Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

The Corcoran Needs New Thinking, New Management: Look North

Is this the beginning of the end of the Corcoran Art Gallery? Yesterday, Washington’s oldest public art museum, founded in 1869 and opened in 1874, said it may sell the Beaux Arts building it has occupied since 1897 and move to the suburbs, where it can obtain more breathing room for less money. Besides, it said upgrading the existing building to current museum standards would cost at least $100 million and it would still lack gallery space for displaying its permanent collection.

Costs aside, that’s crazy. Why leave all those tourists to the District behind? Didn’t the Newseum try to get visitors to come to Arlington and then decide it had to move to the city?

You can read the full statement from the director/president and chairman of the board here.

An article in the Washington Post has more on the current situation and on the Corcoran’s sad history in recent years, which have been marked by mismanagement and poor leadership. And it provides more on how the board came to this decision, with help from a strategic consulting firm named Real Change Strategies, whose website is not operable as I write this. Real Change Strategies is owned by Martha Blue, a former employee of McKinsey & Co. and Goldman Sachs with an MBA from the University of North Carolina. (Not that I’m blaming her…) According to the Corcoran’s 990, it paid her $609,691 for her advice.

The obvious fact here is that the Corcoran has had no workable, believable vision to sell to potential funders. It has been unable to raise money because there’s little reason for philanthropists to give. Its 990 forms, for fiscal years ended June 30, show a decline in contributions and grants to $4.4 million in the year to June 30, 2010, its most recent filing. That’s the lowest for the past ten years, down from $4.9 million in FY 09; $8.2 million in FY08 and $12.9 million in FY07. The number hovers around $10 million for a couple of years before that — and in FY02, it was $20.4 million (or $26 million in today’s dollars).

You can’t blame that record on the recession. We’ve been through several cycles since then, and in 2002 we were barely out of the 2001 recession (not to mention the impact of 9/11).

The Corcoran has gone through umpty-ump changes in directors, to no avail. Maybe it should simply hand over its management to the National Gallery of Art.

New York had a similar situation recently, when the Museum of the City of New York took over the South Street Seaport Museum at the behest of city government. It’s too recent a move to call it a success. But the Seaport museum too had been clueless, and the city was able to intervene because the museum owed it money.

Memo to whoever can knock heads in Washington: look north; this may be a model.

 

Toledo Museum Calls Out “Hey, Baby, Wanna See My Paintings?”

Art museums everywhere are searching for and trying to appeal to younger audiences, but the Toledo Museum of Art may just have everyone beat. It’s offering “baby tours” designed for parents or caregivers with infants up to 18 months old — one baby per adult please. And no strollers.

Now, many art museums have family programs, but this is the first time I’ve seen one offer an initiative like this. (Do let me know if I’m wrong.)

I learned of these baby tours in the TMA’s ARTMATTERS May-August magazine and they seem noteworthy.

The article about them cites the TMA’s director of education, Dr. Kathy Danko-McGhee, a former professor of early childhood art education, as someone who has studied how babies respond to art. Noting that the visual system of humans develops during the earliest days of our lives, it says newborns as young as nine minutes old prefer to look at photographs and pictures resembling the human face; that newborns can see color; that a one-month-old can distinguish between red and green, and that at 12 weeks old, infants prefer colors over white.

So the TMA is offering baby tours of its Jules Olitsky exhibition (his Purple Golubchik, right), on five Friday afternoons at 3:30 p.m. The Pitch: “Watch your baby respond to large colorful paintings and learn ways to facilitate early visual literacy skills.”

Looking at art “promotes early neuron connections in the brain. And for the verbal toddler, interacting with an adult in naming images and describing different characteristics in a work of art lays the groundwork for visual, cognitive and language development,” the TMA says.

Surprisingly, the magazine invites people to learn more by calling Danko-McGhee and printing her phone number.

Kudos to the TMA.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art

 

Dale Chihuly, Too, Gets His Own Museum — UPDATED

While the art world was aflutter last week over word that Cy Twombly would join the ranks of artists with their museums, I heard nary a mention of another such artist: Dale Chihuly. He’s the artist critics love to criticize as too commercial — not in the category as Thomas Kincaid, say, but usually not someone to praise either.

Chihuly, now 70, opened Chihuly Garden and Glass at the foot of the Seattle Space Needle on May 21 — 45,000 sq. ft. designed by the artist himself. But when the Seattle Times covered it, it was Valerie Easton, who writes about gardens, who called it an “ exciting venue.” The art review, by Gayle Clemans, was written as a “highlights” and “low points” piece.

Coverage itself is a tad confusing, in fact: While Easton wrote that “The new exhibit is the largest display of Chihuly glass in the world, and every piece was created specifically for the setting,” other reports say that it contains elements from all of Chihuly’s life, including “conceptual drawings, glasswork themes, one-of-a-kind pieces and his personal collections.” 

The signature piece in the Exhibition Hall’s eight galleries is said to be a new 1,400-piece, 100-foot long glass sculpture. The exhibition includes one of his well-known Persian ceilings 9above), among many other Chilhuly works. Outside, the 16,000-square-foot garden features more large Chihuly creations. Clemans wrote:

…[Chuhily and architect Owen Richards] also added a modernist glass conservatory, a striking space with arching, white metal beams that visually connects the nearby Pacific Science Center and Space Needle. Although inspired by Chihuly’s love for conservatories, it reads a little like a contemporary cathedral from certain angles, which might underscore the feeling that Chihuly has built a shrine to himself….

