{"id":2294,"date":"2022-05-24T23:02:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T03:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2294"},"modified":"2022-05-25T01:34:27","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T05:34:27","slug":"what-museums-can-do-and-orchestras-cannot-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2022\/05\/what-museums-can-do-and-orchestras-cannot-do.html","title":{"rendered":"What Museums Can Do and Orchestras Cannot Do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Lost
Winslow Homer: “Lost in the Grand Banks”<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I keenly anticipated the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s current Winslow Homer retrospective. Titled \u201cCross-Currents,\u201d<\/a><\/strong> it comprises 88 oils and watercolors, a 200-page scholarly catalogue, a \u201cvisiting guide,\u201d an audio guide, and docents readily at hand. The driving aspiration is to newly frame a major nineteenth century American painter, with due regard for our current wrestlings with issues of American purpose and identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short \u2013 it is a necessary exercise in curating the American past, something our museums do and our orchestras do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I write in Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, cities (I mention Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh) whose art museums \u201cregularly scrutinize the American cultural narrative\u201d host orchestras innocent of this endeavor. And I specifically cite a 2018 Metropolitan Museum exhibit tracing the lineage of the painter Thomas Cole, adding: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWere an orchestra to do something similar, it might be a contextualized presentation of the symphonies of John Knowles Paine (1875, 1879) \u2013 crucial progenitors of the American-sounding Second and Third Symphonies of George Chadwick. I would not call Paine a \u2018great composer.\u2019 But he is a great and necessary figure in the history of American classical music. American orchestras do not even know him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were an American orchestra to \u201cdo something similar\u201d to the Met\u2019s Winslow Homer retrospective, it would be a celebration of our greatest symphonist: Charles Ives, whose 2024 Sesquicentenary is nearly upon us. Will anything like that take place? There is a tool kit at hand: the \u201cBrevard Project<\/a><\/strong>\u201d this July. It\u2019s a week-long think tank\/seminar exploring the ways American orchestras can \u201cuse the past\u201d to serve the nation and reinvigorate their mission..  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                    ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devouring the Winslow Homer galleries, I was impelled to recall the 1895 Civil War oration of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., with the immortal words: \u201cThrough our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-made, virtually self-taught as a painter, Homer (1836-1910) apprenticed to a commercial lithographer at nineteen and became a frequent illustrator for\u00a0Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ballou\u2019s Pictorial<\/em>. He was all of 25 years old when the Civil War erupted. He became its most memorable painter. This singular apprenticeship “touched with fire” powered his destiny with gathering force. He seized the elemental \u2013 and, with his signature seascapes, became the recorder of man at war with his surroundings in an indifferent world.\u00a0\u00a0Many an iconic Homer canvas shows sailors at the mercy of a sullen sea. At the Met, I was galvanized by the existential power of \u201cLost in the Grand Banks\u201d (1885), with its brooding and featureless gray sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trope of the self-invented, self-made American artist figures prominently in Dvorak\u2019s<\/em> Prophecy<\/em>. I apply it to Walt Whitman, Hermann Melville, and \u2013 most especially \u2013 to Ives. It connects to something as \u201cunfinished\u201d as the United States itself. The Met\u2019s Homer retrospective documents years of renewal, but also \u2013 at least to my eyes \u2013 pronounced terminal decline. My impression is that his lack of formal technical training ultimately became a source of limitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many years ago, an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum cruelly juxtaposed the watercolors of Homer and John Singer Sargent. Homer was proud of his watercolors, and justly so. But Sargent\u2019s command of this treacherous medium was sovereign. As a technician, he disclosed a virtuosity beyond Homer\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seizing the Civil War, grappling with man\u2019s war with the elements, Homer was an artist whose themes sometimes exceeded his means. And Sargent\u2019s means can surpass his themes. It is in the music of Charles Ives \u2013 music still under-performed and under-recognized \u2013 that great American themes and uncanny, idiosyncratic means jostle in a wondrously dynamic equilibrium. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ives Sesquicentenary seems to me a make-or-break moment for our struggling orchestras. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keenly anticipated the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s current Winslow Homer retrospective. Titled \u201cCross-Currents,\u201d it comprises 88 oils and watercolors, a 200-page scholarly catalogue, a \u201cvisiting guide,\u201d an audio guide, and docents readily at hand. The driving aspiration is to newly frame a major nineteenth century American painter, with due regard for our current wrestlings with issues of American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-B0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}