Play on

The museum trade got very excited by PokemonGo. The British Museum even claimed that hordes of Pokemon searchers rushing through its doors constituted an exciting ‘increase in visitor numbers’ (#deluded). Meanwhile at the Dowse the staff noticed a mass of players in the square outside their building. Turns out it was a major PokeStop and day (and night) groups of players were scurrying about trying to catch Pokemon. With a rainy weekend coming up recently the Dowse figured it needed to take some action as power hungry players coming in to recharge their phones were blocking up the entrance. In place of the usual  DO NOT sign they went for let’s-help-out option. Extension cords offered power outlets on the forecourt and the WiFi levels were pumped up so play could continue.

Open when you are

Usually, that moment when you realize that more of the art museum galleries are being changed for new exhibitions than are open is one of the big disappointments of a visit. Yesterday, however, at the MMK in Frankfurt, thanks to the curators and technicians being happy working in front of the public, we got an intriguing look behind the scenes. Seemed like art to us.

 

 

What’s in that crate?

This crate was one of many we saw arranged around the huge, light empty gallery spaces of MUAC (the contemporary art museum of the University of Mexico). They contained the Anish Kapoor exhibition Archaeology, Biology that was in the process of being installed. The many labels on this single crate can  show us something of the reach and value of Kapoor's work. First we could see that it contained his sculpture Large blue void from 1989. This particular crate had come from Lisson Gallery in London who have represented Kapoor since 1982. It was built by Mtec, a specialist art transport and shipping company based in the UK who, incidentally, have a very cool website. The head office is located at what seems to be the stereotypically English address of 10 Gentlemens Field, but this is only one of a number of units, there are 23 works in the exhibition. This is a big operation. At some stage the crate was under the care of Martinspeed, another specialist art transport firm in the UK. The shipment was one of four crates and weighs 474 kilograms and has the entire sculpture in it. Well, we found it interesting anyway.

Images: top the crate and below all the markings on one side.

What a concept

In April the next big show at Tate Britain focuses on conceptual art of the sixties and seventies. It should be the highlight of Billy Apple’s career as he was making conceptual art at the Royal Collage as early as 1960 (Body cleaning : extraction/subtraction) and changed his name to Billy Apple as an artwork in 1962. Although we don't yet have a complete list of the artists to be included in Conceptual art in Britain: 1964-1979, from the promotional material released so far, Apple is unlikely to be even included far less showcased. What does an artist have to do? Tate owns two conceptual pieces by Apple from the earliest days of conceptual art in Britain, both dated 1962. It might not happen often but maybe this is an artist who picked up on an idea too early! A frequent writer on Apple’s work once talked about, 'a general forgetfulness that dogs Apple’s career' but this time it feels like fate itself is against him. There is a small ray of hope, the exhibition’s research brief asked for, ‘analysis of the course of conceptual art in Britain from its genesis in the early and mid-1960s until the late 1970s’ so maybe the 'early' word will allow Apple to slip in. The possibility that Apple heading for New York (the center of contemporary art) in August 1964 might mean he forfeits his chance for the recognition he deserves as a pioneer conceptualist would be well beyond ironic. We’ll keep you posted

Images: conceptual art by Billy Apple in the Tate collection. Left Relation of Aesthetic Choice to Life Activity (Function) 1961–2  and right Self Portraits (Apple Sees Red on Green) 1962

Showing off

How often do you hear art museums explaining (or, on odd occasions, complaining) that they can only show a tiny proportion of their collections? Almost as often as they promise to make the works in store accessible to the public by turning some galleries into what they call ‘open-store’. But yes, occasionally it happens. In the eighties you couldn’t go into a public art museum without seeing hundreds of paintings double, triple and even quadruple hung, but the fever has passed. The Dowse pulled out a few cabinets last year and rather than displaying objects in them left them just as they were in storage. People liked it. OK you couldn’t see the objects 360 degrees but you got the idea and it was 100 percent better than not seeing them at all. Te Papa has opened its physical storerooms for a few tours but their promised permanent open store has never eventuated.

Today we saw the most cynical version of open storage at the new Broad Museum in LA. After the promise of the architects' over-heated metaphor for the Broad of 'the veil and the vault', we were expecting something special in the way of access to the collections. What we got were a couple of windows opening onto the art store. 'Look,' they seemed to be saying, 'here's all the stuff we have that you can't see.' Tiers of racks, a couple of paintings on view and tantalising glimpses of the staff going about their business. Open storage, so near and yet so far away.

