Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Money For Contemporary Art, Boston: Not So Scarce?

Not too long ago, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston was a nomad, unable to raise money for a proper home, “striving to be marginal,” as the director Jill Medvedow used to say. Then, it raised $75 million, moved into a lovely new home on the waterfront, and hit its stride.

ICA-BostonAnd now, the ICA has announced that since 2010, it has completed another fundraising campaign: it gathered $50 million for operations and to pad its endowment, which stands at $25 million, up from $9.6 million when the campaign started. That’s better, but still not big enough for ICA, imho. 

I asked the ICA where the other $35 million, as a guess, went (though some endowment gain likely came from the improving market). Here is the response:

  • Building reserve:  $3 million
  • Debt retirement:  $4.7 million
  • Endowment: $19.2 million
  • Operations: $23.3 million

“Operations” means that the money will go into the annual operating budgets over the next five years, a spokeswoman says.

More good news in the press release: “100% of the ICA’s Board of Trustees contributed to the campaign and the museum received 21 seven-figure gifts.”

Overall, the ICA said:

…This support allows the museum to continue its rigorous work of organizing exhibitions that are changing the field of scholarship such as Dance/Draw and the upcoming exhibition Fiber: Sculpture 1960 – Present and offering critical reviews of artists like William Kentridge, Amy Sillman, Nick Cave, and Mary Reid Kelly; commissioning new works by important choreographers like Bill T. Jones, Rashaun Mitchell, and Trajal Harrell; and developing a nationally recognized teen arts education program resulting in two honors from the White House.

All good, really — except that times are pretty good now, economically, especially for donors who can afford to contribute to art museums. I might have socked away more of the campaign proceeds into the endowment to provide more cushioning for operations in bad times. 

 

Intrique: Director of Timken Museum Is Out

This Wednesday, John Wilson, Executive Director of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego, is set to give a gallery talk titled “Brave New World: from Icons to the Future.” As I write this, that’s what the museum website says.

John-Wilson-Timken-MuseumIt may be a broken link by the time you read this post, though, because Wilson (pictured at right) quit or was pushed out last week, just before the holiday. His name has been removed from the Board/Staff page of the site, though his replacement’s name isn’t yet there. That would be, according to various reports, David Bull, the well-known conservator and expert on Old Master paintings. Bull is founder and president of the Fine Art Conservation & Restoration in New York and paintings conservator at the National Gallery of Art.

Bull, who is 80, has been named “visiting director,” which is new title to me. Wilson is 58. I’m not an ageist, but something is going on there.

The Timken is a small museum known for it collections of European old master paintings, American paintings, and Russian icons. Wilson has been director for six years, and was, according to the Times of San Diego, “the first professional art historian with extensive museum experience to hold the position.” 

Both sides have remained circumspect, but it looks to me as if the board disagreed with Wilson’s strategy for the museum. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune,

Wilson said he was hired to bring change to the museum. During his tenure, he brought in innovative exhibits that provided context for the Timken’s Old Masters collection, among them a cutting-edge Robert Wilson video portrait exhibit and the current installation “El Lissitzky: Futurist Portfolios.”

In the past year, attendance for the museum, which is the only free museum in Balboa Park, reached a record 200,000 visitors and fundraising also increased substantially. Among Wilson’s goals was to make the Timken a partner and a player in San Diego’s cultural community, and the museum, in collaboration with the San Diego Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Diego, was instrumental in the first ever cooperative effort between the three museums, “Behold America!”

But the U-T quotes Wilson saying: “The board had a model of the Timken that is similar to when John Petersen was here. So it’s time for a change.” And what was that?  The paper says that Peterson was the grandson of Walter Ames, the Timken’s founder, and the son of Ames’ daughter, Nancy Petersen, who was the museum’s first formal director. John Petersen ascended to director in 1996 but died in 2006. Wilson succeeded him. 

And the U-T notes: “Replacing a director, who is a first rate curator, with a visiting director, who is a first-rate conservator, speaks to the museum’s current priorities.”

The Times wrote:

…Paige Nordeen, a museum spokeswoman, [said:] “David will be guiding the institution through San Diego’s 2015 centennial celebrations in Balboa Park and coincides with the museum’s 50th anniversary celebration, and he will be leading several planning sessions over the next month.”

She also used the code word that Wilson was leaving “to pursue other opportunities,” even as the U-T has Wilson saying  “he had no immediate plans, and at least for now, is looking forward to working on some research projects, and will likely stay in San Diego.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Timken

Small Show At The Met Makes Me Wish… UPDATED

entryImmortalCoralThe thunderstorms that hit the New York area last Wednesday and Thursday evening destroyed my plans for a week away, so I ended up spending the Fourth of July in town instead of about 1,500 miles away in Texas.

I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum around mid-day on the Fourth, and it was packed then, even before it started to rain, which probably brought more visitors. First I went to Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century, a beautifully installed exhibit of sculpture, and then I decided to take a look at Colors of the Universe: Chinese Hardstone Carvings. 

And therein lies more than one tale.

Colors of the Universe is an exquisite exhibit, filling just one gallery on the third floor in the Asian wing — up those stairs at left. I am betting it did not get the attention it deserved and, alas, it is closing today — so it won’t. That’s why I have a wish for it: that the Met would send it out to other museums, because the Met owns all — or most — of the pieces in the show.

