There are Parties … and then there are PARTIES!

The other evening in spite of the beginning of a snow storm we went to a mountain top the likes of which I have rarely seen.  Starting with the view from the doorway and it’s outdoor fireplace aglow and the spectacular panorama of town below.  Happily there were valets to take our cars after we arrived up the single lane curvy road, but where they parked the cars I have no idea!

It was both a Christmas Party and a benefit for the Spanish Colonial Arts Society & Museum. Jolonda & Henry Field teamed up with Thomas Getgood & Blake Franklin who used to own an Inn in town.   When they retired and sold the inn they moved into this amazing house of about 7,400 square feet on 5 acres of land. It was the ultimate party palace.   The guest were invited to see all the rooms and I took a photo of the bath and dressing room to give an idea of the grandeur of the place.

The kitchen, which was relatively small, had an open plan, which split the area into two additional spaces that could be used for entertainment.

In a nook from there you could go down a staircase to what was labeled for that evening as the “Rum Room” where you could taste rum from 10 to 21 years old… or just drink some fruit punch.  It made for a cozy place to congregate or put the naughty children when there were no guests in the house.  There were also several bars around the house so you need not go thirsty for a minute just taking your glass from one room to another.

Our hostess, Jolanda Field, who is on the Board of the Spanish Colonial Museum, is originally from Guyana, (she pronounced it “Guy Anna”), wanted to be sure that her guests learned something about her homeland.  I must admit that I was rather ignorant about it, myself.  Guyana is in South America bordered by Venezuela, Brazil, Suriname and the Atlantic Ocean.  Her pronunciation of the country’s name also baffled me since I had been taught “Gee Anna” and can also be spelled Guiana.   Guyana was initially inhabited by several indigenous  groups and originally settled by the Dutch.  It came under British control at the end of the 18th century so the official language is English. The majority of the people speak Guyanese Creole, however, which is based on English.  After Guyana achieved independence in 1966 the pronunciation of the name changed.  Our hostess is here in her striking red dress.

As at all fundraisers, there needed to be a pitch and thank yous to the multitude of people who went to great efforts to make the evening a success.   One of the surprises in the list was Jolanda’s mother who was given full credit for the delicious meal.  Somehow I imagined this slender woman slaving away in the kitchen for days over the hot stoves.  I am hoping she had some help, however, from the large and energetic staff.  Here the director of the museum, David Setford is making his pitch.

Our hostess wanted us to understand the polyglot nature of her country so she offered us a sampling of the cuisine of each segment of the population.  The staff was plentiful. They seemed to be everywhere and served finger foods as appetizers from China, East Indian, Portuguese British and European.  The main coarse added to the above Amerindian and African, and featured a Caribbean “pepper pot” of a variety of meats slow-cooked with spices.

Entertainment included a brief performance of an operatic aria, a singer of lighter fare, and the piece de resistance was a Marimba band which played most of the evening.

The Image is in the Eye of the Beholder

A few months ago I wrote a Missive about the Vilcek Collection exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.  I want to return to it as a jumping off point in order to concentrate on the vision of the artist for whom the museum is named.

I remember when Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was ridiculed and thought to be a minor artist.  I could never understand it because I found her so evocative and almost always managed to pique my imagination.  This happened again when I saw the Vilcek exhibition though my Missive focused on their collecting.

When people come to town now their first question is always where is the O’Keeffe Museum and why are there not more paintings by the artist on view.  To the credit of the current administration the museum is trying to broaden the scope of the Museum and place O’Keeffe in the context of her time.  O’Keeffe is very quotable and many interviews have been published.  She was married to one of the greatest photographers of all time, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946),  and once said, “I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.”   Yet she once claimed that photography had no influence on her career!  I would propose exactly the opposite.  As Cody Hartley, the O’Keeffe’s Director of Curatorial Affairs and co-curator of the Vilcek show said, “She is a photographer who uses paint.”

I believe we all develop our eye in our own way through influences on our lives.  There are various images or thoughts that appeal to us and we see things in those terms.  For instance, a beautiful woman or handsome man inform us as to what beauty is and we think of images in those terms, though my wife and I may define those images differently.   O’Keeffe also denied that her imagery was sexual, yet often when looking at her flowers many relate the images to the vagina.  I remember being at an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum where they showed their O’Keeffe of “Black Iris” from the Stieglitz collection when one young fellow dragged his friend over to see the “private parts” in the painting.  “The evil is in the mind of the beholder” I would venture whether knowingly or not in the mind of the artist, as well.

