Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Who Won The 2013 Curatorial Awards?

The Association of Art Museum Curators met in Detroit last week — a show of support for the city and the Detroit Institute of Arts, as disclosed here last year — and handed out awards. They are always interesting, as recognition by one’s peers is the highest form of praise, and this year they are very interesting — none of the usual suspects won awards.

HopperStudyIn exhibitions, the top award, for museums with an operating budget of more than $20 million, went to Red, White + Bold: Masterworks of Navajo Design, 1840 – 1870, curated by Nancy J. Blomberg, of the Denver Art Museum. I didn’t see that show, but I previewed the museum’s SPUN suite of exhibitions for The New York Times (here) and spoke with Bromberg about it. Good choice, I think.

Here are the others:

In EXHIBITIONS:

Museums with an operating budget between $4-20M

First Place: Yoga: The Art of Transformation, curated by Debra Diamond, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

Honorable Mention: Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey, curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Museums with an operating budget under $4M

First Place (TIE): An Errant Line: Ann Hamilton/Cynthia Schira, curated by Susan Earle, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas; and Encounters: The Arts of Africa, curated by Allyson Purpura, Krannert Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

Honorable Mention: More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s, curated by Claire Schneider, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

In EXHIBITION CATALOGUES, we’ll go from small to large…

Museums with an operating budget under $4M

First Place: The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation by Mary-Kay Lombino and Peter Buse, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Honorable Mention: Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George by Erin B. Coe, Gwendolyn Owens, and Bruce Robertson, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York

Museums with an operating budget between $4–20M

First Place: Yoga: The Art of Transformation by Debra Diamond, et al., Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

Honorable Mention: Picturing Power: Portraiture and Its Uses in The New York Chamber of Commerce, by Karl Kusserow, Elizabeth Blackmar, Paul Staiti, et al., Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey

 Museums with an operating budgets over $20M

First Place: Hopper Drawing by Carter E. Foster, Daniel S. Palmer, Nicholas Robbins, et al., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Honorable Mention (TIE): German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350-1600 by Maryan W. Ainsworth and Joshua P. Waterman, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York AND Rauschenberg Research Project by Sarah Roberts, Nicholas Cullinan, Susan Davidson, et al., at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California.

And finally, in ARTICLES AND ESSAYS:

First Place: Charles Marville: Hidden in Plain Sight by Sarah Kennel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Honorable Mention: Delacroix and the Matter of Finish by Eik Kahng, Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Congratulations, all. I wish I had seen more of these exhibits.

Photo Credit: Hopper Study for Nighthawks, Courtesy of the Whitney Museum

 

Keep The Pre-Raphaelite, Sell Contemporary Art, Expert Says

While inveighing against the Delaware Art Museum’s planned deacccession of William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil at Christie’s in London next month,  Pre-Raphaelite expert Mark Samuels Lasner (below) brought up a very touchy subject: why not sell undistingished contemporary artworks instead?

mark-samuels-lasnerLasner, who according to USA Today is “a senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library and an expert on Victorian literature and art,” called the planned sale “sacrilege.”

“Isabella and the Pot of Basil is “an extraordinarily significant painting,” said Lasner, who has amassed a 9,000-piece collection of Victorian books, manuscripts and letters that has been exhibited worldwide.

In 2009, Lasner helped organize the “Useful and Beautiful” international conference and related exhibitions, which highlighted Delaware’s Pre-Raphaelite treasures. For the last 10 years, he has helped fund an annual Pre-Raphaelite student fellowship under a joint program between UD Library and the museum.

But Lasner said he is weighing no longer supporting the museum – either through fellowship funding or a financial bequest – in light of the Hunt sale….

The Pre-Raphaelite collection is the museum’s “core, the reason for the institution’s very existence,” along with American illustration, Lasner wrote.

The Lasner proposed an alternative — selling “post-1950 contemporary art holdings, ‘most of which are undistinguished.’ ”

Most museum directors I’ve discussed this with won’t go there. Some would like to sell contemporary art works they feel will not stand the test of time. But there are two problems: they don’t want to offend living artists — not only the ones whose works would be sold, but also others who might take offense at the practice. Second, they’re afraid that the works aren’t worth much — and that their sale would be a signal of an artist’s insignificance, depressing prices even more.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the American Printing History Association, Chesapeake Chapter

Milwaukee Revises And Refines: At What Cost?

