Ron's View

[Metropolitan Museum]

We were in New York three weekends ago to visit family. The evening we arrived, I wrote about our dealings with TSA that morning in Seattle. A long series of posts followed about our time in North Carolina after the weekend, but I had nothing more to say about New York. Before I completely forget, let me say a little about our afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, three weeks ago today.

The context: following lunch with my parents, the three of us (Gail, Joel, and I) had several free hours in Manhattan before it would be time to drive over the Triborough Bridge in order to drop Joel at LaGuardia for his flight back to North Carolina. We would then drive farther out on the Island for dinner with my brother and his family. We had already decided that we would start at the Met, and had parked there in the morning in anticipation of this. Following lunch, we headed back.

A year earlier almost to the day, our same threesome had spent an afternoon at the Met, at which time we were able to get a preview of the Islamic Galleries. As I wrote at the time, it was “closed for renovation, expansion, and reinstallation, [but] we got a sneak peak of a small new room with wooden ceiling and walls being carved as we watched by Moroccan craftsmen. This will be a must-see when the space re-opens near the end of the year.”

They opened in November, under the official name New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia. Here’s a description from the website:

More than one thousand works from the preeminent collection of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art—one of the most comprehensive gatherings of this material in the world—have returned to view in a completely renovated, expanded, and reinstalled suite of fifteen galleries. The organization of the galleries by geographical area emphasizes the rich diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of thirteen hundred years, by underscoring the many distinct cultures within its fold.

This was my first priority.

Despite our having agreed to go here first, we momentarily split up for reasons I won’t go into. When Gail and I emerged at a space on the second floor from which several corridors emanate, while I was trying to orient myself and find the new Islamic galleries, Gail asked a guard where the Islamic art was. He pointed way down a corridor leading westward, a corridor I know well, well enough to realize this must be wrong. But Gail said let’s go, and only as we began to walk out did I see some wording on the wall suggesting that the corridor ninety degrees to the left was the very entrance to the desired space.

Following the guard’s directions, we found our way not to the Islamic permanent collection, but to Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, an extraordinary temporary show that I hadn’t even read about. The good news: we got to see an exhibition we probably would have otherwise missed. The bad news: where the heck was Joel?

No big deal, right? I could text him our location. But that’s when I discovered that our AT&T connection was all but dead. I texted texted texted texted. I called called called. I sent email. I re-sent and re-sent. Nothing would go through. Okay, maybe I could go outside if things got desperate, get a connection, and call. But if he stayed inside while I was outside, he might fare no better with his own AT&T phone. Gail kept telling me not to worry, he’ll find us. Well, yes, if we were in the agreed-upon Islamic space, which she believed we were, since the guard told us so. The more we explored the exhibition, however, the more certain I was that we weren’t where we were supposed to be.

I can’t exactly say I panicked. I mean, he’s not a child. He can get by. But, in the worst case scenario, what if three hours later we still hadn’t connected? How would he get to LaGuardia, with his bag in the car?

I know, I should have relaxed. But I didn’t, and the unexpected gem of a show that we had fallen into was not getting its due. Speaking of which, here’s a description:

As the seventh century began, vast territories extending from Syria to Egypt and across North Africa were ruled by the Byzantine Empire from its capital, Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Critical to the wealth and power of the empire, these southern provinces, long influenced by Greco-Roman traditions, were home to Orthodox, Coptic, and Syriac Christians, Jewish communities, and others. Great pilgrimage centers attracted the faithful from as far away as Yemen in the east and Scandinavia in the west. Major trade routes reached eastward down the Red Sea past Jordan to India in the south, bringing silks and ivories to the imperial territories. Major cities made wealthy by commerce extended along inland trade routes north to Constantinople and along the Mediterranean coastline. Commerce carried images and ideas freely throughout the region.

In the same century, the newly established faith of Islam emerged from Mecca and Medina along the Red Sea trade route and reached westward into the empire’s southern provinces. Political and religious authority was transferred from the long established Christian Byzantine Empire to the newly established Umayyad and later Abbasid Muslim dynasties. The new powers took advantage of existing traditions of the region in developing their compelling secular and religious visual identities. This exhibition follows the artistic traditions of the southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire from the seventh century to the ninth, as they were transformed from being central to the Byzantine tradition to being a critical part of the Islamic world.

A week ago we got our new issue of the New York Review of Books, in which Peter Brown reviews the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue. If only we could go back. He explains that the exhibition

embraces the last century of the pre-Islamic Middle East and the first two centuries of Islam. To our surprise, we do not find ourselves in a world swept by a mighty wind. Instead, we enter a series of quiet rooms where time seems to stand still. Like a perfect late fall day, only the occasional rustle of a falling leaf startles us into realizing that the seasons are about to change. The few clear signs that Islam had, indeed, become politically dominant in the Middle East by the end of the seventh century strike us with almost ominous intensity. For there are so few of them.

And he concludes:

The exhibition is, frankly, about those who made it. The mosaics, the silverware, the parchment volumes, the ivories, and the textiles (even the poignant little shirts of those who died young) once gave confidence and joy to those who could afford them. This is an exhibition not only about what people worshiped, but also about what they loved and what they hoped for. Landowners, administrators, and clergymen, they were not necessarily saints, heroes, or heroines. But their mute remains take us back to centuries whose final outcome they themselves could not have imagined. They form a human—and, let us hope, a humane—link between our own times and a distant, major turning point in the history of the world.

When we had gotten about halfway through the exhibition, I decided we had to get back to the “real” Islamic exhibition space in hopes of finding Joel. Dragging Gail through the remaining rooms, I headed past the 19th century European paintings toward the entry space where we had been mis-directed, only for Gail to call ahead to me to stop, for in my rush I had walked right past Joel, coming toward us. He had, of course, been in the proper galleries. Having walked through them and failed to find us, he had struck off in our direction, why I still don’t know.

