Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Syrian Heritage Officials Plead For Help In Aleppo

About 70% of the ancient walled city of Aleppo, Syria is now “destroyed or severely damaged by the war” and, according to an article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, curators and others there are working hard to make sure the same fate does not meet the Aleppo National Museum — which has some problems already, of course.

BN-CN727_0425al_D_20140425155306The WSJ‘s story in behind the paywall (here’s the link anyway), so let me provide a few highlights (or lowlights, more accurately):

In the courtyard, a massive basalt stone lion from Arslan Tash—the site of an Iron Age kingdom east of Aleppo conquered by the Assyrians in the 9th century B.C.—is now almost completely covered with bags filled with sand and pebbles to protect it from mortars and rockets that often crash into the museum’s courtyard.

Nearby statues of goddesses, kings and warriors are similarly cocooned and camouflaged or completely entombed inside freshly made concrete blocks.

Exhibition halls are bare and glass display cases empty, covered in thick layers of dust. Artifacts like the prized second millennium B.C. cuneiform tablets from the ancient city of Mari have either been locked in the basement or shipped to the capital, Damascus.

Two of the museum’s curators and some of the guards and their families now live and sleep at the museum.

BN-CN728_0425al_D_20140425155443Curator Ammar Kannawi says they need technical support and expertise from Western experts who helped in previous conflicts, like Lebanon and Iraq. Another plea:  “Why are we being left to plunge this low? Our identity is being erased,” said Nazir Awad, a Ministry of Culture official, breaking down in tears.

The story says that little has been done by the international community despite a UNESCO initiative launched in August 2013 because there has been little access to the sites. As a result, “looted and smuggled Syrian artifacts now regularly surface in the West.”

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the WSJ

 

 

Why MFA Boston Makes Me Queasy

Yesterday, the Museum of Fine Arts – Boston announced that it was putting on view “a special loan of the beloved Norman Rockwell painting, The Rookie (The Red Sox Locker Room)” from 1957. MFA made it a celebration of  the “third World Series Championship in a decade” for the Red Sox, and said the painting will be in the galleries for just six days, through May 4.

NRockwellWhy? Because it is “being offered at auction at Christie’s (New York) on May 22” in the American art auction. The MFA didn’t day, but the estimate is $20- to 30 million. It did say:

The MFA is the only place where the public will be able to see the celebrated painting in Boston––which depicts the Red Sox locker room in 1957 during spring training in Sarasota, Florida––before it goes on the auction block. Rockwell’s classic work, portraying a group of seasoned veterans giving the once-over to the team’s newest player, will be on view in the MFA’s Sharf Visitor Center. The painting was also on display at the MFA in 2005 and 2008, following World Series wins.

Well, not quite. Won’t it be in the sale exhibition? But that’s minor — the painting is already highly valued, and may not need the endorsement of the MFA. After all, it has already been on view there before. It was acquired by the current owner in 1986.

Six days on view may not mean much, but it nevertheless raises the painting’s profile. Aside from the MFA, the only other museum to have shown the work, which was the March 2, 1957 cover of the Saturday Evening Post, is the Norman Rockwell Museum. Small as this is, I still think that museums shouldn’t be used to enhance value right before a sale.

On the other hand, I do give the MFA credit for disclosing the auction right upfront.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the MFA

 

The BSO And Arts Journalism: Don’t Let This Spread

Heaven knows that arts journalism is not as robust as it once was, or needs to be. But the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is trying something that is, simply, a bad idea.

BaltimoreSympThe BSO is offering a journalism “fellowship,” through which an early to mid-career reporter will be “embedded” with the symphony for a year beginning in mid-June. This person would be tasked with telling “the underreported stories of orchestra musicians (both the BSO and those outside of Baltimore/Bethesda), Music Director Marin Alsop, guest conductors and guest artists, and a wide range of activities happening within the BSO.”

That’s not a journalist; that’s a PR representative. Maybe embeds can be justified in time of war, as the U.S. tried in Iraq, but in a symphony?

In the description of the job, which pays $38,000 for the year, plus benefits, the BSO calls it a residency.

This Residency is intended to cover orchestra-related news, features, trends, profiles and enterprise work; it will not include reviews, personal essay or opinion writing. The fellow will have access to rehearsals, performances and everything that happens off and on stage, including after-hours talks, meals and drinks with musicians, staff and the community. This is the first and only embedded arts journalism residency of its kind in the country.

