Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Corcoran: The Wait Goes On, And On, Interminably

The Washington Post, doing its duty, checked in on the mess at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Corcoran College of Art and Design again the other day, lest something nefarious happen there under everyone’s noses.

It didn’t come up with any news whatsoever. Nothing has happened since the Corcoran said it was discussing its future with the National Gallery and George Washington University. Nor did it come up with new analysis or quote any new recommendations. What it did do is recap the sad situation and put the blame squarely on the board: Corcoran’s Board Holds Key To Museum’s Fate, the headline read.

And in this article, the board looks even more inept than we thought. The trustees have managed to create a situation in which they have no vision for the future, they have no money for the future, they have no director for the museum, and — perhaps worst of all — the study they ordered up to assess the museum/school’s potential is seven months away from delivery.

Then, of course, there will be deliberation and fund-raising, because no one is going to give the Corcoran much money without knowing what it’s going to be in the future, “the vision.” Can this institution remain on life-support for so long? I shake my head in disbelief.

Here’s an interesting passage: Since October, 2o10:

[The board] spent $1.5 million on consultants, including a $683,000 contract with Lord Cultural Resources (not all paid yet), which produced six thick binders of research and interviews with staff and students as well as outside experts. The data examined the state of the art in museums and art colleges worldwide, and attempted to discern the direction in which the best galleries and colleges will evolve in the coming decades. …A year later, in the fall of 2011, Corcoran leaders were not yet ready to publicly propose a new vision, but the board was eager for fresh eyes on the problem. At least six trustees joined in two months….Yet even now, after 24 months, the new vision remains a work in progress.

One could be relieved by that, because any new director worth his or her salt would want a say in formulating the vision. To which the board chairman, Harry F. Hopper III, replied:

We were advised that we could not attract the caliber of leadership on the content side that we needed without having a well-thought-out framework, and that’s what we’re working on. We don’t claim to have a granular playbook on how a new leader is supposed to execute a vision. We have come up with a framework within which a visionary leader can allow the institution to flourish. Exactly what shape that takes is an organic process that will be led by the new leadership that we bring in.

Fair enough, I guess, except: if the board is months away from agreeing to a framework, and then it has to recruit a visionary director — a process that, in recent years, has been taking about a year from the time a director quits to the time another is hired, which is sometimes followed by more delay before he/she can take up the job — that life-support system at the Corcoran better be  pretty darn good. To me, it looks as if it will waste away.

 

Life — And Hope — Return To Chelsea — UPDATED

I hadn’t planned to write about Chelsea, because I haven’t been down there yet. But all day long, I’ve received emails from galleries announcing exhibition openings and returns to life.

Which is not what I expected. The first email I received from there today was bleak. Wrote one correspondent: “[The area] is truly a disaster, lost art, lost galleries, lost businesses, massive destruction.  Where is the press on this? … It is an economic story as well as an art story, and it is a human story.”

I pointed out that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Magazine, and many others — some posted here via links — have been writing about it. But nevermind: when one is feeling beleagered, one wants attention.

And today, CNN chimed in with this report, citing dealer Leo Koenig saying, “I would not be surprised if, when it’s all said and done, the damage that is done to our art world will be in the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in unrecoverable work.”

Then the good news began to arrive. C24 Gallery, on W. 24th St., is opening an exhibit of work by Ali Kazma on Wednesday; Maccarone gallery will open an exhibition by Edgar Arceneaux on Nov. 10; Metro Pictures postponed the opening of Gary Simmons, but said its upstairs gallery will be opening soon; the New Museum reopened over this past weekend; Carmichael Gallery is opening a show by Eriberto and Estevan Oriol on Nov. 8, and so on. David Zwirner wrote saying his gallery will reopen on Friday, Nov.. 9.

Being the master of public relations that he is, Zwirner also wrote a “personal letter” that said, among other things:

As you surely know by now, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York City’s Chelsea gallery district. Virtually all the galleries in the area sustained flooding, resulting in damages to spaces and art.

