Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

“Museums In A Changing World” — The Video

Earlier this year, I was invited to address the Seton Hall University students in museum studies and the Institute for Museum Ethics there, and I proposed a conversation instead of a speech. The title was “Money, Market, or Mission? Museums in a Changing World,” and here was the precis:

Ongoing economic challenges have caused museums to question accepted ways of doing business and to look for new models that involve entertainment as much as education. How can museums respond to current trends in the market and build their audiences without compromising their educational and scholarly purposes? Should the preservation and care of museum collections take a backseat to providing community programs that will attract visitors to the museum? Judith Dobrzynski and Sally Yerkovich lead the discussion around how museums are attracting visitors in this changing time.

The event took place in early March (when I was still in my arm cast) and a while back Seton Hall posted the video of the session on YouTube. It’s here.

SetonHallWe get into a number of issues about which I have written here several times — whether it’s ethical to stage dance parties and other events purely to raise money in a museum instead of trying to get people interested in art; a conservation about [reMastered] at the Worcester Art Museum; how museums “train” audiences; and other things. And there are some issues I haven’t (yet) explored here. One good point I made, when discussing communities and museums, was the difference between art centers, like the Walker, and art museums, like, say, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which should be more about its collections. They can and probably should have different strategies. But, whatever each does, “make it about the art” in some way.

And another thought, which came up in the conversation about deaccessioning and specifically about Detroit: the more we turn museums into entertainment centers, as opposed to art cathedrals/repositories/education centers, the harder time we will have convincing people — including the courts — that museum collections are inviolate and cannot be treated as assets.

You might enjoy the video — skip to the 5 minute mark to avoid the introductions.

 

Judge Rules In Favor Of the DIA

Steven-Rhodes1Thank goodness: This afternoon, Judge Steven Rhodes that the Detroit creditors who pressed to remove art from the walls at the Detroit Institute of Arts to better inspect them during appraisals can’t do it. According to the Free Press,

Rhodes also denied the creditors’ motion seeking access to up to a million additional pages of historic documents about the art housed at the city-owned museum. However, Rhodes said he would allow creditors to work with DIA officials to allow access to artwork in storage at the museum.

The rulings are a setback for major bond insurers Syncora and Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. — who could collectively lose more than $1 billion in Detroit’s bankruptcy. Creditors’ attorneys are pushing for a sale of art and had asked Rhodes to compel Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to consider outside bids for DIA art worth up to $2 billion from four clients aligned with creditors.

Rhodes agreed that removing the paintings would put them at risk of damage.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Free Press 

 

Mocking the Art World, But Not Too Seriously

IMAG0371In a week when Christie’s can and does sell almost $880 million worth of contemporary art in just two nights — with more to come (or go) at Sotheby’s and Phillips — I thought it was time for amusement, sarcastic as it may be.

IMAG0370Several days ago, The Daily Dot, an internet newspaper, brought us Here’s a hilarious gallery show for people who hate art. The article is about a work of fiction by one James Hannaham called “Card Tricks,” which he wrote “in the form of art gallery plaques,” as novelist Jennifer Egan wrote in Recommended Reading, an online fiction magazine that published “Card Tricks.” Here’s a link to her commentary on it. 

Hannaham’s piece consists of several “art works” with labels. There is, for example, Some Crazy Bullshit, which consists of two bits of torn notebook paper taped to a gallery wall, as at right, and the label, at left.

He also offers a found object called Planet, i.e., the earth, and Nothing, enclosed with those little corner tabs we used to use to place photographs in paper albums.

The exhibit, Egan writes, first appeared in a gallery on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and more recently, as The Daily Dot reports, at the James Cohan Gallery in Manhattan. There:

“I’ve noticed, in galleries, that literary people look at the art, and artists look right to the placard,” Hannaham told Egan in a live interview at the event. “They want context.”

I’ve found something a little different: collectors look at who owns the work.

You can see more of Hannaham’s works at both links.

And kudos to both galleries (and apparently one in Minneapolis)  for having a sense of humor about their business. Especially this week.

