The Museum of Bad Art

It is amazing what one finds when trolling the internet.  I was looking for interesting art exhibitions at art museums around the country when I happened upon, “The Museum of Bad Art”.  Of course, I thought it was a joke, so I wrote to them and sure enough received a response from Michael Frank, Curator-in-Chief Museum of Bad Art.  The museum's catchphrase? "Art too bad to be ignored." I guess it is true, “there are no new ideas under the sun”!

The concept for the museum was born in 1994 when an art and antiques dealer, Scott Wilson, found a painting in a pile of trash and picked it up so he could unframe it and sell the latter and again discard the painting.  A friend of his, Jerry Reilly, saw the painting and asked if he could acquire it with the frame.  When Mr. Wilson found an equally unsuccessful work Mr. Reilly again acquired it and the latter started his Museum of bad art in his basement.

Mr. Reilly’s wife, Marie Jackson, started to write brief blurbs about the art they were collecting so their friends could better understand it and they made a CD-Rom as a virtual museum. The photographer, Tom Stankowicz and Mr. Reilly’s sister, Louise Reilly Sacco all became founders of the museum.  Amazingly enough, they were able to gain the attention of Rolling Stone and Wired magazines and even the Wall Street Journal and the museum moved to the basement of a 1927 art-house movie theater outside of Boston.  It was always open when there was a movie on.

When Michael Frank was asked, what were the criteria for bad art that would be accepted by the museum, he gave the ageold explanation used by the courts regarding pornography. “I know it when I see it”.  I would find this difficult to accept were it not for the fact that the question what is art has never been successfully answered though many a bottle of ink has been spilled on the subject, so how can good or bad art be defined.  My father gave me a book called “A child of Six could do it” regarding abstract expressionism and the like but happily the museum that has some 700 works in its permanent collection does not collect works by children.

They are looking for works “created by someone seriously attempting to make an artistic statement-one that has gone horribly awry in either concept of execution”. Just because an artist has poor technique does not ensure acceptance by the museum and the conditions go on such as no works on black velvet or art made for the tourist trade.  

I don’t think you will have any problem recognizing bad art, at least not what is on their website.  For Instance, under the section called “Poor Traits”, is an anonymous painting titled “Welcome to the New World”.  The museum’s description is as follows “An Aztec emperor (possibly Montezuma) introduces the no-look high-five to a new friend who, judging from his suntan, has only recently arrived in the tropics”. Yes, and the wall label goes on from there!

In the section “In The Nood” I found “Chiquita” purchased in a thrift store in Boston.  Here part of the description is “Oblivious to the advancing lava flow, the lovely iconic tropical spokeswoman calmly gives us an alluring wink of the eye as all hell breaks loose behind her”.

My final image is from “The Sports Section” called “Yoga Class” which was found in the donor’s apartment building lobby. It is described briefly “We see an unidentified woman achieving the rarely attempted downwardly-mobile pigeon pose”.

I think that the Harvard Review summed the museum up beautifully, “MOBA is Affordable, Amusing, and a good place to share a laugh”.

Wait a moment, If you are already in your cars heading to the museum, please make a U-Turn at the next safe intersection and return home.  At this time the museum is closed for renovation with no reopening date scheduled!  You can, however, go to their website or find them on Facebook.

Richard Brockway Stolley

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the eminent journalist and editor, Richard (Dick) Stolley.  I knew Dick, previously, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Lensic Performing Arts Center here in Santa Fe.  He and his wife Lise moved to Santa Fe in 2004.  There is, of course, so much more to his story.

He was born in 1928 in Pekin, a small town south of Peoria, Illinois.  Already in his pre-teen years he fell in love with journalism and became editor of his junior and high school newspapers.  Also, while in high school he started his professional career as the sports reporter for his town’s newspaper, The Pekin Daily Times which still exists.  

He and his twin brother, Jim, decided that before going on to university they would join the Navy.  His brother remained in the States during his enlistment, but Dick was on a ship in the Mediterranean.  He got out in 1948 and went to the journalism school at Northwestern while his twin went to MIT as an engineering student.  Dick wrote a wonderful sad article about losing his twin in 2014.

While they were in the Navy their family moved to Peekskill New York so, of course, Dick got a job with the Peekskill Evening Star.  Wherever Dick went he found the local newspaper and since Northwestern  was in Chicago he went to work at the Chicago Sun Times.  Yet his career really kicked off and he came into his own when he joined Time, Inc. with its dozen or so publications.

He stayed the longest with Life magazine with four years in Atlanta, Georgia as Bureau Chief, then four years in Los Angeles, another four in Washington D.C. and finally as Bureau Chief in Paris covering all of Europe.  In 1974 Dick founded People Magazine. He emphasizes that he made a great effort not to limit People to celebrities and when he speaks of it he emphasizes the other figures covered.

