Alexander McQueen isn’t the only guy capable of drawing crowds so big that hours must be extended at a museum. Or Leonardo, for that matter.

I’m happy to report that the Detroit Institute of Art recently added hours to accommodate visitors to its Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus exhibition.

On Jan. 4, the DIA announced that the Rembrandt exhibit “broke attendance records for recent exhibitions at the museum, with more than 15,000 visitors during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The number is around three times the typical weekly attendance for the exhibition.”

At the time, museum hours were 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays, and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

Then, on Jan. 13, the DIA would stay open longer for that exhibition and the whole museum until Feb. 12, when the Rembrandt show must come down. For the month of January, then, the DIA will say open on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Also, on the first two Saturdays in February, hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on the first two Sundays of February, hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The DIA hasn’t done this “in several years,” says the announcement, which noted that it has extended hours “in the final week for past blockbuster exhibitions, such as Van Gogh: Face to Face and Degas and the Dance.” 

In the first press release, DIA director Graham Beal says, “The response has been overwhelming. Much of the positive feedback we have received focuses on how the exhibition is presented, which places Rembrandt and the works of art in historical and cultural context. We are delighted that our presentation has resonated with so many visitors.”

I’m thrilled — we all know Detroit (the city) is a bit of a mess. Good news is welcome, to put it mildly. This exhibition was organized by the DIA with the Louvre and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was shown last August through October.

If you go to the exhibition notice on the DIA website, you’ll find links to videos about the show and a slide show of Rembrandt’s home in Antwerp. A little value added.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Detroit News (Brandy Baker)

 

This is Old Masters week in New York, and to mark it I have written a short article about an ivory, estimated by Sotheby’s in January, 2010, at $120,000 to $150,000.It sold, after much bidding from the trade, for more than $1.2 million. Now, it’s for sale at a New York gallery for $3.8 million.

Much of the general public probably thinks that’s a ripoff, which is one reason I wanted to write about this piece. I leave it you to decide if it’s worth that high amount, but the story of how it gained value, going from a piece attributed to Matthias Steinl to one definitely by him, is a good tale.

As I recount in the Wall Street Journal, on the Saturday Icons page, Anthony Blumka of New York and Florian Eitle-Böhler of Munich bought the piece, had it cleaned, restored it to its original state, complete with pieces that had been missing, and took it to a symposium on the baroque in Munich for study by scholars. They agreed it was by Steinl.

With its newly confirmed authorship, the sculpture, whose photographs are pretty impressive, was displayed last year at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection in Frankfurt in an exhibition called “Ivory: Baroque Splendor at the Court of Vienna.” I plan to see the piece at Blumka, where it will be on view from Thursday until Feb. 10.

Last, I can only quote Eike S. Schmidt, the curator of decorative arts and sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the author of several books on ivory sculpture:

It is quite a sensation that this masterpiece, which was known to scholars only through an old photograph, taken when it was in the Rothschild collection, has re-emerged. It is certainly one of the most outstanding ivory sculptures that were made in Austria in the Baroque age.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Blumka Gallery

 

In case you missed it, even the Colbert Nation is interested in the new American paintings galleries at the Metropolitan Museum.*

Stephen Colbert yesterday (?) interviewed Carrie Rebora Barrett, an associate director of the Met and an Americanist, and it has been posted (here). They talk mostly about Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware.

In it, among other things, we learn:

• That he likes The Met because “it’s a great place to go in and not pay.”
• That Colbert has never been to the Met, alas.
• That Barrett defends George Washington, who’s letting other people do the work, per Colbert, by saying “he got them into the boat, that’s huge.”
• Which artist posed as Washington for Leutze.
• That, of course, what Colbert ends up focusing on is look like GW’s private parts (which, by the way, were also what some youngsters were staring at and giggling about at the reception I attended for the galleries this week), but which aren’t. “It’s a fob,” she says.
• That she sneaks in a reference to Madame X that he doesn’t hear, and probably was not prepared for, because he ignores it.
• What’s on the back of the painting.
• And other things…

I’m always, pleased, as you know, when visual arts are showcased on TV or radio, even if Colbert is making fun.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Colbert Report

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met

 

 

The subject line in the email was deceptive: “Nelson-Atkins Hires Esteemed African Art Curator,” it said. I almost archived it without reading.

The substance turned out to be more interesting. The N-A is indeed hiring the expertise of Nii Quarcoopome (below), the head of the Department of Africa, Oceania & the Indigenous Americas at the Detroit Institute of Arts — but only 25% of his time. The two museums are curator-sharing.

I think we’ll see more of this, and it may mean that curators will see their careers developing along a different path than in the past. More of them will be split between two museums and even more, I project, will become independent curators. Yes, I know that independents exist — I’m predicting that we’ll see more of them — and that they will be used more frequently by major museums. It will be a money-saving move for some and a convenience for others.

According to the press release, Quarcoopome, a native of Ghana, worked with the N-A in 2010 during the the installation of an exhibition he curated that was first shown at the DIA: Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500-Present. The exhibit, “a groundbreaking examination of how African artists expressed the interactions between African cultures and Europeans and Westerners….gave a wide perspective of the African point of view of Europeans, from first encounters and trade relations, to European settlements and colonization, through the contemporary years of post-independence.” (I didn’t see it.)

For his part, Graham Beal, director of the DIA, noted Quarcoopome’s “profound understanding of African society and material culture [which] has resulted in an installation of the DIA’s African collection that brings the art alive for many visitors” and said he was happy to share him.

Quarcoopome holds a doctorate in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been at the DIA since 2002. Before that he was a curator at the Newark Museum.

You can read more in the press release.

 

Tomorrow, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas — created ten years ago at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston — launches a digital archive of thousands of primary source documents, free to all and intended to catalyze scholarship of Latin American art.

This is, to hear Mari Carmen Ramirez, the ICAA’s director, sorely needed. Most people tend to think of Latin American art as derivative. She says it’s not — or at least not all of it is. These documents — 2,500 from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest for a start — will prove her right or wrong, over time. Within three years, another 7,500 documents from  Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and around the U.S. will be added.

This is a titanic effort, which I write about in today’s Wall Street Journal, in a Cultural Conversation with Ramirez. ICAA has also planned a 13-volume book series, a symposium (Friday), and exhibitions. MFAH has spent $50 million on this effort, some taken from its own budget, most raised from foundations, donors, the NEA and the NEH.

Ramirez is, of course, the champion, but she couldn’t have done it — in fact, probably would not have been hired by the MFAH, had it not been for its late director, Peter Marzio.

Marzio embraced the idea mostly because he was looking at the demographics of Houston — but also because he knew that until Oliver Larkin wrote Art and Life in America, which was published in 1949, American art had no textbook, no academic foundation from which to teach it.

So I asked Ramirez what MFAH’s incoming director, Gary Tinterow, thinks about the ICAA. “We have not had a chance to talk about it yet,” she said on Dec. 30 (when I traveled to Houston to interview her). “But the trustees have had conversations with him about it. And the first thing he told me is that he wants to go to Latin America. He’s never been.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Houston Events Calendar