Our Very Own Dictator

It now seems that our administration wants to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As much as I want to write just about the arts there are times when I feel I have to speak out regarding the most important issues of the day that affect all of us. My blog has several thousand readers a week. The great majority are not subscribers but that is the nature of the internet and the ease of surfing the web.

Like it or not, I have a platform, and I will use it.

Authoritarian leaders, I prefer the term Dictators, have much in common. Basically, they rule by fear and the power of the purse. At the ripe old age of 80, I finally understand how a country can just give up and surrender itself to a single individual.

I have heard that people do not think it is fair to compare Trump to Hitler because Hitler came up with the extermination of 6,000,000 individuals. Of course, that was 8 or 9 years after he became Chancellor (Dictator) in 1933. But there are many other dictators that have followed similar paths if not his “final solution”. Though we have heard that Trump is setting up camps from which to deport our undocumented immigrants and even citizens.

It all gets scarier and scarier!

I found an interview online from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs from 2019. Ece Temelkuran a Turkish novelist and political commentator had written a book, “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship”. She wanted to warn the world about people like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been “President” of Turkey since 2014. Temelkuran’s first point is that these individuals will say that they represent “real people” and not the elite. The takeover “takes a lot of silence, silent approval from ordinary people, and it takes a lot of normalization of absurdity and insanity before right-wing populism turns into a real fully formed authoritarian regime.”

Temelkuran also speaks of dismantling political institutions and the judiciary, and, towards the close of the interview, says, “The very end, which I hope doesn’t happen in this country or in the European countries, is criminalizing the opposition, stigmatizing them, and finally making them feel completely insecure and under attack so that they really literally leave the country.” Today we are learning of increasing numbers who have given up their government positions or been fired and former Trump appointees who have come out against him and are being “investigated”.

Viktor Mihály Orbán, who we have heard so much about from our President has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. Did I forget to mention Trump’s closest pal, Vlademir Putin who was President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and then again since 2012 to the present. So why shouldn’t Trump seek a third term if all his friends have stayed in office as long as they like?

So much comes down to money and fear. The billionaires often rely on government contracts or support for their projects. The newspapers hope to keep the “free press” but knuckle under to pressure fearing the loss of access. Law firms are told they will lose clients, and their lawyers will be denied entry to government buildings if they don’t stop suing the government. They have even been extorted to do pro bono work for the administration.

As I started writing Trump has declared all truck drivers must speak English. Sounds reasonable until you realize that these are grueling, and not the best paying jobs. Those willing to take them may very well be immigrants and to what level do they need English? But this Executive Order gives the government lots of leeway to make these jobs unattainable for immigrants.

Jeff Bezos, who I always thought of as one of the best of the billionaires, started to give in first when he would not allow an endorsement for President in 2024 in his newspaper, The Washington Post. Then he gave in again when Amazon was going to post how much prices would go up because of tariffs. This will harm his company more than anyone because people will just stop buying from sticker shock without a reason for the hike in prices. But Bezos has his fingers in other areas for which he will want and need government support.

Germany had the SA (Sturmabteilung) meaning 'assault division'. They were also known as the Brownshirts, infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s leftists and Jewish population. Our Brownshirts include those pardoned for the assault on the Capitol when Trump came back into office. Our politicians are so fearful that they are doing the President’s bidding not just because they may be “Primaried”. Many have received threats of violence and fear for themselves and their families.

How long will we be ruled by fear if the courts and Congress continue to find excuses to sit on their hands? Let me conclude with the final speech from the 1940 film “The Great Dictator”. It starred Charlie Chaplin who also wrote, directed, and produced it. Please listen ...

Ruminations on a Museum

We have contributed various objects to museums across a number of states in the fields of European and, lately, Native American Art, but not enough to be worth even a single gallery in a museum. But one can fantasize!

I started to think about how I would go about building a museum. One would want it to be a destination place that people feel they must see. If you happen to live in France maybe there is a spare chateau you could renovate, or in Italy, a villa. In the United States, however, there are few pre-existing destination buildings available, so you start from scratch.

