Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Broad Expectations: Exceeded

The other day the Broad Museum announced attendance since its opening on Sept. 20: it admitted 177,264 visitors in its first 12 weeks; by the end of this month, it expects more than 200,000 visitors.

BroadThose numbers are against a projected annual number of 300,000, the museum says–which was definitely a low-ball number, I would think. New museums, especially those that are interesting architecturally, always attract big crowds–at first.

Admission to the Broad is free, which helps.

I asked the museum PR department what the new projection was for annual attendance, and this was the response:

We expect to have over 500,000 within our first 12 months of operation. We don’t plan to make any further or more specific projections until we have more actual attendance data. We have adjusted operationally to accommodate a higher visitorship than expected and will continue to do so as needed.

The Broad is open until 8 p.m. three nights a week, and regular readers of RCA know that I advocate for more evening hours at many museums. So I asked how they were working out–if the museum would disclose traffic patterns so that we could all learn from this. Not much, so far:

We share your enthusiasm for museum hours that allow visitors with a variety of family and work schedules to visit the museum…. Our galleries are at capacity every day and we are admitting visitors at roughly the same rate during all open hours, drawing from our onsite ticketing line as well as the line for advance timed ticket holders.

The advance tickets are sold out for December, January and February, the museum says. If you want to go, you have to take a chance on getting onsite tickets. Per the press release:

Admission for the onsite ticketing line is first come, first served, based on availability. The wait time in the onsite ticketing line is 30 to 45 minutes on an average weekday, and 60 to 90 minutes on an average weekend. On holiday weekends, wait time in the onsite ticketing line can be up to two or three hours.

The museum also said its public programming included several sold-out programs, and that it begins school visits, in hours before the museum opens to the public at 11 a.m. on weekdays, in January.

I regret to say that I have not been there since its opening, though I had a hard-hat tour in fall of 2014. This is only the beginning, and it’s a good one, but the key (as always) is what happens after the newness wears off.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Broad

What To Put On the Wall, Along With the Art

The perennially quotidian but important issue of museum labels has cropped up into several conversations I’ve had lately. That put me, for the most part, in mind of some quotes from an artist, none other than that conceptual artist and sometime prankster John Baldessari.

John-BaldessariThere’s little questions that some museums have dumbed down their labels of late. Granted, people seem to know less and less about art, even as museum attendance seems to be growing. (That may be because there’s so much more to know and to learn about art, what with more museums showing increasingly broad and diverse offerings). For prime evidence of the dumbing down, though, look no further than the Copper Hewitt Museum in Manhattan. I was there a week ago to view Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio. Heatherwick’s work is original, innovative and fascinating. But neither the show nor the labels do him justice.

We’ll stick to the labels here, which are framed as questions. Probably meant to be engaging, to involve viewers, they instead are condescending. The museum feels like a kindergarten.

Where is the line, when does a label cross from being informative to being condescending (or even insulting)? Here’s what Baldessari said when he was in New York for his exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in 2010. As Reuters related it:

“I don’t think they (visitors) need any preshow counseling,” the 79-year-old artist, who was dressed in all-black with a scraggly white beard, told reporters at a preview of the show.

Baldessari is often described as a conceptual artist. Critics regularly refer to Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp when describing his humorous, usually colorful creations packed with pop culture references.

But Baldessari said his art is accessible to anyone who visits the museum.

“I don’t think you really have to spoon feed the viewer,” he explained. “You just have to give them something to hang on to and they can begin to unravel it themselves. It’s kind of like reading a detective story, you get a clue, you follow that.”

He’s right, I think.

Now, on a related issue, brought to my attention by an RCA reader, I ask your help: Have you been in museums recently that have removed labels altogether? I’ve written in The Wall Street Journal and here about the Worcester Museum of Art, which removed the labels in its Old Master galleries. The public didn’t like it. But theory is that this forces the visitor to look at the art, rather than the label.

I’d love to know of additional examples. Please leave a comment or send a message to me via the “Contact” link at the top of this website.

 

A Fitting and Fun Christmas Art Initiative

Many American museums ignore Christmas–except for the cards and gifts they sell in their shops and, sometimes, secular decorations. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn today of a new effort at the National Gallery in London.

TheAngelTrailHome, as you all know, to one of the greatest painting collections in the world, all dating from the 13th to the early 20th centuries, the NG has started a four-week series of four short videos to guide visitors through the museum this month on, of all things, angels. They call it “The Angel Trail.”

The videos, only one of which has been released, are posted on the National Gallery You Tube channel. In less than four minutes, curators and the NG’s new director Gabriele Finaldi, discuss how prevalent angels are in art history, and not just in Nativity scenes. Angels are present in many kinds of pictures. through the Baroque period (at least).

The video ends with an invitation to take The Angel Trail on your own visit to the NG. Or, you can use the pictures reproduced on the web here, to look from home. The second part of this short series will be released this coming Friday, and the next two on subsequent Fridays.

In years past, I think, the NG has also offered a Nativities Trail. (In fact, it has a lot of trails.)

While I sampling the Angel video, I had a look at some of the NG’s longer videos–one on Velasquez, for example, and they are delightful too. Serious but not boring. Full of information. Well done, NG!

