On my recent visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts, I was rather amazed to find out that despite the state’s and the city’s deep troubles, which has meant a cutback in virtually all public money to the DIA, director Graham Beal keeps buying wonderful pieces of art. As Beal took me around the galleries, he stopped often to tell me that something was new. How was this possible, in these tough economic times?

No mystery, actually: Detroit is one of those museums with a storied past and enlightened donors who left endowments specifically for acquisitions.

Unfortunately, times are so tough (the city lost 25% of its population between 2000 and 2010, and economic activity along with it), and the DIA has had to cut back quite a bit already, that Beal has had to go to the descendants of two of those donors to ask for relief. That’s the story I wrote for the July-August issue of The Art Newspaper, which has not (yet) posted it online.

So please go take a look at the paper — among other things, you’ll find out a few things he’s been buying, including the nautilus pictured here.

But here’s the gist: In 2007-08, the DIA’s operating budget was $34 million; in the most recent year it had cut that back to $24 million. Since the late ’90s, at least, the museum has operated in the black every year. To stay that way, about 16 months ago, Beal approached the descendants of one benefactor and asked if he could use the income generated by the benefactor’s acquisitions endowment for operations. Beal notes that this very same donor had allowed the same move during the Great Depression, and his descendants quickly agreed. Beal declined to name the donors, but I believe from other reporting that it’s the Ford family. Beal also sought and received permission from probate court.

A few months later, Beal asked the same question of the family of another deceased acquisitions benefactor, and members there also agreed.

The terms are five years for both agreements. Together, the two funds generate about $2 million a year, which will now be used for operations — money the museum won’t have to raise. Keep in mind that, aside from Detroit’s current woes, the museum had raised about $330 million to pay for its recent renovation and modest expansion, plus add to its unrestricted endowment, which now totals about $80 million. There is such a thing as donor fatigue.

I give Beal a pass on this move: the DIA’s other acquisitions endowments still generate about $2 million a year for purchases, for one thing. For another, he went through all the right procedures with donors — after he had more than “trimmed” the budget. He’s not invading the principal of the funds, just using income. He’s not spending it on expansions. And the DIA has plenty of treasures — never enough, of course, but plenty. Plus, he didn’t hide it.

The move was not ideal, in a perfect world, but museum staff and services, plus opening hours and all the other things that go into a museum, matter too.

I’m guessing other museums in the same situation may be doing the same thing. I hope they have followed similar procedures.

UPDATE, 7/18: My article is now posted online here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts 

 

 

The other day, the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston, announced the winner of its 2011 Maud Morgan Prize: the winner is Cambridge artist Wendy Jacob.

This shows that a little nagging can be a good thing. Last year, I recounted here that Greg Cook, in the Boston Phoenix, “ranted about the MFA’s failure to award the Maud Morgan Prize, intended to shine a light on Massachusetts women artists. It was last given in 2006.” Later the Boston Globe agreed, as did I. And the MFA promised to make an award this year — it has now kept that promise.

So it’s only fair to publicize the prize, even though it’s small — $5,000 in the past is now $10,000 — in the scheme of things. The winner also has her work shown at the MFA, and this year, Jacob’s work will be shown at the MFA’s new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which will open on September 18.

I don’t know Jacob’s work, but here’s what the MFA says in a press release:

Jacob’s works explore human impulse, intimacy, and interaction through interventions with furniture, architecture, and open spaces. Over the course of her career, she has collaborated with engineers, circus performers, and people with disabilities to create breathing walls and ceilings, tightropes that cross through rooms, and chairs that embrace their sitters.

Part of her bio reads:

Jacob’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kunsthaus Graz in Austria, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Fellowship, Creative Capital Artist Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council Artist’s Fellowship Award, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.  Born in 1958, Jacob grew up in Brookline and Quincy, taking art classes as a child at the MFA.

That aforementioned “squeeze chair” is pictured here, and here’s a link to her website, where more of  her works are on view. 

Greg Cook now has a bigger question for the MFA. “Does reinstated Maud Morgan Prize mean more local art at th MFA?” he asks in the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.

Oh dear.

 

 

It says something about the art world and its overfocus on contemporary art that a painting can set the record high price at auction for 2011, and smashing a couple of other high marks, too — but the whole thing got little notice in the U.S., though smaller prices did.

Why? Perhaps because it’s an Old Master painting? That’s the only thing I can think of.

