Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Chicago Has Some Fun Marketing Magritte

We all know that it’s hard for museums to get attention sometimes; there’s so much competition for everyone’s attention. The Art Institute of Chicago has mounted a major marketing campaign for Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 that’s a bit unusual and may be working. It started back in June, but for whatever reason the AIC just sent out a press release.

CT FOD_sculpture1.JPGThey call it “unthinking.”

…Beginning in early June, billboards and train stations throughout the city began to invite passersby to “unthink” everyday words and ideas. …Downtown shop windows began filling with surreal tableaus populated by some of Magritte’s favorite subjects: black bowler hats, open umbrellas, blue skies with white clouds, and word play. Threadless.com kicked off a contest to design the best Surrealist T-shirt. A dark figure, dressed in black and blue, began showing up at public events toting a mysterious eye balloon….

On the evening of Thursday, July 24, the line to enter the museum stretched for nearly a block as visitors showed up with “surreal” objects that they traded for free admission to the Magritte exhibition….

Then, on Friday, July 25, something even stranger happened. Two massive feet, right out of Magritte’s painting The Red Model, appeared on the sands of Oak Street Beach alongside a sign urging viewers to “Unthink Long Walks.”

The feet were snatched from the artist’s painting The Red Model.  You may want to check out other “Feet facts” at the press release link above (E.g., each weighs 800 pounds).

Other than the nearly 500 people who lined up and entered the museum free on July 24, the Art Institute makes no claims that this campaign is bringing visitors. But it does seem to be getting some attention. Here are a couple of links: in the Chicago Tribune and on Chicagoist.

There’s more to come, the release notes. And over at Little Black Book Online, there’s more information, too:

The campaign communicates that Magritte’s work does more than make us rethink. It makes patrons believe Magritte, through his work, through his unique view of the world, wants them to Unthink. “Unthink Magritte” will appear in newspaper, print, web, events, and an “Unthink” mobile app. It will also appear prominently in out-of-home including bus shelters, spectaculars and ambient.

Patrons of the Art Institute of Chicago can create and share their own audio, text and photographic interpretations or “Uninterpretations” of the Magritte exhibition or the world around them as inspired by Magritte’s work, using the Unthink Magritte mobile app also created by Leo Burnett Interactive.

That was posted by Leo Burnett Chicago, which created the campaign pro bono, lucky for AIC.

I love it — it’s fun and it’s about the art.

Photo Credit: Antonio Perez, Courtesy of  the Chicago Tribune  

Stanford: The New Art Place To Be


Mitchell-BeginAgainIVMany in the art world have been anticipating the opening on Sept. 21 of the collection of Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson at Stanford — even from afar. In 2011, the couple donated 121 works of contemporary art, filled with paintings by the likes of Pollock, Diebenkorn, Rothko Elsworth Kelly, de Kooning, Joan Mitchell (Begin Again IV at left), and Elizabeth Murray, to name a few, to Stanford on the condition that it build galleries to house them. Stanford is offering timed tickets, starting in mid-August — but they are free.  

But Stanford will be the place to be soon for more reasons than the Anderson collection. Next door to the Anderson Collection building is the Cantor Arts Center. Last week, the Cantor announced three pretty interesting gifts:

  • Richard Diebenkorn’s sketchbooks, donated by his widow, Phyllis – 26 of them, never before shown publicly, containing “an estimated 1,200 to 1,400 drawings, spanning the artist’s career and representing the range of styles and subjects he explored.” The Cantor plans to catalog and digitize them, plus launch scholarly projects, among other things. 
  • 14101-gifts_diebenkorn26 works by Jacob Lawrence, and one painting by his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, from the Gabrielle Reem and Herbert Kayden Collection. In Lawrence trove are “11 drawings, five paintings, nine prints and one illustrated book.”
  • Andy Warhol’s archive of 3,600 contact sheets and accompanying negatives: “Through an invitation-only competition among some of the nation’s leading art museums, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts selected the Cantor Arts Center as the permanent home of Warhol’s archive of contact sheets and negatives. They’ll all be digitized, too. 

 Read much more background and about the plans for these three collections here. 

All I can say is that this is a wonderful confluence of gifts and events and I wish I had plans to go to Stanford soon.

Photo Credit: © Estate of Joan Mitchell (top); © The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation (bottom) via the Cantor

 

Cincinnati Hires A Director, As Another Curator Departs

The news actually came out yesterday in an afternoon press release (but I was a little busy yesterday with other news): the board of the Cincinnati Art Museum has chosen Cameron Kitchin as the museum’s director. Kitchin previously headed the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tenn. 

cam_banner1In the press release, the board indicated that he is “a nationally recognized innovator and leader in the museum field.”  I confess I’ve not noticed him before, though that may have more to do with the PR department there and the lack of national news coverage in middle America than it does with him. In his director’s welcome at the Brook, he wrote “The Brooks is your art museum, a place where you can experience the transformative power of art.” I’m glad he got right to the art. 

The Cincinnati release stresses what are now popular values:

He oversaw the growth of the [Brooks] museum as a community-based institution, leveraging the museum’s significant collections and history to forge new partnerships with a wide network of cultural institutions, educational entities, universities and social service agencies. Under his leadership, the Brooks engaged in rigorous new educational initiatives, pursued exciting original scholarship and successfully achieved broad appeal in exhibitions and programs. 

