Taking Stock: the Modern Museum in America.
At this halfway point it is worth reflecting on a central
problem that besets the museum in America today. How the democratic ethos in the
U.S.A., the notion of “egalitarian democracy,” is squared with the fact that most
of these art treasures are in the museum due to choices made by very wealthy
individuals of the Old World upper-class who lived a life of aesthetic luxury,
completely alien to those who worked as democratic citizens in the new America.”[1]
Despite the nature of the democratic political system and the museum’s mission
to make art accessible to all, these institutions preserve elite values, or
objects that have clear associations with an elite culture. The task of any
museum director is to widen access to the public whilist teaching them how to
look at and appreciate very expensive art, but this involves the difficult task of reconciling democratic art education with the elitist
origins of these works. There is also the problem of teaching the public how to
look at art which involves attempts to popularize discernment in looking, i.e. connoisseurship
through the museum and technology. It is obviously harder to avoid intimations
of connoisseurship in spaces like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the
Frick Collection, where under populated galleries inspire almost private contemplation
of the work of art in highly elegant surroundings once inhabited by the likes
of Berenson and co. As Phillipe de Montebello observes, the Frick is “a
relatively small space with a disproportionate amount of consummate
masterpieces.” [2]
However, in the larger museums like the
Met and as we shall see, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), connoisseurship is
more difficult to incorporate within the mission of the museum, assuming that
it figures there at all.
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| Atrium Expansion, CMA |
Teaching the public how to look features low down on a list
of priorities, of which more pressing are how to enlarge visitor numbers, not
only as a source of revenue but also as a marker of how museums are fulfilling
their role of making elitist culture available to the masses. This is what drives
the mammoth re-building programmes and architectural schemes that seem to be de
rigeur for museums nowadays. As museums do not know effectively how to expand
their audiences for visual art, they build pleasant public spaces, formulate
projects involving major curatorial re-positionings, setting out the chessboard
afresh. Those who watch and understand these games whisper nostalgically about
an era when large museum restaurants, cafeterias and blockbuster exhibitions
did not exist.[3] That era is long over and there is no
possibility of returning to it as American museums like Cleveland complete huge
refurbishment projects, almost physical affirmations of the paradigm shift that
has occurred in the public museum. Museums in America, and indeed throughout
the world, for better or worse, are under immense pressure to change with the
times. The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the many stories told of how
museums have responded to the pressures of modern times, initially by resisting
the encroaching industrial world with uncompromising conservative directors
like Sherman Lee, and later by adapting to the new climate of public
accountability and financial pressure that cultural organizations find
themselves in these days.
The Sherman E. Lee Era.
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|
Poussin, Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on
canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1981.
|
The CMA was established in 1913 and opened its doors to the public in 1916. Its most famous director is Sherman E. Lee (1918-2008,
dir, 1958-1983) who guided the museum through a quarter of a century of its
development.[4] An
expert in Asian art, and a connoisseur with a strong aesthetic sense, Lee was a
conscientious scholar who produced many books, unusual for a museum director in
those days, let alone now.[5]
Lee
inherited an enviable situation in 1958 since the iron-ore magnate and
philanthropist Leonard C. Hanna had left $30 million (about $250 m today) to
the museum. Lee used this capital to pursue old masters and to build an
outstanding Asian collection. He bought works by Zurbaran and El Greco as well
as J.L. David’s Cupid and Psyche, F.
E. Church’s Twilight in the Wilderness and Poussin’s canonical
masterpiece, the Holy
Family on the Steps in 1981, originally owned by Therese Bertin-Mourot,
the niece of Paul Jamot, a curator at the Louvre. However, Blunt cast
doubts on its authenticity whilst Lee was “100% convinced” that it was
an original. Blunt’s opinion carried weight with the French, and Pierre
Rosenberg, then director of the Louvre, told Lee that it wasn’t original. To cut
a
long story short, the painting came to the States which got Lee in trouble
because three years after he brought the Poussin to America, the French
government issued an international arrest warrant accusing him of obtaining the
painting without an export license. Subsequently the French were mollified when
CMA agreed to lend the painting to the Louvre on future request. During a long
and illustrious career Lee was no stranger to controversy. Apart from the Poussin
affair, there was the purchase of a “Grunewald” for $20 million which
turned out to date from the 1970s, though the museum got its money back. Perhaps
the most provocative incident was Lee’s decision to remount a damaged statue of
Rodin’s Thinker
after it had been disfigured by a bomb in 1970, a presumed act against the
Vietnam War, and subsequently a symbol of art’s vulnerability. Though an ardent
exponent of art education, Lee was unwilling to bow to prevailing fashion as he
saw the CMA as a bastion of high culture, less of a place of entertainment and definitely
a “blockbuster” free zone. This resulted in one critic calling Lee’s museum
“the only really aristocratic museum in America. “ This patrician attitude could
not prevail today because museums have to be commercially viable, attract the
public, and they cannot simply be “a place for looking at works of art” much to
the chagrin of art historians, aesthetes and connoisseurs who believe that is precisely what museums are
for!”[6]
 |
| Auguste
Rodin, the Thinker, 1880-81, Bronze, green patina; 182.9 x 98.4 x 142.2 cm.
