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martes, 28 de abril de 2009
MACBA: ejemplo de programación educativa, comunicación y actividades paralelas a exhibiciones
domingo, 26 de abril de 2009
NYT: subastas
Though Julian Schnabel will auction Picasso’s “Femme au Chapeau,” right, other collectors have used private transactions to sell artwork like Jeff Koons’s “Hanging Heart Violet,” left. More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown
During good times, an auction is the obvious choice for any collector wanting to sell a work of art. But as the recession takes its toll, many collectors have changed strategies and retreated to the more hidden, and potentially less lucrative, world of private sales.
For many sellers, the driving factor is fear. Fear that their friends will discover they need money. Fear that if a Picasso or Warhol, Monet or Modigliani does not sell at auction, it will be considered yesterday’s goods.
If they do not have to, fewer collectors are putting their holdings up for auction at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where prices and profits have plummeted. But executives at both houses say business in their private-sale departments has more than doubled in recent months.
Even institutions like the Museum of Modern Art are avoiding auctions. This season it has decided to sell two early classic 1960s paintings by Wayne Thiebaud through Haunch of Venison, a gallery owned by Christie’s. In 2005, when the market was nearing its peak, it sold a variety of works at auction at Christie’s for strong prices.
“There’s an element of uncertainty with an auction that in this climate makes it more prudent to sell privately,” said Ann Temkin, chief curator in the department of painting and sculpture at MoMA. (The Thiebauds were donated to the Modern with the express purpose of selling them to raise cash for future acquisitions.)
“The game has definitely shifted,” said Christopher Eykyn, a former head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s who is now a dealer in New York. “A lot of clients don’t want to be seen selling, so the private route is suddenly more attractive.”
Just six months ago Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art sale brought $223.8 million; its May 5 sale is expected to fetch only $81.5 million. Christie’s Impressionist and modern art auction in November totaled $146.7 million; its May 6 sale is estimated at only $94.9 million.
“Clients want it now,” said Marc Porter, president of Christie’s in America. “And that means cash in their pockets.” Why wait months for the regularly scheduled auctions when you can have instant money, even if it means forfeiting the possibility of sparking a bidding war at auction?
Another factor is that collectors, seeing prices fall, are for the most part hanging on to their art, waiting for the auction market to rebound.
So secret are private transactions that confidentiality agreements bind the dealers and auction-house executives. Still, the art world loves to talk, and in recent months among the expensive paintings that have quietly changed hands are a 1970s de Kooning abstract canvas sold for around $30 million; a Cy Twombly “Blackboard” painting for $12 million; one of Gerhard Richter’s “Color Charts” for $18 million; and Jeff Koons’s “Hanging Heart Violet” sculpture for $11 million.
There are exceptions, of course. Estates continue to go to auction because executors have a fiduciary responsibility and prices are rarely challenged after public sales.
For the auction houses, private sales are lucrative and inexpensive. Generally Sotheby’s and Christie’s charge 5 to 10 percent of the purchase price of an artwork, depending on its value and the agreement with the seller. (If a work goes to auction the houses charge sellers 25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million and 12 percent of the rest.) Money earned from private transactions comes cheap, without expenses like advertising, insurance and shipping associated with auctions.
The dismal sales in New York in November, when night after night paintings by Monet and Matisse, Bacon and Warhol went unsold, meant big losses for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which had a financial interest in most of this expensive art in the form of guarantees, undisclosed sums paid to sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome.
After the fall auctions, both houses immediately began changing the way they conduct business. In addition to announcing hundreds of layoffs, with perhaps more to come, they mostly halted the practice of guarantees and stopped giving consignors a cut in the fees they charge buyers. The days of publishing luscious catalogs have ended as well.
For their part, dealers say that their phones started ringing after Sept. 15, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. “It’s been pretty steady ever since,” said Steven P. Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. He said he had been getting inquiries about selling art from people who had investments with Bernard L. Madoff, or who had seen the value of their stock or real estate assets collapse.
Matthew Marks, another Chelsea dealer, has noticed that sellers “just aren’t into gambling anymore and auctions are no longer a sure thing.”
Gone are the new rich — the Russian oligarchs and oil-rich Middle Easterners, as well as the American hedge fund magnates — who in flush times were willing to pay any price. Gone too are the Europeans who were active when the weak dollar made their purchases seem cheap.
Today’s buyers tend to be older collectors who bowed out of the market when prices began escalating several years ago. These patrons have far more conservative tastes, preferring works by tried-and-true names like Alexander Calder or Robert Ryman rather than those by younger artists like Takashi Murakami or Damien Hirst who were snapped up by speculators and have now lost some 50 percent of their value.
What is selling, said Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and contemporary-art department, is “ the right artist and the right work.”
Tobias Meyer, head of Sotheby’s contemporary-art department worldwide, concurred: “If it’s blue chip, like a Richard Serra sculpture, then we have a list of people who want them.”
For the last six months, pricing has been tricky, a kind of tug of war between greedy sellers and bargain hunters. “Nobody knows where the market is right now,” Mr. Meyer said. “If it’s not something totally unique, the problem is figuring out what it’s worth when something comparable could come up at auction for 50 percent less.”
Indeed the sales next month include works that had been kicking around the private market at prices significantly higher than their estimates from the auction houses. Among them are a late Picasso canvas owned by Julian Schnabel at Christie’s, as well as a Giacometti cat sculpture owned by an undisclosed European collector and a Koons sculpture belonging to the hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, both for sale at Sotheby’s.
Dealers say that despite the increase in private sales, deals do not happen as briskly as they did in the days when collectors were on waiting lists for hot artists. “Everything is a negotiation,” Mr. Marks said.
Still, Mr. Marks is grateful for business. “I’m not asking sellers any questions,” he said. “I’m just happy the phone is ringing.”
NYT: exhibición de Prada
More than meets the eye: the Prada Transformer gallery in Seoul.Art Transplant | Prada on the Move
By Alison S. Cohn Courtesy Prada More than meets the eye: the Prada Transformer gallery in Seoul. 
Cranes rotate the Prada exhibit space.
The “Waist Down” exhibit inside Prada’s Transformer gallery.
The Prada Transformer, fashion’s latest starchitect-designed metamorphic space, opens in Seoul, South Korea, this month. Putting a new spin on the idea of ‘‘mobile art,’’ the Rem Koolhaas/AMO-designed structure will be flipped by cranes to reveal four different configurations. The Transformer’s programming, which runs through July — and which coincides with the Korean release of the second-generation Prada Phone — will showcase works from the Fondazione Prada, curated by Germano Celant, as well as Korean film and student design. But lest anyone forget who wears the pants in this operation, the series will open with ‘‘Waist Down,’’ a retrospective of Miuccia Prada’s skirts, and close with a show of her fall-winter 2009 collection.
