Minorities and Fineart Museums in the Us By Peter C Marzio
Sketching a Time to come for Brooklyn Museum
THOUGH it resides in a prime instance of traditional museum architecture — a Beaux-Arts edifice designed in 1893 by McKim, Mead & White — there is little stale or stodgy well-nigh the Brooklyn Museum.
For more than a century the museum has been ane of the country'southward almost important cultural institutions, and for more than a decade information technology has besides courted controversy.
And that is by blueprint, part of a considered effort to address the challenges that it, along with many other museums, face: how to appeal to a new generation in a climate of persistent financial pressure and the ambition to grow, to do more, to expand its audience. Past some measures information technology has succeeded. By others, including attendance goals articulated by the museum itself, it has non.
With a stagnant economy magnifying these challenges, The New York Times asked experts with various perspectives, including artists, business organisation executives and museum directors, to take a look at a number of questions that now face the Brooklyn Museum and others. Is attendance a good mensurate of museum success? How practise institutions build financial back up at a fourth dimension when both donors and the regime feel pinched? Should a museum exercise more to engage its local artists, who, in Brooklyn's case, are an especially vibrant group? And how should the unorthodox approach of the concluding decade exist assessed?
In 1999 the museum created a maelstrom by exhibiting a painting that depicted the Virgin Mary busy with elephant dung, prompting the mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to threaten to cut metropolis financing. In 2002 it hosted an exhibition featuring props, models, costumes and characters from the "Star Wars" films that struck some reviewers as specially lowbrow. And five years agone information technology added an unapologetically advised, modern glass entrance to the Old Globe exterior of its building.
More recently it gave abroad its celebrated costume collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and did abroad with traditional curatorial departments — similar Egyptian art, African art and European painting — in favor of "teams" for exhibitions and collections. Information technology included a Louis Vuitton shop in its Takashi Murakami exhibition, including handbags and other items designed by that artist. And it agreed to devote an exhibition this month to the work of whichever unknown artist beats back the challengers on Bravo's reality evidence "Work of Art."
For many, the museum'south oft populist efforts have been simply the kind of inventive risks necessary to stay accessible to the kind of visitors information technology has recently shown an ability to attract. The museum's audition, which numbered 340,000 people a year at last count, is now significantly younger and more various than it had been, with an average age of 35 and members of minority groups making up 40 per centum of its visitors. Others grumble, though, that the institution's approach has undermined its stature, undersold its world-course collections and done petty to increase attendance, which museum officials had once hoped would triple. Attendance, in fact, has been flat, even afterward the museum several years ago introduced First Saturdays — free nights that include music, dancing, food, a cash bar, gallery talks and films — which account for nigh a quarter of its visitors.
Apart from the give-and-take over its mission and future, the museum, which operates on a $28 million upkeep, has had many successes in recent years, from educating school children, to mounting critically acclaimed shows and introducing countless visitors to paintings by Gilbert Stuart, landscapes by Bierstadt, the mummy of Demetrios and other works in its permanent drove.
Many of the experts who agreed to appraise the museum'southward efforts were effusive in their support for the institution, whose innovations they embraced. Others suggested changes in its approach.
Many expressed compassion for the challenge faced by the museum's manager, Arnold L. Lehman, who confronts these obstacles while working in the shadow of Manhattan and its cultural behemoths similar the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modernistic Fine art.
Taken together the responses speak to the passionate feelings that go along to be stirred by the Brooklyn Museum. They are non meant to provide a definitive solution or to resolve debate. They are intended to start a conversation.
PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, quondam manager of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The problem with Brooklyn is that information technology's competing with the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Met, MoMA, all the galleries, El Museo del Barrio — you name information technology. I don't know of any museum and so marginalized by its locality and demographic change. The Detroit Establish of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art are struggling. But at least those institutions are the one affair in town, so you tin can all the same promote them as, "Come and see great works of art."
I'1000 glad I'thou non its director. It's a very difficult task, and I wouldn't blitz to blame Arnold Lehman; he's trying his all-time. Simply trying to change the nature of the institution and then equally to accommodate 1's conception of popular gustatory modality doesn't work.
