CultureComment

The Walters - some "manly" swords

According to The New York Times (11/29), the proportion of men taking in the current exhibition at the Met featuring Samuri swords is unusally high.

HHHmmm…

So maybe, the writer speculated, there should be more shows on the shapes of WWII bombs, on naked women, and maybe on fishhooks.

After all, upward to 70% of those attending fine arts mueums are women. So how about some outreach to the male population, the ones watching the NFL on Sunday afternoon when they could as well be enjoying some Renaissance Madonnas or French 19th-century landscapes?

Food for thought.  And by the way, while it is true that almost 70% of museum visitors are women, more than 80% of those very museums are directed by men.

And until fairly recently, almost all the artists were men. (This is certainly true for the Walters.) 

Go figure…

Tom Hoving died yesterday (NYT, 12/11: “Thomas Hoving, Who Shook Up The Met as Its Director, Dies at 78″). Unless you’re way into art museums, you probably don’t recognize the name. But Hoving had an enormous impact no only on the Met, but on all art museums, both here and abroad.

How So?

Though a true American aristocrat himself, Tom Hoving broke the then thoroughly retro American museum world wide open in the most un-aristocratic sorts of ways. As director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1977 (he was appointed at age 35!), Hoving literally “made the mummies dance,” along with virtually everything and everybody else, as he opened up the stodgy old Met to Harlem, and with the first incarnation of King Tut, invented the blockbuster.

Art museums have not been the same since.

Tom Hoving was bash, sometimes abrasive, and always self-promoting. He had a wicked gift for the baroque embellshment of his own past.

He was afraid of nothing.

So it’s not surprising that Tom Hoving’s picture is on the cover of Art for Dummies.  He had the guts to write this thoroughly-commercial self-help guide for art novices.

In it, he spouts opinions about every artist and architectural monument, and every art museum you could possibly imagine.

Including the Walters.

On page 274, in his cross-country tour of US art museums, Tom Hoving stops in Baltimore. And as for the Walters, Hoving’s opinion is categorical: in his view, the Walters is the finest art museum, “piece for piece,” in America.

I think we should all take some pride in that.

About a week ago I was part of an intense conversation with the director of a major New York City museum (in fact, MoMA) about whether it is good or bad to have broad exposure for our collections on the Internet. (As if, in the end, we have a choice.)

The point of view he was articulating is a  familiar one.  Namely, that if we put high quality digitized images of our works of art on our websites, the “authentic” work will somehow be devalued, people will visit us on screen, and our galleries will be empty. And things can only get worse, with the integration of the  Internet and television, and 3D TV just around the corner.

Variations on a theme…. 

As TV was going to be the death of movies, as Blockbusters – the “Home Entertainment Center” – was going to be the death of both TV and the movies – and bowling, and just about everything that would oblige us to leave the comfort and safety of our homes.  

“Nesting,” “cocooning,” and the inevitable disintegration of our social fabric.

So why do those tens of thousands of people jostle in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, so far from their respective “nests”?  For one simple reason: because it is famous. So people want to get close to it, even if they never really see it very well. And how did it get to be so famous? Through reproductions!

And wouldn’t be great if our version of the Mona Lisa at the Walters (above the door, at the left) were that famous?

Well, maybe not quite that famous.

The Walters - Renaissance Gallery

Henry Walters

Yes, it’s true. And all you have to do to uncover them is to get your hands on the first Walters ”Handbook of the Collection,” from 1936, and compare it with the 1997 Handbook.

About a quarter of the works in the later book were acquired by the museum after Henry died, in 1931. Most of these are Asian objects, donated by regional collectors, but there is Ethiopian art as well, which came into the collection by purchase in the 1990s.

But there was, in the 1930s Walters, a Canaletto “View of the Doges’ Palace,” which wasn’t a Canaletto after all, and a Rembrandt portrait of his wife, which turn out to be wishful thinking.

But strangest of all is Gallery XII of the origianl Walters; it was the English Gallery, with all the English greats, including  Hogarth, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Constable.

You’ll find none of these paintings on the walls the Walters of 2009; they simply didn’t pass the test of time, and are now bearing other labels, in deep storage.

All great collectors make mistakes, and Henry Walters was no exception. The amazing thing is how often he got it right.