Dick is probably best known for having been the first to see and then acquire the Zapruder film documenting the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) As soon as the President was shot Dick got a call from Time-Life  headquarters to get to Dallas.  Bringing a fellow writer and photographer he was able to get on a commercial flight that landed just as Air Force One was getting ready to take off with the body of JFK.

Life had a stringer in Dallas who had just left the police department to go home to feed her child when she got a phone call from the department saying that there was a video of the shooting.  She told Dick it was taken by Abraham Zapruder, a woman’s clothing manufacturer with offices around the corner from Dealey Plaza.  He had run out with his Bell & Howell movie camera to film the President driving by.  The bloody results were far from his plan.  It was evening by then, Stolley looked up Zapruder’s number in the phone book. and asked if he could come right over.  Zapruder told him they should meet in his office the next morning at 9am.  Dick arrived at 8.

Other Journalists showed up at 9 but Dick had already seen the film which Zapruder had sent out to Kodak for duplication.  Dick did not want to see it again so he waited in another office.  Of course, all the other journalists wanted the film and were furious to learn that Zapruder was in negotiations with Dick. When one of them started banging on the door of the office where he and Dick were speaking, Zapruder had it and accepted the offer of $50,000 that was on the table.  The police received a copy of the film and Dick took 2 copies with him, expediting one to Time-Life headquarters.  There was no time to publish in color, so the issue came out in black and white.  The negotiations had only been for the rights to the stills, but when legendary publisher Henry Luce saw the video, he said they had to have it. Dick was sent back to negotiate all rights for $150,000, a princely sum for the time.  It was , however, considered too gruesome  to show on the big screen or TV so little use was made of it. The Warren Commission reported their finding 11 months later and here is an image of the Life Magazine cover with some Zapruder images.

As you can imagine, Dick had many other important assignments, and he told me of  a few such as a lynching down south in the 1950’s, which I won’t dwell on.  One that he enjoyed was interviewing Georges Pompidou, Prime Minister and then President of France.  Not surprisingly Pompidou was puffing away on a cigarette when the ash fell on his desk and papers burst into flame!  I asked if he had a photographer with him, but the French would not allow it!

My favorite anecdote was about a brief interview he had with President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) when he was sent from Los Angeles to his new post in to Washington D.C. I want you to read this in Dick’s own words, “Two writers at Life were doing a story about LBJ and Texas and had a few questions which they hoped I could get answers to.  I asked to see him, and press secretary Bill Moyers agreed to ask the President to speak briefly to me in a small office next to the Oval Office in the White House.  I asked him the few questions.  I was embarrassed, so I sort of sat there with the President staring at me, at which point, he punched my arm, and said, ‘Come on, boy, you’ve got the President of the United States here.  Ask me some questions!’ I mumbled a few questions and fled as soon as I could.”  When I heard this I could just hear that Texas drawl!

It was fascinating to have Dick Stolley take me behind the scenes of just a few of the stories he has covered. 

The Town that Time Forgot

As mentioned last week Las Vegas New Mexico is a world away from Las Vegas, Nevada. It is a quiet, you might even say a sleepy, town with antique shops and, diners that have been there since the 1950s. In one of them there were even mini jukeboxes at some tables.  For those of my younger readers, you put in a coin in and pick the song you want to hear, and it plays your selection in turn with other requests from diners.

As we walked and drove through town we noticed how little traffic there was.  Traffic lights lasted far too long for the lack of cars, and at one intersection that begged for a traffic light there was not even a stop sign!

In the 1880’s Las Vegas was New Mexico’s big town, bigger and richer than Santa Fe or Albuquerque. There are nearly 100 buildings in the area on the National Register of Historic Places!  Now there is clearly an effort to revive the town and one of the prime movers in this direction is Allan Affeldt. We did not know him before, but we stayed at his hotel, La Posada, in Winslow, Arizona, a number of times when we were visiting the Hopi reservation.

In Las Vegas we had booked at the Castañeda, an 1898 hotel which is Affeldt’s latest restoration project. Affeldt was there on his biweekly visit and generously allowed us to interview him. We soon realized that he was extremely well-connected including many government officials in Arizona and New Mexico. I asked if he knew our mayor, Alan Webber, and he said they were great friends which was confirmed to us by the mayor who cited “the great care and integrity he practices in his exacting projects”.  Affeldt has a serious interest in historic places and preserving them, but he treats them as businesses.  He told us he averages 90% occupancy it is his hotels which is absolutely amazing.

