Today was a big day for the 21st century museum, in case you didn’t notice. The Walter Art Center in Minneapolis opened an exhibit called 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Collection.

It might be the first true is one of the first true crowdsourced exhibits at a U.S. museum. at least neither I nor other experts could think of any previous such shows. Other museums have asked the public to upload pictures or make other art for shows. But for 50/50, the Walker dropped the once-sacred professional boundary between curators and the public, and asked the public to vote for the works they would like to see in an exhibition.

UPDATE: Please see comments below — the Brooklyn Museum mounted a crowdsourced exhibit two years ago.

The Walker specifically chose about 200 works on paper from its permanent collection — works that are not often on view — from which the public could choose.

They had six weeks last summer to vote, either in person or online. In all, 137,844 votes were cast. The public chose only 50% of the show, though — the rest of the works were selected by Darsie Alexander, the Walker’s chief curator. She said that the rankings were transparent throughout so that everyone could see which works were “popular.” “Seeing and knowing the results was an important premise of this entire effort, both for the ‘public’ side and ‘mine,’ ” Alexander says.

The choices are arrayed on opposite walls at the Walker, hung salon-style (though not too far up the wall; they have to be seen). The public’s choices have generally been hung in order of the number of votes they received; Alexander hung her side a bit more thematically/traditionally, with an eye on identifying key works in the collection and works by artists the Walker has collected in depth. Among them are works by Kiki Smith, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and Kara Walker.

Still, the public provided some surprises — Walker experts expected voters to lean toward figurative works and narrative works, and they did, except for the most popular work of all: Break Point by Fiona Banner (above, left).

The public’s other top selections, in order, were Edgar Arceneaux’s House Turned Upside Down; Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait; Frank Big Bear’s Chemical Man in Toxic World and Charles Sheeler’s Buildings at Lebanon (above, right).

 

Some artists appear on both sides, of course, including Smith, Sigmar Polke and Robert Gober.

 

The Walker says it decided to experiment with crowdsourced curation in an effort to engage its audience more deeply. “Our culture now is more about higher participation, more user-driven content,” Alexander told me, for a short article in the December Art Newspaper.

 

I’m keeping an open mind about experiments like this: I like some aspects of it, such as comparing the two results in a face-off. The Walker has a more engaged, perhaps more sophisticated constituency than many other museums, too, and that makes the experiment more acceptable.

 

Once in a while, efforts like this could be ok; but I would hate to see the public come to expect a voice in curatorial matters.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Walker Art Center

 

Just about when I was writing an item on the promised return of the Maud Morgan Prize for women artists in Massachusetts — little did I know — in Pennsylvania another female artist was going one Morgan better.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts announced that Linda Lee Alter — a Philadelphia-based artist and philanthropist — had donated 400 works of art by women to the Academy.

But it got little attention: I wonder why. 

Lee’s collection includes works by Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Joan Brown, Viola Frey, Ana Mendieta, Christina Ramberg, and Beatrice Wood (none of which is represented in PAFA’s collection now) as well as works by Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Gertrude Abercrombie, Edna Andrade, Sue Coe, Janet Fish, Sarah McEneaney, Gladys Nilsson, Elizabeth Osborne, Betye Saar and Nancy Spero (who are). They range in date of execution from the 1910s to the present, and they include ceramics, photography, painting, sculpture, assemblage, and works on paper. 

Alter began collecting these works in the 1980s. “My hope was to find a museum emphasizing inclusion and diversity; one working toward greater representation of art by women and artists of color in its permanent collection, exhibitions and outreach programs,” said in the press release, “where the art by women would be fully accessible to students, teachers, scholars and the general public; and where my collection would be enthusiastically welcomed because it embodied the institution’s vision.”

PAFA promises that works from the collection will be on view by spring, and that it will produce a comprehensive catalogue of the collection.

Alter, who is 71, founded the Leeway Foundation in 1993, to support women artists, particularly those who live in the region — according to a short item in the Inquirer.

Looking for images for works in Alter’s gift, I instead discovered that Alter had an exhibition of her own works at the Allentown Art Museum in 2008. As the press release said at the time:

Her work has ranged from vibrant fabric wall hangings and appliqués with lively allegorical depictions of fables and Old Testament stories to paintings that serve as metaphors for life events. Many of her works, which have been widely exhibited and collected, have served as inspiration for children’s book illustrations and greeting cards.

Two of her works are reproduced here. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Allentown Art Museum

Late today, the Metropolitan Museum* put out a press release about its summer with some pretty impressive numbers, starting with a really big one: its three key summer exhibitions generated $784 million in economic activity by regional, national, and international tourists to New York, according to the museum’s visitor survey. 

I had to read the release twice to make sure the decimal point wasn’t misplaced. It made more sense when you hear attendance:

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view from April 27 through August 15, 2010, drew 703,256 visitors. (Au Lapin Agile is at left.)

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú, shown from April 27 through October 31, 2010, attracted 631,064.

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, on view from May 5 through August 15, 2010, drew 335,759 visitors.

All told, “using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact, the study noted that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from out-of-town visitors to the Museum totaled some $78.4 million,” the Met said.