We are influenced by early images that define and refine our view of the world.  During her formative years as a painter, 1916 to 1918 O’Keeffe taught at what is today West Texas A&M University.  During her stay in the town of Canyon, Texas she would hitch rides, sometimes in a hay wagon, to Palo Duro Canyon.   She did a series of water colors there which are now in the Amon Carter Museum but one picture “Red Landscape” 1917 remained behind and is now in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at the University.  Here you see another of O’Keeffe’s favorite subject, the canyon.

Later on she related this concept to the city.  Look at her painting of “A Street” 1926 from the O’Keeffe Museum’s Collection, Gift of The Burnett Foundation, shows the city as a canyon created by the skyscrapers.  This picture would fit extremely well into the Vilcek exhibition, Masterworks of American Modernism.  Here you have all the feeling of the idealized city through it’s skyscrapers uninterrupted with the cacophony of what is going on down below.   It is a bit like going out in New York at dawn before rush hour begins.  Even though it is known as the “City that never Sleeps” once in a while it takes a nap!

Now compare it with another painting in the O’Keeffe Museum’s collection, “Untitled (City Night)” from the 1970’s.  Here we have a more idealized version of the City but again without the crowds; just the stars above the skyline.  It is also indicative of the glimpses that are all you get of the sky in the city. No wonder O’Keeffe loved it in Texas and New Mexico.  Just like we feel about the great southwest skies with no obstructions.

Segway to another picture “The White Place – A Memory” 1943 which is in the Vilcek exhibition borrowed from another private collection.   There is clearly a relationship between this picture and the city canyons in O’Keeffe’s mind whether she realized it or not.

 
Now, for one last image, look at a picture from the Vilcek collection.  It is called “In the Patio IX”. It too is a canyon like image with blue sky above.  So what was O’Keeffe thinking regarding her Patio in the title?  Also, if you look at the image another way it looks exactly like an envelope!

We often speak of the artist’s eye and Georgia O’Keeffe gives us plenty of opportunity to study how she looked at the world.

Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye

There had been discussions for several decades about expanding the original 1972 Louis Kahn building at the Kimbell Museum of Art in Fort Worth Texas, but who wanted to fiddle with perfection?  They finally concluded that a separate building across the Kimbell Campus was the solution.  Since they had had one starchitect to do their first building they decided that they needed another for the addendum and decided on Renzo Piano (1937 - ).  In 2013 the Renzo Piano 101,000 square foot Pavilion opened.  Here is a corner of the Piano Pavilion with the  Kahn building in the background.

In the past when the Kimbell decided to do a special exhibition they would have to put most of the permanent collection in storage.  This was not only a shame for the public but also for academic visitors who wanted to study specific works of art as well.  The Piano Pavilion, as it is called, allows the museum to store far less of their collection and hold the block buster exhibitions that the public now expects while keeping the permanent collection on view in the Kahn building. 

My wife never interferes in which subjects I decide to write about so when she so rarely does, I take note.  She was concerned last week when I wrote about the Kimbell but neglected to mention the wonderful exhibition, "Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye" that I had decided to omit.  Far from it, I thought the show was very much worthy of its own post.

As our group from the Spanish Colonial Museum in Santa Fe drove in their van from Dallas to Fort Worth, the Director, David Setford, gave us a brief history of the artist.  When he mentioned that Caillebotte was only recently re-discovered, I objected stating that I remembered his work from my 1960’s “History of Art” by Horst Jansen which was a standard text for anyone taking Art 1 at college or university.   As soon as I got back home I looked at my early art history books and I was totally wrong.  Caillebotte was either unknown or not thought important enough to write about.

The exhibition is co-curated by Mary Morton, curator and head of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where the show opened, and George T.M. Schackelford, Deputy Director at the Kimbell.  The curators decided to focus on the best years, 1875-1885, in the artist’s short career, making the exhibition a strong one of masterpieces.  I cannot say I fell in love with all of them but I certainly admired many of the 50 paintings shown.  I will concentrate on a few that spoke the loudest to me.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) was a lawyer and engineer before he began his artist training after serving in the Franco-Prussian war 1870-1871.  Afterwards he became a serious art student.  Though part of the group called the Impressionists, his style was generally more realistic.    The most universally known of his works is the large painting in The Art Institute of Chicago,  “Paris Street: Rainy Day” 1877 which is 6 ¾ X 9 feet.  Outside of the exhibition the museum put a large facsimile of the painting where one could pose for a photo under an umbrella.

