Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Everything’s Up to Date In Vatican City

The Vatican’s first foray into the Venice Biennale this year isn’t its only recent venture in the “contemporary” art world, if you define contemporary as state-of-the art: if you go to the Vatican Museums’s Gregorian Etruscan Museum, you can now enter a digital recreation, sort of, of the Regolini-Galassi Etruscan tomb, a site northwest of Rome that was discovered in 1836 and dates to between 600 and 650 BC. Artifacts from the tomb, which included silver pieces, gold jewelry and bronze cauldrons, eventually were sold to the Vatican, and are now part of its museum collections.

Regolini-GalassiTombSilverwareA recent article in ARTNews explained that the project, Etruscanning3D, uses new visualization techniques to “re-create, on a scientific basis, the original context of the Regolini-Galassi tomb as it likely looked more than 2,600 years ago. Motion sensors allow visitors to wander through the site while standing in front of a three-meter-wide, high-resolution screen, and a menu lets them choose nearby artifacts to examine more closely, from Egyptian-style sarcophagi to a black ceramic inkpot to a large golden fibula, or brooch, decorated with lions.”

At the Vatican, the installation has two parts: a non-interactive film in Room II, where the objects from the tomb are on display. The film is a “virtual reconstruction of the tomb with the digitally restored objects integrated in the tomb.  In this way, the objects are shown in their original context in their original state…” according to the project’s blog.

Then visitors proceed to Room XVI. There,

In the interactive application, the visitor navigates through the tomb and selects objects and their related stories through simple, natural gestures (such as right arm forward for moving forward) detected by a Kinect camera. When starting, the visitor can select a language (Italian, English, Dutch) and can practice the navigation and object selection when approaching the virtual tomb.  Once inside, the visitor can explore the entrance, antechamber, cella, left and right niche of the tomb with all its objects in place, select specific objects and listen to the stories connected to the objects.  This video shows how it works in English or Italian.

If you are on the West Coast this month, you can get a taste of that. Etruscanning3D has become part of a project called Italia del Futuro, an “exhibition on some of the most significant Italian scientific and technological excellence,” in the cultural heritage and archaeology division. This exhibition is touring the world this year and soon lands in San Francisco (July 12 – August 23) and Los Angeles (September 5 – October 4) as part of Italy’s Year of Culture.

If not, you can watch a video about it here — though, admittedly, it’s not the  best advertisement for this technology, which we will no doubt be seeing more of in the future.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Vatican Museums

 

 

Last Chance This Weekend: Sopheap Pich

SP_02_OIn case people are checking the web this weekend, I thought I’d mention an exhibit I caught today at the Metropolitan Museum — because it closes on Sunday, and this is your last chance. It’s a small show of sculpture by Sopheap Pich, a Cambodian who was born in 1971 and lives and works in Phnom Penh. This is an artist who makes elegant, appealing works packed with meaning.

Consider his beautiful Morning Glory (at left), for example, a large piece made of rattan, bamboo, wire, plywood, steel bolts. But the beauty is doubly poignant and doubly powerful when you realize that Pich has chosen his subject because during Pol Pot’s reign, morning glories were the main source of nourishment for the population other than rice. Says Pich in his statement:

Because it is the easiest plant to grow, it became the vegetable of almost every meal. Cambodians ate so much morning glory it is surprising that we still eat it today. I think it must be one of the lowest in the culinary food chain; the flower of the morning glory has almost no nutritional value at all. It also dies very quickly after being picked. It has a beautiful shape though—having the shape of the iconic RCA phonograph. My idea was simple: to make a gigantic portrait of the morning glory plant with flowers as the best way possible to commemorate its importance to me.

DP280375Smartly, the Guggenheim Museum acquired Morning Glory this year.

The Met owns a less spectacular but still lovely and quite haunting piece called Buddha 2 (at right).

The exhibition rambled a little, strung out in several galleries amid other art works — which was a double-edged tactic. It added context, but was less cohesive than a typical installation and, I believe, may have caused some people to miss parts of the show.

But that’s a quibble. In this particular case, the Met’s contemporary staff is right on target, not late at all.

