Controlled Imagery and the "[remastered]"

“[remastered],” a new installation of the Worcester Art Museum’s Old Master paintings, developed largely by Matthias Waschek, director of the museum since 2011, is one of many changes that the museum has undergone and one that stands as the museum’s most unique and publicly affected. The paintings, which are now hung in “medallion style” groupings, common in 17^th and 18^th century stately homes, encourages the audience to “linger” in the galleries and look for the “commonalities among the paintings in each assemblage.” And unlike traditional installations, “[remastered]” offers no labels with the exception of the artist, title and date on cards in the galleries.

Giulio Cesare Procaccini’s “The Betrayal of Christ,” for example, is the central piece to a six-painting group including paintings by Caravaggio, El Greco, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera and Jan Lievens. This grouping, Mr. Waschek states, is brought together by the “fixed looks on the people in the paintings and the exchange of glances he set up among them. ‘It’s all about the gaze.’”

The very placement of a painting or sculpture and its relationship with other works  as established by groupings as in the case of “[remastered],” according to Monroe Price in “Controlling Imagery,” “superimposes upon it meanings and relationships that exist because of context…a transformation of meaning that takes place each time a painting is reinstalled.” It is no surprise then that each arrangement and variation in groupings creates new meaning, questions and essentially, an imposed meaning through suggestions made by its creator. Waschek, therefore, has in this context, taken full control of the contextual meaning and interpretation of the works on display and as such, has essentially taken freedom of interpretation, connection and individual engagement from the audience and the work of art.

Despite what is without question, a controlled environment, “[remastered]” presents a new way of looking to the 19^th century models of the Louvre and Smithsonian, continuing to adjust and make changes in response to the public’s reaction. While taking control of the presentation and interpretation of a collection grouping can be problematic, Warschek acknowledges this and openly shares of his interest in developing, experimenting and ultimately, creating an installation of works that best represent the museum while serving the public and their interest.

And as a smaller museum freed from the constraints of the old doctrine of what a museum is, Waschek and the Worcester Art Museum are able to experiment and as such, have a promising future in reaching and engaging a wider and greater audience with its collection. And with a nearly 70% increase in attendees in two years, there is no doubt that Waschek is on the right track!

For more info….

Dobrzynski, Judith H. “Museum, Remodeled.” The Wall Street Journal Online. 13 Nov 2013. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303618904579171940939838998

Price, Monroe. “Controlling Imagery: The Fight over Using Art to Change Society.” American Art. Smithsonian Institution: 1993. 

A Servant to Hollywood? Or to the History and Art of Film?

A “fancy repository” of Hollywood memories? Or a respectable institution of the history and culture of film? In an article in the Los Angeles Times, question surrounding the proposed debut of a major motion-picture museum in Los Angeles , the $300-million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, has many talking. The Academy’s undertaking comes at a time when there has been much growth and failure in the world of museums and films. While museum exhibitions like LACMA’s Stanley Kubrick and Tim Burton were widely received and attracted a promising number of attendees, there has been little promise in the success of museums devoted solely to the world of film. The British Film Institute, for example, launched the Museum of the Moving Image in 1988 only to dismantle after 11 years, while Los Angeles’ Hollywood Entertainment Museum closed in 2006 after a failing 10-year run. So what sets the Academy Museum apart? How does it aim to succeed? And escape the stigma of an entertainment center?

The Academy Museum, states Mike Boehm, will need “three famous intangibles the wizard bestowed on her sidekicks” in addition to their upcoming acquisition of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz:

“The brains to deftly balance entertainment with scholarly heft. The courage not to be manipulated by studio executives, actors or directors who might view the nonprofit museum as a tool for boosting box-office returns, gratifying egos or controlling artistic and historical interpretations that are supposed to be up to the curators. And a heart — Hollywood's collective philanthropic heart — that's eager to express itself by giving the museum the money and collection items it needs to thrive.”

The balance of entertainment and scholarly heft will be achieved, according to the Academy Museum, through several concentrated efforts, including the hiring of a chief curator who will not only lead the museum in defining the structure and staffing of the museum departments, but will serve to organize and debut exhibitions in an open and uncensored and diplomatic way. And with a longstanding film library and film archive, there is a strong foundation already in place to serve the museum well in its establishment as an institution of education, scholarship and preservation.

While this seems pretty simple and straightforward, it is far from easy. In order for the Academy to succeed, it must validate itself from its “ability to articulate and shape our understanding of why works of [film] are singularly important, why they deserve our attention and respect.” A museum devoted to film in the very heart of Hollywood raises many concerns that the museum will fall to the hands of the leaders of Hollywood film who may very well become the puppeteers to an institution that should otherwise serve the public with truth and integrity.