The rescue and rebuilding efforts that got underway immediately after the storm have been extraordinary, and we have been moved by the outpouring of sympathy and support not only from the artists of the gallery but also from the art community at large. Thank you! …

…As telephone lines in the area are still being repaired, you might have a hard time reaching us on our land line so we would encourage you to contact us via email or cell phone instead.

We are very much looking forward to hearing from you or, even better, welcoming you here on 19th Street in Chelsea.

If you’re in New York, another fine art offer came out this afternoon; many museums waived their admission charges last week, and today the Neue Galerie — way uptown, and there out of the problem area –  “free admission to its galleries. Café Sabarsky’s chef Kurt Gutenbrunner and his team will serve complementary Glühwein and hot mulled cider in the lobby. This special offering is made to our visitors in recognition of the recent events brought on by Hurricane Sandy.”

UPDATED: Jerry Saltz is singing a similar tune on New York Magazine’s website.

Photo Credit: CRG Gallery, Courtesy of Art Info

 

 

 

 

Tale Behind Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich

Museums depend, in many situations, on showing excavated objects — they just aren’t usually objects made less than 100 years ago (which, by standard definition, don’t even count as antiques).

Nonetheless, last week, Munich’s Neue Pinakothek opened just such an exhibition — noteworthy because of the tale behind it. It’s called Degenerate Art: The 2010 Berlin Sculpture Find.  Perhaps you know the story, Munich is the third venue, but the find has grown since the found objects were first shown in Berlin in November, 2010, at the  Neues Museum on Museum Island.

The sculptures — 11 in Berlin, but now up to 16 in Munich, were discovered accidentally in an excavation directly opposite Berlin’s town hall, the Rotes Rathaus, in the city’s historical center — “hidden in the bomb debris of a residential building for decades since the end of World War II.” The digs were carried out because the U5 underground line was to be extended from Alexanderplatz to Brandenburg Gate.

As you’ve guessed by now, these modernist pieces were seized from museums by Hitler’s henchmen, and their whereabouts unknown. They were given up for lost by many until archaeologists unearthed them two years ago. Berlin’s show included, along with two unattributed works:

• Otto Baum, Girl Standing, 1930
• Karl Ehlers, A standing robed figure with a bunch of grapes, 1933
• Otto Freundlich, Head, 1925
• Karl Knappe, Hagar, 1923
• Marg Moll, Dancer, around 1930
• Emy Roeder, Pregnant Woman, 1918
• Edwin Scharff, Portrait of the Actress Anni Mewes, 1917/1921 (shown here from side and front)
• Gustav Heinrich Wolff, Robed Figure Standing, 1925
• Naum Slutzky, Female Bust, before 1931

According to the story told by the Pinokothek:

Under the direction of Adolf Ziegler, the President of the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste, the first ‘Kommission’ confiscated 14 paintings and one sculpture by Max Beckmann, Heinrich Campendonk, Karl Caspar, Lovis Corinth, Josef Eberz, Oskar Kokoschka, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Hans Purrmann, Edwin Scharff, Georg Schrimpf, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Paul Thalheimer on 9 July, 1937, from premises of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.

On 25 August, the second ‘Kommission’, under the direction of the Landesleiter of the Reichskunstkammer in Franconia and the Landesleiter of the Reichskammer in Bavaria, confiscated a further 110 works from the depots of the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Staatsgalerie on Königsplatz (now the Antikensammlung) and the library building at the Deutsches Museum. A total of 137 were confiscated by the ‘Kommissionen’ in Munich in 1937 and taken away in three lorries to the Haus der Kunst in Berlin and the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste, Köpenickerstr. 24a, also in Berlin.

Of all that, less than 5% has been recovered.

The Mewes portrait bust above was the first to emerge in the excavation, a bit more of which is told here.  The Munich musuem did not list the five scultures new to this exhibition in press materials, nor online.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Neue Pinokothek 

 

Update on Chelsea Galleries — UPDATED

Gallerist NY has an article and more pictures of the damage done by Hurricane Sandy, posted here, and headlined Chelsea Galleries Begin Recovery Work.

