dOCUMENTA (13)

Reviewing my mail the day we got back from Documenta 13 I found requests in my mail from various NGOs, as usual frantically asking for help with disasters in Africa and war regions in the world. It felt like I was still at Documenta. It seemed that every artist in this wide-ranging exhibition was either addressing a war or political disaster or had been the victim of one. A number of the works were by long dead people, often from the Holocaust, but always defined in the context of struggle against oppression. Even the Canadian landscape painter Emily Carr was defined in the context of struggle (I wondered why Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, her US and Mexican contemporaries were not also included).

 The exhibition was mobbed and between the crowds, the tiny label text that forced us to wait to see who had done the installations and why, and the lines waiting to go into restricted rooms (Leaves of Grass, Geoffrey Farmer's thousands of little shadow puppets cut out from Life magazine, was the biggest letdown, after a 40 minute wait), it was impossible to see even half of the works in two days there. But we didn't really care. I have a strong interest in and commitment to political art, but the focus on war crimes, death, deformation, environmental degradation and political oppression quickly felt like hectoring to me. And, as The Art Newspaper reviewer said, the exhibition totally lacked irony or humor. I began to look at the labels only long enough to identify what indignity the artist had suffered.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is far more present in this exhibition than any curator I recall in the past. A significant number of the works are commissioned for dOCUMENTA, which is to be expected, but there are also works co-created by the artist and the curator, objects inserted by the curator, and a conference room designed by the curator, all of them conscientiously credited to her. On the one hand, it's pretty amazing how much she accomplished in so many sites in Kassel and elsewhere; on the other, her omnipresence hinted at new possibilities for curatorial arrogance. With that in mind, it may not be surprising that the introduction to the exhibition is rambling and wanders pretty widely One puzzling sentence: "There are terrains where politics are inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges, both ancient and contemporary." That would seem to cover it all.

We did not see the entire exhibition and missed much in the park, although we wandered through part of it. I gather that many of the works in the park were quite subtle. One, co-created with Jimmie Durham, we did not see, but Tom and I both found its description in The Guidebook puzzling. It appears that artist Durham and curator Christov-Bakargiev each planted a supposedly rare apple tree. Hers was one of a line created by a prisoner at Dachau; Durham's choice was the "extremely rare" Arkansas Black he remembered from his childhood. The Arkansas Black actually is not that rare; our friends buy it in local grocery stores here in Kansas. And as apple farmers, find Arkansas Black fairly available, although we don't like the taste that much. Of course, planting apple trees increases Tom's questioning the exhibition's idea of art, while I've been just figuring that it is, as critics have said, more about creativity. But the creativity always relates to politics.

Curatorially, or design-wise, the exhibition had one enormous weakness. The objects are mostly impossible to comprehend without explanation and a great many of them have little or no aesthetic interest, so it's important to get some idea of the concept. In order to do so one must read labels that are printed in type no larger than what I'm using here and no more than three people can see them at one time. These small typeface labels flout accessibility requirements, but apparently accessibility to visually impaired visitors was of no interest to the exhibition planners. The labels were often in very low light as well, making them even more inaccessible.

Having read advance notices, I came to the Fredericianum expecting to see the ground floor empty. Having enjoyed Ryan Gander's work at Venice last summer, I was interested in seeing what he would do with the empty spaces and did wonder how he created the breeze in those empty rooms. I have no idea what Christov-Bakargiev had in mind keeping the rooms empty, but they are quite lovely spaces with nice windows. But even there there were objects. One of them was a five-page handwritten letter displayed flat in a floor case. With several people already reading this letter, installed by the curator with the permission of the writer, I gave up trying to see what it was about. Our friend told me the artist was apologizing profusely for not participating in the exhibition. After spending two days there, I can imagine excellent reasons to have bowed out. Another otherwise empty space included three sculptures by Julio Gonzalez (1876-1942) that were included in Documenta II in 1959. The description says "To return to Gonzalez in this context is a recapitulation of the work of sorrow....that documenta historically carried out in the realm of art and culture, following global destruction, during the reconstruction of Germany and Europe." The sculptures are small abstractions of the human figure made in the 1930s. I really don't get the connection, althought it's kind of cool to see something that was included in the second Documenta exhibition.

Some of the installations are very engaging. Kader Attia made an extremely complex installation of a slide show of survivors of disastrastrous facial damage in World War I juxtaposed with African masks; wood carvings by Africans depicting the men in the slides; books on African art, culture, colonialism, and World War I; and war remnants - shells, weapons, tools - some of them made into useful objects. The huge arrangement seems like a history or anthropology museum display. The slide show is horrific and the sculptures abstract the reality. I'm not sure if the African sculptures were intended to suggest the similarity of traditional African masks and the distorted faces or if , as the guidebook suggests, the system of repairing African sculptures relates to the repair of the faces, or he is making connection between World War I and Africa. The shell casings and objects made from war refuse also suggest, I suppose, an aspect of repair.

