Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

New College Course: Teaching Artists To Manage Themselves

School is about to start in some places of the country and at some levels, so it seems like a good time to go back to some news released about a month ago: On Wednesday, James Hart, an award-winning actor, director and producer will take up his post at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, as the first Director of Arts Entrepreneurship, an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Division of Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship, at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

The new position is part of what SMU says is both new and unique in the U.S. — an arts entrepreneurship program at the college level. It’s a minor, not a major.  Meadows’s dean, José Antonio Bowen, said in a press release at the end of June: 

The creation of this undergraduate minor is one of Meadows’ most significant curricular initiatives, giving our students the opportunity to learn how to turn their artistic dreams into sustainable business plans. Audition skills are not enough! With the appointment of James Hart – an artist and educator with extensive experience in the fusion of arts and entrepreneurship education – the Meadows School is already positioned as the leader in this new and critical field.

I would agree on that. Again and again, we’ve seen the “talent” (as everyone says in TV so why not here?) rise into management, and sometime they mess it up. That was one excuse cited recently for the dismissal of Edward Villella as artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, as this article in the Miami Herald says. (Sample sentence: “The ballet had a deficit of over $1.5 million, and was in one of the worst financial crises in its history.” But who really knows?)

Bowen said he hired Hart because he “ s the owner, founder and former dean of TITAN Teaterskole (The International Theatre Academy Norway) – a full-time professional theater training program and the first school in Europe to offer intensive training in arts entrepreneurship at the professional conservatory level.” There, “His teaching method stresses the importance of students’ development of entrepreneurial and business skills in addition to traditional arts techniques.”

Others have tried to instill management or simple business skills in artists, but not in the same way. SMU believes it’s starting something that will become routine

As for Hart, a Dallas native. he has taught at the Yale School of Drama, New York University, the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, Tufts University, Fu Ren University in Taipei, Taiwan, Harlem School of the Arts, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Kirkenaer Ballettskole (Oslo), among others, his bio says.

He has also “directed classics of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Marivaux, Gogol, Miller and others, including a large number of world-premiere productions. He has also directed several films…[is] producing The Voice Within, a documentary about master acting teacher and former head of acting at the Yale School of Drama, Earle Gister. As an actor, Hart has performed in a number of venues including the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Dallas Theater Center, Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Theatre Alliance in D.C., and in St. Petersburg, Russia and Taichung, Taiwan. Hart earned his M.F.A. in acting from the Yale School of Drama in 1999 and graduated from SMU with a B.F.A. in theatre in 1996.”

Good move, SMU.

 

Beginning Of The Endgame At MOCA?

Charles Young, the former chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art, has urged the institution’s influential life trustee Eli Broad to remove museum director Jeffrey Deitch.

That’s from a story by Jori Finkel in the Los Angeles Times this morning. Young is a former chancellor of UCLA — no slouch.

Perhaps Deitch didn’t know what he started when he forced the resignation of Paul Schimmel — though he should have — but Broad, who has played hard ball in the business world with the best, should have known. They must have underestimated Schimmel’s support system and overestimated Deitch’s.

More the the LATimes:

[Young] questioned Broad’s “support for Jeffrey, when many about you are no longer willing to give him any credence as a Director of a world-class museum, indeed believe his tenure is likely to take MOCA into the abyss…”

Young’s friendship with Broad didn’t prevent him from saying:

“I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job for which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified…The resignation of dedicated, long-term trustees, and especially four highly respected artists of international acclaim should bother you, David [Johnson], Maria [Bell] and the other continuing members of the Board. The question is ‘What is now to be done?'”

This could be the beginning of the endgame.

 

Chasing Audiences: Too Much Emphasis On Youth?

It’s pretty obvious that museums — and most other places as well — chase the young. They see gray hair in their galleries and fear that no one will replace them if they don’t do something about it NOW. 

I’ve always had some doubt about that — many people, I believe, don’t have the time for art or the inclination for it until they reach a certain age, which — anecdotally — seems to be somewhere in the 40s, give or take, after most people’s children have developed some independence.

Now comes a survey which agrees that society is too youth-obsessed. According to a firm called Euro RSCG Worldwide, which survey people in 19 countries, “63% of consumers around the world believe that society’s obsession with youth has gotten out of hand.”  Results in the U.S. clocked in at exactly 63%, though the response ranged from 78% in Colombia to 45% in Belgium.

“Interestingly,” an article on Marketing Charts said, “this view is shared by 6 in 10 Millennials (aged 18-34).”

7,213 adults took part in the survey, but ages were not stated in the report, nor was the margin of error.

This survey was more about aging itself — e.g., “55% of the respondents said they look younger than most people their age” — than it was about choices. But it still makes me wonder. Older people — and here I mean 40s and above — seem to resent the attention given to young people, even perhaps at some museums. Museums have to deal with that, making sure that they present a balance of activities and, with luck, a lot of programming that appeals to all ages.

I really love it when I go, say, to the Frick or the Morgan and see people of all ages. And I dislike it when I see costume exhibitions full of young people who never set foot in art exhibitions. Likewise, with diverse audiences for both, say, Jacob Lawrence and, say, Titian.