A few more tidbits from the study:

• 72% of the Met’s summer visitors traveled from outside the five boroughs of New York.
• Of them, 46% were international visitors.
• 79% of travelers reported staying overnight in NYC, and 72% of these visitors stayed in a hotel or motel. The median length of stay was five nights.
• These visitors reported spending an average $1,050 per person ($696 for lodging, dining, sightseeing, entertainment, and admission to museums, and another $354 for shopping) during their stay in New York.
• 47% of travelers cited visiting the Met as a key motivating factor in visiting New York.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, 28% of visitors surveyed said that, in their decision to visit NYC, seeing one or more of the three exhibitions was an 8 or higher.
• 47% gave a rating of 8 or higher to visiting the Metropolitan Museum in general.
• During their stay, 73% visited other museums, 46% saw a Broadway show, and 16% attended an opera, ballet or a concert.
• The median age for visitors surveyed was 48, with 39% over 55. More than half (53%) held a master’s degree or higher.
• The median reported income was $79,000; 37% had income over $100,000.

The museum did not provide comparable figures from the past, because its studies in the past covered only one or two exhibitions. In 2007, for example, its study assessed the economic impact of Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde and Americans in Paris, 1860-1900, which ran concurrently, and came up with the number of $377 million for economic impact.

This summer was obviously stronger in exhibits. Interestingly, two of the three were completely or mostly drawn from the museum’s collections and Big Bambu was a site-specific commission. They therefore presumably cost less (no added insurance, shipping, etc.).

I commend the Met for sharing this information. Of course, it had a point to make, which is that the museum contributes more to the city’s economy than it gets in aid. Good point — one that many people don’t know.

Another little flaw: the survey sample is quite small: 618. And the museum didn’t share its methodology. 

Nonetheless, it’s something — as I have said many times, the art world needs more and better statistics.  

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met.

Have you ever heard of Alexander Reid, 1854-1928? Me, neither — at least until recently. 

But he deserves a place in the annals of important gallery owners and among friends of van Gogh. Reid was not only a friend to Vincent, but also a look-alike. He was Whistler’s friend, too.

This is all laid out in a book I just learned about (hat tip to Art Fix Daily) called Van Gogh’s Twin: The Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid. It was published recently by the National Galleries of Scotland in the U.K. and, Amazon says, will be available in the U.S. in March.

According to the author, Frances Fowle, who is a senior curator in French art at the NGS, Reid was an extremely influential dealer, the first British dealer to take a serious interest in Impressionist art. Based in Glasgow, then the “second city of the British Empire,” he also supported the “Glasgow Boys” (who recently wowed visitors to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum there) and the “Scottish Colourists,” profoundly influencing taste in Scotland, which in those days was bubbling economically. Because of him, many rich Scottish merchants purchased works by Impressionist “well in advance of their English contemporaries.”

Last week, Scotland’s Herald wrote about the book, leading off with a story about a proposed suicide:

You are a young Scottish artist and art dealer, living in Paris in the late 19th century. You are sharing an apartment with one of the greatest, and one of the most tortured, painters of the modern age. But you are unhappy in love, and, one night, you make the mistake of telling him some of your woes. He empathises with you. The painter, in this case named Vincent van Gogh, feels so sorry for you, in fact, that he suggests a suicide pact. What would you do? If, like the very intelligent Reid, one of the most influential Scottish art dealers of the past 100 years, you smile sweetly, say it’s a wonderful idea – then run for the hills.

As Fowle says in the article, Reid’s relationship with van Gogh, while colorful, is not the meat of the book. Reid could “make” artists, but he, Reid, too, missed the significance of van Gogh’s work: “He once said to William Burrell’s daughter: ‘I could have bought any work by van Gogh for £5 at the time, but I didn’t realise what an important artist he was going to be’,” Fowle writes.

It seems to be a fascinating story, and Fowle tells it all in fewer than 200 pages. 

Sometimes a little nagging is a good thing, even if it’s done at an inconvenient time. Heaven knows that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has had its hands full this fall opening its Art of the Americas wing. Nonetheless, in October, 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.

Last week, the Phoenix reported that the MFA had announced that it will reinstate the $5,000 prize next year.

The Phoenix‘s Greg Cook, who did the nagging, had help, and he acknowledges it:

The move comes in response to a column I published here on October 6, which prompted Roslindale portrait painter Laura Chasman, who won the prize in 2001, to e-mail MFA director Malcolm Rogers about how much she missed the prize program. “His response was immediate, and it was simply ‘I appreciate your thoughtful e-mail,’ and it was CC’d to the curators,” Chasman says.

 

Then on November 20, a local artist and donor to the prize fund (who asked to remain anonymous here for fear of offending certain powers-that-be) e-mailed 50 women urging them to contact Rogers.

Then, last Wednesday, the Boston Globe weighed in, adding to the pressure (with a really striking photo to illustrate the article, btw).

 

It’s not just about the money, which is how the MFA tried to portray it (discontinued because of low funds) — it’s about the attention the winning artist receives.

 

The last award went to Ambreen Butt, whose work (above) was displayed in the MFA’s lower rotunda; one of her works was added to the permanent collection.

 

Good for Cook for agitating, though there’s one caveat: As he wrote, “Of course, the MFA told me last year that they’d reinstitute the award in 2010, only to postpone it again. Let’s hope they keep their word this time.”

 

Amen to that.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy MFA, Boston