Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Creating “Saudi” Buzz At The Freer/Sackler

As museums have had to compete for the time of visitors with so many other entertainment and edification opportunities, they have often succeeded by turning the show into an “event” that is not to be missed. They’ve generated excitement beyond their walls — buzz that will permeate “the conversation” and therefore bring in people who might not normally be reached by notice of an exhibit.

I thought of that several days ago when the Freer/Sackler Galleries* sent an email about activities surrounding Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If I were in Washington, I’d go see this show because the chances of my getting to Saudi Arabia any time soon are pretty slim. And I’ve already been taken by photos of several of the artifacts in this exhibition, which includes more than 200 objects – alabaster bowls, steles, bronzes, gold jewelry and other artifacts.

But if I weren’t so inclined,  I’d have been tempted by the celebration of Eid al-Arabia the Freer/Sackler offered on Nov. 17. It was billed this way:

Celebrate… with the scents, stories, and sounds of Saudi Arabia. Travel the routes of the ancient traders, explorers, and pilgrims during a daylong celebration. Discover the secrets of archaeology during a morning symposium and book-signing, followed by expert-led tours of the exhibition. Parents and children can experience the most precious trade good of its time-incense-and learn the fine art of calligraphy. Listen to long-recited stories and musical instruments from the region. Free; traditional lunch and refreshments available for purchase.

A few details:

  • There was a roundtable providing an opportunity to follow up on “recent archaeological discoveries in Saudi Arabia and participate in a lively discussion with scholars who have led excavations on the Arabian Peninsula.”
  • The food for purchase was Middle Eastern cuisine, including dates and sweets and an Arabic coffee tasting.
  • 30-minute performances of tales from One Thousand and One Nights.

That’s a lot. I’ll bet the attendees had fun. In fact, when I first read the email, I thought these activities were spread out through the exhibition — that’s why I didn’t write about them at the time. And there was also a ribbon-cutting on Nov. 15, with HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, President and CEO, Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, doing part of the honors. And the website — link above — is laden with videos and slide shows and maps. Additional events are listed here.

This show has traveled around Europe, so it’s not organized by the Freer/Sackler — and it will travel to Houston, Boston and Chicago after Washington. But I would say the Freer/Sackler is going for that buzz. More important, the activities are truly related — no fluff, no overreach. I have to commend the museum.

And by the way, the good news doesn’t end there: The Freer/Sackler is staging one of Cai Guo-Qiang’s “explosion events” in the shape of a pine on Friday, for Christmas, and on Saturday, it’s offering a “digital cave” called Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang. Both buzz-worthy.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Freer/Sackler

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Freer/Sackler

A New Light For Victims of Hurricane Sandy

Art is often said to have healing powers, and beginning tomorrow many people who live in the path of Hurricane Sandy — which struck a month ago — will have a chance to see a piece of art created for them. It’s a “monumental” laser installation by Yvette Mattern called Global Rainbow, After the Storm, launched from the rooftop of the Standard Hotel at the Highline. Designed to illuminate the night sky and be visible for up to 35 miles (depending on atmospheric conditions), the work will aim seven beams of high power light lasers over communities hit by Sandy. It “aims to symbolize hope and act as a call to action to support the communities that were devastated by the storm,” according to the press release.

Mattern’s installation, which has been presented in Europe (you may have seen it at the London Olympics), will shine for three nights, from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. nightly, from Nov. 27 through Nov. 29.

It’s a project of the Art Production Fund, and — naturally, given the occasion — it contains a fundraising element. It hopes to encourage donations to two groups. One is Waves for Water, a non-profit that has been working with relief organizations in coastal communities in Staten Island, New Jersey, Rockaway Beach and Long Beach  to bring much needed on-site support to victims. (You can make donations at the link above.). The other is New York Foundation for the Arts, whose Emergency Relief Fund is assisting artists who suffered damage and loss in Sandy’s wake. (Use this link, and be sure to click the box for the relief fund at the bottom.)

