Anna Maria Jabach in a detail of Charles Le Brun’s “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family.”Credit
Metropolitan Museum of Art
In
17th-century France, Charles Le Brun was as hot as any artist could be.
He created work for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, for the
Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre, for Hôtel Lambert on Île St. Louis, for
the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and for much of Versailles. Louis XIV
declared him “the greatest French artist of all time.” Whatever he
produced made an impact.
Now,
after a nail-biting three months for officials at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Le Brun’s presence will make a difference there, too.
In
February, after the museum had agreed to buy a rare 17th-century
portrait by Le Brun, which had been in private hands in England since
the late 18th century, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of
Art and Objects of Cultural Interest in England, issued a three-month
export ban on the painting, “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family,”
to give British institutions time to match the $12.3 million price the
Met had agreed to pay for it.
Arguing
that it should stay in Britain, Nicholas Penny, director of the
National Gallery in London, wrote in a statement to the Export Reviewing
Committee: “There are only a handful of paintings by Le Brun in British
collections. All represent religious, historical or mythological
subjects, and most are much influenced by Poussin’s style. None is a
portrait.”
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art now owns Charles Le Brun’s “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and
Family.” It had been in private hands in England since the 18th century.Credit
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Luckily
for the Met, no British institution tried to buy the painting, which is
now being prepared for its journey to New York. “It’s a landmark in the
history of French painting,” said Keith Christiansen, the chairman of
the Met’s European paintings department.
The
painting depicts Everhard Jabach, a German banker and collector, posed
with his family in a sumptuous Parisian salon surrounded by tapestries,
classical statues and a whippet. (Jabach amassed a group of paintings
and drawings now in the Louvre.) Viewers can see that the painting also
includes a reflection of Le Brun himself in the mirror, at work on the
canvas.
“It
takes you right to the heart of French culture and in many ways is the
French equivalent of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas,’ which is also an
allegory about the relationship of painter, patron and the act of
painting,” Mr. Christiansen said, referring to the landmark canvas in
the Prado in Madrid.
Monumental
in scale — 7.6 feet by 10.6 feet — “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and
Family” was believed for decades to have been lost. Le Brun had painted
two versions of it for Jabach, and during the 18th century they were
kept in two different houses in Cologne, Germany, where they were seen
by the likes of Goethe and Joshua Reynolds. The second version was
acquired by the Kaiser Freidrich Museum in Berlin in 1836 and destroyed
in 1945, during World War II. It is known only from black-and-white
photographs.
The
Met’s painting has been in a private collection in England since
1791,when Jabach’s descendant Johann Matthias von Bors of Cologne sold
it to Henry Hope, a Rotterdam merchant of Scottish descent. The most
recent owner acquired it in southwest England in 1935, with the purchase
of Olantigh House in Kent. Experts from Christie’s in London discovered
the painting and alerted Mr. Christiansen.
When
“A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family” arrives at the Met, it will
go first to the museum’s conservation studio for cleaning and framing.
It will eventually hang in the 17th-century French galleries, along with
other French portraits: Jacques-Louis David’s neo-Classical painting of
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife and Renoir’s Impressionist
portrait of Mme. Georges Charpentier and her children.
MEDIAN COOL
There
have been playful animals, men on horseback and a host of monumental
abstract bronzes along the Broadway Malls, that landscaped median
stretching from Columbus Circle to Mitchel Square at 167th Street. Until
now, however, these temporary public art installations have been
one-person exhibitions.
But
starting in September and for about six months, Broadway Malls will be
home to its first group show, featuring artists who are represented by
different galleries. Max Levai and Pascal Spengemann from Marlborough
Chelsea have organized the project in collaboration with the New York
City Department of Parks and Recreation and the Broadway Mall
Association.
“It’s
stretching five miles, considerably larger than any other site we’ve
programmed,” said Jonathan Kuhn, director of art and antiquities for the
Parks Department. “It will traverse through many neighborhoods.”