Gift of Ralph King 1917 |
Brief Analysis of European Painting within the CMA.
For this brief survey I have kept to the museum’s
organization of European painting which falls into four main areas: “European
Painting and Sculpture 1500-1800”; “Modern European Painting and Sculpture”;
“American Painting and Sculpture”; and “Contemporary Art.” Rather than attempt
coverage I have chosen what I consider to be high quality works as well as a
few average ones for balance. For the first group, the Italian renaissance is
not well represented; among the best here are panels by Florentines like FraFillippo Lippi. For the Northern renaissance, there are beautiful works by Jean de Beaumetz and Jan Gossaert amongst
others.
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| Caravaggio,
Crucifixion of St Andrew, 1606-7, oil on canvas, 202.5 x 152.7 cm, Leonard C.
Hanna, Jr. Fund 1976 |
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|
Zurbaran, Christ and the Virgin in the House of Nazareth,
1640, oil on canvas, 165 x 218.2, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1960.
|
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Georges de La Tour, St Peter Repentant, 1645,
oil on canvas, 114.0 x 95.00 cm, Gift of
the Hanna Fund 1951.
|
Things improve significantly when we arrive in the
mannerist and early baroque period as we encounter fine works by El Greco (Holy Family and Christ
on the Cross). Heading into the seventeenth- century we have stunning
examples of works by two diametrically opposed artists: Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St Andrew
and Poussin’s Holy Family on the Steps where, in the words of Richard
Verdi, “logic and reason themselves acquire the fascination of the unattainable.”[7]
The Northern Caravaggeschi are extremely well represented in this museum with impressive
works such as Honthorst’s Samson and Delilah, and
two versions of the Denial of St Peter by Wtewael and Georges De La Tour, a
superb example of his night-painting. To this realist group, we could add
Zurbaran’s sombre Christ
and the Virgin in the House of Nazareth which juxtaposes in an intriguing
way Sevillian realism with the flamboyance of the high baroque. There are
examples of French classical works hung near Poussin like La Hyre’s pastoral
mediation on the end of the Fronde, Justice and Peace and
Vouet’s Penitent
Magdalene, which seamlessly blends Caravaggio with French elegance . Neo-classical
paintings like J.L. David’s Cupid
and Pysche fall into the “Modern European Group” and from later periods
and styles we can add such diverse works as Berthe Morisot’s Reading, Picasso’s La Vie,(the endpoint of
modern art in Lee’s time) and Salvador Dali’s enigmatic The Dream. From copious
holdings of American art including 488 paintings, two of the best selections
are Church’s fusion of weather and politics, Twilight in the Wilderness,
and from the gritty realist school, George Bellow’s pugilistic Stag at Sharkey’s
which observes “lumpen Darwinism” in modernist America.[8]
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Frederick Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness,
1860s, oil on canvas, 101. 6 x 162.6 cm, Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund.
|
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George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey, 1909, oil on
canvas, 92 x 122.6 cm, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection.
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Consolidation and Change: Moving into the Future.
Slides
1) View of the Cleveland Museum of Art from Euclid Avenue.
2) Photograph of Sheridan E. Lee, director, 1958-83.
3) Northern entrance, showing the 1971 Marcel Breuer expansion.
4) Auguste Rodin, the Thinker, 1880-81, Bronze, green patina; 182.9 x 98.4 x 142.2 cm. Gift of Ralph King 1917.
5) Giovanni Ambrogio di Predis, Angel, Portrait of a Youth as Saint Sebastian, oil on wood, transferred to pressed wood, 30.50 x 24. cm, John L. Severance Fund 1986.
