Takaezu in 2008

Reprise of a photograph from an old post on this blog...



GMOA deputy director Annelies Mondi, Takaezu, and director Bill Eiland outside Takaezu's home in late May 2008.

Paintings from the West Foundation Collection

GMOA recently acquired two significant American paintings from the West Foundation Collection of Atlanta, Ga. The foundation gave Benjamin West’s “Portrait of Captain Christopher Codrington Bethell” (1769) and John Linton Chapman’s “Via Appia” (1867) to the museum in honor of our director, Bill Eiland, and in anticipation of the reopening.

Benjamin West, a native of Springfield, Pa., was a founding member of the Royal Academy in England and taught important American artists, including Samuel F.B. Morse and Washington Allston. The portrait by West (below) is now the earliest American painting in the museum’s collection.

John Linton Chapman was born in Washington, D.C., but was a longtime resident of Italy. He painted the Via Appia, the section of the Roman road that led to southern Italy, several times. This version (below) shows the view along the road looking back toward Rome. The painting was part of the museum’s award-winning 2004 exhibition “Classic Ground: Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Painting and the Italian Encounter” and is also on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.

“Both paintings, important additions to the museum’s already strong collection of American art, will be on display in the new permanent collection galleries when GMOA reopens on January 29,” says Paul Manoguerra, GMOA’s curator of American art. “We are grateful to the West Foundation for giving these two excellent paintings in celebration of the new galleries and the work of our director.”

Asset-Stripping

We've written on this blog many times and linked to many an article about deaccessioning, a museum issue with which our director, Bill Eiland, is very involved on professional committees. So it was interesting to see this column on Spiked that argues against the practice of deaccessioning to provide operating support (or, indeed, anything but new accessions) from a perspective of experience with it. Tiffany Jenkins points out that there is nothing forbidding such practices in the United Kingdom, which means it seems to happen more frequently, despite outcry. Here's the money quote, which puts her argument succinctly and well:

There is good reason for this caution: to protect the institution from the vagaries of fashion, politics and financial pressures. Museums are not businesses and it is not their job to sell off their treasures to mend the roof or pay the electricity bill. Their purpose is to conserve, research and exhibit objects and art for future generations. They should think of their collections as important artefacts and art from past human civilisations, not as objects with a price tag.

Notes from the Midwest (pt. 1)

Our fearless leader, Dr. William U. Eiland—hereafter referred to as Bill—and I have just returned from a marathon road trip around the Midwestern United States, visiting museums and private collections, and meeting with colleagues about various projects. On any trip with Bill, one can count on long hours made enjoyable with outstanding art and wonderful people. This trip was no exception.

Bill’s journey actually began in Indianapolis two weeks ago this Saturday. He was there for a meeting of the American Association of Museum Directors (AAMD), where, in his leadership role, he works to hold other institutions to the high ethical standards expected of accredited museums. I arrived four days later for a visit to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), to study their works by Pierre Daura. The museum is rich in Daura’s Spanish Civil War images, and we are currently organizing a traveling exhibition on this period of his work. A standout was Daura’s pastel, My Brothers in Arms, 1939, which you can see here. The works on view at the IMA are also well worth the trip. Visitors to their permanent collection are first met with a monumental mural by Sol LeWitt, whose deductive paintings, drawings, and sculptures I’ve always adored. They’ve got a good video about it here. The IMA also has a remarkable collection of Neo-Impressionists/Pointillists, as well as this country’s best collection of works from the Nabis (followers of Gauguin) working at Pont-Aven, France around the turn of the twentieth century. One other note about Indianapolis: if you are a state or federal employee and traveling there for business, use www.FedRooms.Com for a discount at The Conrad, to get a luxury hotel room for the price of a dive motel. It may have been the first room I’ve stayed in with real clothes hangers!

The next morning, I met up with Bill and we headed up to Chicago. The people of Chicago are remarkably welcoming; the whole city seemed to greet our arrival by donning red and black and holding a tickertape parade…although I guess it could’ve had something to do with the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup. Our first order of business was to meet with the Terra Foundation. For those in the know, the name Terra is synonymous with the highest level of excellence in all projects. Working largely behind the scenes, they bring “American art to the world and the world to American art,” to quote their apt tagline. We had a pleasant and productive meeting, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to partner with them on future projects.