Called
“Broadway Morey Boogie,” a play on the name of a 1943 Mondrian
painting, the show will include artists like Dan Colen, Paul Druecke,
Matt Johnson and Sarah Braman. “They are all American and between 35 and
50 years of age,” Mr. Levai said. “These artists are doing very well,
but most of them haven’t had a chance to be in the public realm.” Other
galleries lending to the exhibition include Gagosian, Mitchell-Innis
& Nash and Blum & Poe. In addition to the individual sculptures,
a pop-up space with exhibitions will be presented by the Green Gallery
from Milwaukee throughout the run, but the exact location has yet to be
determined.
A ‘MOBILE RETROSPECTIVE’
Art
Intelligence, a new company founded by Bridget Goodbody, an art
historian, is introducing a series of educational apps for iPads,
featuring art, architecture and design. It has already produced two
artist apps, devoted to Keith Haring and Patricia Piccinini. The third
will be all about Cindy Sherman.
“It
will be like a mobile retrospective,” Ms. Goodbody said. “And it will
hopefully be a fun way to explore art through an interactive,
storytelling experience.”
Included
will be Ms. Sherman’s photographs throughout her career, along with a
timeline that puts her work in context with media images of women since
1975.
It
will be available on the App Store beginning Thursday, for 99 cents,
like the other apps. “I like to think of Cindy as the Madonna of the art
world,” Ms. Goodbody said. “She has broken every glass ceiling that
there is and continues to produce amazing work.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2014, on page C21 of the New York edition with the headline: British Cede Portrait to the Met.
Golden Age of Discovery ... Down in the Basements.
Julie Brown, a collections
manager, examining textiles in the Denver Art Museum’s storage area,
where important finds have been made.Credit
Matthew Staver for The New York Times
GALLERIES usually get all the publicity, but at many museums the biggest news is happening in the basement.
In
recent years, curators, visiting scholars, interns and even students
have discovered — or rediscovered — cultural treasures lurking on site.
The
finds, including a rare Picasso in storage, a long-lost recording of a
Martin Luther King speech in a cardboard box and an entirely new species
of mammal in a specimen drawer, change the image of museum storage from
a climate-controlled purgatory for art and artifacts into an organic
part of cultural institutions, where history is often being made, or at
least demanding to be re-evaluated.
“You
never know what you are going to discover,” said Timothy J. Standring, a
curator at the Denver Art Museum. He speaks from experience. As part of
a process he calls “spring cleaning,” Mr. Standring routinely inspects
art that might not have been seen in decades.
At
first, he hunts for clunkers — candidates for deacquisition
(museum-speak for getting rid of something). But in 2007, he found a
keeper in a bin: a filthy oil painting of a Venice piazza in a battered
frame. He suspected that the painting, which was attributed to a student
of the Italian landscape painter known as Canaletto, might be by the
celebrated teacher himself.
Photo
Timothy J. Standring, a curator at the Denver Art Museum, with the Canaletto painting he unearthed.Credit
Matthew Staver for The New York Times
“Underneath
all the grime of discolored varnishes, I was able to detect that there
was some really stunning painting going on,” said Mr. Standring. His
hunch proved right; in 2012, after extensive research and restoration by
the museum, an eminent Canaletto scholar pronounced Mr. Standring’s
find an early work by the old master. “Venice: The Molo From the Bacino di S. Marco” now hangs in the Denver museum.
History
can hide in plain sight, too. Bob van der Linden, chairman of the
aeronautics department at the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, recently removed a map of the Caribbean used by Charles A.
Lindbergh from an exhibition. “Out of curiosity, and to protect the
chart better when in storage, I decided to unfold it. When I did, I saw
that the chart was covered in writing,” said Mr. van der Linden by
email.
On
the back of the map was a speech Lindbergh wrote and dated Feb. 8,
1928, promoting commercial air travel. At the time, he had been on a
public-relations swing through the Caribbean in the Spirit of St. Louis,
the plane of his historic 1927 trans-Atlantic crossing. “To give you
some idea of how good a pilot he was,” said Mr. van der Linden,
“Lindbergh wrote the speech while flying the unstable aircraft. The
handwriting is quite legible.”
Though
the American Alliance of Museums encourages its members to regularly
inventory collections, no policy requires museums to undergo
self-examinations of storage areas. “That would be hard to mandate,”
said Ford W. Bell, the trade association’s president, who noted that
museums possess a “staggering” number of objects in storage; the group
estimates that 96 to 98 percent of collections are not displayed. “The
reality is that’s what collections are there for — to make discoveries,”
Mr. Bell said.
Museums
frequently battle collection creep, observed Ann Stone, author of
“Treasures in the Basement: An Analysis of Collection Utilization in Art
Museums,” a paper published by the RAND Corporation in 2002. “The
forces that contribute to collection growth are much greater than
collection control and management,” she said. Museums have been known to
over-collect from donors who demand that major gifts include hits as
well as misses, face restrictions on culling undesirable objects, and
often struggle with a fixed amount of exhibition space for an expanding
collection.
Mr.
Standring of the Denver Art Museum advises colleagues to plan periodic
expeditions to the basement. “If you have the resources, I would hope
institutions would allocate time and resources to conduct at least an
annual due diligence.” But taking inventory is not “sexy,” he
acknowledged, and demands staff members. Large and heavy paintings, Mr.
Standring pointed out, “are not like poker chips where you can just toss
them around,” so he recruits a team of art handlers for his forays into
storage. Smaller institutions, he frets, might squander opportunities
to find hidden masterpieces: “A ma–and-pa operation with two helpers?
Forget it.”
In
2012, after researching the whereabouts of a rare Picasso sculpture,
Guernsey’s auction house in New York alerted the Evansville Museum of
Arts, History and Science in Evansville, Ind., that it might own the
work, titled “Seated Woman With Red Hat.” Arlan Ettinger, the president
of the auction house, characterized the initial response he received
from the museum as “Picasso? What Picasso?” But the museum’s director
soon called back in a state of “euphoria,” Mr. Ettinger said. The prized
sculpture was found hanging on an art rack in storage.
Picasso
produced it in the 1950s using a technique to layer colored glass
called gemmail (and known by the plural gemmaux). The Picasso’s original
owner, the industrial designer Raymond Loewy, donated the Modern work
to the Evansville museum in 1963, promising to later transfer the
sculpture. When it arrived five years later, the museum, according to
its website, attributed “Seated Woman With Red Hat” to the phantom
artist Gemmaux — confusing the name of the technique with the artist’s
name. The Evansville Museum intends to sell the sculpture, which Mr.
Ettinger values at $30 million to $40 million, dwarfing the museum’s
$6.4 million endowment.
Developments
in technology, like CT scans and DNA sequencers, enable researchers to
extract new findings from old collections. “Collections are not stagnant
and not in storage collecting dust,” said William Stanley, an expert on
mammals and head of collections at the Field Museum in Chicago, by
email from Tanzania, where he was about to embark on traditional field
work. “Rather, they are being examined and remeasured and photographed
in scanning electron microscopes on a daily basis, by people from all
over the world, and this allows us to figure out what makes this planet
tick.”
Museums
can increase the odds of a rediscovery by welcoming visiting scholars.
“I’m more apt to make a find of something in another museum than my
own,” said Mark A. Norell, curator at the American Museum of Natural
History’s Division of Paleontology, who stands in a long corridor on the
museum’s fifth floor. It is lined with stacks of gray cabinets called
“cans,” where the museum keeps many of its more than 33 million
specimens, only a fraction of which are on display. A visiting
specialist in a particular field, Mr. Norell said, might be able to spot
a discovery that a museum without a dedicated expert in that area of
research could easily miss.
While
he was a visiting scholar to the Field Museum, Kristofer M. Helgen, a
curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,
discovered a new species of mammal. In 2003, he was rifling through a
large metal cabinet deep in the recesses of the museum, examining the
skins of olingos (a raccoon relative) collected in the 1950s. Some of
the skins with red-orange fur stood out.