A slightly less known work is the painting in the Musée D’Orsay in Paris of the “Floor Scrapers”.  This is a painting even earlier in his career, 1875.  He presented it for the Salon of that year but it was rejected by the judges who were shocked by its realism, and not used to seeing city workers as opposed to workers in the fields.  He, therefore, showed it the following year together with the Impressionists many of whom were his fans. This certainly is a realist impressionist!

Not to be missed is the Kimbell’s very own “On the Pont de l’Europe”.  Why the title had to be translated I am not sure, but so be it, the picture, nonetheless, is a masterpiece.  The artist so often seems to grab the viewer and lure him into the picture.  What could those people possibly be looking at? the train on the bridge in the background? the activity in the rail yard below? did something fall on the tracks?

My personal favorites perfectly hung opposite each other are a female “Nude on a Couch” from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and a semi-nude “Man at His Bath” from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  There is nothing lecherous about either one of them, which make them all the more enticing.  You keep waiting: will the man turn around? will the woman summon you?... but that could be male wishful thinking .   They are certainly not the ideal of a nude but neither would I describe them as naked.

The first chapter of Sir Kenneth Clark’s book, “The Nude” is titled “The Naked and the Nude”.  He writes, “To be naked is to be deprived of clothes and the word implies some of the embarrassment which most us feel in that condition.  The word nude, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone.”  Further on he writes,  “No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling.".  For me these two pictures qualify in both respects. 

The show will be up through Valentine’s Day 2016, interpret as you will!

The Kimbell Art Museum

As promised last week I am returning to the Kimbell Art Museum which has so many good memories for me from the time that Edmund P. "Ted" Pillsbury was director from 1980 to 1998.  As Rick Brettel, former director at the Dallas Museum, professor at the University of Texas Dallas and art critic at the Dallas Morning News said, Ted "was, in some ways, single-handedly responsible for turning the Kimbell from an institution with a great building into one whose collection matches its architecture in quality”.  The architecture he was referring to was, of course, the ideal museum building designed in 1972 by the American Architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974).

I remember in the 1990’s being invited with my wife to his wonderful Seminars which he put together with his then curator Colin Bailey, who is currently director of the Morgan Library and Museum.  They were done around special exhibitions to which he invited visiting scholars from all over the world.  These included museum directors, curators, ivory tower scholars and dealers.  It was always a wonderful mix.  During the day there would be the scholarly talks and a tour of the exhibition.  Then one evening he would invite everyone to his beautiful home with a garden that looked like it was out of a Hubert Robert painting and to see his wonderful personal collection.  Another, we might go down to the stockyard area and to Joe T. Garcia’s restaurant with its Tex-Mex cuisine and Western décor, which the European visitors in particular loved.

Then there was the art.  My father always said he loved his home-town museum, The Staedel, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany because it was a small museum with not that many paintings but it had a single masterpiece from so many artists.  I believe the same can be said about the Kimbell which has great paintings from the early renaissance to the 20th century.

Happily in this museum photography is allowed and I snapped away at some of my favorites but I can only present a few here.  The first one to look at was their painting by Duccio Buoninsegna (1278-1318) of the “Raising of Lazarus”.  The Metropolitan Museum finally acquired a Duccio a few years ago, which, in my opinion, does not hold a candle to this one.  I believe that the Kimbell Duccio competes well with the wonderful Duccio in the Frick Collection, “The Temptation of Christ”.

I don’t know if any of you have ever seen a posthumous work by an artist but it happened at the Kimbell.  This painting, “A Portrait of Jacob Obrecht” (1457/58-1505) was bought attributed to Hans Memling (1430-1490).  Unfortunately, for the attribution that is, the engaged frame has the date of 1496 with the sitters’s age as 38.  Now the picture is called anonymous and either Netherlandish or French.  Let the art historians enjoy themselves but this renaissance portrait is still a masterpiece of it genre.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s (1617-1682) simply titled, “Four Figures on a Step” from the artist’s mid-career, there is so much to see.  The income level of this family is immediately evident by the hole in the britches of the child lying in the woman’s lap.  She, however, has been able to acquire a pair of spectacles, which could not have been so easy to come by at the time.  As I have so often said pictures are open to interpretation and keep the art historians in business. The old lady has been described as a procurer offering the little boy or as a virtuous woman delousing the head of a child.  Another tidbit that is fun is that the buttocks of the boy has been covered with over paint twice before in it history and has now been restored to its original state.

