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Category: Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Hypocrites

If you can ignore human suffering to hold on to something that isn’t yours, you don’t deserve the label (or the tax status) of a philanthropic organization.
l’Acteur, 1904-05, Pablo Picasso, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Nazis seized an estimated 650,000 works of art between 1933 and 1945. There are well over 100,000 items that have not been returned to their rightful owners. Tens of thousands of these works ended up in public collections in the United States.
In 1998, 44 nations created the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, spearheaded by our own State Department. It called for a “just and fair solution” if heirs came forward to reclaim their family’s legacy. Museums also pledged to thoroughly research their acquisitions.
That was twenty years ago. In the meantime, many of our museums have stalled for time, using the classic American defense—the courts—to avoid compliance.
Artillerymen, 1915, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
“Prominent U.S. museums have evaded the restitution of Holocaust-era stolen art to rightful owners and heirs by refusing to resolve claims on their facts and merits and by asserting technical defenses, such as statutes of limitations,” the World Jewish Restitution Organization reportedin 2015.
The city with the highest Jewish population in the world is not Jerusalem, but New York, where 1.5 million Jews make their home. Most are the descendants of Jews who escaped persecution in Europe in the 19th and 20th century. Many are enthusiastic supporters of the arts. Sysco co-founder Herbert Irving and his wife Florence are one example among many. Last year their foundation gave the Metropolitan Museum a cool $80 million.
In February of this year, the heirs of Paul Leffmann lost their suit against the Met for the return of Pablo Picasso’s L’acteur. Leffmann sold it under duress for $13,200 when his family fled Cologne in 1938. It is now worth an estimated $100 million.
“The Leffmanns would not have disposed of this seminal work at that time, but for the Nazi and fascist persecution to which they had been, and without doubt would continue to be, subjected,” argued their lawyers. The case is now being appealed.
In October, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announcedit would return Artillerymen by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to the heirs of its original owner. Kirchner, a founding member of Die BrĂźcke, was a seminal figure in Expressionism. He too was a victim of Nazi Germany. Branded a “degenerate,” he ultimately took his own life, but not before he lived to see his entire ouevre confiscated.
The Guggenheim spent two years doing the right thing. They discovered that the painting’s initial attribution was a fabrication. It had in fact been owned by art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, who fled Berlin in 1933. It passed to Flechtheim’s niece, Rosi Hulisch. She committed suicide before she was to be shipped to a concentration camp in 1938.
It was then acquired by Dr. Kurt Feldhäusser. After he died in 1945, his mother sent his art collection to New York to be sold. Artillerymen was purchased by MoMA and then traded to the Guggenheim.
Portrait of Tilla Durieux, 1914, Auguste Renoir, courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan hasn’t been nearly as obliging. Among its treasures is the Portrait of Tilla Durieux, painted by an elderly Auguste Renoir. The sitter, a famous actress, took the painting with her when she and her husband fled Berlin in 1933. She survived; he died in Sachsenhausenin 1943. Their heirs claim that the couple sold the painting under duress in 1935 as they scrambled to find a way to leave Europe.
According to the New York Post, the Neue Galerie, Morgan Library and MoMA all hold looted works by Egon Schiele. These were part of a personal collection belonging to Austrian Jewish cabaret artist Fritz GrĂźnbaum. GrĂźnbaum owned more than 400 pieces, including eighty by Schiele. A quarter of the collection appeared on the art market in the early 1950s through Swiss art dealer Eberhard W. Kornfeld. The whereabouts of the rest are unknown.
Grünbaum died at Dachau in 1941. His wife, Elisabeth, was forced to surrender the family’s art collection to the Nazis before her transfer to a death camp in 1942.
If you can ignore that kind of suffering to hold on to something that isn’t yours, you don’t deserve the label (or the tax status) of a philanthropic organization.
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The Met raises its rates for out-of-state visitors

The trouble with high admission fees to museums is that artists can’t afford them.

The Fortune Teller, 1630, Georges de La Tour, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

The most loosely-held secret in the city of New York was that the admission fee of $25 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was “suggested.” Visitors could, in fact, pay whatever they wanted. That policy will end on March 1, when out-of-state visitors will be required to fork over the full amount. (Schoolkids from neighboring Connecticut and New Jersey will be exempt.)

There won’t be separate lines for visiting and local residents—at least for now. “We can always make the rules more strict,” Daniel Weiss, the Met’s CEO, told the New York Times, “but I’m hoping we don’t have to.”
The Met sees an average of seven million visitors a year. Of these, only 17% pay the full fee. That’s down from 2004, when 63% paid the whole thing. A highly-publicized lawsuit, brought by two Czech tourists and a disgruntled tourist, brought the museum’s admission policy into the public eye in 2016. They claimed the museum was bamboozling patrons into thinking the admission was mandatory. The people at the desk were—I think—trained to scowl bitterly whenever someone’s ‘suggested’ donation was less than the full amount.

