The Gallery

Collection Close-Up: Diego Rivera’s The Hands of Dr. Moore, 1940

2010-12-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

One of the many significant works featured in the Art of the Twentieth Century galleries at The San Diego Museum of Art is The Hands of Dr. Moore, 1940 by Diego Rivera. At first glance, the work might seem to be by the artist’s wife, Frida Kahlo, for it includes roots, an inscription on the painting, blood, and references the female form, all familiar in her work. Rivera, however, created this work at a time when he incorporated trees and/or roots in his work and delved into the realm of surrealism. André and Jacqueline Breton came to Mexico City in 1938 and having the surrealist writer in such proximity influenced Rivera. This painting also demonstrates Rivera’s interest in the depiction of human hands, which he exhibited in several portraits, perhaps most notably in a portrait of his ex-wife Lupe Marín from 1938. The unconventional portrait of Dr. Clarence Moore in The San Diego Museum of Art reveals a fascinating story with local connections.

On May 20, 1940, Rivera delivered the completed portrait of Dr. Moore to the Hotel Reforma in Mexico City and received a payment of $650; the cancelled check, seen above, later came to the Museum with the painting. (The Mexican painter had a history with this hotel, having been commissioned in 1936 Rivera to create a mural there. He also often created portraits as a source of income. )

Who, though, was Ellis Moore, who signed the check? Ellis Moon, originally from San Jose, California, married Claus Spreckels and the newlyweds were subsequently given a home in Coronado, California as a wedding gift from the groom’s father, John D. Spreckels. The Spreckels Family owned local newspapers, a ferry company, and the Hotel del Coronado, among many other businesses. Ellis and Claus had four children and were highly regarded in San Diego social circles. In addition to businesses and their social standing, the family’s philanthropy is recognizable today in San Diego in the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park and the Reading Room at the Coronado Public Library, both generous gifts of the Spreckels Family.

After Claus Spreckels died, Ellis remarried Dr. Clarence Moore of Los Angeles in 1936. The announcement of their engagement made front page news in the San Diego Union on October 14 of that year. Moore was a well-known surgeon and the couple maintained residences in Coronado and in Los Angeles.

Several years later, the couple travelled to Mexico and commissioned the portrait. The accompanying photographs show Dr. Moore posing in Rivera’s studio. By coincidence, The San Diego Museum of Art’s other Rivera painting, La Mandrágora, 1939, can also be seen in the background, behind Dr. Moore.

Amy Galpin
Project Curator for American Art

International Ask A Curator Day, Continued

2010-09-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

More of today's questions answered by John Marciari, Curator of European Art and Head of Provenance Research at the San Diego Museum of Art

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@JoseSPiano:

How often does –should?- a curator walk through the galleries and interact with the public once an exhibition has opened?

John: I try to walk through all of my galleries, both the permanent collection galleries and those of temporary exhibitions for which I am responsible, every day. If something has happened to a work of art, the curator is most likely to spot it, so this is a good practice. It is also instructive (and occasionally amusing, and sometimes humbling) to hear what people say as they move through the galleries, so I sometimes will just sit on a bench and try to blend in. I don't necessarily interact with the visitors every day, but if someone seems to be confused or to have a particular question, I'll try to help out.

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@jbrunotte

Will it be a good idea to create an exhibition of art especially for children?

John: This is a tricky one. On the one hand, the San Diego Museum of Art has since its beginning in 1926 had a biennial Young Art exhibition, in which works by students from grades K-12 are selected for display at the museum: this is an important contribution to local arts education and it introduces many local children to the Museum. So we're committed to programming and education for children. On the other hand, to plan a traditional travelling exhibition solely for children seems to me a bit narrowly focused. I'd say that a show like Heroes (which has been on view through the summer but closes after Labor Day) could be of equal interest to children or adults. That's a better use of resources.

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@Karen5Lund:

Any curator: If you weren't a curator, what would be your other career choice?

John: The obvious alternate career for most curators would be university professor. I, for one, have no desire to change.

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@msbimia

What made you decide to become a curator?

John: I grew up around paint and paintings, not so much because I went to museums, but in a more unusual way. As a young man, my father had worked for Bocour Artist Colors, one of the main producers in the US of artist paints, and he became great friends with Sam Golden, who was the great creative genius at Bocour: Sam was, for example, essentially the man who invented acrylic paint for artists. When Sam retired (for the first time - this is before he founded Golden Artist Colors a decade later), he moved to a farm in upstate New York where I spent many many weekends as a child. Sam and his wife Adele were like an extra set of grandparents to me. He was always telling stories about paint and painters (Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, et al.) and as a result, I became interested in art. I took painting lessons for years when I was young (although no, I don't paint any longer). Later on, I went to college and became interested in European history (my undergraduate degree is in Classics), and then realized that I could combine that interest with the paintings by getting my doctorate in the history of art. Because I was always interested in paintings as physical objects-and for this I credit Sam and all those years of hearing about paint- I gravitated not to the university professorship that was the most obvious career path, but instead to curatorship, where I would always have the objects themselves as my primary focus. As I said in response to a question earlier today, there is nothing I'd rather be doing.

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@marplesmaples

What piece of art defines your museum?

John: Our “defining piece of art” (if a museum can have one, or only one) is the great Still Life by Sanchez-Cotan. It's a masterpiece of still life painting and the best known work in the collection. It can stand as a symbol of our rich collection of old masters, particularly by Spanish and Italian artists.

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@jaschaffer

Do you show work of up-and-coming artists, ones on the east coast?

The Museum of Art serves as the encyclopedic museum for the San Diego region, and this includes shows by contemporary artists, including younger artists - although in the latter case, we're more inclined to focus on those with San Diego connections. The most recent example was our exhibition of Hugo Crosthwaite - his first museum show. Hugo now lives in New York, but he spent much time in San Diego.

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International Ask A Curator Day

2010-09-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

Today (Wednesday, September 1) is “Ask a Curator” day, a worldwide “question and answer” session which will enable interested museum visitors to put questions to curators at over 300 museums around the world.
The organizers of this day are using Twitter to host “Ask a Curator”. You can find a list of participating cultural venues in the “who to ask?” section of the website http://www.askacurator.com/, or simply follow the hashtag #askacurator to follow the questions other people are asking.

At the San Diego Museum of Art, John Marciari, Curator of European Art and Head of Provenance Research, will be fielding questions throughout the day: direct questions to him @SDMA on Twitter. Short answers will be posted on Twitter, with links to the fuller answers here.

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From our Facebook page:
@Junvi Ola:

How and where private collectors acquire art pieces. Do they go to estate sales? Private art auctions? What if its a piece from another country? I'm eternally curious about this process!

John: "Private Collectors" is a pretty open-ended term, but I'm going to take it that you mean people who collect museum-quality art (i.e. art of the quality, condition, and importance that would hang on the walls of a museum). While there are a few cases of amazing finds at estate sales, those are the exception rather than the rule. Most collectors work with dealers and advisors, go to auctions (Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonham's, etc.), visit galleries, or occasionally buy directly from other collectors. If collectors buying at this level have a relationship with a museum, the curators will sometimes help advise them as well.

Export rules from other countries vary from country to country. The more important something is, the harder it will be to export it to the US. Major works, that is, would be run past a review board (which could include, for example, curators at a national museum), and they could be blocked from export.

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@museodata:

What is the most difficult challenge for a curator? How do new technologies influence the curatorship task?

John: This isn't a terribly romantic view of curatorship, but to be honest, one of the greatest challenges comes in reconciling ambitions and budgets. It is still relatively easy to find great works of art that we'd like to add to the collection, but harder to put together the funds necessary to acquire them. Likewise, when planning an exhibition, one needs to keep in mind the huge costs involved in bringing works from other cities or other countries together.

As for technology: new technologies (websites, Facebook, iPhone applications, etc.) allow museums to share ever more information about the collection. Wall labels offer a few bits of information, but we know much more about any object than can fit on those labels, and the new technologies can make it available to those who are interested. New technologies in the conservation lab, conversely, are giving us ever more information. See, for example, http://bit.ly/cJILsA

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What is your favorite piece in your museum's collection? And if I visit, where can I find it?

John: I thought that this would be a question asked today, and it's come in at least twice already. A common game curators play when visiting another museum is to ask two questions: 1. What would you take for your museum? 2. What would you take home? The first question really boils down to this: What is the most historically significant and/or rare object, one that would be a prized addition to a museum's collection? The second question is about personal taste: what would you like to live with? Usually, these turn out to be two different objects, but in the case of the collection here in San Diego, I'd probably choose the same for both: Giorgione's Portrait of a Man. (The Venetian Renaissance is one of my particularly beloved moments in the history of art.) The panel is in our Italian Renaissance Gallery on the second floor. For an older blog post about the painting, see http://bit.ly/9wysYI

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An event NOT to be missed!!!

2010-08-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

Unforgettable Rock n' Roll Photographs

I haven't been this excited for an event in awhile - what an amazing opportunity!!! Behind the scenes tour, fabulous cocktails & food and great company with San Diego Museum of Art's The Gallery. Surely, an event NOT to be missed!!! Don't forget to RSVP for this one, RSVP@sdmart.org

See you there,

Gallery Kim

See Elton John levitate, John Lennon in love, and Tina Turner shake it at MoPA’s stunning exhibition of rock n’ roll photographs curated by rock legend and accomplished photographer Graham Nash.

The photographs express Nash’s view on the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music, and depicts stunning images ranging from live stage performances by Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Elvis, The Beatles, and Kurt Cobain, to intimate, behind-the-scenes moments of Johnny Cash and June Carter, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Janis Joplin and others.
Hosted by Gallery Member Scott Dunklee.

6:00 p.m. Cocktails and appetizers catered by Alchemy
Enjoy craft cocktails and farm-to-table hors d’oeuvres from the magicians at Alchemy Restaurant (Named Best New Restaurant 2009, San Diego Magazine, and “Best Of” Issue, Rivera Magazine 2009).

Note: The first 20 Gallery members to arrive will also experience a special VIP behind-the-scenes tour of MoPA’s vault (separate from the 7:00 p.m. exhibition tour), where you’ll witness the inner workings of a fine art photography exhibition.

7:00 p.m. The private after-hours tour starts for event guests to view these astonishing, sexy, dangerous, and sometimes intimate works of art.

Post Tour: Head to the Prado for socializing and their fabulous late night happy hour.

The Details -

Wednesday, August 25
6:00 p.m. Cocktails and appetizers
7:00 p.m. The private after-hours tour

RSVP requested to RSVP@sdmart.org

Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA)
1649 El Prado
San Diego, CA 92101-1664

Meet a Gallery Member - Devon Foster

2010-07-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Devon Foster is one of our newest members, she's also the Marketing Manager for the San Diego Museum of Art so she's THE person to know at the museum! Ok, one of the great people that make our adventures in art possible!

