Henry Hudson, working for the Dutch East India Company, first sailed into the river now named for him 400 years ago this September, leading to the founding of New Amsterdam/New York. I’m sure New York would have celebrated the occasion, but probably not as comprehensively as it is doing had not the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands stepped up to the plate. You can see what I’m talking about by looking at the website created for the occasion, called NY400. Many (most?) events involve the arts.

One, twin photography exhibitions in New York and in Amsterdam, is delightfully creative — a contemporary way to celebrate the connection between New Yorkers and the Dutch.
 

For NY Perspectives, presented by Foam_Fotografiemuseum and the City Archives of Amsterdam, where it is already on view and will remain so until Aug. 23rd, four New York photographers were enlisted to shoot Amsterdam. Each was given a theme: water, the outskirts of the city, the pedestrian, and night.

In Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered, which opens at the Museum of the City of New York on June 10 and includes the image at left, the reverse happened: 12 Dutch photographers snapped New York.

Besides being a great idea — it’s a model international exchange — the results I’ve seen look very interesting.

[Read more…] about Celebrating Henry Hudson the Contemporary Way

For all its drawbacks for writers, the Internet has its pluses, too. Easier research, for one. And here’s another example: Two new websites in France are putting on display, for everyone to see, just how difficult writing novels (in particular) really is and how it was done by a master. Prospect Magazine has the story, and here’s the lede:

Flaubert, said Henry James, was “the novelist’s novelist.” And perhaps because he wanted to prove to his family of sceptical doctors that writing was hard work, or perhaps because he was incapable of throwing anything away, or maybe even because he was so in awe of the mystical powers of art, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) kept all his manuscript drafts.

A unique internet literary collaboration that began in Rouen, Flaubert’s Normandy birthplace, now lays bare the innermost secrets of his anguished creative process. The 4,561 pages he frantically wrote and rewrote to become his 400-or-so-page masterpiece, Madame Bovary, have been transcribed by 130 enthusiasts from 13 countries and put online. 

Flaubert’s manuscripts have been digitized, posted alongside the transcriptions at two websites: www.bovary.fr and flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/. It’s in French, of course, but anyone can gawk at the revisions. The Prospect article reveals plenty, too, such as:

• Flaubert wrote 52 versions of Madame Bovary’s most famous scene, wherein Emma sneaks out of her house at dawn and runs to her lover;
• He often produced 20 versions of the same page;
• He excised metaphors (“they attack me like fleas”, he said);
• He thought as he wrote, rather than plan what he would say first.

There’s much more in the article; here’s the link. 

New York’s arts world has gone ga-ga over Michelle Obama’s new role as arts ambassador, proving once again that hope springs eternal among them that maybe, just maybe, the President will elevate the arts during his administration (contrary to his first few months in office, which I wrote about here, here and here).

In fact, after I filed my report on her ribbon-cutting visit to the Metropolitan Museum to the
Daily Beast last night and signed off, the editors headlined it “Obama’s New Arts Czar: His Wife.”

“The excitement was palpable,” one person at the Met ceremony told me. Later, at the American Ballet Theater, she wowed the audience again, saying “My husband and I believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation’s leaders for tomorrow. And it is our hope that we can all work together to expose, enrich and empower Americans of all ages through the arts.”

I hope they’re all right, and that Michelle’s arts involvement — and offensive — lasts. As I reported for the Beast, the Met added some nice touches to reinforce any thought the First Lady has on her role: they held her meeting with about 40 New York arts leaders (chosen by the White House) in the gallery named for Hatshepsut, the woman pharoah, and as they guided her through the Temple of Dendur they made sure to say that Jackie Kennedy helped the museum get the edifice. (Here’s a link to my article.) 

At the meeting, participants told me, she listened intently, and she asked for their ideas. There’s no official word on Michelle’s role going forward, but she clearly likes her forays into the arts world.   

Last week, ArtsJournal listed, among the stories on the left of the page, an article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy about online giving: “Non-Profits Lure More Online Donors, But Donors Give Less.” The total raised grew but the average gift dropped.

Digging into the details proved more interesting. In its paper copy, the Chronicle broke down the numbers for 211 organizations, including eight arts/cultural/public broadcasting groups. The star of that class was undoubtedly the Metropolitan Museum, which in FY 2008 not only boosted the amount raised online by 30.4% but also hauled in nearly $2.7 million online. Its closest competitor, the Smithsonian Institution, raised about $1.1 million online.  

I visited the Met site to see if I could learn the secret of its success. One thing was clear — it offered many ways to give, with fewer clicks to do it, and higher suggested contributions. At no other site I visited can one buy tickets to a fancy benefit, as you can on the Met site. Its top suggested contribution is $10,000 or fill-in-the-blank vs. $1,000 or fill-in-the-blank at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Met’s highest membership category, online, is the President’s Council for $20,000 — vs. $500 for a Muse membership at LACMA. At the Huntington Library, top membership is $2,500.

It’s hard to generalize from such a small sample. The top Smithsonian “enter a gift amount” is $250 or fill-in-the-blank, and that doesn’t square with the other examples. And we don’t know how much of this money is “new” money, adding to the pot. 

But the Met is clearly doing something right. And why not offer as many ways to give online as possible? It can’t hurt, can it?

Photo Credit: Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Over the weekend, the Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting in America put on an excellent symposium called “Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals.” Sounds too academic to be interesting, I know — but the fact
that the overflow audience was filled with collectors, dealers, auction house experts and people who are just interested in art suggests otherwise. (Disclosure: Inge Reist, the Center’s director, is a friend, and as a consultant, I helped direct some funding to the Center.)

The Center is just two years old, and was formed to address this gaping hole in art historical scholarship. Collectors, after all, are the ones who largely stock museums. The Met’s longtime curator of 20th Century art Bill Lieberman used to say he was a “collector of collectors,” not of paintings. More exhibitions — like Walter Liedtke’s “Age of Rembrandt” show in 2007 and the 2006 show of dealer-collector Ambroise Vollard, both at the Met — are likely to be organized around collectors.

The Center has already held four symposia (plus co-sponsored one in Venice on women art collectors), established fellowships for scholars, offered workshops and announced the creation of a prize, funded by Sotheby’s, for a distinguished publication on art collecting in America.

I’ve gone to sessions at a couple of the symposia (one on artists as collectors, another on “tuning points” in modern art collecting).

This one was the best so far.

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