How does one call attention to a building? You could start with a striking exterior. A prime example is the Guggenheim Museum in New York, built in 1959 by Frank Lloyd Wright to exhibit the modern “non-objective” art collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim. A cylindrical building on a New York corner is certainly different and almost every New York resident wanted to look at it and some took a chance and looked at the art inside.

What about the Whitney Museum that opened a new building in 1966 to show their collection of American Art. It had to be quite different from the Guggenheim, so they hired Brutalist architect, Marcel Breuer, and if you liked it or not it became another destination building.

I use as examples the museums I knew and remember being shocked by when I first saw them. It took me a while to appreciate them. There are examples like these around the country if not necessarily as extreme.
Whether your museum is being built for one person’s collection or for a community, in a single field such as African art or a collection with the broader purpose of showing the history of man, there needs to be a clear concept. Once you have defined your concept, then you need to find an architect.

The Menil in Houston was built by Renzo Piano and opened to the public in 1987 to house the collection of John and Dominique de Menil . Dominique knew what she wanted so had a major role in forming their museum, which, by the way has the most unprepossessing exterior.

It is more often the case that there is a board of trustees with a committee that will go over portfolios of many architects and interview them to see if they will be compatible with what the board has in mind.
Of course, you want your public impressed when they come into the building. One device to accomplish this is by the atrium as you come into the building. A very large, high, open space which is not only impressive but has enough room for the large groups of people you are hoping to draw in, as well as for social events. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts went through a major renovation and the architect chosen was the Studio Gang from Chicago and it opened in 2023. This architectural fact sheet will give you a great deal of detail. 

https://arkmfa.org/site/assets/files/5504/amfa_architectural_fact_sheet_-_06_03_24.pdf 
 

Here is an image of their atrium ...

There is another professional that the board and architect should introduce into the process, and that is the museum designer. Small exhibition spaces may be appropriate for some collections but will severely limit what art can be shown at the time or in the future. Decisions must be made on the variety of spaces you want based on what kind of art are you going to show. A large bright gallery, maybe even with a skylight is fine to show sculpture but would destroy a collection of works on paper. If you are showing decorative arts a gallery scaled to invoke a large size living room might be good. Galleries for temporary exhibitions will need to have flexibility, preferably with movable walls.

If you have an already established museum and are enlarging it, you must not overlook input from your museum team who have had to deal with where they have been working and what issues you and they are trying to solve beyond just creating more space. Practical considerations include more storage space if you plan to grow the collection.

Needless to say, in order to get a grip on costs, construction and engineers etc. need to be in the mix. Only in an imaginary museum can you skip the practical details😊 like temperature and humidity control and don’t forget the plumbing!

After considering everything I have mentioned above one should address the question of whether one’s collection is worthy of becoming a destination museum. With that criteria in mind my museum will have to remain a fantasy.  

Will The Bayeux Tapestry Get Longer?

Many years ago, on a trip through Normandy, France, my wife was intent on seeing the Bayeux Tapestry, which can be found in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, France.

It is a major historical document of history illustrating a turning point in what would be the future of England, but at that time, so long ago, I did not properly appreciate it. The Bayeux Tapestry as it is known, is not a tapestry at all. It is not woven but embroidered and measuring nearly 70 meters (230 feet) long, I facetiously termed it the longest dish cloth in the world!

The embroidery depicts events leading up to and including the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, led by William the Conqueror. It tells the story from the Norman perspective, focusing on William's claim to the English throne and the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings and the defeat and death of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II. Here is the scene with the Death of Harold.

The style and workmanship suggest that it was made in England, commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux who was William the Conqueror’s half-brother. He participated in the Battle of Hastings and was subsequently made Earl of Kent, given the task of guarding southeastern England. He also served as William the Conqueror's administrator and regent during the king's frequent absences. The embroidery is thought to have been made to adorn the cathedral being built in Odo’s bishopric of Bayeux and sent there around 1077. The first dated record of it in Bayeux is 1476 and it has not left France since.