Cranes rotate the Prada exhibit space. The “Waist Down” exhibit inside Prada’s Transformer gallery.jueves, 23 de abril de 2009
Murder most foul: British Museum unmasks who really killed Aztec leader
A rare turquoise mosaic mask from the Aztec exhibition at the British museum. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesMaev Kennedy
The Guardian, Wednesday 8 April 2009
The Aztec emperor Moctezuma was murdered by his Spanish captors, not by his own people, it will be argued in a new exhibition attempting to rescue a shadowy figure from the propaganda that portrayed him as a traitor.
- Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler
- British Museum,
- London
- WC1B 3DG
- Starts 24 September
- Until 24 January 2010
- Details:
020-7323 8181 - Venue website
The exhibition, at the British Museum, will challenge the traditional account of how the ninth and last great elected Aztec emperor met his end in 1520.
In 1519, a small Spanish army led by Hernando Cortés landed in the Aztec empire. They were initially received with friendship by Moctezuma, a renowned warrior who had ruled as emperor since 1502. The accepted version of events has the Spanish inside his capital, Tenochtitlan, by 1520 holding the emperor as a willing hostage. When he tried to quell a rebellion, the story goes he was stoned to death by his own people.
The truth, the British Museum will suggest, is that the hero who had received the Spanish with honour became a prisoner, and was murdered when he was no longer of use. The exhibition - giving the emperor's name as Moctezuma, closer to the original Aztec than the more familiar Montezuma - will display together for the first time two 16th-century manuscripts, one from Mexico and one owned by Glasgow University, which challenge the traditional account. Tiny figures among a wealth of detailed illustrations of the first encounters between Aztecs and Spaniards have only recently caught scholars' attention: both manuscripts, almost certainly by central American artists, show Moctezuma shackled or with a rope around his neck.
Almost all the written accounts are from decades later, serving one side or the other. Cortés did send dispatches - justifying his actions and stressing the treasure he would be sending - but the reports from a man regarded as a near-outlaw by the Spanish court are considered no more trustworthy than the later stories. Several Spanish accounts refer to Moctezuma as noble and dignified, and mourned by the Spanish. They promptly formed alliances with enemy neighbouring kingdoms resentful of having to pay lavish Aztec tributes.
Moctezuma's supposed death at the hands of a mob is portrayed in paintings from Madrid, inlaid with mother of pearl, included in the exhibition. One Spanish account even insists he refused medical help and food from his Spanish captors, who "spoke very kindly to him". However another account says Cortés killed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.
Moctezuma's reputation is still contentious in Mexico, according to the British Museum director, Neil MacGregor. There is no monument there to him, although there is one to his successor, his brother, who fought on - until he became one of the thousands who died of smallpox and other diseases brought by the invaders.
"What we are trying to do is look at an absolutely key moment in the history of the world through the filter of one man," MacGregor said. "There has never been an exhibition on this man, a great emperor of an extremely sophisticated empire."
The exhibition will bring together spectacular loans from Europe and Mexico, including objects recently excavated from remains of the Aztec city still emerging from under Mexico's modern capital.
Portents such as flaming comets preceded the Spanish, so some accounts suggest Moctezuma wondered if the promised return of the god Quetzalcoatl was imminent. All sides agree he met the invaders courteously, and gave beautiful objects in gold and silver which Cortés promptly melted down. The invaders were astonished by the sophistication of the Aztec capital with its palaces, temples, canals and artificial islands.
"Moctezuma is the last in our series on great rulers and their legacies, and presents perhaps one of the most fascinating examples of implosion of power and the clash of civilisations," MacGregor said.
There was a wealth of personal detail on China's First Emperor Qin, Hadrian the wall builder and the 16th-century Iranian ruler Shah Abbas. But Moctezuma's curator, Colin McEwan, admitted that personal details about Moctezuma are so scarce that one academic thought the exhibition would be impossible.
Modern tests on objects including a spectacular turquoise mask show that the gold, precious stones and feather decorations came from many different places, mapping the breadth of the Aztec empire. "We will raise many questions," McEwan said, "but we may not succeed in answering them all." The exhibition will mark the bicentenary of Mexico's declaration of independence from Spain in 1810, and the Mexican Revolution in 1910.
Dutch bank challenges JP Morgan, Rijksmuseum over masterpiece
THE HAGUE, April 22, 2009 (AFP) - Dutch bank ABN Amro squared up to US rival JP Morgan Chase and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum Wednesday over the rights to an artwork the museum bought from a man who used it as loan collateral, twice.
"We have instituted legal action against Mr (Louis) Reijtenbagh, who used the painting as collateral for a loan with us, but as we learnt through the media, also with JP Morgan," ABN Amro spokesman Jeroen van Maarschalkerweerd told AFP.
"We are asking the court to determine who has the first claim on the painting."
The district court in Amsterdam said the demand would be heard on Friday.
Entitled "The bend in the Herengracht", a famous canal in Amsterdam, the 17th century work by Dutch painter Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde was acquired by the Rijksmuseum from Reijtenbagh, a wealthy art collector, last September.
It is currently on loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for an exhibition ending on May 3.
The Rijksmuseum said last week it had received notice of a claim by JP Morgan, filed with a US federal court on April 1.
"Our (the museum's) position is that we are the rightful owners," the museum's director of collections, Taco Dibbits, told AFP at the time, describing the painting as a "masterpiece of national importance".
Reijtenbagh is reported to have used the painting with other works of art as collateral for a 50-million-dollar (38 million euro) loan from JP Morgan in 2006 before selling it to the museum for several million dollars last year.
Some 27 million dollars is said to be outstanding on that loan, which has run full term. But Dibbits has said that the seller signed a sales contract that indemnified the museum against any third party claims.
Van Maarschalkerweerd would not provide any details about Reijtenbagh's ANB Amro loan.
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The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is the principal museum of the Netherlands and one of the top 10 Museums in the world. The Rijksmuseum houses a large and World famous collection of objects of Dutch art and history. Every year more than one million people visit the Rijksmuseum. From December 2003 the mainbuilding of the Rijksmuseum undergoes the most far-reaching renovation, reconstruction and restoration endeavour in its history.
Web Site: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl
Troubles deepen for museums: layoffs, budget cuts and cancelled shows
The Art Newspaper
NEW YORK. The financial crisis reached US museums in force during the first quarter of 2009. The storm clouds of the recession that had been gathering since last autumn unleashed a deluge of layoffs, budget reductions, salary cuts and cancelled exhibitions as museums across the country sought to rein in deficits and work out budgets for the coming year.
The portfolio of the wealthiest arts institution, the Getty Trust in Los Angeles, lost $1.5bn in the second half of 2008, falling to $4.5bn with additional losses since. The trust—which operates two museums and conservation, research and grantmaking programmes— will cut 25% from its 2010 budget, reducing operations from $284m to $216m. President and chief executive James Wood says the cuts will affect staffing, programming and operations, and that “the Getty’s acquisitions budgets will be reduced substantially”.
The Metropolitan Museum’s endowment, which generated a third of the institution’s $220m budget last year, shrunk from $2.9bn to less than $2.1bn. The loss of income would yield deficits of “$20m to $30m in four years” if not corrected by expense reductions, says a spokesman. Major cuts have come from a restructuring of the flagging retail business. The museum has closed eight of its 23 stores nationwide—making 127 merchandising positions redundant—and plans to close another seven. The goal is $10m in staff reductions for the coming financial year, says a spokesman, adding that another 10% of the museum’s 2,500 employees will be let go before 1 July.
