Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Flash: The Detroit Institute of Arts Names New Director

Salort-PonsThey have replaced Graham Beal as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and it’s an inside job. Salvador Salort-Pons, the current curator of European paintings a the DIA, plus–since 2013–director of collection strategies and information, won the post. Not an easy job ahead of him, but I do think it was wise for the trustees to select an insider.

I don’t know Salort-Pons (pictured at right), so I can’t say much more from personal experience. here are highlights from his resume, per the DIA press release:

For the DIA, Salort-Pons has organized the exhibitions Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries, Five Spanish Masterpieces and was the in-house curator for the show Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus – among others. Prior to coming to Detroit, Salort-Pons was senior curator at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, assistant professor at the University of Madrid and exhibition curator at the Memmo Foundation/Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome. While at the Memmo Foundation, he co-curated Il trionfo del colore: Collezione Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza (Rome, 2002) as well as Velázquez (Rome, 2001), which was the first monographic exhibition on the painter ever organized in Italy. Salort-Pons has been the recipient of a Rome Prize Fellowship at the Spanish Academy of Rome and a research fellow at the Royal College of Spain in Bologna (founded in 1364), the Getty Grant Program, the Medici Archive Project in Florence and Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, among others.

Salvador Salort-Pons named director of Detroit Institute of Arts Will take office as the museum’s 11th director on October 15, 2015 — News from The Detroit Institute of Arts

In addition to two books—Velázquez en Italia (Madrid, 2002) and Velázquez (Madrid, 2008—Salort-Pons has published a number of scientific articles in British, Spanish and Italian journals and exhibition catalogues. He holds a master’s in geography and history (University of Madrid), a master’s in business administration (Cox School of Business, SMU) and a doctorate in the history of art (University of Bologna).

I think it was smart to promote from within because of the DIA’s recent problems and history. Presumably, he will also get on well with the COO, Annmarie Erickson–who played an enormous role in the DIA’s woes because of the Detroit bankruptcy.

A Delectable Selection of Native American Art, With Just One Problem

If you read my last post, about thematic exhibition cooperation among museums, you know I was in Santa Fe recently. But why was I in Santa Fe–that’s another story, one that resulted in a review published in The Wall Street Journal last Thursday. It was about an exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum of the American InVest1dian titled Connoisseurship and Good Pie: Ted Coe and Collecting Native Art.

I liked the contents of the exhibition: Coe, educated as an art historian of European art who once worked with the great Sir John Pope-Hennesy, trained his eye by traveling all over the country to see Indian art and visit with native American artists. He collected across all of North America, buying pieces from the 18th century to the 21st century. And he clearly had a good eye to begin with.

But this is a lesson in display, too. The organizers, including the Ralph T. Coe Foundation and the Wheelwright, didn’t do the material justice. I think the fault lies with both parties. For one, the space (nicely shaped as an eight-sided hogan) is pretty small for 200 objects. That meant there was no room for labels–other than tombstones–for any of the objects, even the very best and most rare objects. So visitors will (I hope) appreciate the aesthetics of the pieces but take away little knowledge about them.

Second, but less troubling, the placement of the art works seemed very arbitrary. After an introduction to Coe, the man, the curators organized the layout around three past exhibition themes, and followed that with a section on Coe’s long-standing friendship with a renowned artist (Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty) and her family.  The objects, by and large, were not in those exhibitions and themes did not come through.

Pickett-Tail_MocsFinally, and this seemed very odd to me though I did not have room to deal with it in my review, that introduction to Coe included specimens he had collected of other so-called native, or primitive, art. So the first things a visitors sees is not the Native American art of the title, but rather art from India, Papua New Guinea, Japan, Ivory Coast, Benin, China, Zaire and the Solomon Islands.

Considering that Native Americans rightly take exception to having their art lumped in with categories that bear no relation, I found it odd that an exhibition devoted to a man that pushed so hard to have Indian art recognized for its aesthetics would start off on such a wrong foot.

If you are in Santa Fe, my advice is simply to visit the Wheelwright and enjoy the show. Perhaps the two examples–above, an Omaha (attributed) child’s vest (c. 1880), probably intended for a boy chief, and at right, Crow Indian Maggie Pickett–Yellowtail (1894–1956)’s moccasins and leggings (c. 1945).

Here’s link to my review on my website and here’s one to the WSJ version (which I had to shorten).

 

 

Summer Museum Sightings, Part 2: Thematic Cooperation

Aldrich1More observations from my travels this summer: Several smaller museums got together this summer to create hoopla by agreeing to present variations on a theme. I see this is as a really good thing, and I have heard anecdotally that it worked. That it, the thematic cooperation brought more attention from the media, sometimes even national media, which helps draw visitors.

One was very near: the seven institutions in the Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance (FWMA) each agreed to present an exhibition about one of the Seven Deadly Sins. So, the Bruce Museum got Pride, and curated a show of art and material culture “from the Renaissance into the contemporary period.” The Hudson River Museum got Envy, the Katonah Museum of Art got Gluttony, and so on. The FWMA published a brochure about the series.

