Spielberg Loans at Lucas
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| Norman Rockwell, Happy Birthday, Miss Jones, 1956. Private collection [probably Steven Spielberg] |
Steven Spielberg is apparently the uncredited lender of three Norman Rockwell paintings at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. In 2010 the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented a joint exhibition of Lucas' and Spielberg's Rockwell collections. The show's website is still active, and it identifies three paintings and one drawing in the LMNA installation as being owned by Spielberg. They are Happy Birthday, Miss Jones, The Connoisseur, The Jury, and a finished preparatory drawing for Triple Self-Portrait. The Lucas labels credit these works to a "private collection."
Spielberg and Lucas have been friends since they met at USC film school in 1967. Spielberg also collects movie memorabilia and has lent one of the original "Rosebud" sleds from Citizen Kane to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
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Visitors of all ages gasped as they entered the galleries, filling the halls with “oohs,” “aahs,” and “oh my gosh-es.” Their very audible, palpable engagement was unlike anything I — who worked in museum research and exhibition content development for four years — have seen in an art museum.
…[George] Lucas said, “You can’t say this is art and this is not art. Art is in the eye of the beholder. You get to decide what art is.”
This democratized concept of who gets to define art isn’t common in museums. In a traditional visitor-museum relationship, the museum assumes the role of “expert” that defines art for its audience. But visitors can be left staring at art pieces and scratching their heads, wondering why they should care. All of us have looked at a piece of art and thought, “This is art? You sure?”
Many of us have had the experience of feeling out of place in museums, not seeing ourselves in the artworks on the walls. After having too many of these experiences myself — and after my 4-year stint working in an art museum — I decided that I was a pop culture museum person. [End quote]
Since Christopher Knight of the LA Times a few years ago wrote off the Lucas as "treacle," but also criticized LACMA for overdoing the contemporary-art angle, he split it down the middle.
Other critics, by being way too easygoing for decades towards "even my kid can do that" (or "This is art. You sure?"), have played the game of the Emperor's New Clothes mixed with go-along-to-get-along.
J. Garcin referring to a contemporary artist whose work sits on the roof of the Metropolitan reminded me all over again of the phrase, "Beauty (or art, or quality, or skill, or excellence, etc) is altogether in the eye of the beholder."