Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral “Saved for the Nation” — But How?

The British have again struck preemptively to keep an important art works from being sold abroad, but this time it makes perfect sense. One can agree that John Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows — which depicts the cathedral under both a heavy cloud and a rainbow from across the River Avon and is thought to be a metaphor for the status then of the Church of England — is is inherently part of British heritage. Aside from the subject matter, the painter is British and he made it for showing at the Royal Academy. That makes more sense to me than declaring that, say, a Flemish manuscript, Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, by Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), purchased at auction by the Getty cannot leave the country because it’s been in the country for decades.(The Tate director, Nicholas Serota, told the British press that a major American museum asked for the right of first refusal if the painting did go up for sale.)

But never mind, I have other thoughts on this occasion.

Constable_SalisburyCathedralfromtheMeadows

The Tate sent word of this deal today: Major grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund (£15.8 million), the Art Fund (£1million), plus a “substantial,” but undisclosed donation from The Manton Foundation and money from Tate Members paid £23.1 million. That’s far less that the open-market value of an estimated £40 million, but equivalent to the heirs of the owner, the late Lord Ashton of Hyde, because of the tax relief accorded.

So far, so good.

But here is where it gets tricky. The painting, which has been at the National Gallery on long-term loan since 1983, isn’t staying there. It’s being purchased as part of a new partnership, called “Aspire,” of five national and regional galleries: the National Museum Wales; the National Galleries of Scotland; Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum; and Tate Britain. The Tate will apparently own the work, but it will go “on almost constant view in partner venues across the UK. From today it will go on view in the Constable room at Tate Britain until the end of the year before being shown at the five national and regional galleries participating in the programme.”

Further, according to the press release:

The Aspire programme is a partnership between five UK institutions, all of which will organise special public programmes highlighting the painting. It will be seen in exhibitions and displays which include the partner venues’ existing collections and reflect the individual context of each site. After the initial five year period all the partners will continue to have special access to the painting for their exhibitions, while ensuring that this extraordinary work is lent to other institutions so that it can be enjoyed by a wide public.

Bold-face mine. This prompts questions. Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows was painted in 1831 and stretches six feet in length. It’s not the easiest painting to move around “constantly.” And even if it were, Aspire is a new partnership — likely to continue acquisitions in this vein. How will they fare in constant motion?

In theory, the partnership is a good thing — joint ownership, as prices for art continue to soar, will keep more works in the public domain. I’ve always been in favor of spreading great art beyond the big cities. But let’s make sure it works out in practice for the art as well as the public.

 

The Absolute Mess In Warhol Matters

In the upcoming June 20 issue of The New York Review of Books, Richard Dorment pretty well demolishes the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Warhol Art Authentication Board. It’s a long, detailed article — posted already online — and I recommend it. Here are a few key passages, which deal with the lack of independence — which was claimed — between the two bodies, and far worse, how the authentication board seemed to change its mind on certain works when it behooved the foundation.

warholSome of Dorment’s reporting comes from public court documents that have heretofore been overlooked.

…In one electrifying moment during his deposition, on July 7, 2010, [Vincent] Fremont [Warhol’s former assistant] admitted that on at least one occasion he sold as authentic Warhols paintings that the estate of Andy Warhol had confiscated from the owner on the grounds that they were not the work of Andy Warhol. He also admitted that the authentication board on which he sits decided that the same body of work had been created under what one member called false pretenses. What made the sales legitimate, he said, was that the authentication board later declared the paintings to be genuine after all.

And:

…when [Rupert Jasen] Smith [one of Warhol’s offsite printers] himself died in 1989 they [44 paintings] were in the printer’s estate. In a letter dated September 25, 1991, the Warhol estate asked Smith’s executor Fred Dorfman and heir Mark Smith to hand over the forty-four paintings…The reason the estate gave for its request was that these paintings were not the work of Andy Warhol. The September 25 letter, which the foundation’s chief financial officer K.C. Maurer has said appears to be signed by Vincent Fremont, explained that “because of the similarity of the Paintings to authentic works by Andy Warhol, their releases might threaten the integrity of the art market and Andy Warhol’s reputation.” Dorfman brought the pictures, as requested, to the Warhol Estate personally. He did not receive compensation….

…After declaring in 1991 that the confiscated paintings were not the work of Andy Warhol, more than ten years passed, during which time Andy Warhol’s work became increasingly valuable. In his July 7, 2010, deposition in the suit brought by Simon-Whelan, Fremont explained what happened next. The more he looked at the works confiscated from Rupert Jasen Smith’s studio, he said, the more he came to feel that they resembled “other” (presumably real or at least authenticated) works already owned by the foundation. In his own words during his deposition: “There was less and less there that was problematic—with the exception of the signature…and some sizes of some of the work, but they became, to me, worthy of review.” By “review” he meant reexamination by the authentication board.

In due course Fremont proposed that the pictures be resubmitted for authentication….

…[eventually] some of the paintings produced by Rupert Jasen Smith without Warhol’s knowledge were, after all, deemed to be authentic works made by Andy Warhol. In Fremont’s words, the paintings turned over by Dorfman, including those with bad signatures, “went through the normal process. Some were authenticated, some weren’t.”

The Foundation, it appears, sold some of those works — though Dorment says he knows not which or to whom.

Dorment’s tale is a tangled one, but for anyone who owns a Warhol or wants to someday own a Warhol, it is must reading. He concludes “…the coming year may prove to be the most difficult yet for the Warhol Foundation.” Andy himself might be frightened.

 

British Art Tours In China: Cushion Or Couch?

Many museums, especially in recent years, have sent their collections on tour, but rarely has one been so open about it as the Bury Art Museum near Manchester, England. There, the museum’s manager, Tony Trehy, has gathered together works from several provincial museums and sent them on a multi-city tour of China in an exhibit titled Toward Modernity: Three Centuries of British Art.

beijingworldartmuseum-turnertakescentrestageNow, before you move on, remember that Manchester was once a rich, rich town of manufacturing and manufacturing moguls. Hometown Bury boy Thomas Wrigley, a paper tycoon, “amassed a collection of 200 artworks during the Industrial Revolution,” according to the BBC, and opened the Bury Art Museum in 1901 to house it. Among the treasures are J.M.W. Turner’s Calais Sands [at right at the Beijing World Art Museum] and George Clausen’s 1888 work Spring Morning [below, left]. But faced with potential cuts in government support, Trehy approached similar museums in England — in Chester, Bolton, Salford and other once-rich towns — and asked them to lend their best pieces for the tour. Chinese galleries, including those in Beijing and Shanghai as well as smaller cities, have been eager to get the show. Trehy told the BBC:

Put it this way. It’s sufficiently lucrative that people have stopped talking about cutting us.

Now, Trehy “is now hoping to take to other countries, and which could provide the template for further themed exhibitions.”

The BBC notes that this beats what the Bury Council did in 2006, which was deaccessioning a painting by L.S. Lowry “to plug a budget deficit,” causing an uproar.

aspringmorning_512Indeed it does. Trehy and others want to send the show to other countries, too. And while it seems that many, many museums are renting their collections this way, what I don’t think is good is this comment from Trehy: “Assuming we can do it on a regular basis, it becomes a significant new source of funding for museums.”

It seems to me that these tours should provide a cushion, in extraordinary times, not something that is, so to speak, baked in the cake. Once that happens, the next funding drought or economic downturn will require another remedy — and what might that be? We are back to deaccessioning or closure.

Treasures from Wales are also on view in China, but the arrangement for that, between the National Museum Wales and the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing, is a traditional partnership (I think).

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the BBC (top)

 

 

Miami Gets Anonymous Donation, And Puts It Where It Should

Here’s a bit of refreshing news: The Miami Art Museum, aka the Pérez Art Museum Miami, received an anonymous gift worth $15 million the other day. Not only did the donor not ask for anything to be named after him or her, or acknowledged publicly — a bit of a slap to Perez considering the controversy over the naming conditions of his gift — but also the museum is allocating it well.

Miami-Art-MuseumMuseum Director Thom Collins told the Miami Herald that “This money will go into the endowment,” because the capital campaign to pay for the cost of the bricks and mortar museum now under construction is mostly completed. Since the donor gave art worth $3 million, the endowment just jumped by $12 million — which is, according to my sources, about what the value of the museum’s endowment was at the end of its last fiscal year. So, the endowment just doubled.

As the article said:

Still and possibly forever unclear: how exactly the gift came about, whether the giver has an established relationship with the museum, what the donated art is and why the benefactor wants to remain anonymous.

The namer, Jorge Perez, a real estate developer, gave about $35 million, with $15 million of that in art and $20 million in cash. Overall, the museum has raised about 85% of its $220 million goal, including $100 million raised in a bond issue approved in 2004. In the controversy over the naming, I sided with the dissenters, some of whom have quit the board. Meantime, the art portion of Perez’s gift has been revalued to $20 million (c’mon) even as its quality disappointed some people.
Meanwhile, the museum is said to be on schedule for opening in December.

A Much More Serious Situation In Cincinnati Than I Imagined

When grumblings about a museum director start to make headlines, a change is usually in the offing. Given the article published in the May issue of Cincinnati Magazine, which an RCA reader pointed out to me this morning, I’d say Aaron Betsky, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, is on his way out. But it’s getting a little ugly.

BetskyWatching from afar, I’ve both praised and panned moves by Betsky in the last few years (here,  here, and here, for example), but if the article is accurate — and it is certainly written with authority by RJ Smith — I may have been too generous to him. His management of the museum in things both large and small is open to interpretation, of course, but once the stage described in the article is reached it’s usually hard to turn the situation around. No wonder he’s up for the architecture job I mentioned here.

I won’t attempt to recap the entire magazine article, but here are a few key passages:

…a small but fired-up cluster of folks with money and the luxury of time are watching every move Betsky makes, probing for mistakes, working to depose a director they can’t abide. They blame him for a string of high-profile departures from the museum staff, including a beloved and successful curator. Last summer, that curator’s exit precipitated…an unheard of attempt to contest the handpicked slate of candidates for the board of trustees…

…employees within the museum, former employees, donors, ex-trustees, shareholders…complain that Betsky has a temper. That he surrounds himself with sycophants. That he does not have a PhD in art history. That his writing is superficial and would never stand up to an academic peer review. Some note with alarm that he is too interested in art produced within his lifetime…

…They hate the Pinocchio statue that stands at the front door of the museum. They hate the black fringe curtains that now hang in the Schmidlapp Gallery…They hate that he used to park his car in his assigned slot even when he was out of town, just to make it look like he was hard at work. Once he realized the staff had noticed, they say, he retaliated by doing away with assigned parking. (Betsky claims he got rid of assigned parking because it was too much of a meritocratic hassle.)…

…The dissent burst into the open last April, when the museum announced that Benedict Leca, curator of European painting, sculpture, and drawings, was leaving to become curatorial consultant for the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario. …He brought dazzling, ambitious, and successful exhibitions of Gainsborough, Rembrandt, and Monet that boosted attendance figures. On the eve of his departure, a group of protesters occupied his Monet exhibit, unfurling a banner that declared their disbelief….Leca was [also] good at raising money for the museum…

…Chief Curator James Crump announced his exit shortly after mounting the career-spanning exhibit of photographer James Welling in February. Chief Conservator Per KnutÃ¥s and others have also left. [More on that here.]

Oh, by the way, Betsky can’t seem to raise money, the article says.

Betsky does not do well by himself. Instead of attempting to see if and where he’s at fault, either in style or substance, and discussing the charges of his critics (this is very hard to do, but still, that’s part of the job), he deems them “frightened of change and ignorant of how an art museum works.” Then he adds “… There are some people who believe any change, big or small, must not happen.”

Then it gets worse: threatening, anonymous e-mails and letters suddenly start to arrive in the reporter’s inbox, apparently from Betsky’s supporters. Some backers also hint that his detractors are anti-Semitic and homophobic, as Betsky is both Jewish and gay. The only incident given in support is a donor who says he lost confidence in Betsky when he said he wanted to bring back the Robert Mapplethorpe photographs that fueled the culture wars of the late ’80s/90s (as if we need that); the guy went home and wrote the museum out of his will. What was Betsky trying to prove by waving a red flag in the face of a donor who experienced that horrible incident right there in Cincinnati?

Dealer Mary Ran rightly dismisses the bigotry charges by pointing out that “…the art world is gay and Jewish” and adds that critics don’t like Betsky for other reasons. Certainly, there are plenty Jewish and/or gay directors in museums around the country that have not had problems. Cincinnati’s trustees surely knew that Betsky was gay and Jewish when they hired him, and it didn’t seem to be a stumbling then. I’m not buying it.

Even Betsky bats bigotry away, mostly: “I would say that I have not encountered any overt discrimination or, uh, problem with either my sexuality or cultural background. Are there undertones? Absolutely.” He wants cover. Earlier he said that the difference between 1990 and now are night and day.

This is a sad situation. The only ray of light I can see in this darkness is that it shows that people care about the museum’s future. If Betsky doesn’t get that academic job, I have to ask the old question: can this marriage, so to speak, be saved?