Real Clear Arts – Page 152

Revealed: Crystal Bridges Has Been Buying More Than You Know

Guess who was a (pretty) big buyer in last fall’s contemporary art auctions? Yup — Crystal Bridges. The museum dropped $10.2 million on a Donald Judd stack at Christie’s, and another $3.4 million at Sotheby’s for Andy Warhol’s Hammer and Sickle, from 1977. Those two works, plus the previously disclosed purchase of a Rothko from 1960 from a private Swiss collector at the estimated cost ofÂ $25 million (which I revealed in a Wall Street Journal article last September), are enabling the museumÂ to mount a sweeping reinstallation of itsÂ 20th century galleries.

I lay a lot of this out in The Art Newspaper, in an exclusive article, posted online today andÂ headlined Crystal Bridges answers criticism with post-war acquisitions. There’s a nice slide show including the Judd and the Warhol.

Ok, the museum wouldn’t quite characterize its purchases that way, but journalists will be journalists (I didn’t write the headline, but I can’t disagree with it either).

I think the important thing is that anyone who thought Crystal Bridges was going to open and be done (and btw, it has drawn nearly 734,000 visitors since its opening on 11/11/11) is wrong. Not so. Yesterday, the museum also announced the installation of a sculpture by Luis Jimenez for its sculpture trail, and last week, it said that Credit Suisse had given it a half-interest in a painting of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, with the other half going to the Met. It continues to plan special exhibitions, in partnership with several other museums.

It’s true, there’s been too much turnover at top for my taste, but we’ll have to wait and see exactly what that means.

What The Art Newspaper didn’t say in the headline — but I do in the article — is that Crystal Bridges is also beefing up its prewar 20th century galleries. I’m posting a couple of them here. At the top is Stone City Landscape by Marvin Dorwent Cone, and at right is Sand Storm by Agnes Pelton.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Crystal Bridges

Thursday Is The Day: Annual NYT Museum Section

In my opinion, museums do not get enough coverage in newspapers and magazines, so if a lot of it comes at once, in the annual New York Times section on museums, well, fine by me. That section should arrive in your paper tomorrow. I have three stories in it this year, and I will have more to say about each of the subjects in the coming days. Meantime, though, I will simply list them here:

1) In Denver, Exhibits Interweave Genres — that’s the headline, but it doesn’t really say what the story is about. As you may know, the Denver Art Museum has two buildings, with the older Ponti building containing more of the permanent collection and the newer Libeskind building presenting more of the special exhibitions. Visitors usually don’t go to both. So director Christophe Heinrich devised a solution — a campus-wide theme for this summer in which all, or most, curatorial departments are presenting an exhibition. This summer, it’s called SPUN.

2) Country Music Temple Stays In Financial Tune — This is about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and its unique financial model. The Hall — which is an accredited museum, typically gets around 80% of its annual budget from earned income. Discuss: What’s the applicability to art museums? We will.

3) Examining Sargent’s Shift From Oils to Watercolors — You know some of these watercolors, but not all, and you probably don’t know the story of how the Brooklyn Museum, first, and then the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, purchased Sargent’s ground-breaking watercolors in bulk and how they came to be united for the first time in a travelingÂ exhibition this year. Sargent is getting the illustration for this post — that’s his In a Medici Villa at left.

You can also see here a summary of the upcoming exhibitions around the country that I’ve chosenÂ as noteworthy for NYT readers.

More soon.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Tag Sale Wonder: From $3 to $2.23 Million

You can’t make this up. Some lucky person who purchased a pretty white bowl at a tag sale in 2007 for “no more than $3” has now sold it for $2.23 million. It happened at Sotheby’s this morning.

Apparently, after displaying it in their home for a few years, the owners — names undisclosed, naturallyÂ — got curious and took it toÂ Chinese art experts. They recognized it as a Northern Song dynasty specimen. It ended up in the Sotheby’s sale with an estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. labeled “Rare And Important ‘Ding’ Bowl Northern Song Dynasty.” It measuredÂ just 5 inches in diameter.Â

Four bidders in the room and on telephones actively sought the little bowl this morning, and it eventually sold “after a prolonged battle”Â toÂ London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi for $2,225,000.