A great art museum building from Shigeru Ban

The Oita prefectural art museum in southern Japan, a couple of hours by train from Fukuoka, has got to be one of the most beautiful art museums in the world. Designed by Shigeru Ban, the same architect who designed Christchurch’s cardboard cathedral, it shares some of that building’s signature elements but then expands and develops them. This is a large light box so beautifully measured and detailed that just walking around the exterior is a revelation in the use of design and materials. And then a wonderful interior with clear zones of different functions that work closely together visually. The effect is you always know exactly where you are and with a very good idea of why. Connect all this with a graceful atrium and what you get is an invitation to explore further rather than the shock and awe of so many recent museum entrances. You can see our photographs of the building inside and out here on OTN: ARCHITECTURE

News from the flaming rock

There have always been close links between New Zealand and the Queensland Art Gallery. The current director of the Christchurch Art Gallery, Jenny Harper, was a senior curator there and before her so too was Anne Kirker, once senior curator of NZ's National Art Gallery. And the QAG has sent its people in the other direction. Current Auckland Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport, of course, and her predecessor Chris Saines who was exported back again to be the QAG's director.  Saines has now headed up what can only be described as a vision-thing-on-speed at the QAG for three years. During this time he has overseen the mega Michael Parekowhai survey The promised land although for some reason could not get the Auckland Art Gallery he once so tightly controlled to take the exhibition (word is the Auckland Art Gallery is working towards a smaller project exhibition). 

And Saines still has New Zealand in his sights. QAG's Foundation was tasked with finding $A150,000 for Lisa Reihana’s four-channel video In Pursuit of Venus [infected] that is currently on show at the Auckland Art Gallery (and also purchased by that institution). The Foundation did it in two months. There is talk  too of Saines enticing Auckland art patrons to turn their attention and support to Brisbane and become part of what he describes as 'more diversified ways of fundraising'. Saines is also giving shape to his ‘new economic model for the gallery’ as he promised back in 2013 when he took over as director.  'Just as we make considerable revenues from our food and beverage offer and our store, we can also look to touring exhibitions as another way of adding to the gallery’s net receipts.’ A major element of this plan? Touring exhibitions to NZ. Strangely, the first of these proposed cash cows is a Cindy Sherman exhibition that is headed to Wellington rather than Auckland. It will be the second time a large Sherman show has been to the city with the previous outing in 1989 at the National Art Gallery.

Follow the yellow brick road

An NZ art museum director highlighted a piece in Variety (the Hollywood Biz paper) about how to deal with fragmenting TV audiences and reckons its got a lot to say to the art museum business. Let's see how that works out. 

The TV guy reckons:

They are facing an increasingly segmented audience:
"We're doing more with less than at any other time.” “

And they're distracted too: 
"Attention spans are so short, the instant you are not entertaining them, they are gone.”

Along with increased demands:
“In an era of declining budgets, but increasing opportunity, you've just got to do everything.”

Then, the numbers game has shifted:
“If you make a show for a certain audience, you want to make sure you get that audience." 

Meaning it's no longer good enough:
"to just pull in as many viewers as possible"

Which leaves a big challenge: 
"With niche audiences on the rise and budgets per show sinking, the challenge becomes how to create high-quality content without always having the benefit of a bottomless checkbook."

If you build them they better bloody well come

About 10 years ago Te Papa had a destination art gallery designed up by a Dutch firm. The goal was to shut down all the complaints about it never showing art. In the spirit of transparency it was done in secret and never amounted to anything. That was a lucky break. The Dutch came up with a design that was all sweeping vistas, ramps, and aggressively architectural spaces.

We saw the Mothership of this style in Rome in the form of MAXXI the art museum that opened in 2009. If we can pinch a perfect phrase, 'it’s all view and no do'. Zaha Hadid (the architect) said MAXXI was designed to “reflect the chaos of life.”  Thanks Zaha. Even more bleakly the current director described the building as being “based on a very clear vision of neo-liberal capitalism – it’s all steel and concrete and glass; it could easily be an airport building, or a shopping mall”. So you can see this is a museum that is going to struggle when it comes to showing art. A couple of years back it nearly closed but now, thanks to (by the look of it) an endless stream of school students, numbers are creeping up.  Ironically the best exhibition we saw there was Architecture in uniform (architecture in war) shown in a series of conventional display spaces built within a swooping expanse. It was ever so.
 
The same miserable record seen in its most extreme form at MAAXI pretty much holds in New Zealand, but the good news is the building boom is almost over.
Images: MAXXI

If you build it they might not come

“As early as 1996, Nicholas Serota framed ‘the dilemma of museums of modern art’ as a stark option, ‘experience or interpretation’, which might be rephrased as entertainment on the one side and aesthetic contemplation and/or historical understanding on the other. Nearly twenty years later, however, we needn’t be stymied by this either/or. Spectacle is here to stay, at least as long as capitalism is, and museums are part of it; that’s a given, but for that very reason it shouldn’t be a goal.”