1907 Postcard of the Castañeda Hotel

The Winslow La Posada Hotel, built in 1929 was his first project. It had long been abandoned although the railroad still operated a depot in one wing. In 1994 before Affeldt and his wife, Tina Mion, made the final decision to acquire La Posada, she insisted that they stay there overnight. So, they took their sleeping bags, broke into the building and slept in an empty room. The next morning, they began negotiations with the railroad, which would take three years, and the restoration would cost 12 million dollars. Ms Mion is an artist and her paintings are hanging throughout their hotels where a section of each is set aside for the owners  quarters and she gets a studio there as well.

Allan Affeldt, Tina Mion and Friends

La Posada and the Castañeda, , were both built as Harvey hotels along the railroad tracks still used by AMTRAK.  Fred Harvey (1835 – 1901), who had immigrated from England at age 15, saw opportunity as the railroad was moving west across the United States. There were no dining cars in those days, so he convinced the railroad company to let him establish restaurants and eventually hotels at the depots. These hotels were on a very grand scale and could no longer be kept up in the smaller towns as railroad travel declined. The Castañeda had been closed for 70 years when the Affeldt/ Mion team acquired it in 2014 and you could see the sky through the lobby roof.

The Castañeda is a boutique hotel with just 20 rooms as compared with La Posada’s 54 rooms.  While they were negotiating for the Castañeda, Affeldt acquired another big historic hotel, the Plaza, in the center of Las Vegas’ old town. That has 70 rooms and is handsomely restored but does not have the same charm and cachet as the former Harvey hotels.

The Castañeda began to open gradually in April this year, a few rooms at a time. We stayed in a luxurious suite created by removing the door between the original rooms.  All the spaces are furnished with an eclectic collection of antiques. When we spoke to Mr. Afffeldt, I asked him about the lack of an armoire or somewhere you could put a hanger in our attractively decorated room. He replied that he is always adding to the rooms and is still finding pieces for La Posada which they opened 20+ years ago.

The restaurants in Affeldt’s hotels are leased so the only risk is the loss of rent if the bar and restaurant fail.  The Castañeda restaurant had not yet opened but they had a food truck and served food in the bar in the evening. The entire hotel and restaurant are on schedule to open during the summer.  Affeldt had a meal he liked in a Santa Fe restaurant and asked the chef, Sean Sinclair and his wife Katie, whether they would like to have their own place.  Sean, age 31, had already worked in restaurants around the country including a Michelin three star in Virginia outside of Washington D.C.  They jumped at the chance and they have leased the bar and restaurant. I asked Sean if he planned to make it a three star and he demurred. He did say, however, that while they would continue to serve bar food out of the same hotel kitchen, they plan gourmet meals with many courses and commensurate prices in the dining room. We are definitely going back to try that out.

Sean & Katie Sinclair

Lest you think there is no adventure anymore out west, on our return from Las Vegas we visited Pecos National Historical Park where we were told to beware of rattlesnakes which we had been told at Fort Union as well.  Sure enough, on our walk around the mission ruins we ran into a couple which we carefully avoided.  In this photo I took you can see the rattles on this one’s tail. Luckily he was a small one.

Fort Union

I just bought a new car, a BMW 330xi and I wanted to drive it out of town. We did not have days for an extended road trip, so we decided to tour near Santa Fe, staying for two nights in Las Vegas, NM. I remember being so excited when we first bought a house and I learned we were a little more than an hour from Las Vegas. I thought of Las Vegas, Nevada, where I had never been there at the time but I learned New Mexico has its very own Las Vegas.  It is the antithesis of the famous one in Nevada and is older too. Next week I will write more about our stay.

We made a day trip from there to Fort Union National Monument, one of the 12 National Monuments in New Mexico, and that is not counting the State Historic Sites.  I had heard of it as a place to see, but it took us thirty years of coming to this part of the world to make the effort.  All I can say is that I wish we had done it earlier.  It is an amazing property and possibly more exciting because most of it is a ruin with only parts of buildings still extant.  Somehow, it allows one to use one’s imagination like at Stonehenge and come up with your own interpretation.  

That is not necessary, however, because there is plenty of literature available and a small educational museum illustrates the story of the fort with artifacts and weapons of the period.  I enjoyed particularly seeing the Colt 45, known as the Peacemaker made between 1873 and 1892.  After you have walked through the museum you can go outside to see the Howitzer, which is a cannon with a short barrel that needs relatively small charges to propel projectiles over relatively high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent.

Then you walk a straight line, up through the ruins of adobe, brick and stone walls of what was actually the third Fort Union, not a military stronghold but rather a complex of buildings that functioned as a supply depot for the 46 forts out west.  The first Fort Union (1851-61) had been built up against the mountains to protect from marauding Indians. Then they found that, set up against the bluffs would not be defensible against the armaments of the Confederate Army.

