this way on its website:

Random create artworks and installations that explore behaviour and interaction, often using light and movement. Founded in 2005 by Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch, the studio utilises raw fragments of artificial intelligence to encourage relationships between the converging worlds of animate and inanimate. The studio is based in a converted warehouse in Chelsea, London and today includes a growing team of  diverse talent.

Rain Room had its debut at the Barbican in London. In New York, Rain Room has been erected in an empty parking lot next door to MoMA, west of the museum’s entrance on 54th St. People have been lining up, sometimes for hours, to experience it, I’ve been told. At a certain point, they are turned away because they’re not going to make it that day.

What is going on here, really? Rain Room is yet another attempt to draw new audiences who really don’t care much for art. In this case, thank goodness, MoMA is not taking up any gallery space for this “immersive environment.” But of course since visitors are not in proximity to MoMA’s art, the museum can’t argue that these new visitors may wander into a gallery with art and decide they like it. That argument for such installations falls apart.

UPDATE: I did forget to say one thing here: To visit Rain Room, you must buy a ticket to MoMA — so it does increase revenues and, having bought a ticket, people may visit the galleries.

Rain Room has another fashionable rationale: it’s participatory, it’s an experience, and young people like that. They don’t like passive moments. The danger in that view is obvious: they won’t go unless there’s an experience. So who’ll be in the galleries looking at real art? And what are museums training people to visit museums for?

 

Cleveland’s Copper Coup

There is something about enamel on copper that has always appealed to me. The clarity and the intensity of the color stand out. So I was thrilled just now to catch up on my museum reading and learn that the Cleveland Museum of Art has a acquired a copy of a Titian on enamel.

BoneCopperYou heard that right; it’s a copy, and at first I thought, what? Why would Cleveland, home to a collection of gems — limited but all high quality — want a copy? Then I saw it — even a picture of it is outstanding (at right). Imagine what it looks like in person.

Christie’s London offered the work, a 16-by-18 inch painting made in 1811 by Henry Bone of England, who copied Titian’s 16th-century masterpiece Bacchus and Ariadne on copper, in its Fourth of July Exceptional sale. Cleveland curator Jon Seydl bid for it by phone from a London hotel. Calling is a highlight of the sale, here’s what Christie’s said in its post-sale release:

An enamel plaque by Henry Bone, R.A. (1755 – 1834) depicting Bacchus and Ariadne, the artist’s largest and greatest work, realised £313,875/$478,346/€367,548 (estimate: £80,000 – 120,000) setting a world auction record price for a work by the artist at auction. Henry Bone’s success as an enamellist was cemented when he was officially appointed Enamel Painter to the Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent, and to George III. Bacchus and Ariadne was purchased by George Bowles, an enthusiastic collector of Bone’s work, from the artist for 2,200 guineas in 1811.

Unfortunately, I cannot convert 1811 guineas to dollars today…but clearly Seydl wasn’t the only person with an eye for Bone.

BoneCopper-framedThe Cleveland Plain Dealer caught up with the news yesterday, writing:

“I was so excited!” Seydl said today in Cleveland. “This is so unique. Thousands of people went to see this work in his [Bone’s] studio. It was a huge sensation in his day.” …

…The dimensions of the enamel don’t include the work’s elaborate gilt-wood and gesso frame, which features neoclassical motifs including palmettes, oak-leaf clusters, leopard heads and acanthus leaves. [at left]

“It has a lot of presence as a thing,” Seydl said. “It’s perfect. It’s as showy and grand as the enamel itself.” …

…“It’s not just a copy, but an enormous technical achievement on its own,” Seydl said of the Bone. “You want works by this incredible enamellist, who is literally doing something that had not been done before.”

Enamels are produced by fusing glass to metal under high heat. For each color in Bone’s version of the Titian, the artist had to reheat the copper plate numerous times, a process that risked destroying previous applications of enamel if the plate were overheated.

“To do something this complicated and to keep it from cracking, splitting or breaking is in itself an accomplishment,” Seydl said.

The work and the frame are both fragile, and there’s one more hurdle: the museum has to procure an export license from British authorities. Let’s hope that, unlike a few recent examples, this one is allowed quickly and easily.

BTW, the Cleveland Museum announced other recent acquisitions several weeks ago, including a Max Beckmann.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Plain Dealer