Now reunited and properly oriented, we returned to the new permanent Islamic galleries that Joel had just seen. I had waited a year for this. But I needed some time to regain my equanimity. Since I wasn’t absorbing much, let me turn once more to Peter Brown, who wrote about the newly opened space and the catalog last December.

The curators of the Islamic collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have faced a different and more challenging task: how to do justice to an entire galaxy of cultures touched by Islam, which spread from the Atlantic to South Asia and the borders of China, and which changed constantly over the course of a millennium. In this immense galaxy, the arts of late-medieval Iran and Mughal India, displayed in the Morgan Library, are no more than a single, incandescent cluster. The curators have displayed the changing galaxy with an intellectual determination and with a visual discretion that make their new installation a delight to the eye and their meticulous new catalog a thrill to the mind.

First of all, the galleries now bear a distinctive name. They are the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia. It is a mouthful. But behind the title lie decades of careful thought on the relation between the universal and the particular across a far-flung commonwealth of cultures. The notion of Islamic art as a single, uniform system that spread with monotonous insistence across the territories ruled by Muslims is effectively dismantled. The essays of the four editing curators, Maryam Ekhtiar, Priscilla Soucek, Sheila Canby, and Navina Najat Haidar (along with the other contributors), make this point clear. The galleries have been reinstalled with the express purpose of doing justice to the distinctive flavor of each region.

It is not often that an intellectual contention is turned into a work of beauty in itself. But this is what Michael Battista and his fellow installers and designers have done with the layout and décor of the new galleries. Their work has allied itself with the discreet, almost subliminal beauty that radiates from the objects themselves. Lattice screens, made for the purpose in Egypt, transform the light from the courtyard around which the galleries are placed. Their firm horizontal lines point the visitor forward from region to region. The floor itself seems to move. Each room, dedicated to one region, is paved with a different stone—from bright Egyptian marble, patterned with great sunbursts, stars, and cartouches in the entrance hall, all the way around to the gentle sandstone of India.

Alas, I didn’t allow myself to give full appreciation to what we were seeing. Next time.

Once outside, we agreed to split up for the next couple of hours. I recommended to Gail that we head to the American Wing, since I remembered reading about some new installations recently. I hadn’t remembered what, but here’s the explanation:

The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of American art, one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world, returned to view in expanded, reconceived, and dramatic new galleries on January 16, 2012, when the Museum inaugurated the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. The new installation provides visitors with a rich and captivating experience of the history of American art from the eighteenth through the early twentieth century. The suite of elegant new galleries encompasses 30,000 square feet for the display of the Museum’s superb collection.

This final phase of the American Wing renovation project is comprised of twenty-six renovated and enlarged galleries on the second floor. The new architectural design is a contemporary interpretation of nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts galleries, including coved ceilings and natural light flowing through new skylights. The redesign, which has added 3,300 square feet of gallery space, also allows for a chronological installation of the American paintings and sculpture, and improved pathways connecting to adjacent areas of the Museum.

On our way from the south end of the Met to the north, we zipped past any number of interesting works and exhibitions, stopping momentarily here or there. The entrance area to the Asian Wing. European paintings of the seventeenth century. Oh, look, there’s El Greco’s View of Toledo with some girl sitting on the floor staring intently at it.

[From Metropolitan website]

On we went, through doors leading to the balcony that overlooks the arms and armor exhibit of clothed riders, on past the historic instruments, into the big American wing central space, and through more doors into the new American wing galleries (only by chance). They are splendid. We chose well. And through the main axis, in the distance, always in view, was Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware. He couldn’t be missed, patiently waiting for us to reach him, as you can see at the top.

From the paintings, we descended half a floor to a mezzanine that is wonderful in an entirely different way. It is open storage, showing object upon object from the American collection, with no explanation but with labels that allow you to go to one of the monitors spread throughout the space to look up what each object is. Like this:

And this:

Soon it was time to meet up with Joel, at the cafeteria, so he could get some food before going to the airport. We realized that once again we might fail to meet up, there being many eateries. Only one “cafeteria,” in the basement, but there was room for ambiguity. And the pity is, there was a wonderful cafe right where we were standing, at the American wing in the big open space, with an outlook onto Central Park. We tried once again to text and call him, suggesting he meet us there, but when nothing would go through, we dutifully headed to the cafeteria.

Ten minutes past our meeting time, I got anxious and began to head up the stairs to look for him. Once again, we bumped into each other. He had indeed, looked for us initially elsewhere. We all agreed that the cafeteria was dismal and went back to the American wing cafe for a snack.

When we were done, there was still some time to explore. We took Joel back through the American open storage area for a look, coming out at a small baseball card exhibition, Breaking the Color Barrier in Major League Baseball.

In October 1945 Wesley Branch Rickey (1881–1965), general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Jack Roosevelt Robinson (1919–1972) from the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs to the Dodgers organization, thus breaking the color barrier that had existed in professional baseball since 1889. On April 15, 1947, Robinson took the field for the first time as a Brooklyn Dodger, earning the title “Rookie of the Year” in the National League at the end of the season with twelve homers, twenty-nine steals, and a .297 batting average. Shortly after Robinson’s debut, Larry Doby was signed by the Cleveland Indians, who then brought over the Negro League’s star pitcher, Satchel Paige, to join Doby the following year. With these developments, baseball’s long-entrenched segregation began, slowly, to crumble; it took another twelve years for the Boston Red Sox—the last team to integrate—to hire Elijah “Pumpsie” Green, three years after Robinson retired from the game.

