2010年6月24日 星期四

Tate Modern

The Tate Modern in London is Britain's national museum of international modern art and is, with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, and Tate Online,[2] part of the group now known simply as Tate.

Contents [hide]

History

Main article Bankside Power Station

The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. The building was converted by architects Herzog & de Meuron and contractors Carillion,[3] after which it stood at 99m tall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron: Alchemy of Building & Tate Modern. The southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation (in 2006, the company released half of this holding).[4]

The galleries

A gallery at Tate Modern.

The collections in Tate Modern consist of works of international modern and contemporary art dating from 1900 onwards.[5]

The Tate Collection is on display on levels three and five of the building, while level four houses large temporary exhibitions and a small exhibition space on level two houses work by contemporary artists.

Collection exhibitions

When the gallery opened in 2000, the collections were not displayed in chronological order but were rather arranged thematically into four broad groups: 'History/Memory/Society'; 'Nude/Action/Body'; 'Landscape/Matter/Environment'; and 'Still Life/Object/Real Life'. This was ostensibly because a chronological survey of the story of modern art along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York would expose the large gaps in the collections, the result of the Tate's conservative acquisitions policy for the first half of the 20th century. The first rehang at Tate Modern opened in May 2006. It eschewed the thematic groupings in favour of focusing on pivotal moments of twentieth-century art, with further spaces allocated on levels 3 and 5 for shorter exhibitions. The layout is:

Level 3 - Material Gestures

This focuses on abstraction, expressionism and abstract expressionism, featuring work by Claude Monet, Anish Kapoor, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Tacita Dean.[6]

Level 3 - Poetry and Dream

The sexually explicit section on this level features a drawing by the pseudo-anonymous French artist "Proper Man" entitled le cock et le balls which is his attempt to explore the tension between old and new attitudes to sexuality within an urban environment.

Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge. The rebuilt Globe Theatre is in white, to the left
Level 5 - Energy and Process

This focuses on Arte Povera, with work by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Kasimir Malevich, Ana Mendieta, Mario Merz[7] and Jenny Holzer.[8]

Level 5 - States of Flux

This focuses on Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Pop Art,[9] containing work by artists such as Pablo Picasso,[10] Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol[11] and the photographer Eugène Atget,[12]

Temporary exhibitions

Level 1 - The Turbine Hall

The Turbine Hall, which once housed the electricity generators of the old power station, is five storeys tall with 3,400 square metres of floorspace.[13] It is used to display large specially-commissioned works by contemporary artists, between October and March each year in a series sponsored by Unilever. This series was planned to last the gallery's first five years, but the popularity of the series has led to its extension until at least 2012.[14]

The artists that have exhibited commissioned work in the turbine hall are:

Date Artist Work(s) Details
May 2000 - November 2000[15] Louise Bourgeois Maman, I Do, I Undo, I Redo About, Photos
June 2001 - March 2002 Juan Muñoz Double Bind Introduction, Photos
October 2002 - April 2003 Anish Kapoor Marsyas About, Images
October 2003 - March 2004 Olafur Eliasson The Weather Project About
October 2004 - May 2005 Bruce Nauman Raw Materials About, Audio
October 2005 - May 2006 Rachel Whiteread EMBANKMENT About
October 2006 - April 2007 Carsten Höller Test Site About, Images
October 2007 - April 2008 Doris Salcedo Shibboleth About, Images
October 2008 - April 2009 Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster TH.2058 Curator's Essay Images
October 2009 - April 2010 Miroslaw Balka How It Is About
October 2010 - April 2011 Ai Weiwei TBA Details to be unveiled 12 October 2010[16]

Level 2 - The Level 2 Gallery

The Level 2 Gallery is a smaller gallery located on the north side of the building which houses exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art. Its exhibitions normally run for 2 – 3 months.[17]

Level 4 - Major temporary exhibitions

As with levels 3 and 5, level 4 is broken into two large exhibition areas. This is used to stage the major temporary exhibitions for which an entry fee is charged. These exhibitions normally run for three or four months. The two exhibition areas can be combined to host a single exhibition. This was done for the Gilbert and George retrospective due to the size and number of the works.[18]

