Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

Once they were revealed to the human eye, certain images and objects have been so powerful that we’ve been fascinated with them ever since we first (really) saw them.

This morning I posted two images of the common housefly. One was from an early photomicrograph, an ~1865 print by Arthur E. Durham. The other was a trompe l’oeil construction by Tom Friedman, made 130 years later. Both Durham and Friedman were fascinated by the tiny made static, by the way the thing revealed itself when it was ‘made’ to hold still. I can relate: When a fly lands on my knee, I stare at it until it flies away. I do the same thing with Friedman’s flies, and at SFMOMA I was similarly fascinated with Durham’s print. How does that bizarre little organism work? How the heck does it see? How does it fly? How is it put together? And just when I figure it out, it flies away. (That is, a real fly does. Part of the fun of the Friedman and the Durham is that I can stare at them as long as I like.)

As SFMOMA’s Brought to Light show revealed, once scientists figured out how to reveal the minute details of minutiae to us by marrying photographic processes to the microscope, we’ve never stopped looking. Artists know this all too well. Perhaps more than anyone but scientists, artists have been fascinated with the natural world.

Take Philip Taaffe, a painter who broke through by mining art history for images that he then re-created in his own language. By the late 1990s Taaffe’s fascination with natural history was in full-force. His paintings from that period include serial images of ferns, conifers and simple sea organisms, all of which are among the oldest continuing species.

The painting above is Taaffe’s 1999 Diadem, which features ’slices’ of plant material and organisms that plainly reference the earliest microphotography. Taaffe even presents Diadem in a way that references photomicrography-filled collages popular at the end of the 19th-century.

At the top of this post is a detail from A. Thouroude’s Collection of microphotographs, from 1890. At the center of the piece (which is made up of albumen and printing-out paper prints mounted on board) is a pleurosigma angulatum, apparently magnified 3000 times. That same organism is the compositional thread that holds together Taaffe’s Diadem. (At least I think it is — I’m no naturalist.) Underneath Taafe’s pleurosigma angulatum are what seem to be dozens of microphotographic ’slides’ of cross sections of plant matter, one of the most popular early photomicrographic subjects. Taaffe’s background ‘color’ even mimics the vaguely yellowed paper of early albumen prints. [At right: A detail from Andreas Ritter von Ettinghausen's 1840 daguerrotype of the cross section of a clematis stem. In the jump you can see a detail from Taaffe's Diadem that shows 'his cross sections' more clearly. Or click here to see a large JPEG of the whole painting.]

Related: SFMOMA’s Brought to Light. Stop-motion photography: Muybridge and Antin. Two flies. Brought to Light is now on view in Vienna at the Albertina, which has a better website for the show than SFMOMA did.

(more…)

The Smithsonian Institution and the Hirshhorn board of trustees have selected Richard Koshalek to be the museum’s next director.

The Hirshhorn has been without a director since Olga Viso left to run
the Walker Art Center. Viso announced her departure 531 days ago, on
Sept. 11, 2007. Kerry Brougher, the museum’s chief curator, has been serving as acting director. Brougher was not a candidate for the directorship.

Koshalek was the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1999 and was the president of the Art Center College of Design until last September. He and the school parted ways after conflicting over institutional priorities. The
end of Koshalek’s tenure at Art Center was marked by student protests
over tuition costs and related complaints over Koshalek’s support of a $50 million, Frank
Gehry-designed expansion.

Prior to his tenure at Art Center, Koshalek spent nearly 20 years at MOCA, where the collection expanded dramatically under his leadership. He started at MOCA as chief curator and deputy director in 1980 and became director in 1983. Among his curatorial staffers at MOCA was the Hirshhorn’s Brougher. 

The hiring of Koshalek, 67, marks the continuation of a recent Smithsonian trend: The hiring of late-career executives. The Smithsonian’s secretary, G. Wayne Clough, is also 67. Johnnetta Cole, the newly-hired director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, is 72.

Back to SFMOMA’s Brought to Light tomorrow (unless there’s more breaking news) Check out this BtL-recalling post from Amy Stein. Timely! (And creepy.)