The selection of baseball cards illustrating some of the earliest and most illustrious players who moved from the Negro Leagues into the Majors is taken from the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection. The more than thirty thousand baseball cards collected by Burdick date from 1887 to 1959 and represent the most comprehensive collection outside of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Speaking of the Burdick Collection, Joel grew up with two posters from the Met on his wall, each showing an array of cards from the collection. Here are the two cards that end the exhibition, Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson side by side.

It was time go to. We headed back to the south end of the museum, stopped at the museum store, headed out the back door into the garage, and off we went.

Regrets? We missed The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. And Red and Black Chinese Lacquer, 13th–16th Century. But we were content. And Joel made his flight.

Two months ago, I wrote about the new exhibition Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise that had just opened at the Seattle Art Museum. I quoted from the exhibition description at the website, which explained that the “show highlight[ed] the complex relationship between Paul Gauguin’s work and the art and culture of Polynesia” and “includes about 60 of Gauguin’s brilliantly hued paintings, sculptures and works on paper, which are displayed alongside 60 major examples of Polynesian sculpture that fueled his search for the exotic.”

Given the circumstances of the opening evening, we did not linger over the art. We had listened to a presentation by Chiyo Ishikawa, the Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, and Pam McClusky, Curator of Art of Africa and Oceania and eaten hors d’oeuvres before entering the exhibition. I wrote at the time that

the distinctive feature of the exhibition is its juxtaposition of Gauguin’s paintings (presented chronologically) with Polynesian sculpture and artifacts. This is surprisingly effective, as one passes from a room of paintings to a few artifacts, more paintings, an entire room of Polynesian objects, a room of woodblock prints, and so on. I wasn’t entirely convinced that I would want to see a show of 60 Gauguins, but the alternation helps to keep one’s eyes fresh and one’s interest piqued. Plus, the opening lecture oriented us well. Many of the objects were already familiar, allowing us to examine the art without fussing with the signs or bothering with the accompanying audio headsets.

Of course, it was late, we were hungry (those hors d’ouevres not quite adding up to a complete dinner), and I didn’t want to be out too late. So we didn’t give the show its due. We got a pretty good overview, which had to do. We have until the end of April to return for a closer examination. And we will.

We found ourselves in danger of not returning for that closer examination, what with our trip two weeks ago and the show closing in another week. We were down to the final two weekends, during which the show will be mobbed. But, by chance, we learned at the beginning of last week that for museum members at a suitable level (like us), it was possible to write ahead and ask for special entry at 9:15 on a Tuesday or Thursday morning, before the 10:00 opening of the museum. I wasted no time requesting entry for this past Thursday. We got the okay and headed downtown first thing in the morning.

As instructed, we entered by the volunteer door, signed in with security, then waited for a museum staff member to meet us. She brought us up to the exhibit, walking us through part of it in order to get to the start. Along the way, we passed a whole class of students being led on a tour. They looked high school age, about thirty in all, and had a one-room head start on us. Other than them, we had the place to ourselves. The woman who brought us up also got us some audio guides to use if we wished.

We worked our way through the exhibit at a slow pace, always being sure to hang back from the tour group. Over time, a few other singles and pairs arrived, moving past us and beyond the group as well. We were content to take our time. As for the audio guides, they were painful to use. When a painting or object is marked as available on the guide, one presses the three-digit code, then a man comes on to state the obvious, and slowly. The painting’s name, year, size. What’s in it — a red figure left of center, a yellow field, on and on. There was no way to skip past this. Only when he was done would he offer to have you push the play button so you could hear a commentary. He returned to say a few words, then offer curator Pam McClusky for a few words of comment. After she was done, he would make more remarks, then give the stage to her again. Forget it.

The pity is, this was the rare occasion when we could plant ourselves in front of a painting, listen to the guide, and not be in anyone’s way. (Surely this is the worst feature of these guides — the natural tendency of the listener to stay put, listening perhaps without even looking, letting time pass, acting as a blocker to all others.) But so little information was forthcoming, all the more given the high quality of the explanations on the walls.

Well, no matter. It’s a wonderful show, and we were privileged to see it on our own. I did tire of that tour group, with the guide talking non-stop. She was loud, slow, and clear, a gem of a guide for those in the group. For me, it became an increasing nuisance, like trying to read a book when someone has a TV or radio on with non-stop talk.

Only when we got to the penultimate room, holding back while the tour group finished up in the last room — the guide talking about one final painting, then about Gauguin’s career as a whole, then taking questions — did I finally lose patience and join the group. And only then did I realize what should have been obvious all along: that the guide was none other than Pam McClusky. Not that it was our place to tag along, but we surely would have learned a lot if we had. Forget the audio guide, with occasional remarks by her. We could have had her non-stop, the very non-stop chatter that had been a distraction when I tried to ignore her, but could instead have been a joy.

What I really wished is that we had chosen a day when there was no tour. But maybe the deal is that she has been leading tours of the exhibition every Tuesday and Thursday before opening hours, which is why the space is open and available to a limited number of members as well.

I suppose that’s about all I have to say. I would have wished to insert photos throughout the post of our favorite paintings and objects, but photography wasn’t permitted, and there’s nothing at the exhibition website either. If you’re in the area, be sure to see the show in the next week. Otherwise, consider getting a copy of the book, one of which we brought home with us.

Two Thursdays ago, the last full day of our trip to North Carolina, we spent the day in Raleigh. I have already written about our visits to the state capitol and the North Carolina Museum of History, which are across the street from each other downtown. After a late lunch at Pharoah’s Grill, we drove out to the North Carolina Museum of Art, about a six-mile drive to the northwest, which conveniently is on the way back to Chapel Hill.