Other areas

Small temporary exhibition spaces are also located in the space between the two galleries on levels 3 and 5. These are sometimes used to display recent acquisitions. Works are also sometimes shown in the restaurants and members' room. Other locations that have been used in the past include the mezzanine on Level 2 and the north facinging exterior of the building.[19]

Access and environs

The closest tube station is Southwark, although a further pedestrian approach to Tate Modern is across the Millennium Bridge from St Paul's Cathedral or Mansion House tube station. Blackfriars Tube is closed until 2011. The lampposts between Southwark tube station and the Tate Modern are painted orange to show pedestrian visitors the route.

There is also a riverboat pier just outside the gallery called Bankside Pier, with connections to the Docklands and Greenwich via regular passenger boat services (commuter service) and the Tate to Tate service, which connects Tate Modern with Tate Britain.

To the west of Tate Modern lie the sleek stone and glass Ludgate House, the former headquarters of Express Newspapers and Sampson House, a massive late Brutalist office building.

Extension for 2012

Tate Modern has attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it have been in preparation for some time. These plans have focused on three areas for expansion all to the south of the building:

  1. The area no longer required by EDF Energy.
  2. Three large, disused, underground oil tanks originally used by the power station.
  3. A major new extension building to be built above the oil drums.

The design of the new extension building, also designed by Herzog & de Meuron, has been controversial. It was originally designed as a glass stepped pyramid, or zigurat, but this has recently been amended to incorporate a sloping façade in brick (to match the original power-station building)[20] after feedback on the original design was unfavourable.[citation needed] The extension will include galleries dedicated to photography, video, exhibitions and the community.[21]

This project will cost approx. £215 million and is scheduled to open in 2012, in time for the 2012 Olympic Games being held in the city.[22] Additionally, the Tate Britain will be undergoing refurbishment.[citation needed]

Transport links

London Buses
Stops SV and ST Tate Modern RV1

Stop BC Southwark Bridge / Bankside Pier 344 0.3 mile walk [23]

Stop SK Blackfriars Bridge 45, 63, 100 0.4 mile walk [24]

Stop SP Blackfriars Bridge / South Side 45, 63, 100 0.4 mile walk [25]
London Underground
0.6 mile walk Southwark Jubilee roundel1.PNG [26]
National Rail
0.3 mile walk Blackfriars [27]
London River Services
Bankside Pier
  • At the exit of Southwark tube station, the orange lamposts will direct visitors to Tate Modern.

【明報專 訊】李立偉1998起出任倫敦泰特現代美術館（Tate Modern）首任館長，帶領Tate Modern建成及開幕。由倫敦廢棄已久的發電廠改成的美術館，2000年開幕時曾邀請倫敦市2萬多名的士司機，參觀畫廊內的現代作品，全年則吸引了逾 500萬訪客人次，成為世界知名的現代藝術博物館之一。

Tate Modern樓高7層，內部總樓面達37.1萬平方呎，其實第3層和第5層專門展示Tate的藏品，其他樓層用於短期展覽和當代藝術家的工作。

Tate 的藏品包括一些抽象、表現主義、未來主義藝術等。

李立偉在2001至2010年出任斯德哥爾摩當代美術館總監，令博物館訪客增加一倍，贊助 人數目增加3倍。



張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

The Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto

畢卡索「喝苦艾酒的人」　16億天價拍出 【6/24 19:11】

畢卡索《喝苦艾酒的人》24日以3480萬英鎊拍出。（路透）
〔本報訊〕西班牙藝術大師畢卡索（Pablo Picasso）於藍色時期創作的名作《昂傑．費南德．迪索多的肖像》（The Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto），又稱《喝苦艾酒的人》（The Absinthe Drinker），今日在英國倫敦拍賣會上創下驚人紀錄，以3480萬英鎊（約新台幣16億6850萬元）落槌成交，而這場拍賣會最終總成交價為1億 5260萬英鎊（約新台幣73億1780萬元），為英國藝術品拍賣最高總成交金額。

