Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

MANscoop: The Art Institute of Chicago has determined that a Paul Gauguin sculpture in the museum’s collection, The Faun (c. 1888), is a fake. Sources tell MAN that director Jim Cuno told his staff today. The sculpture is now attributed to the recently sentenced Greenhalgh forgery gang of Bolton, England. The Faun was in the AIC’s “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” show.
The museum purchased the sculpture from a private dealer who had acquired it at auction from Sotheby’s. Documentation now believed to be counterfeit was then accepted by all parties. Cuno told AIC staff that the museum and Sotheby’s are discussing compensation.

MANscoop: The National Gallery of Art wants to expand. MAN has learned that the NGA has engaged in talks to acquire the Federal Trade Commission building, which is located directly across Constitution Avenue from the NGA’s John Russell Pope-designed West Building. (In the Google Satellite image above, the FTC building is in the upper-left, the Pope building is across from it, and the East Building is at right.) Best-known as the ‘Apex Building,’ the FTC headquarters was designed by Chicago-based architect Edward H. Bennett, who oversaw the entire Federal Triangle project. The six-story Apex Building opened in 1938, three years before the NGA’s Pope building.

Multiple sources tell MAN that the deal is not yet complete and it is possible that the transfer of the building from the federal government to the NGA may eventually fall through. However, each of the sources with whom I spoke were confident that the NGA would complete the transaction. Internal NGA planning has estimated that the museum could open galleries in the building as soon as 2012.

A separate source pointed MAN to HR 31, a bill that Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.) introduced in 2005, when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the FTC to “vacate” its building and for it to be made “available” to the National Gallery of Art. Congress took no action on the bill, and it has not been re-introduced in the current Congress.

A National Gallery spokesperson said that the NGA had no comment.

An NGA expansion is long overdue. The National Gallery is one of the few major American museums to miss out on the expansion boom of the last dozen years. (The NGA last opened substantial new spaces in 1978, when the IM Pei-designed East Building opened.) Partially as a result of a lack of appropriate space, the NGA lags behind its peer institutions — both in the US and abroad — in showing contemporary art. Compared to other major museums, the NGA shows little art of the last 100 years. Its photography department, which acquired its own galleries several years ago has been hampered by galleries too small to accommodate contemporary photography. A number of NGA collections, including 19th and 20th-century central European art, are rarely on view for lack of space.

The Federal Trade Commission headquarters was the last building to be constructed in the Federal Triangle, the enormous Depression-era building project that sits roughly between the White House and the Capitol. The Apex Building, which looks like a dull, under-adorned Beaux Arts box from one end, is likely best-known for its rounded Ionic colonnade, which points toward the Capitol. As with other Federal Triangle buildings, the Apex Building is clad in limestone and sits on a granite base. The ‘point’ of the Federal Triangle is completed by the Mellon Fountain.

According to the FTC’s history of the building, in 1987 the Apex Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a component of the Pennsylvania Avenue Historic District. (This is the view from the FTC roof across the street to the NGA’s buildings and to the Capitol beyond.) A Historic Structure Report from that same year determined that the Apex Building “has an integrity of historical occupation, having been designed [for] and continuously occupied [by] that agency. Further, the few and relatively minor physical changes that have occurred since its completion in 1938 have left the architect’s historic design intent largely intact. On the whole, the building enjoys a level of integrity seldom matched in Federal buildings.”

While Bennett stripped his building of many of its planned architectural details because of federal budget problems caused by the Depression, it has extensive exterior art. The best-known work is Michael Lantz’s sculptures Man Controlling Trade. (While the sculptures are Washington faves, Michael Lantz is less well-known than his brother Walter, who created Woody Woodpecker.) The building also features work decorative panels by Carl Schmitz, Chaim Gross, Robert Laurent, and Concetta Scaravaglione.
The NGA expansion would further concentrate Washington museumdom around the National Mall. The Newseum, located across Pennsylvania Ave. from the NGA’s West Building, is under construction and is due to open in 2008.