Don't forget to welcome Devon to our group at our next meet-up, July 16th!

Kim

Me: What is San Diego's best kept secret?
Devon: There are so many secrets in San Diego, I don’t know which is best kept… maybe some of our hidden beaches? Or neighborhood restaurants? I also love our street fairs and farmers markets. It seems like every neighborhood has them and they always have great food, fun music, interesting tidbits to buy, and lots of friendly people.

Me: What motivates you to get out bed in the morning?
Devon: I love my job, and I swear I’m not saying that just for this blog since I work at the Museum. I work with a really amazing and diverse group of people who make work so much fun.

Me: Guilty Pleasure?
Devon: Sunbathing at the beach, reading detective/lawyer novels (James Patterson is a favorite, and right now I’m in the middle of the Millennium Trilogy), Diet Coke fountain sodas, red wine and Mexican food. Sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. :)

Me: Any fun factoids about yourself?
Devon: I am a San Diego native- I grew up in Point Loma and even went to summer camp at the Museum when I was little. I’ve been told that it’s unusual to meet locals, but I still have a close group of friends from high school and even a couple from pre-school who all live in San Diego. Other fun factoids??? I studied Dante’s Divine Comedy in Florence, Italy one summer during college and lived in Sonoma County for about a year and a half (then I had to move back to San Diego- I missed it too much!).

Me: Why did you join The Gallery?
Devon: I love the opportunities that The Gallery offers to meet local artists and curators. Hearing a curator tell the story behind the work, the installation process for an exhibition, or insight into the artist’s life really helps me appreciate the art and see it in a whole new way. I also love meeting artists and hearing about the inspiration and creative process behind their art.

Me: Favorite restaurant in San Diego?
Devon: There are so many great restaurants to choose from! My favorites are probably: Vagabond Kitchen in South Park for amazing dishes from all over the world, Cucina Urbana, Third Corner, and Sogno di Vino are perfect for a glass of wine and shareable food, Lei Lounge for interesting cocktails, George’s in La Jolla, 333 Pacific, and C Level for the views, Indigo Grill for unique dishes, and Point Loma Seafood or Northgate Market for ceviche.

Me: What is the thing you are most excited to do/learn while part of The Gallery?
Devon: Meet local artists and get to know some of the “hidden secrets” of the local arts community and meet other interesting people in the process.

Meet Gallery Member - Kim Primerano

2010-06-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, I thought since I have been asking & will continue to ask people for their time & personal stories I thought it only fair to pony up myself. However, for the record, it seems odd to ask myself questions & even more strange to answer...

Me: What is San Diego's best kept secret?

ME: This is tough - I love the summer concerts in Balboa Park,

running on sunset cliffs, happy hours on the water. Our sunsets are amazing - I know this isn't asecret but sometimes I think as San Diegans we take them for granted.

Me: What motivates you to get out bed in the morning?

Me: My white boxer, Lily, is a pretty decent alarm clock, coffee & my running shoes.

Me: Guilty Pleasure?

ME: California Burritos from Bahia don Bravo AND Chocolate covered, almond laced, Rice Krispie treats from Zanzibar Cafe Downtown.

Me: Any fun factoids about yourself?

ME: Well...I'm a long way from home. I grew up on a farm, literally a dirt road with no neighbors & lots of animals. My "part" of the farm was to raise horses - I've delivered a foal, rescued an abused

quarter horse (Lucy) & nursed her back to good health & I barrel raced my pony, Glitter.

Me: Why did you join The Gallery?

ME: I need to get involved with something outside of my comfort zone. This probably sounds silly but the last time I remember thinking about art was college & that, I'm afraid, was too long ago.

Me: Favorite restaurant in San Diego?

ME: Oh, I love food so this is tough too! The Mission in East Village has THE BEST French Toast you will ever have!

I also love sitting outside at El Vitral, under the white lights & stars during a ballgame. The food is awesome & it's just so romantic!

Me: What is the thing you are most excited to do/learn while part of The Gallery?

ME: I'm excited about the collaborative stuff we have going on around town - I just think it's a really cool thing when establishments like the San Diego Museum of Art get involved with young & upcoming artists & art collectives.

Summer Nights at the Museum

2010-06-07T15:04:00.001-07:00

For me, there is something extraordinary about being at a Museum at night. Perhaps it is because my earliest memories of being at any museum occurred during the day: school trips or when my parents would take me across the bridge to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from our native New Jersey.

Something special is happening at the San Diego Museum of Art on Thursday nights. It has enlivened our staff and I have no doubt that it will quickly engage our entire San Diego community. The Museum is now open from 5 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays during the summer. These enhanced hours do not only feature exhibitions, but also offer an opportunity to celebrate the dynamic abilities of local contemporary artists such as Zac Monday, Alida Cervantes, Brian Dick, Judith Pedroza, and May-Ling Martínez. These talented artists are bringing fresh and important work center stage.

I love being at museums after hours. I relish day trips to Los Angeles and beat the traffic on the way back by spending a few hours at LACMA before zipping home on the freeway. After many trips to London, there is nothing more special than the first Friday night I closed down the Tate Modern along with many fellow visitors to the city. Moreover, after spending eight years in Chicago, some of my favorite memories of the city are due to late nights at the Museum of Contemporary Art or at the Art Institute.

Recently, after a Saturday in L.A. I roamed the galleries at LACMA and found myself staring at a Stuart Davis painting. A young guy with larger-than-life headphones came up to me and said, “Do you like this painting?” After an emphatic response of “Yes,” this twenty-something gentleman said to me “Me too, but my friends don’t get it.” My only answer was “It only matters that you like it.” That is so true of art— if it means something to you, than that is what matters most.

Come and check out what is happening at the San Diego Museum of Art on Thursday nights, I think you will like it.

Above image: Zac Monday, Dead and Gone, 2010, in situ for one evening within the exhibition Mannered Bodies: European Prints of the Later Renaissance as part of the Summer Salon Series

Another Curatorial Trip

2010-05-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

by Ariel Plotek, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Art

I went to graduate school at NYU, but hadn’t been back to the city in over a year, so a recent courier trip to NY was a homecoming of sorts. The courier trip is a funny feature of the life curatorial. It comes as a surprise to most to learn that works from the collection don’t travel alone. Indeed, every crate—whether onboard a commercial flight to London or a climate-controlled truck to Los Angeles—makes the trip with a courier, usually a curator or registrar who follows the work each step of the way. On this particular occasion I was overseeing the return leg of a loan, from JFK to LAX, and on to San Diego. I had, however, flown out a few days early—time to do some research, see the shows and catch-up with colleagues. It was a particularly good time for art in NYC: gallery week in Chelsea (including the opening of bad-boy Nate Lowman’s latest at Andrea Rosen), two major shows (Marina Abramovic and William Kentridge) at MoMA, the much-publicized (and unfortunately named) Skin-Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection (curated by Jeff Koons) at the New Museum, a specially good Whitney Biennial, and the opening of the New York Photo Festival in DUMBO. The trip’s real treat, however, came as something of a surprise: a knock-out Otto Dix show at the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue. Working on Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris (opening July 10), depictions of prostitutes have been much on my mind, and no one does the dark side of decadence quite like Dix. No less harrowing than his depictions of the trenches, Dix’s portraits of soldiers on leave in the cabarets and bordellos of a Weimar noir are haunting and hair-raising momento mori. Speaking of which, I was greeted at the Rubin Museum (where I supervised the de-installation and crating of our three loans) by the bluntly titled exhibition Remember That You Will Die, a selection of vanitas subjects from East and West designed to give pause. Still much on my mind as I boarded the plane the next day, happy to touch-down safe and sound six hours later in sunny CA.
..and the photo? Me, interrupting a photo shoot at the Chelsea Hotel.

Meet Gallery Member - Sam Dychter!

2010-05-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Meet Sam, he's a San Diego native and a long time member/donor of the museum. He has a great

passion for San Diego and specifically for San Diego Museum of Art. He has been part of The Gallery since the

beginning, in fact, he was one of the driving influences. Please say hi to Sam at the next Gallery event & maybe even see if he wants to meet up for dinner, as you can see, he

knows all of the great local eats!!! Kim

1) San Diego's best

kept secret?

Besides The Gallery? The existencial environment that is San Diego. The perfect balance of great people, weather, and relaxation.

2) What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?

That the medicines and technologies I develop will help those in need.

3) Guilty pleasure?

Double double cheeseburger, animal-style fries, and vanilla shake at In-N-Out.

4) Fun factoid about yourself?

I flew a plane before I drove a car.

5) Why did you join the Gallery?

To learn about art and work to make San Diego a cultural hub that we can all admire.

6) Favorite restaurant in San Diego?

Tough one. So you'll have to indulge me with this list...Italian: Cafe Milano (La Jolla) and The Venetian (Pt. Loma); French: Bleu Bohemme (Kensington) and Cafe Chloe (East Village); Seafood: Sea Rocket (Northpark); Mexican: Pokez (East Village).

7) Thing you are most excited to do/learn or would like to see while part of the Gallery?

Meeting up with my friends and learning about art from the real experts, the museum curators.

Meet a Gallery Member!

2010-05-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

So from time to time I like to check in with our Gallery members & try to learn more about them. The goal being that I can share this information with you all & at our next event you will know someone new & have fun things to chat about. So read on & please introduce yourself to Tim at our next event (May 20th, mark your calendar!).

Meet Tim Rout -

Me: What is San Diego's best kept secret?

Tim: The Gallery Club! (I swear he said this on his own...)

Me: What motivates you to get out bed in the morning?

Tim: Anything new & challenging. And coffee...

Me: Guilty Pleasure?

Tim: Chorizo Burrito

Me: Any fun factoids about yourself?

Tim: I was born in Congo, Africa to medical charity worker parents, and was carried around for a year in a half in a basket before coming to the US. I haven't stopped traveling yet!

Me: Why did you join The Gallery?

Tim: The chance to learn more about the art world and the opportunity to meet fun, like-minded people. So far, so good!

Me: Favorite restaurant in San Diego?

Tim: Kono's. Best breakfast, sun & view on the planet. Better than any 5 star restaurant.

Me: What is the thing you are most excited to do/learn while part of The Gallery?

Tim: I would like to find ways to translate my new knowledge of the art world to my own life, in artistic endeavors and improved understanding of people.

A big thanks to Tim for his time! I hope each of you will take the time to do this for me as well...

See you all soon,

Kim

Behind the Bloom: Art Alive at The San Diego Museum of Art

2010-04-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

We are in the heart of the Museum's annual fundraiser, Art Alive. For those of you who haven't experienced this wholly unique extravaganza, here's the skinny:

Each spring more than 100 regional floral artists converge at The San Diego Museum of Art to create floral interpretations of famous works of art. Inspired by a specific artwork on view from the Museum's collection, each floral designer uses organic (living) materials to create their design. Not only does this share the "art" of flowers, but using shape, texture, and color it encourages museumgoers to see the art in a new way.

