All day yesterday, I had to hold my tongue regarding the vandalism at the Ara Pacis Museum, the monstrosity that Richard Meier created to hold the 2,000-year-old Altar of Piece. If you’ve been to Rome and seen it, you know exactly what I mean: Vandalism is never warranted, but I sympathize with those who did it. Others (Tony Shafrazi, for example) might
have tried to say their act was a work of art itself, and you have to give the vandals credit for choosing paint in the colors of the Italian flag to throw at Meier’s creation and for leaving a toilet and rolls of toilet paper on the site, just in case the message wasn’t clear.

Meier’s building is so absurdly out-of-place and out-of-scale, and such a monument to his ego, that I decline to show it here. (The same criticisms could be made of most of his museums, btw, but that’s another story.) At right is the altar itself.

But all of this has been said before, which is why I remained silent until I discovered the good news about the Ara Pacis, which wasn’t reported by the BBC or the New York Times or the Associated Press. 

The good news was reported by ANSA, the Italian news agency. Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, had promised during his election campaign to tear down the building down, but he has since backed off. Instead, ANSA said, the mayor has begun talks with Meier to ”rethink” its design. He said:

This has happened right at the time that the (city council) is speaking to Richard Meier to find an architectural solution that could improve the urban impact of the museum.

Let’s hope Meier finally listens and modifies his design. The resolution can’t come soon enough. 

Meantime, here’s the link to the ANSA story, which also has more on the possible perp:

Graziano Cecchini, the self-styled ‘Futur-rista’ who made world headlines after tipping non-permanent red dye into the Trevi Fountain in 2007 and sending about half a million coloured balls thundering down Rome’s Spanish Steps in 2008.

Cecchini was ambiguous about his involvement but said: ”Intellectually I claim responsibility for this beautiful action – there should be one a day.”

Over the weekend, I visited the Brooklyn Museum, specifically to see Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea but also to check in on the museum as a
whole. I left with several impressions:

• The Caillebotte (seen here in his 1892 self-portrait, from the Musee d’Orsay) show reveals definitively one of the best things about his work: his wonderfully unusual perspective. Whether he paints from inside the boat of his rowers, at the head of the table where his mother and brother are eating, a balcony overlooking a Parisian intersection and so on, the angles give his works a marvelous newness, a freshness.
• His many other talents, as well as his well-known wealthy background, “distracted” him from painting and, possibly, from becoming a greater artist. His yacht models, on view in Brooklyn, are sleek and modern, perhaps more so than his paintings.
• Still, what’s clear from the show is that he’s an experimenter.
• While his best paintings are not in this show, sadly, it’s still a worthy effort.
• For people who read labels to see who owns what, it’s noticeable that the vast majority of the works in Brooklyn are drawn from private collections. 

A final not-so-positive observation: on a Sunday afternoon, prime time for museums, the Caillebotte show was nicely crowded, which is to say that you could still see the pictures, but the galleries were far from empty.

That did not seem to be the case for the rest of the museum. The permanent collection galleries, while not empty, had few visitors.

And that, I think, is a problem, not just at Brooklyn, but at many museums. They simply should be doing more, much more, to engage people’s interests in their permanent collections.

For more about the show, here’s a link to the Brooklyn Museum exhibition, which includes several pictures; for more about Caillebotte, here’s a website with many of his works (though the reproduction quality there leaves much to be desired).
 

If you’ve ever been to San Antonio, you know its River Walk, which winds along the San Antonio river and is lined with hotels, shops, restaurants, outdoor cafes, bars, and more. As
of this past weekend, it has grown by 1.33 miles via a new patch called the Museum Reach urban segment. The extension opened over the weekend.

The San Antonio Museum of Art, connected directly to River Walk, celebrated with an exhibition called Waterflow that opened on May 13. It displays recent works by fifteen Texas artists “inspired by water,” like Nate Cassie’s Deluge Studies, 2007, at right.

I know, I know, I was just remarking here that viewing images online isn’t good enough. But it’s better than nothing, right? I asked the museum to send me images so we could all see what it has done.

[Read more…] about San Antonio’s River Walk Grows, and the City Gets More Art

Funny coincidence — coming so soon after my last post, yesterday, about “Picturing America” and “Adventures in Modern Art,” the National Endowment for the Humanities is just out now with its new Request for Proposals for School Collaboration projects with “Picturing America.”  This time, the NEH wants:

 proposals for local and regional projects that foster collaboration between K-12 educators and humanities scholars to encourage engagement with the rich resources of American art to tell America’s story. The Picturing America School Collaboration Projects grant opportunity is designed to help teachers and librarians whose schools display the Picturing America images form connections with courses in the core curriculum.

That generally means conferences where teachers who use “Picturing America” materials can trade ideas with scholars, museum professionals and library personnel about its use in teaching. 

Here’s the link.

If the arts are ever going to be a really important part of Americans’ lives, they can’t be seen as a frill, an add-on, something to do in one’s spare time. They have to be integrated with
everyday life. That’s one reason I like “Picturing America,” the National Endowment for the Humanities program I wrote about here and here, and that’s why I like a new program of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — “Adventures in Modern Art.”

Like “Picturing America” — which uses American art works to teach American history — “Adventures in Modern Art” uses paintings, made in this case between 1900 and 1950 and drawn
mostly from the Charles K. Williams II Collection, to show teachers in grades K-12 how the visual arts can help them teach their courses (beyond art). It’s part of the Philadelphia museum’s “Visual Arts as Sources for Teaching” program.

The course was developed to coincide with an exhibition of the Charles K. Williams II Collection, which includes Charles Sheeler’s Neighbors, 1951, above left, and Charles DeMuth’s Gloucester – Sails and Masts, 1919, at right. It will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum from July 12 through Sept. 13.

[Read more…] about Making Art Central Through “Adventures in Modern Art”