Be sure to check back this afternoon… but until then:

Only on MAN: Earlier today, Dia director Jeffrey Weiss talked to MAN about the sale of Dia’s Chelsea exhibition space, how the money will be used, and more.
Oodles of research reveals just how important arts education is when it comes to developing young minds. According to Americans for the Arts, young people who participate in the arts are many times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to be elected to class office within their schools, and are more likely to participate in a math and science fair. Before I was born my mother was an art educator, so I’m particularly disappointed in how a lack of prioritization, the so-called No Child Left Behind law and other factors have driven the arts out of public schools.
A few weeks ago I learned about a micro-philanthropy website called DonorsChoose.org. The concept is simple: When school teachers have programs they want to implement that go beyond what their (typically disadvantaged) schools will support, they post ‘proposals’ to the DonorsChoose.org website and ask microphilanthropists for a few hundred dollars in direct project support. (Here’s more on how it works.) So far the site has raised almost $16 million for projects that have served 800,000 kids.
Every day between now and Christmas I’ll be posting on arts-related project from DonorsChoose. Most of them will require less than $500 to fully fund. DonorsChoose accepts microphilanthropic gifts of $10 and up. I hope MAN readers support worthy projects either as individuals or as a group. I’ll list donors on Christmas Day. If you put a little group together, say the ‘Springfield Art Museum curatorial department,’ email me so that I know to list you as such. I’ve started a web page where you can see a list of proposals and where you can track our progress.
Today’s project comes from Washington Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Ind. It needs $442 worth of donations to be fully funded:

I am a first year art teacher of students in grades K-5 at a Title I school.
These kids love art and they love to read. I go to the public library to check out art related books for them to read at the end of art class. Many students plead to take the books home but I cannot allow that. They also ask if I can copy pages from the “How to Draw” books. Due to copyright laws, I can’t do that either.
By getting my proposal funded, I will be able to create an Art Library from which students can check out books to take home for short periods of time. By taking the art books from my library they will still be able to take 2 books a week, on other topics, from the regular school library. I hope to add to my Art Library with future proposals on other art topics. Also, many of our low income students come from families who do not have transportation to get them to a public library.
The drawing books would be used all year long in class and at home. At the start of each school year the basic concepts of lines and shapes are taught. Students are then expected to draw familiar objects using many different types of lines. They are most eager to draw things familiar to them, such as animals, super heroes, and cartoon characters. Having many books with these kinds of drawings will give students the chance to succeed and feel good about drawing. Most young kids do not think they are very good at drawing. By taking the drawing books home they will increase the amount of time applying their newly learned skills. I am also expecting to have more student art chosen for display at our local children’s art show.
Your help will make it possible for my students to expand their observation and drawing skills and give them access to resources that more affluent students take for granted. Seeing the expressions on the faces of students when they produce a drawing that they thought was too hard is priceless, and the increase of their self-esteem is unmeasurable. Thank You in advance!!!
My project needs nearly 50 book titles to encourage art students to look for patterns and details in the everyday objects they like to draw.

To give to this project, please click here.

While in Miami last week I told you that Dia had sold its Chelsea exhibition space for $38.55 million. This afternoon I spoke with Dia Art Foundation director Jeffrey Weiss about the sale. (And because the NYT has apparently decided that a story isn’t a story once it’s on MAN, here’s your only chance to hear about it.)
Weiss emphasized that the sale does not mean Dia is about to re-open anywhere in New York and that it does not mean that Dia has ‘finalist’ sites that it is considering as a permanent home. “The two things, funnily enough, are unrelated,” he told me. “The sale is something we needed to do because we knew we were going to move. On the other hand the move itself is still unfolding… This money will be for the most part be invested, and from the investment we will draw money for largely for operating budget and related things.”
Weiss said that the sale is also unrelated to a $1.1 million fundraising effort that would enable Dia to purchase a permanent conservation easement on 6,000 acres of ranchland adjacent to The Lightning Field, the Walter de Maria installation outside Quemado, New Mexico. The state of New Mexico has kicked in $500,000 and Dia is working to raise the remaining money by May, 2008.
“It’s a separate thing,” Weiss said. “We’ve got plenty of needs. The Lightning Field effort is very specific and the places we’re looking for help are relevant to that project in a way that they wouldn’t be for other things. [For example, last month Dia sent out a fundraising letter to anyone who has spent a night at the Field. -- Ed.] It still feels right to us to be fundraising for that separately and to not fall back on existing resources.”
Along those lines, none of the money will be used to support Michael Heizer’s City or James Turrell’s Roden Crater. “We are currently not supporting City or Roden per se,” Weiss said. “We’re lending administrative support for now. When we can, hopefully that will change in the future.”
Finally, I asked Weiss what would happen to the Jorge Pardo installation that has been in Dia’s lobby since it was installed for a 2003 show. “The Pardo was always a temporary installation and actually has been maintained in the building longer than originally planned,” Weiss said. “Jorge knows that the building was for sale and he knows that we sold it, but the installation was never intended for preservation. It was always understood to be temporary. So now the new owner could choose to preserve it if they like, but it doesn’t belong to us anymore.”
(I still think the Pardo would look great at LACMA, but that’s another story entirely…)

Before leaving for Miami I started a series of posts on Martin Puryear, focusing on how the unifying theme of Puryear’s art is his use of abstract sculpture to explore the centuries-long, mostly painterly and representational art historical march from flatness to depth and back again. This is the final post in that series. (Links to previous posts are below.)