We came upon on large display as we were trying to find the Fredericianum exit after making a search for the installation by Emily Jacir, whose work I have found very engaging at Venice and other places. (Here her cell-phone photographs of pages from Palestinian books taken from Palestinian homes and kept in the Jewish National Library in West Jerusalam as abandoned property were puzzling, since the actual images are often of nearly blank pages.)

Leaving her installation, we went through the wrong door and happened upon a fascinating and disturbing installation by Michael Rakowitz, also dealing with destruction and books. Rakowitz spent time in Afghanistan, in Bamiyan, actually, with the purpose of reviving the practice of stone carving in the area where the Taliban had destroyed two enormous 6th-century Buddha images in 2001, despite international protests. Using stone from Bamiyan, he had his newly trained carvers make reproductions of books from the library of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, that was destroyed by British bombers in 1941. (We were surprised that the bombing took place so relatively early in the war and understood the destruction of the library to have been an example of "collateral damage." The fact that Kassel was a huge center of Nazi arms manufacture was not mentioned in any labels we read.) Looking at the stone images of books we were engaged by some of the identifying labels, most memorably by the one for The Story of Ferdinand (1936), which we recalled as a charming children's story, but the label said the book was internationally controversial as a pacifist book and banned in Nazi Germany and fascist Spain. Bits of bombs, anecdotes about the British bombers dropping stones from Coventry on Kassel or the Taliban destroying the Buddhas because the West cared more about the sculptures than poor people, and remains of burned books amused or angered me. I found it particularly troubling that the artist, and the curator, equated destructon of a library as collateral damage in wartime with intentional and unprovoked government destruction of historic works of art because they represent a different religion.



Hugenot House bedroom

 A widely celebrated project of Documenta was Hugenot House, a decrepit building that the Chicago artist Theaster Gates proposed to renovate and install with artworks made from remnants of destitute buildings in Chicago. We visited it with great anticipation. The building was still in terrible condition, possibly worse condition than when Gates first occupied it, with torn layers of wallpaper, exposed electric cables, and non-functioning bathrooms. There was a modest functioning kitchen and several small dormitory-style rooms that were apparently in use, as well as several video installations in otherwise unfinished rooms. Our friends found the restoration project daunting and Tom did not see how building renovation, something that was once his family business, could be considered an art project. Having been very enthusiastic about this concept, I was really disappointed at the lack of visible success and the quality of the work altogether.


 Hugenot House











On our second day, we visited the documenta-Halle, where there were drawings by Gustav Metzger, a Holocaust survivor and artist famous for "auto-destructive art," made between 1945 and 1959 that have not been previously shown. They were strong objects, but each one was under a cloth that had to be lifted to see it and the process became tedious for so many drawings. The drawings seem very traditional compared to the work for which he is known.

An installation of enormous airplane images and working engines by Thomas Bayrle interested Tom, but not so much me.

I found the former Elisabeth Hospital installation of works by Afghan artists to be quite interesting, primarily just because it was a whole building devoted to one group of artists. Several years ago I was very taken by videos by Lida Abdul, who was also included in this space. I didn't "get" What We Have Overlooked, the video shown here, and don't make sense of the catalogue explanation.

Mark Dion, Oak

In the Ottoneum, the science museum, Mark Dion constructed a beautiful marquetry display cabinet for the Museum's "wood library," a collection of miniature dioramas shaped like books, depicting 441 species of wood, made by Carl Schildbach between 1771 and 1779. Dion added his own dioramas of species from continents not represented in the collection plus one of Oak, in homage to Josef Beuys's "iconic planting of 7000 oak trees in Kassel for documenta 7 and 8 from 1982 to 1987." (quoted from museum label). The wood of the object comes from one of Beuy's 7000 oak trees. The display cabinet is lovely and functional and the additional objects expand the range of  the educational potential of the collection.



Amar Kanwar











In an installation in the same building, The Sovereign Forest, Indian artist Amar Kanwar combined a video installation with the display of multiple samples of types of rice. I didn't really understand what it was about (and have trouble connecting the images I saw with his statements about mining's destruction of the ecology of the state of Orissa, even though I believe him), but the whole thing was poetic and beautifully presented.

Hundreds of artists were included and more than 800,000 people visitied dOCUMENTA (13). A huge amount of the work is fascinating, as I've already discovered through seeing some of the artists in other contexts. Two months later, however, I still remember the gathering of objects and installations as oppressive.