Celebrating its 29^th year, Art Alive is the Museum's ONLY annual fund raising event. How important is this? It's critical. We rely on the revenue from this 4-day program to support essentials like education programs, exhibitions, and care of the collection.

Over time, there have been a host of different event formats, but a few things remain the same...every year the historic rotunda is transformed by a top floral design team. The selection process varies, but the end result is always a major wow-factor. This year René van Rems, a local AND international celebrity, brought in a team of 30 people, a lighting crew, more than 20,000 stems to create a two story floral chandelier.

There is also a suite of related events that help support the bottom line. That's where the Opening Celebration comes in...a gala, a party, a soiree. Whatever you call it, it's the see-and-be-seen event of the season. Past events have included everything from live elephants to absinthe bars. Last night's party did not feature any live animals or illegal substances (that we know of)--but it was no exception--in fact, we all had a fantastic time.Here's some highlights, shots taken by this most amazing magical photobooth from Patron. WOW do we look good or what?

Dark Dreams with Hugo Crosthwaite at Noel-Baza Fine Art

2010-03-23T11:40:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday Gallery Members were invited to a special evening at Noel-Baza Fine Art gallery in Little Italy for a private viewing of Dark Dreams, an exhibition of Hugo Crosthwaite's artwork. Museum curator Amy Galpin lead a refreshing dialogue with Crosthwaite, and guests received a bonus tour of Pierette van Cleve's private collection. After the tours everyone made their way to El Camino Super Cucina for margaritas and ceviche.

Curator Trip to Mexico City

2010-03-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

From time to time, I have the good fortune to do research or attend a conference abroad. As a curator with strong interests in Mexican art, I was thrilled to travel to Mexico City, one of my favorites places in the world and in my opinion, the best city for art viewing. While many of my colleagues might pick Paris or Rome, I would jump on a plane any day of the week to see the diversity of art found in Mexico’s capital.

My recent trip to Mexico City was my sixth, but it was my first time to stay in the historic center. It was amazing to wake up to the sound of the Cathedral’s bells, and to fall asleep to the light sound of drumming from the central plaza.

Walking through the streets of Mexico City, history and art unfold seamlessly. Within a few quick blocks in the heart of the historic center, one can experience the ancient art of the Mexica Empire, colonial architecture, murals created by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and the most recent work of José Luis Cuevas. At the nearby Colegio de San Ildefonso, one can experience murals by the Frenchman Jean Charlot, an artist included in The San Diego Museum of Art’s collection.

For the Museum, I met with a curator at the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) and discussed some upcoming collaborations between our museums. I also visited the Blaisten Collection, located in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City. Tlatelolco is another area of Mexico City in which one sees art from different centuries in rapid succession; ancient ruins, a colonial church, and a mural by Siqueiros are neighbors. It is also an area of Mexico City where residents witnessed the horrific violence that broke out in 1968 between student protesters and the police. A memorial in the Plaza de Tres Culturas honors those who lost their lives. The Blaisten Collection includes works by well-known Mexican artists María Izquierdo, Agustín Lazo, and Carlos Orozco Romero.

Perhaps the most exceptional part of my trip to Mexico City was the afternoon I spent with Brigita Anguiano, the widow of the Mexican muralist, printmaker, and painter Raúl Anguiano. The San Diego Museum of Art has several works by Anguiano in its permanent collection and plans to host a small exhibition of Anguiano’s paintings this summer. I visited their home in Coyoacán, an area of Mexico City with the house museums of both Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky. It was an incredible experience to see Anguiano’s studio and to have a private viewing of the stunning paintings in Brigita’s collection. The visit made me extremely excited about the opening of the Anguiano show at the Museum. With its ardent dedication to the visual arts, Mexico City is a dynamic place for art lovers. I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

Not to miss: Chapultepec Park, Museo Rufino Tamayo, National Palace murals, Ministry of Education murals, Colegio de San Ildefonso murals, Museo Templo Mayor, UNAM campus, Museo Franz Mayer, Coyoacán, Tlatelolco, Alameda Park, Palacio de Bellas Artes, José Luis Cuevas Museum, and a day trip to Acolman and Teotihuacan.

If you really love murals, also try: the Supreme Court Building, Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, Museo Mural Diego Rivera, and the house museum dedicated to Siqueiros in Polanco.

The Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil and the Museo Dolores Olmedo have stunning collections of modern art as does the Andres Blaisten Collection in Tlatelolco.

A final art tip: Pick up a newspaper and check out the current exhibitions. There are so many art spaces that you can easily find new and exciting things to do. On my recent trip I went checked out the art listings and find my way to a show that honored the anniversary of certain tax freedoms for artists. The show included a stunning Rivera painting that I had never seen before and a host of strong works by contemporary artists. I caught an intriguing Betsabeé Romero show as well.

-Amy Galpin, Project Curator for American Art

Alice Neel's Aphorisms

2010-03-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last night, the Sundance Channel aired their compelling film on Alice Neel. The best parts of the film are undoubtedly all the recorded videos of Neel herself.

When painting her portraits, for example, she said that she had four things in mind:
1. Art - the best part of the process was the moment of "dividing of the canvas," the setting out of the composition.

2. Likeness - the portrait needed, after all, to look like the person being painted. Only then could one try to move on to...

3. Capturing something of the inner character of the sitter.

4. And finally, she explained, the painting should have an aspect of zeitgeist. A portrait painted in the 1970s shouldn't look like as though it were painted in the 1930s.

Keeping all that in mind, have another look at the Museum of Art's Portrait of Mildred Myers Oldden, which was just reinstalled in the newly configured 20th Century Galleries.

Painted around 1937, the portrait is a relatively early work (and as such is an interesting counterpoint to her better-known paintings of the 1970s), but it gives you a pretty good idea of what Neel meant.

The best line of the documentary, however, was something else entirely. At one point, Neel turned to the camera and explained...

Art is not as stupid as human conversation

HOMECOMING: Artist Hugo Crosthwaite returns to San Diego for his first museum exhibition

2010-02-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

By Alexander Jarman, Manager of Public Programs

Brutal Beauty: Drawings by Hugo Crosthwaite opens tonight at Museum. This exhibition is particularly exciting because we will have the artist composing a work in the gallery space for all to see for the next few weeks. I sat down with Hugo over some Mahi Mahi tacos recently to talk about his work.

AJ: Hugo, you were born in Tijuana, went to college in San Diego and now live and work in New York City. Do you consider yourself more of a Mexican or American artist?

HC: For me, that question doesn’t enter into my work that much. New York is so cosmopolitan that being from somewhere else doesn’t matter much. My drawings often reflect to some degree the place that I am living at the time, though I don’t think the Tijuana landscape will ever leave the work.

AJ: Tell me more about making it as an artist here versus New York City.

HC: I try not to think about being a smaller fish in a bigger pond. New York is the heart of the industry, you can’t throw a rock in that city without hitting an artist. But there are lots of people there trying to just make a living with their art and a lot more opportunities for them to do so. More NYC institutions are paying attention to emerging artists, which is why it is so gratifying for me to come back and participate in the Museum’s exhibition here. The San Diego Museum of Art was the first museum I ever went to growing up. It was the only place I could actually see works by all the artists I was interested in- Giotto, Rembrandt, Sorolla, Goya.

AJ: You taught yourself to draw by copying illustrations from Don Quixote and the Divine Comedy at a very early age. What attracted you to such serious and heavy subject matter and has that stayed with you in the work you continue to make today?

HC: I was captivated by the very dramatic images of naked bodies in poses of suffering. I mean, the Divine Comedy has all of these images of people writhing in hell, but the drawings were full of beautiful lines and compositions. That dramatic aesthetic was the first thing I fell in love with in art and I am still drawn to it. But I never looked at the whole figure or the whole picture when I was redrawing it. I would copy one detail and then move on to the next detail, which is what I still do today. I am a collage artist in the sense that all of my figures are made up of body parts and details from various sources. I might draw an eye from a glamour magazine, and then a mouth from a movie still and then a body from an advertisement. So the drawings are just created detail by detail, I never have any idea how they will look when they are done. I can’t sketch out an entire composition ahead of time because I’m too obsessed with the details.

AJ: So let’s talk more about your drawing process, in terms of how it is structured and when you know the piece has finally come together.

HC: Well, the drawing I am working on in the galleries for this show is the fourth time I have proposed working in a public space on a strict deadline. I have to give myself a schedule in order to finish in time, since I only have a couple of weeks. For all of the other works in the show, I have been able to work for months on them at a time or even a year if I need to. I did one of my first big public drawings at a gallery in New York. They invited me to be in a show but all of my work had just been shipped off to another exhibition, so I thought I would make a drawing, sort of as a performance, in the space during the run of the exhibition. In that instance, I have a deadline, so the drawing is done when it has to be done. But when I’m in my studio, I know a work is finished when I can’t possibly think of adding anything else to it….the drawing has run its course and it’s not taking me anywhere else. That’s usually when the title comes to me too. But finishing the drawing is easy, tackling that empty canvas is the harder part.

AJ: Tell me quickly about your drawing here at the Museum, both the actual piece and the process of being ‘on view’ while you create.

HC: Well the invitation to do this show came just as I was reading A Tale of Two Cities. And coming back to the border region, I thought I would make a drawing with two figures, one representing Tijuana and one representing San Diego. I like exploring the duality, the points of embrace and of conflict between these two cities.

I’m looking forward to drawing in front of a Museum audience because I think it demystifies the artistic process. I would always wonder how artists worked in their studios, like how did they hang their canvases, what kind of easel did they use, what kind of techniques were they using? Why was Francis Bacon’s studio so messy but his paintings so pristine? What you’re seeing when you come to watch me in the galleries is exactly what you would see me doing in my studio- except I won’t be listening to music! Usually I have my iPod or NPR going. I didn’t want to bring my iPod with me into the galleries because I want to make sure I can hear someone talking to me if they had a question.

AJ: So you’re not worried about people coming into the space and trying to talk to you while you’re working?

HC: No, I like talking to people about the work. If I didn’t, I never would’ve proposed doing this project.

AJ:Now that you’ve seen the space, how do agree with Amy’s [Amy Galpin, Project Curator for American Art at the Museum, curated the exhibition] vision for the show?

HC: I am very happy with all the work Amy picked and arranged. These pieces represent my working in San Diego from about 1998 until 2004*, when I moved to New York. So for me, it is a chance to reacquaint myself with some of my past pieces, it’s kind of like a time capsule. But that’s why proposing the mural was so important for me, because it gives the audience a chance to see what I’m up to right now. It serves as a very nice little retrospective.

Images: Top, Three Graces, Collection of Debra Dold Trust
Lower, TWINS, Courtesy of Van Cleve Fine Art

* Brutal Beauty contains works from 1998-2007, and includes a commissioned work--constructed by Crosthwaite on site February-March 2010.

