nothing if not critical

Two items that caught my attention in the past few days, neither of them important in themselves, but worthy of comment:

Culturegrrl got a long quote from the Met's Gary Tinterow on deaccessioning.  She's promised to post more from him, and as well as a more detailed response, so I don't want to dwell on this too much.  At the of the quote as posted, however, there's the conclusion by Tinterow and one sentence in response:

The most precious thing really is not money. The most precious thing is space. And that is our most severely restricted resource: it’s space, both for exhibitions and for storage. And that’s how we have to manage the collections.

The "most precious thing" is SPACE? I had always thought it was the art.

Zing!  Well, sort of.  It wouldn't be a blog without a little snark, but really: it's very easy to see what Tinterow is saying, and it's not what Culturegrrl implies.  After all, he talks about how precious space is in terms of it being a "resource"--which a museum's collection is not, or should not be.  And the simple fact is, that in building a collection, resources, even at the Met, are limited and precious.  In the Met's case, space presents a greater limit than money.  One can imagine a less wealthy museum with ample storage where the limit was, in fact, money, or consider that at the Getty, the limit may be the law.  The bottom line is, he's saying that space is precious because it determines how much art a museum may safely contain and care for, and by being such a limit forces choices to be made regarding the collection.  It might be a happier world if such choices never had to be made, but it would not be the world we live in.

Moving on, Artnet features a rather belated review by Peter Plagens of Jed Perl's New Art City.  While he has praise for Perl's writing and research, Plagens rejects the book's judgments as aesthetically conservative and narrow, when not simply perverse.  The review is kinder to Perl's writing than I was, yet attacks the substance more harshly, though along similar lines, if perhaps from a different perspective.  I'd agree with Plagens that some of Perl's enthusiasms are, at least from what I have seen, misplaced, though I'd disagree with which ones (criticizing Leland Bell by offering a rote list of Bay Area figuration, or sneering at Nell Blaine's lyricism strike me as off-target, when the pages containing wild praise for Earl Kerkam are passed over.)  And Plagens definitely scores when he notes that the criticism Perl approvingly cites of Jasper Johns as an accomplished student who didn't stray far from his masters could easily be turned around against the artists Perl lauds.  Here we comes across again Perl's quiet campaign to reorient the view of postwar American art; Plagens puts his finger on the issue, even if at times his rejection of it seems to come more out of bafflement than anything else.

Plagens concludes with some remarks on Perl and his connection to some of the the art and artists about which and whom he writes.  It's tough stuff, some of which I had alluded to in the past (no link, because I'm not pleased by it.)  He moves toward the larger issue in his last paragraph:

My own sense is that this kind of member-of-an-embattled-small-circle mentality should be avoided by art critics, especially those with the moxie, erudition, and forthrightness that Perl otherwise possesses. It would be good for him to recognize that just because some artists are admirable or companionable or have looked really hard at Cézanne doesn’t mean they’re good artists. And just because some artists are good artists doesn’t mean that they’re particularly admirable or companionable. Maybe Perl and I live in different worlds, but it turns out that some of the best artists I know are pretty much jerks. Hey, I’m one of ’em.

One quibble I have with this--and the review generally, not to mention a lot of art criticism--is a sort of equivocation on what a "good artist" is--it strikes me that this term often gets used when what is meant is "great artist."  "And when I die, my friends, passing by my grave, will say: 'Here lies Trigorin.  He was a charming writer, but not so good as Turgenev.'"  That sort of thing.  Anyway, the advice is otherwise well taken, though one wishes Plagens didn't feel it necessary to pull the supreme asshole move at the end.

Comments

[Lisa Hunter]

May I be the lone voice in the wilderness in favor of deaccessioning? Works of art in storage aren't seen by anyone except curators and graduate students. Many a regional museum would jump for joy to have some of the art the Met begrudgingly keeps in its basement. Why not let the work go where it will be appreciated and valued, even if that means a private collection? Private collections of any importance ultimately tend to end up in museums anyhow.

[greg]

I am very disappointed in the Met's Gary Tinterow. A donor gives the Met a wonderful sculpture and they want to give it away. Shame of the Met.The met has more space than they know what to do with. The last couple of years the Met has done many good things and and many bad thngs because of there ignorance. Read the following.

Museum ticket prices are a big rip-off.

Museum staff are over paid, and expensive ticket prices cuts the general public from art. The museums buy fakes (i.e. the 50 million dollar new fake Duccio at the Met) without checking and consulting with a full range of experts about the purchase of the art by fakes. It is an outrage that the Modern and the Met charges 20 dollars to get in. What poor person can afford that huge price to get in?

Go to any book on the artist, Duccio, and you will see a known Duccio painting having hundreds of times more detail in his painted figures, than the Metropolitan’s fake Duccio. Look at the Met's fake Duccio painted child, who has a stump for a hand. One will never see that in a real Duccio painting. In a real Duccio painting, his figures have perfect proportions in the painting. The 50 million dollars, the Met spent on the fake could have helped the museum in so many other areas.

There are many reasons museums are not rock concerts and there are no comparisons. For one, rock concerts are not supported by tax money.

p.s. When I said the museum staffs are overpaid, I meant to say the curators and top administration people are being way over paid and not the hard workers who work on the floor of the museum everyday.

There are many reasons museums are not rock concerts and there are no comparisons. For one, rock concerts are not supported by tax money.

p.s. When I said the museum staffs are overpaid, I meant to say the curators and top administration people are being way over paid and not the hard workers who work on the floor of the museum everyday.

[JL]

I'd agree that 20 dollars is a lot for a museum to charge, but the fact that it is only a suggested fee does mitigate it. In my experience, the staff there has always been pretty easy-going in terms of letting people in for anything. I don't as for your other criticisms of the institution, I don't really agree or find them relevant. The Duccio may be a fake, or it may not be--I certainly have no idea and no one else really knows, either. We'll see how that one plays out. As for having more space than they know what to do with, I doubt the museum's registrars agree.

Deaccessioning can be a necessary and valid practice. It's true that sometimes institutions make what in retrospect appear as mistakes, or in some cases proper procedures and museum governance aren't applied. But when they are, deaccessioning can help prune and develop a high quality collection.

[Paul C]

Deaccessioning is a painful but critical step in creating what has become the greatest encyclopedic museum in the world. If revenue had not been created by selling some of the more obscure works, would the Met now have Juan de Pareja? Seriously, would anyone take ten works by artists such as Hooch, Bartolomeo, Tanguy etc over what might be the greatest painting ever created? Do I want the process of selling a painting be labor intensive and more transparent? Of course I do. But this is necessary.

The Duccio acquisition will go down as one of the great acquisitions in modern history. I have seen it many times in person and I can say without reservation that it is a masterpiece. A previous poster stated the proportions of the figures reveals it as a forgery. There are in fact no problems in proportions that aren't in all early renaissance paintings. Including Duccio's. You have no idea what you are talking about Greg. And your silly rant about prices at the Met confirm it.