Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Party Palaces Or Art Museums? Plus, Barnes Redux

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer last weekend, critic Inga Saffron made an interesting point:

Passing the Barnes Foundation’s sprawling new parking lot one recent afternoon, I was surprised to see half the spaces were empty. By evening, however, the joint was jumping, the lot was full, and many female visitors were wearing skyscraper heels, rather than the sensible flats of the serious museumgoer. That’s when it hit me that the real motive for cramming the lot onto the Barnes’ tiny site was to help the gallery promote itself as a party venue…

…museums everywhere are turning to more overtly commercial, moneymaking ventures. These days, people are just as likely to visit an art museum for a wedding reception as for the treasures on the walls.

Also, likely, another reason to move the Barnes away from the suburbs into the city center — it’s a better money-raiser.

The story isn’t about the New Barnes, though (see below for an update on that) — it’s about how two other regional museums, the  James A. Michener Art Museum (left) in Doylestown, and the Allentown Art Museum (right), are using design to attract private events in  hopes “that people who first encounter the museums as party guests will return as art patrons.”

Saffron approves of the Michener’s new design — “ crisp glass box in the tradition of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House outside Chicago.” She says “…the museum has already booked 25 weddings so far this year, along with its own lecture and music series, in the party room, which seats 180 people at tables. The pavilion’s ambitious architecture also seems to have emboldened the museum in other ways. It just opened a new show featuring rarely seen works from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, the first international show staged at the Doylestown museum.”

In Allentown, the addition is “really an expanded lobby…designed to give the museum a flexible public space and, more importantly, a stronger public presence on Fifth Street, in the city’s downtown.” There, the once solid facade has been replaced by huge, clear windows that allow people to see into the lobby, the cafe and the bookstore from the street, she says.

Saffron is the architecture critic, and writes mostly about the buildings’ designs — but she approves of the idea that if these part venues help “get people in the door, that’s a good reason to celebrate.”

Considering the alternative — shorter hours or higher admissions prices — it’s hard to disagree. Except for the New Barnes: being a party venue was not the biggest reason its backers wanted it to move from Lower Merion — turning it into a tourist attraction and gaining control ranked higher.

 We have new evidence for that, as the Friends of the Barnes Foundation discovered the other day. They wrote:

In a recently-published blog post, Kimberly Camp, President and CEO of the Barnes Foundation from 1998 until 2005 wrote:“Bankruptcy was not the reason we filed the petition to move the Foundation to the city.  At the time the petition was filed, the Barnes Foundation had a cash surplus and we had no debt – none.  But, saying so made the rescue so much more gallant.”

As a result, the ever resourceful Friends’ attorney, Samuel C. Stretton “has filed a Petition in Superior Court, asking that the Barnes Foundation case currently under appeal be remanded back to Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans’ Court. ”

He wrote:

This statement is shocking because it is absolutely contrary to the position and information presented by the Barnes Foundation during the hearings…Although it is late in the game now with the Barnes Foundation open in Philadelphia, the Court system has to have integrity and if the President and CEO says there was ample funds and that was just a false statement about financial difficulty, then this matter needs to be sent back down to Judge Ott to sort this out.

Camp has now taken down her posts, but here’s the “evidence” in a PDF called Some_Thoughts_on_The_new_Barnes_Foundation.

Here we go again.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer

July Fourth: The Statue of Liberty As Subject

 Happy Fourth! Have a look at this painting, in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art:

The Statue of Liberty in Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s Studio, Paris, 1884

Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud’s painting the Statue of Liberty in Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s Studio, Paris (1884) commemorates the construction of Bartholdi’s colossus Liberty Enlightening the World better known to Americans as the Statue of Liberty. Dargaud began exhibiting at the Paris salon in 1873, and until his death in 1921 he specialized in topographical scenes of belle epoque Paris. Like Manet and the Impressionists he was fascinated by the city and painted views of Paris that combine a topographer’s eye for realist detail with an impressionist’s sensitivity to the fleeting quality of modern life. A series of his Parisian views are in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, one of which shows the Statue of Liberty fully assembled outside Bartholdi’s studio.

Inspired on a trip to Egypt by the grandeur of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, Bartholdi imagined a monumental statue of Liberty that would be twice the size of the Sphinx. Liberty was fabricated in Paris at the workshop of Gaget, Gauthier-and Company at 25 rue Chazelles. Work began in 1875. Because of its size the statue was modeled in sections. The right arm bearing the torch was the first portion competed; it was shipped to the United States in 1876 in time for the nation’s centennial. It was not until 1883 that the statue was completed, and on June 15, 1885, the Statue of Liberty-in 214 packing crates–arrived in New York harbor.

A contemporary photograph shows the wooden lattice armature over which a full-scale plaster model of Liberty was formed.’,` Gaget, Gauthier and Company were experts in the art of  repousse; a sculptural technique of hammering sheet metal inside molds 11 7 The copper sheets of the statue were hammered onto carved wooden templates. A sturdy intricate internal iron skeleton designed by the celebrated engineer, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, supported the statue’s thin copper cladding. Darguad’s view of the workshop represents the stage at which the plaster model for the statue’s left hand and arm had been completed.

 Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

 

The Lock Sells — Very Quickly

Christie’s had John Constable’s “The Lock” on stage at tonight’s auction for just over a minute — and that’s not a plus.

The bidding was started at £17 million, increased by £500,000 increments, and it was all over — two bidders, I think, but it’s hard to tell from viewing online — at £20 million. That was the low estimate, but does not include the premium. I leave that for Christie’s to figure out for us and disclose post-sale.

Why the painting failed to bring more money — and more bids — will have to wait for post-sale analysis. The high estimate was £25 million, and I heard from someone recently in London that “word on the street is that a Russian left a bid of  £25 million.” I’d heard mention of even higher prices. Sometimes rumors like these scare bidders away. Or maybe people don’t like the seller’s motivation.

I watched some other lots sell, and several soared past estimates, though not in the eight-figure range.

 

Help Stop Berlin’s Plan To Store Its Old Masters

Last week here, I wrote about the shocking situation in Berlin, where the city’s current plan to accommodate the gift of the the Pietzsch collection of modern art involves the emptying of the Gemaeldegalerie, which houses the State Museums’ world-class old master paintings collection, and moving in the 20th century works.

Some Old Master paintings — perhaps including the Durer at right and the Vermeer below — would be sent to the Bode museum and the rest would go into storage for at least six years,  possibly longer, depending on whether or not the state can find and finance a new home for the Old Masters (more selections from the collection are here). 

Many Real Clear Arts readers were as appalled as I was, and remain.

Over the weekend, Jeffrey Hamburger, the Harvard art historian who has been calling attention to this plan, posted a petition to the powers that be at Change.org.

It asks for:

  • true disclosure of what would happen to the Old Master collection under the current plan – it’s very unclear how much would go into storage and how much would be stuffed into the Bode.
  •  concrete plans to display the Old Master collection that is currently on view in its entirety concurrently — whether in a new or adapted building.
  •  an adequate strategy that will do justice to the whole of Berlin’s extraordinary collections, including a home for Berlin’s growing collections of modern art.

Who could be opposed to that?

Please join others who care about art in signing the petition here.

As I post this, more than 2,100 have signed on — including James Marrow, emeritus professor at Princeton; Robert Darnton, University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard; Frederick Ilchman, curator of paintings at the MFA-Boston; Yve-Alain Bois, of the Institute for Advanced Study; many curators, art historians, art dealers, and people who just love art. Many come from Germany itself, and as far away as Australia. It’s heartening to see people sign on from all over the world.

Photo Credits: © SMB, Gemäldegalerie; Fotos: Jörg P. Anders

 

Norman Rosenthal Quits Thyssen Board, Protesting “Lock” Sale

Well, if you had three luxurious homes, a 125-foot yacht, and an art collection reportedly worth about $1 billion, what would you sell to raise a little cash?

Depends on whom you ask.If you ask Baroness Carmen ‘Tita’ Thyssen-Bornemisza, the answer is John Constable’s The Lock.

If you ask Norman Rosenthal, former exhibitions director of the Royal Academy, it’s anything else. On Friday, he quit the board of the Baroness’s museum in Madrid to protest the sale.

The Baroness decided earlier this year that she can live without one of Constable’s most famous paintings and it’s up for sale at Christie’s on Tuesday. Presale estimate?  £20-25 million or about $30- $40 million. The Lock “is one of a celebrated series of six large-scale canvases that also includes “The Hay Wain”, arguably his most famous work that hangs in Britain’s National Gallery in London,” as Reuters says (more details here). Rumors I’ve heard say the price may reach $100 million.

The Lock fetched £10.9 million at Sotheby’s in 1990, when it was purchased by Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. Not a bad return even at the low end.

Rosenthal, however, called the sale “morally shameful,” and told the Baroness in his resignation letter that she “had no understanding of either art history or art appreciation,” according to London’s Daily Mail.

In response, she told the Mail:  “I cannot afford to keep the painting. People think I am wealthy because I was married to Baron Thyssen. But I have never had a lot of cash because my business is in paintings but the paintings don’t give me any money, they just hang on the walls of the museum for free.” Besides, she said, British paintings do not figure highly in her collection. Most of Thyssen’s collection was sold to the Spanish state, but about 250 works remain in the Baroness’s private collection — including the Constable — and have been lent to Spain for the last 13 years, on view at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.

“Tita’s” stepdaughter, Francesca Von Habsburg, has also disagreed publicly with the sale. Last week, the Mail said she said that her late father would never have sold it and accused her stepmother of “putting the museum’s international reputation at risk.”

Rosenthal and von Hapsburg say that she doesn’t need the money and/or she should sell other things.

What about those earrings?