San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum sure has a problem. Last June 12,
 it opened an exhibition
called Lords of the Samurai, which runs until Sept. 20. It’s the only U.S. venue for a show described in the museum’s press release as:

Through more than 160 objects–armor, weaponry, paintings, lacquer ware, ceramics, costumes, and more–this special exhibition explores the principles that governed the culture of the samurai lords. Nearly all of the objects in the exhibition are from the collection of one of the most distinguished warrior clans, the Hosokawa family. This collection is housed in Japan’s renowned Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo and in the family’s former home, Kumamoto Castle on Kyushu island, Japan. Seven of the artworks on view have been designated Important Cultural Properties, the highest cultural distinction awarded by the Japanese government. Three of the artworks are designated Important Art Objects, another prestigious distinction awarded only to the works of notable artistic and historical significance.

As I understand it, everything was going along well — nice reviews, etc. — until very recently, when someone(s) started a blog parodying the museum’s website. Calling the show “Lord, It’s the Samurai” and labeling the museum “orientalist,” the website — Asians Art Museum — is very clever.

[Read more…] about Samurai Get The Asian Art Museum “Mired In Muck”

Is this what art museums want? Now that virtually all of them have expanded, many far beyond what their constituency would want, some will do anything to get people in the door. Even if it’s not about art at all.

So I wasn’t all that surprised when I read a report about Untitled 24 at the Denver Art Museum, published on Sept. 1, on Examiner.com. (Examiner.com, in case you have not come across it, is a site owned by Philip Anschutz for local news written by anyone who wants to write for it, free. It has a presence in 109 cities at the moment.)

Here’s how it described the event:

If you ever wondered what Denver Art Museum is like after dark, the monthly Untitled events may just be your ticket to find out. In addition to cash bar and finger-lickin’ good complimentary appetizer buffet, the museum brings in DJs, live bands, and hosts a variety of entertaining activities.

…this Friday people were treated to dark art, ghost stories, paranormal research presentations and even a seance where they could attempt to contact dead artists and ask them questions….Bad Luck City and Legendary River Drifters played at the Duncan Pavilion, while DJ The Postman played some music to set the mood at the Hamilton Building Atrium. Meanwhile, you could decorate plastic bones, run into Denver’s own Ghostbusters, or check out a presentation by Colorado X Case Files, where paranormal research experts talked about some of the most haunted places in the Denver area.

The article (here) also included a slide show.

As I understand Examiner.com, there’s little or no editing, or checking on veracity. So I went to the DAM’s website for its description of Untitled events, and found this:

On final Fridays through September, the Denver Art Museum feels less like a field trip and more like a night out.

A field trip? Is that how museums feel about their regular offerings?

If art museum directors and curators aren’t enthusiastic about the art they show, how they possibly expect others to be? 

[Read more…] about Museums Gone Wild: What Message Are Some Sending?

Everyone loves a mystery, and this one began when Grant Holcomb, director of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, purchased a painting called The Printseller’s Window at Sotheby’s in 1998. Holcomb didn’t know much about the artist, Walter Goodman, or the 1883 work, but as he recently told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle:

 I was struck by the power of it….I thought it could be the finest example of trompe l’oeil art in 19th century America.

Chief curator Majorie Searl continued:

The specificity of every object in the painting suggested a message — a mystery we had to unravel. Perhaps we should have hired Sherlock Holmes, who lived on Baker Street at the same time as Goodman.

Turns out that wasn’t necessary. Researchers, led by a Rochester lawyer named Peter Brown, who is head of the museum’s art committee, followed clues to London, and elsewhere, but — incredibly — the museum discovered that the best sources, Goodman’s descendants, lived in Rochester. They provided the museum, which has organized an exhibition about the painting, with background, documentation and a 1882 self-portrait of the artist, when he was 42. You can read more in the D&C’s article here.

What is the painting about?  

[Read more…] about An Art Mystery: What Is The Printseller’s Window Trying To Tell Us?

Who are the greatest photographers of the 20th Century?  

When you hear a question like that, you know that David W. Galenson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is at it again.

Galenson is the guy who takes a statistical approach to such questions. His new list, just published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, provides the answer, based on research that parallels his previous work. In July 2008, he ranked the greatest architects of the 20th Century; in February 2007, he ranked the greatest women artists of the 20th century, and in December 2005, he ranked the greatest artists of the 20th century. All were also published as working papers by NBER.

He has also created a list of the most important works of the 20th century, which — aside from putting Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” at the top of the list — elicited mostly guffaws. And he has studied what kinds of artists make their breakthroughs when they are young or when the are old. He has published three books on these subjects.

Galenson bases his “greatest” conclusions on the number of times the work of an artist — or a specific work itself — appears in textbooks. In this case, he took five leading textbooks about photography (named in his appendices), and counted the photographers whose work appeared four or more times in them. Twenty photographers made that list.

Then, he counted the total illustrations of the photographs of each of those twenty artists in “all available textbooks, published in 2000 or later, that surveyed the history of photography throughout the past century.” Sixteen textbooks qualified (also cited).

As it happened, those books reproduced the work of 16 photographers 11 or more times. 

[Read more…] about Quick, Think: Who Would You Rank As The Greatest Photographers?

This coming week, September but not yet Labor Day, could well be very low-key — the last gasp of summer. If you have extra time, you could do far, far worse than to spend some of it listening to several podcasts recently made available by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. 

That’s the Smithsonian’s non-profit recording label; it took it over from Folkways’ founder
Moses Asch, who for years after the label’s start in 1948 — I learned on the Introductory podcast — produced a record a week. He died in 1986, and the Smithsonian was given the reins only after promising never to remove any of the recordings from circulation. Folkways owns the catalogue and produces new recordings in the Folkways “spirit.”

On that first podcast of the original recordings — “Sounds to Grow On” — Woody Guthrie sings This Land is Your Land, Lead Belly sings Midnight Special, and Pete Seeger sings Wimoweh, aka, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And that’s just the first ten or so minutes. It goes on to offer sounds from an office, sounds from around the world, and segments like Les Paul and Mary Ford singing Born to Lose, interspersed with a narrative of Folkways’ origins.

All told, Folkways has now posted links to eight of the 26-part series (here).

The podcasts are hosted by Asch’s son, Michael Asch, who makes a lot of the tale personal — maybe more so for some tastes than others. But I congratulate the Smithsonian for making these historical sounds available to everyone.