　倫敦佳士得今日進行名畫拍賣，其中以知名音樂劇作曲家安德烈．洛伊．韋柏（Andrew Lloyd-Webber）的韋伯基金會（The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation）委託拍賣的《喝苦艾酒的人》最受買家青睞，經過一番激烈競標，最終該畫以3480萬英鎊成交，超出原先預期成交金額4百多萬鎊。

　另一方面，法國大師莫內（Claude Monet）創作於1906年的《睡蓮》（Nympheas），則因最高叫價僅2900萬英鎊，未能符合原先預期的3000萬鎊至4000萬鎊，流標未能 賣出。

　倫敦佳士得印象派與現代藝術負責人柏塔佐尼（Giovanni Bertazzoni）表示：「全球買家在今晚拍賣會較勁，顯示藝術品市場持續吸引買家花下很可觀的數目。」最終該場拍賣會總成交金額為1億5260萬英 鎊，打破蘇富比（Sotheby's）在今年2月創下的1億4700萬英鎊的紀錄，並躍升英國藝術品拍賣最高總成交金額。
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2010年6月23日 星期三

In pictures: Art of building

In pictures: Art of building

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Page last updated at 10:00 GMT, Tuesday, 22 June 2010 11:00 UK

Zaragoza Delicias Station - Photo by Wojtek Gurak
RayerBazar, Dhaka, Bangladesh by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Art of Building photography competition is run by the Chartered Institute of Building and here we present the 12 finalists, selected from more than 1,000 entries. We start with a picture of Zaragoza's Delicias Station, Spain, by Wojtek Gura.

|
|
|
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces

ARCHITECTURE

1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces

15 June - 30 August 2010
Free admission

1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces

With thanks to Coniston

*****

【明報專 訊】倫敦V&A博物館即日至本年8月30日舉行別開生面的展覽Architects Build Small Spaces。V&A博物館邀請多名建築師，齊玩創意遊戲；館方出題「退修（retreat）」，要求建築師建造能讓人避開喧囂的小型居所。更有 別於一般展覽，這個Architects Build Small Spaces，以實物展出，絕非紙上談兵，以圖則或相片「交差」。這段期間，博物館內放滿一個又一個的獨立小天地，歡迎遊人親身體驗，躲進小屋避世一刻。

■V&A Museums Architects Build Small Spaces

日期：即日至本年8月30日

開放時間﹕上午10:00至下午5:45（周五延 至晚上10:00）

地址﹕Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL

門票﹕免費

網址 ﹕http://www.vam.ac.uk

文﹕黃潔玲


*****


張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2010年6月22日 星期二

The Gemäldegalerie

Pulse | 22.06.2010 | 16:30

Psychology art tours

Johannes Vermeer's 'Girl with the Pearl Earing'. Oil on canvass, around 1665
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Emotionally charged paintings can help bring secrets to the surface

A group of business psychology students are offering guided tours of Berlin's famous Gemaelde Galerie. The idea is that encounters with art can help unlock the unconscious mind.

The students are all studying at the Business School of Potsdam. Their tours run on Thursday evenings, when entrance to the museum is free.

Report: Leah McDonnell


Main hall with sculptures
Portrait of a young girl by Petrus Christus
One of the rooms with German medieval sacred art

The Gemäldegalerie is an art museum in Berlin, Germany. It holds one of the world's leading collections of European art from the 13th to the 18th centuries. It is located on Kulturforum west of Potsdamer Platz. Its collection includes masterpieces from such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer. It was first opened in 1830, and was rebuilt in 1998.

Contents [hide]

History

The March of the Silenus by Peter Paul Rubens was obtained in Warsaw in 1656 (missing since World War II).