Last month a missing piece of the textile with no embroidery, was found in the State Archive of Schleswig-Holstein. It had been in the estate of the textile archeologist Karl Schlabow (1891-1984) who worked for the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritage (Das Arnenerbe) founded by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to promote archaeological investigation of sites associated with early Germanic settlement. The goal was to trace a coherent history of superior Aryan culture. There was particular interest in the Bayeux Tapestry as it was thought, it might prove that the Normans had Viking heritage and therefore were of Germanic origin.

After the fall of France in 1940 the Nazis sent a team of experts in to examine the tapestry and Dr. Karl Schlabow, a member of the team, removed a small piece for his own study.

Now that it has been rediscovered, after a brief tour in Germany, the fragment will be returned to France, and the tapestry will get longer? Though there is speculation that it may have originally been even longer!

Do watch this entertaining 6-minute video to hear more from the curator of the Bayeux Museum and her amusing interlocutor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Nu79DDw03LM

Don’t, however plan a trip to see the tapestry too soon because the Museum is closing for a major renovation and will only open again in 2027.

Money, Money, Money!

Even before the lyrics from the musical Cabaret became familiar, we all knew “Money makes the world go round”. But these days and particularly in this country it has gone to such an extreme that it no longer makes any cents … no … sense!

The large auction houses do not represent the art market only one aspect of it. People in general do not want to read about aspects of everyone else’s day-to-day life, they are already living it. Therefore, the press writes headlines that everything is fabulous or, going to hell in a handbasket, whatever the extreme.

A line in a recent Art Net article reads, “According to Artnet’s data, last year there was a steep decline—44.2 percent year over year—in sales of trophy works at auction, or those sold for over $10 million.” A few sentences further on, “Still, sales in the $100,000-to-$1 million range remained resilient amid last year’s downturn, suggesting that profit-driven speculators are sitting back, and a broader collector base is interested in buying more affordable works they are passionate about…. That’s exactly the price bracket where younger collectors can participate much more actively.”

When I was a boy in the 1950’s my ambition (if I was old enough to have ambition yet) was to be a millionaire, in line TV shows like How to Marry a Millionaire. I just checked, and that would be the equivalent of 13 million dollars today. I presume kids now think that they want to be Billionaires. Well, that is about 77 times 13 million.

More statistics from the web: Currently it is calculated that there are only 3,028 Billionaires worldwide while there are 17 million professional artists. The United States account for 2.7 million artists, representing 1.6 % of all U.S. workers.

Now I know that to a great extent I am equating apples and pears because the art market consists of art through the ages, but today do you, reader, have enough money to spend more than a million dollars on a work of art or even $100,000? Probably a fraction of one percent of the world’s population would feel comfortable paying anywhere near that much.

Since most art dealers (there are over 21,500 listed in this country) and collectors do not speak of their sales or purchases except on the rare occasion of a specific example. The statistics all come from the best-known auction houses where the super-rich go to show off, competing with each other, hoping to hedge their risk from the stock market or filling in that one work missing from their collection. There are, of course, hundreds of auction houses in this country and thousands around the world that sell art. Yet when you look online you will probably find less than a dozen listed.

I have many friends who are artists and sell from hundreds of dollars to a few thousand. There are also many artists who are known by name and recognized in the press and sell in the same range and, yes, there are also some who sell for astronomical sums. I bought this small sculpture just because I found it satisfying and calming and I feel the same way years later. I bought it at a gallery in Santa Fe and it is by Jason R. Brown, he called it The Eye and it cost just under $750.

My point is that though in a recession or a time of uncertainty people have less discretionary income so all artists, like everybody else, will suffer. Obviously, there are very serious issues that we should be aware of and prepare for accordingly, but that the big auction houses are reported to have lost business should not be of concern. If you buy art that you love and can afford, the market headlines have no significance.

Return of The Gothic

No, this is not about politics, but about art. I keep telling my wife that we must accept change and that all the new features we have such as cell phones and computer programs that cause so much frustration, for everybody, also offer us advantages that we did not have previously. On the other hand, much that is new draws from the past.