• Two exhibition websites worth a browse: Kees van Dongen at the Montreal MFA. The catalogue (which is available here via the museum and not in the US via DAP/Amazon, etc.) is beautiful. More on it in a week or two.
• LACMA’s Art of Two Germanys page links to a slideshow, a timeline and more.
• Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory has teamed up with BrightKite to allow museum visitors to interact with each other and with the museum in realtime via BrightKite and Twitter. It’s neat-o-er than I’m making it sound, so just click here and here to read and to see pictures that will make it all clear.
• How and why is there an Abe Lincoln sculpture in NYC’s Union Square?
• WPA posters are completely f’ing cool. So. F’ing. Cool.
• I’m an anti-social non-communitarian, but this looks like smart, tasty fun.
• Why small(er) museums matter out of proportion to their size/budgets. Amen.
• All the (deserved) attention Fred Sandback is getting lately has me thinking about Kate Shepherd. Here’s an example of why.

I’ve got invites to ArtBabble, the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s cool new art video site with cool stuff for both your PC and your iPod. Tweeple got them yesterday. If you’d like an invite, click here…

Earlier this week Congress published online the federal fiscal year 2009
omnibus appropriations bill. Only about half of the earmarks in
the bill are immediately identifiable — the earmarks that members of
Congress were willing to ‘take credit’ for by attaching their names to
them.

Both houses of Congress will vote on (and almost certainly pass) the omnibus before March 6. I went
through the bill looking for artsy earmarks, and here’s what I found:

• WPA mural conservation at Harlem Hospital: $150,000;
• Facility buildout at the Huntsville (Ala.) Museum of Art: $190,000;
• Improvements to infrastructure at the Wadsworth Atheneum: $902,500;
• Educational programming at the MFA Boston: $238,000;
• Cataloguing and preservation at the Columbus Museum of Art: $95,000; and
• Digital media collections, educational programs and online exhibitions at the George Eastman House: $381,000.

I emailed the Wadsworth, the MFAB and the Eastman House for details on
their projects. All three failed to respond. (Skittish about
earmarks are we?)

• Today in museum cutbacks: Detroit, the High, and Philadelphia [via], which tellingly chose not to reply to my email on this subject yesterday.
• A confluence for my geek streak: Is this the first painting of hockey?
• Christopher Knight, who has decried museum collection-rental deals for years, posts about art in Las Vegas and finds the questionable arrangement to be part of the “Sin City mind-set.”

Continued from here…

When MCASD director Hugh Davies asked me why
I object to the deal MCASD has done with the
Bellagio, I told him that one reason is that I think non-profits should focus on their missions, and not on providing profit opportunities for business.

One of the fundamental principles of non-profit institutions is that 501c3s are not holding companies that for-profit organizations or individuals can raid for profit-making activities. (This is part of why the Nature Conservancy was investigated by Congress in 2003, and it’s part of why I think that Congress and the relevant state attorney generals should investigate the way non-profits are increasingly monetizing art in clear violation of the museum sector’s own rules, such as at the National Academy and with the Bellagio Three.)  [Image: Sol LeWitt, Floor Piece #4, 1976.]

“Well, we have been paid a fee [by the Bellagio] just as when we send any show traveling,” Davies replied. “Yes, the fee is larger than the normal fee you would expect if you send a traveling show of permanent collection works as we have to the Sheldon Museum, to the High, the Weatherspoon and so on. If we charge $50,000 for that plus prorated shipping and insurance, why is it any different if we charge twice as much because of the length of the time period to Las Vegas? The work is only moving once, we used the same fine art movers, and so on?

“I can see why the fact that the Bellagio casino is a for-profit corporation means that the context appears sullied. But I’m just looking at the fact that they run a perfectly high-standard gallery. Their security and their air-handling systems are as good or better than 90 percent of US museums.”

I told Davies that I didn’t necessarily agree, that when MFA Boston’s first loan was at the Bellagio that the hotel-casino’s power went out for four days and that the art baked. The MFA had to send out specialists to make sure the temperature was reduced gradually and despite repeated requests the MFA never released any information regarding whether or not works were damaged. Davies said that he was unaware of the Bellagio’s earlier power issue.

Davies and I discussed several other aspects of the arrangement, but one in particular sticks in my head. The Brandeis University president views the Rose Art Museum’s art collection as an asset to monetize. (Davies is a former adviser to the Rose and he wrote Brandeis  an angry letter about what it’s trying to do.) Albeit through a different instrument, isn’t that what MCASD is doing here: monetizing an asset?