The collection was first located in the Royal Museum located near Lustgarten on Unter den Linden, a famous Berlin street. The collection began largely with the collection of Frederick William I, known as the Great Elector and Frederick the Great.[1] It was along the centuries enlarged not only through acquisitions but also by means of war booty and contains many objects looted from Poland. These were paintings obtained from the royal collections in 1656 (Polish Vasas collection),[2] in 1740 (Silesian collection of John III Sobieski) and in the beginning of the 19th century (Stanisław Augustus collection), as well as from many confiscations after the Partitions of Poland.[3]

The gallery's first director was Gustav Friedrich Waagen. Berlin's premier name in museum direction, Wilhelm von Bode, served the gallery from 1890 to 1929. His leadership marked the rise of the Gemäldegalerie to international prominence.

In 1904 the Gemäldegalerie was largely a collection of Renaissance art when it moved to the newly built Kaiser Friedrich Museum, later known as the Bode Museum. The museum was badly damaged during World War II, however most of the collection survived the war in shelters across Germany. At the end of world war II however, 400 art pieces were destroyed in a fire of a Flak tower that served as bomb shelter. Furthermore, several hundred paintings looted by Russian as well as American soldiers or confiscated and never returned by the red army. The rest of the collection was divided between East Berlin (mostly at the Bode Museum on Museumsinsel) and West Berlin in Berlin-Dahlem.

In June 2006 a painting missing since 1944 by Alessandro Allori was returned by the British journalist Charles Wheeler.[4]

The collection

See also: Category:Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Gemäldegalerie prides itself on its scientific methodology in collecting and displaying art. Each room can be taken in as a single statement about one to five artists in a certain period or following a certain style. Especially notable rooms include the octagonal Rembrandt room and a room containing five different Madonnas by Raphael.

Amor Victorious. 1602 - 1603 Oil on canvas. 156 x 113 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin Caravaggio shows Eros prevailing over other human endeavors: war, music, science, government.

Other notable experiences include Flemish moralistic paintings which stretch across the north side of the museum, showing an interplay between the religious motives of the artists' patrons and the often sensual inspirations of the artists. In the Renaissance section, for example, Caravaggio's Amor Victorious is displayed alongside Giovanni Baglione's Sacred Love Versus Profane Love. The two paintings are historically connected; after hearing of the scandalous portrayal of the theme "love conquers all" in Carvaggio's work, a Roman bishop commissioned Baglionne's reply, which mimics Carvaggio's style, including the features of Amor.

The tour

The collection is arranged more or less chronologically starting from the entrance and moving toward the farthest wall. Following the rooms as they are numbered takes the visitor first forward, then backward, in time. The numbering system starting on the north side of the museum yields mostly Northern European art, then British portrait art. A visitor following along the southern side will go through mostly Italian and Southern European art. The gallery contains 1200 works, with around 400 more downstairs.

Architecture and layout

The gallery sits in the southwest corner of the Kulturforum, a modern-styled answer to East Berlin's Museumsinsel (Museum Island) which was inaccessible to West Berliners when the city was divided by the Berlin Wall from 1961 through 1989. The gallery was designed by Munich architects Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler. The building consists of 72 rooms providing a two-kilometer (1.25 mi) floor. Upstairs the rooms flow around a center hall the size of a football (soccer) field; the hall sometimes displays sculpture. There are also works downstairs, a gallery devoted to frames, and a digital gallery.

Notes

  1. ^ The core of the collection was formed from the art treasures belonging to The Great Elector (1620-1688) and Frederick the Great (1712-1786).
    (English) "Old Master Paintings". www.smb.spk-berlin.de. http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/smb/sammlungen/details.php?lang=en&objID=5&p=1. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
  2. ^ Relation by Wawrzyniec Rudawski. (Polish) Lileyko Jerzy (1980). Vademecum Zamku Warszawskiego. Warsaw. p. 45. ISBN 83-22318-18-9.
  3. ^ Stosunek władców Prus do kultury polskiej ilustruje wywóz ze Śląska, jeszcze w 1740 r., zbiorów Jana III Sobieskiego, (...) rekwizycje dzieł sztuki z "pruskiej" Warszawy, z początkiem wieku XIX, wywóz części zbiorów Stanisława Augusta Poniatowskiego.
    (Polish) Jan Pruszyński. "Kulturkampf". www.wprost.pl. http://www.wprost.pl/ar/70605/Kulturkampf/. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
  4. ^ Harding, Luke. "Renaissance woman returned to gallery". The Guardian, 01 June 2006. Retrieved on 12 October 2007.

