If you’ve been sitting in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art* six days a week, for seven or more hours a day, from Mar. 14 through May 31, what do you do when it’s all over?

I’m not sure what Marina Abramovic did on Monday night — probably collapsed — but last night, she went out to dinner. The “closing celebration” of The Artist Is Present was, seems to me, an unlikely event: It matched Marina with three luxury names: LVMH, Givenchy, and Sant Ambroeus, the upper East Side restaurant that has for years appealed to the art crowd.

LVMH and Givenchy sponsored the dinner at MoMA, and Sant Ambroeus — along with a dessert-maker called Kreemart — worked with Abramovic to create a special sweet: “the Gold Ball.” There was also another sweet treat, this one made by the Sant Ambroeus pastry chef — “a chocolate mold of Abramovic’s lips that were made from a cast of the artist’s face during a recent silent performance.”

I kid you not. These pictures are here as evidence.

Actually there’s a rationale, per the press representatives of Sant Ambroeus:

The Gold Ball recipe was given to Ms. Abramović by a Tibetan monastery. The practice of consuming a Gold Ball usually follows a long period of fasting and seclusion. In keeping with this tradition, the artist has planned a performance dessert piece in which the guests will apply a 24K golden leaf to their mouths before tasting the Gold Ball. By consuming the Gold Ball together with her guests, Marina Abramović marks the end of her longest performance ever.

Aside from Abramovic, among those in attendance were Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art branch*, and Canadian artist Terence Koh — both pictured at left. Art advisor and Kreemart founder Raphael Castoriano; actor Christina Ricci, chef Daniel Boulod and socialite Fabiola Beracasa.

Word is that all — or most? — “covered their lips” with the chocolate creations “in homage” to Abramovic.

Here’s my previous take on Abramovic. 

Photo Credit: By Vera Miljkovic (bottom)

*A consulting client supports these organizations. 

 

Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies, Arne Glimcher’s new film, isn’t going to break any box office records, that’s for sure. I saw it over the weekend, and while I enjoyed much of it, the film felt padded to me — even though it clocks in at just 62 minutes.

The question here, though, is whether it will appeal to art-lovers. I think it’s worth the hour. And I say that after seeing the movie, in a hole-in-the-wall cinema in the Village (with a seating capacity of, oh, say 35? I should have counted but didn’t), with a screen no bigger than the largest wide-screen TVs. (And that says something about the appetite for art films.)

The film sets out to show how the creation of movies (especially those of the Lumiere Brothers), the invention of aviation, and other technological developments at the start of the 20th century (not African art or Iberian art) inspired Picasso and Braque to invent Cubism. It also throws in the Serpentine Dance of Loie Fuller (below), which is more convincing than it sounds — and is also gorgeous. Plus the use of fans.

Those elements work, and they fun to watch. Martin Scorsese, as narrator, bothered some critics, but not me. The scholars, including Bernice Rose, Natasha Staller, and John Richardson, were very articulate and enlightening — though their names are left out of the reviews. It was the interviews with artists that drag down the film. Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl are particularly inarticulate, but Chuck Close was hardly much better. Only the late Coosje van Bruggen aquitted herself well.

I say this not to be mean, but to raise a general point about visual-arts movies: too often, inho, they rely on long, rambling interviews with artists who paint, or draw, or do whatever their thing is, far better than they explicate.  

Before writing this post, I checked the movie’s ratings on my favorite review-aggregation site, MetaCritic.com (because it links to so many reviews). It gave the movie a score of 50, out of 100, based on just six reviews (it’s usually 20 or more). The scores ranged from 25 (from The New York Post) to 100 (from the Christian Science Monitor). No readers — whose ratings are listed separately, and are often more in tune with my likes and dislikes — have weighed in at this writing.

Rotten Tomatoes, btw, begs to differ.

Good for Glimcher for making this film, but I wish he hadn’t drawn it out with interviews that make it worse, not better.

Photo Credit: Frederick Glasier (bottom)

If you read the papers on Friday morning, before getting away for Memorial Day weekend, you know that Brandeis University has a new plan to raise money from the Rose Art Museum collection. The Boston Globe’s article reveals that the administration has engaged Sotheby’s to explore “options other than sale” of works from the collection, as a way of plugging the university’s budget gap.

Sotheby’s, which approached Brandeis, appears to be thinking about a loan-show tour, perhaps like the one the Barnes Foundation did a few years back. Brandeis, for its part, said discussions were in initial stages and it would be premature to come to any conclusions.