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the National Gallery

 

Got Miami Week Blues? A New Twist

It’s Art Basel Miami Beach time, and some 250 galleries will be showcasing their art and artists at the convention center there beginning mid-week. Then there are all the satellite fairs, the gallery and museum events, the private collection events (which are very big in Miami), and party-party-party. It was fun when I did the first few times, but I haven’t been in a while and I’m not going this year either.

the-setting_1490x960This year, though, there’s an odd newcomer: Miami Art Masters. It’s not a U.S. version of Frieze Masters, which I have heard has not been doing very well in London. That’s despite the much bandied about notion that contemporary art collectors like to mix in a few pre-World War II paintings among their Warhols and Ligons and Bradfords, etc. I haven’t seen it in practice very much–just a few brave collectors here and there.

What make Miami Art Masters, which plays to that “trend,” a bit weird is its exclusivity. The organizers are taking over “a newly constructed, expansive 12,000 sq ft private residence on Hibiscus Island in Miami Beach, designed by award-winning architects, Touzet Studio” (at left).  There, they will present “museum quality Old Master paintings and drawings, interspersed with a collection of 21st Century contemporary art and design.”

about_1490x960And here’s the kicker: it’s a by-invitation only exhibition.

The official description:

Concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the world’s premier Modern and Contemporary art fairs, Miami Art Masters will utilize the fair’s presence as a platform to engage and educate the contemporary art market collector by showcasing and offering for sale a curated exhibition of important paintings and drawings by Old Masters. Spanning five centuries, from 14th to 19th, the exhibition will showcase fifty art works by prominent historic artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Lo Scarsellino, Filippo Tarchiani, and Jean-Baptiste Oudry.

Further complementing this selection of fine Old Masters works, the team of specialists will integrate a tasteful assemblage of 21st Century contemporary art and design, by internationally acclaimed galleries and designers such as Ralph Pucci, Van Der Straeten, and artists including, Tracey Emin, Cecily Brown, and Candida Höfer, among others. All will be presented in a newly completed architectural residence, a contemporary interpretation of a classic Parisian Hôtel Particulier.

If you click on the link I’ve given you above, you will see the names of the organizers: two art advisors, one design maven, and the owner of the residence. And you’ll find pictures of some of the offering, such as Tobias and the Angel, by Filippo Tarchiani (at right).

If you want to go, you fill in a form on the website–aka “register”–and wait for confirmation that you have been approved.

Maybe exclusivity sells, especially to contemporary art buyers who want to branch out, but are perhaps unsure of themselves in a market that requires a different kind of knowledge.

But the art market gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it?

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Miami Art Masters 

 

A Recipe For Trouble At New York City Museum

When more than a half dozen people shake their heads in disbelief at a museum announcement, and make a point of asking me what I think, I’d say it was time to weigh in publicly.

The announcement that is raising questions came last Tuesday from the Museum of the City of New York. The board announced, in a press release sent to donors and The New York Times, but not to a wide circle of reporters and not easily discovered on its website (it does not come up in Search), that it had hired Whitney W. Donhauser as its new director. She replaces Susan Henshaw Jones. Here is the description of her experience in the words of an email signed by James Dinan, the board chair:

Whitney is a 23-year veteran of The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she has served in various capacities including development, administration, and external affairs. She has spent the last 10 years as senior advisor to the Met’s President.

The release sent to donors continued, after a quote from Dinan:

At the Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Donhauser has had leadership responsibility overseeing major museum functions and projects, collaborating with development, facilities, security, visitor services and capital projects. She has also been involved with coordinating exhibition planning and implementation, marketing and government relations. She worked on the trustee committee on the design selection for the David H. Koch Plaza and played a role in managing its construction. In addition, she supervised the early phase of planning for the Metropolitan Museum’s upcoming use of the Breuer Building, former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art on 75th Street and Madison Avenue.

In other words, Donhauser–whom I have met once or twice and have nothing against–has had no real management experience. She has no direct experience with collections or with exhibitions. She has been part of various teams, been a liaison among groups, has supervised or been “involved” with the work of others. But she has never actually “led” anything substantial at the Met. She has a B.A. from Vassar–the release does not say in what. Was it relevant? Who knows. We also don’t know what, if anything, she knows about New York City history–the subject of the museum, after all.

Leading a museum takes leadership skills that have been tested, somewhere. Equally important, it takes a vision. If Donhauser has a vision for the museum, it would have behooved the board chair to give the public (and donors) a hint about that. Jones has done many good things during her tenure, but the museum lacks a deep curatorial bench, a deep curatorial sense.

What this appointment seems to be about is money. Donhauser has had access to Emily Rafferty’s voluminous Rolodex. Trustees must have thought or bought the line that she can turn them into donors to the Museum of the City of New York–at least that’s my guess.

That key word “leadership” modifying “responsibility” in the release indicates to me that the museum knew the announcement would elicit skepticism. Why not try a preemptive strike?

As one former Met employee–who likewise has nothing against Donhauser–told me, “she presents well.” Other than that, he is mystified by the choice.

Worse, this mismatch of job and expertise is far from unique lately. Many eyebrows in the museum world were raised last May when the Brooklyn Museum* appointed Anne Pasternak as its director. She knows contemporary art and artists, but has had no previous museum experience. Brooklyn is a big, universal museum.

Another example: The World Monuments Fund recently chose Joshua David, formerly president of the High Line, as its new director. I have by way of second hand information–I am acquainted with David, whom I like, but have not had a chance to discuss his move with him–that he admits to knowing little or nothing about heritage preservation.

There are other examples.

I hope these and those other examples prove me wrong. I want these organizations to succeed. For now, I remain a skeptic.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the NYT

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Brooklyn Museum.