St. Petersburg, Russia, without a tour

A while ago I posted the drill for getting a visa to Russia. It turns out that the visa was possibly the most difficult, the only difficult thing about going to St. Petersburg on our own, without a tour. Many of our friends, including arts professionals, had recommended against it - "You may not be able to get into the Hermitage, because of the crowds," "It's difficult to get to some of the places without a tour," and of course the concern about the language. But I'm leery of city tours and especially don't like being guided around museums in a herd. And sometimes it makes the trip more interesting to have to get places on your own. So we just did it. And it was just lovely.

First, our hotel, the Petro Palace, was just what we wanted. It is very close to the Hermitage, about three blocks, and also close to St. Isaac, the huge cathedral whose bright gold dome is visible from just about everywhere. The hotel has a nice modern lobby with a little bar where we sat each evening with a drink and checked our email on the free wifi. The room seemed rather spartan at first, with a thin carpet and quite simple furnishings, but the bed was comfortable, the air conditioning worked, and everything was clean and in good repair. We were on the central courtyard, which was also quiet. They serve a large buffet breakfast with a variety of meats, cheeses, pastries, eggs, cereal and so on. By the fifth day I was a little bored with the breakfast, but it was really just fine. A couple of days it was really crowded, perhaps with a tour, but it was hard to tell because most of the guests were not English speakers.

The first day things did not get off to a great start when we located the central ticket place for the train we would be taking to Helsinki but could not find the right window to purchase the tickets. Finally the information clerk had someone lead us to the window, where we waited for more than an hour on a very short line. We met some very interesting Germans in the line and in the end the ticket buying process was easy even though the agent did not speak English.  Our guidebook had said we could get the tickets from the hotel concierge, but he kindly recommended the ticket office because he would have to charge a substantial fee for doing it for us.

Hermitage Museum/Winter Palace

The Hermitage did indeed have a line of perhaps 100 people. It wouldn't have been that bad a wait, but I am a member of the International Council of Museums, which enabled us to use the tour group line and we  hardly had to wait at all. The Hermitage is crowded, but no worse than the Metropolitan or the Louvre, and only in front of the most famous paintings. Several tour guides asked me to move away from the two Leonardos so they could give their 30-second spiels in front of them. People snapped their pictures and moved on quickly. Although I had seen the Madonna Litta in the London Leonardo show, it was still great to see it in the Hermitage's daylight, where it actually looks better. And the Benois Madonna is still charming, the Madonna holding a flower and Christ's hands encircling hers, while he concentrates on the gesture. The Titians and Rembrandts were not as crowded and we could spend as much time as we wanted in front of everything. Actually, I was surprised by the number of not very interesting paintings that lined the rooms, filling in around a masterpiece or two.What were most interesting were the actual rooms of the Winter Palace, restored to luxurious (or gaudy, depending on your viewpoint) glamour, with amazing parquet floors and extensive gilding.



Floor of one room in the Winter Palace



Parquet detail of another room

The objects are also amazing, a vast range of porcelain, semi-precious stones,silver, gold, glass, coral, inlay, gilding, carving and casting.



Detail of a Sevres porcelain and gilt candelabra

 The only reason I wanted to go to St. Petersburg was to see the Hermitage, and it was a disappointment, not for the palace, but for the paintings. Three other major collections I visited after my art history training was over - the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Berlin Museum (in Dahlem), and the Prado in Madrid - were miraculous, life-changing, overwhelming. The Hermitage collection was just big. I wonder if somehow I wasn't attuned to its assets, wonder if perhaps the works needed cleaning. But mostly I wonder if the tsars in their eagerness to acquire European culture were buying their art in huge lots and not always paying attention to the quality of what they got.

Not to say I am not delighted to have been there, having spent the better part of two days there. But for surprised delight I would recommend the State Museum of Russian art where, as we had in the Museum of Modern Art in Rome, we discovered wonderful 19th-century artists and huge masterpieces we had never heard of. The museum has a small collection of very icons, of a size and quality I don't recall ever seeing anywhere. I'll post some images on another entry, since I can't seem to get any more on this one.

Peace Bears near the Admiralty

 Without a tour, we had to create our own itinerary, of course. Looking online and in our Fodor's guide, I decided that we should take one day and go to Peterhof. It was easy to take a hydrofoil from the dock next to the Hermitage. There's another dock next to the Admiralty, which was closer to our hotel, but the ticket person was in some kind of a swivet and we decided to go to the Hermitage one instead. Our good fortune was that the boat left  as soon as we boarded. Like much of St. Petersburg, Peterhof was full of Russian families on holiday and crowds of people filled the park, wandering, picnicking and enjoying the extraordinary fountains. Everything seemed to require an additional ticket and after seeing some of the smaller outbuildings, we skipped the main palace and just explored the gardens.


Palace, Peterhof



Fountains went off at 2 p.m.