As a result of the banking crisis, the Seattle Art Museum has lost $5.8m in annual rental and related income from its tenant Washington Mutual. J.P. Morgan acquired the failed bank last autumn, but in February backed out of the lease on eight floors in the museum’s tower. J.P. Morgan provided a five-year $10m grant to help bridge the gap, which is heightened by a 27% drop in the endowment. “We need a tenant in there as soon as possible,” says a spokeswoman.
The Detroit Institute of Arts is hard hit, laying off 20% of its 301 employees and trying to cut $6m from its $34m budget for the coming year. The 56 full-time and seven part-time positions include six curatorial positions.
“People are stunned,” director Graham Beal told local reporters. The Indianapolis Museum of Art has cut 10% of its staff and 15% of its operating expenses, and slowed the pace for opening its Fairbanks Art and Nature Park. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, a project of Wal-Mart billionaire Alice Walton, has rescheduled its opening from 2010 to 2011. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is cutting as much as 15% from its 2010 budget, has delayed renovation of its Lacma West building.
British Museum finds relics of 39 saints after 100 year
March 24, 2009
By Maev Kennedy
The Guardian
James Robinson, curator of medieval antiquities at the British Museum, explains how they discovered the relics Link to this video
By Maev Kennedy
The Guardian
James Robinson, curator of medieval antiquities at the British Museum, explains how they discovered the relics Link to this video
The new medieval gallery at the British Museum is full of beautiful images of saints in ivory, stone, gold and wood - but invisible to visitors, it also holds the bones of 39 real saints, whose discovery came as a shock to their curator.
The relics, packed in tiny bundles of cloth including one scrap of fabric over 1,000 years old, were found when a 12th-century German portable altar was opened for the first time since it came into the British Museum collection in 1902.
It was in for a condition check and cleaning, before going on display in the gallery that opens tomorrow - but to the amazement of James Robinson, curator of medieval antiquities, when it was opened a linen cloth was revealed, and inside it dozens of tiny bundles of cloth, each neatly labelled on little pieces of vellum.
The most precious was the relic of St Benedict, an Italian who in the early 6th century was credited as the father of the western monastic tradition, founding monasteries and establishing guiding principles still followed at many monasteries. The relic was wrapped in cloth that was itself an extraordinary object, a piece of silk from 8th or 9th century Byzantium.
Each Roman Catholic altar-stone is supposed to contain at least one relic of a saint, usually in the form of minute flakes of bone. There was a clue on the back of the museum's altar in a list of names beginning slightly implausibly with John the Baptist, and including saints James, John and Mary Magdalene.
There are many reliquaries in the gallery, in the form of crosses, pendants and rings, including one owned by a saint, the Georgian queen Kethevan who was executed by Shah Abbas in 1624 for refusing to convert to Islam. Almost all have long since lost their contents in the centuries of religious and political upheaval which scattered them from palaces and monasteries and eventually brought them to the British Museum. A relic of bone fragments was discovered almost 30 years ago in a spectacular lifesize head of St Eustace, but the relic was sent back to Basle cathedral in Switzerland which was forced to sell the golden reliquary in 1830.
The newly discovered saints will remain in Bloomsbury. Robinson said they were cared for and rearranged into the 19th century, the date of the most recent piece of fabric, but at some point one was lost as there are 40 engraved names but only 39 saintly bundles.
Dallas museum boss hasn't repaid loan
Jeremy StrickDallas museum boss hasn't repaid loan
10:14 AM Mon, Apr 20, 2009
Non-profit groups around the nation have made questionable loans to their executives, an Internal Revenue Service investigation is finding.
IRS officials won't name targets. But they say they're focusing on loans over $100,000 -- and are troubled by "loans with no real terms for repayment or loans where there are terms for repayment but no follow-up if the repayment is not made."
The Dallas Morning News reported in January on a local arts exec who got a loan of more than $500,000: Jeremy Strick (right), who recently became director of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
The lender was his previous employer, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. A written contract required him to repay any balance when his employment ended.
But Strick -- who quit his MOCA job under pressure in December, as the museum's finances crumbled -- now says he didn't meet the contract's terms. "When I left, we changed that," he told me.
Strick said that under the new deal, he owes the money when he sells a house that the loan helped him buy.
Good luck with that. Southern California has suffered some of the nation's steepest declines in housing prices.
MOCA spokeswoman Lyn Winter would not answer my questions about the deal, saying that Strick's employment agreement was confidential. I learned of the loan by reading to the bottom of the museum's IRS filings, which are public for many tax-exempt organizations.
Winter did say that the IRS has not contacted MOCA as part of its investigation.
Strick said he wouldn't advise other non-profits to go down the road MOCA went with him.
"Ideally the museum would own the house" and provide it to the chief executive, he said. "I think that's better and easier for all parties."
Strick also said housing loans are common in the museum world. That may well be true. There have been plenty of reports in recent years about nominally non-profit institutions rewarding executives handsomely.
I checked the IRS filings of many Dallas-area museums, arts groups and other non-profits for insider loans. The only one I found was at Texas Ballet Theater, which provided Artistic Director Ben Stevenson (right) about $41,000 for a down payment and closing costs on a house.
The loan has no repayment schedule. It becomes due in full, plus 5.32 percent interest, when Stevenson dies, sells the house or goes to work for a competitor.
Texas Ballet Theater nearly folded last year after a series of questionable financial moves, as my story in The Dallas Morning News showed yesterday.
Ballet officials say they're now in strong financial shape and defend the loan as a way to help an underpaid employee. They pay Stevenson about $138,500 a year, including the value of a car lease.
Federal law bars most publicly traded for-profit businesses from making insider loans (banks are a big exception), yet generally allows non-profits to make them.
However, the government can tax payments if it thinks a non-profit is being overly generous to an executive. In extreme cases, it can revoke a group's tax-exempt status.
And, as of this year's tax filings, the IRS is requiring all non-profits to reveal more about all sorts of spending practices that benefit insiders.
Some states forbid charities from making insider loans. Others limit the practice -- Texas, for example, allows loans to top staffers, but not to members of the board of directors.lunes, 20 de abril de 2009
NYT: diseño ganador para el nuevo museo nacional de historia afro-americana en Washington D.C.
Architects Chosen for Black History Museum
A dream almost a century old moved another step closer to reality on Tuesday as the Smithsonian Institution chose a team led by David Adjaye, the celebrated Tanzanian-born architect, to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open on the National Mall in Washington in 2015.
The winners of the design competition — which also include the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup — were chosen over five others, including well-known architects like Norman Foster and Diller Scofidio & Renfro.
The museum is expected to cost $500 million and will be built on a site near the Washington Monument after a three-year design period to turn the winners’ idea into a workable blueprint. The museum was established in 2003 by an act of Congress. And although it does not have a building yet, it has already begun collecting artifacts and conducting seminars and other events, including a recent two-day program on the Black Power movement.