Aldrich3The Bruce Museum in Greenwich provides all the details here. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the effort. giving the Bruce the highest marks. The exhibition included works by Saenredam, Dore, Durer, Goltzius, Daumier, among others. The star, perhaps–and cover of the catalogue–was Gabriel Schachinger’s Sweet Reflections, an elegantly dressed woman gazing at her reflection in a mirror (below left).

I got to only one–the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Ct., which got Sloth, a good one to see if you lacked time to travel around. The Aldrich approach was very clever–best viewed as conceptual art. For Sloth, the Aldrich did nothing “original,” but rather made videos of the six other exhibitions. The videos ran on six TVs at the Aldrich and visitors could watch each one from a Bob-O-Pedic recliner (at left). Outside was a signpost showing the directions and mileage to the six other museums (right).

SweetReflectionsInside was a newspaper providing an “Exclusive Report” entitled “Curators Too Lazy,” tabloid-style, and brief “articles,” like one headlined “The Art of Loafing.” (Maybe this was too cute…)

UPDATE, 9/19: I’ve added one more Aldrich photo, with a visitor, at the end of this post.

Then I went to Santa Fe, where I visited two of the exhibits in Summer of Color, a joint effort by four museums, the botanical garden and (very broadly) the annual Native American Market.

The Museum of International Folk Art received the most attention, I think, for The Red That Colored the World—a very good show that was also reviewed in the WSJ. I thought the exhibit was well-thought out, a fresh approach and, if a bit repetitive, definitely worth seeing.

I also stopped in at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, which is presenting Blue on Blue: Indigo and Cobalt in New Spain through next April. For a small museum, I thought it did a fine job, as these pictures of the entrance and the main gallery illustrate–they’re below at the end of this post.

Perhaps galvanized by the cooperative effort or the attention, Santa Fe institutions are not letting up. They are right back in coming months with the Fall of Modernism, which will involve three exhibits celebrating the American Modernist art movement. Running from now through January, it offers: Georgia O’Keeffe in Process and An American Modernism: Painting and Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art and From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from the Vilcek Foundation Collection at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Meanwhile, some art galleries in Santa Fe will also showcase Modernist art.

To me, this effort seems a bit quick, and may end up disappointing. These collaborations generally require more planning time and more execution time than they at first seem.

Nonetheless,  when well planned–and used sparingly–I think they can draw wider than normal audiences. Why do I say that? The publicity, which so many museum directors tell me drives attendance.

BlueEntrance

BlueGallery

ALDRICH:

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By The Numbers, Good Museum News in Virginia

ANyergesEarlier this week, when I received an email from the American Folk Art Museum, I thought it was doing well–getting back on its feet after a disastrous over-expansion.

Anne-Imelda Radice, the director, wrote that:

We closed the fiscal year with great news: 150,018 visitors came through our doors, experiencing exhibitions, programs, events, the shop, and more. This represents a 30% increase from the previous year.

Then there was even better news in an email from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where the metrics seem to be astounding. The email was about the museum’s economic impact–it “generated more than $145 M for the state”–but take a look at this chart:

FY2008 FY2014                         % change
VMFA Attendance 118,470 464,534 292%
Statewide Program Attendance 205,987 616,817 199%
Museum Members 8,353 34,628 315%
Membership Income $1,440,000 $4,003,917 178%
Exhibitions 1/year 4-5 major exhibitions & 4 major gallery reinstallations/year 400%
Acquisitions 141 1,080 666%

Of course, I have nothing from other museums for direct comparison. And I know full well that negative statistics were, of course, left off the chart. Nonetheless, the record of Alex Nyerges, who became director in 2006, seems to be impressive.

He said:
The museum is becoming more globally recognized, and this is evident most prominently in our exhibitions and acquisitions. The amount of art we have acquired has grown exponentially since the museum’s transformative expansion in 2010. By continuing to curate world-class exhibitions, offering programs for all ages, and providing free general admission 365 days a year, we have built an environment for all Virginians to visit, learn, and spend their free time.
I’ve applauded the 365-day-a-year schedule before, and stand by that.
For more information about VMFA’s economic impact study, go here.

What I Learned This Summer: Philadelphia

Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_113I’ve been visiting a lot of museums this summer, on more than my usual share of travels. Sometimes I’ve picked up ideas worth sharing–for example, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There, Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting—which runs only through Sept. 13, so hurry to see it–has been pulling in crowds. Tickets are timed for crowd control, though, so visitors can actually see the paintings–or could while I was there on a Tuesday in July.

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It’s an excellent show that explicates how a dealer was critical to the story of art history–and is full of wonderful paintings, like Renoir’s portrait of Durand-Ruel, at left, and the Mary Cassatt at right.

But I also like how the Philadelphia museum extended the exhibit to its permanent collection galleries. There, during the run of show, paintings that passed through Durand-Ruel’s galleries have special labels.

Each painting in its collection has a special label, that says “This object was sold by Durand-Ruel Gallery” and “Discovering the Impressionists.”

It’s unobtrusive, but adds another layer of meaning for those who’ve been to the special exhibition. And almost seems a bit like a treasure hunt.

Here’s a closeup of one label and pix of how they look on the walls.

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Phila2Looks good, doesn’t it?

And it’s a way to get visitors from special shows into the permanent collection.

Kudos, Philadelphia.