Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Different Strokes: How To Tell A True Masterpiece Nowadays?

Vermeer-WwJugToday’s Wall Street Journal carried a review of the renovated Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which reopens to the public on Saturday. It’s pretty much a rave, and I recommend it. But I found one passage extremely interesting and worthy of singling out and commenting on.

First, here’s the setup passage:

The museum’s director of collections, Taco Dibbits, and his curatorial staff have completely restructured the installation of the museum’s holdings for the renovated building, arranging 8,000 objects from the museum’s permanent collection (an increase of about 40% in the total number of objects displayed) across 80 galleries, 30 of which are devoted to 17th-century Dutch art—the so-called Golden Age. …

…Prior to the renovations, exhibits were organized according to department, with paintings, sculptures and applied arts completely segregated. But now, as is increasingly common in museums, a more chronological approach prevails, so that varied objects from a given era can be shown in tandem to give a sense of the period—fine art, for instance, may be seen alongside furniture, craft items or even machinery—beginning with the Middle Ages on the lower floors and culminating with the 20th century under the eaves of the tower galleries…

And now the important part:

Traditionalists will feel perfectly at home in the Gallery of Honor, where the greatest masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum’s 17th-century Dutch paintings collection—many of which, including Vermeer’s famed “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” (1663-64) [at left], have recently been cleaned or restored—can be enjoyed in perfect tranquility, blissfully free from the video screens and iPad displays that have become the bane of modern museum-going. Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” (c. 1660) [above right] is not shown beside an earthenware jug, nor is Rembrandt’s “The Jewish Bride” (1667) hung beneath a wedding canopy. But elsewhere in the museum, an eclectic and at times whimsical approach does help to enliven the display by providing a rich context for less familiar works.

VermeerNow that says something to me. It signifies that some works of art — the very best — need no technology, no bells and whistles, to serve as explication. The Journal’s reviewer, Jonathan Lopez, endorses the museum’s bells and whistles, saying:

…For instance, a formidable military portrait of the Dutch naval hero Adm. Michiel de Ruyter hangs alongside plundered treasure—gold coins, mighty cannons, a carved bowsprit— that he wrested from Spanish ships in battle. Exhibits of this type not only help to fulfill the Rijksmuseum’s dual art and history mandate, but based on my own observations of how things worked in the Philips wing, they seem to be particularly effective in engaging the interest of children—a shrewd strategy.

But to me, the lack of helping aids in the Gallery of Honor speaks volumes — which is that the greatest works of art, works by the true masters, speak for themselves. The rest need help. Whether or not the curators intended it, they have tipped their hand on this question.

 

The Billion-Dollar Cubist Gift: Donor-Wise

As director Thomas P. Campbell said in the Metropolitan Museum’s press release announcing Leonard Lauder’s promised gift of his collection of Cubist art, it is “truly transformational for the Metropolitan Museum.”

Leger-TypographerI wish it were transformational for other collectors and would-be donors of art to museum. With this gift, Lauder showed the way — much as he did in 2008. Then, within days of the announcement of Stephen A. Schwarzman’s $100 million gift to the New York Public Library, he gave $137 million to the Whitney.

But contrast the difference: because of the Schwarzman gift, The New York Times said at the time, “The 1911 Beaux Arts structure on Fifth Avenue will be called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building after construction is completed around 2014.”  And Paul LeClerc, then library president, said “We hope to incise the name of the building in stone in a subtle, discreet way on either side of the main entrance.” In reality, the incising has already been done — five times on the building, and not so discreetly. Every piece of paper that emanates from the Library has Schwarzman’s name on it.

The Lauder gift to the Whitney, on the other hand, involved no naming rights — though some galleries there had been named for Lauder in the past. It did come with strings — it “required the museum not to sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street for an extended period.” But it also came with this little item: “The gift includes $6 million to cover expenses until the donation is complete, which is expected to be by June 30, 2009.” (Whether Schwarzman has completed his gift is unclear — there was talk at the time of his spreading out payments on the pledge for several years.)

This time, Lauder has given the Met art it needs to tell the history of Western art — with no strings on display, no demands that it be kept together, or never lent, or any of those foolish conditions that were part of gifts by Robert Lehman, Belle  Linsky, and others. (As one Met person told me recently, people often say the Met has no Melendez in its collection, for example — but it does. It has a great one that’s tucked away in the Jack and Belle Linsky galleries, where few people go.)

Endowing (partly) a research center to go with his Cubist gift is another Lauder trademark (the $22 million for this is funded by grants from many supporters, including Lauder). From the release:

The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will be the first such center dedicated exclusively to modern art within an encyclopedic museum. It will serve as a leading center for scholarship on Cubism and modern art, distinguished by its intellectual rigor and range, and its resources available for study. The Center will bring together renowned scholars, fellows, and curators for focused inquiry within the rich global context of the Metropolitan’s collection….

…Under the auspices of the Center, the Metropolitan will award four two-year fellowships annually for pre- and post-doctoral work and invite senior scholars for residencies at the Museum. Through a program of lectures, study workshops, dossier exhibitions, publications, and a vibrant web presence, the Center will focus art-historical study and public attention on modernism generally and on Cubism in particular, and serve as a training ground for the next generation of scholars. The Center will also include a library and an archive on Cubism donated by Mr. Lauder.