“Mammal
museum specimens usually consist of a skin and a skull, and when I
pulled the skulls for the red skins out of their boxes, I could right
away see how different their teeth and their ear bones and the shapes of
the skulls were,” said Mr. Helgen by email.
A handwritten speech by Charles A. Lindbergh, on a map.Credit
National Air and Space Museum
He
refers to his revelation as “a true eureka moment.” After a decade of
additional research, Mr. Helgen announced in 2013 the finding of the new
species, which he named the olinguito.
Mr.
Stanley hailed his colleague’s achievement: “Because of this, our
understanding of one of the most infamous groups of mammals has
changed.”
Not
only experienced scientists make discoveries in museums and archives;
interns and students offer fresh eyes and reservoirs of energy.
Like
many cultural institutions, the New York State Museum is re-examining
its collection during a digitization initiative. Last year, an intern on
the project noticed a reel-to-reel tape with a label that read “Martin
Luther King Jr., Emancipation Proclamation Speech 1962.”
The museum had uncovered the only known recording of a speech
Mr. King delivered in New York, marking the centenary of President
Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In a slow yet
powerful cadence, Mr. King analyzes the unfulfilled promise of the
Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation. “History reveals that
America has a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are
concerned,” booms Mr. King. “On the one hand, she has proudly professed
the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand, she
has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.”
The
New York State Museum’s find followed the 2012 discovery of an audio
recording of a speech Malcolm X gave at Brown University in 1961.
Malcolm Burnley, a senior at Brown in 2012, was leafing through old
copies of the student newspaper while researching a nonfiction writing
assignment, when he spotted a photo of Malcolm X and a brief article
recounting a visit to the campus by the Nation of Islam leader. “To see
that he gave a speech, and it was so little documented, I found very
shocking,” Mr. Burnley said.
Mr.
Burnley later learned that Malcolm X had asked to speak at the
university after reading an essay in The Brown Daily Herald (edited by
Richard C. Holbrooke, then a student, later a top American diplomat),
criticizing the Nation of Islam. School administrators “were not
interested in dipping into the racial dialogue at the time,” Mr. Burnley
said. “If they were going to invite a black speaker to campus, it
wasn’t going to be Malcolm X.” But Mr. Holbrooke, who had invited
Malcolm X to campus, protested; he threatened to move the student
newspaper off campus, prompting administrators to back down.
Katharine
Pierce, who wrote the critique that inspired Malcolm X to speak at
Brown, tipped off Mr. Burnley that she had donated a tape of the
long-forgotten speech to the university’s archive. “It had just been
sitting there, not digitized,” said Mr. Burnley, who found the speech
revelatory.
As
Malcolm X makes the case for black nationalism in the recording, many
in the audience can be heard gasping, Mr. Burnley recounted. But “by the
end of the hour, he is getting applause from almost the entire
audience.”
“He’s making jokes,” he added. “I can definitively say that he was one of our greatest orators.”
Occasionally,
discoveries at cultural institutions spur controversy. At the turn of
the 20th century, the Springfield Science Museum in Springfield, Mass.,
acquired an artifact that it labeled “Aleutian Hat” and socked it away.
Last year, Ellen Savulis, the museum’s curator of anthropology, learned
about the object while planning a new exhibition about Native Americans
of the Northwest. “We have the opportunity to do more in-depth research
when we are designing exhibits,” said Ms. Savulis, who ventured into the
museum’s storage area for a look at the hat. On a shelf, she found the
sculptured head of an eagle-like bird with a prominent beak “carved from
a solid piece of wood that still retains the original colors,” she
said. After research, Ms. Savulis concluded that it did not resemble an
Aleutian hat.
The
Alaska State Museum later identified the artifact as a valuable Tlingit
war helmet (circa 1800-1850), one of fewer than 100 in existence.
Tribal leaders now want their warrior’s helmet back. The Central Council
of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska intends to request
repatriation of the helmet, a lengthy and costly process. “I would trust
the Springfield Museum will understand that the sacred value of this
hat lies in its return to its home,” Rosita Worl, vice chairwoman of the
Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit cultural organization, told
The Alaska Dispatch.