We followed our meeting with a trip to the venerable Art Institute of Chicago. When I was last there in February for the College Art Association’s annual meeting, I spent hours in their new modern wing, which was designed by Renzo Piano and houses almost a quarter of what I teach in my Modern European survey course. This time, we explored other areas of the museum -- a good thing since there’s always more to see than time allows. I had never visited the galleries housing the Thorne Miniature Rooms, and was thoroughly taken with the little windows into domestic settings of days past. Before we left, I insisted that we visit the Impressionism/Post-Impressionism galleries so that I could pay homage to Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884, which I make a point of doing anytime I’m in Chicago. The first time I had the opportunity to see this painting was the summer after an elementary art teacher had explained Pointillism to my first grade class, and to this day I credit that enlivened, enlightening experience as a major factor in the development of my own desire to interpret art.

That evening we met up with Beau Ott, a private collector of mid-century American art who is helping us put together an exhibition of DeWain Valentine’s work, about which I’m particularly excited. I first heard about Beau when my advisor at the University of Texas at Austin, Linda Henderson, borrowed Ed Ruda’s Redball, 1965, from him for her exhibition Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York, so I was anxious to meet him. Aside from an incredible collection, Beau is as nice a person as one is ever likely to meet, and studies American art from the 1950s-70s with a passion that is infectious.

On Friday, Bill and I started our day at the Chicago History Museum to see their outstanding textile and fashion collection. We also met their curator of costumes, Timothy Long, whose fashion sense—he looks like a model—is only surpassed by his scholarly acumen. We hope to borrow from them for an exhibition we’ve got in the works. From there, we went to the Thomas McCormick Gallery to acquire a Picasso etching, The Dream and Lie of Franco, 1937, which I’ve had my eye on since February for my aforementioned Spanish Civil War exhibition. Now that it’s a “done deal,” I can say that it was a great deal for this work. After that, Beau got us into a phenomenal private collection of Chicago Imagists (comprising groups like The Hairy Who, The Monster Roster, and other important, representational artists of late 1960-70s Chicago, whose wildly wonderful work I like to think of as "Surrealism for the '70s"). After that we visited the Block Museum at Northwestern University, where we saw their MFA show and an exhibition of European prints, The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650.

The next day, the three of us headed north. Our first stop was the Racine Art Museum (RAM). We had planned to just “pop in,” but as luck would have it, RAM curatorial assistant Dave Zaleski had also popped in, and treated us to a tour of the galleries, library, and administrative offices. Their current exhibitions are all about insects, and some of the work was unsettling, to say the least, but it was nonetheless exquisite in its execution and installation. Given RAM’s focus on design and crafts, it should have been no surprise that we all also left their shop with much lighter wallets.

Our main destination of the day was the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM). I hadn’t heard much about MAM, which is surprising given the quality of their collection and their building, which was designed by Santiago Calatrava and features massive, cantilevered wings which open and close twice daily, serving as a sunscreen. Their collection of Minimalist sculpture located on their first floor is world class, but their real treasure is the Mrs. Harry L. Bradley Collection of twentieth-century European and American art, which occupies their fourth floor. I could go on about it for pages, but will instead direct you to their site. So entranced with the collection were we that we chose the quickest lunch we could find, a hot dog cart just outside the museum. There I committed the culinary sin of putting ketchup on my dog, and had to promise Beau that I would never do that back in Chicago, lest I get us all beaten up or run out of town (for the record, mustard, relish, and sauerkraut are all acceptable in any combination . . . just no ketchup). We wound down our day in Milwaukee with a stop at a lovely fin de siècle-themed bistro. Beau and I tried absinthe (sans wormwood) for the first time, which I considered art historical research, given the preponderance of early twentieth-century European artists featuring the beverage in their art (Degas and Picasso, most famously). At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it (but in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t put in for reimbursement on that one).

The second half of our road trip was every bit as exciting, so tune in next week for the second installment of this post, where I’ll recount our visits to one of the best, but least-known, outdoor contemporary sculpture collections in the country, along with more museums and astounding private collections.