Efforts to build a national museum of black history stretch back to the early 1900s, but they were thwarted by political opposition well into the 1990s. Among the opponents was Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who in 1994 blocked Senate passage of a bill authorizing the museum, saying Congress should not have to “pony up” for such a project. The museum’s cost will be borne half by the federal government and half through private donations.
Mr. Adjaye, who works in London and recently opened offices in New York and Berlin, is known for his colorful and eclectic designs for the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, as well as for the homes and studios he has designed for artists and celebrity clients like Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer, and Ewan McGregor, the actor.
In accepting the commission, Mr. Adjaye described it as “the dream of my career” and said that the group’s concept for the building — an elevated “mound” dominated by a two-tiered structure that he called a “celebration crown” — focused on the idea of a canopy or porchlike setting for people “to come as a respite, to come and view, to learn.” He said he believed that the primary spirit behind the building, whose interior will be open to skylights at its top, would be one of praise.
“Throughout the history of African-American struggle and celebration, there are these moments of praise,” he said. “It’s for us a deeply spiritual and powerful culture.”
The Freelon Group, led by Philip G. Freelon, will be the architect of record for the project. Based in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., the firm has designed the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture in Baltimore. The inclusion of Davis Brody Bond in the group was bittersweet; J. Max Bond Jr., a partner in the firm, a dean of African-American architects and educators and one of a few black architects of national prominence, died in February.
“It is his legacy and his vision that we stand upon now as we move forward,” Mr. Freelon said.
The announcement of the design winners, at a news conference at the Smithsonian Castle, the oldest building on the Mall, was a reminder of the disagreements that have long simmered over where the museum should be built. Some groups had lobbied heavily for its placement south of the Mall, arguing that the new museum would help bring about a much-needed physical and psychological expansion of the Mall beyond its current boundaries.
But the museum’s advisory council — which includes numerous influential black leaders, including Richard D. Parsons, recently named the chairman of Citigroup; Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Oprah Winfrey — recommended the 15-acre site that was eventually chosen: across the street from the National Museum of American History. The council rejected three other possibilities, two of which were not on the Mall. In an interview in 2006 Mr. Johnson said he had told Smithsonian officials that he would resign from the council if the Smithsonian’s board chose a site off the Mall.
“To have relegated this museum to another site,” he said, “when people are looking to it to answer everything from the need for an apology for slavery to reparations, would have been the ultimate dismissal.”
Lonnie G. Bunch, the director of the museum, who also served as chairman of the jury that selected the design team, said at the news conference on Tuesday that “as we moved through this process, one thing was central to our thinking: we continue to be guided by our respect for this wonderfully important site.”
He added, “What I can tell you is, this is a building that I think will sing for all of us, and I think that’s what we wanted.”NYT: controversia por imágenes apropiadas en la producción artística de Shepard Fairey
Graphic Content | Shepard Fairey Is Not a Crook
By Steven HellerSteven Heller, a former art director at The New York Times, is a co-chair of the MFA Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and a blogger and author.
Even before Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama “Hope” poster became the focus of legal and ethical scrutiny — for Fairey’s use of Mannie Garcia’s A.P. news photo as the basis of the now ubiquitous image — some design critics and practitioners had already questioned the street artist’s habit of “sampling” existing imagery. A scolding essay by Mark Vallen, entitled “Obey Plagiarist Fairey,” which was published online in 2007, accused Fairey, who created the “OBEY GIANT” project in 1989, of “expropriating and recontextualizing artworks of others.” The booty in this alleged thievery is primarily propaganda imagery from the 1920s (Russian Constructivism and Bolshevist posters) to the 1960s (Chinese Socialist Realism and counter-culture rock posters). However, Vallen’s harsh indictment seems not to have hurt Fairey’s reputation. If anything, the criticism enhances his subversive agenda, as it fosters debate about the line between influence and theft in art and design.
Fairey’s image-making follows the lead of earlier rogue art and design movements, like Dada in the 1920s or psychedelia in the 1960s, as well as the Situationists in the 1970s, and even the retro/postmodernists (i.e., designers who borrowed passé commercial art styles) in the 1980s and 1990s. Some guerrilla art is rooted in a romantic Robin Hood notion: steal from the powerful; tamper with sacred cows; and avoid getting caught. Fairey has been caught several times, and was arrested on his way to the Feb. 6 opening of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston.
Left: John Van Hamersveld’s poster of Jimi Hendrix, image from Post-future.com. Right: Shepard Fairey’s “Andre Hendrix Print.”Comparisons have been made between Fairey and Andy Warhol’s transfiguration of the Brillo Box into an evocation of pop culture; he is also linked to the skateboarder practice of ripping off and then satirically twisting mainstream corporate logos and brands by altering a name or symbol. His sensibility is perhaps even more reminiscent of the old Mad magazine advertising parodies and their derivative, Wacky Packs, which send up mainstream products by co-opting and changing their names.
Those who rebuff Fairey’s work are angry that he misappropriates (read: steals) famous art and design works; they argue that Warhol changed paradigms while Fairey makes knockoffs. I did an interview with Fairey for his recent book, “Obey: Supply & Demand,” and I admit that on occasion he has come close to crossing the line from acceptable borrowing into murky infringement territory. But after seeing the satiric art barbs that he aimed at politics, cultural icons and bêtes noires in his exhibition at the I.C.A. (where I participated in a panel discussion on appropriation), I can say this: Shepard Fairey is not a crook.
Left: Koloman Moser’s 1901 cover for Ver Sacrum magazine. Right: Fairey’s “Nouveau Black.”He has indeed copied a number of established graphic works in art and design history, including Koloman Moser’s emblematic Art Nouveau cover for the 1901 Vienna Secession magazine Ver Sacrum and the image (well known in graphic design circles) of a pained woman holding her ears, which was taken from a poster cautioning against noise pollution by the Swiss designer Josef Muller-Brockmann. Yet these images are playfully twisted, not maliciously pilfered. The critics argue that literal replication of the originals — and this is true of Moser and Muller-Brockmann’s imagery, among others — is ethically wrong, but that charge fails to take into account Fairey’s fundamental ethos. His is a wink and a nod toward visual culture and media monopoly. No designer with Fairey’s experience and historical knowledge could be so stupid as to pinch such visible historical artifacts and call them his own. On the contrary, Fairey sees popular visual culture in terms of what Tom Wolfe has called a “big closet” of shared objects. For him, the ubiquity of the graphic design and advertising art that he relies on for source material makes it a kind of commercial folk art. Although some of what he borrows is not as anonymously vernacular as one might like, Fairey believes that the fact that it is designed for public consumption makes it free for the taking.
Shepard Fairey’s “Obey” painting.In Fairey’s parodies of Warhol’s “Marilyn” paintings (in which he replaces Marilyn Monroe with his famous Andre the Giant image over the headline “Obey”), or of a popular poster of Jimi Hendrix by John Van Hamersveld, it is difficult not to recognize Fairey’s humorous intent or his sly commentary on how media –- as art and commerce –- exploits everything that will turn a profit. Fairey is essentially arguing that icons can be conflated and repurposed to achieve manipulative results. His own appropriation refers to that which goes on in the mass media every day. At its most articulate, his work is a critique of image ownership.
