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| Unknown painter, Southern Germany, possibly Nuremberg, about 1530. Loan from a California collection |
The Getty Museum is showing a small Renaissance panel painting from southern Germany, possibly Nuremberg. Lent by an anonymous collector,
Christ Carried to the Tomb identifies its seven mourners with seven virtues spelled out on gold ribbons. Though the artist is unknown, the city of Nuremberg was then (c. 1530) at the peak of its artistic renown, famed across Europe for the work of Albrecht Dürer and Veit Stoss.
Comments
Christ's feet are so morbidly grotesque.
I saw a German sculpture today from circa 1480 at the Cloisters, my local museum. It featured St. Anne, who, (according to some apocryphal writings), was the Virgin Mary's mother. According to legend, Anne became widowed, and married twice again. In each marriage, she gave birth to a girl. These girls were also named Mary: Mary Salome and Mary Jacobus. Both Marys accompany the Virgin Mary in the grave procession in the Getty loan painting.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/471816
This type of loan at the Getty doesn't seem like it would cause a lot of red ink for a museum. Which is why I wonder if too many people overseeing LACMA aren't as interested in making more of an effort to display older European artwork in, most noticeably, the existing Resnick and perhaps the upcoming Geffen too. After all, why have the museum's existing collections of non-modern, non-contemporary art in general not been on constant display since 2020 in the Resnick Pavilion?
The only excuse for the museum organizing and displaying newer art is that it does cost less (insurance, shipping, availability) than organizing and displaying older periods of art, particularity of European origin.
It's NOT the Met. On its own, it cannot mount a show on David because it does not own a David masterpiece (e.g., The Death of Socrates) and it does not own the supplementary material (drawings and other paintings) to stage the show with its own holdings.
When LACMA wants to mount a wide-ranging or even focused show on most artists or periods, it has to borrow almost everything. That costs a lot of money. And, when you are not a museum that can contribute a major painting to the show, other museums are less likely to cooperate.
Of course, those with GZDS will blame Govan and Zumthor for this. But I blame the former curator of European Art and the Ahmanson Foundation for being cheap. Sadly, LACMA is a reflection of all you too. Blame yourselves for NOT having the wherewithal to give LACMA an Old Master masterpiece or a suite of drawings.
And Angelenos are not financing shows that LACMA is well capable of hosting. The collection certainly has major examples by major artists. If the curators engineered scholarship with new monographs on these artists, LACMA could be a serious player, and create an orbit where other museums would gladly gravitate toward.
What do the curators do all day?
> is just NOT good enough to form the
> basis of any single-artist or period show.
I guess my mentioning the cost of special exhibits (which require a lot of borrowed works) made my main point get lost. LACMA since 2020 very easily can have had in the Resnick building a permanent display of older periods of art from its own collection--good or mediocre. Because it would contain objects they own and don't have to borrow, it would presumably not put much of a dent in their budget.
If anything, they're spending way more dollars than necessary by hosting too many shows of contemporary art. Example: in the Resnick right now there's far too much space set aside for a bunch of hanging objects that riff on the chandeliers in NYC's Metropolitan Opera House ("Josiah McElheny: Island Universe"). That should have been sent packing months ago to a commercial gallery like Hauser and Wirth.
Heading of an article in the LA Times, 2023: "LACMA is a contemporary art museum now. But not a good one"