Goodbye, Blockbuster
CASSIDY, VICTOR M.
Goodbye, Blockbuster Are museums rediscovering the treasures within? BY VICTOR M. CASSIDY It was the strangest art exhibition you ever did see. Installed in two galleries at the Art Institute...
...Soon after the Silk Road Project ended, Cuno assessed the results for me...
...Installed in two galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago were Utamaro prints of Japanese maidens tending silkworms...
...Others became exhibitions of Islamic Art, Tang China, Buddhism, and more...
...For that matter, few blockbusters contributed to scholarship, and presented mostly late 19th and 20th century European painting...
...He received only “very positive comments, both for the vitality of the Silk Road programming and its quality...
...From the 2nd century B.C...
...Every object in “The Silk Road and Beyond” was related to the historic Silk Road...
...His “feel for it,” he said, was that the Silk Road Project had a “positive” effect on attendance...
...and more...
...Look to the permanent collection, said Cuno...
...It wasn’t a temporary thing...
...come a large attendance: Every penny they earn from operations is one they don’t have to raise...
...It is the mystery, the wonder of art, that is our singular distinction and that our visitor seeks,” said de Montebello...
...Four of these shows draw heavily on the permanent collection...
...As the project got rolling, Institute curators went on a treasure hunt, identifying hundreds of Silk Road-connected objects in the permanent collection...
...With the Silk Road Project, the Art Institute generated blockbuster-style excitement without losing its dignity...
...There is nothing especially new in this movement to return to basics...
...His model for the future is “a yearlong season in collaboration with other Chicago institutions...
...Indeed, “Silk Road Chicago” signaled a shift in Art Institute priorities away from touring shows designed to attract large numbers of people and revenue (i.e., blockbusters) toward exhibiting the permanent collection in fresh and imaginative ways...
...But because the Silk Road Year is a tough act to follow, the museum designed the more modest “American Perspectives” for this season, adding a touch of promotional gimmickry to traditional museum practice and scholarship...
...a coin with Alexander the Great in profi le...
...Silk Road Chicago” was born...
...Art museums and musicians had collaborated before, but never on such a grand scale...
...Silk Road Chicago” was a museum-wide group of shows at the Art Institute, accompanied by events presented in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma’s touring Silk Road musical ensemble, which plays non-Western music...
...Blockbuster shows have boosted museum attendance and revenue, but the directors believe that things have gotten out of hand...
...James Cuno, who heads the Art Institute, had been pressing for such change since about 2001 when he organized lectures by six museum directors on “the public’s regard for and trust in art museums...
...In planning the show, there was never any discussion of saving money...
...And since the project lasted a full year, “we were able to sustain the buzz...
...Tulips came to Holland from Turkey, and trade followed Alexander’s conquests...
...Works on paper were exhibited in shows such as “Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman Empire” and “Delacroix and Northern Africa...
...American Perspectives,” which runs through September, is a yearlong collaboration among the Art Institute, the Chicago Symphony, and the Poetry Foundation, celebrating American art, music, and literature...
...Cuno became director of the Art Institute in 2004 (succeeding James Wood) and, as soon as he arrived, charged his staff to think about and interpret the permanent collection in new and different ways...
...But how can they serve the public in dignity and still stay afl oat...
...After cataloging and conserving the Met’s 228 Dutch paintings of the 1600s, Liedtke organized “The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” accompanying the exhibition with his two-volume, thousand-page catalogue...
...The Silk Road is the name given to trade routes that extended from Japan and East Asia through Central Asia, India, and other lands, to the Mediterranean...
...Walter Liedtke, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, views exhibition policy from a scholar’s perspective...
...Called “The Silk Road and Beyond: Travel, Trade, and Transformation,” this gathering of works from the Art Institute’s storerooms kicked off a yearlong “Silk Road Chicago” project in September 2006...
...They declared that art museums are losing direction and public confi dence as they drift away from their central purpose, which is the preservation and exhibition of great art...
...But it seems evident that, after an unsatisfactory fl irtation with corporate thinking, American art museums are honoring their core mission: to study and conscientiously present the fi nest art that the human race has made...
...Museum directors acknowledge that their mission is educational, and welVictor M. Cassidy writes about art in Chicago...
...People go to art museums for spiritual nourishment, they declared, and not to be entertained...
...a Dutch still life of hybrid tulips...
...The year’s single blockbuster show—“C?zanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Garde”—was “not as popular as we thought it would be,” and since overall museum attendance was fl at in 2007, Cuno guesses that “a higher percentage of visitors spent time in the permanent collection galleries...
...Art requires quiet, thoughtful contemplation: “You cannot possibly have . . . deep engagement with a work of art in a room with 5,600 people jostling each other,” said the Getty’s Glenn Lowry...
...The Homer show is built around 25 unpublished watercolors that the Art Institute owns, and the complete show will consist of 130 watercolors, related paintings, and additional materials from outside...
...The speakers were Cuno, Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum, Neil MacGregor of the British Museum, John Walsh of the Getty Museum, Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, and James Wood of the Art Institute...
...A few of these were shown in The Silk Road and Beyond...
...We just wanted to place greater emphasis on what we already have...
...So far so good, but you need a focus to change priorities without losing momentum...
...Blockbusters won’t disappear, he says, but “more museums are stressing in-house scholarship now...
...Of the more than 100 scheduled events, fi ve have been art exhibitions: photographs by Richard Misrach and Ed Ruscha, paintings of Jasper Johns, and paintings and works on paper by Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer...
...The Age of Rembrandt” cost “roughly one-third as much as a touring blockbuster,” Liedtke says...
...Others told how the public fl ocked to art museums after 9/11 just to be with beautiful things—and to restore faith in civilization...
...The Hopper exhibition, which was cooperatively organized with two other museums (reviewed in the October 15, 2007 WEEKLY STANDARD) includes the Art Institute’s iconic “Nighthawks...
...until the 14th century A.D., immense quantities of goods were traded along the Silk Road, enriching culture and advancing technology in Europe and Asia...
...The directors spoke with considerable urgency as they searched for answers...
...Love them or not, blockbusters bring in the bodies—and cash...
Vol. 13 • April 2008 • No. 29