But this does not mean the results are not sometimes simplistic. Indeed, some of his posters are ruefully naïve. Still, after seeing the last 20 years of Fairey’s output at the I.C.A., the last thing I’d call him is a crook. What I would say, however, is that his “Obey” has evolved from a cultural critique into a successful commercial brand with anti-establishment overtones. To protect that brand, even he is now aggressively using legal means to stop other artists from appropriating his work. While there’s nothing crooked about this, it is painfully ironic, if not disappointing, to see “Obey Giant” co-opted by Obey the Brand.
Museo de Disney!
Museo de Walt Disney abrirá sus puertas en octubre
Por Agencias
13 de abril de 2009 01:00 pm
13 de abril de 2009 01:00 pm
SAN FRANCISCO- Lejos del parque temático de Walt Disney World en Florida y de Disneyworld cerca de Los Ángeles, el legendario Walt Disney recibirá un nuevo homenaje en su memoria.
Por 112 millones de dólares, la familia del magnate de los dibujos animados erige el "Walt Disney Family Museum" en San Francisco. El primer museo dedicado solamente a la vida y obra de Walt Disney -fallecido en 1966-, tiene previsto abrir sus puertas en octubre.
La hija de Disney, Diane Disney Miller, de 75 años, que vive en el norte de California, se propone mejorar la imagen pública de su padre. "Todo comenzó con un libro horrible y mi enojo con periodistas de todo el mundo que le sacaron provecho", se quejó recientemente Miller en el "The New York Times".
En la biografía con el título "Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince" (El príncipe oscuro de Hollywood), el autor Marc Eliot indagó detrás de la fachada del éxito y trazó una oscura imagen del genio, aquejado por problemas matrimoniales y con el alcohol, depresiones y peleas con sus colaboradores, que se quejaban de su avaro jefe.
La familia no tiene vínculos con el consorcio Disney. Allí ya no hay nadie que conozca la persona de Walt Disney, opinó Miller. Por eso, los descendientes deben preocuparse por su herencia, aseveró.
Hay gente que cree que su padre no fue una persona de verdad, sino que la rúbrica redondeada de Walt Disney solamente es el logo de una empresa, se quejó su hija en el "Times".
Junto a fotografías familiares, videos caseros nunca antes exhibidos, dibujos y clips de cine, se expondrán objetos importantes en la vida de Walt Disney, entre ellos la réplica de una ambulancia que el joven cooperante de la Cruz Roja condujo durante la Primera Guerra Mundial en Francia, un tren construido por el propio Disney y una cámara especial de su diseño, con la que le daba más profundidad a sus personajes.
El museo se propone describir cronológicamente la vida del hijo de un carpintero irlando-canadiense y una ama de casa de origen alemán, quien creció en el centro-oeste de Estados Unidos.
Poco después de su arribo a Hollywood, fundó en 1923 junto a su hermano Roy el Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, que con el paso de las décadas se convirtió en el mayor consorcio mediático y de entretenimientos del mundo. En 1928 presentó "Steamboat Willie", la primera película sonora de Mickey Mouse.
En tanto, "Blancanieves y los siete enanitos" de 1937 fue un nuevo hito en su carrera, como primer largometraje animado en color. Pese a todas las advertencias de que sería un desastre financiero, Disney invirtió prácticamente la totalidad de su capital para esta producción.
Entre las piezas de la exposición se cuenta el Oscar original -una gran estatuilla y otras siete más pequeñas-. Cuando Disney falleció en 1966 luego de una operación de pulmón, había acumulado nada menos que 32 Oscar en su vitrina.
Richard Benefield, hasta ahora vicejefe del museo de arte de la Universidad de Harvard, está al frente del Museo Disney. "Será uno de los museos tecnológicamente más avanzados", aseguró Benefield, quien dijo que habrá más de 200 videomonitores interactivos.
Benefield apuntó que quiere contar la "historia completa", incluyendo aspectos que Miller ya no desea oír sobre la vida de su padre. Entre otros se mostrará un video del controvertido testimonio de Disney ante el Comité de Actividades Antinorteamericanas.
Pero también se refutarán "algunos de esos rumores fantásticos" según los cuales Disney fue congelado a bajas temperaturas tras su muerte. "No es cierto en absoluto", afirmó Benefield. El cadáver fue incinerado y enterrado en el cementerio Forest Lawn, en inmediaciones de Los Angeles, donde también descansan los restos de estrellas como Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jimmy Stewart y Humphrey Bogart.
Vocero: Inaugura la trienal Poli/Gráfica de SJ
Nota de Marina: hay errores/horrores - es Adriano Pedrosa, no Pedroza, y el nombre del otro curador es Jens Hoffman, no Jane.
Inaugura la Trienal Poli/Gráfica de SJ
Por Jorge Rodríguez
ESCENARIO
18 de abril de 2009 04:00 am
ESCENARIO
18 de abril de 2009 04:00 am
Con una evolución sobre la otrora histórica Bienal del Grabado de San Juan, inaugura esta tarde, a las siete, en el Arsenal de la Marina Española del Viejo San Juan, la segunda edición de la Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, destacando el tema de los desplazamientos del grabado en las prácticas contemporáneas, sobre todo en aquellas áreas nunca antes presentadas en este contexto dialéctico, como los grabados experimentales, la fotografía digital, las fotocopias, el vídeo, los performances y las instalaciones.
Con un equipo curatorial integrado por Adriano Pedroza, su director, Jane Hoffman, Beatriz Santiago y Julieta González, actual curadora del Tate Modern de Inglaterra, esta Trienal ya se ha hecho sentir desde antes de su inauguración con la producción de seis carteles, seis revistas tituladas "Número Cero" y del anuncio de 20 libros de artista ya comisionados. En esta edición, como se advierte desde su título, el grabado tradicional ha cedido a un concepto más amplio de arte poligráfico que incluye todo tipo de lenguajes artísticos.
"Según la conceptualización que de esta actividad hacen sus curadores, esta exposición reúne un grupo de obras que abordan la noción del archivo; y más allá el archivo personal, y su transición hacia la esfera pública. El archivo como construcción epistemológica no sólo ha sido el sujeto de análisis significativo por la crítica sino que también ha fascinado a los artistas.
De hecho, este arte conceptual y de instalaciones corre en reversa hacia el dadá y el surreealismo. ¿Qué era eso sino el poder que se tiene cuando se yuxtaponen al azar imagenes, fotos y el recuerdo de la memoria? Con ello, se crean unas instalaciones donde vas poco a poco depurando esos textos y llevándolos hacia una expresión que va desde un archivo personal hasta llegar a una expresión pública", expresó la Dra. Carmen Teresa Ruiz de Fischler, directora ejecutiva del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
Para la funcionaria, quien entre sus créditos tiene la dirección del Museo de Arte de Ponce, el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico y el Museo de la Universidad del Turabo, el poner en pie esta Trienal —aunque nunca formó parte de su organización— ha constituido un gran reto dado que ha tenido que poner en condiciones la planta física del evento desde poner a funcionar las facilidades de aire acondicionado, las paredes que no estaban preparadas para las exposiciones, así como el trabajo de ambientación de esta joya arquitectónica.
