Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

A Blow to Arts Television: Such As It Is

 Time Warner Cable has delivered a blow to Ovation, the independent arts television channel. 

OvationTVThat’s sad, even though Ovation has never lived up to the expections many had for it in the early ’90s, when J. Carter Brown, the esteemed former director of the National Gallery of Art, agreed to become chairman of the fledgling network. As the New York Times told the story:

“I will be Ovation’s godfather,” said Mr. Brown. “My role will be one of making connections and looking at the quality of the programming.” Dr. Harold E. Morse, founder of the Learning Channel, will be in charge of the day-to-day operations as Ovation’s president and chief executive. The network is based in Alexandria, Va.

The Ovation network will limit itself to art, dance, music, literature and theater. Unlike existing arts networks like Bravo and Arts and Entertainment, it will not show movies.

The debut was set for 1994, but that did not happen until 1996, by which time I had written an article headline, TV Has All But Tuned Out the Visual Arts, and Ovation was not carried by the cable companies in New York City. Somewhere along the way, the channel changed hands, and in 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that

“…for the last four years a group of investors has been working to establish an oasis for Ovation, an independent channel devoted to art and contemporary culture….Available in only 5 million homes in 2007, the channel now can be seen in about 42 million homes, or nearly half of all cable and satellite households in the country.”

Now, the LA Times is reporting that “Time Warner Cable plans to drop the small Santa Monica-based channel Ovation from its programming lineup at year’s end.” The company issued a statement saying, in part:

Ovation is among the poorest performing networks, and is viewed by less than 1% of our customers on any given day.

That is true even though Ovation has long since expanded the definition of arts to include art-house films, photography, architecture and other “popular” arts. In 2010, the LAT piece quoted experts suggesting that the “long-tail theory” said a small niche channel could do well because a small base of avid fans would keep it going. I always thought the long-tail theory was overblown, and it clearly didn’t work here.

Still, Ovation does continue on other distribution outlets. Time-Warner’s move knocks it out of 7 million homes in one swoop, but about 44 million homes can still watch under service agreements with DirecTV and Comcast Corp, for example.

Ovation has started an online petition to Time-Warner Cable.

Hauser & Wirth Takes A Strange But Welcome Turn

Here’s an interesting turn of events. Hauser & Wirth, a gallery that represents such artists as Martin Creed, Diana Thater, Ron Mueck, Roni Horn, the estates of Eva Hesse and others, etc., etc. is adding a new venue: on the edge of Bruton.

Hauser & Wirth Somerset Artists impression, Aerial ViewThat’s in Somerset, the UK, and as the Guardian recently put it, “eight miles south of Shepton Mallet, convenient for the A303 and Bristol-Weymouth railway line.”

Yes, this is Hauser & Wirth, which currently has galleries in Zuruch, London and New York. The move is akin to the Museum of Modern Art deciding it needs a branch in, say, La Jolla. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“This is a beautiful part of the world and also a very creative part of the world,” said Alice Workman, who will be in charge of Hauser & Wirth Somerset. It will consist of a gallery and arts centre which “will serve the local community and town but also act on a national and international level”….

Somerset does not have any significant contemporary art galleries, said Workman. “We’ve got a great arts scene in Bath and Bristol but they are a good hour away.”

Hauser & Wirth say they expect about 40,000 visitors a year to this outpost.

I like the move — it’s bold, has potential to draw more people to art, and aims to inspire the gallery’s artists, some of whom have already used the property as a retreat. It dates to 1760 and was originally a “model farm,” with “a cowshed, a piggery, stables, barns, a farmhouse and land – but most of it is in a terrible state of disrepair with some buildings not safe to enter.”

It needs work, obviously, with the opening set for summer, 2014. Could it be a model?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Guardian

 

Russia’s Culture Minister Agrees (With Me): Ordering Evening Hours

Many times here, and elsewhere, I’ve harped on the need for museums to change their hours — to stay open later, especially during the summer months when it stays light later and is warm and people are out and about.

russian-museumMost recently, in mid-September, I noted progress toward this goal:

As for new regular evening hours, I’ll mention a few: the Walters Art Museum (Thursdays until 9 p.m.); the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (to 7 p.m. three nights and to 9 p.m. on Thursdays); the Cincinnati Art Museum till 9 p.m. on Fridays; and the Laguna Art Museum (till 9 p.m. on Thursdays).

I know some of the forces working against this (school bus schedules, costs, labor resistance), and a director or two (Glenn Lowry, to name one) have taken potshots at the idea. Others have pointed out — and this true — that programming at night has to go hand-in-hand with later hours.

And I’ll add one more caveat: It’s not enough to announce evening hours once or twice and expect potential visitors to remember. People must be reminded. And even then, no one changes their habits overnight. Expect the benefits to accrue over time.

Recently, Russia’s Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, sent out an order on this subject. All federally funded museums (except those in rural areas) must remain open at least one evening a week starting Jan. 1, according to The Art Newspaper.  Thus, the Russian Museum (pictured) will remain open until 9.m. on Thursdays, according to its website. The Hermitage’s website has not yet indicated new hours. Etc.

It only makes sense.