Formal Fountains, Peterhof



Peterhof Palace Fountains

We noticed the Singer Sewing Machine building, now a bookstore with a nice Cafe Singer (or Cafe Zinger, as my credit card bill identified it). On the way to purchase train tickets, I spotted an amazing church that turned out to be the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, built in 1883 by Tsar Alexander III on the spot in the street where his father, Tsar Alexander II, was assassinated in 1881. The fantasy exterior is appropriate to the fabulous neo-Byzantine interior, every surface covered with mosaic religious images. A small altar marks the exact assassination spot, revealing cobblestones of the street. We also went inside St. Isaac's Cathedral (1818-1858), near our hotel. It's a huge neoclassical structure with gigantic marble columns and that gilt dome. Inside was another amazing display of mosaics, this time depicting religious figures in neoclassical style, many of which copy original paintings that apparently were deteriorating. Only telephoto photographs could prove to us that they are mosaic.

On a more modest scale I found wonderful landscape paintings in the Marble Palace museum, which also houses examples of contemporary art from the Ludwig Collection. (Again, I wondered if Mr. Ludwig passed on some of his less brilliant acquisitions.) At the Stroganoff Palace we encountered an exhibition on the War of 1812, the Russian War of 1812. the turning point in the Napoleonic Wars, subject of Tolstoy's War and Peace, and celebrated in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, being commemorated this year with no reference to the minor war that Americans give the same name. That palace also displayed photographs of the rooms before their most impressive restorations. In the Mikhailovsky Castle we were surprised to come upon an exhibition of photographs made by Howard Buffet, who has a foundation to help people in underdeveloped countries. We watched a video of him and his father Warren, surprised to find Nebraska neighbors exhibited in Russia.

Crystal Bridges - The Art

While I have some reservations about the initial experience of the architecture of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, I found the experience of looking at art there to be pretty wonderful.  The audience and the variety of looking opportunities reminded me of Soumaya, the Carlos Slim museum  in Mexico City (another museum created by an individual's immense wealth), although the collections are completely different. There were lots of people, at least one wearing overalls, and many of them in small groups. Whatever the fame or "importance" of the objects on view, there are many really engaging images and exploring them is a delight.

The works of art are in relatively intimate spaces and the curved wooden ceilings give the rooms a soaring feel. In most galleries the wall colors are subtle and allow the paintings to glow. It is easy to follow the 'flow' of the museum through each section, and each section has an introductory panel that announces what the gallery intends to include. We were a little disappointed by the simplistic and not completely appropriate way the early 20th century was divided into sections that basically said "These paintings are abstract and forward looking" and "These paintings are representational and baclward," but those are the quibbles of museum people over interpretations of art history.

One of 16 hummingbird paintings
 by Martin Johnson Heade

Not every work at Crystal Bridges is a masterpiece, but one could spend many visits exploring the fascinating objects there, whether they are famous or unusual. I was delighted with "Gems of Brazil," 16 small depictions of hummingbirds by Martin Johnson Heade, who is better known for his haystacks in the Jersey Meadowlands, of which Crystal Bridges also has one.



 Carl Bodmer, Mato-Tope, a Mandan Chief,
1832-34, Hand-colored aquatint, detail

A separate room with low light holds paintings and gorgeously and meticulously hand-colored prints of the early 19th century travels up the Missouri River by George Catlin, Carl Bodmer, and other artist explorers, along with paintings of Indians and maps of their journeys. The Bodmer portraits of Native Americans are amazing for the detail of their regalia and headdresses. A print of Indian utensils and arms by Bodmer, George Winter's Ten Potawatomi Chiefs, and a pair of portraits by Charles Bird King give a sense of the discoveries and diversity of these early adventurers' initiatives.

Carl Bodmer, Indian Arms and Utensils, hand-colored aquatint

George Winter, Ten Potawatomi Chiefs, 1837, oil on canvas maounted on board

Map of the Missouri River and select exploration destinations

Charles Bird King, Ottoe Half Chief, ca. 1822, Oil on panel

 

Among less-known objects is an 1830 portrait by Edward Dalton Marchant of Samuel Beals Thomas with his wife and daughters. These rather plain people look out at us with a bit of disdain and with as much curiosity as we have for them.

I expect that Richard Caton Woodville has gained some national recognition and interest as a result of his 1848 War News from Mexico being noticed in the Crystal Bridges collection. African Americans look on with concern about the news of the Mexican-American War, since the possibility of the United States annexing all of Mexico had substantial ramifications for the potential expansion of slavery at the time.

Alfred Thompson Bricher, View of Mount Washington
1864, Oil on canvas

Bricher, detail

William Keith, Sentinal Rock, Yosemite, 1872, oil on canvas

Keith, detail

Worthington Whittredge, Twilight on the Plains, Platte River, Colorado
 ca. 1866-67, Oil on canvas

Whittredge, detail

In my memory, when I was working on my Ph.D., I would see Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirits high on the wall of the vestibule of the main reading room of the New York Public Library. Now it is at eye level among other landscapes of the period and, frankly, seems more ordinary at Crystal Bridges. There are many wonderful landscapes. While my snapshots of them are amateur, some of the details I took remind me of the fun of exploring these paintings by artists like Alfred Thompson Bricher, John Smillie, William Keith, and Worthington Whittredge.

