Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

God And Tiffany In Manhattan: A Rediscovery

Ok, it’s a stretch to allude to William F. Buckley’s seminal book, but that’s what popped into my head as a headline when I read the press release for a show opening this month at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York. Titled Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion, the exhibit aims to reveal a side of Tiffany that is understudied, under appreciated and largely unexamined.

Yet, for many years, Tiffany received many commissions for stained-glass windows, altars, and other ecclesiastical objects as well as his lamps, secular windows, and jewelry. He was famous at at time when the number of churches in America was growing tremendously — more than 4,000 between 1890 and 1906, according to MOBIA’s press release. In 1889, even before that boom, Tiffany had actually established an ecclesiastical division at his firm. “What Tiffany had done for home furnishing he began to do for houses of worship,” the museum says.

Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion  brings together 83 mosaics, stained-glass windows, liturical objects and works on paper, plus promotional materials — many never or rarely seen in public before. They are loans churches as well as from museums like the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Florida; the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; the Corning Museum of  Glass; and the Met, among others, plus private collectors. 

Fathers of the Church, at right, comes from the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in Long Island City. Tiffany created this mosaic for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago — part of an elaborate chapel for liturgical works including windows, candelabra, and crosses. This display received 54 awards –
more than any other exhibitor – “and won Tiffany Studios international fame for its religious work.”  It hasn’t been seen publicly in years. 

The liturgical suite at left comes from Cobble Hill Church in Brooklyn, and draws inspiration from medieval Siena.

If these are representative of the entire exhibition, it should be a wonderful display.

Tiffany’s religious works did have a small showing last year, however. The Taft Museum in Cincinnati mounted an exhibition called In Company with Angels: Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows — seven 8-foot-high stained-glass lancet windows, representing seven angels that Tiffany made in the late 1890s as a commission for a Swedenborgian church in Cincinnati. When the church was demolished in 1964 to make room for an Interstate, parishioners — fortunately — saved the windows. “They are on a national tour to help pay for their conservation and upkeep,” says the Taft. Maybe they are coming someplace near you.

The art world full of discoveries these days, as it ought to be. That’s what makes it interesting.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of MOBIA
 

 

Eastman House Hire Is Outside Normal Bounds: A Triple Risk?

Forget former gallery-owner-turned-museum-director Jeffrey Deitch as an outlier: The George Eastman House has gone even farther afield in hiring a new director: Bruce Barnes, whose appointment was announced last Thursday, has never served in a museum and has no formal art history education. He was, on the other hand, the CEO of Element K, a Rochester-based online learning company, and has worked on Wall Street. His PhD, from the University of Pennsylvania, is in economics, as was his undergraduate degree.

According to Business Week:

…From February 1997 to March 2000, he served as a Managing Director of Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc. and a Senior Member of its merchant banking group since September 1998. He served as an Executive Vice President of Ziff Brothers Investments, L.L.C. from January 1995 to June 1996. Prior to that, Dr. Barnes served at Ziff Communications Company, the holding company for a predecessor of Ziff-Davis, as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from September 1993 to December 1994 and as Vice President and Special Assistant to the Chairman from November 1992 to September 1993….

He has also, and perhaps still is, a director at a couple of companies.

What’s going on here? The Eastman House has been looking for a director since July, 2011, when Anthony Bannon announced his decision to retire in a year’s time. It’s unclear how they found Barnes — probably a search firm — but, reading between the lines, it seems that his vision sold the board. He wants to take the Eastman House’s fame international, which will build on Bannon’s work that made it national.

Barnes does have relevant experience. After leaving Element K, he founded  the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, a private foundation based in New York. He is the sole trustee, according to public documents, and works there 20 hours a week.

The ADA1900, according to the Eastman House’s press release, “works independently and in collaboration with museums across the United States to foster understanding and appreciation of American decorative art from the period around 1900.”  Barnes co-wrote The Jewelry and Metalwork of Marie Zimmermann (2011), which was copublished by ADA1900 and Yale University Press. And ADA1900 copublished The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs (2008), “an award-winning scholarly book that accompanied an exhibition of the same title co-organized by ADA1900 and the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Huntington Art Collections, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.” With his partner, writer Joseph Cunningham, listed as director of ADA1900 on its website, he has through the Foundation has given gifts of decorative art to 14 museums (listed on the Foundation’s home page).

Looking at ADA1900’s 2011 990, Barnes has also done a little dealing — the foundation sold four Charles Rohlfs dining room chairs that he had donated to a collector last fall at an appraised value of $90,000, for example.

Aside from his own donations, ADA1900’s notable financing came from the Fairfield County Community Foundation ($70,00o) in the year ended last Dec. 31. It has net assets of $1.6 million and expenses of about $325,000 last year. No salary for Barnes was listed, so presumably he took none.

Nothing wrong with any of this, but it is interestingly non-traditional. The Eastman House says it expects Barnes to create “more worldwide traveling exhibitions and an enhanced virtual museum online.” His own statement is included in the aforementioned press release.