UPDATE: I’ve researched the Lowry line to which I refer above. It came in an article announcing that MoMA would, beginning next May, open every day, and he said:

But “it was always a myth that everyone really wanted late hours,” Mr. Lowry said. “We tried being open later on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays,” he added, but the one really popular day turned out to be on Friday, when admission is free from 4 p.m. until closing at 8.

About 18 months earlier, when MoMA was extending hours to 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Lowry told the NYTimes:

“This is about choice,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of MoMA. “Our data suggests people want to go out on Saturday nights. They also say they are interested in coming to the museum later on Thursdays. That night is the big experiment. It’s really all about trying to be as flexible as possible.”

But this post is not about Glenn Lowry — it’s about how people spend their time and when they have free time. People may not come to evening hours at first — these things take time and reminders. But it’s no accident that sports events, concerts, theater, etc., etc., etc., regularly take place at night — and not just one night a week, either.

 

 

Lessons For Many From Fort Ticonderoga

Historical homes and other places have been losing their appeal to visitors for years. So, the other day, when I saw something positive about Fort Ticonderoga, which was in pretty dire straits a few years ago, I stopped to look. 

FortTiconderogaA quick recap: In August, 2008, the Fort was set to celebrate its 100th anniversary (for visitors) when it lost the support of its biggest donor, Forrest Mars, of candy fame, owed money,  and set out to sell some of its collections to cover the debt. As the New York Times reported at the time:

The fort had a shortfall of $2.5 million for the [new] education center. The president of the board that governs the fort, which is owned by a nonprofit organization, said in an internal memo this summer that the site would be ”essentially broke” by the end of the year. The memo proposed a half-dozen solutions, including the sale of artwork from the group’s collection.

”The fort is facing a financial crisis, which puts its very existence in question,” the president, Peter S. Paine Jr., said in the memo, which first surfaced in local newspapers last month.

Instead, the fort received a lifeline, a new executive director, and with an $85,000 grant from the Perkin Fund (a Massachusetts family foundation) hired a consultant named PGAV Destinations in July, 2011 to develop a three-phase master plan. It’s that group that recently reported that its “phase one”

created a 38% rise in both memberships and program revenue; 18% growth in both admissions revenue and annual giving; an 8% increase in field trip revenue and a 6% increase in paid attendance in 2012 over 2011.

For a little context: The Fort drew aome 75,000 visitors in 2010 — it did not say how many were paid. Nor could I find in its annual report the baselines for membership, donors, etc. So, while those markers sound good, and are going in the right direction, it’s not clear how much progress has been made. General admission is $17.50 — very steep — although residents of Ticonderoga have free access.

That is one thing PGAV changed, according to the press release: As one of its “six essential ‘Quick Wins’ (“easily implementable steps that involved little-to-no capital expenditures”), the Fort altered pricing (but gave no details). It also added special events and tours  and discontinued “superfluous free programs.” Hill said: “The quick wins not only provided immediate sources of revenue, but they also provided rich opportunities to experiment with new strategies that will inform later steps in the comprehensive plan.”

What is the lesson here for other cultural or historical venues — including art museums? (After all, Fort Ti’s Education Center is home to  The Art of War: Ticonderoga as Experienced through the Eyes of America’s Great Artists — “Fifty works from the Fort’s extensive art collection are brought together for the first time in a single exhibition, to present a visual history of Fort Ticonderoga. Fort Ticonderoga helped give birth to the Hudson River school of American art with Thomas Cole’s pivotal 1826 work, Gelyna, or a View Near Ticonderoga, the museum’s most important 19th-century masterpiece to be featured in the exhibit.”)

Sadly, sometimes such practical steps are hard to make without outside impetus from a consultant — which is often wasteful. Organizations know what to do — they just can’t do it. (See: the Corcoran.)

And also, sometimes, it takes a crisis to galvanize action. That’s also a sad comment — but human nature.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fort Ticonderoga

 

 

Did Tobias Meyer Really Say This?

TobiasMeyerI have to think that even Andy Warhol — maybe especially Andy Warhol — would laugh at a comment made recently by Tobias Meyer (ar right), the worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s recently. To wit:

“It has the intensity of a great Warhol or a great Bacon.”

The “it” under discussion was the Raphael drawing sold by Sotheby’s on behalf of Chatsworth on Dec. 5. Head of An Apostle fetched nearly $47.9 million after intense bidding. It’s an amazing piece of work that at least one expert I know thinks is Raphael’s best drawing in private hands. And maybe his best drawing ever.

What was Meyer thinking?

Elsewhere in the video, Sotheby’s experts Gregory Rubinstein and Christiana Romalli talk about Raphael’s career and laud this drawing properly as the “most intensely moving, powerful and wonderful drawing” Sotheby’s has ever handled. I wonder what they thought of Meyer’s comment. And I wonder who made the video and actually decided to use that quote.

Meyer goes on to say: “This is the greatest drawing by one of the greatest artists in the world.” Good recovery. But it hard for me to believe that he would make the comparison between Raphael and Warhol or Bacon — more so because Meyer not only thinks it, but said it — out loud, on a recording. There’s no room to deny it. See the video for yourself here (the second one, “Raphael: Renaissance Masters from Chatsworth.”

I asked the aforementioned anonymous, highly respected expert if we should laugh or cry. “Both,” he replied.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Telegraph