Se han unido para levantar la planta física del Arsenal los propios empleados de Servicios Generales del Instituto y la Brigada de la Administración de Corrección que se ha adherido dando el apoyo que se necesitaba. Como se recordará, fueron los mismos empleados del Instituto quienes restauraron las facilidades del Convento de los Dominicos para crear la Galería de Puerto Rico que alberga la colección de pinturas más importantes de Puerto Rico desde el siglo 17 hasta el siglo 20.
"Tenemos además trabajando arduamente, los siete días de la semana, al equipo de Patrimonio Edificado y al grupo de Artes Plásticas. Ha sido todo un reto porque acabo de llegar de un museo nuevo, uno ‘State of the Arts’, mientras ahora estamos reconstruyendo el Arsenal, con esas fabulosas bóvedas. Esta edificación hay que rescatarla, y mi deseo es que se abran todas sus puertas para exhibir arte de todo el mundo", dijo la directora, quien también estuviera a cargo de las riendas del ICP a principios de los años 80.
Ruiz de Fischler aclara que el tema de la palabra y/o archivo en esta Trienal es sinónimo de lenguaje tanto de texto como visual como de instalación.
"Por un lado, esta Trienal sigue el desarrollo de las Bienales latinoamericanas que tenía el Instituto porque tiene que ver con las imágenes impresas; pero quedó transformada desde la primera Trienal Poligráfica donde se abrió a los nuevos medios contemporáneos. Esta segunda, diría, es bien reflexiva. Y por eso mismo, va a necesitar las visitas guiadas para que ayuden a contextualizar esta presentación para el público que no es tan lego en estas materias", concluyó.
jueves, 16 de abril de 2009
Charla sobre recaudación de fondos con Roberto Soto Acosta
La Maestría en Gestión y Administración Cultural del Programa en Estudios Interdisciplinarios, UPR, Río Piedras te invita a la charla:
“Fondos públicos y privados para las Artes”
Por Roberto Soto Acosta
martes 21 de abril de 2009, 6:00pm en el Auditorio del Departamento de Música, Facultad de Humanidades
Perfil:
Roberto Soto Acosta es un veterano fundraiser nacido en Nueva York, pero que vive en Puerto Rico desde 1991. Tiene más de 3 décadas de ser un procurador de fondos y fue parte de Aspira, Inc, en Nueva York (una importante e histórica ONG latina en esa ciudad). Actualmente es un consultor independiente y es parte del Comité de Ética de AFP.
1. ¿Cuántos años has estado involucrado en el fundraising?
Me gusta pensar que comencé en la escuela primaria, cuando las monjas nos pedían que recaudáramos dinero para las misiones de la iglesia. Cómo profesional y voluntario, llevo unos 35 años involucrado en fundraising.
2. Si pudieras cambiar algo, cualquier cosa, sobre la profesión en fundraising, ¿qué sería?
El poco entendimiento que tiene la sociedad, las corporaciones y hasta las mismas instituciones sin fines de lucro para las cuales trabajamos sobre nuestra profesión y el papel importante que juega, muchas veces de forma imperceptible, el profesional de fundraising. Aún hoy día, mi mamá (que cumple los 97 años en junio), me confiesa que no entiende qué es lo que yo hago.
3. En tu opinión, ¿cuál es el aspecto más difícil al solicitar un donativo?
Lograr obtener suficiente información actualizada sobre la condición económica y personal de un prospecto. Sin esta información se hace mucho más difícil el acercamiento a la persona y aún más difícil la solicitud de un donativo apropiado a la luz de sus circunstancias económicas, sociales y familiares.
4. ¿Qué es lo que menos te gusta de la filantropía y sobre el fundraising?
Lo que menos me gusta es la dificultad que representa captar fondos a beneficio de entidades benéficas que no cuentan con conexiones a los centros del poder económico (y político), a la gente pudiente y a las grandes corporaciones y asociaciones, pero que hacen una labor noble y efectiva.
5. ¿Cuál ha sido el comentario más sorprendente que has escuchado de parte de algún donante o prospecto?
“No sabía que teníamos una presencia tan grande en la Isla”, cuando le comenté al Presidente de una fundación corporativa estadounidense que su compañía matriz tenía 19 fábricas y casi 5,000 empleados en Puerto Rico.
6. ¿Cuál ha sido tu momento más memorable como fundraiser?
La primera vez que conseguí un donativo de US$10,000.
7. ¿Qué te gustaría hacer, que aún no has logrado?
Establecer el Museo de la Música Puertorriqueña– y ser su primer Director de Desarrollo.
8. ¿Qué te mantiene despierto en la noche?
Nuevas ideas y estrategias a favor de mis clientes, sin embargo, ¡lo que más me mantiene despierto es el temor a no recordar esas ideas y estrategias por la mañana!
9. Cual ha sido el libro, película o curso que ha provocado el cambio más grande en ti o sea que ha impactado más en tu vida
Florecillas de San Francisco de Asís (Actus Fioretti) (Libro)
10. Si pudieras invitar a tres personas, actuales, históricos o míticos a cenar, ¿a quiénes serían y a dónde irían a comer?
En estos días, los presidentes de Venezuela, Colombia y Ecuador – con Simón Bolívar. Iríamos a comer en una aldea indígena en la Amazona, y hablaríamos de la paz, del desarrollo económico de la región y un futuro de armonía y unidad de propósito. Aprovecharía la oportunidad, por supuesto, para solicitarles donativos para ONGs regionales.
NYT: Kepping art, and climate, controlled
Cragside, a Victorian house museum in England, was damaged by severe flooding last year. Keeping Art, and Climate, Controlled
AS anyone who works in a museum knows, art conservators can be slow to embrace change. But for Sarah Staniforth, director of historic properties at the National Trust in Britain, the eye opener came last September, as she contemplated photographs of a torrential downpour that had just invaded the billiard room of Cragside, one of the trust’s Victorian house museums.
Since 2000 catastrophic rainstorms have become so prevalent in England that the trust has gradually retrained its emergency teams to cope with floods, in addition to its time-honored enemy, house fires. Yet at Cragside, as with all of the trust’s 300-plus historic house museums, employees still use a standard British mid-20th-century conservation method — chiefly an electric or hot water heating system that maintains constant humidity levels — to protect irreplaceable treasures, like its painting by J. M. W. Turner and its early Burroughes & Watts billiard table.
And now, in the photographs Ms. Staniforth viewed in her office, Cragside’s carefully tended electric conservation heating system was standing in a pool of water. So were the 19th-century fire irons and ornate wrought-iron fireplace seating unit, which had both rusted, and the billiard table, whose legs would take several months to dry out. (The room finally reopened to the public in late February.)
