Art, Money and Power - NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/arts/design/11kimm.html?adxnnl=1&8hpib=&ad
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May 11, 2005

Art, Money and Power
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

We had "Sensation" at the Brooklyn Museum, a gift to Charles Saatchi, whose
collection it advertised, and shows at the Whitney of artists (Robert
Rauschenberg and Agnes Martin come to mind) virtually packaged by the
gallery that represents them. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been
renting its Monets to a casino in Las Vegas, while the Guggenheim, which
gave us the atrocious "Armani," an even more egregious paid advertisement,
is spending resources shopping itself around the globe while canceling shows
here at home.

Every year, in one way or another, museums test the public's faith in their
integrity. When P.S. 1 unveiled "Greater New York" some weeks back, the
exhibition turned out to be a shallow affair in thrall to the booming art
market. No one really should have expected otherwise from an event timed to
coincide with the city's big contemporary-art fair. Meanwhile, P.S. 1's
institutional parent, the Museum of Modern Art, the spanking new
headquarters of Modernism Inc., inaugurated its exhibition program with an
appalling paean to a corporate sponsor's blue-chip collection. This gave the
financial services company, UBS, an excuse to plaster the city with
advertisements that made MoMA seem like its tool and minor subsidiary. You
can only imagine how that went over with another of the Modern's sponsors,
J. P. Morgan, UBS's rival.

Now comes the Met with its current Chanel-sponsored Chanel show, a fawning
trifle that resembles a fancy showroom. Sparsely outfitted with white cube
display boxes and a bare minimum of meaningful text, this absurdly
uncritical exhibition puts Coco's designs alongside work by the current
monarch of the House of Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld.

A few years ago, a Chanel show was put off by the Met's director, Philippe
de Montebello, because Mr. Lagerfeld wanted to interfere. It makes no
difference whether he had a direct hand in it this time or, as the museum
keeps insisting, was kept at arm's length from the curatorial process: the
impression is the same, and impressions count when it comes to the
reputation of a museum.

Museums deal in two kinds of currency, after all: the quality of their
collections and public trust. Squander one, and the other suffers. People
visit MoMA or the Met to see great art; they will even consider art that
they don't know or don't like as great because the museum says so. But this
delicate cultural ecosystem depends on the public's perception that museums
make independent judgments - that they're not just shilling for trustees or
politicians or sponsors.

Naturally, the public wonders whose pockets are greased by what a museum
shows, because there's so much money involved in art. But this question can
be subordinated if the museum proves that it's acting in the public's
interest, and not someone else's. In turn, museums can call on the public.
The New York Public Library is auctioning some American art, including a
couple of Gilbert Stuarts and an Asher B. Durand that has been a civic
landmark for many decades. Some New York museum ought to end up with the
picture but will have to rally public enthusiasm swiftly - it will have to
bank on public trust.

Of course, this is the real world. Museums need trustees to cover the bills.
They depend on galleries and collectors and sponsors and artists for help.
Last year, the Modigliani retrospective at the Jewish Museum had a
ridiculous painting that turned out to belong to a trustee who insisted it
be included. No exhibition of a living artist avoids some negotiation (read:
compromise) with the artist or the artist's dealer. The artist or the dealer
may demand that this picture, not that one, be shown; that new work be
stressed; that a certain collector's holdings be favored; or that the show's
catalog be written in a certain way. It's the cost of doing business.

But there are degrees of compromise. Some years back, the National Gallery
in Washington presented a show of the collection put together by a Swiss
industrialist, Emil Buhrle, with a catalog overseen by his heirs that
celebrated his "inner flame" for art but made no mention of the fact that
his fortune came partly from dealing arms to the Nazis, or that his son, who
owned many of the works, was convicted of illegal arms sales. Only the most
scrupulous reader of the fine print would have noticed that a Renoir once
belonged to Hermann Goring.

The show was about Buhrle, so the public could expect to learn who he was.
The Chanel show avoids mentioning her activities during the war, when she
maintained a life in Paris as the lover of an SS officer and, according to
her biographer, Janet Wallach, tried to exploit Nazi laws to wrest control
of her perfume business from her Jewish partners. No doubt, the Buhrle show
would never have happened if the National Gallery had emphasized how Buhrle
sold arms to the Nazis, and I suspect Chanel would not have been very happy
about sponsoring this show if the Met had been more forthcoming about its
founder's wartime history.

Is such information irrelevant to what's on view? It depends.

The public should decide. The Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery
in London makes clear that he was a murderer. His violent personality
explains something about his later work. It would have been irresponsible
for the exhibition not to mention it.

Trust us, museums say: the rules need to bend, and we know how much bending
is enough and how much is too much. In a curious way, commercial galleries
are in a better position. We see where they're coming from. Frank Lloyd
Wright had a saying. At an early age he made a choice between "honest
arrogance and hypocritical humility." He picked arrogance. Galleries are
honest about wanting to sell you something. Museums often traffic in moral
hypocrisy - and are then exploited for their presumptive lofty independence.
Chanel couldn't have bought better publicity.

As for the Met, it says something that it would allow itself to play this
role, just as it says something about the Modern that its first big
exhibition seemed like a corporate payoff.

At least MoMA gets something. The museum will get art from UBS. Mr. Saatchi
made millions recently selling Damien Hirst's shark, whose value was
enhanced by the notoriety of "Sensation." All Brooklyn got was grief.


–
Lee Wells
Brooklyn, NY 11222

http://www.leewells.org
917 723 2524