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gemäldegalerie
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

2010年6月15日 星期二

James N. Wood, President of the Getty Trust, Dies at 69

James N. Wood, President of the Getty Trust, Dies at 69
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: June 14, 201

James N. Wood, who was the director of the Art Institute of Chicago for 25 years and took over as president and chief executive of the Getty Trust in Los Angeles in 2006, helping to steer it through a turbulent period, died Friday at his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 69 and also had a home in Bristol, R.I.
The J Paul Getty Museum, via Associated Press

James N. Wood
Blog
ArtsBeat

The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.

* More Arts News

Mr. Wood died of natural causes, the trust said, but no cause of death was announced.

In his years at the Chicago institute, Mr. Wood became one of the most respected museum leaders in the country, overseeing an expansion of its world-class collection, renovations of all its departments, the construction of a new wing and the initial planning for a second addition.

He also helped conceive well-regarded exhibitions — a Monet retrospective in 1995 and a van Gogh and Gauguin show in 2001 — that broke attendance records for the museum.

Before taking over the Art Institute, he was the director of the St. Louis Art Museum for six years. He also held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo

Mr. Wood was the first person with a deep background in art and museum administration to serve as president of the Getty Trust since its formation in 1982. He succeeded Barry Munitz, a businessman and former chancellor of the California State University system, who had resigned under pressure after eight years amid growing criticism of his leadership and questions about his use of the trust’s money.

Under Mr. Wood, the trust — which oversees the J. Paul Getty Museum and three other arms, for conservation, research and philanthropy — was seen as having restored its reputation. Mr. Wood moved aggressively to streamline the organization of the trust, leading to layoffs and the elimination of dozens of positions. During the recession, he instituted deep cuts in the Getty’s operating budget that led to salary cuts and further layoffs.

In January, Michael Brand, the museum’s director, announced that he was resigning. Several museum officials and others in the art world with knowledge of the situation said that Mr. Brand’s departure came about because of sharp differences with Mr. Wood over the museum’s direction, specifically over the control of money for acquiring art.

James Nowell Wood was born March 20, 1941, in Boston. He received his undergraduate degree in art history from Williams College and his master’s from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

He is survived by his wife, Emese Forizs, an art historian and painter; two daughters, Rebecca Breen and Lenke Moscarelli; and three grandchildren.

Mr. Wood was mentioned through the years as a leading candidate for the director’s post at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Instead, he chose to stay at the Art Institute until his retirement in 2004.

When he agreed to take the post at the Getty Trust, he told The New York Times he considered the previous two years a kind of “extended vacation,” one that he had assumed would continue a lot longer. But he said of the new position: “I feel extremely grateful. It’s a totally unexpected opportunity.”
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:

Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds

By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: June 14, 2010
> var articleToolsShareData = {"url":"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/15\/arts\/design\/15museum.html","headline":"Brooklyn Museum\u2019s Populism Hasn\u2019t Lured Crowds","description":"The Brooklyn Museum has invited the neighborhood in, but its attendance in 2009 dropped 23 percent.","keywords":"Museums,Brooklyn Museum","section":"arts","sub_section":"design","section_display":"Arts","sub_section_display":"Art & Design","byline":"Brooklyn Museum said it hoped to triple attendance in 10 years by concentrating on a local audience. It had stopped worrying about competing with Manhattan museums or about its image — despite its world-class collections — as a poor man’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Enlarge This Image
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s performed in the Brooklyn Museum’s court as part of the museum’s First Saturdays, which lose money but have helped attendance.

Multimedia
Graphic
Brooklyn Museum Attendance
Graphic
The Biggest Draws at the Brooklyn Museum

Related

Blog

ArtsBeat

The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.

