The Neue Galerie has a small “focus” exhibition on Oskar Kokoschka — just seven paintings and, in a separate gallery, 40 works on paper. To me, it illustrates the perils of placing a good but not great artist among his more impressive confreres and surroundings.

The seven works, all portraits, hang in a wood-paneled gallery that’s also home (at the moment) to two fine Schiele landscapes and five vitrines filled with silver, glass, jewelry and other decorative arts by Dagobert Peche, Koloman Moser and, above all, Josef Hoffmann. Many are dazzling.

Just across a threshold is the center gallery, filled with Klimts, including the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I that cost the Galerie’s maestro, Ronald S. Lauder, $135 million. It’s flanked by the two Georges Minne sculptures, Kneeling Youths, that were given to the Neue Galerie by Bloch-Bauer’s heirs in 2007. They, like the painting, had been restituted by Austria to Maria Altmann and her relatives, in 2006. The youths had been displayed near the portrait in Austria all those decades ago, before World War II, and both the narrative and the juxtaposition remain compelling today.

With all that competition, if you were simply visiting the Neue Galerie, not specifically for the Kokoschka show, you might miss his paintings.(His Rudolf Blumner, 1910, is at left.) The fact that they are hung high, over furniture, doesn’t help.

Kokoschka’s works on paper struck me as more interesting, more emotional, rawer — sometimes graphic, sometimes expressionistic. They made me wonder if the paintings might have held up better in a room of their own.

None of this is meant to discourage visitors to the Neue Galerie.  

[Read more…] about Kokoschka at Neue Galerie — Just So-So, But Go Anyway

There’s all-too-familiar and sad news coming from Milwaukee: the Journal Sentinel will begin August minus several of its arts journalists. Dance critic Tom Strini, theater critic Damien Jaques and books editor Geeta Sharma Jensen have taken the most recent buyout offer — the fourth and most attractive one since fall, 2007 at the paper.

Mary Louise Schumacher, the art and architecture critic — who’s staying — says that the three had 84 years of experience, collectively, in her blog post today. She also writes about the JS’s past commitment to arts coverage, and says that many on the arts-entertainment staff remain. Still, I can’t help but notice that those she mentions write about food, film, tech and pop music…the more popular varieties of the arts.

Twenty-seven other journalists are also leaving the paper, so it’s not that the arts were targeted. Those leaving could still write, freelance, for the paper. Jim Higgins, the JS’s assistant entertainment and features editor, writes: “As a line editor in this area, I can say we will continue covering performing arts and books with a combination of staff and freelance contributions.”

But many people also expect additional layoffs. Who knows where they will fall? It’s hard to construe this any other way than another black day for the arts.

 

 

Several days ago, AJ blogger Greg Sandow weighed in (here) on the recent Chorus America study, which purported to show that people who sing in choruses are better citizens than
 
those who don’t sing in a group (nothing about singing in the shower…). To recap, here was the main point, taken from the press release:

An estimated 32.5 million adults regularly sing in choruses today, up from 23.5 million estimated in 2003….That’s good news because singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S., such as a community chorus or a school or church choir, is strongly correlated with qualities that are associated with success throughout life…Greater civic involvement, discipline, and teamwork are just a few of the attributes fostered by singing with a choral ensemble.

Greg, rightly, picked the piece apart — which made me glad, because I was almost suckered into writing an article on the study. Then I actually read it, and realized that I’d pretty much been wasting my time.

If only Chorus America were the only offender on this score (and btw I am not suggesting any maliciousness on its part). Unfortunately it’s hardly alone among arts organizations. I’ve already written here about the useless statistics collected by the Association of Art Museum Directors, imploring them to collect better information. (They told me they’re working on it…then said nothing was decided on the subject.)

Another example occurred in opera recently — though it was not the fault of opera companies. Rather, an Italian medical professor published a study in Circulation: The Journal of the American Heart Association supposedly showing that listening to dramatic music, like opera, influenced the human cardiovascular system predictably and therefore had application in the treatment of heart disease and stroke.

Sounded great for opera, didn’t it? 

[Read more…] about Statistics, Studies and the Arts: A Plea For More & Better

Time for a little update on ArtBabble, the website for art videos founded by Max Anderson and
the Indianpolis Museum of Art. Yesterday, AB’s enthusiasts there sent out an email — an e-babble, they called it — announcing Art Babble News! of Ten New Partners! to Art Babble Fans!

I appreciate their enthusiasm, so I decided to announce the partners here: 

• Art Institute of Chicago
• KQED
• Museum of Arts & Design
• Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
• Norman Rockwell Museum
• Rubin Museum of Art
• San Jose Museum of Art
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Van Gogh Museum
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

But they had to come up with some numbers for me to make this post worthwhile. Since its launch in April, ArtBabble has had more than 100,000 unique visitors, according to Robert Stein at IMA.

They stay, on average, a little less than five minutes, he says, “which is comparable to the average length of a video on ArtBabble.” And, “pages per visit is hovering around 4 and about 45% of our visitors are return visits.”

Fittingly, IMA has posted the most videos — 161. You can see which are the most popular since the launch by visiting the site, though as Rob Stein warns “to be fair most of these views likely occurred during the site launch…”

[Read more…] about Art Babble Keeps Babbling On — With More Partners

It looks as if the Brandeis University-Rose Art Museum brouhaha is turning some museum associations into, for this field, activists. A group task force is circulating a petition with the theme “Great Universities Have Great Museums,” closely following the NEA’s slogan, “A Great Nation Deserves Great Art.”

When Brandeis announced in January that it intended to close the Rose Art Museum, a few critics complained that neither the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries nor the Association of Art Museum Directors moved quickly enough. Still, when ACUMG did protest, its statement deplored the university’s move “in the most unequivocal terms.” Branding the Brandeis decision a “dismal example” to other colleges and universities, David Alan Robertson, ACUMG’s president (left), told The New York Times, “One fears that this opens a floodgate.” (Robertson is also director of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern.)

Now ACUMG, AAMD, the College Art Association, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the University Museums and Collections group of the International Council of Museums, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation are seeking like-minded academics in an effort to make sure that floodgate stays closed.

The task force is asking university professors, presidents, provosts, and deans to sign an online petition. One email urges, “Pass the link on to all colleagues you know who care about academic museums and wish to support them during these challenging times.”

The key paragraph:

At the heart of many of our great colleges and universities stand museums of art, science, archaeology, anthropology, and history, as well as arboreta and other collections of living specimens. Along with our libraries and archives, these academic museums advance learning through teaching and research. They are the nation’s keepers of its history, culture and knowledge. They are essential to the academic experience and to the entire educational enterprise.

The task force plans to publicize the petition in a full-page ad in The Chronicle of Higher
Education this fall, along with “selected signatures.”

In the meantime, you can read the entire petition here, and you can see who has signed at www.acumg.org/webelieve. When I checked late on the evening of 7/28, there were pages and pages of signatures, some from museum directors and independent scholars as well as academics.

Ordinary folk can offer support at Save The Rose Art Museum.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy Northwestern University and Save the Rose