An exhibition at the National Gallery in Oslo called “Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light” delves into this concept. The show will be on there until June 15 before moving to its last venue, the Albertina in Viena. I learned about it from an article on Artnet written by Jo Lawson-Tancred called “How Art from the Middle Ages Inspired Modern Artists”.

Though I had not thought about this before, when some of the late 19th and early 20thcentury artists, like Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) were cited, it seemed obvious. For instance Kollwitz’ etching depicting workers mourning the German Communist Karl Liebknecht who was murdered by state forces in 1919.

The press release from Oslo says, “The Gothic is often associated with elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.” It’s hard to deny when you think of Edvard Munch and images like “The Scream”. Even more to the point might be “Ashes”, a vision of despair as two lovers separate after an amorous encounter. Furthermore, it is known that Munch made studies of Gothic cathedrals and their rose windows through which light penetrates darkness.

When the exhibition opened in October of 2024 the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine called it “the most daring exhibition of the year”. The show originated from the research of its guest curator, Juliet Simpson, of Coventry University, that had led to an international research project.

Quoting from the Coventry University Press Release, “… Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Vincent Van Gogh and Marianne Stokes pushed the boundaries of art and society by drawing inspiration from Gothic art.” Marianne Stokes (1855-1927) was an Austrian artist who emigrated to England. Her painting of 1908, “Death and the Maiden”, from the Musée d’Orsay certainly evokes all the features mentioned above about the Gothic, elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.

A painting of an earlier date is included in the show and it is obvious why. It is an 1872 Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), lent by the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. It looks directly back to images by Hans Holbein the Younger (circa 1497-1543).

As mentioned earlier there is a continuum but still, the artist that surprised me the most was van Gogh (1853-1890), who we usually associate with “Starry Night” and vibrant colors. The painting that was featured is his 1886 monochrome “Skeleton with Burning Cigarette” from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We are quite sure that van Gogh suffered from mental illness and his later work illustrates his fascination with mortality and the dark side.

Following its Gothic theme the show associates the morbid subjects in early 20th century art with examples in medieval art. Granted many of these themes have been repeated through time. As we all know, “there is nothing new under the sun”. Still, I like to look at and think about art from different angles and not be subject to doctrine. When we are guided by others, we can often make our own leaps to find personal insights.

An Art Prescription

Our local newspaper, The New Mexican, published an article from the Associated Press by Jamey Keaten. The headline reads, “Town lets Doctors Prescribe Free Museums as Therapy”.

We have all read how art can help people, but I have never seen a government move to recommend and subsidize it. This has occurred in a small-town called Neuchatel, beneath a medieval castle and a lake by that same name in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I like the way the article starts: “The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery?” … Neuchatel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.”

This pilot project is based on a 2019 WHO report that “found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and ‘premature mortality’.” So far, just 500 such prescriptions have been given out in this town, with a population of just under 45,000. If art can do that, it is worth the price … but here it is free. Think what it would save the government on medical aid. 

I thought that could never happen in this country, but I was wrong. The prestigious Stanford University also has a program for its community. It has teamed up with Art Pharmacy, an organization which according to its website, “enables personalized social prescribing services with healthcare, university, corporate, and government partners.”

https://www.artpharmacy.co

The Stanford program offers an arts prescription which is a set of engagements in the arts customized to your personal interest. Each engagement is called a dose. You are assigned to an Art Pharmacy Navigator who will get you free tickets or whatever other access you may need. After you have fulfilled your prescription, you can apply for a renewal. To me it sounds like a good way for student and teacher alike to cope with the stress of campus life.

There is a different program called CultureRx out of Massachusetts which has brought together 12 cultural organizations with 20 healthcare providers across the state allowing the latter to write prescriptions that might benefit their patients. The medical practitioners welcomed the plan as they saw the pleasure their patients got from enjoying the arts without the expense. I am guessing that most who are reading “Missives from the Art World” have the where with all to not have to worry about this expense but how many in the general population can afford the high entry costs for many museums or the price of theater tickets?
Another organization I never would have thought existed is Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts+Mind Lab (IAM Lab) an “interdisciplinary research-to-practice initiative accelerating the field of neuroaesthetics”. Their work focuses on “social prescribing” which includes art, music culture, nature, and social connections. All these have been shown to have important health benefits.