Heart of the Andes, 1859, Frederic Edwin Church, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

If you’re old enough, you remember when the Met was free (before 1971).

Currently the Met takes in about $43 million a year. That’s expected to increase to $49 million, or by $6 million per year. In other words, in ten years or so, the new policy will bring in a little less than the $65 million David Koch spent to build the new fountains at the building’s façade.
Of course, those numbers are a guess, since nobody currently counts who’s from New York and who’s from Maine.

Boaters, 1874, Édouard Manet, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met is in financial trouble right now. The City of New York owns its building and provides $26 million a year in funding support. That amount has been static or falling in recent years. To close the gap, the Met is considering selling its executive co-op at 993 Fifth Avenue. That’s currently occupied by the former director, Thomas Campbell, who resigned eleven months ago and hasn’t yet been replaced. Nobody can say for sure how much that sale would net, but it’s likely to be in the tens of millions.

Then there’s the Met Breuer, a satellite museum of contemporary art, in the former Whitney Museum. That opened in 2016 as part of the Met’s $600 million renovation plan. The lease costs the Met $17 million a year.

Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867, Claude Monet, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Protecting the cultural resources of western civilization adds up, especially when it’s done in a white-glove manner. I love the Met; it’s one of the world’s cultural jewels. I’ll go see the Michelangelo drawings before they close, and I’ll pony up their $25 fee to do so. But I’ll no longer be stopping by to draw on a rainy day, and I’ll visit less often.

Most working artists are not wealthy, but they need access to great art to learn about their craft. For us, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a far friendlier scheme. There you can pay $35 a year for a membership, if you can prove (with a postcard or other literature) that you’re a currently working artist. 

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Pubescent erotica

(Note: this post contains an image that I find offensive. Read at your own risk.)

ThÊrèse Dreaming, 1938, Balthus, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museumin New York has refused to remove ThĂŠrèse Dreaming, a portrait of 12- or 13-year-old ThĂŠrèse Blanchard showing her knickers. This 1938 painting by Balthus is ambiguously sexual. Much of his work was more overt.

A petition started by New Yorker Mia Merrill to have it removed has gathered almost 11,000 signatures. “Given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses without providing any type of clarification, The Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children,” states the petition.
The Met has a long-standing policy against censorship. “Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present, and encouraging the continuing evolution of existing culture through informed discussion and respect for creative expression,” they responded.
The White Skirt by Balthus, 1937, is a painting of Balthus’ wife in her mid-30s. He makes sure that we understand her aristocratic background by the drape, at right.
Balthus was a terrific liar about his own history, changing the details to suit his audience. Genetics refute his tale of being descended from the Polish and Russian nobility: his son died at age two from Tay-Sachs disease, indicating that one of Balthus’ parents was an Ashkenazi Jew. He and his brother both adopted the Rola coat of arms, although any connection to the Polish petit nobility was spurious. 
But there was something about the family that attracted celebrity. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke was Balthus’ mother’s lover. Balthus married twice, once to a Swiss aristocrat and once to a Japanese beauty 34 years his junior. His son was a famous London playboy in the 1960s. Balthus’ funeral in 2001 was attended by international celebrities. Bono sang.
Girl in Green and Red, 1944, is also a portrait of Balthus’ wife, who by then was approaching middle age.
“A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence,” said Oscar Wilde. Balthus may have paid homage to innocence, but he probably slept with it, too. His models Laurence Bataille and Fré´dé´rique Tison both said they had affairs with the artist while in their teens.
There is nothing one can say in defense of The Guitar Lesson. If this wasn’t high art, the owner (a private individual) would be doing time for possessing child pornography. Balthus painted several studies of this, including one with a male teacher.
Equally unnerving was his habit of painting adult women as little girls. His wife was in her early thirties when she posed for The White Skirt, and even older when she posed for Girl in Green and Red. In both cases, he gives her the face and body of an adolescent.
The Guitar Lesson, 1934, Balthus
By the end of his life, Balthus was pretty well sexed-out. In the 1990s, he took a series of 2,000 Polaroids of the youngest daughter of his doctor. Every Wednesday afternoon, from the age of eight until the age of 16, Anna Wahli posed for him, usually semi-naked.  “It took such a long time to change what seemed to be a minute detail and, from my point of view, all the photographs looked alike,” she wrote.
One of 2000 Polaroids taken by Balthus in the last years of his life. If you want, you can buy them in coffee-table book form for about $350. (Courtesy Gagosian Gallery)
When he was 14, Balthus told a friend that he wanted to remain a child forever. That’s hardly exculpatory; I imagine a lot of pedophiles do. Nor is the fact that Balthus is so compelling as a painter. That just makes him a better pornographer than most.
Formally, Balthus’ paintings are brilliant. He took the painting style of the Italian Renaissance, and jazzed it up with vivid color and compositional innovation. But instead of the Virgin Mary, we have his own fantasies about little girls. As social mores change, what do we do with him?
It’s a difficult question. I didn’t appreciate my own work being censored, and I don’t approve of censoring history. I’m equally opposed to sexualizing children, however, and I don’t think high art should get a special pass. However, Balthus’ paintings are now worth millions. They’re not going away any time soon.
Mia Merrill is not asking for the painting to be permanently shelved. “I would consider this petition a success if the Met included a message as brief as, ‘Some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus’ artistic infatuation with young girls,’” she wrote.
I signed. 
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Rain day

