Museum Attendance Up In 2011

Attendance at museums was up in 2011.

The Louvre drew more than 8.8 million visitors last year — a 5% increase from a year earlier. Far more Russians and Chinese visited than ever before, but Americans remained the most numerous.

The Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which together form the triangular Art Walk in Madrid, also broke attendance recvords in 2011. The Prado itself saw just shy of 3 million visitors, plus another 864,000 who attended the two Prado International exhibitions held in St. Petersburg and Tokyo.

And … lest you think attendance is up only at the world’s top museums, special exhibits at regional museums have been drawing record crowds. The Detroit Institute of Arts, for example, has broken recent attendance records with their Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus exhibit. An exhibition that explored the history of graffiti and street art brought record-setting crowds into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, attracting 201,352 visits over 81 days.

At the same time, sadly, the AP reports that Bosnia's oldest and most prestigious cultural institutions have begun closing their doors as a result of long-standing disputes among politicians from its three ethnic groups, and dwindling state funding. In 2011, the seven institutions — among them the 125-year-old National Museum whose collection includes the famed 600-year-old Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah — received virtually no funding from authorities in the Balkan nation and can no longer finance their work or even cover their utility bills.

More Exhibits Worth A Trip

Here's info on two more summer exhibitions, one in Madrid, one in Sydney; plus two shows to plan for: Washington DC in the Fall, and Boston in 2011.


SYDNEY - Art Gallery of New South Wales
Victorian Visions
20 May - 29 August, 2010

Victorian Visions presents an impressive collection of 45 paintings, watercolors, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including works by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse. This is the first time that many of these works have been seen in Australia.

The prosperity of the Victorian era (1837-1901) transformed the British art world, creating a community of artists who were free to create paintings that depicted powerful stories from ancient history and contemporary life with a new richness of color and wealth of detail. Many of the works in the exhibit are superb examples from these significant artists, including the impressive 2.6-metre tall painting Marianne by J W Waterhouse; Holman Hunt’s Il Dolce Far Niente; Richard Redgrave’s The Tempstress; and Leighton’s Athlete Struggling with a Python, long recognized as the seminal work in British new sculpture.

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MADRID - Residencia de Estudiantes

Una casa-un palacio

22 May - 25 July, 2010

Una casa-un palacio is an exhibition featuring the works referred to by Le Corbusier in a lecture he gave in Madrid in 1928. The exhibit shows how Le Corbusier’s priciples of design confronted the rational and optimal resolution of technical, functional and economic problems, without forgetting beauty. The exhibition includes a selection of photographs and original plans of Le Corbusier’s works, projects, paintings and pieces of furniture, dated around the year 1928, as well as a number of photographs, letters and documents.

Domestic architecture is represented by Villa Cook, Villa Stein and two houses at Weissenhof in Stuttgart, and the Palace of the League of Nations project in Geneva represents institutional architecture. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), better known as Le Corbusier, was a heroic figure from the history of architecture. Considered by many “The Architect” of the 20th century, Le Corbusier has all the features that define Modern architecture.

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WASHINGTON, DC - The Phillips Collection
Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips
September 11, 2010 - January 16, 2011

Illustrating its unconventional approach to displaying art, The Phillips will present loosely themed groupings of some of its own masterworks plus important works from Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. Half of the 24 paintings and one sculpture on loan from the Allen are old masters, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. They include rare works by painters of the British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish schools.

Included among the old masters will be one of the most important examples of northern baroque painting in the United States, Hendrick ter Bruggen’s Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (1625); The Fountain of Life, a superb 16th-century painting probably painted in Spain after a work by Jan van Eyck; and Joseph Wright of Derby’s night scene Dovedale by Moonlight (c. 1784–85). Oberlin’s modern holdings include works by Alberto Giacometti, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

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BOSTON - Boston Athenæum
Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey
February 9 - June 3, 2011

The imaginary world of artist and author Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000 maintains a delicate balance between the hilarious and ominous uncertainty.