It is equally important to deter from becoming simply an entertainment center to one of pleasure. “Museums should be venues of pleasurable experiences, they should be amusing and delightful places where the act of discovery and learning is enjoyable and engaging,…where ideas and images, instruction and pleasure are transmitted to the public.” The fate of the museum, therefore, rests on the public. And the public trust is more vulnerable now than ever. With the challenge of funding, it is critical for the livelihood of the museum to take every precaution and measure possible to ensure that they serve as a museum of the public and for the public, and an institution in service to the history and art of film..

Although the Academy has raised nearly half of its projected $300-million construction fund, concern surrounds the museum’s ability to continue to receive millions each year to fund ongoing operations and new collection acquisitions. It is evident that there are many issues that the Academy Museum faces, but it is only upon its opening that will we truly see whether the Academy has achieved success or failure in their ability to establish from the beginning, “that it is not a servant to Hollywood, … [but] a servant to the history and art of film.”

Lowry, Glenn D. “A Deontological Approach to Art Museums and the Public Trust.”

Boehm, Mike. “The long Yellow Brick Road to Hollywood’s new museum.” The Los Angeles Times. 2 November 2013.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-ca-academy-museum-motion-pictures-20131103,0,2892098,full.story#axzz2klMIyJ8g

Magritte For Dinner

With the growing number of museums and competition heating up, museums across the U.S. are finding new and inventive ways of attracting the public and building upon a growing audience. In an article in ARTnews by Frances Vigna, the Museum of Modern Art in New York brings food and art together in an experience far from the traditions of the old. Embracing Rene Magritte’s fascination with image making, MoMA, in collaboration with artist Elaine Tin Nyo, reinterprets Magritte’s most iconic paintings as a five-course meal.

From cocktails of sapphire-colored curacao with plates of rosy-hued cheese puffs, based on Magritte’s 1930 oil Pink Bells, Tattered Skies, to prosciutto di Parma with an olive standing in for the eye to resemble The Portrait (1935), the attendees experience, interpret and connect to Magritte and his work through their bellies! While many might argue that this dining experience alone speaks nothing to the art and fails the participants by removing them from art itself, they will be happy to know that all attendees were also provided with a 45-minute private tour of the show by curatorial assistant Danielle Johnson. The careful planning of this demonstrates the success a museum can achieve in connecting the public to art in ways that are reflective of the visitors’ worlds while paying reverence to art itself. What gap might have formed had MoMA done one without the other is gone and in place, a bridge that has provided participants with an unforgettable experience of engagement and participation.

The participant is not asked to make the meal themselves from scratch or design their own “artistic” meal, but rather, to participate in a larger project by joining the team and doing their part….eating. For the final meal, dessert, the attendees were instructed on how to paint their “canvases” representative of Magritte’s Celestial Perfections, four canvases from 1930 featuring the artist’s sky motif. Painting aquamarine crème anglaise onto clean, bare plates and dotting their blue sky with pillow-soft poached meringues, the audience was provided as Simon would call, a “constrained” and “well-scaffolded” participatory experience. Constrained projects such as this motivate and focus participation and create a “comfortable entry point to engagement without limiting their creative potential.”

Museums are constantly changing and the vehicle by which they engage and connect visitors with art has taken on some interesting forms. “Getting visitors to connect to what they see, on whatever terms that might be,” argues Lisa Roberts, is to provide the audience with the skills of “perception and interpretation” which shifts the focus from the object to the process of looking at it. As in MoMA’s dinner with Magritte, the audience is introduced to a new way of looking at art, of interpreting it, and validating their own personal connection and responses to the art. While there is no denying the power of art to trigger an emotional response, experiments such as this take a step away from the authoritative traditions of looking and interpreting art, to eliciting visitors’ response on an internal and personal level. A successful example, the final plate!

A single molded dark-chocolate sparrow the size of a baseball begs its visitor to partake in the same act that appears in Magritte’s 1927 oil Jeune Fille mangeant un oiseau (Le Plaisir). In this painting, a serene girl violently devours a bird she has plucked from a tree like ripe fruit. And for the participants, the chocolate sparrow was to be devoured in the same violent embrace, cracking the shell of the bird which burst from its hollow belly, the sweet taste of rum-raspberry sauce. Now this is a painting…and experience…you’ll never forget!

Roberts, Lisa C. “Changing Practices of Interpretation.”