Per Sotheby’s:

The bowl is a remarkable and exceptionally beautiful example of Song pottery, celebrated for its thin potting, fine near-white body, and ivory-colored glaze. The only known bowl of the same form, size and almost identical decoration has been in the collection of the British Museum in London for over 60 years having been bequeathed to the museum by the prominent British collector Henry J. Oppenheim in 1947.

I wonder what the tag sale owner will think, if he or she ever finds out.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’sÂ

How The Web Is Changing the Museum World

My headline is way too broad — one could write a book, or at least a long white paper, on how the web is changing the museum world. And I’m not talking about museum websites. But here are three disparate ways we’ve seen change in the last few days.

1) Last week, the BBC reported that a crowd-sourcing site it started with the UK’s public collections — called Your PaintingsÂ (I reported on that initiative here last year)Â — led to the discovery of an unknown van Dyke. Previously, theÂ portrait was considered to be a copy; covered in dirt, it was kept in storage at the Bowes Museum in County Durham. AnÂ art historian and dealer named Dr. Bendor Grosvenor saw it online, thought differently, and it has now been authenticated by Chris Brown, a van Dyke expert.

2) Earlier today, the FBI announced that it knew who stole 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 23 years ago. According to that press release:

The FBI believes it has determined where the stolen art was transported in the years after the theft and that it knows the identity of the thieves,Â Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBIâ€™s Boston office, revealed for the first time in the 23-year investigation. â€œThe FBI believes with a high degree of confidence that in the years after the theft, the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region, and some of the art was taken to Philadelphia, where it was offered for sale by those responsible for the theft.â€

And then the FBI said it created a special website about the heist, asking the public to help it solve the crime. It has four videos, one about the art (two of the stolen paintings pictured here), and one each from two FBI special agents and the Gardner’s security chief. Other relevant information is also there.

3) I received notice the other day about a new website that calls itself Vastari, “a new platform to revolutionize collecting and curating.” The site, based in London, connects registered collectors and curators, via two search engines: “one database of exhibition proposals for collectors to browse, and a search engine of objects for museums to consider for said exhibition proposals.”

Collectors upload to a secure site pictures of their exhibition-worthy art, which must possess “Â a concrete provenance” and is “owned indisputably by you.” This service is free now, but there will be an annual charge.

The site says:

This way, the collector benefits from targeted contact with cultural institutions, whereas the institution profits from broader curatorial choices in the private sector.

See more about Vastari here. Notice that the site carries logos of the Museums Association and the American Alliance of Museums.

It’s a rather interesting concept. Let’s see where it goes.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the FBI

Membership Does Have Its Privileges — Here’s A New One At The Met

Several days ago, I met a curator of the Metropolitan Museum* for lunch, and she suggested that we meet in the new balcony lounge. I’d never heard of the new balcony lounge, but I eagerly said yes. While the Met has several places to eat, the two most convenient ones — in the Petrie Court and in the American wing — are often crowded, and the noisy ambiance of the basement cafeteria doesn’t usually appeal to me. The Members dining room is very nice, but formal and besides you have to take an elevator to get to it (I am impatient).

The new balcony lounge turns out to be a place restricted to members at the sustaining level and above — that is, donors who contribute more than $550 a year.

So the point is not that the Met has a new restaurant. It’s thatÂ the Met has a dozen categories of membership and, like other other museums, it is trying to figure out how to differentiate among them and in process encourage those who can pay more to do so. Sustaining members there are invited to view exhibitions in the evening followed by receptions, and they are entitled to reciprocal membership with 15 other museums.

Now they have a place of their own, with light snacks, beverages and reading material. The breakfast, lunch and evening menus are posted online, btw.

The pictures here show what it looks like (btw, it’s in a space that used to be the store, so no galleries were sacrificed). Given the membership fee, it’s supposed to feel sophisticated, and I guess it does. The food I tried was just fair, but I may have picked the wrong thing. The seats are comfortable, and I can envision stopping in between exhibitions to rest.

After eating, I chatted a little with the two women who were manning the desk, and they said people have been popping in to ask about it, with a few increasing their membership category on the spot.

I don’t know if it’s worth that — the lower category, Friend, costs $275 and membership for those withing a 200-mile radius starts at $70. But I do think it’s a worthy goal to entice members to give more. Food has always been a way to people’s hearts and wallets.

* I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

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