Gallery Event Wrap-Up: A Conversation between Curator Ariel Plotek and Educator Alexander Jarman

2010-02-01T14:39:00.000-08:00

On January 21, The Gallery hosted their Behind Closed Doors: Art of the 20th Century event at the Museum. Assistant Curator Ariel Plotek and Public Programs Manager Alexander Jarman sat down to reflect on how the evening went.

AJ: So what was your favorite part of the night?

AP: Well, first let me just say what I like most about the Gallery. What I’ve remarked repeatedly about Gallery get-togethers is how much the members seem to like one another. Folks don’t just come for a lecture, they’re there to rub shoulders with each other. Having said that, as a speaker, our Gallery members are an ideal audience: curious, attentive, and there to have fun.

AJ: And it was great to be able to enjoy a beer in the galleries while listening to you, Amy and John. But seriously, it was very special to have the group see the space, see the works and hear the ideas behind the exhibitions before they are even open to the public. It seems like everyone was excited to bring their friends back when the shows open to share their knowledge of the ‘inside scoop.’

AP: You know, there’s a sort-of nervous energy in the Museum, a real sense of mounting excitement when a show is about to open. What you see at the official opening is an unveiling, the culmination of a lot of effort–

AJ: And what you got to share on Thursday wasn’t just the result, but some of that anticipation.

AP: Exactly. And it was great to see how contagious that excitement can be. Everyone really wanted to talk about the choices we’d made for the shows. All those nitty-gritty details suddenly seemed to matter—and not just to the curator, whose job it is to weigh shades of white…

AJ: Yeah, and it seemed like most people were pretty keen to keep the conversation going.

AP: Even before the Art of North America was fully open, people were milling around, curious —checking out the ‘peach cobbler’ (the coral color in galleries 2 and 3). It certainly got everyone talking.

AJ: I thought Katy’s comment about how even the Board of Trustees doesn’t get that kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse, was very apt. Really reminded us all how special the evening was.

AP: Absolutely, I thought that captured it perfectly.

Top image: Ariel Plotek holds a 'butterfly board,' which is a preparatory map of the exhibition layout.

Lower image: A close-up of the 'butterfly board' for Art of the 20th Century.

James Hyde

2010-01-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

As visitors to the Museum have seen this week, we're starting major reinstallations. The Picasso, Miro, Calder exhibition has closed, and those rooms will soon be given over to the art of South Asia, in a new installation entitled Temple, Palace, Mosque. For the first time, our important - even world-renowned - collection of South Asian painting from the Binney Collection will get a prominent place in the museum. It deserves it: this is one of the world's great collections of painting from India, and we're going to install it in rooms that will also have sculpture and other objects from our collection.

That will be a complicated display and it will take some time to set up. In the meanwhile, we're using one of the now-empty galleries just off the rotunda to show our installation-sized group by contemporary artist James Hyde (born 1958).

Entitled Middle Station--Luminous Platforms and Relaxed Seating, this is a collection of glowing coffee tables and of chairs made of galvanized aluminum or vinyl-sheathed styrofoam. Indebted to the American minimalist movement of the 1960s and 70s, to artists such as Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Scott Burton, Hyde's work plays with the properties of light and reflection and questions the boundaries between art and utilitarian objects. The installation might be summed up with a quotation from the artist himself: "For me, painting is neither an object or a practice, but a habit of seeing... I'm interested in how furniture constructs the figure. This comes from painterly concerns. I've often been more interested in the pictorial qualities of the painting support than its surface. My furniture can be thought of as pictorial abstractions of a painting panel."

With that in mind, come in, sit down for a while, and be part of the work of art. If you want to know more about Hyde and his work, have a look at his website:
http://www.jameshyde.com/

-John Marciari

What Museum People are Talking About

2010-01-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

Last week was chock full of arty encounters, museum moments and culture gossip. Thought I'd share a bit of this with you all, to keep you up to speed on what museum people are talking about.

Monday at the Getty: How to Get an Art Historian All Worked Up

We took a select group of Trustees and Circle Donors up to the Getty for a private tour of their latest exhibition, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference with senior curator Lee Hendrix and our own John Marciari. Of course we learned more about Rembrandt, and the up and comers who studied with the master, but we also got quite an education on the controversy of attribution. Is this really a Rembrandt? Or is it a Govert Flinck? How can you tell? For the record, art historians get really sweaty and animated expressing their opinions on this. For more on Rembrandt don't miss all of the activities in SoCal not to mention our own Ferdinand Bol show.

PS. The other hot topic on everyone's lips was the recent announcement (January 7, 2010) that Getty director since 2005, Michael Brand, was stepping down. We were warmly greeted by David Bomford, associate director for collections at the Museum and interim director.

Thursday Lunch: The Role of a Museum Director is Not For the Faint of Heart

I met my friend Rob for lunch in La Jolla on Thursday afternoon. He's from LA and works for Gurr Johns dealing with appraisals and private collections. Our big conversation topic was on the recent naming of Jeffrey Deitch as the new director of MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles). I won't give you my take here, but if you're interested, read this NYT article and today's LA Times piece. Dig deeper with a series of interviews with Deitch from Modern Art Note's Tyler Green. Finish it up with Tyler's summary which provides links to other takes on the topic.

Friday Lunch: How Cool is Hugo Crosthwaite?

Friday we had lunch with Pierette Van Cleve, of Van Cleve Fine Art. Van Cleve represents artist Huge Crosthwaite, who is a San Diego artist (in NY) making it big. Really big. And he's going to be at the Museum in February installing a major piece for Brutal Beauty: Drawings by Hugo Crosthwaite. Not sure what this installation might be like? Check this clip out. At the February Culture & Cocktails you'll have a chance to see him at work...We're pretty smitten, and we think you will be too.

Sarah E. Beckman
Associate Director of Development

Living Your Life With More élan

2010-01-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

By Alexander Jarman, Public Programs Manager
This coming Tuesday, January 12, the Museum has another installment of its exciting Art of Élan concert series-it’s chamber music with a heck of a lot of energy. I asked Art of Élan’s two artistic directors, Kate Hatmaker and Demarre McGill, if they could answer a few questions about their group, classical music and working with the Museum.

1. Tell us a little about how you decided on the name Art of Élan.
First, we love the word élan. It’s a French word that represents spirit, vitality and momentum, all of which have universal appeal. For us, Art of Élan is really about the art of living your life with more élan. It’s about injecting some élan into all that you do, and for us, that’s classical music.

2. You are both already professional musicians playing in a highly regarded symphony. What made you want to decide to start a side project?
We formed Art of Élan a little over 3 years ago, with the intention of attracting a more diverse audience to classical music. There is often a misconception that classical music is somehow outdated, that young people are unable to relate to it today, but we both feel that live ‘classical music’ is extremely relevant and exciting. We felt that we… would be able to showcase the local talent of San Diego [and] make classical music more accessible for people in San Diego.

3. Who do you enjoy listening to?
While we both listen to a wide variety of music (pop, hip-hop, classical, jazz, blues) we are usually struck by people who are trying to do something different with their art.

4. Why did you specifically want to work with the Museum for this series?
We are so thrilled to be collaborating with SDMA on this year’s “Fantasia” series. Performing in an art gallery allows people’s senses to be stimulated much more than they would at traditional concert halls, and, as each of our concerts is inspired by a different work of art in the museum’s collection, there is certain synergy that pervades the events, uniquely marrying both music and visual art. It’s an added bonus that the Hibben Gallery has such nice acoustics as well!

5. What can we expect from this next concert on Tuesday?
Our upcoming concert is called “Shades of Affection.” Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Painter and Model III, it features a wide variety of musical tellings of love and lust. We have also invited a bass/guitar duo from Tijuana to come perform some of their original compositions on the program. The entire show will be available online by Wednesday afternoon (www.instantencore.com/artofelan), so that concertgoers can continue to enjoy the concert experience, long after it’s over!
As with all of our concerts, we invite our guests to join us afterwards for Happy Hour food and drinks, next door at The Prado.

We're not the only ones interested in Art of Élan. Check out the article in this past Sunday's Union-Tribune with the link below.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/10/art-elan-gives-classical-music-fresh-young-face/

Concert details:
Tuesday, January 12, 7:00 p.m.
Hibben Gallery
Members: $20, Nonmembers $25, Students $10
Above image: Pablo Picasso

Spain, 1881–1973
Painter and Model III, 1970
Pastel on card
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norton S. Walbridge
1991:18

The Never-ending Revision of Collections Research

2010-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

A number of my earlier blog posts have given some idea of the never-ending (but nonetheless rewarding) task of research on the permanent collection. Here's another episode in "the life of a painting," showing how stories and misinformation can gradually accrete on the canvas.

The portrait at left is by the Nabi artist Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and hangs in one of the small upstairs galleries with the rest of the collection given to the Museum by Ambassdor and Mrs. Maxwell Gluck. Executed in the broad, flat patches of color and thick brushstrokes typical of Bonnard’s work, the painting has always been identified as a portrait of a “Monsieur Monteux.”

At some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s, before the painting came to the Museum, the title evolved. Whereas before it was simply identified as "Monsieur Monteux," suddenly it became a "Portrait of Pierre Monteux."

This is a case of wishful thinking. Someone must have asked, "Who was this Monteux?" ...and then found the most famous Monteux possible: Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), one of the great conductors of the early 20th century. He had been the conductor for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris in the early 1910s but left Europe at the outbreak of World War I and came to America, where he was later conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

Moreover, the sitter in the portrait bears some resemblance to Pierre Monteux. Here, at right, is a photograph of him published in Life magazine in 1950.

But the problem is this: Bonnard's painting was made much, much earlier... at least 35 years before that photograph, to be precise. If a portrait of Pierre Monteux, Bonnard's canvas would have had to be painted by 1915, when Monteux left France, but the conductor was only then 34 years old, and the sitter in the portrait is a much older man. The Bonnard catalogue raisonne, moreover, dates the painting to ca. 1915, presumably on the basis of style.

So if not Pierre Monteux, who is it? There is another Monteux who seems to fit. Marcel Monteux, the owner of the Chaussures Raoul chain (the first mass-produced shoe chain in France), was an early patron of the so-called Nabi group of artists, which included Bonnard and his associates Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker-Xavier Roussel. Roussel's decorative paintings for the Monteux house, for example, are today in the Dayton Art Institute. Marcel Monteux also owned works by Degas and other leading artists of the day. If Bonnard painted a portrait of an older Monsieur Monteux in 1915, Marcel Monteux would seem to be our man. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any other portraits or photographs of Marcel Monteux to compare, so for now (at least), the painting remains simply a "Portrait of Monsieur Monteux," but at least we've got Pierre out of the picture, so to speak.

-John Marciari, Curator of European Art
(with thanks to Agnes Penot-Lejeune for her help with provenance research)

Meet a Gallery Member!

