Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Toronto’s Good Idea: “Just Like Me”

24890-660Every now and then I come across an idea that’s worth singling out, and the Art Gallery of Ontario has one: it’s an exhibit of paintings and sculptures featuring children designed to enchant children. It’s called Just Like Me: Explore, Imagine, Create; it’s the first of a series, and it includes 23 paintings, sculptures and photographs from the AGO’s European, Canadian, Inuit and photography collections, along with “multisensory activities and art books to inspire adults and children to meaningfully engage with art.” It’s shown in a space called The Kids’ Gallery.

First, a hat tip to the Toronto Star, which is where I noticed it last December — in a short article headlined Art Gallery o. f Ontario to launch children’s exhibition series. I nearly forgot about it, and when I returned to look recently I was pleased to discover that the exhibition lasts until this coming December 8.

In the press release announcing this initiative, the AGO explained:

Just Like Me: Explore, Imagine, Create makes art easy for young ones to enjoy with kid-friendly text panels and works hung at child height. The exhibition features images and paintings of children from diverse periods and cultures, encouraging young ones to reflect on the similarities and differences between their lives and those of families in other times and places.

22722-660The exhibition is curated by Lloyd DeWitt, curator of European art at the AGO. According to DeWitt, “Kids are often fascinated by images of other kids. We’re gathering the greatest works from the AGO collection that feature children as subjects in order to offer our youngest visitors both a mirror to see themselves in the art, and a window to peer into other eras and cultures.”

The AGO invites families to learn, play and rest inside The Kids’ Gallery with books, drawing and dress-up activities. Exhibition-inspired costumes and props are available for visitors to design, dress up and pose for their own portraits. Families are encouraged to post their photographs on Instagram with the #AGOkidsgallery hashtag to see their portrait appear on a screen in the space. The Kids’ Gallery activity centre also includes art books and a drawing station for budding artists inspired by the exhibited works.

Among the works in the show are the two posted here: Boy Holding a Torch, c 1692, by Godfried Schalcken, and Baldwin Street, Toronto, by Martin Lambeth, c 1958.

Sight unseen, I like this exhibition, at least in its idea — I’d welcome comments from anyone who has been to Toronto and seen it. The challenge for the series is coming up with more good exhibition ideas that don’t pander.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the AGO

 

Can You Discern What Is A Caravaggio And What Isn’t?

FortuneTellerIf experts can’t agree, I probably can’t tell (though I might have an opinion). Nonetheless, in this age of crowd-sourcing virtually everything that can be crowd-sourced, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is asking its visitors to answer that question.

Since Apr. 12, the museum has presented a small exhibit of four paintings by the artist in Visiting Masterpieces: Caravaggio and Connoisseurship. Two, Fortune Teller (c 1594–95) and Fra Antonio Martelli, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Malta (c 1608), are accepted as by the master — though as the museum says they once were not. Experts are divided, however, on the other two – Maffeo Barberini (c 1596) and Saint Francis in Meditation (c 1595).

So, the MFA says, it invites visitors to “employ the analytical thinking of experts and decide for themselves: which could be true Caravaggios? Visitors are encouraged to tweet their opinions using the hashtag #TrueCaravaggio and follow @mfaboston for conversation about the paintings.” I found little on Twitter last night, just these tweets:

And a few tweets by others.  But then again, I’m not on Twitter and rarely go there, so perhaps I missed some. But I like this exhibit — more details about it are here — for a couple of reasons, mainly the focus on connoisseurship and the small size, which invites interested people to linger. To me, the votes — or discussions on Twitter — are just add-ons. If they create more excitement, so be it. I hope there’s something in the galleries, though, to show the actual split in professional opinion — and precisely why. I’d also like to know what the MFA’s paintings curators think.

Photo Credit: The Fortune Teller, Courtesy of the Capitoline Museums via the MFA

Another Director’s Job Is Now Open

Jim-BallingerThe Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Barnes Foundation, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester — those museums all need directors. And now, so does the Phoenix Art Museum.