Simon, Nina. “Principles of Participation.”

http://www.artnews.com/2013/11/06/excuse-me-while-i-eat-the-sky-magritte-for-dinner-at-moma/

A "Suggested" Admission Fee

In an article in The Art Newspaper Online that was posted yesterday, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s suggested admission fee does not violate the original lease with the city which “seeks to make the museum accessible to a broad public.”  Judge Kornreich ruled in favor of the museum, stating that the “admission to the Met is de facto free for all” because “a de minimus contribution of a penny is accepted.” Despite the Judge’s ruling and the dismissal of the “majority” of two lawsuits filed against the museum, what will still proceed for further review in court is the claim that the “museum misleads visitors into believing they must pay the full admission fee to gain access to the museum.” And this is something I couldn’t agree with more having been one of the many unaware of the admission fee as a “suggested donation.”

The deceptive approach of the Metropolitan is off putting to say the least. Although the Met is primarily about the objects it contains, evident in their envious and overwhelmingly extensive collection of art from around the world, the deceptive nature of the Met has frayed the trust of the public. Everywhere one turns, admission fees are posted. With a hefty $25 a head for admission, it is no surprise the upset experienced by visitors who were given the runaround when they asked the tellers if the admission fee was in fact, just a “suggested donation.” And even more upsetting for the majority of the public who were unaware that this admission fee was, in fact, a “suggested” admission fee. As a public institution, Cuno states, “museums are expected to act and behave in a way that is in keeping with the perceived values they embody,” that of integrity and benefit to the public. By misleading visitors into believing they must pay the full admission fee violates public trust in the museum.

But with little to define what constitutes acting within the public trust, it is no surprise that many museums, including the Met, have failed in one aspect or another, the public and themselves. The success and popularity of art museums have forced museums to change in keeping with the times. As such, they compete intensely with one another, “as well as with other cultural venues and forms of entertainment for funding, attention and prestige.” This transformation of the museum is a point made strongly by Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, a curator at the Met:

“[The museum] is in fact a modern hybrid with the mingled characteristics of the cathedral, the royal palace, the theater, the school, the library, and according to some critics, the department store. As the emphasis or activity shifts, the character of the organization changes. Thus when the Museum serves a s place of entertainment it takes on the dramatic quality of the theater, when it is used for scholarly purposes it can become an ivory tower, when its educational activities are stressed it becomes a school. In the family of social institutions invented by man, the place of the museum is not fixed. It is pliant and develops in many directions, or sometimes moves simultaneously in several directions.”

What is clear here is that the evolution of the museum to one of consumerism, commercialization and entertainment will inevitably raise questions among the public as the museum continues to fall under scrutiny. Competition and funding, among others, will surely create times of questionable action as they fight to remain at top. And as such, the public trust will continue to be tested as they watch the museum take its course.

Lowry, Glenn D. “A Deontological Approach to Art Museums and the Public Trust.”

Halperin, Julia. “Judge Upholds Met’s Suggested Admission Fees.” The Art Newspaper. 30 October 2013.

http://theartnewspaper.com/articles/Judge-upholds-Mets-suggested-admission-fees/30822

“Komm, Frau”

In following the news surrounding the art world, I find myself quite often surprised by the amount of backlash that artists and museums receive when the art they create or support stirs controversy or discomfort. And even more surprising, to read about artists facing criminal charges and prison time for speaking to issues that should and need to be addressed. Is freedom of speech not in play these days?

The brief appearance of a concrete sculpture in Gdansk, Poland on October 12, 2013 depicting a Red Army soldier raping a pregnant woman has sparked heated controversy and a very upset Polish and Russian government. Erected without permission next to a Soviet tank, a communist-era memorial to Red Army soldiers who liberated the city from the Nazi’s in 1945, a sculpture finds its way into the public arena as a Red Army soldier kneeling between the legs of a fully pregnant woman lying on the ground, his left hand pulling at her hair and his right hand holding a gun in her mouth. The artist, Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk, who created the sculpture to address the tragedy and suffering of rape victims by Soviet soldiers during the last months of the war, is now facing 2 years in prison for “inciting racial or national hatred,” according to an article in Speigel Online.

The title of the piece, “Komm, Frau,” a German phrase meaning “Come, Woman,” draws mass attention to what has been a largely hushed subject of the crimes committed by the Red Army during World War II when German women, as well as Russians and Poles who had been Nazi prisoners, were raped during the last months of the war. This speaks not only to the horrors of Russian history, but further, to the victims of rape across the world. From the Nanking Massacre to the rape of Japanese women during the U.S. Occupation following the end of World War II, there has been little to no discussion or acknowledgement of these largely taboo topics in our history. Would an exhibition addressing these rather hushed subjects be successful? Accepted? Or received with opposition?

