Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Landesman Exits the NEA, Taking A Surprise Bow

Rocco Landesman has left the building. The now-former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts departed the other day, but not without granting an exit interview to The Washington Post. Interesting choice — maybe The New York Times didn’t ask (it probably didn’t) but as I recall Landesmann made a small mistake at the start of his term by giving the NYT his first interview instead of the Post, which of course is what everyone in Washington reads first. He learns.

RoccoLandesmanLandesman — not my favorite NEA chief, as Real Clear Arts readers know — exits taking a bow, according to the Post. Despite early gaffes, he earned credit by building ties to other federal agencies, which had more money, and eliciting new support from the private sector for investing in arts places in various communities. According to the Post:

The resulting “ArtPlace” consortium of foundations, financial institutions and federal agencies, including NEA, has awarded 80 grants to 46 communities, totaling nearly $27 million.

More than half of that is new money, says Robert Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts…

That’s not bad, if only a drop in the ocean in terms of money.

While I don’t agree with everything he said or did by a long shot, I give Landesman credit for being practical. Despite early comments about restoring grants to individual artists, for example, he recognized it wasn’t going to happen and moved on to other things — but not without finding a small way around the restriction.

There’s been way too much hand-wringing about that particular aspect of NEA funding, anyway. As long as the battle lines are formed around that issue, NEA funding is not going to grow. And maybe it shouldn’t — that’s heresy to some people in the arts, I know, but it’s time to rethink it.

 

Museum Websites Are Getting Better, But I Have Two Pet Peeves

While I was checking around on museum websites the other day to see which ones would be open on Jan. 1 and which would not, I noticed that many museums have updated their websites in recent months, mostly for the good.  Some have been radically redesigned and show off their art handsomely. A few look a tad corporate to me. And everyone’s got moving images (which is bad news only if they take a long time to load).

Websites2But I noticed two big deficiencies. On some, it’s actually hard to find out visiting hours and, worse, admission fees. In a few cases, to find hours, I had to click three or four times to get to the page with information. For admission fees, some museum make visitors to their website go to the “Buy Tickets” section even before they disclose the cost of admission. That’s inexcusable, and I’d bet those museums have people turning away before they get there to find out the number.

This isn’t just my feeling: though I could not find a study of museum patrons, I did see a recent longitudinal study of the “mobile preferences” of arts patrons (admittedly, phones are not the only way people access museum websites, but it is one big way) by an arts consultant called Group of Minds, which appears to have focused on performing arts groups (it’s unclear). Group of Minds contacted 45,000 patrons of half-price/discounted ticket email lists in six cities. The survey received a response rate of 4.3%.

Group of Minds discovered that “Seventy percent of respondents said they would use their phone to look up arts events if given the opportunity, up from 45% in 2009.” And what the respondents wanted most was logistical information: address and directions to the event, parking information, and the like. You can read the whole survey here.

I can’t think of why it would be different for museums — people need easy access to logistical information.

My second beef is personal: it’s about the press links. Many don’t have a press office listed on the home page, where it belongs. Some museums do not disclose the names or phone numbers of their press representatives. There may be a general phone number, which inevitably leads to voicemail, and a general info@… or pressoffice@… email contact. Sometimes not even that.

Past press releases — forget about it. There might be the last half-dozen, say, but when I need to check something that happened a few years ago… no dice.

I find this lack of access hard to believe. I know press offices get nuisance calls from people who are not in the media. Guess what? So do reporters and people in other occupations.

Time was when reporters could put in a call or send an email and wait for an answer from someone… anyone. That’s over. Chances are, if I can’t get a name and contact point on your website, I’m moving on to the next museum, unless I absolutely need to start searching on the web for an old contact name. I don’t think I’m alone. If you want press — and the number of emails I receive suggests that you do — try to be a little more open with what you put online, please. Thank you.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Nitin360

 

“Ask Me About The Art” At The Guggenheim

GuggI didn’t go to an art museum today — as I recommended yesterday — because I had other commitments. But I did go yesterday, arriving at the Guggenheim Museum about 3 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, late enough for me to imagine what it might be like today. It was delightful — full of people, but not so crowded that one couldn’t see the pictures.

On view was Picasso Black and White, and the show was definitely drawing a diverse as well as plentiful crowd. I heard several foreign languages being spoken and saw people of all ages and races. Picasso is always good for crowds, and this exhibit got good reviews. Michael Fitzgerald in The Wall Street Journal called it “ not only one of the most exquisitely beautiful exhibitions of modern art to appear in New York in recent years but also among the most intellectually engaging,” and Karen Rosenberg in The New York Times said it was “as eye-opening as it is elegant.” It was good to see that many people went beyond Picasso into the galleries filled with new acquisitions and a small show of Kandinsky works — they were full, too.

I stopped to ask one guard if he had to work today. Yes, he said. Did he mind? He gave me a strange, surprised look and say, definitely, no. He said he didn’t have to start untill 11 a.m., so it wouldn’t interfere with his plans for last night. How did others feel about working on a holiday? He said he had heard no complaints. Some people may well have grumbled, I’ll guess but I hope that they weren’t forced to work a holiday — and I hope the guard’s answer assuages RCA readers who’ve complained in comments that museum employees shouldn’t have to work holidays.

AskMeI stopped to talk with another guard because I was taken by the big button he was wearing, pictured here. “Ask Me About The Art,” it says. I’d not noticed them before, and he told me they were ”pretty new,” though he didn’t recall when they were passed out. He loved the buttons. An art history major, he said until he got a button, most people asked where the rest rooms were. Now, some people do ask him real questions about the art on view. Other museums might take the cue and get similar buttons (some may already have similar identifiers).

All in all, there was only one discouraging moment during my visit. One young man, eyeing a painting, couldn’t resist saying, so that all could hear. “Or, it’s a ‘Woman in a Chair’ — I thought it was a spider” to one of his mates, who snickered. He should have found the nice young guard I spoke to — who might have helped him out.

Photo credits: © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heading Toward A New New Year’s Day Tradition

The Cincinnati Art Museum sent me, and presumably many other journalists, a Press Alert the other day — saying it would be open on New Year’s Day during its regular hours, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.  As regular readers of Real Clear Arts will know, I was very pleased to see that. Museums that want to be “accessible,” in today’s coded jargon, must be open when people have free leisure time.

the-life-lineI think New Year’s Day, when so many stores are open, sporting events take place, movie theaters are crowded, etc., is a perfect day for museums to open their doors. For some families and individuals, a trip to the art museum on New Year’s could be a new tradition.

So I did my usual random sampling of a few museums around the country, and here’s what I found:

Open on New Year’s Day: the Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina; the Philadelphia Museum of Art (where Homer’s Life Line, at left, is on view), the Milwaukee Art Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum (OR).

Closed on New Year’s Day: the Whitney, the Metropolitan , the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the de Young in San Francisco, the Seattle Art Museum, the Miami Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum, the Getty, the Albright-Knox, the Isabella Stewart Gardner, the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the High Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Philbrook Museum of Art, the Worcester Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art (ME).

I stopped. I have no data, but I would bet that five or ten years ago, I would not have found even that many museums open on New Year’s. The balance is shifting, I believe, and that’s a good thing.

Happy New Year to All.

 

 

In Egypt: Islamists And Artists — The Battles Continue

I had a hunch it was time to check in on the contemporary art situation in Egypt, given that the new Islamist-drafted constitution passed recently, handing a victory to the Muslim Brotherhood. I can only report what I read elsewhere, and that news isn’t great.

Culture for All EgyptiansLast week, the online English edition of Al Ahram published an article rounding up what’s happened in the Egyptian art world over the past year in a piece headlined Artists and Islamists Going Head to Head. It began:

Islamists’ attack on arts and culture in Egypt since they came into power has manifested in several cases of conflict between Islamist sheikhs and politicians.

The Islamist stances vary between accepting only “art with a purpose,” to not having an issue with art as long as some restrictions are put on nudity and controversial topics. A more extreme Islamist stance sees artistic expression as a form of Westernisation that promotes values not in line with Egyptian Islamic tradition. Not only did sheikhs attack the arts, but so was it attacked on the streets, where Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters had direct confrontations with artists, at times even impeding them from their work.

At year-end, it was a standoff, but with a few surprises. For one, last Sept. 6, President Mohamed Morsi met in an open meeting with artists — at the Presidential Palace. Morsi reportedly told the artists and writers who attended that the government values their work and that it’s a “major pillar of Egyptian society.” Yet some boycotted. Why? One, “renowned actress Samira Ahmed” … “told Al-Ahram Arabic-language newspaper she would not attend such meetings until real action is taken against everyone who insulted artists.” Morsi didn’t please Islamic preachers either —

Sheikh Wagdy Ghoneim, who publishes many controversial videos on his YouTube channels, released a video entitled Is this Art? denouncing Morsi’s move to build bridges with artists, whom he calls “immoral.” He also charges that Egypt was a civil state and that it should follow sharia (Islamic law): the reason many voted Morsi into power according to Ghoneim.

And so it went. The article provides several instances of artists asserting themselves, and Islamicist fighting back — against new films, visual art, writing. It ends on a positive note:

The Culture Resource (Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy) just launched a campaign called “A Culture for All Egyptians” with posters (pictured above) all over the streets and media campaigns affirming people’s right to be part of the culture movement: culture with no boundaries on artistic expression. The campaign aims to make these changes in culture policies and law to give people a chance to be part of the artistic movement.

Can this campaign be believed? It would be a step forward (see the article at that link), but that’s unclear. Over the past couple of years, museums in the U.S. and Europe have made great efforts to increase the presence of Islamic art on view — and many have taken that drive into contemporary art as well. We are so vigilant when the Chinese suppress art; we should be just as vigilant in the Middle East.