6) Fra Fillippo Lippi, , St Michael, 1456-58, Tempera on wood, 81 x 30 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1964.
7) Jean de Beaumetz, Calvary with a Praying Carthusian Monk, 1390-85, Tempera on wood, 56 x 45,6 cm, oil on oak panel, 56.6 x 45.7 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1964.454
8) Jan Gossaert (Mabuse), Virgin and Child in a Landscape, 1531, Oil on oak panel, 50 x 38 cm, John L. Severance Fund 1972.47
9) Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St Andrew, 1606-7, oil on canvas, 202.5 x 152.7 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1976.2
10) Gerrit von Honthorst, Samson and Delilah, 1620, oil on canvas, 129 x 94 cm, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1968.
11) Hendrick Terbrugghen, St Jerome, oil on canvas, 125.5 x 102 cm, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1977.
12) Georges de La Tour, St Peter Repentant, 1645, oil on canvas, 114.0 x 95.00 cm, Gift of the Hanna Fund 1951.
13) Poussin, Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73.3 x 105.8 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1981.
14) Laurent de La Hyre, Justice and Peace Embracing in a Landscape, oil on canvas, 54.9 x 76.2 cm, John L. Severance Fund 1971.
15) Simon Vouet, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1630, Oil on canvas, 131 x 104 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1988.
16) Zurbaran, Christ and the Virgin in the House of Nazareth, 1640, oil on canvas, 165 x 218.2, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1960.
17) El Greco, Holy Family with Mary Magdalene, 1590-95, oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm, Gift of the Friends of The Cleveland Museum of Art in memory of J. H. Wade 1926.
18) Jean Baptise Oudry, A Hare and a Leg of Lamb, 1742, oil on canvas, 98.2 x 73.5 cm, John L. Severance Fund 1969.53
19) J L David, Cupid and Pysche, 1817, oil on canvas, 184.2 x 241.6 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1962.
20) View of neo-classical galleries.
21) Gustave Courbet, Portrait of Portrait of Laure Borreau, 1863, Oil on canvas, 81 x 59 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1962.
22) Berthe Morisot, Reading, 1873, oil on fabric, 46 x 71.8 cm, Gift of the Hanna Fund 1950.
23) Claude Monet, The Red Kerchief, 1869-71, Oil on canvas, 99 x 80 cm, Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.
24) Pablo Picasso, La Vie, (Life), Oil on canvas; 197 x 129 cm, Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.
25) Salvador Dali, The Dream, 1931, 96.0 x 96.0 cm, John L. Severance Fund 2001.
26) Frederick Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860s, oil on canvas, 101. 6 x 162.6 cm, Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund.
27) George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey, 1909, oil on canvas, 92 x 122.6 cm, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection.
28) R.J. Kitaj, The Garden, 1981, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 121.9 cm, Gift of The Eppler Family Foundation, an Anonymous Donor, The Kangesser Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Porter, in memory of William M. Milliken, The Thomas and Mildred Doughtery Foundation, and Wishing Well Fund 1981.
29) Lucien Freud, Portrait of Ib, oil on canvas, 50.7 x 40.6 cm, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1979.15
30) Andy Warhol, Marilyn x 100,19 62, screenprint ink and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 205.7 x 567.7 cm, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, and Anonymous Gift 1997.
[1]
See James N. Wood, “The Authorities of the American Art Museum” in Whose
Muse: Art Museums and the Public Trust, ed. James Cuno, Princeton
University Press, 1990, 103-127, 107.
[2] Whose
Muse, 184.
[3] On
the Cleveland situation see David Carrier, Museum Skepticism: History of the
Display of Art and Public Galleries, Duke University Press, 2006.
[5]
Carrier, Museum Skepticism, 197.
[6] Carrier,
Museum Skepticism, 199.
[7]
Verdi, Nicholas Poussin 1594-1665, RA, 2005, no. 60.
[8] On
Church and Bellow’s paintings, see Robert Hughes, American Visions,
157-166, 330-335.
[9]Franklin
has said that he resigned
to devote more time to research and scholarship. His statement can be found here.
The interim director of the museum is Fred
Bidwell, a collector and advertising executive, who leads the search for a
new director. The institution has had four
directors since 2000, including Lee's daughter, Katharine Lee Reid (2000-2005); Timothy Rub
(2006-2009); and Deborah Gribbon (2009-2010).