2010-01-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

This is my first stab at this so I welcome feedback! I'm a volunteer on the SDMA's steering committee for The Gallery and my focus is membership. I thought the group would be much more fun if we could start to learn a little about each other - even if it is only completely random, trivial facts!

My guinea pig was Antoinette Lipman (pictured below with fellow Gallery member, Sam Dychter) she eagerly answered my questions so that at our next Gallery event everyone would have a few random conversation starters with her (or so I would stop asking her to do this for me). ~ Kim

Here we go -

What do you think San Diego's best kept secret is? The view from Clay's Restaurant.

Guilty pleasure? Watching old Alfred Hitchcock shows on Hulu.

Swim, bike, run or gym? Tennis.

Favorite restaurant in San Diego? Harry's Diner.

Thing you are most excited to learn/do/experience with the Gallery? I am really excited to get a look behind the scenes at the museum.

Craziest place you have ever been OR the place you would most like to visit? I'd like to go see the Northern Lights and also take a road trip to do my own taste of the best hamburgers and BBQ across the country.

Gallery Palette: An Interview about Exhibition Wall Color

2009-12-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

By Alexander Jarman, Public Programs Manager

The Museum has installed a lot of exhibitions in the past year and each one of them came with a fresh coat of paint. Wall color is an important component of our gallery spaces- it has the power to enhance works of art or detract from them. To learn a bit more about this matter, I asked the Museum’s own Andrew Marino and John Marciari (Museum Technician and European Curator respectively) as well as Joshua Rectenwald, the Painters Assistant at the Cincinnati Art Museum to share their insights about the colors we see in art museums.

To start us off, what are some of your favorite or least favorite colors you have used in your museum?

JM: My favorites are Raisin Torte in Gallery 17, Pumpkin Blush in Gallery 20 and Cork in Gallery 18 and 16. The color we used for the Picasso, Miró, Calder exhibition reads as much more blue than I expected when looking at the samples. It’s vital to pick colors under gallery lighting-there are HUGE variations when they’re seen in the fluorescent/incandescent lighting of the offices, for example.

AM: I know this seems like a cop out, but I think the colors we choose are all successful. Color choices for exhibits endure a lengthy decision process before they are selected. I trust this process. Some colors sing with the art a little better than others, but that’s life.

How much does wall color affect an exhibition?

AM: Ideally, it shouldn’t affect it at all. Practically, it helps support a sense of cohesion. Exhibition wall colors can also help the viewer organize information and make connections.

JR: Wall color can have drastic affects on exhibitions. In general, paint determines the overall mood of the gallery space. Lighter colors present a more casual and lively environment while darker colors tend to create a more solemn and serious experience. Color can also be used to break up different sections of an exhibit, thus clarifying and making it easier to navigate.

JM: I think the wall color affects an exhibition quite a bit…or more accurately, things like wall color and lighting affect people’s perception of an exhibition. The pictures are the pictures, but I do think there are better and worse ways of seeing them.

What else should we know about painting the walls of a Museum?

AM: Clean up sucks. Paint buckets, brushes, rollers, various utensils, etc. It’s not necessarily difficult work, just time consuming.

JR: My favorite part of the installation process is actually peeling and scraping all the vinyl off the wall. It feels like I’m erasing the former exhibition. But if there was one thing I would say about paint colors it would be that no one sees eye to eye on them. I get this all the time when I’m painting a gallery. I’ll have people ask for the name of the paint and tell me that they really like the color, and then the other half I talk to think that the color choice looks terrible. So I guess you can’t win.

California Cool

2009-12-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

Although it's right there in the lobby when you enter the museum, some of our visitors miss the rotating Collections in Context installation. The principal of the installation is simple: every few months we choose a newly acquired object—something that has entered the collection by gift or by purchase within the past six months—and we hang it alongside an object (or a group of objects) that has been at SDMA for a number of years. By offering a context in which to test visual relationships between new acquisitions and objects long-held by the Museum, Collections in Context presents the daily practice of museum work to visitors.

Last week, we reinstalled the latest installment, which focuses on the recently acquired Balls, #16, painted in 1964 by Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967).

Fischinger, who had fled his native Germany with the Nazi rise to power, settled in California in the late 1930s. He is best known as a filmmaker, and particularly for his pioneering works in an abstract, non-figurative mode. In Hollywood, he attracted the attention of Orson Welles and assisted with Walt Disney’s Fantasia. He nonetheless continued to have difficulties in finding an audience for non-figurative films, and during the last two decades of his life devoted himself to painting, pursuing the types of abstraction he employed previously in his films.

Fischinger's geometric paintings find many parallels in the work of other California-based artists of the time, among them Karl Stanley Benjamin. In 1959, Los Angeles Times art critic Jules Langsner coined the term “Hard-Edge Painting” to describe the work of these California painters. Partly a reaction against Abstract Expressionism, Hard-Edge Painting emphasized angular lines, reduced forms, precise surfaces, and rich colors.

In the current installation, we've paired Fischinger's painting with an untitled work by Karl Benjamin, which was painted in 1957 and acquired by the Museum of Art in 1958.

Finally, Colorforms in Colorspace #12, a painting of 1948 by John Sennhauser, rounds out the installation. Sennhauser was based in New York when he painted the canvas, but he later settled in Escondido, and this is one of a group of his works that came to the Museum of Art after his death.

In all, it's a miniature of exhibition of just three works, but one that really encapsulates the aesthetic of mid-century Modernism in California and beyond.

The Art of Collecting: Event Wrap Up

2009-11-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

On November 12 Members of The Gallery met up in La Jolla for The Art of Collecting.

Owners Joseph Bellows and Ron Stevenson did a fantastic job of welcoming guests to their galleries and "back rooms" for private viewings of their art storage and presentation areas.

This experience sparked a new dialogue for several collectors who took the opportunity to explore works currently NOT on view, by artists they are interested in learning more about.

Post tour, guests noshed on more fine food (and imbibed in more fine wine) before embarking on a lively discussion with John Marciari , Curator for European Art and Katy McDonald, Deputy Director for External Affairs. The conversation generated a host of questions from "can you negotiate a deal?" to "how do you know the dealer is reputable?" to "what should you buy?".

Number one, buy what you love--and visit Museums and galleries to learn and determine what it is that moves you. Marciari responded to questions on reputation and trust, indicating that you should ask other collectors and other gallery owners for feedback, if a certain dealer seems questionable. Look for dealers with a solid history. On this, and negotiations for price, Bellows implored the importance of viewing the process as a "relationship" and not as a "transaction".

On the question of forgeries and fakes, Marciari encouraged everyone to have confidence in their quest for more information--"don't be afraid to reach out to a specialist in the area of art you are passionate about."

Finally, sign up for gallery mailing lists to receive invitations to opening events. Visiting local galleries is an important part of your art education and one of the many ways to support artists in our community.

Discovering Rosalba Carriera

2009-11-19T16:38:00.000-08:00

Here’s a story about one of the “new” works on view in the recently reinstalled European Art gallery at the Museum.

A few months ago, one of our registrars came to my office and handed me a quick index photograph (there it is at left) she’d just taken of a work that turned up during an inventory of one of the store rooms. The work, attributed to Rosalba Carriera, was acquired in 1949 but no one could recall ever having seen it on public view.

My first thought: Wow. That looks like the real thing.

Rosalba Carriera was one of the most highly-sought portraitists in eighteenth-century Italy, second in popularity only to Pompeo Batoni (whose portrait of Etienne-Reneé Potier de Gesvres hangs in the recently reinstalled gallery). Rosalba’s particular specialty was the portrait in pastels, and she had few equals in that medium. The portrait of a woman had all the benchmarks of her style, and having been little-exhibited, it seemed – even in the photograph – remarkably fresh. Rosalba is a special artist; the Getty has just acquired a pastel portrait by her.

But then I had my second thought: Oh no. The Frame.

The frame is unmistakably that of the royal collection in Dresden. Once you’ve seen a group of them, you can’t miss them. And the problem with the frame was that at the outbreak of World War II, the Dresden collections were dispersed for safekeeping, and many works never made it back to the museum when the war ended. The Dresden Museum has a major provenance research project underway in an effort to locate all the looted treasures.

Born and trained in Italy, Rosalba had spent years working at the court in Dresden, and the largest collection of her pastel portraits is in the museum there. This seemed to be a vote in favor of the San Diego portrait’s authenticity. The bad news, though, is that I was afraid that just as we’d rediscovered a great work, we might have to send it back to Dresden.

So let the research begin: I quickly discovered in our curatorial files that the dealer who sold us the work wrote in 1948 that he got it through an “exchange with the Dresden Museum, about 18 years ago.” (The dealer was Jacob Heimann, of New York and Los Angeles – and if anyone has more information about him, please let me know). I’ll admit I was deeply skeptical.

I went back to the old catalogues of the Dresden collection. The 1899 and 1905 catalogues list 156 pastels, but only 109 are in the catalogues published since 1929, with no reference to the missing 47.

At this point, I wrote to Andreas Henning, the Curator in Dresden. I explained that I was doing “a bit of research on Rosalba, and that I was curious about the pastels missing from later editions of their catalogue.” (This was a bit evasive, I’ll admit it.) Andreas explained that yes, some of the Rosalba pastels had been missing since before the war, but earlier in the century, Dresden’s then-director Hans Posse “exchanged” some with dealers in an attempt to acquire contemporary art.

We then went through the old catalogue lists, and we found one pastel described as a “Portrait nearly front view, dark grey background. Brown eyes; flowers in the gray hair; brown, multicolored flowered dress with a décolletée. The right hand at the breast.” This seemed to match. It was number 88 in the old catalogue, and it had been sold back in 1924 in exchange of a painting by Wilhelm Trübner.

At this point, I went back into storage and opened up the frame. There, on the back of the old stretcher supporting the pastel, was a most welcome sight: the number 88. Case closed. Not only had we confirmed its provenance, we’d also established that it had been sold by Dresden, and that we would not have to send it back.

And it’s now on the wall in San Diego, for the first time in decades. But pastels are delicate, and after a few months, we’ll return it to a nice dark corner of the storeroom to preserve it.
Come see it while you have the chance.

John Marciari
Curator of European Art
Head of Provenance Research

The Art of Collecting

2009-11-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Image via Joseph Bellows Gallery:
012, Edward White Spacewalking Above the Texas Coastline, Gemini 4, June 3, 1965, digital c-print, 24.5 x 24.5 inches

Tonight The Gallery is privy to its first off site members only event, held at the Joseph Bellows and R.B. Stevenson Galleries in La Jolla. Making sure to create a lively experience, we have created an itinerary of social connecting, gallery FAQs and behind the scenes walkthroughs. In preparation for the event we have enlisted a goodly amount of wine and some comfortable seats for our favorite fashionistas. If you are not a member (call (619) 696-1918 to join!), or cannot attend tonight's event, I've put together some of the questions that will shape our conversation with the curators and gallery owners. In addition, there are some great resources on line that revolve around this very topic: How to Start an Art Collection.