It also says:

Multimedia stories will include breaking news, features, trends, profiles and enterprise. Stories will be posted to the BSO’s brand new website and throughout social media channels and other online media. The newest iteration of BSOmusic.org is content-rich, hosting a prominent Stories Newsfeed on its homepage, dedicated to the stories created by the Arts Writer-in-Residence. We aim to establish partnerships between the BSO and outside news organizations and hope that the Fellow’s content will be syndicated to news outlets that have an understaffed arts desk.

But many important details are left out — first and foremost, who’s going to edit the work? Who’ll have control? What if the embed turns up information the BSO does not want disclosed? Will the embed quit? And why would a legitimate news outlet want to take articles from an embed?

I could go on. This isn’t the same as, but it carries as many potential troubles as, the situation in 2012 when Peter Gelb tried to limit what Opera News, published by the Met’s Opera Guild, could print.

According to an article about this in The Chronicle of Philanthropy,

The [BSO] recently underwent a website redesign and was encouraged by new board member Amy Webb, head of Webbmedia Group, a Baltimore digital-strategy consultant, to develop more “self-generated content as a way to better engage our patrons,” says Eileen Andrews, the orchestra’s vice president for marketing and communications.

That may explain it — the push for more “content” from a web firm executive who sits on the board. But blurring the line between journalism and PR is never a good idea. Anyone who is media-literate will know the difference and doubt the content or the motivation.

 

That Dangerous Impulse To Ever-Expand

AnneRadiceI could barely believe it when I read that the American Folk Art Museum, saved from dissolution only when it unhappily sold its “new” building to the Museum of Modern art in 2011, is expanding again. But there you have it, according to The Art Newspaper.  Yesterday, it reported:

The American Folk Art Museum plans to open an annexe in Queens to house its collection and library. “We have just signed an agreement,” the museum’s director, Anne Radice [at left], says. The annexe will also provide the institution with additional space for exhibitions as well as improve access for researchers, she says.

The Queens annexe will be near the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, confirms a spokeswoman. This puts it in the same neighbourhood in Long Island City as MoMA QNS, the Museum of Modern Art’s satellite storage and archives, open to scholars by appointment only.

Storage, library — they may need the space. But this also sounds like that “lebebsraum” impulse, which can be all-consuming and often wrong. There isn’t much syngery with MoMA QNS, as it is not an exhibition space. I’ve been there and noticed very little street traffic that would suggest the area would support “space for exhibitions.” TAN does not specify whether this is a lease or a purchase, and there’s no announcement on the museum’s website.

Plus, while recovering, the folk art museum is not fully stabilized after its financial woes of the past several years. Its most recent 990, through last June 30, reports net assets at just $8.2 million — a lot better than the previous year’s minus $4.3 million, but still.

I hope the folk museum has done its sums properly. I would hate to see it in trouble yet again.

Who Would You Pick To Play Picasso? Plus, Best And Worst Artists’ Films

Most movies about art and artists leave a lot to be desired. We shall see how Picasso is treated in a movie about the making of Guernica, with Antonio Banderas starring as the artist. Banderas, who like Picasso is a Malaga native, said that he “turned down the chance at one point of playing Mr. Pablo, but the time has come in my life where I understand him better, and I am nearly at the age he was when those events happened, in 1937, when he was 55 or 56, and I’m getting close,” according to Fox News Latino. Banderas is 54.

Antonio_BanderasCarlos Saura will direct the movie, to be called “33 dias.” That’s about how long Picasso spent painting Guernica. 

Oh, the movie will also star Gwyneth Paltrow; IMDB says she is “rumored” to be playing Dora Maar.

You can find a few more details are here, but there’s nothing on a production schedule. IMDB puts release as 2015, and lists more cast and crew members.

I couldn’t think of any good artists’ biopics — I haven’t seen that many — but it turns out that Getty curators have been pondering the question, and they made a list. In a February blog post about art in movies, they named these as “the best biopics”:

  • The Moon and Sixpence (1942), about the life of Paul Gauguin
  • Moulin Rouge (1952), about Henri de Toulouse–Lautrec
  • The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo
  • Caravaggio (1986), about the story late-Renaissance master
  • Camille Claudel (1988), about the tormented sculptor (and Rodin’s muse)
  • Basquiat (1996), about the brilliant American painter
  • Artemisia (1997), about the 16th painter
  • Pollock (2000), which includes the story of one of the artist’s most important commissions, Mural, 1943

That post also lists movies, good and bad, that have “art on the big screen.” Where do you think they put Legal Eagles, about the Rothko case?