Chart Courtesy of Marketin Charts

Out Go The Sargents In NYC; In Comes Flavin, LeWitt In Texas

When I learned today that the Players Club in New York City has been selling its portraits by John Singer Sargent — two down and one to go — I thought it was worth mentioning here. The money, from the disposition of pictures of actors and members, Edwin Booth, the club’s co-founder ($2.5 million), and Lawrence Barrett ($1 million), is intended to pay for the rehabilitation of the Club’s crumbling facade — an 1845 building that was Booth’s home. On the market now is Sargent’s portrait of Joseph Jefferson, also expected to bring $1 million. This all according to The New York Post.

It’s a private club, of theater people, and they have every right to sell — the only reason to mention it is the opportunity these portraits present to would-be buyers. Dealer Warren Adelson bought the Booth (at left).

But along with that news came a bookend about the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, which is about to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its Tadao Ando-designed building. Reinforcing some public opinion about modern art, here was the lede in the Dallas/Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

What does a 10-year-old want for reaching the two-digit milestone? Some fluorescent lights? Perhaps a box of colored pencils for drawing on the wall?

That’s what the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has purchased…

Clever, but…the article was referring to works by Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt, of course. Still, it was a positive article, noting that “The Modern’s new pieces are debuting over the fall in an anticipatory buildup for the anniversary party” on Dec. 6.

So what exactly has the museum acquired:

The blue and yellow fluorescent light sculpture by Dan Flavin and the wall drawing by Sol LeWitt are two of many presents, er acquisitions, the Modern has purchased recently. Many of the new pieces are by artists already represented in the Modern’s stable, such as Fort Worth-based Vernon Fisher, Howard Hodgkin, Bruce Nauman and Nicholas Nixon. New names that will go up on the walls are those of Robyn O’Neil and Mark Bradford. Bradford’s painting, Kingdom Day, 2010, is a homage to the Kingdom Day Parade held every year in Los Angeles on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Bradford’s depiction specifically references the 1992 parade in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating; in it an explosive landscape is rendered from the topology of satellite imagery.

Also new to the institution is a piece by Jenny Holzer, who will be given a semi-permanent gallery for one of her signature signs that scrolls LED aphorisms such as “Money creates taste;” “Your oldest fears are you worst ones;” “Slipping into madness is good for comparison;” and “Mothers shouldn’t make too many sacrifices.” The rolling platitudes will move from one end of the long clerestory gallery to the edge of the pond and seemingly slide into the water. This gallery is a neighbor to the one that houses the Ladder for Booker T. Washington by Martin Puryear, and as one of the most valuable tracts of museum real estate, it needed a destination piece.

On view by Oct. 21 will be LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #50A, 1970; Flavin’s Untitled (for you Leo, in long respect and affection) 4, 1978; Nixon’s latest installment for his photographic series, The Brown Sisters, Truro, Massachusetts, 2011; Bradford’s painting, O’Neil’s nearly 14-foot long charcoal drawing These Final Hours Embrace At Last; This Is Our Ending, This Is Our Past, 2007; and Hodgkin’s Ice, 2008-10.

Up by Nov. 16 will be Fisher’s The Coriolis Effect, 1987; and Nauman’s video and sound installation Studio Mix, 2010. Holzer’s work, which is yet to be titled, is the showpiece of the anniversary gala.

It”s clever to unveil things like this, doling them out and giving people new reasons to visit and new things to talk about. Good for whoever thought it up. And I can live with that lede.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Players Club (top) and Ft. Worth MoMA (bottom)

 

Another Google Cultural Initiative — World Of Wonders — With WMF

Not going away for a summer vacation this year? There’s a new tool from the World Monuments Fund* and Google that salves that wound. It’s called the World Wonders website, and it takes you to some of the world’s great places — all culturally significant sites – “through panoramic images, 3-D models, photographs, YouTube videos, and other information.” You can travel vicariously.

More than 130 sites in 18 countries are already up, and the WMF promises more to come. The project offers anyone anywhere in the world with access to the Internet an opportunity to view these sites and the ability to learn more about them.

Developing the site, Google deployed its Street View technology, which lets users navigate within destinations by moving their mouse, moving forward and backward, getting in close or panning pit. As MSNBC wrote a few weeks ago:  “Using the hand tool or on-screen compass, you can “walk” through the gardens of Versailles, amid ancient temples in Kyoto and along the waterfront in Cinque Terre, Italy. You can even walk inside the ring of megaliths at Stonehenge, something you’re not allowed to do at the actual site.

I explored a little — using Internet Explorer, not Chrome — and I like the way WW is organized: You can choose the site to visit by location (continent) or theme (gardens, palaces (a scene from the Royal Palace at Caserta, Italy is above right; and the Thomaskirche in Leipzig is at left), cities, historic sites, etc.).

WMF announced this in Madrid on May 31, but it hasn’t received much attention or notice.

It should. The World Wonders Project — aside from being fun — is also an educational resource. WMF has also developed educational packages for downloading from the site, for classroom use.

The potential for this project, if it expands, is huge. Not quite a vacation substitute, of course, but…

Photo Credits: Courtesy of World Wonders

*I consult to a foundation that supports the WMF