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."
Art is supposed to be puzzling. It's supposed to challenge signification and sense. In large part, it's art because as Sondheim would put it "art isn't easy." Art is not transactional. It is not supposed to make the viewer feel good or feel seen.
But no, let's pander to the rubes in the name of freedom and democracy Hey, if it worked for Trump, why not try the same tactic to excuse another rich man's vanity and folly.
I think I should also remark on the absurdity that this attack on art experts is coming from a center named after the Annenbergs. When the Annenbergs gave their collection to the Met, one of the reasons they cited was the better curatorial support it would get from the Met. They snubbed LA because they were seeking the sort of intellectual and historical coherence that only the Met could provide, that only the Met's art experts could provide.
.... So many years later, LA has yet to obtain that intellectual coherence for itself. And, the Lucas just serves to muddy the waters even more.
--- J. Garcin
Now, I see only MoMA and the National Gallery as peers of the Met's. That's unacceptable.
I heard the main reason that Walter Annenberg gave it to the Met was because he thought NYC each year attracted more rubes as tourists. And so such types generally aren't into museums, yet will stop by the place on 5th Avenue for the helluva it.
Not being too sarcastic either, because people treat the museum like they treat the Statue of Liberty or Times Square.
This is a review from a guy based in NYC, who is apparently more interested in the performing arts instead of visual. He sounds like kind of a rube::
Howard Sherman, Downstage Center,
While my usual topic is theatre, I took in a different form of culture while in Los Angeles, during the first few days of a new museum’s opening.
Because the Lucas Museum had allowed in press several weeks ago, I had already read my share of reviews of the museum, which were all over the map, some admiring, some dismissive. The biggest snag for many was the name: what is “narrative art” anyway,
My advance reading had prepared me for the wide variety of art on display, and I didn’t feel driven to impose any aesthetic on it at all as a result. I have no education in art or art history, and while I visit major museums when given an opportunity, I make no specific request of any museum…
My ultimate reaction to the museum, which reportedly has 7% of its collection devoted to Star Wars memorabilia (among the least interesting of its displays for me), was that what I was seeing was a result of the highly personalized and idiosyncratic pursuits of avid collectors…
So the true test of the Lucas Museum will also be over time…how might it evolve when others are responsible for the curation, assuming the museum is not required to be trapped forever just as it is, a la The Barnes Collection, but is instead endowed with the funds to sustain its collecting and vary the displays to honor new narratives… I would, of course, suggest theatrical design as one area to be added.
My museum-going in Los Angeles was not limited to the Lucas… …I also ventured out to Fairfax and Wilshire, which boasts multiple cultural institutions. That turned out to be lucky, because when I arrived at the Motion Pictures Academy museum in the early afternoon, I found that it had sold out to capacity for the day.
Fortunately, the Academy Museum is cheek by jowl with the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, which also features a new large new building… its concrete grey walls and floors stood in sharp contrast with the whiteness of the Lucas. Is our new aesthetic industrial design or bright white? With their complementary curves, the Lucas Museum and the Geffen Galleries seem to be in conversation, across the city.
Fully prepared to see LACMA and the Lucas Museum as equals in the city’s cultural life, I do have one recommendation: if you’re trying to get kids into art museum-going, start them with the Lucas… I suspect they’ll find more to engage their eyes and minds and acclimate to the museum experience…. [End quote]
His "Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art" makes me think of the Groundhog Day posts by W. Poundstone that make light of how out-of-towners regularly don't get the name of LACMA down correctly.
Because William Pereira, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, Renzo Piano and, most recently, Peter Zumthor have never managed to work better with LACMA's directors and staff, or vice versa - and since before and after 1965 - the museum's collections haven't been helped.
Amar Hanspal, Linkedin:
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened in Los Angeles last week, and I cant stop reading about it.
A museum dedicated to storytelling, housed in a building that is itself a story... Somewhere behind every impossible curve is an architect who refused to simplify it, an engineer who found a way to hold it up, a fabricator who figured out how to make it, and a builder who put it in the sky. Thousands of people bending every tool they had past its limits, for years, so the rest of us could stand under it and feel something.
And I love what they chose to put inside: Rockwell paintings next to comic books, movie props next to illustration. Art forms the establishment spent a century dismissing as popular, finally given a home this ambitious. There's something fitting in that pairing: a building that refused to behave, wrapped around art that entertains and educates.
Because that's the thing about buildings: they are how we tell stories to the future. Long after were gone, they keep talking. A museum, a school, a house, a clinic. Every one of them says: this is what we cared about, this is what we could do.
The tools of the next decade should make this level of storytelling possible on ordinary projects, ordinary budgets, ordinary schedules. More buildings that make you stop on the sidewalk. More stories told. More reasons to look up.
Congratulations to everyone who spent years making this one real. You've given the rest of us a masterclass, and one hell of a story. [End quote]
However, I originally thought my main problem with the Geffen would be all its gray concrete or lack of enough wall space and square footage. I never thought the Geffen's installation would now be the biggest problem I have with the building. Not sure if Govan and his employees in the future will be professional enough to do a better job.
> took over
When they sold the Da Vinci, a work admittedly more for historic than artistic value, I grew wary of the new owner's professionalism. But Armand Hammer didn't leave the museum with a large enough trust fund, and legal wrangling after his death eroded that further. So something had to give.
Also, although I like contemporary art as much as the next person, in today's LA it's sort of overplayed.
But I wouldn't want the Hammer, MOCA or Broad (or even the partly-open Marciano in the former Masonic building) to slow down, much less close, but there are only so many ways to slice the hipster-avante-garde, contemporary-art pie.
Part of the mess was the pending lawsuit that most anticipated would financially devastate what was left of the holdings. A public university deaccessioning a Codex of such historical interest was a bitter pill to swallow, but UCLA felt the money would be much needed just to kept the rest of the museum afloat through the lawsuit and settlement.. When the judge unexpectedly dismissed the suit, what was felt to be a lifeline turned into an unexpected windfall. That windfall, coupled with a new directorship who had a clear vision of where to head, resulted in the Hammer we have today.
Eventual new leadership at the Lucas need not be USC. It could be anyone with a clear vision and directorial chops, but USC would seem to be a great fit. The clear vision need not be to become yet another Contemporary Art museum with some retained pieces from an idiosyncratic collection. Professionals could develop some other vision that will shine. Hopefully, any new leadership would never feel under the gun to deaccess any of Lucas' current holdings just to keep the lights burning, but they could start thinking of what to deaccess selectively to build a better collection.
I certainly do not know what will happen to this current vanity museum. I am just enjoying picturing what today's idiosyncratic collection may eventually become.
One chief draw of an art museum is to see something other than yourself. Glad Ms. Robertson has gotten out of the art museum profession.