Further, as I discovered when I searched the web for a review, the Met had put this show on view before. Holland Cotter reviewed it in The New York Times on Dec. 28, 2012, when it was on view through Jan. 6, 2013. Now, according to the Met’s website, it has been up since Dec. 11, 2013 and through today. Cotter wrote:

AsianpillowEach of the show’s 60 miniature sculptures, dating from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), is a nugget of show-off virtuosity and doesn’t pretend to be much else, though at least a few have ostensible functions…. some of the most memorable works in the show — organized by Jason Sun, a curator in the Asian art department, in the jewel-box Chinese Decorative Arts galleries — are notable for their sheer, look-at-me strangeness. Such is the case with a little dish of peanuts and candied dates sculptured from brown chalcedony. The artist has exquisitely differentiated the surface textures of the nuts and fruits, and pulled an amazingly nuanced range of browns from the quartzlike stone. The results are more phenomenal than beautiful. All the hard work has produced a bizarre, dark, resinous-looking little thing, a consummately wrought novelty-shop item, magnetic for silly reasons. A lot of art’s like that.

Honestly, I don’t remember that piece, though I concede that a few objects in the cases are surprises. The coral Daoist Immortal and Boy was an eye-opener by virtue of its bright , candy-colored orange, to name one. I love the little jade pillow — in the shape of a baby! — also at right.

Two more beautifully carved pieces — Seated Luohan in a Grotto (in lapis lazuli) and another in malachite — are below, at the end of this post.

jaderoom02Finally, I discovered something else when I looked up the donor of many, if not most of these objects: Heber R. Bishop, whom Hyperallergic once described as “an incredibly wealthy businessman who was enchanted with jade in all its forms, from geological shards to the most ornate jade carvings of China.”

That article, published a year ago, revealed that these pieces were once on view in a room of their own, known as the Jade Room, “ showcased in an opulent room in the style of Louis XV, with fifteen delicate glass cases presided over by a chandelier.” [pictured at left]

But it’s vanished as if it were never there.

The author, Allison Meier, also said:

According to the museum’s 1922 Guide to the Collections, the Bishop Jade Room contained “a collection bequeathed to the museum by Herber R. Bishop with the condition that it should be exhibited in a room reproducing the owner’s ballroom. The rich and very complete collection of jades is arranged according to the different colors and kinds, and contains not only Chinese jades but different kinds found in India, New Zealand, Nebraska, Mexico, and amongst the prehistoric remains of the Swiss lake dwellers.”

She didn’t get an answer from the Met about the jade room’s demise. In a way, Colors of the Universe is a recreation of the Jade Room, but in much sparer, more Asian galleries — and not all jade. Plus, there are pieces donated by other collectors, such as Edmund C. Converse, who donated the malachite carving below.

So, should this exhibit remain on view all the time? Or, better, be shared with other museums and publics that don’t have the riches of the Met? I vote for the latter.

UPDATE, 7/8: The Met tells me that it has just extended this exhibit until March 8, 2015.

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Photo Credits: Courtesy of Hyperallergic (Jade Room), The New York Times (malachite carving). All others:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski  

Fourth of July Post

Morgan-SSBannerThe Morgan Library & Museum has put on display a rare first edition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” marking the 200th anniversary in 2014 of the origination of the famous anthem. And the Morgan is open today, until 5 p.m., in case you’re looking for something to do in the rain. Also, it has its regular hours this weekend.

Since it’s a holiday, I’ll quote completely from the Morgan’s press release:

Francis Scott Key’s poem, inspired by the sight of the flag defiantly flying over Fort McHenry after the British attack in September 1814, was set to the 1770s melody “To Anacreon in Heaven” by John Stafford Smith. The tune was composed for the Anacreontic Society, ironically a British music club that held its meetings at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. Not until 1931 was “The Star-Spangled Banner” declared the nation’s official anthem by an act of Congress. Quite notably, patriotic is misspelled in the subtitle of this first edition, one of only a handful of surviving copies.

This manuscript, according to the collections record, was “Printed and sold at Carrs Music Store, 36 Baltimore Street [1814], in Baltimore.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Morgan

Save The Corcoran Petition Filed, But…

CorcoranToday, the Save the Corcoran Coalition filed its complaint and petition in D.C. Superior Court, which must rule on the proposed deal between the Corcoran, the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. STC  is asking to intervene in the Corcoran’s cy près proceedings. The petition asks the court to:

·      remove members of the current  Board of Trustees,

·      ensure that the entire Corcoran collection remain together,

·      require that the Board submit to a full financial accounting, and

·      deny cy près relief if the Board’s own maladministration has caused the Corcoran trust to become impracticable.

STC is right about one thing, for sure: trustees have never, to my knowledge, given a full financial accounting of the Corcoran’s situation. It always looked to me as if trustees sumply gave up, underestimating those who would oppose their plans. To quote from the press release:

“There are so many hard questions that need to be answered. We need to start there. If the Trustees want to dissolve a national, historic gem, we need to understand every wrong turn. We will never be able to get back our third oldest museum in the nation, and years of mismanagement is not a substantial explanation,” said Caroline Lacey, a Masters degree student currently enrolled at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, and a plaintiff on the suit.  “We as the students have made very serious time and monetary commitments to the Corcoran, and we deserve full accountability.”

STC’s attorney, Andrew Tulumello, Managing Partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said:

“The Trustees have proposed the radical step of destroying the very institution they are charged with protecting.  This is not necessary, and it is wrong. The public interest demands a more thoughtful approach.”

I agree with most of that. Trouble is, I don’t see a real solution to this, and the current “deal” may be a better outcome than a return to an ever-struggling Corcoran.

Still, I want to know, as STC does, precisely what the situation is before deciding.

Here’s a link to the trustees’ filing, should you want to dig into the legal issues.