GMOA in the News

The Albany Herald has a nice article about collaboration among museums that mentions GMOA's collaboration with the Albany Museum of Art on numerous things, including the AMA's exhibition of works by Lamar Dodd, plus GMOA director William U. Eiland's lecture there tomorrow on Dodd at 6:30 p.m.

Director of GMOA inducted into Sigma Pi Kappa

On Friday, April 16, William U. Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art, was inducted into Sigma Pi Kappa, the only national honor society focused entirely upon preservation. Founded in 1991 on the University of Georgia campus, Sigma Pi Kappa has 13 chapters across the United States.

Eiland was nominated for his efforts in identifying and preserving all aspects of creative art, in particular paintings, sculpture, and all of the decorative arts. He is also commended for his professional leadership in raising awareness and understanding of the values of art preservation as well as promoting education about the importance of art to society. One of his most significant contributions is the expansion of the Georgia Museum of Art, which will provide more space to preserve and display its growing collections.

The induction ceremony was held in the historic Demosthenian Hall on UGA’s North Campus and was followed by the “April is Preservation Month @ UGA” barbecue and the annual preservation lecture.

Chris Peterson, a member of the board of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, was also inducted into Sigma Pi Kappa at this time.

Construction Photos

Our director, Bill Eiland, was out at the new building taking photos on his iPhone of some Friends members who got to go on a hard-hat tour, and here's the slideshow of what he sent us.

GMOA in the News

Checking our Google Alerts this morning after a holiday weekend, we noticed two mentions of the museum. Culture Grrl mentions our director, William U. Eiland, in a post on the deaccessioning press release by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), complete with a link to the release. Bill is cochair of AAMD's Deaccessioning Task Force. Unsurprisingly (and rightly), the release reiterates AAMD's policy on deaccessioning ("works cannot be deaccessioned to provide funds for operating or capital purposes and such funds may only be used for the refinement and expansion of the collection").

Also, if you happen to be in or near Greensburg, Penn., on March 25, our friend Jason Schoen is speaking at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in connection with an exhibition of paintings from his collection, "Concerning the 1930s in Art: Paintings from the Schoen Collection." Schoen has been a wonderful friend to GMOA, placing many of the works in his collection (both paintings and works on paper) on long-term loan with the museum, and we plan to reopen with "The American Scene on Paper: Prints and Drawings from the Schoen Collection," a fine exhibition of just such.

GMOA in the News

The newspaper of Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, Texas, has a brief article about the talk that our director, Bill Eiland, will give on that university's campus this Thursday, November 19, at 4:45 p.m. Eiland has given a few other versions of this lecture, which focuses on the prints in the traveling exhibition "The American Scene on Paper: Prints and Drawings from the Schoen Collection," most recently at Learning in Retirement in Athens, Ga. If you're anywhere close to the area, we'd definitely encourage you to go. It's a wide-ranging, important and interesting talk.

Another SEMC Report

Remember our recent post about the Southeastern Museums Conference annual meeting, in which Christy Sinksen told us some of what she learned while there? Well, our director, Bill Eiland, responded about his own experiences:

As a consequence of the inability of some museums to afford transportation, housing and registration for their staff to the Southeastern Museums Conference meeting in Charleston, W.Va., I had several requests to fill in as organizer, chair or "interlocutor" for various sessions. One of them was the research session, an annual event that I started at SEMC some 20 years ago; I believed then and I believe now that the state, regional and national conferences of museum professional should have a session devoted to scholarship in our museums, since we are primarily educators for our various publics, and I was particularly pleased to learn that the GMOA had won awards for content in its publications this year--the first year that such honors have been bestowed for content as well as design!

In the research session this year, we heard three papers, all of direct relevance to the Georgia Museum of Art. The first was a report on research on the drawings executed at Sloss Furnace, an industrial site in Birmingham. Our interest? The presenter, Karen Utz, the curator there, asked for our help in identifying images of steel production in the South, and we have important works of art by such artists as Howard Cook, Richard Coe and Lamar Dodd, among others, to contribute to such an exhibition. Second, we heard a talk on the production of toys by a company in Tupeolo, Mississippi, and you are right to ask of what import such a subject could be to the Georgia Museum of Art: our Fifth Henry D. Green Symposium on the Decorative Arts, scheduled for January 2009, will include a talk on toys and their relevance to the South's material culture. Finally, Dennis Harper, former curator here at GMOA, spoke on the exhibition slated to travel to his museum at Auburn as well as to ours here in Athens and the one at the University of Oklahoma. Dennis's talk, and our chance to hear it, is important for several reasons: for planning our installation; for writing and preparing the catalogue, for which we are responsible; and for raising funds collaboratively to support the project.