In The London Review of Books Hal Foster looks at the new art museums  and wonders what the hell are they trying to do? Image: Rome’s Maxxi by Zaha Hadid

Potty

You'd think that there are some things so iconic, so distinctive, so rich in historical flavour that a national or  city museum would just have to get their hands on them, wouldn't you? Milan Mrkusich’s house in Remuera  would have to be one of them, Colin McCahon’s library should have been another, and that easel Rita Angus always used. How could you pass up a draft of Wystan Curnow’s essay High culture in a small province, or Theo Schoon's notes and sketches on South Island cave drawings? Some of these have been protected while others have already slipped into private hands. What’s are the odds on anyone discussing with the Mrkusich family the long-term future of the house Mrkusich designed and lived in for so many decades? Low. 

This rant comes to you courtesy of us seeing one of these icons when we were in Auckland last week. The people we were with mentioned they had recently purchased something very cool at an Art + Object auction. Then they showed it to us. And, we kid you not, it was Len Castle’s Pottery notes sub-titled Len Castle's Mixtures. We're talking about the recipes he used to glaze his ceramics and drawings for constructing kilns. We're  no experts, so have no idea how much of his working life it covers, but even as a sample it is a truly wonderful thing. 

How is it even possible that this little notebook with its handwritten and hand-drawn contents is not part of an Auckland institution’s collection? The same couple also picked up (and at an very reasonable price) some of Castle’s library of books on ceramics as well as (maybe best of all) a couple of boxes of stones and mineral samples that had offered Castle inspiration and information. OK, the institutions can’t collect everything. But Len Castle’s Pottery notes? Surely some mistake.

But let’s not talk about me ...

Art museums are always on a charm offensive but who do they really think they are? Here are nine of them tooting their horns. Your job: match the statement to the museum.

So here's a quick quiz. Who….

... is a pathfinder, an innovator and a catalyst for contemporary art and ideas

... provides a vital platform for critical thinking across media, disciplines, cultures and contexts

... is renowned for being bicultural, scholarly, innovative, and fun

... focuses primarily on contemporary visual arts by local, national and international artists and designers

... is the home of the visual arts in New Zealand

... is home to one of New Zealand's most important public art collections

... aims to explore new ideas and initiatives with insight, imagination, and intelligence

... is more than an art gallery

... is renowned today for the richness of its historic collection and its close working relationship with major New Zealand artists.

Answers here on OTNSTUFF

Male call

You may think that holding the world record for women art directors per number of art institutions doesn’t make much difference to the chance of women getting solo shows (a random look at five institutions today shows that at the moment you could see solo exhibitions by 13 men and 3 women) but at least here in NZ there is at least some motivation to make this change.

In Australia the top job record is not so positive. In fact only two Australian State art museums have ever had a woman in the top job - once for the Australian National Gallery in Canberra and once for the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Did we mention it was the same woman, Betty Churcher? Well it was. Ex-Auckland director Chris Saines helped maintain the status quo when he replaced the female acting director of the Queensland Art Gallery and a guy has just been announced as the next director of the Australian National Gallery. In the 40 regional galleries under 20 percent are run by women. Australians in the know tend to blame the male-heavy boards of trustees that select all these guys but there is some sign that change is in the air. But still… message to Australian women, don’t hold your breath.

Image: the key to the Executive urinal. 
Source: ArtsHub and RPGNSW (and thanks lol for pointing the way)

Be nice

It’s open season on art museums in Wellington at present. The Dominion Post having headlined “Te Papa losing its gloss” in early September announced last week that “The gloss is coming off Lower Hutt's Dowse Art Museum.” So a bad gloss day for those two. The problem in both cases was falling attendance numbers although, in fairness, the Dowse’s weren’t falling, just staying put and you'd have to say that with a local population of 103,000 and an annual attendance of 198,000 it must be getting close to saturation even accounting for out-of-towners. The cost per visitor is also not too bad at $10.10 compared to the City Gallery at $13.32 and Te Papa’s $16.79. 

After a whack or two from the media you might have thought there'd be some collegial support from other local institutions but, not so much. Director of Porirua’s Pataka Helen Kedgley was tight-lipped and “reluctant to speculate on other galleries’ shortcomings.” She then explained that in Pataka's case high attendances were due to “quality exhibitions, its community hub design and engagement with residents.” There was a similar lack of support when Douglas Lloyd Jenkins resigned from the Hawke's Bay Museum not long after a public beat-up from his Council. No one from the profession bothered to publicly support him on Facebook or as far as we can see support him in public in any way. And when Chris Saines was fighting for his life with the big Auckland changes the professional silence was awe inspiring. 

To be competitors rather than collaborators is a risky strategy for most art galleries and museums. As their buildings have increased in size along with budgets, salaries and staff numbers they've become bigger targets for local politicians and Council admin. So you'd think it would make sense for them to be nice to each other. Someone should get them all in a room and tell them the ‘together we stand divided we fall’ thing.