Although there is a growing attention given to controversial issues surrounding gender, sex, racial discrimination, etc., some of the most acclaimed museums who have attempted to educate the public and rid the “taboo” out of our less than proud histories in an acknowledgement of the wrong and the importance of this understanding as critical to the betterment of our society and cultures around the world have been met, at times, with opposition. This begs the question…Would an exhibition that displayed “Komm, Frau,” for example, and other art that speaks to issues like this have a place in a museum? In a gallery space?

Although museum’s like the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its controversial exhibition Sensation, as Lowry states, which was received with much attack, particularly from the mayor of New York, leaving the museum to “fight” to keep its doors open, “the museum’s protection under the First Amendment was never in doubt, as was clear from extensive pre-existing case law, and like every other major paper the New York Times defended Brooklyn’s right to present the exhibition.” Despite public protection under the First Amendment, the U.S. has had its fair share of challenges with respect to controversial art and exhibitions.

Museums and artists alike have met with equally forceful opposition from the public at times, as in the case of the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum and its representation of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. Although we would like to think that we have moved passed the failures, horrors, and dark moments of our history, and have accepted and acknowledged what has transpired and how evolved we have become, the U.S., as with the rest of the world, refuses to accept and acknowledge wrongdoing on their own part. The Enola Gay, which spoke to the reality of the B-29’s involvement in the horror of the atom bomb and its mass obliteration of men, women and children in Japan, was met with continued opposition and criticism by the American legion, members of Congress and World War II veterans who were unsatisfied with the museum’s representation of what transpired during the war. And though they were not “forced” to shut down, the backlash and public opposition left little room for the museum to continue, resulting in the closure of the exhibit.

Will we ever be truly ready for truth?

“’Pseudo-Art’: Russian Ambassador Slams Wartime Rape Sculpture.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/russia-slams-sculpture-of-soviet-soldier-raping-woman-in-gdansk-a-928492.html

Lowry, Glenn. “A Deontological Approach.”   

Gallagher, Edward. “The Enola Gay Controversy.” http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/r2/

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

I have always been intrigued by the process in creating a work of art. It is this that drew me to an article on an exhibition currently held at the Whitney Museum, “Hopper Drawing,” which shows an expansive collection of drawings Hopper made for his large oil paintings. His well-known canvases including Soir Bleu (1914), Manhattan Bridge Loop (1928), From Williamsburg Bridge (1928), Early Sunday Morning (1930), and Nighthawks (1942) among others are shown alongside the many drawings and sketches that evolved into what we know today of his canvas works.

In the article, “How Edward Hopper Storyboarded Nighthawks,” as it appears in ArtNEWS, Cemblast pays close attention to the development of the characters and setting for what would become his most renowned painting, Nighthawks, bringing to mind, the writings of James Cuno. For Hopper, a show focusing on his drawings would have been quite perplexing. As Cemblast states, “Hopper didn’t consider his drawings as art objects that should be exhibited or sold. To him, they were simply studio materials – documents of the process he used to conceive and to plot, in minute detail, the stories he told on canvas.” Although Hopper did not consider his drawings as art objects, his studies for the Nighthawk and others are finally given the attention needed for the public to fully appreciate and understand the artist and his creative process. Compositional studies of the diner and the surrounding streetscapes, of the four figures, and the effect of lighting and contrast reveal the artists thought process, the development of his composition and style, and the idea that paintings are much more than what the artist had intended for public display.

The beauty of a fragment, states Cuno, “is that it is at once part of something else, something larger, and is complete in itself, even in its partial form.” The sketches of Hopper’s Nighthawk, the fragments of a Brygos drinking cup, or the literary fragment of the German Romantics, for example, is an intensely intimate look into a “condensed, intensified pattern, whose intensity is necessarily accompanied by the pleasure of release from the condensed to the expansive.” By providing the audience an experience of the condensed, fragmented parts of drawings and studies, to the expansive image of the final work on canvas, it comes as no surprise that the exhibit was received with much acclaim and popularity.

And as Cuno continues further, in an examination of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, the compositional and figurative studies not only provides pleasure in witnessing the condensed as an evolutionary process in achieving its ultimate expansive state, but is an accumulation of these very fragments, a collection of parts of painted or drawn studies of individual figures or groups of figures, put together as if to make of each canvas a finished painting in and of itself. The evolutionary process to painting, therefore, of compositional studies and preliminary sketches, are equally important in understanding, appreciating, and connecting to a work of art. And even better, a glimpse into the inner workings of a great artist and his work.

“Paintings ARE made of PARTS…They ARE visual contraptions…And ALWAYS MORE.” 

~ Cuno 

http://www.artnews.com/2013/07/25/how-edward-hopper-storyboarded-nighthawks/

Cuno, James. Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust.