Digital Museums for Digital Art

In October of 2023, I posted a Missive called “Chat GPT Art Exhibit.” At that time, I spoke of the fear of A.I. taking the place of people such as curators. Here, I am going to address the other great fear, that A.I. is going to replace artists. I have also written that digital art is merely using the internet as a tool to create art, just like pencil, brush, paint, and photography. Half a century ago, we started to collect photographs, and there was still the attitude that photography was not really art because it was not an original creation but rather just a copy of nature.

Therefore, we could buy for hundreds of dollars what today would bring thousands if not tens of thousands. That, however, was not why we collected and we sold and gave away the collection so we could start our Native American collection. My belief is that the way a photographer sees things and captures them through his lens, which makes the photograph creative or mundane, is now accepted.



We have many museums in the United States that include digital art in their collections, but I have not found a museum in this country devoted solely to it. Let me know if I am incorrect. There have been temporary exhibitions of digital art experiences, and I have written about one of them, but they have been presented in rented spaces.

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2022/04/beyond-van-gogh.html

There was an article in a recent post on Artnet by Jo Lawson-Tancred telling us that Dubai is planning a huge new museum dedicated to digital art. This will not only become a vehicle for using the tools of A.I. to create art, but it will entail jobs for administrators, curators, and techies to create and maintain the equipment needed, as well as security guards and all the others involved in maintaining a museum.

According to the article, the creation of this Museum of Digital Art (MODA) denotes the competition across the Gulf States to dominate the fast-growing field of tech-driven culture as the museum will show various art forms that rely on emerging technologies. The author tells us that MODA will be part of a $27 billion transformation of Dubai’s financial center as a tech hub. Dubai is not alone, two years ago Saudi Arabia launched it own media Institute, Diriyah Art Futures, with an exhibition “Art Must Be Artificial: Perspectives of A.I. in the Visual Arts”.

Two years ago, Emilia Wang wrote an article for Artnet on teamLab in Tokyo, and there I found a paragraph that expressed my feeling on A.I. art precisely: “Naturally, the technological underpinnings of the works spark interest, but teamLab doesn’t want its audience to get fixated on the mechanisms. Takashi Kudo explained, ‘Just like there is watercolor and oil paint, the works move between spaces and through mediums such as projection and L.E.D.’ Technology for TeamLab is a tool, but it is not the inherent message.”

In an interview with Takashi Kudo, Global Brand Director, he explained, “TeamLab aims to explore a new relationship between humanity and nature through art. Digital technology enables us to liberate art from the physical and transcend boundaries. We see no distinction between ourselves and nature; we are interconnected, existing in a long, fragile, yet miraculous continuity of life.”

The teamLab digital museums are immersive, interactive art experiences created by the international art collective. One is also being built in Hamburg, Germany, devoted solely to digital art, and it is planned to open this year. Some of TeamLab's exhibitions have come to the U.S. Their signature concept is art that is immersive and borderless, not confined by a frame of any sort. In the words of digitalartmuseum.com, “Artworks move out of rooms, communicate with other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle without boundaries.”

As we get older, it is difficult to even conceptualize this new field, and I am sure this will take a while to catch on and be accepted as a legitimate art form. Personally, I find it very exciting. When more than a few museums are devoted to the subject, we will begin to discern the good, better, and best of the work presented.

Two Museums Join Forces

If you live in New York or have an interest in the art world, you are almost sure to have heard about the merger agreement between the Metropolitan Museum and The Neue Galerie. The Neue Galerie will remain in its present location but under the auspices of the Met as of 2028. The story of how such things come about often seems obvious in hindsight, but rarely is at the time. Although the Met is world-renowned, not everybody knows about The Neue Galerie. The latter is a gem of a museum that specializes in German and Austrian art of the early 20th century. Its star attraction is Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, better known as the Woman in Gold.

The Neue Galerie is going to celebrate its 25th anniversary later this year when it reopens after renovations over the summer. It was founded by an unusual duo. Ronald Lauder, son of Estée Lauder, who founded the eponymous cosmetics firm, and a Viennese art dealer by the name of Serge Sabarsky. The Sabarsky gallery was located on the street level of Madison Avenue at 77th Street. Ronald walked by often and fell in love with the art that Sabarsky displayed in the window and along the gallery walls. Ronald’s daughter, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, tells the story best in an article in Vogue magazine. “When I was little, my father used to walk me to Serge’s gallery. He would say to my mother, ‘I’m going to take Aerin to the park,’ and we would go to the park and then end up at Serge’s for hours and hours. I would color while they were discussing their dream of having a museum of Austrian and German art”. (Image Serge Caption: Serge Sabarsky and Ronald Lauder)

Serge Sabarsky and Ronald Lauder

Aerin went on to explain that Ronald not only has known the director of the Met, Max Hollein, for many years, but also was friendly with Max’s father. In fact, the Vienna-born Met Director has been a trustee of the Neue Galerie for the past 20 years.

Ronald S. Lauder, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Max Hollein, & Renée Price

In the interest of total transparency, I was personally friendly with Serge, and Ronald was an important client of our gallery, Rosenberg & Stiebel, as well as a friend. Serge confirmed to me his ambition to create a museum of art in his field. Most friends pull out photos of their children when they see you, but in Serge’s case, he always showed me photos of the buildings he and Ronald were looking at as possibilities for their dream. In the end, it came to be the William Starr Miller mansion at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue, an ideal location on Museum Mile.

On the announcement of the merger, Ronald stated in a letter emailed to the members of The Neue Galerie, “None of this would have been possible without the dedication of Renée Price, the Neue Galerie’s founding and longtime director. I first met Renée in the 1970’s when she was gallery director for Serge Sabarsky”. The three of them made quite a team, but sadly, Serge died before the opening of the Museum. Ronald, however, did the most wonderful and appropriate thing in naming the restaurant on the Museum’s ground floor, The Café Sabarsky. It is more than a Café because it is a serious restaurant, but it has the aura of a typical Viennese Café as well as the food you would expect to find there. My favorites are the Weisswurst and the Sacher torte. Nowhere else in this country can you find this sausage or cake as good as in Austria or Germany. The reason I believe it is so appropriate is that Serge loved telling stories, and I can visualize him sitting in a corner of his café telling stories to all who would listen.

I will end with one of his favorite jokes. The waiter brings him the soup he has ordered, and before the waiter can put it down, he says, “It’s not hot enough. Take it back.” A few minutes later, the waiter returns with the soup. Without hesitation, the patron repeats, “It’s not hot enough. Take it back”. After this happens a couple of more times the waiter, by now quite annoyed, says “You don’t look up. You don’t try the soup. How can you know it is not hot enough and when do you think it will be hot enough?” He replies, “When you have to carry the soup on a saucer and a tray instead of with you thumb in the bowl”.

Art Museums as Architecture

Museums used to be in actual palaces, and if none were available, buildings were constructed to look like palaces. Why palaces? Well, to paraphrase the notorious bank robber, Willie Sutton, that is where the art is, gathered to show the wealth, power, and culture of the owner.

The Louvre is a converted palace. Originally built in 1190 as a fort, in the 14th century Charles V turned it into the royal residence, and so it remained for the French kings until 1682. Accommodations were made to show parts of the Royal collection, and selected artists were allowed to live and have their studios there. Finally, in 1793, it became a museum open to the public. In 1989, wanting to keep up with the times, the French government had the world-renowned architect, I. M. Pei created a new entrance in the center of the courtyard in the form of the now-famed glass pyramid.

Catherine the Great introduced art to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in 1764 to house 225 paintings she purchased from the Berlin merchant, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852 by Emperor Nicholas I, who added a New Hermitage building specifically to house the collection as a museum.

In this country, we have no kings, but we do have venerable buildings that demonstrate our culture. The oldest museum in the United States dates from 1773 and is in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded by the Charleston Library Society, it was modeled on the British Museum, initially with zoological and anthropological objects, and expanding to works relating to local history.

From the 19th through the mid-20th century, museum buildings were constructed in the neoclassical style recalling Greek and Roman temples. They were to represent authority, respect, and cultural reverence for their contents. A prime example is the Berlin National Gallery, completed in 1830, and it was built on Berlin’s Museum Island. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was designed by the multi-disciplinary artist and visionary, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

In the U.S., business moguls of the Gilded Age bought what they deemed the best art from Europe for their baronial style mansions. In 1882, Henry Clay Frick built Clayton in Pittsburgh, where his family lived until 1905, when they moved to the New York mansion he constructed with the aim of making his art collection public. They did not give Clayton up since Frick’s business and coke and steel empire was registered in Pittsburgh. In 1970, Frick’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick, moved back and opened Clayton as a museum for her personal collection that included early Renaissance Sienese painting and 18th-century French works of art.

All these museum buildings conveyed the importance of art and science, but in a manner intimidating to the general audience. Increasingly in need of public support, institutions no longer look to the past but rather hire the day’s star architects to create original destination buildings that will lure a public curious as to what they hold inside.

Near the end of last year, the Grand Egyptian Museum was opened near the Giza Pyramids. It has been described as the world’s largest archeological complex dedicated to a single civilization. The inauguration of the monumental building brought heads of state leading delegations from 79 countries to pay homage to the greatness of a culture, not in a palace of former rulers, but in a purpose-built statement of grandiose proportions.

In China, they are ready to open a museum reinterpreting traditional Suzhou architecture. It is the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art. It was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, with an international practice whose home office is in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Time marches on, and what the art of the future will look like or the structures in which it, along with earlier collections, will be placed, is still to be seen.

Interviewing the Artists

As you know, I love and collect quotes, so I imagined myself asking artists questions that I was curious about.

How do you think about your subjects?

Gilbert Stuart lamented, "What a business this of a portrait painter - you bring him a potato and expect he will paint you a peach.” Marcel Duchamp was more introspective: “Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.”

What do you wish to accomplish through your art?

Salvador Dali believed that "A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others." In order to accomplish that, Piet Mondrian responds, "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."

When do you feel that your artwork is complete?

Leonardo answered, “Art is never finished, only abandoned”. Rembrandt, however, knowing he had quite the ego, said, “A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.” Again, I think Duchamp had the best answer, “Art is completed by the viewer”.

Who do you believe qualifies as an artist?

Picasso famously replied, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Textile artist and teacher Tien Chiu tells his students, “You cannot aspire to be an artist, because you already are one.”

Is it hard to be an artist?

“Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do,” Degas answered. Michelangelo concurred, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

Why do you create art?

Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky believes "The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect..." Frida Kahlo says more simply, “I paint Flowers so they will not die”.

How do you define art?

El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor, answered, "Art is a reflection on life. Life isn't something we can cut and fix. It's always in a state of flux." Degas responds

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see”. Edward Hopper thinks for a moment and then replies, “If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”

How do you accomplish what you wish to do?

Georgia O’Keeffe said, "I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it." Banksy believes, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.Balthus concurred, “Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.” Author Fredrik Backman instructs, "Don't paint the way things look, paint the way they feel".

One last question ... do you listen to the critics?

Composer Jean Sibelius answered simply, “Pay no attention to what the critics say ... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!" Jean-Michel Basquiat summed it up, "I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is".
 

A Mucho Lunch

When I lived and worked in New York, I often had lunch in the office and, more times than not, I ordered a sandwich from a local deli. It was good but unmemorable. Now in Santa Fe, I often get a Mexican meal, a burrito, tacos, or a quesadilla. I still eat at my desk, but I missed those New York sandwiches.

When I was working at a not-for-profit institution off St. Michaels Drive, a commercial area and not in the center city where most tourists go, I came across Mucho Gourmet Sandwich Shoppe in a mall on Llano, a side Street. What a godsend!

Mucho translates as “a lot” and that is what you get at Mucho Sandwich. I think of it along the lines of a Jewish deli in New York where they make sandwiches with gusto. It took only one visit for me to join the ranks of the regulars.

Wanting to learn more about this extraordinary establishment, I interviewed Shannon, who presides at the counter. Mucho was founded in 1989 by her parents, Peggy and Rex Schnupp, who wanted to start a small business when they moved to Santa Fe. Within a few years their children, Shannon and her brother Nathan, joined the company, and today they run it, keeping it a family operation.

Shannon gets in around 8:15 A.M. and makes the soups and most of the deserts and makes sure everything is running smoothly in the kitchen. They already have orders from the day before to prepare. Nathan starts taking phone orders at 9:00A.M., and the phone does not stop ringing until after the lunch hour.

He and his sister continue to work full out from the minute they unlock their doors at 11:00 A.M., when they open to the public, until 3:00 P.M., when Nathan no longer answers the phone, and Mucho is closed. By the time they open, every flat surface in the place is covered with boxes filled with bags of sandwiches for pick-up and delivery.

Shannon, always in a good mood as she works like a whirling dervish, yet seems perfectly calm when she takes your order. First, she puts your name on the sandwich bag, checks off the sandwich you picked, and adds any modifications. If you come in a few times, she will call you by name when you get to the front of the line! I once mentioned to a client of mine who had not been in for a couple of years, and she remembered his favorite sandwich and how he liked it modified!!