The hirer in situations like this never knows how the hiree will turn out. Running a museums is different from running a business — not to mention working on Wall Street – but Barnes definitely has relevant skills. He seems to be entrepreneurial — and that’s good. He sold a vision, and that’s good. He has already lived in snowy Rochester, so he can’t complain. He might  be just the ticket.

I wish he had some notable interest in photography, however, which many people still do not accept as a fine art. That’s a place where Barnes’s past focus on decorative arts will not help.

However, Bannon was a risk 16 years ago, too: He has a BA in biology, a Master’s and PhD in English, had worked as a newspaper critic before joining the museum world as director of the Birchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo. He recently returned there, as director of a much large institution now.

For my hometown’s sake, I hope Barnes fulfills his promise. Kodak itself is in dire straights, and today came more news that the Rochester Philharmonic is also in trouble.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the George Eastman House

Art Institute’s Architecture Experiment: Studio Gang Architects

When I worked at The New York Times, tour groups would sometimes be escorted through the newswoorm, and the members would stand there watching reporters and editors work. We simply sat at our computers or talked on the phone — and I never understood why anyone would want to take a tour of the NYT (this was after the presses were moved out of W. 43rd St.). I felt the same way when I worked in television: basically, there’s not much to watch. What we do goes on mostly in our heads.

I was reminded of this when I read about the Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects exhibition that opened this week at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jeanne Gang, founder of the firm, MacArthur “genious,” and designer of  the beautiful, undulating Aqua Tower, an 82-story highrise in Chicago (among other things), is the subject of the show, along with her team. But most of what they do goes on inside their heads, too — doesn’t it?

Maybe a lot less than at a newspaper. The Chicago exhibition — self-described as “innovative” in the press release — is not a survey or retrospective. It promises to show the practice “in an engaging workshop-like environment that reveals the practice’s creative processes as they seek to answer pressing contemporary issues through architecture” and consists of two interrelated parts:

The first functions as a gallery with projects illustrated through a range of materials from sketchbooks and models to photographs, plans, and other drawings. This space will also feature a special series of installations, also designed by SGA, dedicated to the studio’s material research and formal explorations.

The second section of the exhibition replicates a workshop, complete with a large worktable, pin-up boards, full-scale mock-ups, and material samples. This space is a key component of the presentation and will serve as the location for two Archi-Salons–public programs that will further connect and place the work in the exhibition within the larger field of architectural discourse.

They are scheduled for Oct. 6 and Nov. 7 — details at that link above.

First admission: I haven’t seen the exhibition. But architecture exhibits tend to attract good crowds, and this one sounds to me like on worth paying attention to. I haven’t yet found reviews, but here’s one local article that gives an on-the-ground report.

 

The Expanded Stedelijk Opens; Ann Goldstein’s Chance and Challenge

The reopening of the expanded, improved Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which took place on Saturday, hasn’t gotten much press in the United States, despite its being run by an American, Ann Goldstein, formerly a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. That’s a pity. Especially because Goldstein came to New York to meet the press last spring: When was the last time the Stedelijk did that?

As I write in an article for Art in America magazine — the September issue — Goldstein has high goals. She exhibited, in our interviews, an interesting mix of assuredness, built on a long track records of organizing well-respected exhibitions, and willingness to change, adapting to a new country’s customs. I suppose that’s logical: as she pointed out to me, she’s from Los Angeles, where change is a constant. And she seemed so down-to-earth that I was a little surprised when she used American corporate-speak when she talked about her goals, wanting the Stedelijk to be alive, active, artist-centered, anticipated and ambitious. Pretty good aims, despite the hokey alliteration.

One article I read, not well done, noted the lack of Dutch artists in the opening exhibitions. That’s just plain wrong, as my article notes, though it’s a sensitive topic. After I raised it — prompted by a chat with a Dutch artist — and we talked it through, Goldstein nevertheless later wrote me an email, saying:

As you know, we will open in September with a presentation of our collection and one temporary exhibition, “Beyond Imagination,” which features the work of 20 artists who live an work in the Netherlands. It is part of a longstanding series of exhibitions known as the Municipal Art Acquisitions. These exhibitions, which are sponsored by the City of Amsterdam have been annual exhibitions and acquisitions that look at Dutch-based artists It was very important to me that we reopen with this exhibition, and as many of the artists have been participants in the residency programs here in NL: de Ateliers, Rijksakademie, and Jan van Eyck Akademie, it also gives us the opportunity to put a spotlight on the vital and important Dutch art community, which is also quite international.

 In addition, we have a magnificent new monumental textile commission by Dutch designer Petra Blaisse made specifically for our new entrance hall, our new graphic identity is by the Dutch design team Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen, and our collection display will include the work of numerous Dutch artists and designers, including single gallery spaces devoted to the work of Marlene Dumas, Rineke Dijkstra, Willem de Kooning (here still considered Dutch), Erik van Lieshout, Guido van der Werve, Melvin Moti, Ed van der Elsken, Gerrit Rietveld, etc, as well as works by Karel Appel, Stanley Brouwn, Ger van Elk, Jan Dibbets, Daan van Golden, Loes van der Horst, Wim Crouwel, among many others in the various collection presentations.