Emma Marie Cadwalader-Guild, who is she? She sculpted an African-American man in basswood around 1876 and titled it Free.

There are paintings by Stanton MacDonald Wright, Stuart Davis, George Bellows and many, many other important artists of the 20th century, but I chose to remember a small image by Agnes Pelton

and the large Norman Rockwell of Rosie the Riveter, modeled with great humor after Michelangelo's Isaiah from the Sistine Ceiling.

The post-World War II art also has both recognized and less famous artists. I noticed a very good Hans Hofmann painting as we rushed to finish this area before the museum closed.

How we got our Russian visa

I've wanted to go to St. Petersburg, Russia for a long time, particularly to see the Hermitage. I didn't really want to take a tour because it wouldn't give us enough time in the museum, se we decided we could do it on our own. This involves getting a tourist visa. It took me two full days, actually more, to figure out how the visa process works for Russia. Partly this is because I did not believe the process actually works the way it does. When I searched "Russian visa" online, a lot of websites appeared offering to help get the visa.  I couldn't find any guides or independent sources with the information (I looked online at the NYTimes, Fodor's, Frommer's.). It took me a while to realize that if you aren't able personally to go to the offices in Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco, Houston, or Seattle, one of those companies will probably be necessary. The actual process seems to take about three weeks if you go through normal channels.

I found it kind of amazing, hard to believe, that we needed an invitation to Russia and a documented hotel reservation, but we did. Fortunately, before I worked on getting the visa, I searched and found a hotel, and the online booking site, http://www.stpetersburg.com/, also provided an invitation at no additional cost. Several of the booking sites make the same offer, as do the agencies that help you get a visa.

Next we had to get passport-sized photographs, easy to acquire at FedEx/Kinkos or Walgrens or other places. Fortunately our passports are good for a few years and still have some blank pages.

Then there's the form. The Russian consulates have outsourced visa applications to a company called Invisa Logistics Services LLC (http://evisa.kdmid.ru/). You go there online, get an id and password, and fill out the form, which asks for much detailed information, including your family names, several of your previous jobs and your education with addresses, and everywhere you've been outside the US for the past 10 years, with the year you were there. (Also your criminal record and the like.) You submit the form online to ILS Houston (or whichever office is closest to you). Save the id and password they give you because you may need to edit the application form. I had to do it twice.

After indicating on this application a time for an appointment, set the following week, I realized that somehow I had to have the documents personally delivered there, so I searched for someone to do that for us. There are many, many services, with fees that seem to range from about $50 to $90 per visa.  I had no way of knowing which of the businesses was reliable, but used one noted by the site where I found our hotel. It is Travisa (http://www.travisa.com/) whose office in Houston we used.  Travisa has an application form you must complete. They do not charge your credit card until the visas are processed, which is reassuring to know. The official consulate application fee for the tourist visa is $175 per person and there are additional costs, plus the Travisa fee.We printed out the ILS application forms, the invitation, and hotel reservation, and enclosed our passports and photographs and FedExed them to Travisa.

The Travisa representative takes your materials to wherever the visa needs to be processed. There my application was rejected because I had written our destination, St. Petersburg, twice. So I edited it, printed and signed it and sent it again. This time I had missed clicking something that controls the margins and it was rejected again. The third time seems to have worked. I'm grateful that there is someone to help me get through this complicated bureaucratic process, and the representative at Travisa has been most friendly and understanding.

So, the process:
1. Be sure you have a passport that is good for at least 6 months after your trip and that has two blank pages for the visa (not the last two pages)
2. Begin the process at least a month before leaving, preferably 6 weeks or more
3. Book a hotel (They advise against getting non-refundable airline tickets or hotels before the visa is approved) For some visas they require copies of your airline reservation.
4. Get an invitation to Russia (the hotel, booking agency, or visa company can help with this)
5. Have passport-style photographs taken
6. Choose a company to be your representative in Houston, DC, NY, SF or Seattle and fill out their application form.
7. Fill out the visa application online (http://evisa.kdmid.ru/)  and submit it to ILS Houston (or the city of your closest consulate). Fill it out carefully. Be sure to submit it to an ILS office.
8. Print all the application forms and sign them to send. Make copies for your own records. Copy your passport.
8. Send all your materials securely (FedEx) to the company representing you.
9. Be ready to repeat parts of the process if your application is rejected.

This really is the way it works. Travisa, and some of the other sites, provide lists of what is required, as well as the variations for different types of visa. I'm sure tour companies and travel agencies also provide a lot of help. I would have liked to have a friend tell me what I know now.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

When I was a student I was thrilled by images of Moshe Safdie's Habitat '67, built in conjunction with the Montreal World Exposition. I've never seen it, but have always imagined Safdie as a powerfully creative architect with a vision for a better world, and have looked for his work for years. By the time I saw any of it again, the irregularly stacked boxes and affordable housing concept of Habitat had been replaced by huge curved and glassed monuments to art, culture, and money. He has been successful.

Eight months ago we attended our first opera performance at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. Two weeks ago we visited Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Everyone around here wants to see both Safdie buildings, major additions to the arts and culture scene in this part of the country. My initial response to the Kauffman Center was exhilaration; with its soaring lobby and extensive glass façade it proclaimed that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Kauffman Center lobby

Everyone I've talked to has loved Crystal Bridges, which makes me disappointed that I did not have the same burst of delight there. Instead, I kept seeing reflections of buildings by other architects. The name Crystal Bridges made me expect buildings connected by bridges over sparkling streams, but the only bridge in the structure is the restaurant, and the water feature is two murky manmade ponds. Nonetheless, the works of art in the building are displayed extremely well and the experience of seeing the art is excellent. It’s a collection worth seeing, not necessarily all masterpieces, but objects of great visual and historical interest.

Crystal Bridges is a complex of several buildings made of poured concrete inset with bands of southern pine and roofed with copper-clad pine and glass. The buildings alternate concave and convex roof lines and the facades curve in or out; this variety of profile and emphasis on curves giving the structure a sense of movement and life, appropriate for such an organic natural setting. Moving through the museum and between the galleries one traverses spaces with views into the woods and planted grounds of the complex, a refreshing break from looking at art, reminiscent of the experience of the Getty Museum pavilions in California.

Crystal Bridges Museum from upper entrance





Kauffman Center Lobby



Some critics have already noted that the curved roofs at Crystal Bridges recall Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport and Ingalls Hockey rink at Yale (nicknamed the Pregnant Oyster when I was an undergraduate). I love these curved, sculptural roofs. The glass walls and curved wooden beams alternating with glass in some of Crystal Bridges' ceilings, with their extensive use of wood, emphasis on natural light and integration in surrounding nature, call to mind Thorncrown, the gorgeous chapel near Eureka Springs by Fay Jones, the Frank Lloyd Wright student after whom the architecture school at the University of Arkansas is named. Speaking of similarities, the interior balconies of the Kauffman Center recall the Wright’s Guggenheim Museum ramp, even though their function as lobby hallways is somewhat different and they appear to be tinted pink and blue, reflecting their bright carpets. One wonders if these are meant as quotations, as opposed to the more general influences Safdie acknowledges.



Our experience of Crystal Bridges may be atypical because we entered through the lower parking lot, took the elevator the wrong way, and ended up in a poured concrete stairwell with visible water pipes. We finally realized that we needed to take the elevator down, and found the small circular courtyard between the museum entrance and the museum shop. The lobby is busy and functional. By this point I hadn’t yet seen an overall view of the museum.

We ascertained later that if you enter from the top parking lot, it is obvious that you need to take the elevator down and you can get an overview of at least part of the complex from above. It is also possible to park at Compton Gardens in downtown Bentonville and take a very pleasant and not difficult walk through the grounds that leads to a modest side entrance of the museum. Our inauspicious beginning, taking the back stairs, was similar to our experience at the Kauffman Center, where the parking lot leads to elevators and escalators in stark, definitely back entrance-feeling passages. Since in this region cars are the only way to get anywhere, it is a real disappointment that Safdie's buildings do not provide more scenic entrances for the majority of visitors. I expected the complex to open up in an architectural welcoming gesture, but that did not happen either. From both the park and above it is possible to get some sense of the museum’s layout and its relationship to water. From parking in the lower lot, it would be more attractive to take the marked “Art Trail” down staircases that can lead to the lower entrance.

Park entrance, Crystal Bridges

The staff and volunteers were exceptionally friendly, a Walmart characteristic, my friends tell me, and we were cheerfully guided through the check-in process. The gallery spaces are lovely. The larger galleries have curving wood beamed ceilings and long softly curved walls; these spaces are subdivided into galleries that are suitable for the domestic-sized works of art. Wall colors are reticent and enhance the objects, for the most part.

Crystal Bridges Late 19th Century Gallery

Crystal Bridges window wall and exterior of two early 20th-century galleries

The most dramatic structure is that displaying the art of the first half of the 20th century. Its angled walls are glass and its ceiling alternates curved bands of wood and glass, so natural light flows into it from everywhere and it seems continuous with nature and the rest of the complex. In order to show painting in this space, two rectangular structures are set into the building. I wondered if Safdie planned it that way or if the staff had to have the structures built in order to show anything besides bronze and marble sculpture.