Gorey’s love of literature and the ballet, and his off-beat and ironic sense of humor, resulted in a sardonic and witty oeuvre; this exhibition explores the diversity of his art through original pen and ink illustrations, preparatory sketches, unpublished drawings, and ephemera.

The exhibit includes roughly 180 objects, including selections from numerous well-known Gorey publications. While his Edwardian-inspired images appear simple, the pen work is often complex.

Some Summer Exhibits in the US

Some enticing exhibits in the US this summer. Here are but a few:

PITTSBURGH, PA
Frick Art & Historical Center
May 14 - September 5

Small but Sublime: Intimate 19th Century American Landscapes at the Frick Art & Historical Center. 22 small-scale paintings and drawings by 18 American artists, ranging from the realistic style of Hudson River School to the American Impressionists. Admission is free.



NEW YORK, NY
The Morgan Library & Museum
May 18 - September 12
Eight extraordinary drawings by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) demonstrate the variety and dynamism of his draftsmanship. Dürer, master of the German Renaissance, transformed drawing in Northern Europe. Using his unrivaled talent as a draftsman and the force of his powerful artistic personality, Dürer tirelessly promoted drawing as a medium, creating works of exceptional beauty and remarkable technical skill.


Exhibitions focused on Dürer’s drawings are rare, and this marks the first time in more than twenty years that the Morgan’s outstanding Dürer holdings will be displayed together. Also included are prints and treatises by the artist.In his pursuit of beauty, Dürer devoted careful attention to every aspect of artistic production. On view in the exhibition are a woodcut, its associated woodblock, and a letter to the patron for whom it was made. In the letter Dürer wrote, “Please let it be as it is. No one could improve it because it was done artistically and with care. Those who see it and who understand such matters will tell you so.”

The Morgan Library & Museum
May 21 - August 29
Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design gives us scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic meadows, rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation and other alluring naturalistic features of gardens created in the Romantic spirit.

The Romantics looked to nature as a liberating force, a source of sensual pleasure, moral instruction, religious insight, and artistic inspiration. Eloquent exponents of these ideals, they extolled the mystical powers of nature and argued for more sympathetic styles of garden design in books, manuscripts, and drawings, now regarded as core documents of the Romantic Movement. Their cult of inner beauty and their view of the outside world dominated European thought during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The exhibition features approximately ninety influential texts and outstanding works of art, providing a compelling overview of ideas championed by the Romantics and also implemented by them in private estates and public parks in Europe and the United States, notably New York’s Central Park.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
12 May-15 August
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo presents 72 extraordinary works of the 16th-18th centuries, from a preeminent private collections of Italian Old Master drawings. Masterpieces by historically important draftsmen—principally Italian masters but also artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps—among them Correggio, Parmigianino, Bernini, Poussin, Guercino, Canaletto, and Tiepolo.

CALIFORNIA
J. Paul Getty Museum, LA
May 18 - October 17
Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV features eleven large prints intended to evoke the grandeur of Le Brun’s large-scale paintings and tapestry designs that illustrate events from the exemplary lives of ancient rulers such as Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great. Examines the prints' rich vocabulary and illuminates the context in which they were made between the mid-1660s and the mid-1680s.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
May 22 - September 6
The de Young Museum hosts the Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, which includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection. Highlights the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, among others.

The Musée d’Orsay is lending their most beloved paintings while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2011.
Birth of Impressionism will be followed in the fall of 2010 by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Beyond: Post–Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions.

Curatorial Intervention Goes Too Far

The Caravaggio exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome was fabulous … with the exception of the ill-conceived lighting. Perhaps the curators were trying to play off Caravaggio’s trademark “chiaroscuro” when they opted to create their own light & dark effect in presenting the two-dozen works on loan from museums around the world.

The dim ambient light in the rooms could have been effective if the canvases had been evenly lit. Instead, spotlights were trained on the paintings, presumably to highlight specific sections of each work.

