this week (and last year) in art history

Some links, new and old:

- The Art History Newsletter and Culturegrrl both recently noted the arrival of The Art Tribune, an English language version of the French online art journal La Tribune de l'Art.  The first editorial promises both news and scholarly articles on art from the medieval period to the 1930's.  It looks very promising, and already has one  indispensable feature:  one of the single best pages of art history links I've ever seen.  It covers scholarly publications, art journalism, a slew of different art databases (images, museums, etc.), libraries, blogs, and much more.  It's already very impressive, and I hope they continue to update it.

- One of the first links I learned about from The Art Tribune was for the magazine Apollo, which I had never even thought to check to see if it was online (I have checked about The Burlington Magazine, but they don't bother to offer us unwashed masses any free content aside from the current issue's editorial.)  To pick one story: how the Tate does not so much gravitate toward the shocking with the Turner Prize but instead to "the esoteric and rather dry"--and the fact that it's boring guarantees the Prize's survival.

- Ed Winkleman hearts the Met and its new exhibitions, including the The Age of Rembrandt installation of all the museum's Dutch paintings.  Contrary to Ed's post, it was my impression that the press was decidedly mixed regarding the organization of the exhibition by date of gift and donor.  But that aside, what struck me was that the main fall exhibition at the nation's largest museum featured painting of the Dutch Golden Age just months after the conclusion of the biggest year in 17th century painting from the Dutch Republic in some time.  Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way to get the views of an authority in the field of Dutch painting on all the recent activity, what it means and what's been learned?  Well, this essay at caa.reviews would fit the bill, but it's not available to non-members for no good reason, so I'll just offer a quote:

While producing much food for thought, what the Rembrandt Year did not do was to bring about a radical revision in our understanding of the artist, or to resolve the complex issues, especially surrounding the attribution of satellite works, that continue to fuel the fire of interest in his endlessly stimulating oeuvre. The primary reason for this may be that the phenomenon identified by the Dutch Board of Tourism as “Rembrandt 400” was driven not by academic scholarship but by museum exhibitions; and museums, despite (or perhaps because of) their best intentions, are duty bound to please the public. A workshop discussion attended by over twenty curators at the ninth international congress of museum professionals sponsored by the Dutch organization CODART (www.codart.nl) recognized the difficulties of reconciling conflicting goals: presenting beloved masterpieces to a public eager for the famous and the familiar, preserving said masterpieces (and their enormous monetary value) from the wear and tear occasioned by travel and installation, and advancing knowledge and education by engaging with the more difficult and unfamiliar, despite consequences to the bottom line.

The slight hint of the academic's condescension to museums aside (nothing universities ever do is done to please patrons, of course, be they students, alumni, or the Defense Dept.), the article gets the big picture right.  To get more of a taste of what the Rembrandt year offered, there's always this old column by Gary Schwartz, whose own superlative The Rembrandt Book also deserves mention.

- Lastly, more Büchel reactions: Martin continues his story of the hearing, Ed is disappointed as understandably is Donn, who echoes Ed's take, the Hartford Courant has a story largely taking the side of Mass MoCA, while Sergio, writing with his usual understatement, calls the decision a "death-blow" to contemporary artists.  Most surprising to me: one of the Walker's blogs has a post on the controversy.  It largely just reports the events, but do I detect an undercurrent of sympathy for or solidarity with Mass MoCA?  Perhaps so.

Comments

[Franklin]

The slight hint of the academic's condescension...

You may not know this, but the CAA purchased a decommissioned former-Soviet Union facility for the enrichment of uranium, and they repurposed it to refine extremely high concentrations of academic condescension.

Heaven forfend an exhibition not offer a radical revision or resolve complex issues. Those responsible should be knelt and shot.