Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

“An Exhibition 40,000 Years In The Making”

I don’t usually associate the British, let alone the venerable British Museum, with hype. But that headline quote is the tag line for what seems to a very worthy, and interesting, exhibition called Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind.  I guess it says something about the marketing minds at the BM, and the need to fight for attention in today’s world.

BM-bisonIce Age Art starts on Thursday. The BM has a goal here: to elevate the objects — which include the oldest known ceramic figures in the world, plus the oldest known portrait and figurative pieces, all of which were created over 20,000 years ago – in the show from artifact to art. The curator, Jill Cook, says in the description, “By looking at the oldest European sculptures and drawings we are looking at the deep history of how our brains began to store, transform and communicate ideas as visual images. The exhibition will show that we can recognize and appreciate these images. Even if their messages and intentions are lost to us the skill and artistry will still astonish the viewer.”

There’s a lot more background in the press release. But as a taste here are two object, both made about 20,000 years ago. On the left is a bison sculpted from mammoth ivory, found at Zaraysk, Russia, and on the right is a female figure, sculpted from steatite, found at Grimaldi, Italy. There’s a very short video, available at the first link above, which shows additional images (quickly).

The exhibition also includes works by Picasso, Moore, Matisse and other major modern artists “to establish these connections across time, highlighting the fundamental human desire to create works of great beauty. This can be appreciated in a striking drawing of two deer engraved on a piece of bone found in the cave of Le Chaffaud, Vienne, France,” the BM says.

BM-femaleCook told the Associated Press that the Ice Age creators “…are fully modern humans. What these works of art show is that they have a visual brain capable of imagination and creativity. They really are us. They are our ancestors.”

The AP story, as posted on the San Francisco Chronicle site, has a slide show of other object in the exhibition.

Now, most museums that I know measure the time frame for organizing an exhibit from the time a curator starts working on it — not the date of the art involved. We should keep it that way, but for this, to catch more attention, let’s make an exception.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the British Museum

 

Eye Candy From Denver, Plus A Modest Reminder

DenverNA4Last week’s announcement by the Metropolitan Museum of Art* that it had organized and sent a collection of works from the permanent collection to the National Museum of China in Beijing –  Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art – Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art — reminded me that I had one more item in my notebooks from my recent trip to Denver.

There, I was eager to see the installation of Native American Art at the Denver Art Museum. I wrote about it from afar two years ago for The New York Times, in an Arts & Leisure section cover story that was headlined Honoring Art, Honoring Artists — which was too bad, actually, because the headline didn’t convey what the article was about.

DenverNA5It was about the attempts there, as curator Nancy Blomberg created a new suite of galleries for Native American art there to place emphasis on the artists who created the works — even when we don’t know there names. She tried, wherever possible, to seek out attributions to individuals and, where not, to emphasize still the individual by saying “Navaho artist,” say, on the labels, rather than just “Navaho.”  (I also posted about it here and here.)

One example is in the photograph at right: It’s the vitrine dedicated to the pottery created by Nampeyo, a Hopi woman born around 1860.

DenverNA1I met Nancy, and she showed me around briefly then left me on my own to wander. The galleries looked beautiful, as the pictures here will attest. (I snapped many with my cell phone. Most were taken before and just as the museum was opening — that’s why they are devoid of people.)

The greatness of Denver’s collection was evident. Now consider that, in 2011, Blomberg said she was going to display about 700 objects from the museum’s collection of about 18.000 objects. Looking around, I blurted out to Blomberg, “you have so much great stuff — you have to get some of your collection out on tour!”

DenverNA2Blomberg hasn’t had the chance to do that, she said, but the museum’s director, Christoph Heinrich, has encouraged her (and other curators there) to do so, she said.

It’s true that museums are sending parts of their permanent collections out on tour, especially during renovations, to increase earned income. But that wasn’t behind my enthusiasm. I simply think that many more people who do not get to Denver, let alone to the Denver Art Museum, would like to see this collection. If what’s in storage includes items of similar quality — not all, but enough — there may well be a themed exhibition that could be shared.

I think that same thought when I visit other museums. Some have an embarrassment of riches that might be lent temporarily to others.

Of course, I know that many museums already do that. This is just a gentle reminder to those who don’t but could.

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski

The Metropolitan Deaccessions, Ummmm, What?

What precisely did the Metropolitan Museum of Art* deaccession the other day? Apparently, a painting far more valuable than the museum had expected — and perhaps one with incorrect attribition.

NotRubensThe Met had decided to sell sixteen Old Masters paintings to benefit its acquisitions fund, and sent them to Sotheby’s, which put them in last Wednesday’s Old Master paintings auction. At the end, as Sotheby’s wrote in its press release, the Met had “achieved strong results, totalling $2.4 million.”