Enlarge This Image
Chip East/Reuters

An exhibit from one of the museum’s pop-oriented offerings, the 2002 “Star Wars” show, which didn’t find favor with most critics.

Enlarge This Image
Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Arnold Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, with a group of teenage visitors. The museum has tried to bring in a local audience with shows focused on popular culture and with its First Saturdays, free nights that can include music, dancing, gallery talks and films.

Instead, the museum invited the neighborhood to view its McKim, Mead & White Beaux-Arts building as a community resource and openly celebrated popular culture with shows like its recent photographic history of rock ’n’ roll.

But six years in, the effort to build an audience is not working. Attendance in 2009 dropped 23 percent from the year before, to about 340,000, though other New York cultural institutions remained stable.

Almost a quarter of the attendees were people who came for First Saturdays, free nights at the museum that include music, dancing, food, cash bar, gallery talks and films.

“Although I think First Saturdays are a very effective community outreach, I question whether people come to them to see art, or to enjoy music and drinks,” said Michael de Havenon, who stepped down in 2006 after 22 years as a museum trustee.

The Brooklyn Museum has long faced criticism that its populist tack and exhibitions on topics like the “Star Wars” movies and hip-hop music have diminished its stature. And now the attendance figures raise questions about the effectiveness of those efforts to build an audience by becoming more accessible.

Attendance last year was just a smidgen above the 326,000 visitors who came to the museum in 2004.

“The core constituency of collectors who matter, and people who are members of an art museum, want to be taught and stretched and learn,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, a former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art who now runs the Indianapolis Museum of Art. “You may get people in the door for a motorcycle show or a ‘Star Wars’ show, but they don’t return, and there is no residual value from their visits.” (The motorcycle show was at the Guggenheim, in 1998.)

The director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, 65, says his institution had not lowered the standard of its shows to attract crowds.

“We don’t start with the fact that it could draw a lot of people,” Mr. Lehman said. “We start with the idea that it’s a great exhibition.” But he acknowledges that building an audience since he took the helm in 1997 has been difficult. Attendance at one point decades ago topped one million; it had grown as high as 585,000 in 1998 before slumping again.

“It’s the one thing that frustrates me more than almost anything else,” Mr. Lehman said. “I’ve always felt, ‘Where are all the people who should be here?’ ”

Experts say many factors lure visitors to museums, including location and marketing, not just the quality of an institution’s collections or the nature of its exhibitions. And Brooklyn is far from the only museum that has suffered a sudden attendance drop or mounted a crowd-pleasing exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art’s show this year on the art of the director Tim Burton drew 811,000 visitors, its third-largest audience ever for an exhibition.

The Brooklyn Museum’s chairman, Norman M. Feinberg, expressed support for Mr. Lehman and said attendance typically fluctuated based on the popularity of exhibitions, jumping 55 percent, for example, in fiscal year 2000, the year of the controversial “Sensation” show.

The attendance drop of 23 percent in 2009 came as attendance at 32 other cultural institutions monitored by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs lost an average of 1 percent, according to city statistics. Attendance grew at other major art museums like the Met, MoMA and the Guggenheim last year, though the Whitney Museum also showed a deep decline that it attributed partly to not mounting a biennial show that year.

Mr. Lehman says he takes pride in the fact that even though the Brooklyn Museum’s audience hasn’t grown, it has become younger and more diverse. A 2008 museum survey showed that roughly half of the attendees were first-time visitors. The average age was 35, a large portion of the visitors (40 percent) came from Brooklyn, and more than 40 percent identified themselves as people of color.

“Arnold doesn’t get enough credit for being a real pioneer in audience development,” said the city’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Kate D. Levin. She noted that at the museum’s annual gala, the Brooklyn Ball, in April, guests ran “the gamut from senior statesmen types to the freshly tattooed.”

Critical to those efforts, Mr. Lehman said, are inclusive, accessible programs. “I like people to think of it as their favorite park,” he said, “someplace they like to be.”

“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” which closed Jan. 31, drew large crowds. And in 2009, the museum invited the public to help select works for a photography show by voting online.

