museumVIEWS A quarterly newsletter for small and mid-sized art museums Spring 2012 Radcliffe Bailey, Winged, 2008. Mixed media on paper. In “Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine,” Davis Museum, MA 1 museumVIEWS SpringFeatures 2012 Getting Ahead in U.S. Museums Page 3 Have a Drink– but before that, Take a Look Page 4 The Frame Matters Ad Campaigns Raise Interest– Sometimes Page 5 A 1960s Renaissance Page 6 BOOKS Page 7 NEWSbriefs Pages 8–11 NOTES about an artist– Francesca Woodman Page 12 springVIEWS Pages 13–20 museumVIEWS Editor: Lila Sherman Publisher: Museum Views, Ltd. 2 Peter Cooper Road, New York, NY 10010 Phone: 212.677.3415 FAX: 212.533.5227 Email: [email protected] On the web: www.museumviews.org Top right: Georges Rouault, Master Arthur, 1934. Color etching MuseumVIEWS is supported by grants and aquatint. In “Georges Rouault,” Utah Museum of Fine Arts from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Center: Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1955. Oil on canvas. In “Mark Rothko: and Bloomberg. Selections from the National Gallery of Art,” Academy Art Museum, MD MuseumVIEWS is published 4 times a year: Above: Mavis Smith, Night Pool, 2009. Egg tempera on panel. In “Mavis Smith: Hidden Realities,” Michener Art Museum, PA Winter (Jan. 1), Spring (April 1), Summer (July1), and Fall (October 1). deadlines for Right: Pablo Picasso, Nude with Joined Hands, 1906. Oil on canvas. In “The Steins Collect,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY listings and artwork are Nov. 15, Feb. 15, May 15, and Aug 15. 2 Getting Ahead in U.S. Museums [“How to get ahead in U.S. museums: Once considered the Cost? weakest candidates by boards, curators are now getting The CCL absorbs the cost of tuition, travel, and accomodations, ie., the top management jobs.” no cost to fellows. –the heading to an article by Erica Cooke for The Art Newspaper.] Residency? Take Gary Tinterow, the new director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Hous- The time of the residency is one that is mutually agreed upon by the fellow ton (TX). He was one of the first to graduate from the Agnes Gund-launched, and his/her host; likely in March or April. New York-based Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL). Take, for that matter, 41 other curators, all graduates of the center, who have either become directors or risen to hold greater responsibilities in their respective careers. 2012 Fellows It all started in 2008, when Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, of Modern Art and trustee at the Frick Collection and the Cleveland Museum Museum of Modern Art (NY) of Art, joined with Elizabeth W. Easton, scholar and former Chair of the Andrea Bayer, Curator, Department of European Paintings, Metropolitan Department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Art (NY) President of the Association of Art Museum Curators, to co-found the CCL, Christa Clarke, Senior Curator, Arts of Africa and the Americas, and based on the proposition that curators were being ignored in searches for new Curator, Arts of Africa, Newark Museum (NJ) directors, and should not be. According to their official mandate, “The Center for Curatorial Leadership Thomas Denenberg, Director, Shelburne Museum (VT) aims to train currators to assume leadership positions in musums in the rap- Leah Dickerman, Curator, Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern idly evolving cultural climate of the 21st Art, (NY) century. The mandate of the CCL is to Elizabeth Finch, Lunder Curator of identify within the curatorial ranks indi- American Art, Colby College Museum viduals who have the potential to become of Art (ME) leaders and to help them shape them- John Ravenal, Curator of Modern and selves into curators who not only take Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum charge of the art in their care, but who of Fine Art are also capable of assuming the leader- ship responsibilities essential to high Elizabeth Smith, Executive performance in today’s art museums. The Director, Curatorial Affairs, CCL is premised on the conviction that Art Gallery of Ontario there need be no contradiction between Martha Tedeschi, Curator, Department these two sets of obligations—indeed, of Drawings and Prints, Art Institute of that there must not be.” Chicato (IL) This year, eleven new fellows, curato- Stanton Thomas, Curator of European rial professionals, carefully chosen by a and Decorative Art, Memphis Brooks small committee of current and former Museum (TN) museum directors, have begun an inten- Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Director of sive program that will last until June. The Collections and Exhibitions, Reginald curriculum consists of a combination F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African of “teaching” and “doing”: a two-week American History & Culture intensive program in New