Last week, at Sotheby’s London, Venice, a view of the Rialto Bridge, looking north, from the Fondamenta del Carbon, by Francesco Guardi, fetched nearly $42.9 million, including the buyer’s premium — exceeding the high estimate (which does not include the premium). It’s the highest price ever for a Guardi, the highest ever for a “view painting,” and the second highest ever for an Olf Master painting. Here’s a BBC account and here’s one from Dawn, with a few more details.

The buyer has remained anonymous.

UPDATE: Bloomberg, I’ve discovered, covered it too.

 

 

 

Late last month, the U.S. Postal Service issued a new sheet of stamps that, while not quite as good as the ones I wrote about last year honoring Abstract Expressionists, are a boon to the art world nonetheless.

These stamps honor industrial design masters, and the USPS chose the Cooper-Hewitt  National Design Museum as the setting for the dedication. The designers honored include Peter Müller-Munk, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Raymond Loewy, Donald Deskey, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, Norman Bel Geddes, Dave Chapman, Greta von Nessen, Eliot Noyes, Russel Wright and Gilbert Rohde.

Each stamp feature the designer’s name plus a photograph of the pitcher, phone, typewriter or other object he/she created and the year or years when it was created.  

The press release making the announcement contained a short history of design:

Industrial design emerged as a profession in the United Sates in the 1920s, but really took off during the Great Depression. Faced with decreasing sales, manufacturers turned to industrial designers to give their products a modern look that would appeal to consumers. Characterized by horizontal lines and rounded shapes, the new, streamlined looks differed completely from the decorative extravagance of the 1920s. The designs evoked a sense of speed and efficiency and projected the image of progress and affluence the public desired.

Consumer interest in modern design continued to increase after World War II, when machines allowed corporations to mass produce vacuums, hair dryers, toasters and other consumer goods at low cost. Industrial designers helped lower costs further by exploiting inexpensive new materials like plastic, vinyl, chrome, aluminum and plywood, which responded well to advances in manufacturing such as the use of molds and stamping….

Even as streamlining gave way to new looks in the 1960s, the groundbreaking work of industrial designers continued to transform the look of homes and offices across the country. Today, industrial design remains an integral component of American manufacturing and business, as well as daily life.

Here’s a link to a background PDF with more detailed information about each designer. And here’s what the full sheet looks like:

 

I think this is all great — the more good art and design out there, the better.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the USPS

 

With the recent announcement that the Museum for African Art will not open on schedule later this year, but rather in the second half of 2012, there’s a gap in the range of African art to be seen in New York. The much-praised Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria traveling exhibition, which opens Friday at the Indianapolis Museum of Art after tours in London, Houston and Richmond, was supposed to come to New York later this year, an inaugural show for the MFAA, which co-organized it. Now the museum won’t be ready.

If a new venue has surfaced for Ife, I haven’t seen word of it, and I am wondering what will happen to the show between next Jan. 16, when it closes at the IMA, and the second half of 2012 — assuming the MFAA makes that goal and the show can remain intact. Doubtful…sorry to say, though I hope I am wrong.

But, while it’s not the same thing at all, there is another African art exhibition in the neighborhood that, based on the catalogue, is well worth noting: Power Incarnate: Allan Stone’s Collection of Sculpture from the Congo at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich.

As the art world knows, Stone was a legendary New York dealer and a fine collector who died in 2006. The first sale of his estate, at Christie’s, fetched $52.4 million, and the second, at Sotheby’s in May, brought $54.8 million, according to The New York Times.

Well, the man had an eye, as the saying goes, and it extended way beyond contemporary art, as the Bruce show demonstrates.

These African sculptures are “power figures,” intended to protect their communities.

As the Bruce says in its description, “the dense layers of applied materials create what the Kongo referred to as ngitukulu, or “astonishment.”  To which I would add, “and how.” They are beautiful in a non-Western sense. The two examples shown here are a good demonstration.

“We got the show because I knew Allan for years, borrowed from him repeatedly, and regularly brought our collectors’ groups to his home and its legendary jampacked collection,” says Bruce director Peter C. Sutton, when I asked him how it came about. Sutton says no works in the exhibit have been consigned for sale — my thoughts on single-collector shows are here — but he assumes they will be sold eventually.

While I am talking about Stone, I must take note of the sad fact that is estate is the subject of litigation. According to various press reports, including this one in the New York Post, Stone’s widow Clare has accused his executor, Lelia Wood-Smith, of improperly using money from his $300 million estate to purchase a home in Greenwich and moving parts of his collection into it. Mrs. Stone seeks Wood-Smith’s removal. One of his six daughters has also said that Wood-Smith, unbeknownst to the family, has taken some of her commission in art works.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Bruce Museum/Allan Stone Collection