Image via R.B. Stevenson Gallery: Old Rembrandt, acrylic on interference, 12 x 14 1/2 in, 2004

Questions for The Art of Collecting

How do you start a collection?

What art should you buy?

How do you know which dealers/galleries are reputable?

I don’t know what art I like…where do I start?

What are the top collectors asking or looking for from a Gallery owner?

What is the most common question asked by a new collector?

How does a gallery differ from an auction house?

Why buy art? Why not just support your local Museums?

Resources
Apartment Therapy is one of my favorite design inspiration web/blog sites...they broke it down simply here. BUY WHAT YOU LOVE!

I found this interesting piece via The Harbus, a publication from the independent student weekly for the Harvard Business School. It offers an overview of a panel discussion (2006) with a variety of thoughts from artist to gallery owner, professor to professional.

This article is written from a gallery owner's perspective--Sylvia White...
1. Educate your eye
2. Establish your budget
3. Determine your goals
4. Become a responsible collector
The author also shares her insight on "the ideal gallery" here.

Stay tuned for more on this topic after tonight's fabulous event.

-Sarah Beckman, Associate Director of Development

Calder Jewelry, and the Calder Headboard

2009-11-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

A Calder-Guggenheim Story

Picasso's friend and biographer John Richardson was here last week to deliver the Axline Lecture. Over the days he was here, we spent a lot of time wandering around the galleries together, and I spent a lot of time soaking in all the great stories he told. Here's one of them.

As we wandered through the Calder Jewelry exhibition, John saw the large photograph of Peggy Guggenheim wearing a pair of Calder earrings. He recalled that Peggy Guggenheim was a great fan of Calder and that in addition to all the jewelry she owned, she also commissioned Calder to make a bed headboard for her. This was very similar to the jewelry: made of twisted wire in abstract and animal shapes, with moving parts. It still exists and is on view at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where it is exhibited in the room that used to be her bedroom.

What isn't usually part of the story told about the headboard, though, is that Peggy Guggenheim didn't like it. Why, one asks? Apparently, when things began to heat up in the bedroom (a not infrequent event if one believes the rumors about her love life), the headboard's movable metal parts created too much of a racket.

-John Marciari, Curator of European Art

Video Killed the Radio Star

2009-10-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

By Alexander Jarman, Public Programs Manager

Nope, its not a blog posting about the Buggles or their amazing track from 1979. This is however, a posting about film, video and art. Tomorrow night, Monday, we are having an incredible lecture here at the Museum by Neil Kendricks. He will begin by presenting three very short films by Stan Brakhage, an avant-garde filmmaker whose works we have in our permanent collection. Then Neil's going to show you how Brakhage's works from the 1960's would impact the next generation of short format filmmakers who would go on to make music videos.

Brakhage's films are beautiful but also interesting to dissect technically. This guy would tape, collage and paint on top of and scratch directly into film in order to achieve different effects (the above picture is an example of Brakhage taping natural materials onto his filmstrips). Often when you watch one of his films you are really witnessing a moving painting. But you'll want to stick around for the music videos and short films by Floria Sigismondi, Chris Marker and Mark Romanek (he did the Nine Inch Nails music video, Closer).

This is going to be one of our best lectures this fall and I hope all of you will be able to come by the Museum for it.

Guest Lecture Series

Neil Kendricks: Brakhage and Beyond

Monday, October 19, 7:00 p.m.

James S. Copley Auditorium

$12 members/$15 nonmembers/$7 students

Installing Now: American Artists from the Russian Empire

2009-10-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

Next up at the Museum of Art: American Artists from the Russian Empire. We're installing the show this week, and it opens on October 24th. America is a melting pot, of course, and so is American Art... or, to use another cliche: this exhibition explores the Russian slice of the American pie. The exhibition explores the work of Russian immigrants and ranges from the social realism of artists like David Burliuk or Ben Shahn to the European-styled modernism of Max Weber, Archipenko, Lipchitz, and Gorky; from the surrealism of Pavel Tchelitchew on to the hard-edged modernism of Bolotowsky and Louise Nevelson. The culminating note of the exhibition is the group of five paintings by Mark Rothko, beginning with a figurative work of the 1930s (signed with his original name, "Rothkowitz") and continuing on to two of his classic color-field paintings of the 50s. That alone would merit the price of admission (although of course if you've signed up and joined The Gallery you have unlimited admission), but beyond Rothko, there are fascinating glimpses of the closely-knit Russian artist community in New York (note the portraits by and of Burliuk, Soyer, Nina Schick, and Nicholas Roerich), or of the broader development of minimalism and of color-field painting (two large color-field canvases by Jules Olitsky hang near those by Rothko).

American Artists from Russia will also be the featured exhibition at our next Culture and Cocktails on October 29th. For details about a special tour of the exhibition in the hour before Culture and Cocktails begins, see our webpage.

Calder in Context

2009-10-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

Coming up this Saturday, October 10th, at 2 PM...
Calder in Context: A Multisensory Exhibition Walkthrough
Join a curator, an actor, and a jazz saxophonist for an exhibition walkthrough of Calder Jewelry. Participants will learn about the influence Calder had on contemporary jewelry designers and discover how poetry and jazz influenced his own work. Listen to excerpts from Calder’s diary, hear live jazz from the 1940s and 1950s, and see one-of-a-kind, handmade jewelry from one of the twentieth century’s most important artists.
The program is free for those who have paid Museum admission, and of course, those who join The Gallery get unlimited Museum admission for two adults as part of their membership benefits.

Touched by Art

2009-10-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

It only makes sense for me to share a follow up post to the recent "Please Don't Lick the Art" issue with this gem from the ONION. Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons to Touch Paintings has now been crowned my top favorite Onion article of all time (well, it's probably a three-way tie). Museum humor? Maybe. Worth sharing? Most definitely.

Museum officials confirmed that many new visitors have given donations to the museum to get special member benefits, such as being allowed to remove works of art from the walls and sit down with them while enjoying food or drinks in the café. {Excerpt from the ONION}

Okay, we're all down with the rules: no food or drink in the galleries, don't touch the art, no umbrellas, no sharp sticks, check your bag, no photos, no video, no pens...Perhaps it's time to consider the things we CAN do in a Museum. Ponder. Discuss. Hum. Sketch. Hold hands. Meditate. Study. Learn. Create. Listen. Make art. Meet people. Laugh. Discover. Think...

-Sarah Beckman, Associate Director of Development at The San Diego Museum of Art

Art Bite: Museum Day

2009-09-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day is this Saturday, September 26th. And no, you don’t have to travel to Washington D.C. to take part. San Diego has plenty to offer, with more than 10 affiliate organizations. All you have to do is click HERE to receive your free Museum Day Admission Card.

When presented, this card provides you with FREE admission to any of the following: San Diego Air & Space Museum, Mingei International Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego Natural History Museum, Museum of San Diego History, Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, San Diego Chinese Historical Museum, Birch Aquarium, Quail Botanical Gardens, Museum of Making Music, San Diego Archaeological Center, California Cener for the Arts Escondido Museum and the Oceanside Museum of Art.

With the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., being free year ‘round, this offers you a taste of what it would be like if a grand endowment fell from the sky to support San Diego’s many museums being free. While The San Diego Museum of Art is not part of this program, this is a perfect opportunity to see what other museums in San Diego are up to. Enjoy!

- Keith York, Co-chair of The Gallery

Fantasia: A blending of visual art and music in 1940 and 2009

2009-09-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

My initial recollection of Fantasia involves Mickey Mouse panicking amid an army of brooms that are inducing an artificial flood, until the Mouse’s master casts a spell to quell the impending catastrophe. Walt Disney’s 1940 feature film actually involves quite a bit more than Mickey Mouse, who only appears on screen for about 9 minutes. The movie contains a soundtrack that includes the likes of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Beethoven, just to name a few. It is fitting then that our upcoming season of Art of Èlan is entitled Fantasia.

What the heck is Art of Èlan? This is our program of classical chamber music, programmed by Kate Hatmaker and Demarre McGill, the artistic directors of A of È. Each season, Kate and Demarre go around the Museum, scour the galleries, look through the permanent collection catalogue and find works of art that inspire a specific program of classical music. These concerts are perfect for either the seasoned or novice classical concert goer, as the music is always inspiring and each concert is held to just one hour long. And then there’s the setting- SDMA’s Hibben Gallery. With only 125 seats and some top-notch works of European painting on the walls, the Hibben Gallery is an intimate and beautiful space to watch a concert in. The musicians perform right in the middle of the room, so there is never a bad seat. Our first concert of the year will be next Tuesday, September 29th at 7p.m. and I encourage all of you to come to the Museum and witness how classical music can move you.

For more info call 619.696.1978 or email ajarman@sdmart.org

- Alexander Jarman, SDMA Public Programs Manager

After Abstraction, Then What?

2009-09-22T13:22:00.001-07:00

I can't resist this one. Have a look at Tyler Green's latest post. He notes how abstract art has become so much a part of the mainstream that it's even being used to decorate the new Cowboys Stadium. Al Roker is covering it on TV, and football fans in Dallas are happily tweeting and flickring about it.

Which, for me, begs the question: if abstraction is now the favored flavor of the American masses, what will the new cool be?

-John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art

The Gallery has Launched

2009-09-18T15:56:00.001-07:00

(L-R) Scott Dunklee, Keith York (Co-Chair),
Kimberly Primerano (Member Chair), Sam Dychter (Co-Chair)

I'm thrilled to share that The San Diego Museum of Art's newest group for adventures in art & culture is off the ground. Last Thursday, September 10, The Gallery Steering Committee welcomed a bevy of new bodies to the Museum for fine Spanish wine and tapas to celebrate two current exhibitions of modern masterpieces: Picasso, Miró, Calder and Calder Jewelry. The group was greeted by Deputy Director Katy McDonald, and guests toured the galleries with local curatorial celebs John Marciari and Julia Marciari-Alexander. Flamenco guitar and dance performances by Arte y Pureza highlighted the evening’s theme.

The event was generously underwritten by Steering Committee members Scott Dunklee, Sam Dychter, Keith York, and Kimberly Primerano. Other Gallery members in attendance included Alexis Julicher (Steering Committee Member), Tom Gildred (Trustee Liaison), Jill Larson (Trustee), Christine de Pagter, Brandon McCulley, Brenda Phillips, Jessica Hanson York, Patti Testerman, Elisabeth Dantcher, Antoinette Lipman, Sumi Barton, Grace Duvall, Loretta Schroeder and Mark Chavez, and Steffanie Dotson.