UPDATE: Here’s a Reuters story with different details.

I have not been south of 42nd St., and so have not personally seen the damage, but I have spoken to a couple of people, some on second floors or higher of Chelsea buildings who are assuming no damage but can’t gain access to see for sure. Those on the ground floor all seem to have suffered losses, even if they removed some art to storage on higher ground. From Gallerist, here’s a picture of Haunch of Venison Gallery on West 21st St.:

 

 

 

Vietnamese Artist, Danh Vo, Wins Boss Prize

The Guggenheim Museum, despite suffering a power outage to its downtown administrative offices, which are closed (its email and phone systems are also down), managed to get out some news today (the museum itself was closed, as usual for Thursdays, but it plans to reopen tomorrow — it has been closed since Sunday, but opened yesterday only for Picasso: Black and White). So I thought it was worth a post: the museum named Danh Vo as winner of the Hugo Boss Prize. It’s the 9th time for the biennial prize, which involves a $100,000 award. The jury’s citation:

We have chosen to award the Hugo Boss Prize 2012 to Danh Vo in recognition of the vivid and influential impact he has made on the currents of contemporary art making. Vo’s assured and subtle work expresses a number of urgent concerns related to cultural identity, politics, and history, evoking these themes through shifting, poetic forms that traverse time and geography. 

I can’t agree or disagree — the work leaves me befuddled — so I’ll post a few pictures and comments. Here’s one (Tombstone for Phùng Vo — at left) from the competition. The Walker Arts Center, which owns several works by Vo including that piece, has an interesting rationale for its choice by curator Bartholomew Ryan that begins:

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” So reads the inscription on a black stone with gold-leaf engraving that will be installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in the spring of 2012. Titled Tombstone for Phùng Vo (2010), it’s one of several works by artist Danh Vo recently acquired by the Walker. …it’s my hope that this piece becomes a part of the life of the Twin Cities—that people will discover it and notice as the installation changes over time. In fact, the tombstone itself won’t always be here. On the death of the artist’s father, Phùng Vo, the stone will be shipped to Denmark and placed over his grave in Vestre KirkegÃ¥rd, a large cemetery in Copenhagen….

Just as immigration documents have controlled his family’s movements in life, the Walker’s acquisition of Vo’s work has led to contractual obligations that will impact various activities after his father’s death:…Phùng Vo has created a will for the Walker that …bequests to the institution four artifacts of personal significance, including a gold crucifix with a chain and three objects based on versions he purchased soon after he arrived in Denmark. These items—a Dupont lighter, an American military class ring, and a Rolex watch—have since been “upgraded” to newer models. Phùng Vo bought them originally because as a recent immigrant from Communist Vietnam, they symbolized a particularly Western brand of success and masculinity.

Whereas the tombstone will rest within the protective enclave of the Walker until it is sent to the cemetery in Copenhagen, these four objects will be part of Phùng Vo’s daily life until he dies. After the tombstone arrives in Copenhagen, the artifacts will be delivered to Minneapolis where they can be installed in a vitrine designed by the artist.

And here’s what Frieze magazine said about him in 2007, reviewing a show in Berlin:

Danh Vo investigates the invisible boundaries between the public and the private, and the possibility of their porousness. He undermines the institutional (he curated an exhibition of works by well-known artists in his parents’ house in Copenhagen) as well as the personal (he has married and then divorced several people, augmenting his name with theirs but not sharing a private romantic life). He has collaborated on a project with Tobias Rehberger without declaring his co-authorship, and stolen an idea from his artist boyfriend for his own funding application. Vo adopts appropriation more rigorously than is often the case, to discover how much a person can actually appropriate. Another person’s idea? An art work? An identity? There is a constant back and forth that questions authorial status, ownership and the role of personal relationships that prevents the ‘appropriator’ from keeping the upper hand….

See what I mean? Vo’s work is undoubtedly thought-provoking, but I haven’t seen it in person (at least I didn’t take note of it, if I have). Until then, I have to reserve judgment.  

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Guggenheim (top); of Frieze (middle)