You can see more text and images on the Met’s site, and in Art in America‘s May issue (the online version has a slide show), which shows a spectacular piece called Compound that is, alas, not in the Met exhibition.

I suspect, and hope, that we’ll be seeing more of this artist.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

Happy Fourth of July! You’re Invited

Do you recognize the painting at right?

PreyFourthIf so, congratulations — you are among the chosen invited to a gathering tomorrow by one of the American embassies around the world to celebrate Independence Day. Many invited their international counterparts and colleagues to share in “themed festivities” and they all use the same image for their invitations. This’ year’s choice is the painting at right. It’s titled The Collection and was painted by Barbara Ernst Prey, an artist who lives in New York City. She also operates galleries in Williamstown, MA and Port Clyde, Maine, according to a press release highlighting the State Dept.’s choice this year.

Prey also designed the White House’s 2003  Christmas card, and participates in the  ART in Embassies program, which places art works in embassies around the world. Hers have been shown in “Paris, Madrid, Oslo, Prague” and she has also lectured about American art around the world. She currently sits on the National Council on the Arts, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Prey specializes in “classic American landscapes,” and (to me) exhibits the spirit of Norman Rockwell in her works. The announcement I received said that “two of Ms. Prey’s paintings, Hydrangeas and Walker’s Point, are currently on exhibit at the newly designed George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas, Texas. Private collectors of Ms. Prey’s work include Orlando Bloom and Tom Hanks.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Barbara Prey 

 

A Return To Crowdfunding: It Worked

yogaIt was just over a month ago that I wrote here about the Freer-Sackler’s attempt to crowdfund its coming exhibition, Yoga: The Art of Transformation. With a campaign called “Together We’re One,” the museum set out to raise $125,000 between May 28 and July 1, with the money going to support the exhibition, exhibition-related web content, printing of the exhibition catalogues, and public programs (including a family festival).

What happened? A lot of money flowed in – as of this moment, according to the website, donors have contributed $129,050. So the Freer-Sackler* has extended the campaign for a week, until next Monday, “ to enfold as many studios, yogis, art lovers, ashrams, community organizations, and philanthropic individuals as possible into the fabric of yoga history.” It did not set a new goal.

The museum is playing its hand for this exhibition very well. Aside from crowdsourcing, it has enlisted Alec Baldwin and his relatively new wife, Hilaria Thomas, a yoga instructor, as chairs for the exhibition’s gala, “Some Enlightened Evening,” to be held next Oct. 17, two nights before the exhibition opens to the public. As controversial as Baldwin often is — most recently slurring a gay reporter via Twitter — he still draws people, and I believe will add to the Freer-Sackler’s coffers. With luck, he’ll even give it money, instead of just lending his name.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Freer-Sackler

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Freer-Sackler.

 

Forecast For Culture Next Year: Optimism

The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, which I wrote about favorably here in February, is out with its first survey of the health of the “arts industry,” and I must say I am a tad disappointed. For two reasons.

But first, here are the results: After surveying arts leaders in all disciplines, the study found that they in general have a positive outlook for the future of their organizations in areas like attendance, earned revenue, donor support, program quality and so on. For example, although only 30.2 percent of the participants said that “overall conditions for the cultural sector” in their local market were better (including slightly better) today than they were a year ago, 48.3% expect them to be better in the coming year. While 44% percent said attendance was better or slightly this year, versus last, 55.7 % expect it to improve in the coming year. That pattern continues, as you will see if you look at the results.

You can probably guess the first disappointment — this sounds a lot like wishful thinking to me. This questions are about sentiment, and there’s no evidence to back them up. Too, we don’t know if these leaders have a good forecasting sensibility and track record, because this is the first survey. Call me a skeptic on these results.

Secondly, the participants themselves are disappointing, from my point of view. The biggest number came from theater groups (23%), while only 7% came from “visual arts organizations.” That doesn’t sound representative to me. Moreover, 47% of participants came from groups with a budget of less than $250,000. While there are more small groups around the country than large ones, I wish the survey included more large ones. $3 million or more is the largest budget category — that’s just not big enough.

I still hope that this Center lives up to my expectations. This is just a start, and it does say it will continue to probe. But I wonder if coming out with something so flimsy to start was the right move, reputationally.