Guests ponied up to the membership bar and signed on for a year of exclusive benefits and great new art experiences offered by the Museum. Next up, Culture & Cocktails—this is art for all, people. Following C&C is November’s “Collecting 101” where Gallery members are treated to a private reception at a local art gallery. Are you ready? Sign up. Call Jennifer Gilderman at (619) 696-1918 or email thegallery@sdmart.org

- Sarah Beckman, Associate Director of Development, The San Diego Museum of Art

Art Bite: Double Header at L Street

2009-09-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

This weekend there is only one event to mark in indelible ink on your calendar. L Street Fine Art will host the third annual San Diego Art Prize Exhibition. This year’s show, Double Header, features the works of San Diego’s Richard Allen Morris and Tom Driscoll.

Richard Allen Morris: My Card, 2009, Acrylic on Canvas. 24" x 18"

Richard Allen Morris’ first solo show was back in 1959 after he served in the Korean War. Since that time his Abstract Expressionist framework has translated well from oil on canvas, to assemblage and collage, and portrays wit in such disparate themes as guns and portraits. You may have come across the show (and coffee table book) Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective, 1958-2005, an exhibition of 150 paintings made over the course of his fifty-year career organized by Museum Haus Lange and shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Richard’s work has been represented well by R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla.

Tom Driscoll : Amberjack, 2009. Cast epoxy resin, 5' x 21"x 6"

The work of local artist Tom Driscoll is rooted in San Diego’s history of gallery spaces like The Pawn Shop, 552 Gallery, Newmyer, Quint Gallery and Sumay Space. Driscoll grew up in this burgeoning art community and eventually garnered critical acclaim for his work. Best known for his cast cement and large-scale sculptures the artist is currently producing an intriguing series of cast epoxy – on view at Double Header.

Double Header is the final exhibition of the 2009 San Diego Art Prize season. The San Diego Art Prize is given annually to “established and emerging artists who have exhibited outstanding achievement in the field of visual arts.” This year’s show is sponsored by the San Diego Visual Art's Network, SanDiegoArtist.com and the Omni San Diego Hotel. The show kicks off Saturday, September 19th (and runs through November 20) with an opening reception slotted between the hours of 7-9 p.m. at 628 L Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

From Keith York, Co-Chair of The Gallery

More Picasso (and why not?)

2009-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

I've been asked a number of times whether the works by Picasso now on view in the Picasso, Miro, Calder exhibition constitute our complete holdings of Picasso's work. Simple answer: no. Although we've hung that gallery fairly densely, there are actually only 15 works by Picasso (and one by Francoise Gilot) in that room, leaving nearly 50 additional prints by Picasso still in storage.

So how did we choose? And why aren't they all always on view?

This presents the useful opportunity for clearing up one of the most frequent misconceptions about museum practice. One reads again and again how museums only have 5% or 10% of their total collection on view at any time. While every museum would like to have more gallery space, the numbers game is the wrong way to think about it. The Museum of Art, like most museums, has thousands of works on paper - prints, drawings, and photographs - and these simply cannot be on view all the time.

Returning to Picasso: we have his first major print, the Frugal Repast, on view in the exhibition. In 1913, this was issued as part of the so-called Suite des Saltimbanques, a group of 15 prints that Picasso had designed back in 1904-05. It's his first masterpiece, one of the iconic images of his early career.

The Museum has four other prints from that suite. We didn't include them all not only because we wanted to leave room for other works from across Picasso's career, but also because they didn't all stand up from the point of view of impression quality and condition. And this gets back to the other question, of why we don't leave works on paper on permanent view.

Here, for example, is the Head of a Woman in Profile, another of the prints from the Suite des Saltimbanques. Looking at it, I think that the first things you notice are 1. that the paper is darkened (i.e. burnt) and 2. that there are brown foxing spots. The condition becomes the focus, not the print. And in contrast to all those prints that we have in brilliant impressions, there seems little point to have included this in the display. It's great to have the print as part of the collection, but in an exhibition that is about showing off highlights, it just doesn't make the grade.

So what has happened to it? Why the burn? Why those spots? There is some debate as to what causes foxing, but the general consensus is that the spots are inherent defects in paper, which become more visible with exposure to air, humidity, etc. In fact, many of the impressions of this print (and of the entire suite) that come to the market have some foxing, although perhaps not to this extent. Ambrose Vollard, Picasso's dealer, chose bad paper, one that in time has shown its defects. (It was 1913 and wove paper was still relatively new, so let's not be too hard on him.) The darkening of the paper is more straightforward. It results from exposure to light at high levels or for a long time. Our print is still in the frame in which we received it, and turning it around, the "long exposure to light" comes clear. Each of those labels represents some exhibition to which it was lent (most of them, it should be noted, date to years before the print was given to the Museum). The Head of a Woman in Profile spent a lot of time in the light, and it suffered because of it. It's no surprise that the fragile paper has darkened. And this, you see, is why we don't leave this or any other print on permanent display. Multiply this case by a few thousand similar objects, and you understand why only 10% of the collection is on view at any time.

I want to end with another object not on view. The Salimbanques Suite was issued in an edition of 250. Afterwards, the copper plates were cancelled - scratched out - to prevent further impressions from being made. In addition to the scratches, this particular plate was inscribed "biffe" (scratched out, cancelled) and dated, 29 October 1913. Often, the publishers ran off a number of impressions after the cancellation, perhaps to reassure buyers that their prints really were from a limited edition. The cancelled-plate impressions, however, have eventually become collector's objects in their own right. That's a bit of a long and complicated story to tell in a wall label, and it would have distracted from the main thrust of Picasso, Miro, Calder. It's really something more for a general "History of the Print" exhibition. But after bringing up the Head of a Woman in Profile, I couldn't resist showing the cancelled-plate impression as well. Print-collecting curiosity aside, this impression hasn't been too often exhibited, so despite the scratches, it gives a much better sense of what the print is meant to look like.

-John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art

New Rules: "Please Don't Lick the Art"

2009-09-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Portrait of Catherine Coustard (1673-1728), Marquise of Castelnau, Wife of Charles-Léonor Aubry (1667-1735) with her Son Léonor (1695-1770)
Nicolas de Largillière c.1699

This really takes passion for the arts to a new level. Recently on rounds at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, museum guard Tim Piowtrowski discovered a young patron deeply enamored with a 17th-century portrait of the French aristocrat Catherine Coustard. The young gal was so taken by the rich blue gown that the guard actually had to say, "Please don't lick the art."

I've visited a number of museums myself, with two young boys in tow. Even at our own Museum I've made a mad dash to save a Matta Matta Clark installation from the happy feet of a 4 year old and we've been warned by the guards not to touch the Buddha. God how embarrassing! To this day, I can safely say my children have not gone so far as to lick the art. I can't say they haven't been tempted though...

To celebrate this lovely anecdote MIA has come out with T-shirts bearing this phrase, for $22.50. Ahhh capitalism.

From Sarah Beckman, mother of art-loving twins and Associate Director of Development at The San Diego Museum of Art.

Art Bite: Beyond the Border

2009-09-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

Just a quick bite this week...featuring 40 established and emerging contemporary artists, Beyond the Border International Contemporary Art Fair is a haute art pick for this holiday weekend. Hurry though...ends on Friday at 6 PM.

A Random Rembrandt Story

2009-09-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

A Quick Post from John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the Museum.

In preparation for our upcoming exhibition From Rembrandt's Studio: The Prints of Ferdinand Bol, I've been reading Catherine Scallen's Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship. One amusing thing mentioned in the Introduction: in 1851, Delacroix wrote in his diary that "someday, perhaps, Rembrandt would be seen as the equal of Raphael." This is a pretty good lesson in how radically tastes change: 150 years later, it would be hard to find many people who would rather see a Raphael than a Rembrandt.

Museumgoer

2009-08-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Image via 20X200-more on this later!

I am a museumgoer. And yes, that is an actual word: Museumgoer. All mashed into in one and defined as one who goes to museums. While a number of people I know are “museumgoers,” a hearty number of them do not venture into museums in their own city. It seems we reserve our cultural adventures for vacations. Sigh.

Insert true confession: Not only am I a museumgoer, I am a museum professional.

I grew up visiting museums and galleries. The famed contemporary art leader The Walker, is still one of my favorite destinations and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is an incredible source of inspiration. Who does not love The Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, The Met, the Louvre? I make it a point to plan my travel experiences around cultural destinations and great food. Why don’t we do that at home? It’s an easy sell to get your friends gathered at new restaurant, but why is it such a tough pitch in San Diego to meet for a gallery opening or to see a new exhibition?

I challenge you to look at our fine city in a new way. Consider visiting The San Diego Museum of Art (this is YOUR Museum) for a view of incredible works of art. You might be surprised at the collection’s diversity, at how frequently objects are rotated, and that so many incredible exhibitions presented at the Museum are exclusive West Coast venues (take that L.A.!). Don’t stop there either—try on these other fine gems in Balboa Park—the Timken (FREE all the time!), MoPA (photography), and the Mingei (“art of the people”).

Please do not wait until you are asked to chaperone the third grade class field trip or until your mom begs to see Monet. Visit today. Your Museum is a place for conversation, for inquiry, for inspiration. While you may be asked to check your bag, you will not be shushed. Enjoy it, experience it, and support it.

Blogging on the role of museumgoer is museum professional Sarah Beckman, Associate Director of Development at The San Diego Museum of Art.

Art Bite: This Weekend

2009-08-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Image from Mod Swap

Saturday Night

Art of Photography Show at the Lyceum Theatre

Photographer Steven Churchill is on deck again. He has been organizing “The Art of Photography Show” annually since 2004. This year’s exhibition begins with the Opening Reception Gala on Saturday, August 29from 6-9. Be sure to attend the opening and nab your complimentary copy of the show’s 80-page catalog with a forward written by Charlotte Cotton, Curator and Head of the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). http://artofphotographyshow.com.

Sunday

Mod Swap in Little Italy

For those into post-war art and craft, the trio of collectors and sellers known as ObjectsUSA.com branch out of their normal online retail space and quarterly gallery shows to bring art, furniture and craft objects to the public – at a swap meet price. The open market “Mod Swap” returns for its sophomore outing on Sunday, August 30th from 10am to 1pm in the parking lot on the corner of Kettner and Kalmia (in Little Italy in front of Klassik and Jett). Bring an item to sell, or trade, or your wallet for “Eames Era” items up for grabs at low, low prices. www.objectsusa.com

Next Thursday

Beyond the Borders International Contemporary Art Fair at the Grand Del Mar

San Diego’s first BTB ICAF will feature over 500 works of ‘investment grade art’ by both established and emerging artists for 3 days beginning next Thursday. This new art fair is yet another sign of San Diego’s growing art scene and is worth taking a chance on.

http://www.beyondtheborder-art.com

Photography Matters at the San Diego Museum of Art

2009-08-26T17:35:00.001-07:00

In just 11 short days, our exhibition of Richard Avedon’s photographs, Portraits of Power, will be closing. It will be hard for me to say goodbye to those large format works exploring every part of the grey scale. Avedon gets his subjects to wear their hearts on their sleeves and I am definitely going to go for one last look at all the lines, creases, cracks, wrinkles, visible disappointments and palpable emotion expressed in his sitters’ faces before September 6. But I’m also going to make sure to view our other photography exhibition, Unerring Eye: Recent Gifts of Photography from Joseph and Elaine Monsen, which also closes on September 6. This show is in one of the most often overlooked spaces at the Museum-Gallery 6. On the first floor, behind the staircase, in between the restrooms and probably under your radar, Gallery 6 is devoted to displaying small exhibitions of photography from the permanent collection and local collections. Unerring Eye features work by Kenro Izu, Anne Hamilton, Joe Deal and other important modern and contemporary photographers.

