Bye-bye Renoir. I learned this morning that the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is selling Femme cueillant des Fleurs, c 1874. The painting will be offered at the Dickinson booth at Maastricht, Mar. 18-27, with a price tag of $15 million.

I learned this from a Maastricht press release, not as I would have preferred, from the Clark itself.

Proceeds, the release says, will be used to strengthen the Clark’s collection (in accordance with the policy of the Association of Art Museum Directors). No violation of the rules…

Sterling Clark bought this picture from Durand-Ruel in 1933. He loved Renoir. From his first purchase of Renoir’s work in 1916 through the next forty years, Clark and Francine bought and bought. The Clark owns 32 other works by Renoir, certainly one of the biggest concentrations in the U.S.

This is an early Impressionist work, and — though it may seem a bit sugary to some eyes — could well be in demand because it was made jast as Impressionism began to develop.

As the release says,

It also serves as a poignant reminder of a story of fierce jealousy involving Monet’s first and second wives. Camille Doncieux was 18 years old when Monet met her in 1865 and she soon became his lover and was the model for a number of his works in these early years.  Monet’s father refused to accept her into the family because of her humble origins but despite this the couple married in 1870.

The lifelong friendship between Monet and Renoir was at its closest between 1866 and 1875 and the two men often painted together, setting up their easels side by side. Camille was depicted in a number of their paintings…from this important period….She is shown standing in a field near St Cloud, outside Paris, clutching a bunch of flowers…A year after Renoir painted this picture, Camille became ill and in 1879 she died aged 32 , her already poor health worsened by the recent birth of her second son Michel.

Monet’s second wife Alice Hoschedé was a jealous woman who destroyed all the material that she could find relating to Camille….It is perhaps appropriate that this fascinating and enigmatic figure in the history of Impressionism is known to us almost entirely through the paintings for which she posed.

As I’ve said before, I think museums should make these disclosures, not the gallery or the fair or the auction house. I also have reservations about selling through dealers, but at least this time it is very public, which is the source of my qualms.

As to whether this particular painting should be sold, I’d like to know more about its exhibition history and to see the other Renoirs in the collection. How important was this one to Sterling Clark? We don’t know.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of TEFAF Maastricht and The Clark  

Here comes the Battle of the Sexes. At least, that’s how the Delaware Art Museum is billing an exhibition that opens on Mar. 5. What makes it noteworthy here is that it’s another experimental attempt to get people to participate actively in the arts, as an experience, rather than passive viewing — about which I have mixed emotions.

Battle of the Sexes was organized by The Philadelphia Women’s Caucus for Art, a new group for me, but which (I learned via its website) was founded in 1972 in connection with the College Art Association. The Philadelphia chapter is the oldest of The Women’s Caucus for Art groups. Among its activities is organizing exhibitions.

This exhibition will present works by women artists, each of whom has chosen a male artist to exhibit a work alongside hers. Neither one of the pair will be attributed to an artist on the wall labels — so viewers will not know who made what. (Two are posted here.)

Then, the museum is asking visitors to mark, on ballots, who they think made what — female or male. A week before the exhibition closes, the museum will tally the “votes” and the results will be posted, along with the names and genders of the artists. For those who don’t expect to return, the results will also be posted on the Philadelphia-WCA blog and they will be emailed to voters who request the results. 

What’s the point? The museum says the show aims to “have you looking, thinking, talking, voting, and coming back to see the mysteries revealed.”

But I probed further, “thinking” about what precisely? Was the exhibition intended to prove that we can tell what sex an artist is by the subject matter? Or to prove we can’t tell? Or to show that one is as good as the other?

None of those, exactly. Here is the museum’s answer:

The point of the exhibition is to see if people have preconceptions about the gender of artists based on the piece of art they see in front of them. Do floral paintings and pastels look feminine to people? And do rustic outdoor scenes or action images seem masculine? This exhibition is to let people find out if they have these preconceptions and to encourage people to think about how they form preconceptions.