Two Steps Forward, A Half-One Back, In Detroit

Where the Detroit Institute of Arts was ever going to get the $100 million it has to raise to keep up its end of the deal for freedom with Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr has been a mystery. Now it may be getting a solution. Detroit newspapers are reporting that the Big Three automakers may be about to pledge $50 million to the cause, which would make the DIA independent of the city, prevent its art from being sold, and help reduce cuts to the city’s pensioners.

DIAAccording to the Free Press,

The DIA approached the auto companies about six weeks ago to ask them to contribute more than $50 million as a group, one person familiar with the talks said. The total donation for the three may end up closer to half that amount, said the source. But once the automakers are on board, the museum might make similar requests to automotive suppliers. The DIA also asked for help from several non-auto foundations, including the Los Angeles-based Getty Foundation. Today it said it is mulling the request.

…A deal may be as close as a week away.

There are many more details in the article, and an excellent statement from General Motors and the GM Foundation: “The DIA must be central to any plans for a revitalized Detroit. Both GM and the GM Foundation are giving very careful consideration to how we can help preserve this treasure at such a critical time.”

The DIA has to raise another $200 million over the next nine years for its endowment, replacing the $23 million in receives each year in the temporary millage enacted in the three Detroit area counties. And it still must raise about $10 million a year for its operating budget. Let’s hope the Big Three come up with the money.

As for the step backward, the DIA is having to spend time and effort fending off city debt insurers Syncora and FGIC, which requested a ton of information from the DIA so its collection could be valued independently. DIA attorneys have now filed an official objection to their proposal, a “motion allowing their representatives to physically remove as many as 12,000 works from the walls and archives, snapping digital pictures of the front and back of each piece.” The Free Press continues:

The city-owned DIA tonight said the proposal “invites disaster” and “poses serious risks to the collection” because of the delicate condition of the works. 

The museum also protested the creditors’ request for access to what the DIA described as a trove of “over a million pages of hard-copy documents, many of which are originals that can be more than a half century old.”

The museum said it had already provided nearly 90,000 pages of records on its collection, as well as physical access to some documents.

“These files cannot be inspected and hastily copied without risking damage or destruction,” the museum said in the filing. “Many that are not used in day-to-day Museum operations are stored in the Museum archives and are not well organized or easily accessible.”

The issue is in court on Thursday. I hope the judge rules that this is a nuisance issue, with no basis for going forward.

 

Tate’s Coming Show: Is There A U.S. Counterpart?

Next week, Tate Britain will open what could be an excellent exhibition built around the career and influence of Kenneth Clark (pictured). It makes me wonder if anyone here in the U.S. could qualify for such treatment.

NPG P1153; Kenneth Clark, Baron Clark by Bernard Lee ('Bern') SchwartzThe exhibition, titled Kenneth Clark – Looking for Civilisation, 

…explores the impact of art historian, public servant and broadcaster Kenneth Clark (1903–1983), widely seen as one of the most influential figures in British art of the twentieth century. The exhibition examines Clark’s role as a patron and collector, art historian, public servant and broadcaster, and celebrates his contribution to bringing art in the twentieth century to a more popular audience.

We perhaps know Clark best as the broadcaster and writer, but Tate is instead focusing on his activities in the 1930s and ’40s, when he was an important patron of contemporary artists there:

 grahambelllandscape…Using his own wealth to help artists, Clark would not only buy works from those he admired but also provide financial support to allow them to work freely, offered commissions, and worked to ensure artists’ works entered prestigious collections. Believing that a crisis in patronage had led artists to become too detached from the rest of society, Clark promoted a representational art that was both modern and rooted in tradition. The artists he favoured included the Bloomsbury Group, the painters of the Euston Road School, and leading figures Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland [his landscape at right].

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Clark’s private patronage became a state project when he instigated the War Artists Advisory Committee to employ artists to record the war. Through the commissioning of such iconic works as Moore’s Shelter Drawings and Sutherland’s and Piper’s images of the Blitz he ensured that the neo-Romantic spirit that those artists’ work embodied became the dominant art of the period.

I think it might be a difficult show to curate, though. The sample six pictures on the Tate website don’t give me more encouragement about the visual lure. Even so, it should be a wonderful historic exhibit, offering much to learn and think about.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Tate (bottom)