I can’t leave the Kimbell without mentioning a set of 4 oversize paintings by François Boucher (1703-1770).  They were created right at the end of his life in 1769 for the Paris hôtel of  Jean-François Bergeret de Frouville [d.1783].  They were acquired from the French Rothschild’s and bought by dealers including our firm.  We offered them to the director of the Frick where they have a rotunda into which they would have fit perfectly.  The director was told to be discreet about their acquisition because the Rothschilds, in those days, did not want anyone to know what they bought or what they sold.  So much for discretion, the Frick director decided not to keep the paintings and spoke with the director of the Kimbell Museum that acquired the set.  Here is an image of one of the paintings representing the “Forge of Vulcan”.

The Kimbell collection goes well into the 20th century but I will conclude with a work of 1889 by James Ensor (Belgium, 1860-1949).  The painting, “Skeletons Warming Themselves”.   The artist, to quote the Museum’s website  “has placed three dressed-up skeletons in the foreground around a stove on which is written “Pas de feu” and under it “en trouverez vous demain?”—“No fire. Will you find any tomorrow?”  “The skeletons are accompanied by a palette and brush, a violin, and a lamp. Presumably Ensor intended these items to symbolize art, music, and literature. If so, the probable implication is that artistic inspiration, or patronage to support it, has expired.”  What a wonderfully macabre subject of social criticism.  Again another painting that is tops in its class.

The Kimbell is truly a museum of Masterpieces.

A Few Days on the Road

I was convinced to join a group from the Spanish Colonial Society and Museum in Santa Fe to come on their junket to Dallas, Texas.  Actually, it did not need too much convincing since I had wanted to see the Caillebotte exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Dallas's more hospitable neighbor but more about that another day. 

These trips are often over scheduled and this one was no exception.  Within a few minutes of arriving at the hotel we were asked to be in one of the hotel's meeting rooms for a lecture.  Happily, this was a rather interesting one, on "Colonial Art in Texas" by Dr. Kelly Donahue Wallace, Professor at the University of North Texas.  Another of her titles was Director of on-line programming, a relatively new term in academe. In the images she showed I found interesting all the influences from continental Europe including France and mostly The Netherlands. 

After a brief break we went to see a lovely couple in their vitrine-like home.  You could see most of the rooms through the large glass windows.  They were extremely eclectic collectors and clearly bought what they liked wherever they went.  The French 18th century style furniture they chose to live with was of particular interest to me. The one essential for these trips is the van or bus and we were, mercifully, a small enough group for a van.

The next morning we were at the Meadows Museum of Art when the doors opened.  The Meadows is on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU).  Our son was there studying at the Meadows School for the Arts majoring in Theatre 15 years ago. In those days the museum was actually housed in the school but we hardly saw anyone ever there and certainly not the students unless they were in a class!  Today it is quite a vibrant institution with its own building.  We had a docent take us around their special exhibition, "Treasures of the House of Alba".  I don't know about you but when I see an art exhibition I like to learn something of the art and not just the history of the family.  I want to be wowed by their collection and see how it fit into the family story not just about the people themselves.  What I found of most interest in the show was the family’s fifteenth century bible, an  illustrated manuscript of 513 folios.  A Rabbi was commissioned for the first translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew into Spanish.  CLICK HERE to see illustrations from the facsimile edition with the story of the bible.    This image of the Meadows museum has the lyrical undulating sculpture by Santiago Calatrava of 2002.

We spent the afternoon at the Dallas Museum of Art ostensibly to see their collection of Spanish Colonial art which all fit into one small gallery.  Our docent was a very nice fellow but luckily the curator from the Spanish Colonial Art Museum, Robin Gavin, was with us to help him out...  The museum is a cold cavernous place, which shows how much space there is in Texas!  Happily we could roam around their collections on our own where we could discover some wonderful paintings.  Then on to the next cocktail party where the lady who greeted us had a proper art collection with works of art everywhere.  She and her husband had clearly collected passionately being into Native American and Pre-Columbian ceramics and American Modernist paintings and works on paper.  Next stop a good restaurant.  I should mention that our hostesses both evenings fed us well with drinks and a multitude of fancy hors d'oeuvres.