In post after post, I have expressed my wonder at the museums of Durham, Greensboro, and Raleigh. The art museum is no different, and a testament to the cultural priorities of the state. One approaches it just off a highway, in a nondescript area past some state maintenance and motor pool facilities. There’s a parking lot just off the road, with the unpromising view ahead and down the hill of the building pictured above. Leaving the lot, one can choose a path into the woods, which is the start of the Museum Park. Or one can take a path down to a plaza, with the older east building on one side and the newer west building to the other. The signs indicate that the east building has temporary exhibitions and a membership desk, while the west has the permanent collection.

We chose to start in the west. A friendly woman gave us the visitor’s guide, with maps of the two buildings, plus a guide to the park. It was already past 3:00 PM when we got started, and we quickly realized that we would have to be content with a sampling of the collection.

The west building is all on one level. Whatever you may make of its appearance from the outside, it’s quite wonderful indoors. The walls and ceiling admit an enormous amount of natural light, all filtered by drapes. We learned later from a security guard who attached himself to us that the building opened just two years ago. When it was being built, passersby would think it was a warehouse. Our guard-turned-guide taught high school history in Maryland for 30 years, after undergraduate studies in art history. He and his wife moved down to the Raleigh area five years ago to be near their daughter and grandchildren. Now he gets to spend his days with art while his wife spends hers with the grandchildren.

The museum overview tells us a bit about the museum’s collection:

Since the initial acquisition in 1947 of 139 works of European and American art, purchased with a $1 million appropriation of state funds, the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art has grown to include major holdings in European painting from the Renaissance to the 19th century (enhanced in 1960 by an extraordinary gift from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation of 75 works dating primarily from the Italian Renaissance and baroque periods), Egyptian funerary art, sculpture and vase painting from ancient Greece and Rome, American art of the 18th through 20th centuries, and international contemporary art. Other strengths include African, ancient American, pre-Columbian, and Oceanic art, and Jewish ceremonial objects. (The NCMA houses one of only two permanent displays of Jewish art in an American art museum.)

The Museum is actively building the collection with recent acquisitions, including a gift from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation of 30 works by Auguste Rodin, making the NCMA the leading repository of this artist’s work in the southeastern United States. … The 164-acre Museum Park is home to more than a dozen monumental works of art, with artists actively involved in the restoration of the Park’s landscape and the integration of art into its natural systems.

We started our tour with the Renaissance paintings. The Kress Foundation gave gifts of European art to dozens of museums across the country, including our own Seattle Art Museum. It’s not my impression that we’ve built much on it here in Seattle, the SAM having pursued other areas in its acquisitions. But the NCMA has a stronger European painting collection than I anticipated, due as much to state purchases as the Kress gift.

One quirky addition to the collection is Devorah Sperber’s 2005 After the Mona Lisa 2, inadequately pictured below.

It is described at Sperber’s website as “an enlarged rendering of The Mona Lisa’s face. When seen with the aid of viewing spheres, distorted views of The Mona Lisa’s smile mimic ‘low spatial frequencies’ usually seen only with peripheral vision. Unlike the original painting, in which the illusion of the smile is subtle, in my rendition The Mona Lisa’s elusive smile appears, changes, and disappears in a dramatic and humorous fashion.” Or, as explained at the Coats & Clark website:

The North Carolina Museum of Art has recently chosen an installation by contemporary New York-based artist Devorah Sperber titled “After The Mona Lisa 2.” This work comprises 5,184 spools of Coats Dual Duty thread as the “color palette” to re-create a detail from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting.

Sperber has transformed one of the most well-known works in the history of art by inverting and enlarging it over 200 times to 85 by 87 inches. Viewing the work through an acrylic sphere that is part of the installation mimics peripheral vision, turning the image right side up and shrinking it back to a recognizable size.

In her work Sperber explores the reproduction of images in the digital era, links between art and technology, and visual perception – how the eye and brain make sense of the visual world.

I suppose I’m giving this one work more attention than it deserves. But it was fun to see.

As for the Rodin collection, that took us by surprise. We might have thought we had turned a corner from Les Invalides and stumbled into the Musée Rodin. (We stayed just around the corner from it during the Paris portion of our honeymoon and returned in November 2009, it being a favorite of Gail’s.) But no, we were still in Raleigh. The high ceilings and natural light of the interior Rodin Court show the pieces off to good effect. Just beyond the court are doors opening onto the Rodin Garden, with sculptures arrayed on a lawn surrounding a pool. I have one photo of the garden in my coming attractions post. Here’s another:

(In case the Cantor name sounds familiar, you may be remembering the The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Or Cantor Fitzgerald.)

Next we explored the Judaic collection. The display space is limited, but filled with astonishing objects, but old and contemporary.

The gallery and its collection were founded by the late Dr. Abram Kanof, a physician and respected scholar of Jewish art and symbolism. It is one of only two galleries devoted to Judaica in an American art museum. Since opening in 1983, the gallery has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, the majority of whom are not Jewish and are largely unfamiliar with Judaism’s rich and diverse artistic heritage. Inspired by Dr. Kanof, the Museum has wholeheartedly embraced the role of the Judaic Art Gallery as a forum for religious and cultural understanding, acknowledging as well that ideas are often best communicated through memorable works of art.