So I won’t. But none of this is the most interesting part of the story. That would be the quote Globe reporter Geoff Edgers ended his story with this:

Brandeis has to set its priorities and decide how the museum fits into the long-term purpose of the university. They would be fools not to explore this.

The source? Not some unschooled philistine, but Peter C. Marzio, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Marzio is now the elder statesman of museum directors, having taken his post in 1982. The others in his “class” have are all gone: Philippe de Montebello retired last year, Marc Wilson is stepping down from the directorship of the Nelson-Atkins Museum as of this week, and Anne D’Harnoncourt, who took the top job at the Philadelphia Museum in 1982, died in 2008.

Marzio is secure in his job, and his skin. He may have a bit of Texas in him, too.Or he may figure that, given his stature, he can afford to break some eggs, offer new thinking, get practical — like Nixon going to China.

Good for him. I’d like it if the Rose were preserved as is (university officials have told me that it continues to make loans, by the way). That may yet happen. But loans are better than sales anyday. 

But assuming he has been quoted accurately, Marzio is a breath of fresh air, in a community that doesn’t tend to welcome new ideas that go against the “museum culture.” Just try, for example, talking about the need for different museum hours matching changing lifestyles…see how far you get.  

As Marzio said about the museum community right before the quote above: “They will be against anything except the status quo.”

Photo Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

I’m happy to report that I’m not the only one worried about what happens to permanent collections when museums build new buildings to show special exhibitions, solely or mainly. Lots of examples come to mind, including the Denver Art Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, and — as I wrote in my last post — now the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

The problem is simple and obvious: visitors are drawn to the new buildings and the special exhibitions, and the permanent collection, sequestered in old digs, gets lost in the shuffle for attention.

Jessica Brandrup, the Kimbell’s Head of Marketing and Public Relations, wrote to me after that post, and said the the Kimbell staff has given “a lot of thought” to the question “how to keep original museum buildings alive when new galleries open? … how can our landmark Louis Kahn building (above) remain a lively hub for the appreciation of art once the museum facility by Renzo Piano opens across the way?”

So, a bit contrary to the generalizations in the press release and articles about the plans for a Renzo Piano building/addition, Brandrup says this:

In fact, we will often exhibit portions of the permanent collection in the Renzo Piano building. For instance, the Asian Collection, with its many light sensitive scrolls, will be especially well suited for the southwestern gallery of the new building, which has no natural light. (When the Asian Collection is exhibited in the Kahn building, we have to block out all of the natural light, which detracts from Kahn’s architecture.) Likewise, we will occasionally feature special exhibitions in the Kahn building.

I’ve already mentioned that the stairs/escalators from the parking garage are positioned so that visitors come up facing the Kahn building — though the Piano building is closer — but Brandrup adds another feature:

we are intending to keep a number of our most popular visitor amenities (such as our restaurant and museum store) in the Kahn building.

Fine, but the Piano building, according to the press release, will also house “a cafe, exhibition store, and coat-check.”

I’m not playing gotcha here, and I appreciate Brandrup’s email, with the additional information. At least the Kimbell is thinking about such matters. It’s still something of a problem for several museums. The Piano building won’t be open for a few years, but it will be interesting to watch what happens in Fort Worth.

I’ve poured over the materials sent by the Kimbell Art Museum on its new expansion, designed, as you probably know by now, by Renzo Piano. The accolades have come in already, but — truth to tell — from the drawings in the press packet, I can’t tell what this wing will really look like. Or whether, and how, it will really pay homage to the Louis Kahn masterpiece.

One good thing: As visitors come up from the parking garage, they will face Kahn’s intended front entrance, whereas now they come in what was to be the back door.

On the other hand, now they come up from underground into the new building, and seem to be directed to go there.

Which brings me to a key question: what will this do to the permanent collection?

The Kimbell is erecting the Piano building “to provide extra galleries to be used primarily for exhibitions, allowing the Kahn building to be devoted to the permanent collection.” Says Director Eric Lee in the press release: “The Kimbell has never been able to present a major exhibition and a full display of the permanent collection at the same time.”

In theory, that’s great — no more moving art from the Kimbell’s stellar collection into storage for what is sometimes lesser art.

But in practice, judging by what happens at many museums, visitors come to see new buildings and special exhibitions. They skip the permanent collection, for a variety of reasons, including “it’s always there…”

So why do museums so frequently put special shows into the new buildings? The Kimbell’s collection is so good that maybe the Kahn building won’t be empty, as so many permanent collection galleries are (and as many museum directors, privately, admit).  

Why doesn’t someone do something counter-intuitive and plan a new building for the permanent collection?

Just asking. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Kimbell Art Museum