The next morning it was back into our van to drive the 45-minute trip to Fort Worth where we went to visit the incomparable Kimbell Art Museum founded in 1966 and opened in their wonderful Louis Kahn building in 1972.   Curator, Nancy Edwards gave us a tour of the highlights of the collection.  It was so good to see old friends again, both in person and on the wall.  I think that I will visit some of those in more detail in the next weeks. They have a hearty cafeteria menu especially as compared to the box of lettuce that we were handed at the Dallas museum.  There was no choice there.  At the Kimbell you just tell them what size plate you want, small medium or large and fill it up!  Then to the new wing of the Kimbell by starchitect Renzo Piano where the wonderful Caillebotte exhibition was being held.  Since the show had just opened it was too crowded to have a docent; we settled for the audio guide.  Also more on this at a later date.   Here our eager group waits for the Kimbell Museum’s doors to open.

The final art stop on our brief trip was another high point, the Amon Carter Museum. It was the dream of Amon G. Carter, Sr. who died in 1955.  The museum, also in a building by a famous architect, Philip Johnson, opened in 1961.  It was then what Ruth Carter Stevenson, daughter of the founder, once told us that, at the beginning, it was called the “Yippee Yi Yay” museum.  In other words it was not taken seriously.  “Mistake, big mistake”.  The original collection of Western Art has been extended to cover all American art.  There is a great interest in photography with a fabulous collection best known for its holdings of Elliot Porter.  Here we had a docent of a certain age who was so full of vim and vigor, I kept thinking what she must have been like as a young woman. In any case, she was the perfect anecdote for a group that was probably pretty close to museumed out!

Back in Dallas we had our good-bye party at a restaurant called Mesa.  It had been recommended by our son and the daughter of one of the others in our group.  What a great recommendation it was!  Some of the best Mexican food I have ever had, not to mention the Margaritas!  Caught in this photo the Museum Director, David Setford (right) and Joel Goldfrank whose daughter suggested Mesa.

I always say I enjoy travel in retrospect since it is always exhausting and this trip was as well. We certainly got a lot in and lots of good memories with what turned out to be a most enjoyable group of fellow travelers.

Andrea del Sarto

Drawings are an acquired taste.  They rarely hit you over the head and say, “you cannot ignore me”.

Like all areas of art there are nuances: some people relate to rough sketches where there is more outline than substance; others just to finished drawings where you can put just one up on the wall and the viewer will see exactly what the artist was getting at.

If you ride on the New York subway system you will sometimes see someone with their sketch pad out drawing the riders opposite them.  Because of the intimacy of the subway these draughtsman seem more furtive than a painter working with easel in the middle of a park or on a mountainside.  If you think about it drawing is more intimate and personal.  If the draughtsman is good he or she can reach right down to the soul of a sitter much quicker than an oil painting can.

If you want to study one of the great draughtsmen of the Renaissance rush over to The Frick Collection in New York before January 10.  There you will find an exhibition, “Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action” co-organized by The Frick and the J. Paul Getty Museum.  About 50 drawings (close to 1/3 of his known corpus) and 3 paintings borrowed from many collections among them the Getty, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Uffizi as well as the National Gallery are displayed.

Del Sarto, (1486-1530), was born and died in Florence, though he was baptized Andrea d’Agno, he was known as del Sarto after the profession of his father, a tailor.  His fame, however was soon to be eclipsed by his better known contemporaries, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

In the exhibition you can follow step by step the stages of drawing by a master to its ultimate conclusion in a finished painting.  My wife and I do not agree on how to view the exhibition.  It is being shown in the Frick’s lower level exhibition galleries and the grand oval room in the center of the museum.  If you go around as the Frick suggests you will go downstairs first and view the sketches, then work your way upstairs to the finished drawings and paintings that relate to them.  I believe, that at least if you are a novice, it is best to first see the finished products, the paintings,  and then see how they were put together from the drawings.

Without knowing the model it is difficult to see how well the artist has done, but working backwards from the painting to the study one can relate the two images.  One of the best examples is the “Study of the head of an Old Woman” circa 1529 from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford   The drawing surely done from life has so much more gravitas, life experience if you will, than St. Elizabeth has in the finished painting’s figure in “The Medici Holy Family” of the same year from the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Plantina, Florence.

 

Another example is the painting of St. John the Baptist from the Palazzo Pitti and the head of the boy from the National Gallery, Woodner Collection in Washington D.C.  While the painting is unquestionably striking the drawing is so much more delicate and beautiful.

 

As Holland Carter referred to it in the New York Times, “the real workshop business” can be found downstairs.  This is where you find the unfinished drawings on their own.  They seem disconnected until one per chance finds the painting or paintings that they relate to… del Sarto was not above using the same sketch for more than one painting.   More difficult is to match up individual body parts with specific paintings such as the “Studies of Arms, Legs, Hands and Drapery” from the Galleria degl Uffizi in Florence.