The Judaic Art Gallery features objects from the major Jewish traditions—Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Oriental (or Mizrahi)—as well as from modern Israel. All objects are designed for use in synagogue worship, observance of the Sabbath and holidays, or ceremonial occasions honoring the life cycle and Jewish home. Highlights of the collection include a splendid pair of mid-18th-century silver and gilt Torah finials (rimmonim), originally part of the treasury of the Great Synagogue of Amsterdam; a large standing Hanukkah lamp, circa 1930, one of the masterpieces of the “Hebrew style” from Jerusalem’s celebrated Bezalel Workshop; a finely filigreed case for an Esther scroll from the Ottoman Empire; and an elegant pair of silver finals and matching Torah pointer (yad) dated 1783 from the Orthodox Synagogue in Plymouth, England. Important new objects continue to be added to the collection thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Judaic Art Gallery. The long-term acquisition plan is directed toward broadening the survey of Judaica to include objects from all important Diaspora communities as well as Israel. Special consideration will be given to ritual objects of North Carolina and southern origin. In addition the plan calls for an ongoing program of commissions from leading American and international designers.

My photos of these objects didn’t come out too well. It was Passover while we were there, so let me focus on two examples of Passover Seder plates. The first is extraordinary, but my shot is hopelessly blurred. Below are three levels for the three pieces of matzoh. At top is the Seder plate itself, with separate figures each holding up a bowl to display the assorted traditional items — the bitter herbs, the charoset, the karpas, etc.

The second is a modern rendering of the same concept.

It was getting late, and we still wanted to explore the museum park. After a brief look at the museum store, we headed back up the hill and onto the walkway. We didn’t get far, only far enough to round the first big curve and see the first two pieces, Vollis Simpson’s Wind Machine

and Thomas Sayre’s Gyre (with pedestrians).

The complete loop walk is about two and a half miles. Next time we’ll plan better. But on this day, we had to head out, so we could be back in Chapel Hill for dinner with Joel.

What a fabulous museum!

I’ve just written about our visit to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, last Wednesday. We got to our car around 2:30 in the afternoon. Before driving back to Chapel Hill for dinner with Joel, I wanted to stop at the Weatherspoon Art Museum on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This took Gail by surprise. She might have been thinking a late lunch would be a welcome idea. I assured her that she wanted to see the museum and we agreed that I’d find her coffee and a snack instead.

On reaching the museum, we learned that they didn’t have a café, but were pointed in the direction of local hangout Coffeeology, just down the street. You can see the table where we sat, the two-top just right of center where the guy in the gray sweater is looking downwards.

On returning to the museum, we went upstairs to see the Trenton Doyle Hancock exhibition, WE DONE ALL WE COULD AND NONE OF IT’S GOOD. “Internationally acclaimed Texas-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock is best known for his ongoing narrative and theatrical installations that thrust the viewer literally and figuratively into his personal, idiosyncratic, and, at times, heretical weave of words and images. This exhibition features new and selected works executed across a wide variety of media, including drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture.”

We didn’t spend long, moving on to Telling Tales: Narratives from the 1930s, a small but superb exhibit. From the website:

Artists who advocated both representational and abstract styles attempted to capture the spirit of their age—a time marked by the bleak reality of the Great Depression as well as the uplifting optimism linked with the machine age and its promise of progress. While works by Social Realist and Regionalist artists—the art market’s dominant styles at the time—abound, images by other artists whose concerns were more psychologically penetrating are also included.

We were two days too early for the opening of Matisse and the Decorative Impulse, being prepared in some additional second floor space. Back on the main floor, we looked at Richard Mosse: Falk Visiting Artist. As the title indicates, Mosse is visiting the university now, and in honor of the visit, the museum has a show of his recent work.

Photographer Richard Mosse has spent the last two years shooting a new series of work titled Infra in the eastern Congo. The artist is known for his restrained and highly aestheticized views of sites associated with violence and fear, such as his 2008 depictions of the war in Iraq, and his large-scale photographs of airplane crash sites and emergency drills. For his work in the Congo, Mosse used Kodak Aerochrome, an infrared film designed in connection with the United States military to detect camouflage in the 1940s. The film reveals a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can perceive, turning the lush landscape of the Congo into a bubblegum pink. This hue contrasts dramatically with the severe environment within which the people of the eastern Congo live and draws our attention to the complex social and political dynamics of the country. Beginning in 1998, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) became the site of the widest interstate war in modern African history, which has claimed millions of lives. Although the conflict was thought to have subsided in 2006, with the first free elections, thousands continue to die as a result of the ongoing conflict, most due to hunger and disease.

Mosse’s technique, as described above, yields amazing results. The landscape colors are altered while other colors remain true, creating surprisingly powerful images. The one at the top is typical. Here’s one more.

On our way out, we took a quick look at the Sculpture Garden.

Who would have imagined that UNC Greensboro has such a good art museum? For that matter, who would have imagined that there are so many wonderful museums in Greensboro? We saw so much in our six hours.

In my previous post, I described our visit this morning to the Duke Homestead. From there, we drove a couple of miles to Duke University to visit its Nasher Museum of Art, arriving a little after noon. Just in time for lunch, which we happily had at the Museum Café. Gail and I shared a white bean and chicken soup, and both of us chose the curried chicken salad wrap with side salad. This was the most beautiful imaginable day, so we sat on the outside patio, but we hadn’t taken into account how windy it was. Our stuff kept blowing away. After the soup, we moved inside.

Two of the museum’s gallery rooms are devoted to a temporary exhibition, Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy, which was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. A third large space contained several exhibits from the permanent collection. One, Angels, Devils and the Electric Slide: Outsider Art from the Permanent Collection, was prepared specifically to complement the Calder show. We started here, without first reading the sign that explained its complementary role — use of found objects, etc. Perhaps the intent was for us to start with Calder.

No matter. We loved this exhibition. You can see my favorite, Jimmy Lee Sudduth‘s rooster, above. Below is the placard describing it.

There was also an exhibition put together by a Duke class of undergraduates and graduate students containing ancient objects from the permanent collection. And a selection from museum’s medieval collection, the core of which was acquired from the estate of Ernest Brummer in 1966. The museum says this is one of the finest medieval collection in a university museum. I’m guessing there’s not much competition for this honor, but in any case, the collection certainly contains some wonderful pieces.