The Milwaukee Art Museum has revamped the design of its intended expansion, calling back the architect Jim Shields — who had taken his name off the project — to view1-600make refinements, the Milwaukee Business Journal revealed.

The new design adds wall-to-wall windows overlooking Lake Michigan on the ground floor of the addition and exterior panels with a natural metal such as zinc or copper, said Shields, of HGA Architects and Engineers, Milwaukee.

Previously, the museum had released a “boxier, mostly white” building plan, but director Dan Keegan said that was “conceptual and unfinished” and never the final version. 

The last design had blank white walls facing the lakefront for a portion of that space, shielding an interior gallery from the sun. The new design shrunk that gallery space by 1,500 square feet so the exterior walls can instead have windows, Keegan said.

The result is what Shields called a “community living room” in that space, with floor-to-ceiling windows. There will be tables there for a cafe and room for display of sculptures, for example.

“The galleries were pushed back a bit in order to add this open, transparent space,” Shields said.

The exterior materials have also changed, from white to earthy-toned. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which had criticized the initial plan, also had a story on the revision. I was  not so against the old plan,  but this one may be better on some grounds (the exterior look) and worse on others (less gallery space). I can’t tell if the building is too close to the lakefront, which is a concern I had. We shall have to see.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Milwaukee Business Journal

 

Revenge On Germany: Bern Museum To Get Gurlitt’s Trove

The Kunstmuseum Bern is now saying that it is the “unrestricted and unfettered sole heir'” to Cornelius Gurlitt’s treasure trove of art, according to several reports. Wow.

KunstmuseumBernAccording to the London Daily Mail, one of several accountings of the aftermath of Curlitt’s death, “The 81-year-old son of Adolf Hitler’s art dealer, whose collection included many pieces looted by the Nazis, had made a will shortly before his death yesterday.”

In a statement it said the appointment brings “a considerable burden of responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind, and questions in particular of a legal and ethical nature.”

The museum says it never previously had any dealings with Gurlitt….

…Stephan Holzinger, Mr Gurlitt’s lawyer, told the BBC that Mr Gurlitt wrote the will in the last few weeks.

‘It now falls to the probate court to determine if the will is valid and whether a contract of inheritance exists,’ he said. ‘I can understand that there is now wild speculation, but I don’t want to comment on that at this stage.’

German authorities are said to be angry about this development — and museum officials, whose institutions were stripped of many of these works must be too. Will they contest? Gurlitt was clearly angry about the way he was treated in the last few years;  now he has got revenge.

The Daily Mail piece recounts the history of this affair pretty well, in case you have forgotten the details.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Daily Mail 

The Word Is Out From Delaware Art Museum

The first painting that Delaware Art Museum trustees have chosen to deaccession is not, as many expected, Winslow Homer’s Milking Time. Rather, they’ve chosen a pre-Raphaelite painting by William Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil. 

l_isabella-and-the-potChristie’s has placed it in its June 17 London sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art. But the catalogue is not yet online and the estimate has not been disclosed.

Going against traditional museum ethics rules — and some say without exploring all other options — the museum said in March that it needed to sell as many as four paintings to raise $30 million, some of which would be used to pay down debt racked up in its recent expansion. The rest would go into its skimpy endowment.

The Homer disappeared from both the museum’s walls and its website, leading many to suspect it was on the block. The painting might raise close to $30 million, according to some experts.

But Newsworks, which is WHYY in Philadelphia, now says otherwise — citing the Hunt. It says “The painting was originally purchased by the museum in 1947 using general art acquisition funds.” It appears, from the museum’s website, to be the only Hunt in the collection.

I could argue this either way, alas. While the Homer is likely to fetch much more than this, and therefore require fewer paintings to leave the collection, I think it’s a better painting than the Hunt and ought to be kept. On the other hand, Delaware has a fine collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, and I believe that museums should aim for and maintain strength in specific areas to differentiate themselves from other museums.

Which brings me back to square one: I don’t think all financial avenues have been explored.