Hanging out in Museums

I see the issue of Edmund Capon’s retirement from the Art Gallery of NSW is in the news again. Not that Edmund has said he is going to retire, but rather that at 69, the view is that it is probably going to be this year that he feels he has achieved enough. His language indicates this namely "We’re getting to that stage where I think the pace of evolution in the AGNSW needs a bit of a kick up the bottom and maybe, you know, I’m holding that up". The potential successors are already being rolled out from the art gallery director recycling file, including Michael Brand, ex-National Gallery of Australia and Art Gallery of Qld and more lately director of the Getty Museum, from which he resigned 4 years into his 5 year contract last month, Christopher Menz, who recently resigned from the Art Gallery of SA (see previous blog) , Tony Ellwood current director of the Art Gallery of Qld and Timothy Potts, ex director of the National Gallery of Victoria, and currently director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Whilst all worthy candidates it would be good to see a few new faces from the younger generation of art curators being considered.

Edmund’s reign at AGNSW has been a highly successful one, but it was interesting to read of the critics already circling, albeit anonymously. One frontrunner for the job who asked not to be named was quoted as saying "there’s not nearly enough space and there’s too much of an ad hoc approach in which the Gallery tried to be all things to all people". Others argue it is geared to the casual tourist rather than artists, scholars and residents.

I’m not sure I agree with either. Yes there is always the need for more space but by moving the paintings store off site and opening up the space as the new John Kaldor Galleries, there has been a significant increase in exhibition space. And in terms of popularity with residents, there is no doubt that AGNSW is the place to hang out. I was there of an evening last month when the Gallery was open and it was chock a block with an enthusiastic crowd doing everything from exhibition viewing, and eating at the cafe to just hanging out.

And hanging out is an increasingly critical part of why successful museums are successful. AGNSW is lucky with its location – not sure I would like to hang out in Sydney at the Powerhouse or the Australian Museum for example, but that is helped by the way that the main space encourages engagement. It is a welcoming space, unlike, for example the foyer at the National Gallery in Canberra, or the Art Gallery of SA.

Hanging out is part of the social phenomenon of new museum going. James Christen Steward, the new director of Princeton University Art Museum has articulated this well. He believes museums should be a space for everyone, even those without the intellectual curiosity to look at the collections. "We need spaces in which other forms of community engagement can happen, where it’s possible for people from every walk of life to come together to hash out what’s needed to have a satisfying life". Steward identifies the building lay out as critical to this, but has also initiated a series of moves to aid the social process including
- re wardrobing the attendants
- opening until 10pm on Thursday nights
- getting colleges within the university to stage social events in the galleries
- more frequently changing exhibitions

Yes, it is easier for an art museum to do this than a natural history or science/ design museum, but not exclusively. Both the Natural History Museum in London and the American Museum of Natural History in New York have been trail blazers in this aspect of creating a socially welcoming environment.

Museum Directors – changing of the guard

No sooner have I cited the eminent scholar, Christopher Menz, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia as an example of a scholar director, than he chooses not to renew his contract after 5 years at the helm. The reason Menz gives is that state funding is inadequate to run the Gallery at a professional level. John Mcdonald (the art journalist and formerly senior curator at the NGA) has picked this up and delivered a broadside at the general paucity of gallery funding in SMH today.

Whilst I am sure John has a good point, I am not buying into that discussion today. Of more interest are a couple of things:
1) The AGSA Chairman, Michael Abbott was clearly put out that Menz did not consult him before resigning and, reading between the lines, is not close to Menz. That may partly be because Menz directly criticizes the Premier, Mike Rann, for not recognising the need for more ongoing funding, and Abbott in his role as a QC is currently representing Rann in a defamation action against Channel 7. That is always going to be a problem for a state/national gallery if the director and chair are not in alignment. The excellent recently published book on the history of the National Gallery, London by Charles Saumarez Smith is a fascinating read about this very issue of director/trustee tension, particularly pertinent as Saumarez Smith resigned as director in 2008 as a result of clashes with his Trustees.
An example of where it works well is the Edmund Capon (director) and David Gonski (Chair) relationship at AGNSW.