“That photograph made me feel that we had just been fiddling while Rome burned — or, rather, flooded,” Ms. Staniforth said. “It made me see how important it is to get your priorities right, and not to worry exclusively about the humidity when your house can fill up with water as a result of climate change.”
For more than 50 years conservators around the world have sought to prevent damage to the varied objects in their collections by observing a uniform climate-control mantra: Keep everything in the museum at approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 55 percent relative humidity. Since the 1970s that goal has increasingly been achieved with the help of mechanical HVAC (heating, ventilating and air-conditioning) systems, which typically cope with unforeseen events by working overtime.
But as museum budgets shrink, energy costs spiral, and gradual climate changes make the traditional HVAC system more costly to maintain, conservators and other museum experts are rethinking this model. Should museums add to global warming by continuing to rely so heavily on such systems in the first place? And what happens if unforeseen events put them and other protective measures out of commission? As a first step some are pushing for new scientific research while considering updated versions of old solutions.
A week after Cragside was flooded, such issues were at the fore as Ms. Staniforth moderated a panel discussion on climate change as it pertains to museum collections at the annual conference of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. The forum was the brainchild of the institute’s president, Jerry Podany, the chief conservator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, who believes the panel was the first of its kind.
Mr. Podany said the meeting was long overdue. “We may not ever get rid of HVAC systems, but we have been on a roll where the only choice was to turn to them,” he said. “I think that we need to take a hard look at our alternatives.”
A major issue confronting museums is to figure out whether their current climate guidelines can be refined. Although they have been debated for centuries, those in use today date to 1956, when Harold J. Plenderleith, a conservator at the British Museum, published “The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art,” the first comprehensive guide on the subject.
(The British Museum’s scientific research laboratory was set up in 1920, after conservators realized how badly artifacts had deteriorated when they were stored in the tunnels of the London Underground during World War I. Archaeological iron rusted, bronzes developed patches of powdery green corrosion, and some pottery and limestone objects developed salt crystals because of high humidity levels.)
In 1978 Garry Thomson, a conservator at the National Gallery in London, expanded on Plenderleith’s ideas in “The Museum Environment,” with a specific focus on the interior climate.
But some conservators maintain that Mr. Thomson’s recommendations have since been taken out of context. George Bisacca, a panel-painting specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said Mr. Thomson’s prescription was for wood-panel paintings, which are especially sensitive to changes in humidity. Wood expands and contracts as it absorbs and releases moisture, while the paint expands and contracts at a different rate, which eventually leads to blistering and cracking.
Mr. Bisacca said that since the 19th century, when many more paintings began traveling internationally, most panel paintings have cracked, in part because of the resulting change in humidity levels, combined with cradling, a pervasive and problematic 19th-century restoration technique. (Conservators often reduced the panel to half its thickness and attached a restraining grid to keep it flat.) At the time of this interview Mr. Bisacca was on his way to Madrid to work on one such panel: the “Adam” section of Dürer’s 1507 diptych “Adam and Eve” at the Prado; its surface cracked long ago in dozens of places.
“If you can keep that relative humidity constant,” he said, “then you stop that constant process of expansion and contraction. But people who don’t understand the mechanisms involved have taken that and applied it everywhere on earth.”
While Thomson’s conclusions make sense for panel paintings — or those acclimatized to Britain’s relatively humid weather — they may not be as appropriate for other climates, or for artworks made from different materials.
Marble, for example, withstands far greater extremes of temperature and humidity, as do some ceramics, metals, plastics, mosaics and glass. Yet many artworks are composites, like an illuminated manuscript fashioned from parchment, ink, paint, wood, leather, metal and jewels — all materials that have different responses to temperature and humidity.
Consider the infinite possibilities, and it is little wonder that conservators maintain similar guidelines for almost everything, with major exceptions for archaeological iron and bronze, which need to be kept very dry, and ivory, which can fall apart unless it is adapted to new conditions very gradually.
A 70-degree temperature also works well for something museum directors want to attract: people. And by now a climate of approximately 70 degrees and 55 percent relative humidity is required under most art-lending agreements.
Last year Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate in London, began urging museums to investigate whether the existing guidelines can be applied with more subtlety. Together with Mark Jones, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, he presented the issue to the Bizot group, an alliance of the directors of some of the world’s most prominent museums, and is now working with British conservators to figure out where to begin.
First, more detailed research will be needed on what various objects actually require. Some is already under way at conservation and study centers like the Getty’s, the Canadian Conservation Institute and the Center for Sustainable Heritage at University College, London. The Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology has integrated some of its findings into computer programs that can predict damage in many different materials. Conservators can use the system to play with temperature and humidity ranges to see how far the limits can be pushed.
Other efforts are under way to tweak existing climate control systems. One possibility is a wider use of microclimate cases: vitrines that keep groups of similar objects at their own specific humidity levels, so that the air in the rest of the room does not have to be conditioned so stringently. While some are now regulated by miniature HVAC systems, most use what are known as passive, or nonmechanical, measures: a vitrine is fitted with a layer of material, usually silica gel, that buffers the environment by absorbing or releasing moisture as necessary.
While display cases like this exist in museums around the world, the Victoria and Albert has made a commitment to use more of them as it opens new galleries rather than installing HVAC systems. The museum has already taken this approach in its new sacred silver and stained-glass galleries, which opened in 2005; its new jewelry gallery, which opened last year; and the new medieval and Renaissance galleries, opening in November.
Other proposals include a wider use of what Michael C. Henry, a partner in the New Jersey architectural and engineering consulting firm Watson & Henry Associates, calls “smart” ventilation. Before the advent of HVAC systems, Mr. Henry said, buildings were constructed with features that helped to regulate the temperature naturally: windows that let in cooler air, towers that allow warm air to rise and skylights that open to release it, as well as greater thermal mass, which keeps temperatures relatively stable. But now he calls this “fugitive knowledge,” because many architects no longer know how to make these things work.
Mr. Henry has created ventilation plans for many museums and historic houses around the world. At Redcliffe, a pre-Civil War plantation on the banks of the Savannah River in South Carolina, his scheme includes putting an exhaust fan in the attic to pull filtered air through an unused basement window. For Manzil-e-Meher, a new archive in central India for the papers and personal effects of the mystic Meher Baba, who died in 1969, ductwork has been installed throughout the building, and the climate is managed by intake and supply fans.
Similarly low-tech methods may have a place in large museums. Mr. Jones suggests that employees can close off a few sensitive galleries if the weather is particularly humid; limit crowds, which can heat up and humidify a room quickly; and ask visitors to check wet raincoats. Mr. Serota suggests encouraging visitors to keep their coats on in the dead of winter, to avoid the dryness central heating causes.
Historic house museums are on the front line in the battle against climate change. Most manage already without HVAC systems, which are hard to install without destroying the historical integrity of a building. The National Trust in particular, with more than 300 houses, is something of a green museum resource center. Since the 1980s it has also received grants from the British government to find low-energy ways to protect collections.