York in Janu- ary, taught by faculty from Columbia Crisis averted University’s Business School, concludes In 2008, museums seemed to be facing with practical exposure in New York a leadership crisis caused greatly by the museums; a one-week residency at a lack of investment by institutions in the museum different from the fellow’s own training and advancement of their own institution; a montorship; a long-term staffs. Some 60 directors were planning team project to be presented in June; to retire by 2019. Top jobs invariably and a final week residency in June for would go to people from the business the presentation of team assignments. world. Academic courses include non-profit Enter the Center for Curatorial management, finance, negotiation, board Leadership at a time when more than development, and strategic long-range two dozen major museums were search- and short-term initiatives. Seminars are held throughout the year when the ing for directors, and to hire a curator with little or no experience of budgets group comes together with directors and trustees to discuss current museum- or fundraising was thought to be risky. Probably rightly so. Today, however, world issues. curators are more involved with the business problems connected to exhibi- tions and staffing. And today, there is an increasing number of curator/direc- FAQ’s tors: Thomas Campbell for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gary Tinterow for the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Douglas Druick for the Art Institute Who is eligible? of Chicago, Ian Wardropper for the Frick Collection, Michael Taylor for the You must be a curator and an American citizen currently employed Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College to name a few. as a curator. Director Easton says the outcome is not only beneficial, but also practical: “It is easier to teach business to art world professionals than Experience? it is to teach people from business about the art world.” Trustees, she says, Participation in the management, care, and scholarly study of collections; who often come from the business world where they deal with financial development of exhibitions, publications, and programs; supervision of matters as a matter of course, prefer to deal with directors who are passionate personnel and finances; familiarity with fundraising and strategic planning. about art. Museums, she believes, are better off with leaders who understand the needs of curators. q Above: Juan Downey, Map of America, 1975. Colored pencil, graphite, and acrylic on Bainbridge board. In “Juan Downey,” Bronx Museum, NY 3 Have a Drink – but before that, Take a Look [An article by Henry Adams in the magazine Art & Antiques, March 2012, soldiers, revelers, dogs, a goose, children, and a disapproving matron accom- caught our attention. Here are some facts from it.] panying Yankee Doodle riding down the main street of Princeton. The Dover Coach, a Rockwell illustration created for the Saturday Eve- One of the most eccentric places for serious art can only be a bar. And yet, ning Post, saw second service behing the bar in the clubhouse of the Society across the country, and perhaps across other counries, there are murals, pre- of Illustrators in New York (128 East 63rd Street). Rockwell found the right pared by seasoned and professional artists, and enjoyed during many happy period costumes and the English coach that he needed while visiting hours and beyond, that adorn the walls of bars and eateries. Hollywood. For example, want to look at an enthroned Old King Cole For a delightful bit while sipping on your first martini of the day? Then go to the of whimsey to accompany King Cole Room at the St. Regis Hotel (2 East 55th Street) a straight-up drink, Ludwig in New York where a stunning mural depicting a smiling Bemelmans fills the bill Cole with some distracted courtiers looks down on you and with his walls in the Be- your fellow imbibers. By Maxfield Parrish, the mural was melmans Bar at the Carlyle executed in 1905 for the bar at Astor’s Knickerbocker Hotel Hotel (35 East 76th Street, on 42nd Street. Parrish, although hesitant about a barroom NY). Searching for a liv- commission, agreed because the payment of $5,000 was a ing in his new home, New windfall in his needy state as a young recently married artist. York, he found his metier in Having become the popular meeting place for celebrities and 1939 with the publication others, The Knickerbocker bar closed when prohibition came of Madeline, a rhymed chil- into effect, the three-panneled painting was placed in storage, dren’s book, which soon brought out for a time to enhance the New York Racquet achieved the status of clas- Club, and finally, in 1932 was installed in its present site in sic, about the adventures of the St. Regis Hotel in a room designed around it by William a little French girl and her Mackay. teacher/nun Miss Clavel.