Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

“Spring Masters” Show Hires Architect To Radically Redesign

SpringMasters1Last year about this time, I wrote here about the Spring Show at the Park Avenue Armory, lauding the use of color on the walls of the booths. This year it was  Spring Masters, New York — they called it and “inaugural fair” as it was under new management, but it is basically a reincarnation of the Spring Show. This year, it had the same array of colored walls — well, maybe a little less flashy: I didn’t see the bright red, yellows and greens that were there last year. But this year it had something else, as its website claims:

SpringMasters2…a design by architect Rafael Viñoly that reimagines the visual impact, layout, and experience of the fair. Viñoly’s design includes hexagonal booths and floor plan that encourage and accommodate an array of presentation strategies. The redesign represents the most significant change in the Armory fair format in three decades…

SpringMasters3So the design — see the map I’ve posted — had two aisles instead of three, and a couple of clusters in the middle. That was supposed to be more relaxing, but I found it a tad confusing — I had to double-back occasionally to make sure I had seen every booth. As for the hexagonal booths, dealers told me they were intended to give them more wall space. Maybe you can tell a little from the pictures I’ve posted. I was told that about 95% of the visitors said they liked it. I didn’t mind the new layout, but I think SOFA, the design show, which had bare floors and very spare booths, was more radical than this. I still like the colors of this show, which when well chosen really bring out the artworks.

SpringMastersmap

 

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski

Now What? Cornelius Gurlitt Has Died

_74671208_gurlittNews reports are coming in from Europe: the “‘Nazi art’ hoarder,” as the BBC terms Cornelius Gurlitt, is dead at the age of 81 — “with no definitive answer on what will happen to his secret collection, which included many Nazi-looted pieces.”

Gurlitt recently changed his mind about claiming all 1,300 or so pieces in his collection as his own, saying he would cooperate with German authorities on establishing the paintings’ provenance and that he would return them if they were proven to be stolen.

More from the BBC here, plus a look into his vault here.

Gurlitt reportedly died in his Munich apartment; he had recently had heart surgery.

The disposition of the works is very muddy now, because — as The New York Times reported — “It was not clear if Mr. Gurlitt had drawn up a will that would stipulate what would happen to his collection.”

How Would You Explore The Knoedler And Duveen Archives?

Just the other day, I learned that the National Endowment for the Humanities had made a $300,000 grant to the Getty Research Institute to help make available the Knoedler Gallery archive. I’ve written about this archive before — it’s an important one and it’s big. Some finding aids have already been posted online.

knoedlerThe NEH grant will accelerate the processing of the archive, funding the “arrangement and description, and partial digitization” of the archive’s “1,400 linear feet of records documenting the acquisition and sale of European and American art in the United States between 1848 and 1971.” That work begins this July and is scheduled to conclude in October 2016. And, says the Getty:

The highest priorities for digitization are client correspondence, and forty-two volumes of stock books, sales books and commission books, which document artworks bought and sold by Knoedler. The digital collection will be made available in the GRI’s digital repository.
NPG x28132,Joseph Joel Duveen, Baron Duveen,by George Charles BeresfordMeantime, I also saw that the  Samuel H. Kress Foundation gave the GRI a $110,000 award for a project titled the “Knoedler Archive Stock Books Database Acceleration.” It started in January and is set for completion in December 2015.

The project will transcribe eleven Knoedler stock books, from the period 1872 to 1970, representing approximately 30,000 acquisitions and sales records of paintings into the searchable database.

This two-year database project was originally conceived in conjunction with the collaborative GRI International research project An Art Market for America: Dealers, Collectors, Philanthropy and the Formation of American Museums. Once complete, the Knoedler stock books database will be a principal data source for the collaborative project, and made freely available to the academic community and interested public for new research and scholarship.

Some stockbooks are already online here.

In a separate project, the Duveen Brothers archives are being digitized with support from the Kress Foundation, and some of that material will be available online in June.

These are important documents; now someone needs to offer fellowships to explore them, perhaps with new digital tools.

Photos: Michael Knoedler, courtesy of the Getty (top); Joseph Duveen (bottom)

 

Insiders Duel on Delaware Deaccessioning Dilemma

In two opinion pieces, the grandson of the Delaware Art Museum’s founder — and current board chair — faces off against a former member of the museum’s collections committee regarding the museum’s decision to sell art works to pay its bills. Both add facts or make some interesting points, but it’s the latter, I think, who emerges ahead.

