Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Menil Repurposes Sacred Space For Contemporary Art

When the Byzantine Fresco Chapel at the Menil Collection in Houston opened in 1997, it displayed a group of 13th-century Greek Orthodox frescoes. But after restoration of the works, which the Menil had rescued from looters for the Church of Cyprus, the museum returned the frescoes to Cyprus as a donation when the agreed loan expired in 2012.

ByzantineChapelMuseumSo what to do with that chapel (at right), which has now been deconsecrated? The Menil has commissioned a year-long installation from the team of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet has been a hit wherever it is installed, but especially when in 2013 it was place in the Cloisters’s 12th-century Spanish chapel, as the first work of contemporary art ever to be shown at the Met’s medieval art branch.

So perhaps this was a natural. The duo, says the Menil release:

will fill the now-deconsecrated space with a sonic and visual experience inspired by ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras’s concept of “the music of the spheres.” This theory that the movement of celestial bodies creates harmonies has recently been corroborated by scientists. Visitors will hear an audio collage including recordings collected by the NASA spacecraft Voyager when monitoring the interaction of solar winds and Earth’s ionosphere. Because the ions vibrate within the range of frequencies audible to the human ear, it has been possible to convert their resonances into sounds, which will become part of the aural experience. Among the objects suspended in the mobile will be an array of mirrors and a small player piano.

The Chapel, meant as a sacred space, will from now on house these long-term, contemporary installations, the museum said. This one, I hope, will be more like Forty-Part Motet than like Cardiff’s Murder of Crows.  We will see on Jan. 31, when it opens.

 

 

Boston’s Arts Czar–Real Or Window Dressing?

This fall, Boston’s relatively new (Jan. 2014) mayor, Martin J. Walsh, appointed a cabinet-level arts czar: Julie Burros, who has been director of cultural planning in Chicago for nearly 15 years, where she helped develop a cultural plan for the Windy City. Many in the arts there were thrilled. Talking with the Boston Globe, ArtsBoston executive director Catherine Peterson said: “I think it is a potential game changer for the city. It embeds somebody who reports directly to the mayor, so the arts are not just at the center of what goes on in our museums and theaters, but at the center of life in the city.”

07_3KK3982AAs the Globe wrote in September, Burros will have “…a staff of nine and an annual budget of $1.3 million, with most of it going to salaries, officials said. Burros will also oversee the Fund for Boston Neighborhoods, currently at about $1.1 million, funded largely by contributions from organizations and individuals and used for events such as First Night. She will be paid $125,000 a year.” And, it added:

The idea behind the appointment is that a strong arts sector yields cultural, economic, and quality-of-life benefits that touch everyone in the city. “This is one area that crosses over almost every single department of city government and every single piece of city life,” said Walsh.

Last month, Walsh and Burros amplified their view with an op-ed in the Globe, saying (among other things):

Together with city residents, we will look at how arts and culture can play a greater role in the lives of all Bostonians — experiencing, learning, and creating. Experiencing the arts means enjoying the beauty of that which others create for us. Learning about the arts means that children and adults can see the world around them through a new lens. And creating art means finding ways to express thoughts and feelings to heal, connect, and inspire.

Our cultural plan will be a road map of a long-term strategy for how to enrich and strengthen our civic fabric as only the arts can. We seek to make the arts more accessible to residents of all neighborhoods and to support public art and design as a key component of how we envision and develop space in Boston.

All well and good, I think. Except. I remember when the Chicago Cultural Plan was revealed in fall, 2012, and I don’t have fond memories. It was maddeningly general and full of feel-good language to make the public seem as if their words were heeded.

But the Chicago Reader beat me to writing up what was wrong with it, enumerating Ten Things Wrong with the Chicago Cultural Plan So Far. The Reader called it a wish list. A year later, that publication went back to the plan to assess progress. It found that One year in, the Chicago Cultural Plan is already receiving plaudits. But that doesn’t mean it’s not window dressing. The writer, Deanna Issaacs, quoted a Chicago commissioner saying that “half of the 241 initiatives in the plan have been addressed.” In a year?

If so, either the bar was set too low or that was an exaggeration. You may want to decide–here’s a PDF of the plan’s Executive Summary and here’s a PDF of the plan itself.

One thing Bostonians should be looking out for. Chicago hired Lord Cultural Resources to write the plan. As a global firm, it has a reputation of cookie-cutter solutions. If Burros hires them in Boston, let the skepticism begin.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Boston Globe

Perelman Vs. Gagosian: A Decision

Well, it turns out, the court agrees with me on at least one case filed by billionaire Ron Perelman about the art market. As I wrote here in October, in a legal match-up between art dealer Larry Gagosian and financier Ronald Perelman, neither is a sympathetic character. But I thought then, and still do, that Perelman’s suit about his purchase of a Cy Twombly painting was probably a frivolous case. Some RCA readers disagreed.

ronald-perelmanLast week, the New York Supreme Court dismissed a Perelman suit against Gagosian filed in 2012 in which he said he had been tricked into paying an inflated price for a $4 million Jeff Koons sculpture called “Popeye.” That suit, which charged breach of fiduciary duty, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and fraud, has now been dismissed.