This concept is widespread if currently available only in small doses (pun intended). Arts on Prescription is a concept that has already been tested in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Germany, if on a small scale. There was an article a couple of months ago in The Atlantic magazine called “The Anti-Social Century”. Written by Derek Thompson the opening line was “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics and even our relationship to reality”. The article stresses how we need to interact with others and how the absence of this leads to so many problems. Art prescriptions can help individuals, and, as a result, our society by encouraging them to engage in a shared experience of visual or performing arts.

In a world that has been found to be fraught with more and more stress, it is heartening to learn that the healthcare community is beginning to explore the relief that can be brought through exposure to art.

Unusual Heists

I read about a very unusual heist on Artnet recently. It was an update on a 2019 story. But I could not let it slide since it involves a golden toilet. In this case, as far as we know, no secrets were flushed down it but rather it was just absconded with. Apparently, this toilet was not just gilded but cast in solid gold by the conceptual artist, Maurizio Cattelan. Remember him more recently of Banana fame?

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2024/12/hard-to-believe.html

The work was part of an exhibition at the 18th-century Blenheim Palace in England where Winston Churchill was born.

The working Loo (known in this country as a toilet) weighed in at 98kg (216 pounds) and was attached to Blenheim’s existing plumbing. After just two days on exhibit five men broke into the Palace and ripped out the toilet which had been insured at the U.S. equivalent of six million dollars! This extraordinary event took the perpetrators just 5 minutes to enter and then leave with their booty in a Volkswagen which I presume was not a VW Bug!!

Blenheim staff brilliantly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They left the gaping hole in the bathroom cubicle and put back the police tape so when they reopened the exhibition visitors multiplied as people came to see the scene of the crime!

This story made me think of what other unusual heists there have been. Of course, there are the very well-known thefts like that of the Mona Lisa, or Edvard Munch’s The Scream and the group of paintings from the Isabella Gardner Museum. I am intrigued by some less celebrated stories.

According to fodors.com the earliest art theft in recorded history was in 1473. Hans Memling’s, The Last Judgment. Paul Beneke, a privateer ie pirate boarded a ship bound for Florence stole the painting and headed back to his native Poland. It was displayed in the Basilica of the Assumption in Gdańsk, Though Italy kept trying to get it back, it remains in that city’s museum.

Xiao Yuan is a thief you have to admire since he, himself, is an artist. He was also a librarian at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in China. He replaced 143 artworks with his own forgeries and said to have made 6 million dollars selling 125 of the works at auction. He further claimed that thefts from this museum were not unusual and that some of his paintings had been taken and substituted for inferior copies. Yes, there are thieves, as well as politicians, with extraordinary egos!

Everyone has something they think no one would, or ever could steal. We had a scrap metal sculpture that was a caricature of a dog holding a rifle. It was basically worthless, but I called it Wyatt for Wyatt Earp and put him on our portal near the front door to guard our home. Well, someone else liked it as well and it disappeared! A two-ton sculpture, however, is in a totally different category. Who can cart away a 4,000-pound piece of bronze. It turns out that in 2005 thieves stole Henry Moore’s sculpture called “Reclining Figure” from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, England, and, after cutting it up, sold this 18-million-dollar piece of sculpture for scrap metal for a whopping 2,000 dollars! Wonder what the equipment they used to cart away and chop up the sculpture cost them.

I will end with this story from the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts: In 2006, Guinness World Records awarded Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III the title of “Most Stolen Painting.” The painting earned the award, as well as the nickname “Takeaway Rembrandt,” “after being stolen four times in the last 53 years: the first time in 1966, three more thefts occurred in 1973, 1981, and 1983. The painting has been found in a luggage rack, on the back of a bicycle, and underneath a bench in a graveyard. Today, the Takeaway Rembrandt can be found hanging in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, hopefully with better security…”