Homer-MilkingTimeBoth pieces were published in the Wilmington News-Journal. Dick Poole — the non-trustee collections committee member until 2013 — wrote first. His piece, dated Apr. 28 and headlined Please, Don’t Sell Delaware museum’s art treasures — began emotionally, with him “on my knees begging” trustees not to sell. It got much better when he asked financial questions, for example:

…recent financial history demonstrates that the Delaware Art Museum already has survived much worse financial stress without closing or selling art that has long been accessioned into its collection. At the depth of the Great Recession in 2008-2009, the Museum’s reserves fell to $20 million while it was saddled with a debt of $25 million. At its Annual Meeting in 2011, the Museum announced that it had refinanced its debt until 2013 “on very favorable terms.” By year-end 2011, reserves had climbed to almost $24 million, and the debt had been reduced to $21 million. The Museum negotiated a plan to pay off $6.5 million of debt in 2014, $7 million in 2015, and $7.5 million in 2016, with no mention of selling art to do so….

…at the end of 2013, the reserves were up to $25.6 million, and the debt was reduced by $1 million, to $20 million. Contrary to the impression created by the trustees’ announcement that it must sell artwork from the collection to avoid shutting down the Museum in October 2014, the Museum’s Audited Financial Statements as of December 31, indicate that “the Museum has the option to convert the bonds to a variable rate loan to be paid in monthly installments at the bank rate [of 8%] until the loan is paid in full.”

On May 6, 7 and 8, the Museum trustees are holding …Q&A sessions….let’s propose that the trustees put a hold on their decision to sell our art, agree among themselves to raise $3.5 million to be matched by $3.5 million from the Museum’s membership and art lovers throughout the State, use the $7 million in proceeds to pay down the debt, and refinance the remaining $13 million in debt.

Meanwhile, the board chair – Gerret van S. Copeland — answered no questions and issued no response to that challenge in his piece, dated May 3 and headlined If the Art Museum closes, we lose a piece of ourselves. He reasserted that “the trustees considered every reasonable option to pay off the debt – including fund raising, strategic alliances, and refinancing with local and regional banks. But none proved viable.”

He then declares that raising money, as Poole proposes, would not be that simple:

…It took the trustees four years to raise $6.7 million of a $10 million campaign to celebrate the museum’s centennial. Over the past five years, our volunteer trustees have generously given more than $5 million in personal contributions to support museum operations. Before the trustees voted, we approached our funders to ask for their support. Many of them told us they would be happy to support us if we could relieve the debt. Needless to say, the expectation that we can raise tens of millions of dollars in a short amount of time is not possible.

That’s an amazing statement. The museum has 19 active trustees, according to its website, plus two honoraries. Those numbers suggest that they 1) are not particularly generous and 2) don’t believe in the museum enough to invest in it while it’s in the red. It looks like they are saying they won’t throw good money after bad.

Yet the museum’s board voted for the museum’s recent expansion, which is why it has such a hefty debt load. I realize they are not all the same players — three trustees were elected last May — but Copeland’s opinion piece is truly revealing, perhaps in more ways than he intended.

Photo Credit: Winslow Homer, Milking Time, which has disappeared from the museum’s walls and database and may be for sale

 

Insights: Cherry-picking Culture Track 2014

Culture Track, conducted by the arts advertising/marketing firm LaPlaca Cohen, came out with its 2014 Culture Track the other day, the first since 2011. As usual, the survey — said to be the largest national tracking study of the attitudes, motives and behaviors of culturally active audiences in the U.S. — answered questions, raised some more, and included some puzzling responses about participation in the cultural sector.

CT_logo_2I picked out a few things for comment:

  • The eldest and youngest — the pre-war and millennial generations — participate most frequently, which rings true since the first group has the most time and the second the fewest obligations, along with a need for activity. But a few comments: If, millennials consume culture largely to escape stress (as 73% do), why do cultural institutions keep offering them very active, participatory “experiences”? Much of this programming seems to be driving away the other most active group — the pre-war generation. 77% of them think that the programming has an unappealing topic that’s  not intended for them.
  • Cell phones, and apps, are less an important means of communications with people than they are a means for cultural consumers to take photographs and tell people they were there. Only 15% use a cultural organization’s app — so let’s make sure the money spent developing apps is proportional to their use and worth it.
  • Loyalty to both visual arts and performing arts groups is down: 15% have memberships and 10% have subscriptions, down from 26% and 23% respectively in 2011. That’s not a shock, unfortunately. More than anything else for museums, people are members because they like the museum — not because they want to skip the line or get discounts. That’s surprising — were respondents being truthful? It makes me wonder.
  • While cost, logistics, the inability to find a companion to go with, and the lack of time keep people away more, 28% now say “inconvenient hours” are a problem, versus 20% in 2011 — need I say more? (I’ve already said it here many times.)

There’s much more in Culture Track. You can see it by clicking on the link in my first paragraph, above.