It’s hard to keep score on Perelman’s legal maneuvers. But I cite this dismissal because of what the judge said about the market (I’ve cut the case law references):

The parties operated at arm’s length when they negotiated (e.g. over the price of the $10.5 million painting) …Thus, fiduciary obligations did not exist between them… Moreover, even read liberally, the complaint does not establish that defendants exercised control and dominance over plaintiffs – limited liability companies who, by their own description, frequently purchased, sold, and exchanged works of art as investments….

The amended complaint alleges that defendants misrepresented the value of certain works of art and that the values were supported by market data, when they were not. As to the latter,
the complaint fails to state a cause of action for fraud because plaintiffs did not allege justifiable reliance… As a matter of law, these sophisticated plaintiffs cannot demonstrate reasonable reliance because they conducted no due diligence; for example, they did not ask defendants, “Show us your market data” … As to the claim that defendants misrepresented the value of certain art works, statements about the value of art constitute “nonactionable opinion that provide[s] no basis for a fraud claim” …

That “sophisticated plaintiffs” phrase is what counts. That is why I thought, and think, the new suit is also wrong-headed, unless it was filed for other motives.

What To Make of The Turner Record?

While much of the art world was in Miami Beach last Wednesday, Sotheby’s in London sold a J.M.W. Turner for a record $47. 4 million, or £30.3 million, including the premium, against a presale estimate of $24.1- to $32.1 million. That’s huge!

TurnerTurner, whose biopic Mr. Turner opens in the United States on Dec. 19, painted the work, Rome, from Mount Aventine, in 1835, and exhibited it the following year at the Royal Academy.

Four bidders wanted to picture, Sotheby’s said, mentioned that the sale “coincided with a wider moment of Turner mania, with the groundbreaking exhibition of Late Turner at the Tate and Mike Leigh’s sensational Mr Turner.” The auction house might also have mentioned the Turner & the Sea exhibit, which was organized by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich last year, and also shown at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.

It must have helped that the work had only changed hands once before, in 1978, when the Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister, bought it and in whose collecetion he has remained ever since. It has never been restored or relined. That, plus the fact that it was one of the few major Turners in private hands increased the competition. That price is also the highest for any pre-20th century British artist ever sold at auction, according to Sotheby’s.

The previous record for a Turner was set in 2010, when the Getty Museum bought his Modern Rome–Campo Vaccino for £29.7 million, ot $44.9 million.

Still, Turner is not universally admired, and the enthusiasm for the category extended past the Turner.

Here’s a passage from the press release announcing the record:

Alex Bell, Joint International Head and Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department said: “…Turner is a revolutionary artist who transformed the way we experience painting, and Rome, from Mount Aventine is one of his greatest achievements. The landmark price the work achieved tonight was driven not only by its exceptional provenance and condition but also by the fact that it was one of the last great masterpieces by the artist left in private hands. Following this summer’s record evening sale, tonight’s auction is a further indication of the growing strength of the Old Master market.  Where there is quality there are buyers, and we are seeing a huge influx of interest, most notably from new entrants into the field who this year accounted for 40% of our buyers.

Boldface mine. Also, 84% of the lots were sold, following a 81% sell-through rate last July. Some 64% of works sold in this Old Master and British pictures sale  sold for prices above their high estimate.

Sotheby’s did not, of course, say who the new buyers are. Could it be possible that some collectors are tiring of the outsized prices in contemporary art and are looking for better values? Have they paid attention to Leonard Lauder, who has said loud and clear that he started collecting Cubist works when everyon else was focused on Impressionism?

I actually hope so.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Rush Post: Financial Health Of the Arts Industry

Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR), begun a few years ago, ,released a new bit of research today–“examining the financial, operating, engagement and staffing health of the U.S. nonprofit arts industry.”

I confess I find much of its work a bit unsurprising. Do we really need research that shows, as this report did, that “The receipt of an NEA or IMLS grant has a positive effect on nearly all performance outcomes” or that “Arts sectors that are heavily into digital distribution of their programs (podcasts, virtual tours, high-def broadcasts, etc.) engage far more people through virtual attendance than sectors that reply solely on live, in-person attendance—with opera and symphonies leading all other sectors in participation in digital programming”?

I’d have preferred juicier questions that those answered in the email announcing the release.

It did come to a  few more interesting conclusions:

  • New York organizations tend to have a negative bottom line – the most negative bottom line of any of the geographic market clusters.
  • Larger organizations are more likely to have a lower return on fundraising and are more likely to run a deficit.
  • There appears to be a ceiling on the amount of dollars that can be raised for each dollar spent on fundraising ($7.80).
  • There is relative consistency in return on marketing: $4.15 earned for every dollar spent on marketing.

I am crunched for time today, however, and can’t dig into the report further to find out why. Here’s a link to the press release and  link to the full report, which I will look at tomorrow or over the weekend. If there’s anything worth commenting on, I’ll be back.