In the release, Mattern says, “I hope that seeing this beacon in the night sky will provide people with a sense of peace and security in this time of crisis and that it will unify us with its presence so we remember that we are all in this together, regardless of divisions of class, race, religion and culture.”

That’s asking a lot of art, but … at times like these, it’s nice to remember that art can have a higher purpose and a universal appeal.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Art Production Fund

 

East Meets West In Beijing, The Art Museum Version

About ten days ago, 15 museum directors from the U.S. went to China to meet their peers from Chinese museums, in a meeting organized by the Asia Society to lauch an effort it calls the Asia Society Arts and Museum Network.

The Asia Society issued a press release in advance (which I didn’t get), but it was China Daily, a government-funded English language newspaper (whose charms I once wrote about), that wrote an after-the-fact article I noticed. It reported that China wants more exchange in contemporary art. That’s a bit of surprise, considering that contemporary art is often politcally tinged (at least) and offers the potential for creating more tension between China and the West.

But let’s return to the beginning: the Asia Society launched this five-year effort to “strengthen arts communities across Asia and encourage collaboration and exchange between art institutions and professionals in Asia and the United States” in an attempt to “advance cultural understanding between the United States and China.” The directors — heads of the Asia Society Museum, the Whitney, SFMoMA, the Peabody Essex, among them (all are listed in the aforementioned press release) — met with the heads of the Shanghai, Hubei, and Wuhan museums, among others (also listed in the release) in Beijing on Nov. 15-17. Said Melissa Chiu, head of the Asia Society galleries:

There has been an enormous increase in the number of museums in China and there is a great desire on their part to build partnerships with American museums and understand more about how museums can become larger cultural centers in their communities. The launch of the Arts and Museum Network at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture is the beginning of a series of conversations between museum directors in the United States and in Asia.

Now to China Daily. It begins with a bit about Jay Xu, the director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, who grew up in China but has lived in the U.S. for 22 years. “China is leading the way in the speed of building museums. Nobody is building as many museums as China is now,” he told the paper, adding “Managing these museums and personnel training is extremely important, and that’s one of the areas where U.S. museums could offer assistance and help.” But he was careful to compliment Chinese museums, saying the U.S. can learn from them, particularly in the use of “cutting-edge technology and innovative ways to connect art to life.”

I was disappointed to hear Xu cite an example from the Shanghai museum, which employs “motion detectors at exhibits of ancient Chinese scroll paintings. When someone looks at one section of the scroll, the detector will sense the movement and turn on the light, and, when one moves away, that light would dim while others turn on.” While impressive indeed, they were in operation when I first visited China in 2002. I’d have liked a more recent example. 

It was Fan Di’an, director of the National Art Museum of China, who took the bolder, contemporary stance. “Chinese and American contemporary art are very active in commercial events, such as auctions and expositions, but not so much in public museums,” he was quoted as saying. “That’s something we should pay more attention to.”

With the politically active  Ai Weiwei being the best-known contemporary Chinese artist in the United States, that’s quite interesting. I wonder what happens next.

Photo Credit: From the Fu Baoishi exhibit at the Metropolitan, Courtesy AFP via China Daily

November New York Auctions: Reading The Tea Leaves

ArtTactic is out with an analysis of the recent auctions in New York, and the situation remains troubling in many ways — which is to say that the numbers continue to suggest that an increasing number of buyers are in the market for art as an investment, not collectors. Long-term, the presence of speculators is not good for those who simply love art or for museums.

According to the new report,

The Evening sales across Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury raised $764,600,000 (excluding buyer’s premium) against a pre-sale estimates of $642,450,000 to $911,800,000. This was 15% higher than the last art market peak in May 2008….with only 12% of the lots going unsold.