by Carol L. Douglas

by Carol L. Douglas
Rain, I can handle. Wind—in the usual amounts—I can handle. The combination is difficult, since the wind makes an umbrella impossible. Rain makes for gloomy paintings anyway, which one can sometimes recast as moody, but not always.
The organizers of this weekend’s event had given us two days for one painting. So when Saturday was both windy and guttering rain, Brad Marshall and I decided to take pencils to the Met instead. We thought we’d look at Max Beckmann, follow him up with some lighthearted Fragonard frivolity, and then find a bit of Roman statuary to draw. But as Brad held the elevator door, a gentleman turned to him and said, “Did you see the Caravaggisti? Really excellent.”
by Brad Marshall

by Brad Marshall
There really being only one Caravaggio, I’ve never been that interested in his followers. There’s a fine line between emotionalism and being just plain silly. So I was pleasantly surprised at what a fine painter Valentin de Boulogne was.
I found myself in a group of three ladies querying me about Judith and Holofernes. (Brad had neatly sidestepped.) “How do you know this stuff?” one finally asked.
by Brad Marshall

by Brad Marshall
“I’m an evangelical Christian. We learn this stuff,” I answered. But regardless of faith, these stories are a powerful part of our cultural legacy, since the books of the Bible are the greatest collection of literature surviving from antiquity. There was a time when everyone learned them, and they learned them predominantly through paintings. As Brad said later, “I know them from Art History.”
Valentin also turned out innumerable morality paintings, as per his time. All those fortune-tellers-with-soldiers put me in the mood to draw armor, so we made our way to that Hall. Since there were no benches, I asked a security guard if we could sit on the floor.
by Brad Marshall

by Brad Marshall
“Absolutely impermissible,” he sniffed, in the refined tones of a descendent of ten generations of Norman knights. “Not allowed… Still, if you promise to not tell my supervisor that I allowed it, go ahead.” Later, he walked by again and muttered, “Impermissible,” at me. He would have his little joke.
by Brad Marshall

by Brad Marshall
So we drew horses and armor, Brad sketching away lightheartedly and me fuming and cursing and complaining that I didn’t understand how the mannequins were seated.
“Stop drawing what you know and start drawing what you see,” Brad said, and it was, of course, good advice. I was rather surprised at the stature of these warhorses. In my mind’s eye, I’d seen them towering like modern-day Friesians. Instead, if the armor is any indication, they were about the size of my old quarter horse.
Suddenly it was 7 PM and time for us to head back, since Sunday promised to be a long day. We picked up a pizza as we exited the subway. That made it a perfect New York evening.
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Paintings, paintings everywhere!

The Amathus sarcophagus (5th century BC, Cyprian archaic period) was excavated by General Cesnola in Amathus, Cyprus and purchased from General Luigi Palma di Cesnola in 1874. Frankly, it’s absurd to talk about intellectual property rights for objects purchased from tomb robbers. 
I believe that our shared art heritage should be available to all (especially the parts that were plundered in the first place). The Metropolitan Museum of Art  recently announced that it has released 400,000 digital images of its collection into the public domain. While the Met has always had images online, the new database includes high-resolution views suitable for scholarly study.
Two misconceptions need to be cleared up. First, this is not the Met’s whole collection, which numbers far more than 400,000 items. Also, no online viewer can “let you see the pieces as you might if you visited the museum in New York City, in person,” as one breathless reviewer wrote. There is no substitute for a real walk around a museum.
George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, c. 1845. It’s a lot more fun to see this in person and enter the inevitable debate about whether that’s a cat and if so, why it’s on a boat. But when it’s on the internet, it’s definitely a cat.
On the other hand, many of these objects can’t be viewed in the museum at all, since they’re not on display. That makes this online collection invaluable.
The Met is following a general trend in the art world to make access to artwork easier. The Farnsworth Art Museum bucks this trend, and I wish they’d stop. There is so much that can be learned from studying the technique of a master painter, and not all of us can go to Rockland to look at Andrew Wyeth’s preparatory sketches. (But if you want to, join me for my workshop in Belfast this summer.)
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, 1662-65, Johannes Vermeer. To choose one work to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the Met’s collection is impossible, so why not start here?
The Met allows dissemination of images for scholarly purposes. What does that mean? Essentially, it means anything that isn’t for commercial gain, like reprinting images on umbrellas, scarves, and coffee mugs—those rights they reserve for themselves alone.
You can view the Met’s collection here.

Come paint with me in Belfast, ME! Information is available here.