This year, in another effort to stay relevant, it has entered into a partnership with Bravo on a new reality television show called “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist,” which had its premiere on Wednesday. The winning artist gets an exhibition at the museum and a cash prize.

The show was the last straw for Martin Baumrind, a trustee for 10 years who resigned this month because, he said, he had long opposed the museum’s direction. “What it has become is a party place and a center of celebrity — evidenced by the fact that they have partnered up with Bravo,” he said. “That is not what I signed up for.”

Certainly the museum’s beginnings were more traditional. Founded in 1823, it has widely acclaimed holdings in American painting, sculpture and decorative arts. Its African collection, Egyptian artifacts and pre-Columbian material, particularly its Andean textiles, are regarded as first-rate.

Critics, though, have suggested that some exhibitions, like the 2002 show of costumes and drawings from the “Star Wars” movies, hurt the museum by de-emphasizing the core strength of the collections.

“The quality of their exhibitions has lessened,” said Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art and a Brooklynite. “ ‘Star Wars’ shows the worst kind of populism. I don’t think they really understand where they are. The middle of the art world is now in Brooklyn; it’s an increasingly sophisticated audience and always was one.”

Mr. Lehman said much of the criticism was unfair. He said the museum had arranged exhibitions on a number of less popular topics — including a 2004 show featuring 200 artists from Brooklyn — and that few critics of the “Star Wars” show had appreciated its context.

“To get to ‘Star Wars,’ you had to go through gallery space in which we used objects from the collection to talk about myth-making and the ideas behind so much of what ‘Star Wars’ was about,” he said.

To be sure, several recent shows have been positively received. “I saw the hip-hop show twice,” the art critic Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times last year, referring to the “Hip-Hop Nation” show in 2000. “It was packed. Being a greenhorn, I asked my fellow viewers questions — who’s this, what’s that — and learned a lot. It was a great museum experience.”

Currently, the museum has shows featuring the work of the contemporary artist Kiki Smith, fragments from its Egyptian collection, highlights from its well-respected costume collection now housed at the Metropolitan and a historical exhibition about women’s contribution to public health in Brooklyn.

Financially, the Brooklyn Museum — like many museums — has seen rough stretches of late. It reported a deficit of $3 million for the fiscal year ending in 2008 and saw its endowment drop to $65 million in 2009 from $93 million in 2008. (The museum said that the deficit was in large part because of losses in the stock market and that its endowment is back up to $85 million.)

Last year, the museum cut its staff by 20 through layoffs and buyouts and increased its suggested admission to $10 from $8. Those efforts, and $25 million in operating and capital support from the city, helped it report a $9 million surplus on its most recent tax return.

The museum loses money on First Saturdays and does not track whether the people who attend ever come back during regular hours. But there is no question First Saturdays have helped attendance, which the museum expects to increase by more than 15 percent this year.

“If that environment could be replicated,” Mr. Lehman said, “on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then I could easily retire and say we’ve succeeded and people think of the museum as a place to be of significance in their lives, not necessarily to see an exhibition.”

In a sense, Mr. Lehman said, he is more concerned with the quality of the museum experience for the diverse audience he is now reaching, on transforming the museum from, as it said in its 2009 tax return, “a slumbering outer-borough giant into a dynamic innovator.”

“That has to become more important to me than the numbers,” Mr. Lehman said, “though I admit to you, I’d like to see 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 more people.”


The attendance drop of 23 percent in 2009 came as attendance at 32 other cultural institutions monitored by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs lost an average of 1 percent, according to city statistics. Attendance grew at other major art museums like the Met, MoMA and the Guggenheim last year, though the Whitney Museum also showed a deep decline that it attributed partly to not mounting a biennial show that year.

Mr. Lehman says he takes pride in the fact that even though the Brooklyn Museum’s audience hasn’t grown, it has become younger and more diverse. A 2008 museum survey showed that roughly half of the attendees were first-time visitors. The average age was 35, a large portion of the visitors (40 percent) came from Brooklyn, and more than 40 percent identified themselves as people of color.