2) In regards to his successor, there seems to be a current trend to recruit museum directors in our region from the UK. Just before Christmas Te Papa announced that their new director (after the tragic death last year of Seddon Bennington whilst hiking) is to be Michael Houlihan, Director General , National Museum of Wales. Almost at the same time the WA Museum announced that their new director is to be Alec Coles, Director of Tyne and Wear Museums in the UK. And I understand that the replacement for Craddock Morton at the National Museum is unlikely to be appointed until mid year and is likely to be from overseas.

Let me hasten to add I see nothing wrong with this. Some of our great directors have been from the same source, notably Edmund Capon (AGNSW) and Patrick Greene (Museum Victoria), and it is unlikely the Powerhouse Museum would ever have been built with out the forcefulness and personality of Lindsay Sharp ( who went onto the Royal Ontario Museum and the UK Science Museum).

Vale Thomas Hoving and the role of museum director

I see Thomas Hoving the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 to 1977 has died (SMH 29th December 2009). I still consider his book about those years at the Met (“Making the Mummies Dance”) to be the best yarn about life at the top of a great museum, particularly as it was written at a time when the Met was flush with money for acquisitions and also coining the term blockbuster exhibitions. It reads like a good detective novel as Hoving jets around Europe tracking down acquisitions and exhibitions with all the related intrigue.

Interestingly he indulged in a fair bit of deacquisitioning (see my previous blogs on this here and here) to fund these, no doubt in the days before the Met had a policy on such being largely at his personal whim. As the SMH Obituary points out he almost lost his job in the process, selling off important modern paintings to fund the purchase of a Velazquez painting.

It’s got me thinking about the role of directors of museums – should they be showmen or scholars? Hoving was a showman, as was largely his recently retired successor Philippe de Montebello. However his successor is an English scholar and sculpture specialist Thomas Campbell. Michael Brand, the Australian director of the Getty is in the same mould of scholar, now overseeing a 25% reduction in the Getty’s operations - not of his own making I hasten to add. Across the Atlantic, the new director of the National Gallery, Nicholas Penny is a scholar, who succeeded a more publicity conscious (if not actual showman) director Charles Saumarez Smith.

In Australia we see a slightly different type of director in the form of bureaucrat – for instance Dawn Casey at the Powerhouse Museum, Frank Howarth at the Australian Museum and Craddock Morton at the National Museum – all public servants in government departments in former lives. But we also have the showman in the form of the odd sock wearing Edmund Capon at the AGNSW (though he is an Asian scholar of some note), and the scholars with Christopher Menz at the Art Gallery of SA, and Stefano Carboni at the Art Gallery of WA.

Carboni incidentally just to take us back to where we started, came from the Met where he was curator of Islamic Art.

Showman or scholar (or bureaucrat)? Not sure what makes a great director, but probably a mix of all three. What is clear is that great museum/gallery directors are very few and far between.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or is it?

It’s intriguing how often I find I blog about an issue and then almost immediately come across something related to it. This time it is to do with my blog about how to look at pictures (posted September 28 2009) .

Now along comes the quarterly curatorial and conservation e-news from the English National Trust with an article on ‘the enduring eloquence of true beauty’. It has been written in response to the plea made by the new chairman of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins, to bring beauty back into the public debate, and to treat it as a serious issue in any discussion about preservation of art and nature. This touches on another issue I have blogged about namely the spirituality of historic places, and the way in which we must encourage their use by affinity groups who enjoy being there because of this. There is no doubt that historic houses can act as aesthetic reservoirs, providing a source of beauty that we can all tap into. The viewing of beauty, as we know if we think about it, can make us generally happier and more contented.

But what this article is all about is exploring how beauty works. Can we define it, and how much is it tempered by cultural perceptions? For instance the Italian and French formal gardens are seen as beautiful by their native citizens, whilst the English would merely see them as impressively formal, with the true beauty in horticulture lying in the ‘beauty without order’ of the rambling English garden.

And it lead me to think further about looking at pictures, and how much we value beauty in coming to decide if we like a picture or not. Name a truly beautiful picture, and to me a few Giverny Monets come to mind along with a Dutch still life or two. What does not come to mind is, for instance, a John Brack (one of which of an arid suburban landscape currently sits on my desk courtesy of the exhibition now showing at the Art Gallery of SA) .

So is beauty critical to enjoying a picture? Not at all in my view – it is just one of a number of elements that make an image worth the time to explore and understand it (now I am sounding like Kenneth Clark).