In touch

It's Awards week on OTN and this month's winner of Best signage designed to stop people touching sculpture goes to the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles

Skin condition

As you wander round the Getty Museum in LA you start to feel there is a theme to the contemporary sculpture collection. What could it be? Got it. Naked women.

But seriously

We'd seen the dog with the purple front leg before as part of Pierre Huyghe’s contribution to Documenta 13 in 2012 but then it was often lurking behind a large spill of gravel. This time the dog was roaming around the museum where a large Huyghe’s survey exhibition was underway and was sometimes, but not always, accompanied by a guy with a strange mask. The dog was enough really.

The strange thing was how much more real the dog seemed in these large white galleries than it had outside in nature, albeit a nature somewhat distorted by Huyghe. In part we all felt comfortable about the dog because of the relaxed attitude of the guards at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. They had obviously been specifically briefed for this exhibition - you could sit anywhere, lean on anything, touch most things, take photos, lie down, and so on.

Was this attitude why most of the visitors were under 30? The exhibition was staged as a series of inter-related but distinct encounters and this chunking really worked. Each event (whether it was a large scale video, a set of drawings, a statue with a beehive growing on its head, an aquarium, smoke and mirrors) was an opportunity for people to lie on the floor, talk among themselves and absorb the exhibition in a way that is quite different from the long hard stare we're used to. It may have become a cliché but the phrase that best summed up the Huyghe exhibition was serious fun. Not just populist or spectacular or interactive (although it turned out to be all three) but the fun made by an intensely curious artist treated seriously. And there were no labels, just a sheet with a map, list of works and brief commentary. #justsaying

Space invaders

Palais de Tokyo in Paris must be up there as one of the biggest contemporary art spaces in the world. Who knows how many thousands of square meters it covers, possibly no one. Who could be surprised then when most of the work it shows is of the installation art kind. The pressure on artists to fill these jaw dropping spaces is extreme. What counts as a 'small' space comes in at around 150 square meters and the largest at around a thousand or more. As a visitor it's fascinating to see the strategies various artists adopt to cope with filling these sorts of areas. Here are some techniques we saw at work. Feel free to use them to fill your own large spaces.

1   Use cheap materials. Clay, paper, cardboard boxes, corrugated card and iron, tires and bricks.

2   Cover the floor with a cheap material. That clay comes in handy again and so does paint or, if you’re really low on funds, water (in sheets or puddles).

3   Install a very small work into a very large space.

4   Construct a set and decorate it with theater props

5   Use video projection on free-standing screens or the back wall of a large room

6   Project video onto floors (this seems the same as item 5 but add a balustrade – more bang for the bucks)

7   Use old school tv sets to show your video and fill up the remaining space with chairs and couches

8   Cover walls with decorative surfaces (wallpaper, newsprint, graffiti)

9   Make something large and hollow using light cheap materials (painted paper, paper mache etc)

10  Place small works on plinths widely separated from one another

11  Performance

You're welcome.


Images: some example left to right top to bottom. Light weight and hollow – Eduardo Basualdo, painted floors and walls - Michael Riedel, video on floor - Tony Ousler, small ojects large space – Julien Bismuth, cheap materials on floor - Dominique Ghesquiere, plinths – Agnieszka Kurant, large found objects and theatrical devices – Hiroshi Sugimoto

The Count

With all the fuss over Napier’s MTG not getting enough people through the door to satisfy its City Council (who let it not be forgotten originally set the target at an absurd 690,000 in their Annual Plan), we did a quick check to see how everyone else was doing.

Top people magnet is the Auckland Art Gallery helped hugely by its new building. Next up, kind of surprisingly, is the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Its attendances must wipe everyone else off the map in visitors as a percentage of population. Then it’s Te Papa’s fifth floor. There are no audited figures available but over the years we've cobbled together an estimate based on its own reports.

Only one on the list Rotorua charges an entrance fee although some of the others do charge for temporary or touring exhibitions. Many institutions don’t publish their attendance figures or do so in a way that makes them difficult to extract. The Dowse's attendance numbers, for instance, are combined with the Petone Settlers Museum at 204,000 so aren't included (The Dowse have since told us their latest annual attendance figure is 205,563 not including the Petone Settlers Museum). There's also the notorious kid factor - the percentage of non-voluntary children (aka school kids) bulking up these figures is of course a deeply hidden secret.

But here’s a rough and ready guide.

Auckland Art Gallery  720,000
Dunedin Public Art Gallery 255,000
Te Papa’s fifth floor 190,000
City Gallery Wellington 161,681
Waikato Art Museum  111,915
Rotorua Museum 97,642
Govett Brewster 67,000
Sarjeant Gallery  37,463

Image: sophisticated chart from OTN’s design department

Art chart

Frame of reference from I love charts