“No more than when the Phillips is when it re-does their air-handling system [and sends its collection on the road],” Davies said. “I always find amusing when these institutions fix their air-handling systems and the collections travel for two or three years! It’s a way of generating revenue, no question…

“I have been perversely trying to look at the other side of the coin. We museum directors can huff and puff
about how once we bring these artworks into our collections that they no longer have value because they’ve been removed from the market, that they become this special trust that is the patrimony of our cities and that they’re held in trust for future generations. It’s B.S. We go on and sell them and the rule is the proceeds form the sale can only go to replenish the collection.” [Image: Frank Stella, Sabra III, 1967.]

Finally, Davies said the Bellagio deal is a great way to raise the profile of MCASD, a much-admired museum that has a fine collection and strong programming, but which receives little national attention (except for on MAN).

“I cannot possibly spend to get billboards and airline magazine ads for our museum, and the Bellagio can and now every single one of them mentions MCASD,” Davies said. “You are never a prophet in your own land. So when people from Phoenix and Los Angeles go to Las Vegas and see this, it increases the knowledge and the reputation of our museum.”

Despite Association of Art Museum Director guidelines telling member museums that “the collections a museum holds in public trust do not represent financial assets that may be converted to cash for operating or capital needs, or pledged as collateral for loans,” AAMD continues to look away as museum after museum partners with commercial entities to rent out art for cash.

The latest: The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is currently renting art from its collection to the “Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art,” a space in Las Vegas’ Bellagio hotel-and-casino. The presentation will be on view through Sept. 7.

The MCASD is the third museum to allow a commercial entity the opportunity to make money off of its collection by renting it to the casino-based gallery. The Phillips Collection pioneered the collection-goes-to-Vegas model in 2000 by splitting admissions revenue with the Bellagio — and AAMD looked the other way. The MFA Boston took the concept a step further by accepting over $1 million from PaceWildenstein’s PaperBall subsidiary in return for sending 21 Monets (and later other paintings) to the Bellagio. Each time Boston rented out art to a commercial entity, AAMD shrugged.

So can it really be a surprise that a third museum has flouted the AAMD’s alleged guidelines and, according to multiple sources, at its most recent meeting left undiscussed this latest monetization of a museum collection?

The MCASD-Bellagio deal
According to MCASD director Hugh Davies, under the terms of San Diego’s arrangement with the Bellagio (Paperball no longer runs the the Bellagio gallery), the MCASD receives a flat fee for renting contemporary works by Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Andy Warhol and others to the casino. In addition, MCASD staff assisted the Bellagio in setting up an exhibition store.

Davies refused to say how much money the museum was receiving from the Bellagio, which is charging $15 to visit the installation. (In time there should be some good hints in the MCASD’s tax return.) Davies said that about 7,000 people have visited since the show opened on Jan. 23.

MCASD doesn’t mention the questionable arrangement anywhere on its own website, but six MCASD works are visible on the Bellagio’s site. MCASD’s Flickr stream features images from the opening of the rental. [Image: Ellsworth Kelly, Red Blue Green, 1963.]

“The folks at Bellagio put a fair amount of time and energy into re-doing that gallery so it could host larger-scale contemporary works,” Davies told me on Tuesday. “To their credit they even had to take a wall out of their bookstore in order to get the large Warhol in there. They did whatever they had to do to get it right. They’ve tried to make it a serious museum presentation rather than dumb it down or something like that.”

MCASD’s transaction would seem to violate several guidelines laid down by the Association of American Museums (of which MCASD is a member) and by AAMD (of which Davies is a member and former president).

Both AAM and AAMD cite the protection of art as a major charge of museums and as a major reason not to rent out art for financial gain. In addition to the passage from AAMD’s handbook, “Professional Practices in Art Museums,” noted above, AAMD also mandates that:

“In any decision about a proposed loan from the collection, the intellectual merit and educational benefits, as well as the protection of the work of art, must be the primary considerations, rather than possible financial gain.”

“For me the best reason to do this is that Las Vegas, which is the fastest-growing city in the U.S., is far and away the largest city without a collecting art museum,” Davies said. “I think it’s an unhappy coincidence that they’re closing the Las Vegas Art Museum as we’re doing this.

“I see it as a very good thing for us to do, to lend to this city that doesn’t have a collecting museum first-rate examples of classic contemporary art… that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to see in their own hometown. I see it not in a patronizing, or in a missionary way, but as a very non-elitist thing to do.”

Coming this afternoon: The debate over the practice.

It’s the Lab at Belmar’s Adam Lerner. And the Lab will merge into the MCA Denver.