I don’t know about this. In simpler times, people would guess that a woman painted Mary Cassatt’s paintings and that only a man could be as obsessed with sex as Picasso (do I have your attention now?).

But in these times, Sarah Lucas and Ghada Amer, among others, make sex a subject, and Charles LeDray sews tiny clothing items. Does it matter? Does the public think about such matters, or care?

Though I’m an advocate for equality of opportunity, I don’t. Nor do I necessarily want my visual art to be participatory. But let’s see what the the Delaware Art Museum finds out.

Photo Credits: Taxi, by N.P.D. (top) and Bluebird’s Journey by M.P. (bottom), courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum  

Much has been made in the last week or so of the article published in Psychology Today arguing for the value of “supporting the arts” at a time when the Obama Administration and Congress have targeted the National Endowment for the Arts for cuts.

It’s a good article that makes good points about the value of participating in arts and crafts activities, particularly among youngsters, for the impact it has on creativity later on. I believe in the conclusions.

But I’m not so sure I buy the connection with the budget cuts.

The bottom line of the PT article was this: “Hobble the arts and crafts and you hobble innovation. Hobble innovation and our economy will suffer. Conversely, invest in arts and crafts and every dollar will stimulate the economy not only today, but through innovation a host of tomorrows.”

But in the article, the authors asked honors students about their experiences and discovered that the correlation was with those who “had lessons” in arts and crafts — not exposure to the arts. And, they wrote:

lifelong involvement in dance, composing music, photography, woodwork, metal work, mechanics, electronics and recreational computer programming were particularly associated with development of creative capital.

And:

A particularly striking finding was that early hands-on experience [emphasis mine] with arts and crafts was critical to continuing participation in these arts and crafts. And continuing participation in arts and crafts across a lifetime was one of the strongest correlates to generating patents and new companies.

Does any of that have a tight connection with what the NEA spends money on? Not as far as I can see.

Federal budgets are notoriously obfuscatory, but according to the NEA website, here are some potentially relevant programs:

• NEA Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth: $6.7 million awarded in FY 2008 (latest figure): “projects that provide opportunities for children and youth to gain in-depth knowledge and skills in the arts in school and community-based settings.”
• The Arts Education Partnership: “convenes forums to discuss topics in arts education, publishes research materials supporting the role of arts education in schools, and is a clearinghouse for arts education resource materials.” No figure given.
• Coming Up Taller program: “annual award recognizes outstanding community arts and humanities after-school programs for at-risk and underserved youth” — $1.2 million since 1998, if I am reading the site correctly.
• Improving the Assessment of Student Learning in the Arts: “the first nationwide effort to examine current practices in the assessment of K-12 student learning in the arts both in and out of the classroom.  Best practices and assessment models in all art forms will also be shared.”

In FY 2010, the NEA budget was $167.5 million (and that’s about what it’s spending this year so far, though it awaits budget approval). In its FY 2012 budget request — a total of $146.255 million — the NEA reduced its funding to state and regional agencies for arts education in favor of prioritizing Rocco Landesman’s “Our Town” initiative — which infuses arts into communities in hopes of creating jobs and stablizing communities — among other things. Further, the 2012 budget request redirects its emphasis on arts education from students to people of all age levels.

So, let’s go ahead and talk up the PT article and go ahead and blast budget cuts. But unless the NEA starts doing more for participatory arts lessons, I’d downplay the link. 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Elmhurst Academy (top), artclass.info (bottom)

It’s not just Egypt. Tunisia’s revolution may have been more peaceful, but news coming from there now suggests that the country’s antiquities have also been “looted.” By the first lady, Leila Ben Ali.

I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised: I visited Tunisia a few years ago, and not only was President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s picture everywhere, but also his home — easily viewed from the train to the love “blue-and-white” village of Sidi Bou Said just outside Tunis — was gigantic. (Sidi Bou Said, btw, was also an artists’ hangout, and among those said to have visited are Paul Klee and August Macke.)  

