The Milwaukee Art Museum, a symbol of the city, took on a new hue last night: The winged Santiago Calatrava-designed addition began to glow in the dark, in a bright shade of pink. This will continue for 10 days, all told, enhancing its spectacle value and prominence in the city’s skyline.

The glow is a product of marketing and what the museum is calling community involvement. Staff had already chosen pink as the prime color for the ad campaign for its big fall exhibition — Andy Warhol: The Last Decade — when along came representatives from the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the Milwaukee Race starts at the museum’s lakefront spot on Sunday. The Warhol show opens Saturday.

So the museum is donning pink from 7:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. each night for a while. And, in another show of synergy and support, museum is offering free admission on race day to all cancer survivors participating in the race and $2 off admission to everyone else who runs in it.

The museum as never been lit like this for more than a few hours, and never in conjunction with a cause. But it would like to do so in the future — if there’s another good fit and if the requisite funding can be found (in this case, it was provided by the Pellmann Center for Medical Imaging). 

Reminiscent of the Empire State Building, in other words, whose color scheme changes frequently and is watched and talked about.

Photo Credit: Frank Meyl, Courtesy Milwaukee Art Museum 

Every now and then you run across an exhibition that blends art that’s fun with creative marketing. I thought I found one today.

But after investigating further, I’m not at all sure: The sponsorship makes me a tad queasy — and some activities, well, I wonder if they are more about foot traffic, and never mind the art.

My tip-off to the exhibit came in a pitch for annual support from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Ct.

When you donate to the annual fund, it said, “you will be invited to LIGHTS OUT!” — which turns out to be an after-dark tour, illuminated only by flashlights and led by Aldrich director Harry Philbrick, of Bike Rides: The Exhibition.

The point, the letter said, was that the Aldrich “is always thinking of new ways to look. look again.

I’m all for that; the Aldrich has a great reputation among contemporary artists.

Its website says that the show is meant to “explore the increasing relevance of bicycles in contemporary art and culture.” About 30 works, multi-media. It starts on Sept. 26.

No question, the “marketing” takes clever advantage of the subject. 

[Read more…] about “Bike Rides” At The Aldrich: On Track, Or Off?

Just before Jackson Pollock entered his intense “drip period,” he painted his famous Mural, 1943-44, which resides in the University of Iowa Museum of Art. But did he “sign” it, hiding his name among his paint strokes?

That is a contention of a forthcoming book, Tom and Jack by Henry Adams, which chronicles the relationship between Pollock and his teacher, Thomas Hart Benson.

If true — and not everyone agrees — it would add yet more evidence of Pollock’s self-regard, according to a new article published in the October issue of ARTNews:

That Pollock would insert his signature into the painting makes sense in terms of Mural‘s meaning for Pollock, argues Adams, a professor of American art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland: “The whole point of Mural was to declare that Jackson Pollock was a great painter,” he writes in Tom and Jack, which is being published in December by Bloomsbury Press. “The painting is essentially a big billboard for Jackson Pollock.”

You be the judge:

[Read more…] about A New Theory About Pollock’s Mural: He Hid His Signature

It’s pretty darn hard to separate the life of Georgia O’Keeffe from the art of Georgia O’Keeffe.
As critic Henry McBride once remarked, she was from the very start “a newspaper personality.” But if the exhibit on view at the Whitney Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction, does what curator Barbara Haskell would like — which is to recreate interest in her less well-known but more daring abstract works — it won’t change her image as a sexy temptress at all.

In part, that’s because the show’s catalogue publishes, for the first time, excerpts from letters O’Keeffe wrote to Alfred Stieglitz over the course of their acquaintance and eventual marriage.

Some of them are, as Whitney Director Adam Weinberg said at the press preview last week, “very steamy.”

Haskell said she wanted to “revitalize [O’Keeffe] for a new generation,” though — and this may help on that goal.

In any case, I’ve written about this for The Daily Beast (here), with excerpts from the excerpts, plus a slide show of her work and photographs.

The credit goes to Sasha Nicholas, who spent hours and hours going through the recently unsealed letters, which are in the collections of Yale.

Weinberg mentioned something else of interest: O’Keeffe was in the first Whitney biennial in 1932, and the museum acquired one of her paintings in 1932. When I searched The New York Times historical database for a review, I found this one by Edward Alden Jewell, but no mention of her work.

Photo: Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918, by Alfred Stieglitz, Courtesy Whitney Museum 

As I mentioned here last week, the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution held their annual

public meeting today, and according to an Associated Press article just posted on the Washington Post website, they — no surprise — approved Secretary G. Wayne Clough’s plan to create four new “centers” to explore “the universe and climate change on Earth, world cultures and the American experience.” Clough wants to “help scientists and curators foster new research” And who’ll pay?

The plan calls for an increase of 16 percent to 32 percent in revenue to pay for new priorities. Currently, about 65 percent of the world’s largest museum and research complex’s $1 billion annual budget comes from Congress, though officials expect less than half the new money will come from the federal budget. Instead, Clough will lead the Smithsonian’s first major capital campaign and pledged to pursue other funding sources.

That, as I mentioned last time, is to be a $1 billion campaign — even though, according to AP, “Donations for the budget year ending Sept. 30 were expected to total $110 million, down from $122.4 million in the 2008 fiscal year.”

 
AP did not contain news that the Regents also approved another expansion: This time, I have heard, the National Postal Museum will grow, thanks to a donation by William H. Gross, the billionaire bond-trader/co-founder of Pimco in Newport Beach, Ca. The William H. Gross Stamp Gallery will occupy new, leased space and will contain exhibits focusing on postal history, operations and education.

This donation has not been announced [UPDATED – see below]  (that’s coming in a few days, I’m told by one source) and I could not obtain the amount Gross (at right) gave — or pledged.  

[Read more…] about Smithsonian Regents Approve Clough’s Research Plan, Authorize Another Museum Expansion — UPDATED