The ‘well-that-was-a-good-idea’ moment in MoMA’s Martin Puryear retrospective comes when you enter the museum’s second-floor atrium, where curator John Elderfield has installed a mini-survey of Puryears about perspective. There’s MAMFW’s breathtaking Ladder for Booker T. Washington, MoMA’s own Greed’s Trophy, and the brand-new Ad Astra (at left).

As I noted here a couple weeks ago, Ad Astra is plainly an updating of Puryear’s first two-in-one persepctive piece, 1977’s Box and Pole (at right). Both works feature a trope that Puryear has used time and time again in the intervening 30 years: Pairing two objects — a flat object (often a cube) and an object that runs away from the viewer into space.

In 1979, Puryear created an outdoor piece called Equivalents, a work which has since been destroyed. (There is a photo of it in MoMA’s Puryear catalogue, but I couldn’t find a JPEG.) The piece was as simple as Box and Pole (and demonstrates how far Puryear’s practice has run away from minimalism in recent decades): It consisted of a wooden square, and a wooden cone, installed next to each other. The tip of the cone was as tall as the cube. The cube confronted the viewer with flattened space, the cone showed how perspectival space runs away.

Two of my very favorite Puryears are not in the MoMA show, which is too bad. 1979’s Her and She (at left, from the collection of the California African American Museum) are among Puryear’s most clever, subtle examinations of perspective and the lack thereof. Often installed perpendicular to each other, Her and She go beyond the simplicity of Puryear’s cube-and-vanishing-point works to more subtly explore how other shapes can be flat, nearly flat, and how they can also recede from the viewer. To the best of my knowledge, after 1979 Puryear gave up the simple cube-based installations for more subtle explorations of flatness and receding space, as evident in his 1993-94 structure at California’s Oliver Ranch. (Ad Astra comes close, as Puryear discussed with David Levi Strauss in the Brooklyn Rail.)

Related: MoMA’s Puryear website offers up a groovy video of the installation of the atrium, but the site is Flash-based so I can’t give you a more direct link.

Previously: Puryear at MoMA, considering perspective; Puryear and Augustus Vincent Tack. Puryear and Ellsworth Kelly. Puryear and the Getty’s That Profile, Photoshopping art history: Puryear and (possibly) Uccello.

Thanks to The Stranger’s Jen Graves for hosting MAN while I was away. Don’t expect a macro-Miami post today… I dimply don’t have any macro thoughts about Miami VI. Posts about art I saw start tomorrow. Also: Check back this afternoon for a new, two-week, MAN holiday series.

Sorry I’m so late, but it’s been far from dead around here with Tyler’s great post about the Dia Art Foundation’s sale of its Chelsea building to chew on.
It’s deadline day at my real job, and in next week’s Stranger I’ll take a look at the major differences between SANAA’s New Museum building and the firm’s other designs, thanks to a SANAA exhibition that opened in Seattle the same day as the museum opened in New York.
This installation shot from the exhibition shows, lined up in the foreground, a grid of dozens of draft models for the ways the rooms could have been configured inside the one-story, glass-enclosed circle of SANAA’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. Towering in the background are, of course, the boxes of the New Museum. The installation says it all about the differences of the two buildings, not in scale–the scale of the models is not comparable–but in terms of the relative priority of the interior spaces (21st Century Museum: high, New Museum: low).
I learned something else about the New Museum, too, looking at the Seattle SANAA exhibition (that’s a SANAA-designed “tree” and a flower table at left). Since what I’ve written isn’t out yet (next Wednesday on www.thestranger.com/visualart, if you’re interested), I won’t cannibalize it too much. But here’s a trailer:

Maybe it’s a fundamental mismatch of sorts. Self-consciousness and anxiety–the stock in trade of the super-sophisticated downtown museum, and something you feel throughout the galleries–is not a SANAA trait.