Del Sarto is particularly well known for his work in red chalk and the lyrical robe from the J. Paul Getty Museum is a fine example.

Like most other people I am a sucker for children (even though I sometime overdose on Face Book ) and I just cannot resist showing the Metropolitan Museum’s red chalk drawing, “Studies of a Head and Hand” of 1510.

A much smaller exhibition “Andrea del Sarto’s Borgherini Family” is showing at the Metropolitan Museum.  Cooperation between museums in the same town seems to becoming more frequent which is a good thing for a change.

If you will not be able to get to New York before the show closes, second best, take a look at the Frick Collection website,  where you can see the works of art and even how they were grouped.

The New Cooper Hewitt

In 1895, three granddaughters of Peter Cooper (1791-1883), designer and builder of the first steam locomotive in America, and founder of the Cooper Union school for science and arts, asked the school for space to create a museum for decoration inspired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.  The museum was founded in 1896 and was originally known as the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration.

The interests of the museum and the school diverged, and as the school’s finances were stressed, in 1963 the Cooper Union announced the closing of the museum.  Heeding the subsequent outcry the Smithsonian agreed to take over the collections and library in 1967.  In 1972 the Carnegie Corporation donated its mansion on the Upper East Side of New York to house the museum.  It was the first Smithsonian Museum outside of Washington D.C.

We were at the opening in 1976 and remember the former curator of the collections, J. Stewart Johnson, who had just become Curator of Design at The Museum of Modern Art, being there and commenting that this was the first time he had actually viewed the the objects since they had all been packed up during his tenure!

The museum has recently gone through a major renovation taking over a building next door in order to move their offices relieving exhibition space, adding a bigger shop and putting in a freight elevator. We had made a donation of our German Jugendstil pewter collection and some other decorative arts objects a couple of years ago but not had a chance to see them in their new home.  When we went back to New York this time we made an appointment with old friends, Cara McCarty, Curatorial Director, and Sarah Coffin, Curator of 17th and 18th Century Decorative Arts, as well as Head Product Design and Decorative Arts Department.

We were treated to a nice healthy lunch in their new cafeteria, which has also been added during the renovation.  A much needed addition since there are not many simple lunch places in close proximity. It looks out over the garden, which will be open to visitors, but is still under construction.  From there we were taken into the mansion itself, which thankfully had not changed in its beautiful early 20th century style with its dark wood paneled rooms.  In any case the Carnegie Mansion was designated a land marked building in 1974 so its essence had to be preserved.  Ninety-one million dollars was raised for the project and about eighty million was used for the renovation leaving the remainder as an endowment.

We were handed admission badges and what looked like a thick pen.  Mystified we were taken to large glass tables on which we could call up most of the objects in the collection.  We were shown how to drag objects we selected into a personal collection.  What then you may ask?  When you get home you can enter the code printed on your admission ticket and bring all those works of art that you “collected” into your personal collection on your computer.   What is truly incredible is that almost all the 210,000 objects in the collection were digitized and bar coded within 18 months, which must be some kind of record for organization and efficiency!

Another statistic that amazed me was that 92% of the visitors take the pens (which you are meant to return when you leave) and only two have walked away so far.  Even more surprising is the statistic that 34% of those who used the pen have retrieved the material again at home … Yes, big brother is watching!

As you can imagine 210,000 works of art cannot be shown all at once and, as a matter, of fact, only about 600 are on display at any one time.  As a result only two pieces from our donation were on view and, as we had been told, are shown in what was originally one of the mansions guest bathrooms! They are a pair of Kayzersinn Candlesticks, German 1900-1902, and the beautiful French 18th century gilt bronze musical clock stand, which I gave in memory of my father.  I dragged those with my pen into “my collection” and when I got home I was able to retrieve an image and all the documentation.  http://cprhw.tt/o/72THv  -  http://cprhw.tt/o/5AE2n

I must admit that when you go through your “collection” at home you may look at a couple of your images and scratch your head and think, why in the world did I want to save that one?   By going on the museum’s website you can search through the collections but it is helpful to have data such as the designer or accession numbers, otherwise you need to figure out rather detailed and therefore complicated search categories.

It’s always nice to come across something familiar even if it did not come out of your own collection.
As we continued on our expert guided tour of the rest of the museum we saw that an entire room had been dedicated to the collection of model staircases donated to the museum by Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw many of which we had seen when the Thaws lived in Santa Fe.

For me it was definitely a new and different experience in museum going, viewing familiar objects and interacting with them in a whole new way.