Curatorial Matters

For some time now, many museums have been reinstalling their permanent collections in new ways, moving away from a chronological progression to more thematic placements. Supposedly, thematic hangings are easier for visitors to understand — at least that’s the usual explanation for them.

Now we have the Tate reversing course. Beginning today,

…visitors can experience the national collection of British art in a continuous chronological display – a walk through time from the 1500s to the present day. BP Walk through British Art will comprise around 500 artworks over a newly configured sequence of over 20 galleries. The displays include works by major artists such as Francis Bacon, John Constable, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, J.M.W. Turner, Gwen John, Stanley Spencer, L.S. Lowry, John Everett Millais, Bridget Riley, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, and Rachel Whiteread.

Brother, do I hate that “BP Walk through…” credit line, but that’s another post. Oh yeah, and another.

The Tate (I know it doesn’t use the article, but I do…) has also devoted new rooms to William Blake and Henry Moore, joining the Clore galleries that display the works of J.M.W. Turner, and now, Constable, too. It has also hung works by England’s first female professional  painter, Mary Beale, including the portrait posted here, in an attempt to show more women artists.

But it’s the rehang that is of interest.  Since 2000, the Tate Britain has mixed artists and periods in its galleries. The upside is this new approach (see this slide show), as the Tate, puts it:

The new chronological approach offers a fresh perspective highlighting surprising juxtapositions of art created within a few years of each other but rarely associated. An early Gainsborough landscape hangs side by side with Hogarth’s satires. The frolicking female nudes of Alma Tadema’s A Favourite Custom 1909, the epitome of Victorian revivalism, are seen next to Walter Sickert’s gritty modernist icon La Hollandaise 1906. Often separated when hung by movement or genre, the chronological presentation allows a more neutral view of the range of art being produced at any one historical moment to emerge.

Here’s more in the press release.

The Guardian rather approves. So does Richard Dorment in The Telegraph: “The permanent galleries have been rethought and re-modelled in a way that at last allows us to see the richness and variety of a national collection that in recent years has been lost to view….it is gloriously, satisfyingly, reactionary.” And the Times of London, though only subscribers can see past the first paragraph.

Might this signal a trend? I think I hope so.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of The Guardian (top); the Tate (bottom)

 

Praise from peers is often the most meaningful, as long as it’s not politicized; that’s why I pay attention to the awards for excellence awarded each year by the Association of Art Museum Curators. The other day, that organization gave the blue ribbon to 11 exhibitions, catalogues and articles from 2012.

One exhibition “swept” in that it won two of the 11: Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How A Radical Idea Changed Modern Art, which was organized by Leah Dickerman with Masha Chlenova at The Museum of Modern Art, won in the Outstanding Thematic Exhibition and Outstanding Thematic Exhibition Catalogue categories.

The three other exhibition awards went to:

• Judith Mann and Babette Bohn, curators for the Saint Louis Art Museum, for Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master, in the Outstanding Monographic or Retrospective Exhibition category.
• Charles W. Haxthausen, curator at Williams College Museum of Art, for his Sol LeWitt: The Well-Tempered Grid show in the Outstanding Exhibition in a University Museum category.
• Yaëlle Biro, curator for the Metropolitan Museum, the nation’s largest art museum, in the Outstanding Small Exhibition (based on square footage: no more than 2,000 square feet) award for her African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde. That’s a bit ironic, but it demonstrates that even small fish in big ponds can thrive and win notice.

Another Met curator, Wolfram Koeppe, won the award for best monographic catalogue for his Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens, published by the Met for his exhibition there last year (which was terrific).

The other winner, in the Outstanding Permanent Collection catalogue niche, went to Roberta J.M. Olson with contributions by Marjorie Shelley and Alexandra Mazzitelli, at the New-York Historical Society for their Audubon’s Aviary: The Original Watercolors for “The Birds of America”.

Finally, Jon L. Seydl, of the Cleveland Museum of Art won for best catalogue essay, “The Last Days of Pompeii,” in the catalogue of that name by Victoria Gardner Coates, Kenneth Lapatin, Jon L. Seydl, et al.

The curators association also awarded three honorable mentions, which are listed here, along with the winners.

 

The Spring Show at the Park Avenue Armory, which started today, is a new event in the art calendar. This is its third edition, as fair organizers like to term their annual events. It is a mixed offering — mixed in the goods on offer (paintings, furniture, silver, jewelry, flags, artifacts, etc. etc.), mixed in quality, mixed in the geographical home of the dealers, and so on. At the opening preview reception last night, I found plenty of things to enjoy and admire, as well as some that were easy to bypass.

Art snobs who pass it up are missing something, and so are museum people. True, they won’t find many museum-quality items on offer. But they will find something else: Spring Show galleries provide a laboratory for the color of their walls. Not since Thelma Golden hung Bob Thompson’s paintings on bright yellow walls at the Whitney in 1998 have I seen such an eye-opening display. (OK, there was the Brooklyn Museum’s experiment with neon colors for its American art galleries, but I didn’t and don’t like those. But the beige walls in the Metropolitan Museum’s American paintings galleries are just as awful.)

Since then, we’ve seen museums expand their use of colored walls — as I mentioned in my last post, the Brooklyn very successfully used melon walls for its current Sargent exhibition, and I’ve noticed marvelous shades of blue, olive, deep purple, gold, etc. etc. in many museums. Even in contemporary art exhibitions, white walls are not the required uniform anymore.

What did I see last night? Black. Turquoise. Deep Green. Bright red.

I took pictures, some posted here, but they don’t do the job as well as I’d have liked. Exposure was difficult because the dealers put spotlights on their offerings.

But you will get the drift.

Ain’t it grand? And worth experimenting with?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credits:  © Judith H. Dobrzynski