The Stedelijk is an international museum, though, and Goldstein’s bigger challenge will be meeting the attendance expectations of the board, which wants 500,000 visitors a year – which it has never done. It will need to draw from the crowd at the neighboring van Gogh Museum, which attracts about 1.4 million visitors a year, and the Rijksmuseum, which gets more than 1 million.

The Stedelijk’s new entrance, on the museum square, will help, but it won’t be enough.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Stedelijk

 

Gemaldegalerie Battle Far From Over: Berlin Pulls Out Another Big Gun — UPDATED

Just in case you thought that cultural authorities in Berlin might cave in to pressure regarding the future of its Old Master collection, here’s a dose of reality. They continue to wage war, even though they have ordered up a “feasibility study” to assess alternatives to the original plans, which would send most of the city’s magnificent Old Masters collection into storage for an undetermined number of years, while a new museum is supposedly built on Museum Island, and integrate the rest into the already filled galleries of the Bode Museum.

As I noted on Sept. 12, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation thinks that its plan to devote the Gemaldegalerie (now home to the Old Masters) to the Pietzch collection of modern art without adequate assurances that the Old Masters will not go into storage is just fine — and they are pulling out big guns to support it, an effort to counter the many who oppose it.

On Saturday, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute, weighed in, supporting the move in Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZa). He begins by saying that no one goes to the Gemaldegalerie — the same argument made at the outset by the Berlin authorities.

That follows a show of support by Metropolitan Museum director Thomas P. Campbell, who — inexplicably to some curators on his staff — wrote a letter to The Art Newspaper agreeing with the plan. (It was published in the print edition only and is not online.)  The Art Newspaper has published online three additional letters of support for the plan, but — to my knowledge — only one, by Jeffrey Hamburger of Harvard, against — so far.

The petition Hamburger started, btw, is now up to 13,703 signatures.

I expect more such letters and articles in the coming months, some orchestrated by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The Met, the Getty and other museums — and their directors — have a vested interest in pleasing the Prussians. They need to borrow art from them down the road — as they have in the past. It takes no courage on their part to support the plan; it’s simply an act of cozying up to friends and would-be friends. It does take courage for the curators who have signed petitions to put their names on it — there may be retribution in the form of loans denied.

I have rarely — have I ever? — turned over space here to someone else. But former museum director Tom Freudenheim has sent this on-the-ground report, which I am pasting, in somewhat edited form, here:

Nothing has changed since my time living in Berlin, over a decade ago: the same terrible (German-only) signage outside and in (‘Gemäldegalerie’ doesn’t qualify for Esperanto-like signaling that it’s a place to see old master paintings), and the same sad feeling that the proprietors would just as soon keep out potential visitors….The paucity of visitors on a sunny fall week-day afternoon bore that out [but]… isn’t this solitude a lot better than fighting crowds at the Louvre?

When — and if — the notably argumentative Berliners manage to develop plans (and funding) for [a] new museum [for the Old Master paintings], it may turn out to be wonderful; but replicating the current purpose-built galleries that opened in 1998 will be an incredibly hard act to follow. They are subtly perfect in almost every way, albeit connected by an odd central courtyard.

Meanwhile, try playing the triage game that kept me busy for a couple of hours: which paintings would I keep on view and which would I place into storage for an indefinite period of time…Hopeless task. Let’s see, how about the “lesser” masters? So I start with the riveting Christoph Amberger portrait of Charles V, the wonderful Jean Fouquet double portrait of Étienne Chevalier and St. Stephen [above left], the Hugo van der Goes Monforte Altar — no one has ever heard of these guys anyway. And…there are so many works by Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck, Rembrandt and Hals, Cranach, Durer, Holbein and Altdorfer…One or two would suffice!

…Surely we don’t need to give in to feminist issues by pretending that the brilliant 1777 Self Portrait by Anna Therbusch [above right] warrants our attention. And considering that there’s a real Caravaggio, why bother with spectacular Caravaggiesque paintings such as Honthorst’s Calling of Peter? OK – I found one to omit: Dürer’s Madonna with the Siskin (a bird); is it a terrible painting or in bad condition? Dunno. But my guess is that Dürer scholars would miss it.

I gave up my triage exercise by the time I got to the Italians, wondering whether this was my last chance to luxuriate in one of the world’s great collections. The issue here isn’t whether a new permanent home might not be a good idea. It’s how managerial ineptitude could have placed the museums (and therefore their scholarly and general public) into such a bind that the potential “deal” (if it really is a deal) with the Pietzsch’s could be subject to that kind of tradeoff.

Let’s keep repeating that: this has never been a Modern vs. Old Master fight, as the original petition made clear in the first paragraph. But that’s how the Pietzch-backers want to portray it — the new against the old — when, really, they made a bad deal.

UPDATE, 9/26: No sooner had I written and published this then, indeed, another heavyweight museum director published a piece agreeing with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation’s plan. Here’s Ian Wardropper, director of the Frick, in Die Welt.