The outpost came into its own during the Civil War when a second fort (1861-62) was built to defend against the Confederate troops who came up from Texas.  It was an earthworks construction created by digging trenches in a star shape. This fort had 28 cannon platforms and could contain 1,000 troops. It did not last long because the Howitzer could fire rounds high up that would come down into the trenches.  However, one important event occurred there in 1861: when the U.S. Dragoons (mounted troops) were organized as a cavalry Fort Union became the home of the first regiments of the newly formed First U.S. Cavalry!

The fort was not located in the middle of nowhere without reason.   This was where two ecosystems met, the mountains and the plains.  I had not realized that the plains went this far west.  This is where the two main branches of the Santa Fe Trail met.  The Santa Fe Trail was not just a passage West for settlers but rather a continuing commercial supply route. The starting point was in what is today St. Louis, Missouri. Our house is right on the Trail just a short distance from where it ends at the Santa Fe Plaza.

 The language of the army was English but most of the troops were local volunteers who spoke Spanish, so it was preferable to have officers who spoke both languages. One of those who trained the New Mexican volunteers was Lieutenant Kit Carson.  He not only spoke Spanish but also several Indian languages.  By July 1861 New Mexico was in Confederate hands.  In March of 1862, however, at the Battle of the Glorieta Pass, the Union took New Mexico back.

Kit Carson

Though it must have been very difficult living on the frontier with no town nearby the third Fort Union which lasted the longest (1863 to 1891), formed its own community.  There were barracks for the troops, different corrals for the mechanics and transportation, store houses, a commissary, officers’ quarters, a quartermaster depot, guard house and stockade.  The soldiers in this period were there to protect travelers from Indian attack, escorting the wagon trains and accompany stagecoaches after the Civil War that carried mail and money as well as passengers.

Fort Walls

The Stockade

With the Indian Wars dying down, and the use of the Santa Fe Trail fading out before the advance of the railroad, Fort Union was no longer a vital link between East and West.  The remnants of the fort were established as a National Monument in 1954 to make it possible for visitors like us to experience the vast spaces and better understand the history of the United States’ push west. 

A Feast for the Eyes

“A Feast for the Eyes” is an exhibition in St. Petersburg Florida that I stumbled across on line. I was at the Museum of Fine Arts there once before and through an exhibition there came back in touch with my first girl friend at age 12. But that, is another story:  http://www.geraldstiebel.com/2012/10/the-first-girl-i-kissed.html

The museum has a diverse permanent collection covering  European art, but it seems that they have latched on to a major cache of wonderful European Old Masters that fill many gaps from the Grasset Collection.  The Grasset family came to Spain from France in the 1850’s and their name is now pronounced Grassette. Juan Manuel Grasset, who is close to 93 years old started acquiring what is now a fine collection of Old Master in the 1960’s.

Unbeknownst, to the St. Petersburg Museum staff, his daughter, Christina, has been vacationing with her family in St. Petersburg for almost a decade. She recently got in touch, inquiring if the Museum would like to show the collection as they were looking for an institution where it would serve a real purpose. 

The exhibition certainly adds a whole new dimension to St. Petersburg’s holdings, being in the words of the Museum Director, Kirsten Shepherd, “a gift to young people in our community whose first impression of so-called ‘Old Masters’ will be these delightfully fresh and lively masterpieces.”

The exhibition features forty superb Old Master paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries by major Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch and Netherlandish artists, with an emphasis on the Low Countries. This is only the second time this collection has been shown publicly. It was at the San Diego Museum of Art in 2016.

An engineer by profession, Mr. Grasset was obviously a very dedicated and discerning collector to have been able to acquire so choice a group of Old Masters over the last half century. As museums gobble up collections there is less and less on the market. Still, there are deaccessions: Christies just announced that it was getting a group of works from a member of the Rothschild family. 

Here are some of the Grasset pictures that caught my eye.  The one that has received the most publicity is the Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, Italian, 1697–1768.  It is probably also the most accessible since it is a scene of the Grand Canal in Venice. Who is not in love with the myth and reality of Venice?

There are a number of still lives, one by the most famous 17th century Dutch Still-Life painters, Jan Davidsz De Heem.  Titled, and this will be a surprise, “A Still Life of Flowers in a Glass”!    Another well-known artist of the period was Floris Claesz who has actually painted “The Feast for the Eyes” with the table setting with pitcher, goblet and cheese, fruit and nuts.  Note the trompe l’oeil effect of the knife tipped up against the cheese plate. 

My final example is possibly the most valuable,-- Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), Flemish, “A Wooded River Landscape, with a Fish Market and Fishing Boats,” It is a small picture and painted on copper which gives it a luminous quality because the paint is not absorbed by wood or canvas but sits on the surface, glistening.