There really are no bridges in the complex, although a few in the garden cross small bodies of water. Rather than buildings connected by bridges crossing sparkling streams, the structures surround two artificial ponds created by damming the small spring-fed stream that flows through the valley into which the complex is set. Most reviewers saw the building before the ponds had filled and described their imagination of the final result. Perhaps this still is not complete, because the ponds were murky green or brown. Just now I'm wondering if such a large water feature actually makes sense for the complex, which might look just as good with gardens in the center. A pleasant terrace by the pond opens to gardens and education spaces.

Cystal Bridges Restaurant

Crystal Bridges is doing very well, with 350,000 visitors in the first six months, more than double the anticipated attendance. Perhaps because of the unanticipated crowds the museum has posted the rule that visitors must remain 18 inches from the objects; the guards are ever-watchful of viewers. Since the label print is quite small and several of the paintings demand close examination, it is frustrating to be remonstrated for attentively examining the art.

I still find myself struggling to get an overall impression of the place beyond that it’s big and ambitious and somewhat complicated, with many references to the architectural past. The building seems well suited to the art it exhibits (except for that one big sunlit structure), is large enough to accommodate significant crowds of visitors, and integrates the architecture and art with beautifully landscaped natural surroundings.

Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

At the British Museum in January we purchased advance tickets for the Grayson Perry exhibition, not really knowing what to expect. While wandering around the museum, we came upon a pink and blue motorcycle with a sort of shrine on the back. The label indicated that the motorcycle was tripped out for Grayson Perry's trip to Germany and that the shrine was for his teddy bear, Alan Measles. While we found some of the details amusing, I was quite repelled by the idea of a grown man so dedicated to his teddy bear, and anticipated the exhibition with considerable trepidation.

The next day we appeared for the exhibition and very quickly I found myself totally fascinated by the stunning objects Perry had chosen from the British Museum collection and somewhat interested in many of the items he had crafted for it. And I was completely taken by the statement "Hold your beliefs lightly," which was repeated several times in the installation. Several of the texts accompanying the objects were thoughtful and enlightening. Wanting to remember these objects, and photography being prohibited, I purchased the exhibition catalogue.

A month later, thinking I would write something here about the exhibition, I opened the catalogue, but couldn't find many of the objects that had so fascinated me. The texts did not replicate the exhibition labels (they rarely do in catalogues), and even the Perry works were difficult to comprehend. For example, I had been amused by walking around the vase titled "Your Are Here," and discovering people's quoted reasons for coming to the exhibition - "I'm into beat stuff," "It's on my A level syllabus, my tutor told me to come," "I had a free ticket" - but the catalogue's two views could only remind me of the experience of amused discovery, not replicate it.

The catalogue emphasizes Perry's works and does not include all the British Museum objects. Of his works I recall especially his "Map of Truths and Beliefs," 2011, some of the ceramic jars, and the complex pilgrim figures of "Our Father," 2007 and "Our Mother," 2009. I tried to ignore the omnipresent bears, and "The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman" itself was a letdown both in the exhibition and the catalogue, a lot about not much.

After we saw the exhibition I enthusiastically recommended it to a London art colleague; she expressed total lack of interest, saying "Grayson Perry is all about Grayson Perry." The catalogue bears her out, but the exhibition was more of a wunderkammer, its mostly anonymous objects unexpectedly beautiful, powerful, amazing and amusing.

Since Perry is a Turner Prize winner and certainly an eccentric personality, there are many websites that reproduce images of his work. For example, the Saatchi Gallery website illustrates some vases, one with the excellent comment, "People say, ‘why do you need to put sex, violence or politics or some kind of social commentary into my work?’ Without it, it would be pottery. I think that crude melding of those two parts is what makes my work.”

What enchanted me about the exhibition was the beauty and the power of the objects Perry chose from the British Museum's collection. I think some of them were the Haida argillite carvings, Japanese and Indian portable shrines, a Kongo Power Figure, a Russian pine and ivory model of a sled, the print of the Chevalier d'Eon (an 18th century cross-dresser), an etching of multiple methods of torture, and Chinese earthenware statuettes of women. Most of these were three-dimensional; they lose presence in two-dimensional photographs. Photographs also diminish the size differences, so photographs of tiny things sit next to those of huge things and both lose some of their wonder.

This was another example of how an artist can be the curator of a fascinating exhibition drawn from a museum collection; and it demonstrates again why I try not to look at catalogue photographs of objects after seeing a particularly stunning show.

Soumaya, Mexico City

We're just back from a 9-day trip in Mexico City and some historic cities in Mexico - Guanajuato, San Miguel Allende, Queretaro, Tepotzotlan. One of my goals was to visit contemporary art museums and new museums in Mexico City, a city with enormous artistic wealth and more fine museums than you can possible get to in a week. We were a group of 14 interested, and interesting travelers.