As for the Calder show, it was a delight. Here’s the online description:

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University presents an exhibition that provides a fresh perspective on modern sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and his influence on a new generation of artists.

Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art pairs 32 master works by Calder with works by seven young artists: Martin Boyce, Nathan Carter, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Aaron Curry, Kristi Lippire, Jason Meadows and Jason Middlebrook. The Nasher Museum is the fourth and final venue for the exhibition, which will be on view from February 16 to June 17, 2012.

Visitors know and love Calder as the inventor of the mobile, and for his legacy as a modern sculptor. This is the first exhibition to explore Calder’s influence on an exciting new generation of artists. Visitors will have a rare chance to see their work side by side with that of Calder, to compare the creative use of materials to define space and explore form, balance, color and movement.

And here is one of the works:

[Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago]

Well worth a visit. And have lunch too.

Six weeks ago, I described a day trip we might take when visiting Joel in Chapel Hill this month. We would drive 50 miles west to Greensboro to visit the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, which opened two years ago on the site of the Woolworth’s where four college students began their 1960 lunch counter sit-in. And along the way, we would stop at the Saxapahaw General Store, featured in the NYT Sunday travel section in January, for a meal. That’s still the plan. The civil rights museum provides hour-long guided tours and we have made our reservations.

That leaves two more days to plan, not counting our arrival and departure days. Here’s what I’m thinking (though Gail has yet to weigh in). We’ll go down to Raleigh one day, hang out in Durham and Chapel Hill the other, and see still more museums.

Raleigh has three state museums, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of History, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. I can’t imagine going to all three. The good news is, we can’t. The natural sciences museum will be closed for two weeks in preparation for the opening of a new wing. This is bad news too, of course. It would have been fun to see the wing. But it simplifies our decision.

What most interests me at the history museum is an exhibit called The Story of North Carolina:

More than 14,000 years of the state’s history unfold through fascinating artifacts, multimedia presentations, dioramas, and hands-on interactive components. Additionally, two full-size historic houses and several re-created environments immerse museum visitors in places where North Carolinians have lived and worked.

[snip]

Highlights in the first part of The Story of North Carolina include American Indian life, European settlement, piracy, the American Revolution and early 1800s farm life. The exhibit continues through the antebellum era, the Civil War, the rise of industry, the Great Depression, the two World Wars, and the Civil Rights movement.

The art museum has a park that is “home to more than a dozen monumental works of art, with artists actively involved in the restoration of the Park’s landscape and the integration of art into its natural systems.” One is pictured below.

The museum also has a notable collection of Judaica, such as the Torah finials below from the treasury of the Great Synagogue of Amsterdam.

We could also try to fit in a tour of the State Capitol, completed in 1840 and pictured at the top.

On the day we go to Durham, we can visit the Duke Homestead State Historic Site.

At Duke Homestead, visitors can tour the early home, factories, and farm where Washington Duke first grew and processed tobacco. Duke’s sons later founded The American Tobacco Company, the largest tobacco company in the world. The Dukes became one of the wealthiest families in the country at the turn of the 20th century and now lend their name to Duke University, Duke Energy, and the Duke Endowment.

Duke Homestead offers an orientation film twice an hour, an extensive tobacco museum, and guided tours of the surviving historical structures on the grounds. Among these structures are early Bright Leaf tobacco barns, Washington Duke’s first and third factories, and his 1852 homestead.

And on the Duke campus, there’s The Nasher Museum of Art, which “opened in 2005 with a building designed by Rafael Viñoly as the center for the visual arts on campus.” We’re talking Nasher as in Ray and Patsy Nasher of Dallas, the Nashers of downtown Dallas’s Nasher Sculpture Center , and of the NorthPark Center mall, which displays more art from the Nasher collection. (I wrote about our visit to the Nasher Sculpture Center two years ago.)

We may not have time to do all this. After all, we also want to enjoy the local restaurant offerings, walk around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill to get a sense of what they’re like, and drive around as well. We’ll have to return soon.

[Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times]

Some people collect art. Lots of people collect stuff. What’s the difference? Might all of us be art collectors? These questions underlie Collecting: Art is a Slippery Slope, the current exhibition at the Wright Exhibition Space. I’ve written three times before (most recently last June) about exhibitions at the Wright, a small gallery not far from the Space Needle that mounts shows from time to time drawn largely, or entirely, from the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection. (Together, the Wrights built the largest collection of contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest.) The gallery is open on Thursdays and Saturdays only, with free admission. Collecting: Art is a Slippery Slope is curated by the Wrights’ daughter Merrill, and we visited yesterday.

The weekly Seattle paper The Stranger offers the following handy summary of the show (see also Michael Upchurch’s review in the Seattle Times):

Collecting: Art Is a Slippery Slope is a spectacularly bric-a-bracky exhibition organized by daughter of Seattle’s leading collectors of modern art, Merrill Wright. She invited 24 of her friends to share what they collect and each collector (including: Art dealer James Harris and partner Carlos Garcia, and Dina Martina, among others) was given an eight-foot-long shelf in the airy galleries. The range of objects is mind-blowing, from hair wreaths to folding chairs to chain-saw carvings to magician’s stands to NASCAR memorabilia.