Everyone’s eyes were on one lot in particular, labeled “Portrait of a young girl, possibly Clara Serena Rubens by a Follower of Peter Paul Rubens.” During the sale, five or six bidder competed for the work, witnesses there told me. Against a presale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000, it sold for $626,500, including the buyer’s premium.

It’s a small painting, just 14 by 10 1/4 in., but with a long history. You can read the whole description here. It has an good exhibition history (long), figures in much literature, and has this catalogue note:

The sitter of this portrait resembles the younger subject of a similarly informal portrait by Rubens in the collections of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vaduz. She also closely resembles the sitter in a drawing by Rubens, now in the Albertina, Vienna. The Vaduz portrait and Albertina drawing have both traditionally been thought to depict the artist’s daughter, Clara Serena, who died at the age of twelve in 1623. As Held observes (see Literature), such a repeated portrayal of apparently the same sitter does suggest a close personal contact between artist and model.

Held also, however, downgraded the painting from being a Rubens to being a Follower of. As for provenance, this is what’s listed by Sotheby’s:

Possibly Mme Camille Groult, Paris;
Possibly Sir Robert Henry Edward (Alabert?) Abdy, 5th Bart., Paris;
Mrs. Peter Cooper (Lucy Work) Hewitt, New York;
Her Estate sale, New York, American Art Association/Anderson Galleries, 6 April 1935, lot 613;
Frederick R. Bay, New York, by 1936 until at least 1939;
Charles Ulrick Bay, New York, by 1942;
His widow, Josephine Bay Paul, New York, 1955;
By whom given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1960 (Inv. no. 60.169).

In the condition report, Sotheby’s discussed some retouching, but concluded “the painting is presentable and there is no need for further work. offered in an elaborately carved and gilt wood frame.”

Is it really a Rubens? Was Held wrong? That would be a happy ending, except, of course, for the Met.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

More Evidence Of Market Insanity

Botticelli-MadonnaI just can’t help myself. The juxtaposition of two auction sales is simply too tempting.

In tomorrow’s New York Times, Steve Wynn announces that he’s the one who bought Tulips, by Jeff Koons, last November for $33.6 million, a record for a piece by Koons at auction. He had to admit it at some point, because he put it on view in the Wynn Theater rotunda in Las Vegas  a few days ago, and eventually he’ll move it to a hotel-casino he’s building in Macao.

The paper also mentions another record — this one set this week — for a Botticelli. On Wednesday, Christie’s sold that painting, of a Madonna and child once owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., for $10.4 million, his highest auction price. 

I’m pasting them both here. You decide.

KoonsTulips

The Al-Sabah Collection Is Going Places — Not Just Houston

Al-Sabah jewelryIt was news last fall when the  Museum of Fine Arts in Houston announced a five-year partnership with Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah and his wife, Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, of Kuwait — through which the al-Sabahs would send parts of their collection for long-term viewing in Houston. They want their treasures seen around the world, as a means of expanding the view people have of Muslims to include its culture. Given so many political ties in Texas (the Sheikha visited George H.W. Bush last week), and with its oil companies, it was natural for the family to choose the MFAH (though having Mahrukh Tarapor, formerly with the Metropolitan Museum and now senior adviser for international initiatives to the MFAH, must have helped).

So the other night, the MHAF unveiled its entry in the Islamic race: a gallery filled with about 70 objects on loan from the al-Sabahs. It can’t compare in volume with the Met’s newish Islamic wing, which attracted more than 1 million visitors in not much more than a year, or with the Louvre’s new wing for Islamic art — topped by that golden “flying carpet” — but still. Apparently what the Kuwaitis sent is choice. The museum’s description:

Among the highlights showcased in this display are spectacular Mughal jewelry, illuminated manuscripts, exquisite ceramics, and intricately decorated ceiling panels. More than 60 examples from the 8th to 18th centuries are on view, made in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The collection also includes carpets, glass and metalwork, paintings, architectural fragments, scientific instruments, and works on paper.

And there’s much more where that came from, and the Kuwaiti News Agency is out with an article that says that there will be more international sharing of the 30,000 works in the collection (which is on permanent loan to the state of Kuwait).

Al-Sabah-porcelainBut not with U.S. museums — even though its clear that the public has an appetite for art of the Muslim world.

Houston’s renewable deal is exclusive in the U.S., the KNA said. Rather, it added, “plans are underway to potentially launch exhibitions in Italy, Finland, South Korea and Singapore, where there are few Islamic art collections available to the public.” KNA did not name the institutions involved, but it provided a lot more background on Kuwaiti thinking.

Among American museums, the other good places to see respected collections of Islamic art are the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Freer-Sackler in Washington and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art.

The current al-Sabah selection is expected to remain in Houston for about a year; then, there will be a switch-out.

Photo Credit: Two 17th century pieces from India, courtesy of the MHAF