Caravaggio’s own treatment of light and color in his work was carefully wrought for compositional balance and narrative clarity. I would have preferred a wash of light that allowed me to take in each composition as a whole, as the artist conceived it, without curatorial contrivance.

Why would the curators feel the need to tamper with … er, augment … Caravaggio’s work?

For some years now there has been a trend in museums to try to make old art more accessible to new audiences. This is not a bad thing: the ability to generate more profit from a special exhibit allows the production of expensive landmark exhibits like the Scuderie exhibition.

But I believe the effort to be misguided, if -- in trying to facilitate the experience for modern audiences – the work becomes even further removed from the context in and for which it was created.

Museum illumination is a fine art in itself … especially for work produced pre-electricity.

Dramatic Expression of Spanish Baroque

This painted and gilded lifesize wood figure, Saint John of the Cross, was carved by Francisco Antonio Gijón and painted, it's thought, by Domingo Mejías, c. 1675. Gijón was a sculptor from Seville who was known for his ability to carve dramatic works with intense expression. He was only 21 when he was awarded the commission for this sculpture and he completed it in about six weeks!

My work preparing me for the Caravaggio Pilgrimage in Rome has me immersed in the transition from Mannerism to Baroque. So I was delighted to learn of the Spanish Baroque exhibit that just opened in Washington DC.

Spanish Baroque art expressed the religious fervor of the Counter-Reformation in spades -- and some arrestingly real polychrome sculptures and paintings were produced.

About 20 Spanish masterpieces of the 17th century are now on view in a fabulous exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700 will showcase major paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Francisco Pacheco, as well as painted and gilded polychrome sculptures carved by Gregorio Fernández, Juan Martínez Montañés, and Pedro de Mena, among others.

The exhibition makes it possible to see the dynamic and intricate relationship between two-dimensional pictures on canvas and painted sculptures. Many of the sculptures have never been exhibited away from the Spanish churches, convents, and monasteries where they continue to be venerated by the Catholic faithful.

Once in a Lifetime

Thomas Hoving died on Thursday. Hoving was the colorful and controversial director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 to 1977, and was known as – if not the inventor of -- certainly the champion of the Blockbuster Exhibit. His idea was to bring to us -- through a temporary exhibition -- art that we would have a very hard time seeing on our own.

On Friday I heard part of the re-broadcast of a 1993 NPR interview with Hoving. In part of the interview he talked about how the day of the blockbuster exhibit is over.

He said, “They’re not really blockbusters anymore ... They SAY they are, but … there’d be a great show of Caravaggio in which there are three Caravaggios and the rest are followers. Art prices have risen to such ridiculously astronomical heights that nobody can afford the cost of insurance and other things to bring the works of you-name-it into one place any more … it’s virtually impossible to do … people are unwilling to lend anymore, and it’s too costly.”

Interesting that he used Caravaggio as his example back in 1993 … because today I learned about an upcoming Caravaggio exhibition that sure sounds like a blockbuster to me!

Between February 18 and June 13, 2010, Caravaggio 's entire career will be on view at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. WOW!

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the death of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the show will bring together masterpieces from museums around the world. These include the two versions of the Supper at Emmaus, on loan from the National Gallery in London and Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera; The Musicians from Hoving’s own Metropolitan Museum, Bacchus from the Uffizi, Boy with Lute from the Hermitage in St Petersburg; Amor Omnia Vincit from Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie; the three versions of Saint John the Baptist, from the Capitoline Museums and the Galleria Corsini in Rome, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

Even some works which are rarely loaned out will be included: The Deposition from the Vatican Museums, The Annunciation from the Museum of Nancy (which was restored for the occasion); and The Crowning of Thorns from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

WOW!

Almost the entirety of Caravaggio’s artistic production will be on view in Rome: the paintings brought together for the exhibition, plus, of course, the numerous Caravaggios that are on view in Rome’s churches, still displayed in the chapels for which they were originally commissioned.