With that, I’m signing off. I wish I’d written about Richard Prince, and why I don’t like him. And about why I thought Martin Puryear’s show at MoMA made him look weak. And about what I did love in Unmonumental at the New Museum (Nate Lowman’s Not Sorry, for one–the triptych of bullet-ridden teller’s windows sitting upright on the floor in the image at right). With any luck, I’ll get into some of those lengthier subjects on my home blog, Slog Visual Art, soon, if you want to visit me there.)
As to the question of whether I should have gone to Miami after all, I’m still torn when I read urgent reports like this, in today’s Art Newspaper:

Art Supernova was brought to a hushed halt by a bizarre series of alarming shrieks moving mysteriously from booth-to-booth like some dangerous dadaist performance. Just as security was about to be summoned, the source of this scandal was revealed to be top Paris dealer Anne de Villepoix whose mysterious involuntary sneezing has made her the subject of much medical research, the velocity of her allergic outbursts being measured at 1,600 km per second.

What was I thinking?
–Jen Graves
jgraves@thestranger.com

UPDATE, Dec. 10: Dia director Jeffrey Weiss on the sale, more.
Breaking while I’m in Miami: According to NYC real estate transaction records, the Dia Art Foundation has sold its Chelsea exhibition space for $38.55 million. At this point the buyer is only known as “548 West 22 Street Realty LLC.” The sale closed on November 29. Despite repeated requests Thursday, a Dia spokesperson refused comment (and initially referred MAN to an administrator who is on vacation until Monday).
We may be witnessing an interesting moment in the NYC cultural/real estate/commercial galleries world: Dia started Chelsea. Dia leaves Chelsea. The NuMu opens in the Bowery… and commercial galleries are following.
UPDATE, Friday AM: Dia wouldn’t talk yesterday so we don’t know the answer to this question (and lots of others): What will happen to the Jorge Pardo installation? Other unanswered questions: Will all of the money go toward Dia’s (presumably) next NYC space? Who is the buyer? Is this deal about finding a new space for Dia or do they need operating funds? Or will the money go toward a Dia project, such as Roden Crater?

In honor of Miami, some party reporting from Seattle.

The party was Tuesday night, the night of all the Miami previews, at Gary Hill’s loft condo in Seattle. Magda, Gary’s warm and beautiful X (wife? girlfriend? partner?), introduced me to Alex, a quiet, smiling man standing alone in a corner.
She had known Alex only for two hours. Gary and Magda had run out of gas on the highway around 4 pm, and Alex stopped to help them. “No Americans would stop,” Magda said before skipping off to pour drinks. Magda is from Poland.
Alex, I learned, is from the Ukraine. He is a business student at a local community college. Before coming to the party, Alex looked up Gary’s work online. He had never heard of Gary before. “I like, classic, like, art,” Alex told me. All night Gary and Magda made sure Alex had someone to talk to. He was the surprise guest of honor.
Nobody was talking about Miami. If there was a sustained topic of conversation in the little circles of artists (sound sculptor Trimpin, video artist Tony Weathers), the occasional celebrity (that wizened and bearded man in the corner was Torben Ulrich, a former tennis pro, father of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, a musician in his own right, and evidently a visual artist too), and a few members of the weekly meditation group that meets in the loft, it was not art but politics. Earlier in the day Bush had started making renewed and appalling noise about Iran. But when the party hit that familiar slide into despair, somebody would pull it back–there were the Democratic radio debates in Iowa that day to consider. Dennis Kucinich may not be getting more electable but he’s still getting air time.
The planned guest of honor was George Quasha, the artist/poet/writer visiting Seattle in part to finish a 400-something page book about Gary that’s almost complete. All of this was coinciding with a performance the next night in Seattle by Alison Knowles, the early Fluxus artist who happens to be an old friend of Quasha’s, like Gary. Knowles wasn’t at the party yet; she was expected for round two, to be held at a nearby restaurant.
When the party moved to the restaurant, I went home with a DVD of Quasha’s latest project. It’s a series of ongoing and constantly changing videos called “Art is,” “Poetry is,” “Music is,” and, most recently, “Peace is.” They’re based on a simple concept: ask an artist what art is, for instance, and turn the camera on. Some of them perform, some ramble, some tell parables. “Basically, I’m a painter and I basically paint,” Alex Katz says to kick things off. “A good part of what I do, I don’t understand. Somehow the instincts tell you, you have ideas that get transported into paintings and, uh, you sort of do the best of your talent and instincts. And basically, other people tell you what you’ve done. It’s relatively simple.” After the last part, he laughs.

^{A still from Gary Hill’s Church and State, 2005}
–Jen Graves
jgraves@thestranger.com