LLauderWhen Lauder gave postcard collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he also endowed a curator’s position, held by Benjamin Weiss, the Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture.

In other words, while Lauder doesn’t shy from taking credit, what he does do that should be more widespread is think through his gift — and he ends up ensuring what’s best for the objects and the public, not just himself.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum (top – Leger’s Typographer)

 

 

 

Why The Met Can Thank Brooklyn For “Madame X”

SpanishFountainLast Friday, the Brooklyn Museum opened John Singer Sargent Watercolors – a landmark show, really, because it brings together a groups watercolors acquired by the Brooklyn Museum in 1909 and by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1912 for the first time. These early twentieth century watercolors together show how innovative Sargent was in this medium, which the museums assert was heretofore considered “tangential” to Sargent’s oeuvre and reputation — but shouldn’t be.

I wrote about the exhibition, Sargent’s mid-life career crisis, and his ensuing experimentation for The New York Times in mid-March.

But last week, while at the Metropolitan Museum* to see Photography and the American Civil War (which, btw, is fascinating and fabulous), I ran into H. Barbara Weinberg, the American art curator there, who told me how those well-publicized purchases — by rival museums — led indirectly to the Met’s purchase of — Madame X. And some watercolors, too, of course.

Here’s the tale: The Met, anxious to get its own cache of Sargent’s watercolors, approached Sargent in December, 1912, “with a plea for eight or ten watercolors,” Weinberg wrote in the Spring 2000 Bulletin of the Met. Then “…He entered into an artful negotiation with the Metropolitan,” promising to sell one watercolor and to reserve “the best” of those he would do in the next year for the museum. The Met did agree to buy one, Spanish Fountain (at left), in January, 1913, but “Sargent’s ambivalence about the sheets that he had on hand and, later, his worries about transatlantic shipping during World War I, delayed the sale,” Weinberg wrote.

Two years later, Sargent picks up the ball again, and writes to the Met saying he was still trying to pick the best, and offering to include “the best oil picture I did in the Tyrol last year” for an additional sum. He enclosed a picture of Tyrolese Interior (at right) as museum-worthy, and sent it and 10 watercolors to the Met in December, 1915 — a year after these contacts began.

TyroleseInteriorAt the end of that month, the Met’s secretary, Henry W. Kent, wrote to Sargent with thanks. This time, it took Sargent less than two weeks to respond — with the proposal that the Met buy Madame X. In January, 1916, he wrote that the picture was on view at the San Francisco Exhibition and that “now that it is in America I rather feel inclined to let it stay there if a Museum should want it. I suppose it is the  best thing that I have done. I would let the Metropolitan have it for £1,000.”

That sum, Weinberg said, was the equivalent of $4,762 at the time — about $100,000 in today’s dollars.

Kent wanted the painting — he’d been trying to buy it from Sargent for years. This time, he got it.

Why did Sargent have a change of heart? Virginie Gautreau had died in 1915 — remember that the painting had scandalized the public when it was first shown — but even so Sargent did not want her name to be attached to the painting. That’s why, when it was intalled at the Met for the first time in May, 1916, it was called Madame X.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met

 

Art Exhibitions And The Movies: Problems And Prospects

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chat with Phil Grabsky, the British filmmaker who has started “Exhibition: Great Art on Screen,” a series of what he calls “event films” that will bring some of the very best art exhibitions to the public via films analogous to the Metropolitan Opera’s simulcasts (and post-produced filmings of live opera, as La Scala, among other opera companies, does it).

manet-exhibitiononscreenGrabsky made Leonardo Live last year, and I mentioned his new effort in passing here at the end of January, while writing about the opening of Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy in London. His film of the same name as the exhibition premiers this coming Thursday, Apr. 11,  on about 1,000 movie screens in 28 countries, including the U.S. (You can see a list of the countries, with links to the cinemas, here, except, oddly for the U.S., for which you should go here.)

My talk with Grabsky was for an article in The Wall Street Journal published last week. In it, I describe what he’s doing, mention his next two efforts in the series (on Munch in Oslo come Juner and Vermeer, again at the National Gallery in London, in October), and discuss why, although he corrected many of the criticisms about Leonardo Live, he still faces problems inherent to art exhibitions that operas do not have (they already have a narrative). Manet, and his upcoming efforts, however, do have a big plus: those high-definition lingerings on the paintings. As I write in the Journal, “…Mr. Grabsky often holds the camera on a painting, full screen, for as long as 30 seconds. That’s much longer than most people spend with a painting at an exhibit.”

Let me explore that, and a few other issues, here that I couldn’t get into in the Journal piece.

As museum professionals know, most people spend only a few seconds with each painting in an exhibition, and even at the Leonardo exhibition at London’s National Gallery last year (see here and here) — where the NG, trying to avoid what “gallery rage,” rationed the number of timed tickets sold to 180 per half-hour, much lower than its normal limit of 230 entrances per half-hour — officials figured that people spent, on average, just 18 seconds with Leonardo’s paintings, according to Grabsky.

Will these shows succeed, and should they? One editor I work with declined to publish an article on “Exhibition: Great Art on Screen” because, he said, he didn’t want to discourage people from going to see the real thing. Is that a worry? I asked Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, about that and about why he likes these films. Here’s what he wrote back:

The films can help people understand the work behind an exhibition which in turn promotes awareness of the special character of these events – some of their limitations as well as the unique opportunity they provide. I’m not in the least worried that viewing the films will become a substitute for going to the exhibition.

Me, neither. I think they’ll encourage people to visit museums — afterall, one reason people have switched from the real opera to the simulcasts is the cost differential. For Grabsky’s art movies, the cost is about the same. Second, there’s no way I am going to get to that Munch show this years — the 150th anniversary of his birth — I simply won’t be in Oslo. I suspect I’ll face that same travel barrier for most of Grabsky’s chosen exhibitions.

GrabskyGrabsky told me that most museums are enthusiastic. While not all of those he contacted have agreed to meet, of those that have, he
said, “None has so far said anything but ‘I think it’s a great idea and I want to be part of it.’ ” There is something it for them, aside from exposure: Grabsky plans to share a small percentage of any profits he makes with the exhibition’s museum, though it is very unlikely that dollar number will be substantial. (It will never, imho, reach the Met’s success, which last year the series generated $11 million in revenue for the Met, according to a recent article in the Journal.)

Here’s another reason people may want to watch: changing technology. Grabsky told me that digital camera technology he’s deploying for the Vermeer film is four times as good as the high-definition technology used for Leonardo and Manet.

In any case, Grabsky seems hellbent, a man on a mission. “In the beginning we have to go with big-name artists,” he said. But, he added, “We want to get to a point where people say ‘Exhibition is doing Bernini. I don’t know who Bernini is, but I love Exhibition, so I’m going.’ ”

That would be something.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Phil Grabsky

 

 

Exhibitions I Wish I Had Seen — Or Could Still See

Let’s talk positively (the news can be so negative). Among the riches at American museums at the moment, here are three innovative or unique ones I’d really like to see:

1955.1079SaucerVersoBackstories: The Other Side of Art at the Clark Art Institute – Most museums visitors, I’d wager, don’t think much about what’s on the back of the art thery’re staring at. Too bad, as this exhibition demonstrates. The backs often show how or when something was made, whose collections they’ve belong to, or which galleries/auction houses have handled them, how they have been cared for and the changes they may have undergone. The Clark went into its permanent collection and found paintings, works on paper, sculpture, silver, and porcelain with interesting backsides, and is displaying them mostly on pedestals. They span five centuries and include works by Durer, van Gogh, Sevres porcelain made for Catherine the Great (verso, shown at right), Nolde, and Memling. When the exhibition was announced last December, Michael Conforti, the Clark’s director explained its origin:

The acquisition of a two-sided painting by Giovanni Battista Cremonini spurred our interest in the backs of other objects in our collection. As the curatorial team began to think about the objects in a different way, Backstories was born.

Kudos. If you, like me, can’t get to Williamstown before the show closes on Apr. 21, you’ll get a flavor of the show at the link above — it has several pages and examples and, very handily, a checklist.

vatican2Objects of Belief from the Vatican: Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco — At the Vatican Museums, many of us are too busy marveling at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms to get to the Ethnocological Museum there. This exhibition shows what a mistake that is. For the first time, the Vatican has sent 39 of its treasures, drawn from a collection that numbers more than 80,000 objects from indigenous cultures in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, to the United States. Many are unique. According to the press release:

Highlights include two masks and three shrine carvings obtained in 1691 by Fray Francisco Romero in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; three figurative sculptures representing the gods Tu [one, at left] and Tupo sent by the first missionary in Mangareva to Pope Gregory XVI in 1837; and a 15th-century stone sculpture created in Mexico of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.

There are paintings on bark and stone from Australia, and on silk from China and Japan; wooden statues from Polynesia and stone ones from pre-Columbian civilizations; feather-works from Papa New Guinea and majolica from the Middle East. It remains on view until Sept. 8, while the Vatican museum is under renovation (reopening next year).

PiranesiOf course you know Piranesi well, why go to the San Diego Museum of Art, where Piranesi, Rome and the Arts of Design opened on Saturday? Because this Piranesi show is different. It begins with 300 original prints from the renowned collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, and it goes on to offer modern-day interpretations using “new technologies such as video, photography, and digital modeling.” That means that a vase or teapot or fireplace, say, drawn by Piranesi, is present in the flesh, so to speak — in three dimensions. According to the museum:

These never-before-seen and never-before-crafted objects take center stage in the exhibition and attest to the creative intellect of Piranesi’s designs. In addition, the exhibition brings to life Piranesi’s most famous works, the Carceri (Prisons), in the form of a virtual reality 3-D installation.

Somewhere a 3-D printer must be involved. Already shown in Madrid and Barcelona, the exhibition has gotten rave reviews in Europe. It’s in San Diego until July 7.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Clark, the deYoung and the San Diego museums, top to bottom.