What makes the greatness of a museum isn't its dynamic exhibition policy, nor its forward education practices, or its leading public programs.
All of these are fantastic contributions, certainly, but first and foremost it's the collection that is here for years, decades, and even centuries to come, as a testimony to the culture that mattered and shaped an era. A great exhibition policy generally doesn't outlast the curators behind it, whereas a great collection outlives museum-hopping, career-oriented curators forever.
People don't really go to the Met, to MoMA or the Smithsonian for their exhibitions, but "to visit the museum" and see its collection. Because, beloved readers, my friends, most foot traffic in a museum isn't constituted from the savvy art crowd only, but from a general audience, the bulk of them being tourists and/or school children.
Museums in Los Angeles have rich collections, but generally speaking do a poor job of marketing them. Some museums worldwide attract a large audience that comes mainly to see their masterpieces (think the Louvre and Mona Lisa), and it is sad that museums here in Los Angeles fail to really reach out and publicize their holdings. Take the Getty, for example. Many people (actually, far many less than you would think) know the Getty has
Van Gogh's Irises, but very few realize that
James Ensor's L'Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles is there as well.
Since we are talking about Belgians, how many of you remember that LACMA owns
Magritte's The Treachery of Images ("ceci n'est pas une pipe")? The "
Magritte & Contemporary Art" exhibition originated at LACMA for a reason, and I think the museum should really try to make it better known to the public that it holds a XXth Century masterpiece, and that because of this reason alone tourists should flock
en masse to visit the museum.
They'd get to also see a nice Marcel Duchamp
readymade nearby (
A Bruit Secret) and one of Frank Stella's
Black Paintings (
Getty Tomb). Plus a f
ew great Kandinsky, not talking about Giacometti and Brancusi. Not bad, eh?
Let's stay in Northern Countries and highlight one of LACMA's relatively recent acquisition. It's currently up in the European Art Galleries*, and I stumbled upon it recently while visiting the collection with
noted Los Angeles painter Mark Dutcher. One of my all-time favorite
XVI Century Dutch Painter, Adriaen Coorte, who specialized in still-life, left about 60 paintings, and whose works are not something you stumble upon everyday, to say the least.
There was an exhibition in 2003 at the
National Gallery in Washington in 2003 (alas, no catalog, but you can download the brochure) and the one at the Mauristhuis in 2008 (there is a catalog, if someone wants to send me a preemptive birthday present, I would be most grateful).
The Coorte in question comes from
the remarkable Carter collection, along with a few
Rembrandt, a
Saenredam, at least one
Frans Hals (maybe more but I only remember seeing one last week), one beautiful still-life by Clara Peeters (a female painter, a rarity for the time), and one Frans Post. Post went on an expedition to Brazil and came back with a magnificent set of paintings, the majority of which were later offered to the King of France and are now in the Louvre collections.
All of this to say that LACMA was the recipient of a major gift through the Carter collection (the gift happened sometimes between 2003 and 2009), and that FBC!'s favorite masterpiece of the lot is Coorte's delicate painting of a bowl of strawberries.
Note that it is a Chinese bowl the strawberries are in, and that this style of still-life, obviously, shares similarities with Spanish
bodegones but also with, say, the paintings of
France's Lubin Baugin.
With just one little painting, you now realize that
global trade and exchanges were already important in the 17th Century, and that through it a sort of
international style of painting was already permeating what was then the contemporary art scene. And I'm not even speaking about the reciprocal influences between the Delft and the Chinese ceramics.
Food for thoughts? I certainly hope so. Visual delectation? You bet.
Adriaen Coorte (Holland, Middleburg, circa 1660 - after 1707)
Wild Strawberries in a Wan Li Bowl, 1704
Painting, Oil on paper, mounted on wood, Canvas: 11 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. (29.53 x 22.54 cm); Framed: 18 3/4 x 16 x 2 in. (47.63 x 40.64 x 5.08 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter (M.2009.106.5)
European Painting and Sculpture Department.Photograph taken by myself. Feel free to repost, but please credit and link both LACMA and FBC! Thanks.
* The European Art Department at LACMA is currently undergoing some renovations and re-installation. Some rooms can be closed when you come to visit. To avoid disappointment, you can become a member and then come back as many times as you want. More surprises! The Islamic art department is swell, did you know it?
In other related news, I got confirmation that there was going to be an exhibition with Dorothea Tanning in it at LACMA in 2012,
In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, April 1-June 24, 2012
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