But here’s the downside: the fact that this center was designed by the artist, during his lifetime, and includes not just Chihuly’s art but many of his personal collections, from Native American basketry to vintage glass Christmas ornaments. It generates inevitable narcissistic undertones.

Put me on the side of the ledger for those who don’t think Chihuly’s work warrants a museum of its own. Not that he would care — he makes millions a year and paid nothing for this center, whose $20 million cost was financed by the Space Needle Corp. It’s open seven days a week, with enlightened hours — from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday to Sunday and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday — and is certain to draw crowds, at least for a while.

Unless, people are tripped up by the cost: general admission for adults is a steep $19. Compare that with the $10 charged by the Clyfford Still Museum, which caught some flack in the Denver area for being too expensive. It, btw, recently opened its second installation, Inaugural Exhibition, Part II, “including discoveries made since the opening of the Museum in November 2011 and an entirely new selection of works on paper.”  (Yes, I have query in on that… I’ll post an answer when I get one.)

UPDATE: According to a spokeswoman for the Still museum, “The works on paper (drawings and prints) that are now on view show greater connection to his paintings than previously revealed, which sheds light on his process and relationship between painted and drawn works. The museum also found that one work in the collection was actually a fragment – cut down from a replica of a major work that is at the Met.” You can see more about that here, in the blog post dated May 23.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Oregonian

Enlightened Minnesota Stages A Museums Month

Today is the last day of “Museums Month” in Minnesota, and I wish I’d known about it before. It’s another reason to wish that other states were as good about the arts as the North Star state. (To cite just one example, in 2008, residents voted to raise sales taxes by three-eights of one percent, or about $300 million a year, to protect the environment and cultural heritage.)

This was the maiden effort for Museums Month, but the organizers would like it to “become an annual festival of the many beloved museums and zoos located across the State of Minnesota.” Among some of the noteworthy elements:

  • 100 metro public libararies offered “Museum Adventure Passes” on a first-come, first-served basis: Holders could use their library card to “check out” two free admissions to eighteen cultural organizations in Minneapolis-St. Paul,  including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Arts Center. (Guidelines here.) The loan period for the pass was seven days.
  • The Metropolitan Library Service Agency every day during the month selected two members of the public, drawn randomly from those who registered online, for memberships to a selected group of museums.
  • Links on the Museums Month website spread the word about “museum stories,” articles that covered various museums.
  • One of those links disclosed that the Star-Tribune had a contest for viewers of its museum travel guide — those who visited 5 of 15 museums participating were entered in a contest for “fantastic prizes.”
  •  There’s also a short statement, posted in a PDF online, about the economic impact of Minnesota’s museums.

This was a collaborative effort by the museums themselves, with several partners, like libraries and public television. I salute them! Now, I’d like to see a report on the month — what it did, if anything, for attendance, membership, enlightenment and anything else they can imagine.

Meantime, this is a model other states could easily adopt.

 

On Her Diamond Jubilee, The Queen Shares Some Of The Royal Collection

This week Britain is celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, commemorating the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the throne. As RCA readers know, British royalty also owns one of the greatest art collections in the world. I thought I’d check in to see what she is sharing with us folks, especially as the U.K. will be hosting more than its usual number of tourists this year for the summer Olympics.

The answer, it seems, is less than I would have hoped. The big exhibition that celebrates the Queen’s 60 years on the throne is called Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration and it’s part of “the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace (30 June – 8 July & 31 July – 7 October),” which admittedly is nice. The diamond exhibit simply displays how diamonds have been used and worn by British monarchs over the last two centuries.  It includes some of the Queen’s personal jewels inherited or acquired during her reign. The most famous piece, the Diamond Diadem, at left, has been worn by the Queen on her journey to and from the State Opening of Parliament since the first year of her reign.

In the Queen’s Gallery, there’s  Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist, which is said to be the largest-ever exhibition of his anatomical work.  It includes 87 pages from Leonardo’s notebooks, including 24 sides of previously unexhibited material.  One of them shows a “to do” list, in which “Leonardo reminds himself to obtain a skull, to get his books on anatomy bound, to observe the holes in the substance of the brain, to describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of a crocodile, and to give the measurement of a dead man using his finger as a unit.”

And there’s The Northern Renaissance: Durer to Holbein, which displays about 100 works – prints and drawings by Dürer, mythological paintings by Cranach the Elder, and preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger as well as finished oil portraits.

 At Windsor Castle, visitors can see The Queen: 60 Photographs for 60 Years, which is exactly as billed, and Treasures from the Royal Library, likewise. 

But art-lovers may want to make the trip to Scotland, where the royals’ Holyroodhouse Palace is showing Treasures from the Queen’s Palaces, about 100 works reflecting the tastes of several monarchs and other members of the royal family over the centuries. It includes paintings by Rembrandt, Hogarth, Hals, van Dyke and Lotto, among others.

The entire exhibition program is listed here.

And if you’re not going, you can still learn more — the BBC has produced an eight-part series, 30 minutes each, about objects in the Royal Collection. It’s called The Art of Monarchy. You can hear it all and see images here. Transcripts, for those who’d rather read than listen, are there as well. If it’s hafl as good as the Beeb’s A History of the World In 100 Objects, I’d be happy.