“Arnold doesn’t get enough credit for being a real pioneer in audience development,” said the city’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Kate D. Levin. She noted that at the museum’s annual gala, the Brooklyn Ball, in April, guests ran “the gamut from senior statesmen types to the freshly tattooed.”

Critical to those efforts, Mr. Lehman said, are inclusive, accessible programs. “I like people to think of it as their favorite park,” he said, “someplace they like to be.”

“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” which closed Jan. 31, drew large crowds. And in 2009, the museum invited the public to help select works for a photography show by voting online.

This year, in another effort to stay relevant, it has entered into a partnership with Bravo on a new reality television show called “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist,” which had its premiere on Wednesday. The winning artist gets an exhibition at the museum and a cash prize.

The show was the last straw for Martin Baumrind, a trustee for 10 years who resigned this month because, he said, he had long opposed the museum’s direction. “What it has become is a party place and a center of celebrity — evidenced by the fact that they have partnered up with Bravo,” he said. “That is not what I signed up for.”

Certainly the museum’s beginnings were more traditional. Founded in 1823, it has widely acclaimed holdings in American painting, sculpture and decorative arts. Its African collection, Egyptian artifacts and pre-Columbian material, particularly its Andean textiles, are regarded as first-rate.

Critics, though, have suggested that some exhibitions, like the 2002 show of costumes and drawings from the “Star Wars” movies, hurt the museum by de-emphasizing the core strength of the collections.

“The quality of their exhibitions has lessened,” said Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art and a Brooklynite. “ ‘Star Wars’ shows the worst kind of populism. I don’t think they really understand where they are. The middle of the art world is now in Brooklyn; it’s an increasingly sophisticated audience and always was one.”

Mr. Lehman said much of the criticism was unfair. He said the museum had arranged exhibitions on a number of less popular topics — including a 2004 show featuring 200 artists from Brooklyn — and that few critics of the “Star Wars” show had appreciated its context.

“To get to ‘Star Wars,’ you had to go through gallery space in which we used objects from the collection to talk about myth-making and the ideas behind so much of what ‘Star Wars’ was about,” he said.

To be sure, several recent shows have been positively received. “I saw the hip-hop show twice,” the art critic Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times last year, referring to the “Hip-Hop Nation” show in 2000. “It was packed. Being a greenhorn, I asked my fellow viewers questions — who’s this, what’s that — and learned a lot. It was a great museum experience.”

Currently, the museum has shows featuring the work of the contemporary artist Kiki Smith, fragments from its Egyptian collection, highlights from its well-respected costume collection now housed at the Metropolitan and a historical exhibition about women’s contribution to public health in Brooklyn.

Financially, the Brooklyn Museum — like many museums — has seen rough stretches of late. It reported a deficit of $3 million for the fiscal year ending in 2008 and saw its endowment drop to $65 million in 2009 from $93 million in 2008. (The museum said that the deficit was in large part because of losses in the stock market and that its endowment is back up to $85 million.)

Last year, the museum cut its staff by 20 through layoffs and buyouts and increased its suggested admission to $10 from $8. Those efforts, and $25 million in operating and capital support from the city, helped it report a $9 million surplus on its most recent tax return.

The museum loses money on First Saturdays and does not track whether the people who attend ever come back during regular hours. But there is no question First Saturdays have helped attendance, which the museum expects to increase by more than 15 percent this year.

“If that environment could be replicated,” Mr. Lehman said, “on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then I could easily retire and say we’ve succeeded and people think of the museum as a place to be of significance in their lives, not necessarily to see an exhibition.”

In a sense, Mr. Lehman said, he is more concerned with the quality of the museum experience for the diverse audience he is now reaching, on transforming the museum from, as it said in its 2009 tax return, “a slumbering outer-borough giant into a dynamic innovator.”

“That has to become more important to me than the numbers,” Mr. Lehman said, “though I admit to you, I’d like to see 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 more people.”
張貼者： 於 沒有留言:
訂閱： 文章 (Atom)