Last Thursday, on Apr. 17, Jim Ballinger — director there since 1982 — announced that he was retiring, with the effective date undisclosed but, I’d guess, probably related to the selection of his successor. The search will start immediately, the museum said.

Ballinger turns 65 this year, and started at the Phoenix museum as a curator there in 1974. According to the museum’s press release:

During Ballinger’s tenure, the museum has presented nearly 500 exhibitions and the collection has grown by 10,000 objects. Ballinger has personally organized more than 50 exhibitions, authored exhibition catalogues, a book on Frederic Remington, administered two major capital campaigns that expanded the museum from 72,000 square feet to its current 285,000 square feet and brought a number of blockbuster exhibitions to Phoenix, including the current Hollywood Costume. He currently manages a staff of more than 115 and an operating budget of $11.6 million a year. He is recognized as a leader nationally in the field of Western American art.

…”Today, the museum is four times the size physically and the budget is more than 10 times the size as when I started as director,” [Ballinger said].

That’s 40 years in one place, an anomaly in today’s world.

Details here.

Fashion Attracts Record Visitors Everywhere

Winterthur, the great palace of American decorative Arts in Delaware, is suddenly the belle of the ball thanks to British fashion. And television.

DowntonAbbeySince the March 1 opening of its Costumes of Downton Abbey exhibit, some 550 visitors per day, on average, have been arriving, “exceeding all attendance records maintained since Winterthur opened in 1951,” Liz Farrell, the museum spokeswoman says. Last year at this time, Winterthur was presenting a wonderful exhibit that I wrote about for The Wall Street Journal, Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience, but stellar as it was, maps drew an average of 100 visitors per day.

Says Farrell: “The month of March 2014’s 12,233 visitors to Costumes of Downton Abbey surpasses the previous record set following the June 17, 2001, dedication of Enchanted Woods (7,594 visitors).” Winterthur’s previous record exhibition was Fashion in Film in 2006 – 2007, which drew 307 visitors per day. Also, “lectures are selling out of the 300-seat Copeland Lecture Hall.”

I didn’t ask, but I would bet that Winterthur’s visitors are mostly women, who’ve always been the most ardent fans of decorative arts. So costumes are a natural.

And they are thrilled, naturally — it isn’t easy for a museum that’s even slightly off the beaten path to go beyond its natural, local constituency.

Winterthur’s experience also follows patterns elsewhere — exhibits of clothes by Alexander McQueen, Yves St. Laurent, and other fashion stars also set records at various museums. Last year’s PUNK: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum was No. 10 on The Art Newspaper‘s annual list of most-attended museum exhibitions.

So I don’t see this trend to fashion shows ending; the challenge for art museums is to keep them grounded with a thesis, even when they are monographic. The apogee on that score, at least recently, would have to be Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, which was originated by Gloria Groom at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Winterthur

 

AAMD Tries To Get Tough Re: Delaware Deaccession

Timothy Rub (pictured), current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, has just penned a tough letter to Delaware officials — Governor Jack Markell, Attorney General Beau Biden and Wilmington Mayor Dennis P. Williams. It breaks no new ground, but it does make a decent point on the museum’s current strategy of non-disclosure:

timothy-rub…we are also deeply concerned that the Delaware Art Museum has refused to disclose publicly the works of art that it is considering selling. Given the importance of this decision and its potential impact, we believe that such information should be shared with the Museum’s members and the community as a whole so that they can understand what is at stake and be reassured that the action taken by the Board of Trustees does not violate donor intent or other strictures.

AAMD does intend, as it has said in the past, to impose sanctions on the Delaware Art Museum if it goes ahead with its plans to sell $30 million worth of art to pay its bills.

You can read the whole letter here.

But I have another non-disclosure quibble. Rub repeated what he has said before — the AAMD wants to help:

We also reaffirm our offer to help the Museum explore alternatives to this course of action.

Yet he has not, to my knowledge, even hinted at what alternatives he might be able to suggest than the museum hasn’t already explored on its own.

I realize that negotiating in the press is not a good strategy, so I’m not expecting details. But how about a few general hints? I for one would take the letter more seriously if he were more specific.