Visiting upstate New York this weekend — way upstate — I spent a day in Buffalo, checking out two new must-see art attractions, the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the Darwin Martin House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece and the subject of this post. 

Even people who find Wright’s prairie house style not to their liking will appreciate the Martin
House. Although it’s still being restored, and will be even more beautiful in about three years’ time, the restoration group that saved it essentially announced that the home was ready for prime time this spring, when they opened a $5 million visitors center designed by Toshiko Mori. With its floor-to-ceiling windows, long flat shape and an orientation parallel to the pergola Wright use to unify the Martin House complex, the center is a perfect complement to Wright’s design.

Here’s the home’s background: Around the turn of the 20th century, Darwin D. Martin, an executive of the Larkin Soap Co. and one of the country’s best-executives, formed a friendship with Wright that led to several commissions, including the pioneering Larkin Soap Co. office building in Buffalo and the building of this domestic complex in 1903-05. It includes the home (front view, above; side view, below), a pergola linking it to the conservatory, stables, carriage house, a home for Martin’s sister and (off to the side) a
gardener’s home. When Martin died in the ’30s, his wife, who never liked the home because it was dark, moved to their summer place, Graycliff, also designed by Wright (and also open to the public, though I didn’t get there).

Unoccupied, the Martin home fell into disrepair and was vandalized. Later, it was purchased by a well-meaning owner (who nevertheless modernized the kitchen with yellow formica counters!) who developed money troubles. His predicament prompted him to sell the pergola/conservatory/carriage house, which were demolished and replaced with apartment buildings.

[Read more…] about Wright’s Darwin Martin House Becomes A Must-See

It wasn’t so long ago that the cultural world was cheering Dresden, the one-time royal residence of Saxony rich in artistic splendor. Its historical center, all but destroyed in World War II, was lovingly rebuilt. The state art collections there are among the best in the world. Artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Richard Strauss worked there. 

Germany asked UNESCO to make the Dresden Elbe Valley a World Heritage Site, signifying its status as being of universal significance, and in 2004, UNESCO complied, citing (among other things) “Its art collections, architecture, gardens, and landscape features [which] have been an important reference for Central European developments in the 18th and 19th centuries” and its “exceptional testimonies of court architecture and festivities, as well as renowned examples of middle-class architecture and industrial heritage representing European urban development into the modern industrial era.”

Now, that’s all over. Dresden is putting a four-lane bridge over the Elbe at a critical juncture and, at its recent meeting, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee stripped Dresden of the honor. I applaud the committee, for finally getting some backbone, and said so in an opinion piece for Forbes.

This is only the second time since the list was begun in 1972 that the committee has delisted a site. But UNESCO has few other tools to use with sites that are being exploited and ruined.

At its meeting last week in Seville, the committee also added 13 sites to the heritage list.

[Read more…] about What’s The Matter With Dresden? A Heritage Failure

To celebrate the Fourth of July, here’s a look at WaterFire, the public art installation in
 Providence — 100 bonfires burning along the city’s three rivers. Started in 1994, it’s 15 years old now, but locals say it still draws 40,000 to 60,000 people to the city each time it’s put on (WaterFire happens more than a dozen times each summer). (Corrected per comment below.)

Artist Barnaby Evans has won several awards for it.
In 1997, The Providence Journal called it “the most
popular work of art created in the capital
 city’s…history.” 

You can read more about WaterFire here.

Happy Independence Day.

Remember that “confidence report” from London-based ArtTactic that I wrote about here several days ago? Most of the study, which involves interviews with key participants in the art market, was behind a pay wall, and I was able to give you only a few bullet points.

Now ArtTactic has posted a podcast, with video charts, showing much more of its hand. It

reveals more evidence for ArtTactic’s verdict that there is “less negativity” in the contemporary market. But that’s all relative. As is explained, the index ranges from zero to 100, so any index below 50 means that the firm received more pessimistic than optimistic views of the market. That index shot from 11 in December to 28 in June. But that’s still gloomy, just less gloomy.

ArtTactic also breaks down the market by price categories; perhaps not surprisingly, the only category in truly positive territory was the segment for art priced at less than $50,000. There is also some, but less, confidence in the $50,000 to $100,000 and for works selling for more than $1 million. The middle market is the most dicey. Anecdotal evidence over the last six months has suggested the same thing.

In December, a significant number of people thought that recovery would take more than five years. With prices skidding since then, more than 60% of respondents now believe that recovery will take just 1 to 2 years. And the pace of price declines has definitely slowed down. As a result, people feel that the market is much less risky than it was in December. Because there is less liquidity in the financial world, there is perceived to be less speculation.

ArtTactic also ranks artists, and the top three rated for “long-term” value are Gerard Richter, Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman — the same as those at the top in December. Damien Hirst is not in the top five, but he has apparently moved up smartly since December.  

The entire podcast, with charts, can be heard and viewed here.

Oh, yeah, and regarding the just-concluded June sales on London (versus the May sales in New York,

[Read more…] about Listen Up: The Contemporary Art Market Confidence Report Podcast

Back to my lunch with Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum,* which ensued after I noted here that on a recent visit the special-exhibition galleries were full but the permanent collection galleries were empty.

This is a problem of museums’ own making. Over the years, they, aided by media coverage, have trained people to come for the special shows and nevermind the treasures they actually own. Now, with many museums cutting back on traveling shows because of
financial woes, the problem is growing.

Brooklyn, it turns out, recently held a retreat on the subject. One obvious answer, hardly unique to Brooklyn, has curators devising “special” shows from their permanent collections — AKA “shopping in your closet.” In October, for example, Brooklyn will open James Tissot: “The Life of Christ” — an exhibition of 124 watercolors drawn from 350 that were acquired by the museum in 1900, at the urging of John Singer Sargent.

None of these watercolors (that is a detail from Jesus Goes Up Alone onto a Mountain to Pray, 1886−94, above) has been on view in at least 20 years; some haven’t been seen since the 1930s. They were first shown in Paris in 1894, and then went on the road to London, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and — Brooklyn. Lehman plans to peddle the show to four other museums, earning fees from them that will pay for conservation.

In a similar vein, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum, which has been traveling for about a year and is going to about a dozen museums, will return to
Brooklyn in mid-stream (next Feb. 12 through May 2) for a visit. By then, the museum will have readied a special gallery for several mummies in its permanent collection (which has 11 humans and several animals, all told) that are not in the traveling show; it will focus on the after-life. That’s a mummy of Hor at left, entering the CT scanner at North Shore Hospital.

All of this makes sense, and none is controversial. But it doesn’t address the problem squarely. There’s more.

[Read more…] about Brooklyn’s Lehman Addresses the Problem of Permanent Collections