Archive for the 'Art' Category
Declaration of the Universal Museum - an Update
Friday, August 10th, 2007
Note: This update includes references to some of the items concerning the Declaration from 2004 through mid 2007. The previous references can be found here.
In early December 2002, nineteen of the world’s top art museums issued a statement firmly opposing the repatriation of cultural material. Attention was drawn to the continuing claims by various countries and peoples for return of collections held in the major museums of the world.
Debate on this issue has continued in conferences, on websites and in journals.
Although at the time, it was claimed that return of Aboriginal human remains from museums in Britain to Australia would be hampered by the Declaration, it would seem from recent events concerning material of human remains from Tasmania in The Natural History Museum in London that no reliance was placed in the Declaration. Rather the issue concerns objects created by people.
Nor has the Declaration been the basis for any aspect of the negotiations between art museums in the USA and the Italian Government over classical archaeological items alleged to have been stolen. There are notes about this later.
We can recall that the British Museum asserts that it “is a universal museum holding an encyclopaedic collection of material from across the world and all periods of human culture and history. For the benefit of its audience now and in the future, the Museum is committed to sustaining and improving its collection”.
The British Museum was significantly involved in the adoption of this Declaration and its director, Neil MacGregor, has vigorously defended it.
Continue to article.
More on “Quality”
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
In the previous post on “Quality” I mentioned a number of orchestras and museums which I thought represented an exceptional level of excellence and suggested that this had a lot to do with the way people worked with each other and the attention given to recruitment. There is another issue and that is the assertion one hears from time to time that involvement of young people in various branches of the arts such as learning music has spin-off effects in improving other abilities such as math and analytical skills. The jury is still out on this particular issue as I understand it. But the points which emerge are of general signficance.
Here are three items which are about young people and the arts. And there is a fourth item which is not about young people but the Director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Philippe de Montebello.
The first item is an interview with British producer/director Michael Waldman and work with disadvantaged, troubled young people aged between 15 and 19, and their involvement in the ballet based on Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”. Through this they achieved amazing performances and advanced their personal development as well. “A young black woman who was aged 15 who was in a rehearsal session early on, was asked to talk about herself… She said, ‘I’m told that when I was 2 my Dad murdered my Mum’. In rehearsal she showed herself to be focused, energetic, disciplined, with abilities to put her feet in front of each other, musically, and was cast in the character role of Lady Capulet, the mother of Juliet. And when it came to the final performance, the ballet reviewers who came to this said she was as good as the Bolshoi’s Lady Capulet.” (Professors Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Shirley Brice Heath of Stanford University have stories of a similar nature; see the page on museum issues)
The second item concerns the astonishing orchestral project for young people in Caracas, Venezuela, El Sistema - a remarkable project which uses Beethoven and Brahms to “save” the children of the barrios. Earlier this year, the musical directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic - arguably among the best orchestras in America - became vacant. The orchestra chose 26 year old El Sistema trained Gustavo Dudamel after a couple of guest appearances during which the Venezuelan shot what the orchestra’s president Deborah Borda called ‘contagious joy’ through the seasoned musicians. ‘We had combustion,’ she said. ‘We knew something remarkable had happened.’
The third is about partnerships at American art museums which seek to find whether art appreciation has spin-offs in other areas. The US Department of Education offers a grant program to support local education agencies and “organisations with arts expertise in replicating or adapting ways to integrate arts disciplines with a key goal to improve students’ academic performance, including their skills in creating, performing and responding to the arts”. A number of museums involved in the project have shown significant improvements in critical skills.
The last item concens the “Met” in New York. (By the way, fifty percent of all private money for the arts is raised in New York!) There are many rumours, denied, of the impending retirement of Philippe de Montebello, 71 year old director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the last 30 years. In “Twilight of the Sun King” by Charles McGrath (New York Times July 29, 2007) there are some comments about de Montebello and what I think makes museums outstanding. We are enlightened about some of the ways in which the Met distinguishes itself. It has a lot to do with the culture de Montebello promotes.
Continue to essay
Quality, Where do you Get it?
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Everyone has their own idea of whether a particular musical performance, play, exhibition, artwork or organisation or enterprise is good, bad or indifferent. Some argue that it is not worthwhile trying to work out what criteria one would use to judge something. Particularly jazz: some performers have been heard to say that if you have to analyse a performance there is something wrong with you, you shouldn’t be listening to it at all. Others will talk not of reading a book but of “experiencing” it. But there are outstanding performances and so on, ones of supreme, even sublime, quality.
The fact is then that quality is a very difficult issue to come to grips with. Our own personal preferences are to an extent a part of our identity. The arts management writer Paul DiMaggio put it well when he said that differences in quality, in both execution and presentation, “are apparent to almost everyone; discerning others is better left to experts… nearly everyone agrees support … should encourage excellence.” He made the point strongly that a diversity of sources of funding is essential where the audience is part of a pluralistic society.
Critics are people who seek to define quality. They are frequently reviled. Oscar Wilde observed. “Once upon a time man had the lash, now he has the pen.” Emily Bronte, in a recently discovered letter of 9 November 1849 to W[illiam] S[mith] Williams, wrote that while allowing that the critics writing for the Spectator and Athenaeum (about the recently published Shirley) are ‘acute men in their way’, she feels that ‘when called on to criticise works of imagination — they stand in the position of deaf men required to listen to music — or blind men to judge of painting. The Practical their minds can grasp — of the Ideal they know nothing.’” (The Telegraph). Cate Blanchett, Oscar winning Australian actor and now co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company (and Australian Museum Trustee) recently observed that she ceased reading critics’ reviews five years ago!
Continue to the essay.
One example of high quality performance is the Australian Youth Orchestra, currently on tour in Europe. A link specifically to an extract from a report about its first concert in Paris in July 2007 is here.