On entering the gallery, one picks up a xeroxed compendium of descriptions of the collections, each written by the collector him/herself or a third party. Merrill Wright uses her blurb to discuss the impetus for the exhibition:

Growing up, people would come into our house and we would often hear some variation on, “You call that art?” That has become one of my favorite questions. First of all, it is rude and rudeness is fascinating. Secondly, it begs further questions, “What is the fine line that defines art?” And, “Who’s making the call?” Some art, like Allan McCollum’s, can stray into flirting with commodity. My early Warhol is actually an advertisement for men’s clothing while my table is really a piece of Franz West’s floor. Most of my art can slide both ways — as art or thing. And sometimes my things can become art. Like a 1965 diorama of the Kennedy assassination that is absolutely transcendent. Or a 1790s ceramic fish tray depicting the French Royal family incognito. Collecting means you can define for yourself what is art. All collections are personal in different ways.

[Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times]

Bill and Ruth True, like the Wrights, collect contemporary art and have set up a space, Western Bridge, a renovated warehouse in Seattle’s industrial district, to show art drawn from their collection. We’ve had the pleasure of spending an evening at their home and seeing the art on display there. I was therefore particularly eager to see their contribution to Collecting: Art Is a Slippery Slope. The guide’s blurb about it, written by Eric Fredericksen, explains that

for Slippery Slope, Bill and Ruth thought to explore an interest they shared in a seemingly simple thing, the folding chair. As inveterate entertainers, hosts and event organizers, they appreciated the flexibility of this object, a great accommodation to have when you set out to host a small dinner and end up welcoming dozens of guests. They were also drawn to the surprising variety of design approaches to the task of making a chair fold flat. The mundane folding chair is a surprisingly interesting intersection of craft and art, aesthetics and engineering. Presented on the floor, the wall, and the shelf, the chairs can be seen as reliefs, sculptures.

Gail enjoyed this particular collection less than I did. I found it revelatory, for it awakened me to the realization that one can collect without investing much money. What must be invested is time: time to develop an overarching vision, to keep that vision in mind in one’s daily wanderings, to be on the lookout for objects that fill gaps or broaden the vision, and ultimately to curate the collection.

I now know that I’ve been collecting art all my life. If only I hadn’t deaccessioned my childhood collection of milk bottle caps.

The show Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise opens tomorrow at the Seattle Art Museum. Last night, Gail and I attended a special preview, which I’ll describe in a moment. First, the show description from the website:

Seattle Art Museum presents the only United States stop for Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise, a landmark show highlighting the complex relationship between Paul Gauguin’s work and the art and culture of Polynesia. The exhibition, on view at SAM Downtown February 9 through April 29, 2012, includes about 60 of Gauguin’s brilliantly hued paintings, sculptures and works on paper, which are displayed alongside 60 major examples of Polynesian sculpture that fueled his search for the exotic. Organized by the Art Centre Basel, the show is comprised of works on loan from some of the world’s most prestigious museums and private collections.

Gauguin (1848–1903) is one of the most influential and celebrated artists of the late nineteenth century. From early on in his career he sought inspiration from outside French society in both his life and his work. While his Polynesian experience was a defining factor in both his art and his posthumous reputation, many exhibitions devoted to his work have treated the artist’s direct relationship with Polynesian art as only one small part of his larger enterprise. Through a balanced analysis of Polynesian art alongside Gauguin’s works, this exhibition shifts the emphasis and brings Polynesian arts and culture into the center of Gauguin studies.

We arrived around 6:40 and crowded into the south lobby with the other guests for a short cocktail reception. Close to 7:00, we were all ushered into the adjacent auditorium. Unfortunately, I seem to have tossed the program for this part of the evening, so I don’t have at hand some of the names. In any case, before the ceremonial thank yous and the scholarly lecture, the evening kicked off with a bang. The lights were dimmed and the curtain lifted to reveal five Polynesian drummers. Three younger men, naked from the waist up, appeared from the wings, and performed a haka. That might ordinarily be difficult to follow up, but Charlie Wright, the chair of the SAM board, is pretty smooth, and he agilely kept our attention as he thanked a long list of individuals and organizations for making the exhibition possible.

Next up, an engrossing presentation about Gauguin’s life, his art, and the works in the exhibition by Chiyo Ishikawa, the Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, and Pam McClusky, Curator of Art of Africa and Oceania. (They gave repeat performances today during the general members preview.) We were released at 8:00, with the option of proceeding upstairs to the exhibition itself or hanging out in SAM’s main lobby and event space for food and entertainment.

We started with the food and entertainment. Two tables were set up with identical, Polynesian-themed offerings. There was a small placard listing the items, but to read it I would have had to hold up the line, so I just took one of everything — they were all hors d’oeuvres sized — and proceeded to the drinks table, where I grabbed the featured drink, a rum punch complete with umbrella. I’m not generally a rum punch drinker, or a rum drinker at all, but I didn’t want to be ungracious, so I took it. We found a couple of the rapidly disappearing empty seats, ate our food (pretty darn good; I would happily have had seconds, or thirds, but the lines were long and we had art to see), took our drinks, and squeezed in through the crowd for a view of the entertainment. The same musicians who were the haka drummers, along with a few more, were playing music to which three trios danced: the half-dressed men and two trios of half-dressed women. Well, more than half dressed. One trio of women had bikini tops that looked like molded plastic. Gail explained to me later that they were to be thought of as coconuts. The other trio had fabric tops. And they had little wrap skirts. I was ready to abandon them and my punch so we could see the exhibition, but Gail, who was standing closer up with a better view, seemed to be enjoying the dances, so I waited.

Round about 8:20, we headed upstairs and entered the exhibition. As the blurb above explains, and as the curators demonstrated during their lecture and slide show, the distinctive feature of the exhibition is its juxtaposition of Gauguin’s paintings (presented chronologically) with Polynesian sculpture and artifacts. This is surprisingly effective, as one passes from a room of paintings to a few artifacts, more paintings, an entire room of Polynesian objects, a room of woodblock prints, and so on. I wasn’t entirely convinced that I would want to see a show of 60 Gauguins, but the alternation helps to keep one’s eyes fresh and one’s interest piqued. Plus, the opening lecture oriented us well. Many of the objects were already familiar, allowing us to examine the art without fussing with the signs or bothering with the accompanying audio headsets.