Which brings me to one of my favorite contemporary photographers-Jason Evans. Usually a day does not pass by without me checking out The Daily Nice, Evans’ project that exists only in the non-space of the Internet at www.thedailynice.com. Evans loads a single photograph onto the website each day. None of the photographs are ever archived and exist for a mere 24-hour period before they are replaced by the successive image. Each post is a snapshot, an entry in Evans’ visual diary, rather than a ‘finished’ photograph. Make the site your homepage and bring a new photo into your life every day. Better yet, while you’re staring at Jason’s work, be reminded of photography at the San Diego Museum of Art. Be reminded that you have a space locally where important photography is always on view.

Portraiture and Great Art?

2009-08-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

A post from John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art:

My post last week offered a few thoughts about the magic of the Giorgione portrait here in San Diego. On the heels of writing that, however, I read an article by Michael Archer that argued that Portrait art has never been more pointless. Archer's article is mainly about portraiture in contemporary art, but his view is so limited - if I were less diplomatic I might call it 'half baked and wholly objectionable' - that I can't help but return to the subject. One need only glance at the Giorgione or at the Marquis de Sofraga by Goya, another painting in San Diego that could hang in any museum anywhere in the world, to realize that there is a lot more to portraiture than Archer realizes with his interest in mere likeness and with "the figure in history."

Need one really know anything about Sofraga to be mesmerized by this picture?

Similarly, while knowledge of the back story of a figure's role in history can add to our appreciation of a photographic portrait by, say, Richard Avedon, is that knowledge really necessary to appreciate that work as great art? Our Avedon exhibition closes soon, on September 6th, but there is still time to have another look and to think not only about Avedon, but also about what makes great portraiture more generally.

Art Bite: Social Climbing and Three Decades of Contemporary Art

2009-08-20T16:45:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Art Bite. Members of The Gallery and staff at The San Diego Museum of Art are dedicated to sharing with you select art happenings in the region. Curated by an eclectic mix of staff, artists and culture zealots, Art Bite provides you a fresh pick of the week.

Intros aside, let’s get to the juicy bits. There are two shows of contemporary art in San Diego County that deserve your attention right now: Social Climbing/Part I: on the Move, at Seminal Projects in Little Italy, and Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. Both exhibitions offer a wide range of media, concept and vision. Social Climbing features (mainly) emerging artists and Three Decades of Contemporary Art serves as a retrospective of established artists exhibited at Quint Contemporary Art in La Jolla.

ALDO GUERRA

Army of One (1984)

2009

Digital C-print

24 x 29 inches

Edition 1 of 3

ALEXANDER JARMAN
Untitled 4
2009
Collage
29 x 25 inches, framed

ALLISON WIESE
Every Man a King But No One Wears a Crow
2007
High intensity sheeting on aluminum
84 x 36 inches

Social Climbing demonstrates the breadth of media currently utilized in visual art, from new media interactives to sculptures made from materials like masking tape, filing cabinets and cardboard. Luis de Jesus, owner of Seminal Projects, has borrowed a page from Paula Cooper, who is known for rearranging the art on view in her NYC gallery during the run of an exhibition. Similarly, de Jesus will be switching around the art in Social Climbing on any given day.

SOCIAL CLIMBING / PART I: ON THE MOVE
Luis de Jesus SEMINAL PROJECTS
August 8 - September 26, 2009

Gary Lang, Future Circles
1998, acrylic on canvas, unique, 113" diameter
Collection of Michael Krichman and Carmen Cuenca © Gary Lang
Photo courtesy of Quint Contemporary Art

Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art provides a special opportunity to view outstanding examples of painting from private collections and museums from our region. Showcasing regional, national and international artists like Roman de Salvo, Jean Lowe, Mel Bochner, Ryan McGinness and Gary Lang, this is a rich survey of the work that gallery owner Mark Quint has cultivated for more than 30 years.

Ryan McGinness, The True Knowledge of Things, 2007.
acrylic on canvas, unique, 96&quotx96" Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
© Ryan McGinness Studios, Inc.
Photo courtesy of Quint Contemporary Art

QUINT: Three Decades of Contemporary Art
California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum
August 15 – December 31, 2009

Avedon's Foray into Film

2009-08-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

By Alexander Jarman, SDMA Manager of Public Programs

Richard Avedon made a long, important and successful career out of capturing fame through the medium of photography. The Museum’s current exhibition of Avedon’s work, Portraits of Power, presents this prolific career of chronicling important leaders, activists and politicians. The show is interesting in part because it explores images the artist was passionate about, but not as well known for- Avedon’s popularity was fueled by his work in fashion photography.

The artist’s own life and work was turned into celebrity through the 1957 release of Funny Face, a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Funny Face was both a Broadway play in 1927 and a film in 1957, but that is where most of the similarity ends. The two productions were radically different in terms of plot, though Fred Astaire did play the lead in both versions. His character for the film, Dick Avery, was based on-as you might have guessed by now- Richard Avedon. Paramount Pictures hired Avedon as a consultant for the film and he actually produced some of its still photography, including the now iconic image of Audrey Hepburn in the darkroom.

This Thursday, August 20^th, the Museum will be screening Funny Face in its upstairs galleries. I invite you all to come to the Museum, view our Portraits of Power exhibition and see a classic film on fashion photography.

Thursday, August 20

Film Screening: Funny Face

7:00 p.m.

Hibben Gallery

Free after Museum Admission

Giorgione, etc.

2009-08-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

Another post from John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the Museum:

One of my favorite art blogs is Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes, and not merely because he said some nice things about SDMA a few months back. The blog's title is actually a bit of a misnomer because Green covers a lot more than the world of Modern Art. This morning, for example, he's written the first installment of what will be a series of posts discussing this mysterious maybe-by-Giorgione (or maybe-by-Titian, or maybe-started-by-Giorgione-and-maybe-finished-by-Titian) Portrait of a Man at the National Gallery of Art. I've never been satisfied with the whole Giorgione-Titian collaborative idea, so I'm happy to hear that it is apparently being reconsidered. I'm even more delighted that Tyler Green thinks that his readers will care about a connoisseurial problem like this.

The discussion of the NGA portrait is as good an excuse as any, though, to draw attention once again to the Portrait of a Man in San Diego. This isn't a large painting, and it hasn't always had the popular appeal of, say, the Sanchez-Cotan still life hanging in the next room, but to me, this subtle picture is without question the principal masterpiece in San Diego. Painted probably in 1506, it marks a watershed in the history of Italian portraiture. It shows exactly what the great writer Vasari meant when he identified Giorgione as the first "modern" painter: out with the old, hard linear style of Bellini and others, and in with the "living and natural." A few months ago, when leading some patrons through the gallery, I called the painting

San Diego's Mona Lisa

a label that I think does it justice. Everything that people have always thought special about the Mona Lisa - the enigmatic expression, the subtle modelling of forms, the sense of real air and atmosphere - is here too. Like all great portraits, the picture does far more than just record someone's appearance (which is just as well, because we don't know who the sitter is). Instead, despite its simplicity, the painting has real life: the more we look, the more the picture engages us, and the more it thus comes alive. Finally, Giorgione died young, and portraits by him for which there is no question about the attribution are as rare as hen's teeth. This is a painting that could hang in any museum anywhere in the world, but here it is in San Diego.

Picasso Miró Calder: What, Why, and How?

2009-08-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

SDMA's newest exhibition—Picasso Miró Calder—opens this weekend. Here’s the inside story, from John Marciari, Curator of European Art at the Museum, who is responsible for the show…

What? A three-room exhibition, with a room devoted to the work of each artist, and with a few key objects by their Parisian contemporaries thrown in. We’ve set out a broad range of works including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and ceramics. A few things will be familiar, but most will be new to our audience, either because they are recent gifts (including a major Picasso painting, Seated Woman, a promised gift which you'll have to come see in person!), loans from private collections, or works on paper that do not stay on view because they’re so sensitive to light.

In short, the exhibition offers the great opportunity to see a big group of works by these major artists. When the show closes in December, most will go back into dark storage or back to their owners.

Why? The idea started when we signed on to get the Calder Jewelry exhibition. The jewelry is fascinating, and the show is great on its own, but we also thought that many people would wonder how it connected up with Calder’s better known work such as the large Spinal Column sculpture that we’ve just reinstalled on the front steps, or the Beastly Beestinger mobile that is in the new exhibition. So we started with the idea of a complementary Calder exhibition to put the jewelry in context. We then expanded the idea to include Miró, partly because the Calder, Miró exhibition held at The Phillips Collection a few years back was so enlightening. Then, right around the time that planning began, we received a few major gifts: a Miró painting, a late Picasso drawing, and the Picasso painting mentioned above. Given the overlapping stories of Picasso, Miró, and Calder in Paris in the first half of the 20th century, it seemed natural to expand the show to include all three.

How? There is a lot in the show, roughly 40 works by the three artists and a few by their contemporaries, but this is still merely a selection from our broader holdings. We began by picking the most important works from our permanent collection and then by talking to some of our trustees and supporters, who offered a few key loans. The selection then evolved so that the show would tell some stories. Picasso, for example, returned throughout his career to the theme of the artist and his models/muses/lovers (the most important women in his life tended to be all three). The Seated Woman, for example, is a portrait of Françoise Gilot, who had given birth to Paloma Picasso only a few months earlier. Building on this, I was inclined to include a few extra prints that developed that artist-muse theme, which is also the subject of one of our Picasso drawings; there is also a self-portrait drawing by Gilot hanging nearby. This, however, is just one of several overlapping narratives. Rather than give everything away here, though, I’ll leave the works to tell their own stories. Come visit.

Get to Know The Gallery

2009-08-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

The San Diego Museum of Art is thrilled to present The Gallery-the Museum's new group for adventures in art and culture. Members of The Gallery enjoy an insider’s view of the Museum’s collection and area art happenings.

Through compelling social, educational and philanthropic events, The Gallery provides young art enthusiasts direct access to curators, collectors and artists. Engaged in local, national, and international art affairs The Gallery is a dynamic cultural community investing in the future of The San Diego Museum of Art.

For more information on the upcoming Gallery Launch Party on September 10, please contact: jgilderman@sdmart.org