Part of the turnaround would be to declare, not only rhetorically but too by action, "This is a great museum and an opportunity to run into great works of fine art." The message hither is that a major encyclopedic museum, one born like the Met or the Louvre along the values of the Enlightenment, flirts with popularization and the espousal of so-called popular civilization at its ain risk. Therein lies a paradox. I suspect that, in fact, what most museum visitors crave is some form of uplift, an experience to become them away from the humdrum of daily life in favor of an encounter with something unique, thus unreplicable. They don't simply want to stride into the museum equally they would into a mall, just to feel a real transition from the street to the institution.
Epitome
I call up the electric current glass archway defeats that very purpose and the exhilaration felt when a person who wasn't brought up in a mansion is able to walk into a mansion. By taking away the majesty of the entrance, they've taken away the majesty of the experience. I would have it away, if I could.
I would stress the sense of privilege people in the area should experience at existence able to see great old master paintings, great American pictures without having to go into Manhattan. Promotion would stress: "Y'all don't have to go to Manhattan to see one of the world's great collections. Nosotros take it here in Brooklyn."
When you have a drove of this magnitude — art from about parts of the world, often at a very loftier level — your responsibleness is not merely a communal one. Of course you lot accept to emphasize service to the customs. But danger e'er lurks when a museum is regarded commencement and foremost equally an instrument of social engineering. A museum of the stature of Brooklyn should treat and enquiry and publish the collections, which information technology holds in trust for humanity, and which I have no reason to believe information technology does non exercise, only also back-trail its collections with programs that are equal to that stature and the obligations that come with it. Great museums are non just for the people who live within xx miles. You are not the owners. You are the privileged guardians or custodians of the artistic heritage of all flesh.
I cannot believe the customs would non ascension to the opportunity and joy of seeing great collections displayed properly — as a stated allure, not an unexpected encounter. I am inclined to be indulgent and indeed to praise Arnold's willingness to experiment and to place the accent on the museum as a Brooklyn institution. The fundamental question is whether Brooklyn actually wants something unlike from everywhere else, something watered downward, something slanted more to popular culture than to high culture. Much of this is a matter of style and perception in the message conveyed. The art is there, after all, then peradventure major retooling is to exist in the message, not so much the medium. I don't know, and it'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to talk, isn't it?
KAREN BROOKS HOPKINS, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music
The museum doesn't deserve a barrage of criticism. Let'due south face it: When you piece of work in Brooklyn, or anywhere outside of Manhattan, the stakes are simply different. When you accept a cracking show (and I mean great), the place is packed. When y'all only have a very good show, the place isn't e'er packed.
Programs similar Target Showtime Saturdays are wonderful and help to introduce new audiences to the organization. Only when all is said and washed, a hit evidence delivers the appurtenances every time. Is this easy to practice? Of grade not! The world of fine art is completely unpredictable, and the cost of presenting a big show can exist daunting. Therefore I believe a good programming strategy that won't break the banking company is one that focuses on bringing together a combination of new discoveries and blockbusters featuring well-known artists, all within the same flavour.
Afterward all the talk, all the same, those of u.s. toiling here in Brooklyn know that y'all have to earn it every day. Some seasons are just better than others; 365 days a year, no matter what's happening inside, the Metropolitan Museum has thousands of people on its front steps. Information technology'due south the location, it's the scope of the collection — information technology'south the Met! But for those organizations exterior of the mainstream the world of attendance and financing is a very different place. Although many Brooklyn neighborhoods have had an influx of new residents, the population density and philanthropic capacities of Manhattan remain enormous by comparison. Only while our numbers may sometimes exist smaller, the demographics are unbeatable: Brooklyn audiences are young, various and audacious, which has enormous positive implications for the future.
I like to think that this struggle to succeed is what pushes united states of america and gives us our edge. It makes working in Brooklyn only a trivial bit tougher, just, at the end of the twenty-four hour period, somehow more rewarding.
WILLIAM POWHIDA, Brooklyn artist
Some of the issues facing the museum may exist across its control because of the recession and across my experience equally an creative person. What is in its control, and an area I feel strongly about, is its identity, or for a lack of a better term, its "brand." The museum has tarnished its reputation by ceding too much institutional control to outsiders, with Charles Saatchi'south "Awareness," the commercial artist Takashi Murakami's bazaar and now Bravo's "Work of Art" prize show. These efforts tend to dominate the chat and de-emphasize the museum's function in otherwise strong, scholarly exhibitions and educational outreach.