This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for art pilgrims to experience a near-complete Caravaggio anthology gathered in one place.

Did I already say “WOW”?

Baroque: The First International Style

If you’ll be in London between now and July 19th, try to get to the V&A to see their special exhibit, 1620-1800 Baroque – Style in the Age of Magnificence.

Baroque was the first artistic style to have a significant global impact. It spread from Italy and France to the rest of Europe, and then was carried to Africa, Asia, and Latin America by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other European colonists, missionaries and traders. As European communities were established, craftsmen, artists and architects traveled and settled around the world. Trade in luxury goods and the distribution of art prints furthered the global dissemination of Baroque style.

Art Daily Newsletter reports today that “The magnificence and splendour of Baroque, one of the most opulent styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the subject of the V&A’s spring exhibition. The exhibition will reflect the complexity and grandeur of the Baroque style, from the Rome of Borromini and Bernini to the magnificence of Louis XIV's Versailles and the lavishness of Baroque theatre and performance."

Displays cover architecture, furniture, silver, ceramics, painting, sculpture, and textiles. Abnd will explore Baroque in performance and the theatre; the public city square; religious spaces including St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; and secular spaces including Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

Among the roughly 200 objects on display will be religious paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo. Of particular interest to anyone who has been to Our Lady Cathedral in Antwerp is an oil sketch of the center panel of Descent from the Cross, the huge altarpiece Rubens painted for the Arquebusier Guild, which is still magnificently on view in that remarkable gothic edifice.

Mark Jones, Director of the V&A said: “Baroque is one of the most exuberant and dazzling design styles there has even been, an expression of European power and magnificence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our exhibition will be the first to examine all the elements of Baroque including architecture, art and design and will look at how it established itself through Europe and then internationally as European power grew overseas.”

Would That I Could Get to the Getty

LOS ANGELES - To celebrate Italian Language Week, the J. Paul Getty Museum is offering a special one-hour overview -- in italiano -- of the current exhibition: Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the greatest Baroque sculptor, and his unparalleled talent as a portrait sculptor transformed the practice and earned him the patronage of the Catholic Church and nobility in 17th- century Rome. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa , Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture is the first major exhibition of Bernini's work in North America and the first ever comprehensive exhibition of the artist's portrait busts.

On view at the Getty Center through October 26, 2008 , the special exhibition also includes Bernini's portrait drawings, as well as portrait busts by other important sculptors in 17th-century Rome such as Francesco Mochi, François Duquesnoy, Giuliano Finelli, and Alessandro Algardi. If you’ve been to Rome, you know Bernini. If you’ve listened to the Jane’s Smart Art audio guide to St. Peter’s Basilica, you’re also familiar with the work of Mochi, Duquesnoy, and Algardi.

As a complement to the Baroque portraiture exhibit, the Getty Center has mounted another temporary exhibit at , Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture -- also through October 26, 2008.

The goal of medieval portraiture was to present a subject not at a particular moment in time, but as the person wished to be remembered through the ages. “While modern portraiture strives to capture the accurate likeness of a specific person, medieval portraiture was primarily valued for its ability to express an individual’s social status, religious convictions, or political position,” says Elizabeth Morrison, curator of manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Art Daily provides a schedule of related lectures, gallery talks, & concerts in Sept and Oct.

New operating hours and parking fees

Henceforth, the Getty Center will close at 5:30 pm (a half hour earlier than previously) on Sundays and Tuesday through Friday. Saturdays it will remain open until 9pm. The Getty Center is closed on Mondays. Ticketed events and performances will still be presented on Friday evenings, but the galleries will not be open to the general public. Getty Villa hours will remain unchanged.

Admission to both Museums remains free.

In addition, beginning on Sept. 9, parking fees at both the Getty Center and the GettyVilla increased from $8 to $10.