The research session was but one reason my attendance at this peer professional meeting was so important. The associate director and registrars who were there with me were equally gratified to receive prestigious awards for the GMOA, to attend their special-interest group meetings (I had the privilege of leading the directors in a luncheon and afternoon session), to make ourselves aware of the services and products available at the museum exposition and to do the all-important networking that allows us to obtain those products, services and programs cheaply and easily.

Especially now that the museum is closed, we need to be preparing quickly and efficiently for our re-opening in 2011. Such meetings as SEMC help us to do so, and, because we have no state funds for travel or staff education and training, I am more grateful than ever to the W. Newton Morris Foundation and its Trustees, who specifically devote some of the funds we receive from them to travel and professional development.

If you happen to be in or around LaGrange...

GMOA director William U. Eiland is giving a talk on Lamar Dodd (image above) at 7 p.m. this evening at the Hills & Dales Estate, the Callaway family home in LaGrange, Ga., preceded by a reception at 6:30 p.m. In the lecture, "Essential Beauty: Lamar Dodd's Life and Times," Eiland will discuss Lamar Dodd's extraordinary career in the context of the major 20th-century art movements in America. Artist, advocate, administrator and teacher, Lamar Dodd defined a current of art activisim in the last century that existed more virulently outside the South. His career parallels the growth of the University of Georgia and the emergence of the region in the fine as well as decorative arts. Of note, of course, and a significant part of the story, will be Lamar Dodd's refusal to recognize that difference between Georgia's beaux-arts traditions and its material culture. Dodd strove to find the essential beauty in all things. The Newton-Coweta County Times-Herald has a nice article on the lecture.

GMOA in the News

We would be remiss if we failed to mention the fact that, in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "How to Sell a Museum Masterpiece," our director, William U. Eiland, was quoted. The article, by Daniel Grant, focuses on the criticism directed at the Orange County Museum of Art's recent sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings to a private collector in Laguna Beach, not, in this case, because of their being deaccessioned at all (procedures were followed there), but because of the way in which they were sold. The guidelines set forth by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), for which Eiland chairs the professional issues committee, do not require sale at public auction, and every situation is different, but, as Eiland put it, "At auction, there is no gerrymandering the price, no hocus pocus." We recommend you read the article, which is useful in the way it explains one of the many thorny issues of museum ethics, and we extend a high five to our fearless leader.

More News from AAM: ICOM

What else happened at AAM? Our director, William U. Eiland, passed along the following note about his activities there:

I have been elected to the board of ICOM-USA, which is in a period of transition to what appears to be more independence from AAM but without cutting any ties. The meeting of the board that I intended was primarily about administrative matters, including meeting the new secretariat general, who is French and who has an office in Paris. The next meeting for university affiliates of ICOM is in Berkeley this fall and the next general meeting in Shanghai in 2010, I think.

ICOM is the International Council of Museums, and was founded in 1946. A nonprofit, non-governmental organization, it is dedicated to the improvement and advancement of the world's museums and the museum profession as well as the preservation of cultural heritage. ICOM has more than 21,000 members in 140 countries working through national and international committees and affiliated and regional organizations and embraces museums of every size and discipline in every corner of the world. Eiland has been heavily involved in many professional organizations of the kind and is recognized as a leader in the field. We congratulate him on his election and know that ICOM-USA could not have a better board member!

GMOA in the News

This past Sunday, William U. Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art, appeared in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning in a segment titled "The Art of Survival" that addressed the current trend of museums deaccessioning works to pay operating expenses. The video, unfortunately, has not been posted, but an article that summarizes the piece is online here. Bill was interviewed not only because of his ability to speak extemporaneously and passionately on the subject (which we're sure many of you have experienced personally), but also because of his extensive professional involvement with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and its committee on the matter. If anyone happens to have a digital version of the video, please let us know. We'd love to post it for all to see.