The first thing I will say is that we were completely safe at all times. We happened to be in Guanajuato when the 7.4 earthquake hit in the Oaxaca area. It was felt in Mexico City, but all we saw was a slightly swinging chandelier in the Teatro Juarez. We saw families in museums and on outings everywhere, people seemed happy, and in general Mexico City seemed prosperous. The only evidence of the narco wars was an art exhibition that addressed it in the Siqueiros Polyforum.

Soumaya ramps

On our first day we visited Soumaya, Carlos Slim's museum for his personal collection. Our group had differing views. Upon leaving, one person suggested that with all his money, Mr. Slim might have hired a professional advisor to help him get better art, that the museum seemed like someone's attic. Although I can understand that "take," and it reflects what I think I've seen in the general press about the museum, I had a completely different impression. I also disagree quite vehemently with those who call the museum's architecture derivative of the Guggenheim. It is not circular and you do not have to view the art on ramps with uneven floors. Fernando Romero, the architect of this imposing structure, did not waste the huge interior space at all. Ramps lead you from one floor to the other and some of them have timelines or information about artists posted on the walls. I saw many people carefully reading these materials. The exterior is cloaked with octagon-shaped metal units, likened by my chemistry professor colleague to models of carbon atoms. It looks much smaller on the outside than on the inside, although the outside is large enough to be difficult to capture in a photograph. And it's on top of a sort of pedestal, making it visible from farther away.

I started at the top, which has marvelous complicated natural light and only displays sculpture. The 'hook' is Rodin, and there are many. But I also found Camille Claudel and other contemporaries of Rodin, as well as quite a selection of amusing sculptures by Salvador Dali. The gallery was full of families and young people talking about the sculpture, or just enjoying it and visiting with each other. Some of our group thought the space looked like a rummage sale, and the people were certainly enjoying it as much as they would a sale. I'm not sure what the organizing principle is for this gallery, but I also enjoyed just walking around and seeing what wonders there are there. A small bronze of Napoleon by Vincenzo Vela was featured in the museum brochure, and took me back to a grad school friend who did her dissertation on Vela. Famous artists, unknown artists, interesting subjects, strange subjects. People were having a good time here. And I was among them.

Jesus de la Helguera, (Chihuahua 1910-1971) Indian Love, 1954. Coll. Fundacion Miguel Aleman.

The next floor down combined ancient Mexican  artifacts and 20th-century Mexican painters. I was taken by the Totomixtlehuaca Codex, dated 1570 from Guerrero, a detailed large sort of map in charcoal on cotton, as well as by paintings by Rivera., Siqueiros and Tamayo. A group of extremely kitsch subjects also caught my eye, and I took a snapshot of Amor Indio, (Indian Love), 1954.  They remind me of Bouguereau and of Luis Jimenez; they are probably not what a respectable art museum would show, but also indicative of some popular taste and amusing. I can imagine being fascinated by these paintings as a child, as I once loved Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.



Joaquin Sorolla, Head of a Boy, 1911



Selections of an unusually dark portrait of a boy by Joaquin Sorolla, a Modigliani portrait of a male printer, early Van Gogh peasant paintings that could have depicted Mexico, and a Rivera seascape among French seascapes in the 19th-century galleries gave the strong impression that Slim is putting Mexican art into its European context and connecting famous European artists with Mexico. I had the sense that general visitors here would find the art easy to relate to and specialists might find paintings in styles and subjects they did not expect. Of course, the "quality" of these works might have been mixed, but the little Sorolla transfixed me, as did many of the other works by both Mexican and European artists.

The collection includes very good and representative works by many of the most famous Mexican artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Three paintings are below:

Joaquin Clausell (Campeche 1866 - Zempuaola 1935), Night Seascape, early 20th century

Gerardo Murillo, Dr. Atl (Guadalajara 1875 - 1964 Mexico City), Landscape with Volcano, 1946

Jose Maria Velasco (Temascalzingo 1840-1912 Mexico City), Ahuehuerte Trees in Chapultepec, 1875

The collection is enormous and there's plenty to delight anyone; as I said, I saw many delighted people. Usually I really want a chronologically arranged display, but here I just found things I liked at regular intervals and was happy with the very general organization by floor. I even began to understand why there are copies of Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta and the ancient sculpture of the Laocoon in the lobby, an opportunity to experience in the round objects that aren't readily available, as plaster casts have been used in other museums. You can't get that close to the real Pieta any more, so even in bronze, it's interesting to experience the work spatially.

On a Saturday the museum was full of people and it seemed clear the Carlos Slim intends it as an entertaining and enlightening gift to Mexico City.