There is an incredible choice of sandwiches, and below is one side of the menu. A typical order might be a sandwich, a small bag of potato chips from a wide choice of flavors, and a large drink. As said, nothing is small here. A friend of mine goes just for the salads for his wife and his dinner. One of the most popular sandwiches is the Turkey Surprise, which is also known as the Thanksgiving Sandwich because it includes not only turkey and stuffing but cranberry sauce as well.

Monday to Friday, they are making a minimum of 300 sandwiches and salads. I asked Shannon what their largest single order was, and she answered that they once had an order from State Farm Insurance for 1500 sandwiches. To calculate the volume another way, they order 100,000 sandwich bags a year! On a regular basis, they have orders from hospitals, attorneys’ offices, schools, and the state government. I personally know of a couple of boards of directors that order from their for meetings. Mucho places orders every evening from its roughly 10 vendors, which are delivered the next morning. Nathan used to make the deliveries as well, but the volume became too great, and they have two relatives with SUVs to make those deliveries all over town.

Behind the lines, you can see four women smiling and chatting with their colleagues as they make all those sandwiches and salads nonstop. Two men work at the grill for the hot sandwiches. There is a large oven specifically for making their delicious crisp bacon. Huge bowls hold the lettuce that is used liberally in many of their sandwiches as well as salads. Of course, there is also a backup staff for washing dishes, etc.

There is camaraderie among their customers online as they chat while they wait briefly for their sandwiches. The pre-orders are already waiting in a box for easy takeout.

Hungry yet? Don’t be surprised if you take your Mucho sandwich out of the bag and find they sneaked in a cookie, unasked.

Collector’s Choice

I have, of course, written about collecting before, but after reading a couple of articles from Town & Country, which a friend sent me, I thought I would try again to answer the unanswerable.

The first was written over forty-five years ago by Russell Lynes (1910-1991). He was a photographer (though his brother George Platt Lynes was better known as such),  an educator, editor, and, in my world, best known as an art historian. The article I am referring to is called “The Romance of Collecting”. Lynes starts out by saying that a young couple asked him if they should buy a certain painting. They were not satisfied with his response, “Do you love it?” The couple probably wanted to have an affirmation of their taste. Today, I believe, the would-be collector would be calculating if it was worth the price, or worse yet, a good investment.

Everyone collects for different reasons, but the collectors I like best are those who can’t help themselves. That doesn’t mean that their tastes won’t change, just like your favorite food when you are young might not be the same when you are older.

My wife and I have acquired art in fields that we knew were against the market because we loved the objects, not because we believed they would be worth more, but because we wanted to live with them. Yet, over time, our tastes and circumstances changed, and one collection gave way to another.

As a kid, I had friends who collected baseball cards and spoke about their Topps Mickey Mantle card, which has today brought fortunes at auction. I had a Mickey Mantle card too, but it was not a Topps product, but I kept it because it was Mickey Mantle. Unfortunately, I did not take care of it and put it in an album. Condition matters, so my card today is not worth much, if anything at all. As a grown-up, I have not been swayed by others. When I see it, love it, and can afford it, I buy it, but I have learned to take care of it as well.

Lynes makes a distinction between collectors and accumulators. I believe there is a very fine line there, starting with why the work was bought in the first place. The job of the art dealer is often to help place a work in someone’s home after they have said they have no more room. One might suggest that they can put the inferior work away and replace it with their new masterpiece! Thus, the collector becomes an accumulator and has closets full of art. The advantage there is that they will have work that they can give away. In my case, I often enjoy that more than anything, especially if a museum thinks what I owned is worth adding to their collection!

I mentioned another article from Town and Country, and that one was written this month by Laura Neilson about when “Scandal Sells”. It addresses art that Jeffrey Epstein owned, which can bring a premium, not because of the quality of the art, but because of the previous owner. You have probably heard of the collectors who collect drawings and paintings created by Adolf Hitler. I would say, “whatever turns you on,” but that does not change the art. If you appreciate history, I can see the interest in having a token. But if you put it up on your wall and have it there only because of the creator, you, in my opinion, are not an art collector.

Epstein owned a Roman-style statue that was in an FBI auction in Palm Beach. It changed hands a couple of times until a dealer sold it to new buyers who put it in the center of their living room. They were said to have “an appreciation for the emancipation of the piece”. As it was placed front and center of the new owners’ home, not hidden away for salacious private viewing, perhaps the provenance has become just part of the story.