Of course, it was late, we were hungry (those hors d’ouevres not quite adding up to a complete dinner), and I didn’t want to be out too late. So we didn’t give the show its due. We got a pretty good overview, which had to do. We have until the end of April to return for a closer examination. And we will.

If you’re in the area, get your timed entry tickets and go too. Or, have a look at the exhibition catalog. In the meantime, below is one of the paintings on loan to the exhibition, Gauguin’s famous Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, usually residing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

I mentioned throughout the fall that when the Wall Street Journal would finally stop being delivered (they kept delivering it long after I stopped paying), I would miss the book reviews, and the arts and culture coverage in general. Thanks to WSJ book reviews, I was led to two books that I would not have read otherwise, Robert P. Crease’s World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement and Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia. Add Larry Silver’s Pieter Bruegel to the list.

The last day the Wall Street Journal was delivered was December 23. A few days later, I used my iPad WSJ app to find out how much content was available, and sure enough, it knew I no longer had full privileges. But I discovered that I still had access to a significant amount, including most of the Saturday book reviews and the food-wine-auto coverage. On New Year’s Day, I checked online for the WSJ’s weekend reviews from the day before, and there was Jonathan Lopez’s review of Pieter Bruegel.

I can’t remember when I first became a Bruegel fan. One of his most famous paintings, The Harvesters, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the cover of Silver’s book is a detail — but I can’t say I remember admiring it in my childhood. During a stay in Antwerp to attend a conference in 1978, with side trips to Bruges and Brussels, I fell in love with Flemish art. I began to read about it, made sure to stop by The Harvesters when in Manhattan, and checked out the Flemish paintings whenever passing through other major museums, such as the National Gallery in London. In 1983, I returned to Antwerp for another conference and spent more time in museums. In 1985, during our honeymoon, I arranged for us to pass through Antwerp for a couple of days between longer stays in Paris and Glasgow so Gail could share my little hobby. But I haven’t been back to Belgium since.

Regarding The Harvesters, here is its reproduction at the Metropolitan’s website:

And here is what the gallery label says:

This panel is part of a series showing the seasons or times of the year, commissioned from Bruegel by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series included six works, five of which survive. The other four are: “The Gloomy Day,” “Hunters in the Snow,” and “The Return of the Herd” (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and “Haymaking” (Lobkowicz Collections, Prague).

This remarkable group of pictures is a watershed in the history of Western art. The religious pretext for landscape painting has been suppressed in favor of a new humanism, and Bruegel’s unidealized description of the local scene is based on natural observations.

For years, those Bruegel seasons paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum made me eager to visit Vienna. Three decades later, I still haven’t made it, and the list of places Gail and I want to visit keeps growing. Some day. In the meantime, perhaps I can content myself with the book. In the WSJ review, Silver writes that

“Pieter Bruegel,” a superb and sumptuous monograph by the scholar Larry Silver, is an object of beauty in its own right. This large-format volume presents all 40 or so of Bruegel’s surviving paintings and a wide selection of his drawings and prints in color plates that render tone and hue with scrupulous accuracy. Mr. Silver’s text offers an indispensable introduction to Bruegel’s achievement—in Mr. Silver’s phrase, “the epitome of naturalism in art, the climax of the Netherlandish tradition.”

The book isn’t cheap. List price $150.00. But only $91.30 from Amazon, in stock, a lot cheaper than a trip to Vienna.

[From the British Golf Museum. Reproduced at the High Museum website by kind permission of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.]

We love art. We love golf. And if we can get ourselves to Atlanta some time between February 5 and June 24, we’ll be able to see the exhibit The Art of Golf at the High Museum of Art. Regrettably, I don’t think this is going to happen. But I can dream. And look at the exhibition website.

At the site, the show has the following blurb: “Explore the history of golf through paintings, drawings, and photos by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Andy Warhol, and Norman Rockwell. Featuring memorabilia from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, as well as the largest collection of Bobby Jones portraits ever assembled.” We also learn the following regarding the photograph above:

Formed in 1867, the St Andrews Ladies Club grew to include 500 members within twenty years—a total close to that of the exclusively male Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrew’s membership of 795. Strict conventions governing acceptable dress meant that women were obliged to play in the restrictive, tightly laced, full-length clothes then deemed fashionable and appropriate. More practical golfing attire became popular at the turn of the century.

Here’s another work featured at the website:

[From the Scottish National Gallery]

Regarding this one, we learn that

Hendrick Avercamp’s winter scene conveys a message about democratic social values: various classes – rich and poor, old and young, male and female – are bound together through leisure. Nevertheless, kolf was connected to elite status in seventeenth-century Dutch society, here evidenced by the players’ colorful, elegant clothing. The copper support, unusual for Avercamp, provides a smooth surface appropriate to the gemlike quality of the depiction. Two thin tree trunks enclosed in the ice provide the goal for the group of four kolfers in the right foreground.

You know, I’m pretty sure I saw this painting at a show in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., not that long ago. Yes, I must have. I just found this post that I wrote in May 2010 about a visit to the National Gallery, and in it I briefly mention what I describe as an “intimate” temporary exhibition, Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age. The painting was surely there.

I wonder if we can squeeze in an Atlanta trip.

[Thanks to Tim Murphy for drawing my attention to the exhibition in this week's Golf World Monday, the online accompaniment to Golf World Magazine. (And, yes, Golf World Monday came out today, even though today is Tuesday, because the PGA Tour's opening event, the Tournament of Champions, concluded yesterday.)]