hyde or die

» One of America's quietest museums quietly expands

Related: North America’s largest art museums ranked by total exhibition space (in square feet):

1. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 736,095
2. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 228,334
3. National Gallery of Art, 224,417
4. Brooklyn Museum of Art, 193,057
5. Art Institute of Chicago, 185,187
6. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 183,404
7. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 165,128
8. Detroit Institute of Arts, 157,314
9. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 144,168
10. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston*, 143,000
11. National Gallery of Canada, 142,979
12. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 142,091
13. Indianapolis Museum of Art, 141,037
14. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 135,000
15. Museum of Modern Art, 130,000

May 24, 2010, 12:22pm  

Earthquake damage at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Talca, Chile. Photo: Jorge Sacaan Riadi

Several Chilean museums and historic buildings incurred damage as a result of the massive earthquake that struck Chile on February 27, 2010. Most of the museums under the Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM) were substantially undamaged both in terms of their architectural structure and their collections. Only the O’Higgins Museum in Talca and the National Museum of Natural History in Santiago were damaged structurally.

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April 09, 2010, 12:29pm  

Just got this little save the date in the mail from Ace Gallery…

Could it be possible?

How/where c/would he do/have it?

April 09, 2010, 11:58am  

Deitch, what are you doing?!  I am not completely confident, but I am under the distinct impression if you are planning on doing something unethical you keep that knowledge to yourself.  Which loosely translates to not telling anyone. Especially not the press!  Maybe he doesn’t think dealing while Director (DWD..heh) is unethical? In which case we have ANOTHER problem. Ugh…Here’s what happened.

(Could Deitch) possibly unload some pieces from his personal collection “to supplement a museum director’s salary.”

But instead of talking to me about his personal collection, (Deitch) discussed his gallery’s “enormous” unsold inventory. He couldn’t possibly liquidate his entire stock in the next three months, he told me, so he expected occasionally to put some of those pieces up for auction.

“Isn’t that ‘dealing’?” I blurted out, thrown off-guard by this astonishing admission.

He then backpedaled: He would sell only lesser works at minor auctions “like Christie’s Open.” (Works in Christie’s most recent First Open sale went for as much as $842,500.) The more important pieces would be transferred from his gallery’s inventory to his private collection (from which he had previously stated that he might occasionally sell works).

He then reverted to Jeffrey-as-victim, complaining about being subjected to this importunate line of questioning when he was sacrificing “millions of dollars in opportunity costs” (i.e., money that he would otherwise have made), by giving up future gallery earnings for a nonprofit museum director’s salary.

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March 17, 2010, 11:46am  

» Ten US Museum Exhibitions to see in 2010

This is a pretty good list that isn’t even NYC-centric! Of course it has the Marina Abramovic show at MOMA that I couldn’t be more excited about and the John Baldessari show that is travelling to LACMA, but it also has the Cattelan show at the de Menil in Houston that I was so upset about missing.

Here are a few more shows that I am also looking forward to seeing this year…

• Robin Rhode, the South African photographer who’s pieces are too creative to describe, will be showing at LACMA.
• Rachel Whiteread’s drawings will be shown at the Hammer. Do I even need to explain why? She’s above and beyond ethereal.
• Mi Casa es Tu Casa: A Land Project at MOCA.
• I know I still need to make it down to San Diego to see the Tara Donovan they have up at MCASD, but at the end of February they are opening the exhibition which highlights the highlights of their acquisitions over that time period.  And we all know how I feel about Pleasure Point: Celebrating 25 Years of Contemporary Collectorsmuseums showing their permenant collections. Very good.
• I don’t know much about Urban Panoramas: Opie, Liao, Kim at the Getty, but it sounds good to me.

January 15, 2010, 1:43pm  

» Museum attendance rises as the economy tumbles

It may be because of the relative bargain of a museum ticket, an increased popular interest in contemporary art, or just a rainy summer, but admissions at the majority of art museums in the US have been holding steady through the recession—and many are dramatically on the rise. A survey by The Art Newspaper of 20 museums across the country found that two-thirds have experienced a clear increase in visitor numbers over the past three years.

The trend holds for institutions with free and paid admissions alike, and institutions that show contemporary art have seen the most clear-cut increase. New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), one of the nation’s most expensive museums at $20 per ticket, had the best year in its 80-year history, bringing in 2.8 million visitors between 2008 and 2009. The size of its membership rose to a record 120,000. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective was its best-attended show yet, attracting 372,000 people. The New York museum has also broken its 2008 attendance record of just over one million.

I’m not surprised by this, museum tickets are often less than a movie ticket and popcorn and can be much more stimulating, but this is exciting news isn’t it? People spending their money on more “quality”* experiences, where one could go off in solitude and think or with friends and start lively discussions about what they are experiencing, is a lovely trend.

*Just my opinion.

December 10, 2009, 1:41pm  

» Is this a Michelangelo?

I don’t know much about this stuff but it’s interesting to read about the arguments of whether it is or not.

October 30, 2009, 2:05pm  

I would like to go to The Museum of Arts and Design in NY, soley so I can get my life-sized abacus on.

July 31, 2009, 1:21pm  

Everyone is talking about it. And I mean everyone.

I’m not sure how I feel about this yet.  We are in unprecedented economic troubles, but there is something sad about the idea of a museum raiding it’s permanent collection and getting rid of things that they don’t need at the time.

Of course, what’s the point of having the art if you can’t afford to run the place and keep the doors open?

It is definitely a gray area.

July 01, 2009, 11:18am