In coping with the increase in heavy downpours, which bring floods, Ms. Staniforth’s conservators have gradually installed wider gutters and leaders and placed medieval-style spouts at the base of parapets that can quickly drain off large amounts of water. And they routinely inspect and shake out textiles and wall hangings to guard against moth and carpet beetle infestations, which have increased as England’s climate has warmed.
Yet even the greenest building can falter. Cragside is a case in point. As well as being a gloriously appointed Victorian house museum, it is an early example of postindustrial sustainable architecture: completed in 1870, it was the first building in the world to use hydroelectricity, with its lights and elevator powered by a water pump and turbine engine fed by a nearby stream.
The billiard room flooded in September because rain had collected on the roof. But the stream had also overflowed, inundating the newly restored pump and power houses.
Although new gutters and spouts will probably keep the roof from flooding in the future, Ms. Staniforth has not yet figured out how to handle the stream. For now, she said, “I think we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”Conservación, según wikipedia...
Removal of adherent surface deposits by physical chemical means (by cotton swab). Church of Suceviţa Monastery , burial chamber. Romania, Suceava.Conservation-restoration, also referred to as Conservation, is a profession devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care. All of this work is supported by research and education.
Defining conservation:
The traditional definition of the role of the conservator involves the examination, conservation, and preservation of cultural heritage using "any methods that prove effective in keeping that property in as close to its original condition as possible for as long as possible.”
However, today the definition of the role of conservation has widened and would more accurately be described as that of ethical stewardship.
The conservator applies some simple ethical guidelines, such as:
- Minimal intervention.
- Appropriate materials and methods that aim to be reversible to reduce possible problems with future treatment, investigation, and use.
- Full documentation of all work undertaken.
The History of Conservation
Key Dates
This page contains a list of some of the key dates in the history of conservation in Europe and the United States, compiled by Joyce Hill Stoner. Beginning in 1565 with the restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes.
A Brief History of Conservation
The care for cultural patrimony has a long history within traditions of fixing and mending objects, and in individual restorations of artworks. During the nineteenth century, the fields of science and art became increasingly intertwined as scientists such as Michael Faraday began to study the damaging effects of the environment to works of art. Louis Pasteur carried out scientific analysis on paint during this time period as well. However, perhaps the first organised attempt to conserve cultural patrimony was the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in the UK, influenced by the writings of John Ruskin the society was founded by William Morris and Philip Webb in 1877. During the same period a movement with similar aims had also developed in France under the direction of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc a French architect and theorist, famous for his "restorations" of medieval buildings.
Conservation developed as a distinct field of thought initially in Germany, when in 1888 Friedrich Rathgen became the first Chemist to be employed by a Museum, the Koniglichen Museen, Berlin (Royal Museums of Berlin). He not only developed a scientific approach to the care of objects in the collections, but disseminated this approach publishing a "Handbook of Conservation" in 1898. The early development of conservation in any area of the world is usually linked to the creation of positions for chemists within museums. In 1924 in the UK the chemist Harold Plenderleith began to work at the British Museum with Dr. Alexander Scott in the newly created Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, thus giving birth to the conservation profession in the UK. This department had been created by the museum to address objects in the collection that had begun to rapidly deteriorate as a result of being stored in the London Underground tunnels during the First World War. The development of this department at the British Museum moved the focus for the development of conservation from Germany to Britain, and in 1956 Plenderleith wrote a significant handbook called The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, it was this book rather than Rathgen's that is commonly seen as the major source for the development of conservation as we know it today.
In the United States the development of conservation can be traced to the Fogg Art Museum, and Edward Waldo Forbes, the Director of the Fogg from 1909 to 1944. He encouraged technical investigation, and was Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the first technical journal, Technical Studies, in the Field of the Fine Arts, published by the Fogg from 1932 to 1942. Importantly he also brought onto the museum staff chemists. Rutherford John Gettens was the first chemist in the U. S. to be permanently employed by an art museum. He worked with George L. Stout, the founder and first editor of Technical Studies. Gettens and Stout co-authored Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopaedia, first published in 1942 and reprinted in 1966. This compendium is still cited regularly. Only a few dates and descriptions in Gettens’ and Stout’s book are now outdated.
The focus of conservation development then accelerated in Britain and America, and it was in Britain that the first International Conservation Organisations developed. The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) was incorporated under British law in 1950 as “a permanent organization to co-ordinate and improve the knowledge, methods, and working standards needed to protect and preserve precious materials of all kinds.” The rapid growth of conservation professional organizations, publications, journals, newsletters, both internationally and in localities, has spearheaded the development of the conservation profession, both practically and theoretically. Art historians and theorists such as Cesare Brandi have also played a significant role in developing conservation-restoration theory. In recent years ethical concerns have been at the forefront of developments in conservation. Most significantly has been the idea of Preventive conservation. This concept is based in part on the pioneering work by Garry Thomson CBE, and his book the Museum Environment, first published in 1978. Thomson was associated with the National Gallery (London), it was here that he established a set of guidelines or environmental controls for the best conditions in which objects could be stored and displayed within the Museum Environment. Although his exact guidelines are no longer rigidly followed they did inspire this field of conservation.
Conservation Ethics
The conservator's work is guided by ethical standards. These take the form of applied ethics. Ethical standards have been established across the world, and national and international ethical guidelines have been written. One such example is:
- American Institute for Conservation Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice
Conservation OnLine's Ethical issues in conservation provides a number of articles on ethical issues in conservation; example of codes of ethics and guidelines for professional conduct in conservation and allied fields; and charters and treaties pertaining to ethical issues involving the preservation of cultural property.
Specialization within the profession
The profession of art conservation is broad and encomposses many areas of speciality. Some specialities within art conservation would include:
- Book and paper conservation
- Conservation science
- Electronic media conservation
- Historic preservation
- Object conservation (archaeological, ethnographic, and sculptural)
- Furniture conservation
- Frame conservation
- Paintings conservation
- Photograph conservation
- Textile Conservation
- Variable art conservation
Preventive Conservation
Many cultural works are sensitive to environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and exposure to light and ultraviolet light. They must be protected in a controlled environment where such variables are maintained within a range of damage-limiting levels. Shielding from sunlight of artifacts such as watercolour paintings for example is usually necessary to prevent fading of pigments.
Preventive conservation is an important element of museum policy and collections care. It is an essential responsibility of members of the museum profession to create and maintain a protective environment for the collections in their care, whether in store, on display, or in transit. A museum should carefully monitor the condition of collections to determine when an artifact requires conservation work and the services of a qualified conservator.
Interventive Conservation
Interventive Conservation refers to any act by a conservator that involves a direct interaction between the conservator and the cultural material. These interventive treatments could involve the cleaning, stabilizing, repair, or replacement of parts of the cultural material. It is essential that the conservator fully justify any such work, as well as fully documenting the work both before, during, and after the treatment.
The principal goal should be the stabilisation of the object or specimen. All conservation procedures should be documented and as reversible as possible, and all alterations should be clearly distinguishable from the original object or specimen.
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