I would restore some of the museum's institutional control and relevance by developing a flagship survey evidence of gimmicky fine art in Brooklyn. The museum has tried that only in one case in the last decade, with 2004's "Open House," which was unfortunately poorly installed. It was still an important opportunity for the museum to appoint 1 of its greatest avails, artists working in Brooklyn, and insert itself into the conversation about contemporary fine art that New York obsesses over.
Bushwick and Gowanus both have vibrant creative person communities, only to proper name ii, evidenced by the some 300 shows at the recent Bushwick Open Studios. The Brooklyn Museum needs to be function of the contend about contemporary art, not one about commercial tie-ins like "Work of Art." I know there are significant financing and installation challenges posed by surveys, but in the long term it's all nigh the perception of the museum, one that can be progressive, relevant and home to a world-course permanent collection.
ROCHELLE SLOVIN, manager of the Museum of the Moving Image
What'due south bugging people near the Brooklyn Museum? Is there any good reason not to cover First Saturdays? If international D.J.'s are O.K. for P.Southward.1 Gimmicky Art Center, and string quartets are judged suitable for late nights at the Metropolitan Museum, then what exactly is the objection to hip-hop and salsa at the Brooklyn Museum? My advice to the Brooklyn Museum: Continue to accept first-class intendance of your treasured collections, hang tough, and pile it on — more great exhibitions, more performances, more than blithesome noise.
DANIEL SIMMONS JR., chairman of the New York State Quango on the Arts
The museum is an incredible institution that continues to be vibrant and innovative. However, information technology has fallen short in developing a core identity and marketing this effectively. The museum should brand itself as a contemporary-art museum with more than shows geared to artists who are defining the global art scene. While this might non garner record attendance, it would produce a stable core audience on which to build. I applaud its public programs, like First Saturdays, but those should be seen every bit but that, a civic service and not an attendance and marketing strategy. Revenues should not be the master commuter of programs, and many shows have been perceived to be only that. Not dandy public relations for a serious institution.
ANN PHILBIN, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles
Attendance is simply one measure out in a long list of priorities—some of which are very hard to quantify. For example, how does one mensurate the bear on of showing a young creative person for the first time and starting his or her career, or the ramifications of capturing the imaginations of young at-risk school groups?
Furthermore, how is omnipresence divers? At the Hammer we accept begun to understand that our visitor numbers should not be express to our own box function but might also include the hundreds of thousands of people aroun the world who log on to our Web site, hammer.ucla.edu, to view podcasts of our public programs, or the many thousands currently visiting the Charles Burchfield retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which the Hammer organized. Are these not all part of a measurable sphere of audition and influence?
Paradigm
MAXWELL L. ANDERSON, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art
With a national average of 2 pct to iv percent of art museum revenue coming from admissions, the distracting glitter of crowds is not as cloth to institutional health every bit well-nigh people presume. Instead of being evaluated for their contributions to inquiry, preservation and educational activity, art museums like the Brooklyn Museum are increasingly expected to exist commercial attractions and economical engines.
The museum'south time to come, similar that of libraries, universities and other art museums beyond tourist meccas, lies in making a case for government, foundation and private patronage by beingness a hotbed of creativity. Not by making a case for the box part.
MICHAEL M. KAISER, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The museum has done more well-nigh arts organizations to build a diverse audience; that may be far more important to its management than increasing attendance steadily each twelvemonth. In the finish information technology is the mission of the organisation that determines how success will be measured.
MARTY MARKOWITZ, Brooklyn borough president
The museum has developed unprecedented audition diverseness at a time when and so many cultural centers struggle and hire consultants to expand their audiences. It has amongst the most important permanent collections in the nation and has used its estimable curatorial resources to mount keen exhibitions that take traveled to other museums nationwide. Thus, it is both a multicultural gathering place and a tremendous Brooklyn export.
