So this week James Turrell was formally inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which gives me an occasion to post some pictures I took recently at one of his skyspace installations.

Before I experienced one for myself, people suggested checking out the YouTube videos of these installations — but I did not find any that did the Turrell piece justice.

To refresh: For these pieces, Turrell creates an enclosed room with an open space through which viewers see the sky. For a period surrounding each dawn and sunset, visitors sit through his choreographed interior light projections that affect the way we see the sky through the open ocular. Outside, for example, the sky may still be light blue, but inside, surrounded by articial light, it may appear to be purple.

The effect, as these photos — taken over the course of an hour, and therefore just a sampling — show, creates a picture not unlike Rothko paintings.

Read the photos from the top left to top right, middle left, then middle right, etc.

Much occurred in-between, of course. It’s a fascinating study in perception.

Works by all the recent inductees to the Academy will be on view there through June 12. They include Malcolm Morley and Cy Twombly.

Photo Credit: © Judith H. Dobrzynski

 

 

Ian Wardropper, chairman of the department of European Art and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, has just been named director of the Frick Collection. He succeeds Anne Poulet.

Here’s the link to the press release.

In some ways, this is not unexpected. Wardropper lost the top job at the Met to his underling, Tom Campbell. And so he was eager to leave for his own place.

Of course, his appointment creates the same dynamic at the Frick, where Colin Bailey, associate director and chief curator, has also been seeking a directorship. Rumor has it that Bailey now wants out.

Wardropper, people who know him well say, is not much of a change agent, and so the Frick is likely to continue on the path set by Poulet and her predecessors. If he has plans, he isn’t saying much about them.

He starts in October.

 

 

Can we tell if art is made by a man or a woman? That was the question the Delaware Art Museum asked of its visitors in an exhibition called Battle of the Sexes, which I wrote about here last February.

The premise was this: Works by women artists were shown side by side with works by male artists of their chosing. Neither work was attributed on the wall labels, and viewers were asked to mark, on ballots, who they think made what — female or male. 

On Wednesday, a week before the exhibition closes on May 22, the museum announced the “votes.”

It turns out that the voters guessed that exactly half the works were thought incorrectly to be made by the opposite sex, as you can see by reading the last column in the chart above. (Percentages above 50% are correct; below 50% are incorrect.)  

The museum says that “percentages above 70 % reflect [that] the artist was working strongly within visual or material gender traditions” — that was about a quarter of the 26 artists — and that percentages between 40 and 60 % were “ambiguous.” Percentages below 40% show the artists to be “subverting gender stereotypes.”

I’m not sure what this experiment in participatory art-viewing proves. Is it curious that so view people voted? Do people care little about this subject? Are the biggest revelations to come, to the individuals who voted and would like to know how they did? Or perhaps to the artists, who may not realize whether they are turning out stereotypical works — or not?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum 

As expected, given its advisory panel, the New York State Board of Regents approved a deaccessioning policy for state-charterered museums and historical societies at today’s meeting, and — wisely — did not overreach.

They did not adopt the dumber provisions of the legislative bill offered by Former Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. Libraries are not part of this policy, and there’s no unfunded mandate to catalogue everything, for example.

Nor did they “split the baby.” They took fairly measured action, and by publishing comments and their answers to them, showed excellent judgment in determining what is a matter of public policy and what should be left to the discretion of the collecting institutions.

For example, even though I think it’s important for museums to deaccession in public — beforehand — the Regents did not make a policy statement on that. Instead, they told the institutions to report deaccessioned items yearly, after the fact — which, I suppose has some restraining effect on the sales.

Nor did they, as I had proposed, provide for an arbitration process for institutions in extremis, but them’s the breaks, at least in New York.  

So what did the Regents do? You can read the whole decision here, but, in sum, they told museums and historical societies that may may not deaccession objects unless they meet one of ten specific criteria (such as inconsistency with mission, redundancy, severe need for conservation that goes beyond the capacity of the institution, inauthenticity, refinement of the collection, repatriation, etc.).

They also said that the proceeds may be used only for “acquisition of collections or the preservation, conservation or direct care of collections.” The Association of Art Museum Directors’ policy is stricter, allowing only the first. 

They did not, as far as I can see, include institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art that predate the Regents’ chartering process.

Unless I’m missing something —  in which case I am sure I will hear about it — it’s not a bad solution. 

 

 

Can you recall your first visit to a museum? Your first exposure to great art? Or, perhaps, a museum visit or a work of art that turned you into an art-lover? Or an artist? What are your museum memories?

Tomorrow is International Museum Day, an annual event created by ICOM, the International Council of Museums that has been around since 1977. This year, ICOM says that more than 30,000 museums in about 100 countries will take part. And the Association of Art Museum Directors, meanwhile, calculates that about 100 American art museums will participate, often by reducing admission rates or offering special programs. (Not everything takes place tomorrow, though — some museums shift the day to make it more convenient.)

This year, ICOM has chosen the theme “museums and memory” in an attempt to prompt museums to explore how they help preserve individual and collective memory. As ICOM puts it:

Through the objects they store, museums collect stories and convey the memory of our communities. These objects are the expressions of our natural and cultural heritage. Many of them are fragile, some endangered and they need special care and conservation. International Museum Day 2011 will be an occasion for visitors to discover and rediscover individual and collective memory.

Objects, in other words, can tell a story. But it’s also broader than that, which is what prompted my questions above. Think about it… and think about what your museum means to your community: a source of pride, a unifying factor, or — I hope not — a struggling institution?

Tomorrow night, I will be at the Toledo Art Museum (above), moderating a panel on these questions and more. Toledo’s creative director Brian Kennedy (at right)has gathered the directors of two other great Midwest museums to be on the program and, to add to the international aspect of the day, all three were born overseas: David Franklin, the Canadian head of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Graham Beal, the British director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Kennedy himself, who is Irish.

It starts at 6 p.m. If you’re in the neighborhood, come. And come early to visit the museum’s renowned collection, too. 

UPDATED: The program is now posted online.