While the arts world has had its eye on the White House, watching to see what President Obama is doing for the arts (the most recent report is from Politico, which published an article quoting yours truly on Wednesday), not enough people have been paying attention to Congress.

To wit: The other day I received an email update that floored me. It reported, glowingly, that 25 Representatives had signed a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) urging the House Appropriations Committee to allocate $50 million for the Office of Museum Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Let’s see: 25 is less than 6% of the 435 members of the House. But Ford W. Bell, the president of the American Association of Museums, said:

Twenty-five signatures on this important letter is 25 more than we ever had before. Next year during Museums Advocacy Day, we will aim for all 435 Representatives on the letter in support of the Office of Museum Services, and that’s how we will begin to see a real increase in funding. We are fortunate to have found two museum champions in Congress, and I applaud Reps. Paul Tonko and Louise Slaughter for their tremendous leadership on this issue.

It turns out, the email then said, that this is the first time such a letter has been circulated. Still, 25 signatures, which include those of Slaughter and Tonko, is pitiful support for something as uncontroversial as the IMLS.  

Analyzing the list to assess the geographical spread is also enlightening: seven signatures came from New York, two each came from New Jersey, Ohio, and California — almost half from four states. The other signers came from 11 states and Puerto Rico. Three were Republicans; the rest, Democrats.

More money for the arts isn’t everything; there are lots of ways the government can support culture. And maybe I’m leaping to conclusions here. But it seems to me that the failure of this letter to attract more support — despite the fact that it highlighted the many educational and other vital services museums provide –shows that the cultural world shouldn’t be placing all its bets on the White House. There’s much more work to be done building broader support. 

I’ve already mentioned here some of the many things to like about the new Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, which is just
across the street from the Albright-Knox and which opened last November. One of them is a current exhibition called “Anthony J. Sisti: A Forgotten Regionalist, Selections From the Collection.”

The show is in keeping with the museum’s mission to be “The Museum for Western New York Arts” for contemporary art and for modern works. Sisti was a Greenwich Village-born boxer turned artist who spent most of his life in Buffalo, where he had a well-known gallery.  

Classically trained in Florence and at the Albright Art School in Buffalo, his works, according to newspaper articles, were shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Art, among others, during his lifetime. 

But he seems to be one of those artists who suffered by being good at too many kinds of art: He painted political portraits of people like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gov. Al Smith, was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration,
painted boxers in the ring, did landscapes. He taught art in Buffalo and New York. He was talented, but not very original. You can see the influence of artists like Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton and others in his work. (At right is Picnic At Chesnut Ridge, 1943.)

Apparently, Sisti was a bit of a swashbuckler, too. 

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Located right across the street from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Burchfield Penney
Art Center, locals say, is the first new museum to be built in the city in more than 100 years. It cost $33 million, provides 84,000 square feet of space, and is comely to boot. Last November, just before it opened, The Buffalo News crowed in an editorial (here):

Buffalo’s museum district gains another jewel soon…the new Burchfield Penney Art Center is a welcome addition to this region’s cultural life and visitor attractions. It’s a spectacular achievement, and the opening in tough economic times of such a stellar showcase for the work of Western New York artists is a bright
testament to community vitality….

The Burchfield Penney’s 18,000 square feet of galleries and 5,000 square feet of education and program spaces expand the cultural offerings of the museum district in a wonderfully local way.

I agree, especially about the local part. The Center specifically bills itself as “The Museum for
Western New York Artists,” which means it’s an opportunity to see something different. In its coverage (here and here), The News quoted the enthusiasm of local artists, too: 

Watercolor painter Tom Baldwin of Clarence Center said the museum offers opportunities
for artists like himself. “I’m excited about the possibility of being able to exhibit here some day. It feels like a big-city art museum, it doesn’t feel like a little place for local artists,” Baldwin said.

He’s right about the feel. When I was there last week, the Burchfield Penney offered several exhibitions. They include a gallery of Charles Burchfield’s works — along with a recreation of his studio — plus a big sculpture show (at right). I could have been in Chelsea.

 

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One of summer’s pleasures is traveling up to Williamstown, Mass., to see what the Sterling
and Francine Clark Art Institute has on view. Usually, the summer exhibition is terrific — and this year is no exception. Early in June, I spent time at Dove/O’Keeffe: Circles of Influence, a look at the “symmetry of influence” between Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe. Curated by Debra Bricker Balken, it’s a beauty; my take on the show is published in The Wall Street Journal today. The bottom line is this:

“Dove/O’Keeffe: Circles of Influence”…is the first
exhibition to explore their relationship. But what’s important is not that visitors learn art history. It’s that they see for themselves the way these two artists inspired each other over more than three decades and, more important, that they discover, or rediscover, the extraordinary, underappreciated Dove….

Dove emerges as the far more daring, more imaginative artist of the two. He, not she, tries collage, putting blue chiffon over metal with sand to make a serene “Sea II” that exceeds her wildly abstract “From the Lake No. 1.” He, not she, creates works such as “Fog Horns” that evoke sound. And he, not she, never looks back at figuration, but turns out works that are increasingly spare, abstract and yet incredibly lyrical. His works are both more
 layered, literally and figuratively, and more nuanced.

Along with my review, The Wall Street Journal has also created a slide show of eight works
from the exhibition on line, so don’t miss that. But I’m posting a few more here. From the top: Dove’s Happy Clam Shell, 1938; O’Keeffe’s Slightly Open Clam Shell, 1926; Dove’s Sea Gull Motive (Sea Thunder or The Wave), 1928; O’Keeffe’s Dark Iris, No. 2, 1927.

The show is a bit of a departure for the Clark: With about 60 works created between 1910 and the early 1940s, it’s the first all-20th Century show, I believe.

But with its new Tadeo Ando-designed Stone Hill Center, opened a year ago, there’ll be more. 

The current show at Stone Hill is called Through the Seasons: Japanese Art in Nature. It mixes screens as old as the 17th Century with contemporary ceramics. Another attraction there is the conservation labs, which are viewable through floor-to-ceiling windows — creating an interesting tableau of people on the outside peering in.

Dove/O’Keeffe is on view through Sept. 7; Through the Seasons is on view until Oct. 18.

Photo Credits: Works by O’Keeffe, © 2009 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Works by Dove, Courtesy of and copyright The Estate of Arthur Dove / Courtesy Terry Dintenfass, Inc.

News Flash: Actor Kal Penn started his job at the White House today, as an associate
director in the Office of Public Engagement, where he is the liaison to the arts and Asian-American and Pacific Island communities. To prepare, he told reporters on a by-invitation conference call this afternoon, he put on a suit and tie, brushed his teeth, flossed, and did the things most people do when they start a new job.

Don’t blame Penn for those quotidian details, though — he was merely answering the fluff-ball questions pitched by reporters from places like The Washington Post, People, TV Guide and Dow-Jones. They proved, again, either that celebrity still makes mush of many reporters or that no one expects all that much of Penn in this job, or both. (I was in the queue to ask a question, but my time did not come before his time was up.) 

Penn, whom I wrote about here in April, has been starring in “House” on television and the “Harold & Kumar” movies. He said today he’s taking sabbatical from acting so that he can serve his country.

What else did we learn in the call, which lasted about 20 minutes?

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