ArtTactic sees a “widening” of the market — more players at the high end, because:

A total of 35 works (excluding premium) sold above $5 million last week, compared to 24 in November 2011. If we look at even higher price levels, a total of 14 works sold above $20 million, compared to 3 works in November last year. As a result the average auction price came in at $4,964,935 across the three auction houses, which is a 9% increase from May 2012, but 64% higher than November 2011.

Meanwhile, because great Impressionist and Modern art works are hard to find, the focus has moved increasingly to contemporary art, made after World War II — “which raised more than twice the total of the Impressionist and Modern sales.”

Museums will have to depend even more on cultivating collectors if they want art of the era. Perhaps they usually do, you might argue, but contemporary art collectors nowadays seem to be far more demanding of museums than collectors of other kinds of art.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

London Visit: On To The Tate, Which Is Expanding, Sort Of

On my recent trip to London, I also visited the Tate Modern — whose permanent collection galleries were pretty jammed on a Saturday. I discovered, or rediscovered, several artists that are too little known in the United States or too little shown in U.S. museums. Among them, I’d put Meredith Frampton, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Barkely L. Henricks, and Dod Procter. There were others.

The Tate’s play area for kids, all done up in red, with computers, was full not just with children but with teenagers who were sitting there using their cell phones. Now, they may have been listening to cell phone tours, but I doubt it.

They point to one criticism I have of the Tate — not enough seating. It’s a big museum, which takes a long time to visit if you’re going to look at more than a gallery or two. But aside from the restaurants — which are nice — there are few places to rest. Take a gander at the picture I took of the Turbine Hall. There were even more people in the foreground, sitting on the steps, when I dug into my purse to get out my cell phone, but they left before I could turn it on.

(Another pet peeve I have about the Tate and other UK museums: granted, they are free, but asking me to a pound for the gallery plan was annoying. I guess I dislike being nickeled and dimed.)

This was my first visit to the Oil Tanks, which opened in the summer. They are cool, no question — I didn’t love the installation of Sung Hwan Kim, which was commissioned by the Tate for the tanks; it is quite confusing to navigate in the dark. But I was glad I saw it, and it does show the potential of the tanks’ spaces.

An installation by William Kentridge was next door — and seemed more successful, to me. Suzanne Lacy’s Crystal Quilt was very clever.

In the special exhibition galleries, a show of photography by William Klein and Daido Moriyama was very cleverly installed — in a mirror image configuration. It’s actually two retrospectives, of one artist who inspired the other, displayed side by side. Visitors can compare and contrast.

But what about the growth I mention in the headline? Even if I had not just visited, I might have written here about the plan announced by the Tate on Nov. 2. That’s when it said it was starting a program to acquire more modern and contemporary African art and two-year project entitled Across the Board which will commence on Nov. 24 and will consist of a series of events featuring emerging African artists and exploring recent practices on the continent.

The release continues:

In summer 2013 Tate Modern will dedicate a wing of its galleries to two of the most important African artists working today. A seminal work in the recent history of African art, Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002 by Meschac Gaba (b.1961, Benin) has been acquired by Tate and will be displayed in its entirety for the first time in the UK next year. Consisting of twelve sections, including a Games Room, Marriage Room, Music Room and Salon, this work challenges preconceived notions of African art. This work has been part gifted by the artist and part purchased by Tate through the Acquisitions Fund for African Art supported by Guaranty Trust Bank plc.

The UK’s first major exhibition of painter Ibrahim El-Salahi (b.1930, Sudan), Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist will bring together approximately 100 works from across more than five decades of El-Salahi’s international career, this retrospective will highlight one of the most significant figures in African and Arab Modernism and reveal his place in a broader art historical context.

The Tate got this initiative financed by Guaranty Trust Bank — and bravo for that.

I bring this up as an example of how museums are struggling to deal with contemporary art made in places like Africa and the Middle East — Should be integrated with other contemporary art? should it be segregated by geography? Does it depend? We don’t have definite answers for that — or even a trend.