Ben Ali’s palace required decorating, and Mrs. Ben Ali apparently helped herself to the nation’s treasures, some of which she distributed to homes of other members of the family.

According to The Art Newspaper:

Many of the artefacts and antiquities confiscated by the Ben Alis originally came from the Bardo Museum, which has the world’s largest collection of Roman mosaics. According to Samir Aounallah, the Tunisian museums committee president, Leila Ben Ali used museum artefacts, including mosaics and frescoes, to decorate the family’s villas.

Archaeological sites have also been affected. “I have accredited sources that have said sites in Cap Bon had objects taken from them by the Ben Ali clan,” said Aounallah.

Aounallah also said that many of the objects have now been put back.

The Bardo Museum (pictured above) indeed contains a fantastic collection of mosaics — and much more. (I wrote about an article about it for The Artful Traveler section for ARTNews, but it was published in 2007, before ARTnews began putting articles online.)

The Bardo’s range runs from pre-history through the Ottoman era — Stone Age tools, gold Phoenician jewelry, massive stone sculptures from the Roman city of Bulla REgia, Islamic artifacts, equisitely turned-out period rooms, and bronzes and other antiquities recovered from a Greek ship that sand in 81 B.

Who knows what intrigued the First Lady.

The International Council of Museums is watching developments in Tunisia,  but with perhaps less concern than Egypt. Again quoting The Art Newspaper:

According to Julien Anfruns, the director general of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), several international archaeologists and curators are currently in Tunisia surveying potential damage to objects as well as drawing up revised inventories for the country’s museums. Despite the violence, which according to a United Nations mission saw 219 people killed and 510 injured, museums have for the most part remained well protected. “People there are very understanding of the importance of the preservation of these museums,” said Anfruns.

So far, little of this has been covered in the West. But The Art Newspaper’s article says:

Evidence of pillaging by the Ben Alis has been well documented on several news channels, including one segment that aired on the Middle East-based Al Arabiya in January. The clip shows [above] the home of Ben Ali’s daughter, Sakhr El Matri, revealing antiquities and ancient statues perched in the foyer and next to the swimming pool of her oceanfront villa. In the aftermath of the uprising, crowds reportedly descended upon several of the Ben Ali houses to tour the premises. A handful of the sprawling properties’ walls were tagged with graffiti including one that read: “This property is now a national museum for the Tunisian people.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Al Arabiya via The Art Newspaper (bottom)

When I interviewed Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo about their Old Master collection in 2009, they said definitively, for the first time, that they would give it away to an institution (see here and here).

Now they’ve gone further: On the eve of the opening of its showing at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, they’ve essentially said that it’s the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s to lose.

In an article published today, Eijk van Otterloo told Geoff Edgers of the Boston Globe that:

…if they were to give it away now, it would probably go to the MFA. But he’s interested in hearing from MFA director Malcolm Rogers about how he might be able to accommodate a library of more than 10,000 Dutch art-history books the couple recently purchased.

Given the fundraising prowess of Rogers, I don’t think he will lack for ideas — though I’m not sure he made enough of a fuss about their recent long-term loans of a half dozen paintings, including their Rembrandt (at left).

So I wouldn’t be surprised if he were high-tailing it up from his home in Chestnut Hill to their home in Marblehead, Mass. today — except that the couple is currently living in their home in Naples, FL. That’s because for the next year or so, while their collection is touring the country, their Marblehead home is undergoing renovations, including new windows.

Rogers won’t lack for competition. Mrs. van Otterloo is a trustee at PEM, and it is also in the running. The Globe said they are also considering the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which has the attraction of being free.

Other museums may make a play. In fact, Mrs. van Otterloo told the Globe that others are making advances, “starting to dance.”

It ought to be fun watching, but if MFA doesn’t get it, there should be trouble in that boardroom. 

Here’s a link to the Globe piece, which has much else to offer.