Kitchin led the museum through two comprehensive strategic plans, a capital plan and a groundbreaking program in early childhood education in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. Other significant new achievements included art therapy, Alzheimer’s services, teen art programs and overhauls of critical museum systems, collections databases and security infrastructure. Kitchin’s innovations and effectiveness in reaching new audiences across the entire community, building bridges through public service and leading a diverse and talented professional museum team drew the attention of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s search committee. In addition, Kitchin’s use of technology as a tool for exploring art and his creative public programming impressed the museum’s board.

We’ll see what happens in Cincinnati, which is a smaller town (population 297,000 versus 655,000 for Memphis), but the Brooks’ collection of 9,000 objects pales in comparison to the CAM’s 60,000.

Kitchin previously was executive director of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and before that “managed Economics Research Associates’ national consulting practice for museums and cultural attractions.” That’s an interesting credential.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Harvard University (class of 1993) and then got an MBA “with a concentration in not-for-profit and museum management” from William & Mary (’99).  

The search took seven months; previous director Aaron Betsky “stepped down” (under fire) in January and left the building on May 1. Kitchin starts his new job on Oct. 1, and I hope he brings stability (see below), as well as the best exhibitions he can attract, to Cincinnati. Betsky had a very mixed record on that score.  

The museum also suffered a lot of turmoil. As he arrives, Esther Bell, who was appointed CAM’s Curator of European Painting, Sculpture and Drawings on October, 2012, got a new job. She is leaving to become curator in charge of European paintings at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, beginning in September, according to SFGate.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum

St. Louis: Ka Nefer-Nefer Case Ends With A Whimper

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan, who has been hounding the St. Louis Art Museum to return an Egyptian mask it purchased in 1998 for about a half million dollars, has told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “his office only had “a lack of record showing a lawful transfer,” not proof the mask was stolen.” The Justice Department has therefore abandoned its effort to force SLAM to return the mask, letting yesterday’s deadline for taking legal pass without an additional filing. 

Ka-NeferNeferTo recap, as the P-D wrote:

The mask was excavated in 1952 from a storage room near the step pyramid of Saqqara and was one of the items found with the mummified body of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, a noblewoman at the court of Ramses II.

The mask disappeared from storage in Egypt sometime between 1966 and 1973. The museum bought the mask in 1998 from a New York art dealer for $499,000.

When Egyptian authorities learned in 2006 that the museum had the mask, they began trying to get it back.

After negotiations failed, the federal government threatened to sue, but lawyers for the museum beat them to the courthouse, filing their own suit in January of 2011.

Then, in 2012, the government’s seizure case was dismissed on the grounds that government proved nothing. The U.S. Attorney’s office appealed, but in June the Court of Appeals agreed with the first ruling. And now:

“The evidence that we had showed that the mask was in the lawful possession of the Egyptian authorities for several years, and then there was a period with no activity,” [Callahan] said. After that, “the mask was not in the possession of the Egyptian authorities anymore and there was no paperwork to support the theory that it lawfully left.”

The museum has said that the mask was part of a private collection in the 1960s, and was purchased in Switzerland by a Croatian collector, Zuzi Jelinek. Jelinek sold the mask to Phoenix Ancient Art in New York in 1995, the museum said.

The museum has said that it researched the mask’s ownership history before buying it, reaching out to Interpol, the Art Loss Register and others.

As The Art Law Report noted, however, “This does not necessarily end all wrangling over the mask.  Egypt itself, which has steadfastly maintained that the mask was taken illicitly before being imported, could still take legal action in the U.S.  whether that would face timeliness or statute of limitations/laches issues would likely be the question Egypt first considers.”

But SLAM has the mask (above), for now, which is on view in Gallery 130.

 

Retirement For Emily Rafferty At The Met

ERaffertyIn many New York art circles, Emily Rafferty was, as president, as much associated with the Metropolitan Museum as the director, even though she had nothing to do with the art and usually shied away from talking about it. Today, the Met announced that she’ll retire next spring — and what a loss that will be. Everybody I know inside the museum and outside the museum respected Rafferty; she was a role model for many women at the museum. Here’s what the announcement said:

Emily Kernan Rafferty, President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2005, announced today her decision to retire in the spring of 2015, after more than 10 years in that position. Ms. Rafferty came to the Museum in 1976 as an administrator in the Development department, where she rose through the ranks, serving as Vice President for Development and Membership (the first woman to be appointed a Vice President in the Museum’s history), and later as Senior Vice President for External Affairs.

…Now that the Museum is ready to embark upon a series of new initiatives and a related long-term capital campaign, I believe it should have administrative leadership from someone who is prepared to assume those responsibilities for many years to come and carry them to fruition. I am honored to have helped lead and achieve a smooth transition from the Directorship of Philippe de Montebello to Tom Campbell six years ago, and under Tom’s leadership helped to effect significant positive changes within the Met. My respect and affection for the institution and for my colleagues is profound, and the Met will always be close to my heart.”

Read the rest here.