GRAHAM W. J. Aggravate, director of the Detroit Constitute of Arts
Along with Brooklyn, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and, increasingly, others, the Detroit Institute of Arts has been accused of "dumbing downward" and "Disneyfication." I am, from time to fourth dimension, described as leading the United states of america' most challenged establishment, and it is true that we labor under many adverse conditions. Simply at least I do not have an art museum that is a globe exemplar sitting beyond the river in Windsor, Ontario. Arnold is in an invidious position, and has tried to create a very different type of museum on the proverbial shoestring.
BILL IVEY, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
Brooklyn needs to control costs and focus on growing its local audience, perhaps by developing an annual exhibition on a Brooklyn theme. Second, figure out how simultaneously to place the museum'south unique collection in forepart of fine-arts fans everywhere. Mounting strong traditional exhibitions, while serving Brooklyn day to twenty-four hour period, means invitee curators and touring, touring, touring. Oh, and don't promise to triple omnipresence someday before long.
DAVID A. ROSS, sometime managing director of the Whitney Museum of American Fine art
The Brooklyn Museum is far from alone in its attempts to come to grips with a society in which non just change but also the relentless rate of change creates new problems and opportunities daily. Will it make mistakes as it tries one new idea afterwards some other? Of course it volition. Simply in the aforementioned way that corking artists do not fright failure, it continues to push frontwards, finding new ways of serving its quickly changing audition. Nothing would be worse than a risk-balky museum, so fully confident that information technology holds all the answers that information technology only bores u.s. to decease.
STEPHEN A. SCHWARZMAN, chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private disinterestedness house
To succeed, the museum has to instill the same feeling of pride that New Yorkers feel about other institutions that make this city great, from Central Park to Yankee Stadium. With its collection, amid the all-time in the world, there is no reason why the museum cannot reclaim this office.
WENDA GU, Brooklyn artist
Omnipresence is the nigh of import and objective measurement of the museum. It is too the just measurement of a museum's success.
LAURIE BECKELMAN, onetime chairwoman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
I do not think this is a fourth dimension to instigate toll-savings measures like cutting hours of operation or public programs. Rather it is a fourth dimension for trustees to exist bold and to contribute at higher levels to ensure that the programs — and the establishment — suffer. I also believe the museum's future lies in finding means to get international visual artists to come up to Brooklyn.
KIKI SMITH, artist
Attendance is not necessarily a good mensurate of museum success. The quality of its collection, its administrative vision, the depth of its scholarly programming and its curatorial direction are. The nature of commercialism is dependent on growth, but information technology is non inherently in a museum's interest to expand.
PETER C. MARZIO, managing director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Brooklyn Museum is pioneering a new path that many older encyclopedic museums will take to follow if they desire to survive. It is transforming itself into an ecumenical museum by focusing its collections and programs on the diverse neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
By looking closely at Brooklyn, by exploring the ideals and values of its citizens, the museum is opening a dialogue that is creating a sense of customs ownership. Progress is deadening and uneven, but this is a new path with few directional signs. To judge the results past attendance is to miss the new trees for the wood.
I case is the free Target Get-go Saturdays event held on July 3. A tape 24,000 people entered the museum. The dynamics were incredible. Diverse patrons interacted to create a beautiful portrait of Brooklyn. This is a new image. Critics who denounce this as populism (a word that somewhere along the way has get negative) miss the point. The museum does not take a large endowment or sufficient government financing, nor does it have the greenbacks flow provided past millions of tourists. It cannot ignore the grass roots of its communities because those communities are the base audiences.
Will the museum survive post-obit this path? I volition bet that not only volition information technology survive these difficult economic times, but it will also mutate into a new blazon of museum that will abound across anyone's imagination.
RICO GATSON, Brooklyn artist
Some of my most amazing art experiences accept been at the museum, both as an exhibiting artist and as a visitor to the spectacular collection of Egyptian art and shows like "Andy Warhol: The Terminal Decade," "Kiki Smith: Sojourn" and "Basquiat." Brooklyn is host to the world's near vibrant group of artists, and it would make sense for the museum to devote itself to providing a forum for these contemporary artists. High-profile exhibitions similar the Whitney Biennial could depict from this pool and stimulate interest, which could energize this fine institution.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/arts/design/08museum.html
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