The article, however, makes an interesting distinction. Interviewing auctioneers, the author finds that auctioneers must make valuations of objects not including provenance, since they don’t know what the provenance will add or subtract from the valuation. They also wonder whether there are ethical boundaries that people will not want to cross, and therefore, it might take longer for people to sell a work that belonged to Epstein than Bernie Madoff. The latter’s crimes were of a financial nature, and Americans have a more difficult time with sex. (see last week’s Missive). But you never know, it only takes two bidders to bring a price at auction. The Madoff Mets baseball satin jacket, valued at $720, brought $14,500 at a U.S. Marshals Service auction.

While provenance from a celebrity may add temporary interest to a piece, a history of passage through renowned art collections gives it true pedigree.

Sex in Museums

“The Eroticism of Things” is the title of a 2018 exhibition at the Werkbundarchiv-Museum der Dinge in 2018. This museum in Berlin is an archive documenting 20th/21st-century industrial design and consumer culture with a collection of some 40,000 mass-produced objects. The exhibition website includes the following explanation: “While nudes have entered many living rooms as replicas of respectable works in the art-historical canon, erotica has often gotten censored, tabooed, and banned. The distinction between eroticism, art, and pornography has always been in constant flux and continues to sway people’s perception and categorization of sexually charged things.”

Nothing has changed throughout history, other than people’s perception. In 2023, parents complained that Michelangelo’s David, which was shown to students in a 6th-grade art class at a school in Tallahassee, Florida, was pornographic, causing quite a stir and the resignation of the principal. But this was not a unique event. Even when it was created, Leonardo da Vinci, while praising the artist and sculptor, suggested that Michelangelo might add a loincloth!

For whatever reason, or maybe it’s obvious, the discovery of an 8-inch carved-bone phallus has made the art news. I read the article in Hyperallergic, but it has appeared in publications around the world. The “discovery” was made in the collections of The Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which specializes in Roman archaeology and regional history. The phallus was found when a government-funded inventory of the museum’s 16,000 boxes of archeological specimens was carried out. At the point of discovery, only 300 of the boxes had been gone through! I don’t know how the story got out, but I would like to think it was a brilliant PR agent for the museum🙄

This made me curious about objects with a sexual orientation in other museums. The story of the “Secret Cabinet” in Naples is worthy of a Missive of its own. It is a collection of first-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, today exhibited in a separate section at the National Archaeological Museum. It is called “Secret” because the gallery was closed and opened so many times as attitudes toward sex changed. In fact, at one time the room was bricked closed, and the current installation only dates from 2000. This sculpture of Pan and a Goat is a highlight of the Cabinet.

There have been allegations that the British Museum destroyed sexually related artifacts in its collections. The Museum reassures us, however, that this is not the case with the collection of around 400 such works donated in 1865. Known as the Secretum, the collection was, from time to time, removed from public display but has now been dispersed to the appropriate archeological departments, in effect, hidden in plain sight. It makes me think of a bored child being taken through room after room and case after case of the 8 million objects in the Museum’s collection, until he stops in front of one and calls out, “Mummie, Mummie, look what they have here, why does it look like a penis?” What parent has not been put in such a predicament in public?

In many ways, the U.S. is much more puritanical than other nations. Even in Canada, women can go topless. In Germany, I read about co-ed saunas where men and women are accepted totally naked, but it is not obligatory. However, there are some in the United States who seek to counter this puritanical attitude. In Miami, Florida, in the Art Deco district, you will find The World Erotic Art Museum, library, and education think tank. The museum was founded by Naomi Wilzig (1934-2015) in 2005 and includes 4,000 artworks from around the world, dating from 300 BCE to the present. She had come from an orthodox Jewish home and did not know about erotic art until a request from her son, who knew she loved prowling antique shops and thought they might be a good source. She found that many of the antique dealers kept erotic items off view but would slowly open up and show them to her. Finding the quest fascinating, she built a collection which led to a book, lectures, and finally the founding of a museum. After being turned down in many places by communities believing erotic was merely porn, her son found her a welcoming location in Miami. Here is an example from the collection.

I will end with what is probably an apocryphal story of a highly respected curator of Greek and Roman Art at a major museum. It was said that when she retired after many years, one of her desk drawers was found to contain many of the phalluses missing from sculptures that were on view.

An old friend used to say to me, “The evil is in the mind of the beholder.”