In
rare cases, a discovered artifact can threaten the existence of the
institution where it is found. In 2012, the Bishop Bonner’s Cottage
Museum, a local history museum for Dereham, England, uncovered three
live grenades in a box marked “bomb” from its archives. The local bomb
squad removed the explosives, and Ray Fraser, chairman of Dereham
Antiquarian Society, which owns the museum, believes it is now
grenade-free.
But Mr. Fraser offered a word of caution to other museums: “Don’t take in anything that looks like it could explode on you.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 20, 2014, on page F2 of the New York edition with the headline: Golden Age of Discovery ... Down in the Basements. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Several hundred millennials mingled under the soaring atrium of the Guggenheim Museum
on Fifth Avenue one recent frigid February night. Weaving around them
were black-clad servers bearing silver trays piled high with doughnuts,
while a pixieish D.J. spun Daft Punk remixes.
The
occasion was the museum’s annual Young Collectors Party, and the
increasingly tipsy crowd thronged in a space usually filled with
visitors eager to see the 73-year-old institution’s priceless artworks.
But on this night, the galleries displaying an exhibition of Italian
Futurism were mostly cordoned off. Instead, youthful, glamorous and
moneyed New Yorkers were the main attraction.
Many
museums, including the Guggenheim, view events like this as central to
their public programming. They get a new generation through the front
door and keep potentially staid institutions relevant with a cultural
landscape in flux.
But
events like this are also, at some level, central to the future
financial health of the museum. Before the Young Collectors Party,
museum executives held an exclusive dinner for a select group of young
donors already contributing at a high level. If all goes well, some of
those in attendance will one day become trustees of the Guggenheim.
Together, the dinner and the party took the museum one step closer to
cementing relationships with these rising philanthropists and their
friends.
The Young Collectors Party at the Guggenheim in Manhattan.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times
“You
don’t just go on the board overnight,” said Catherine Dunn, the
Guggenheim’s deputy director of advancement. “You engage people in the
life of the museum so that they can ultimately join the board.”
Across
the country, museums large and small are preparing for the eventual
passing of the baton from the baby boom generation, which for decades
has been the lifeblood not only of individual giving but of boardroom
leadership. Yet it is far from clear whether the children of baby
boomers are prepared to replicate the efforts of their parents.
While
charitable giving in the United States has remained stable for the last
40 years, there is reason for concern. Boomers today control 70 percent
of the nation’s disposable income, according to data compiled
by the American Alliance of Museums. Millennials don’t yet have nearly
as much cash on hand. And those who do, the alliance found, are
increasingly drawn to social, rather than artistic, causes.
Now,
as wealth becomes more concentrated, tax laws change and a younger
generation develops new philanthropic priorities, museums — like other
nonprofit organizations — are confronting what, if unaddressed, could
become an existential crisis.
“The
generational shift is something a lot of museums are talking about,”
said Ford W. Bell, president of the American Alliance of Museums. “The
traditional donors are either dying, stepping back or turning it over to
their children or grandchildren.”
Generational
change is always occurring as new blood takes the place of the old. But
as the boomers’ children take over, there is concern among
administrators and trustees that millennials are not poised to meet the
financial and leadership demands of increasingly complex — and expensive
— museums.
“We’re
not just talking about replacing one generation with another
generation,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts. “We’re talking about a new generation that behaves so
differently than the last one.”
Two-thirds of millennials want specific information about how their dollars will “make a difference,” according to the 2011 Millennial Donors Report. That can pose a problem for museums, which rely on individual donations to support everyday operations and build endowments.
“Younger
philanthropists and donors today are looking for measurable results,”
Mr. Bell said. “It used to be you gave because it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But today younger donors have a lot of things they can give to. They
ask what the impact is going to be and how you’re going to measure that
impact. The Rockefellers gave, but they weren’t looking for specific
metrics.”
Moreover,
many are disinclined to contribute to long-term capital campaigns. “An
older generation of philanthropists really understood the value of an
endowment,” said Maureen Robinson, a member of the Museum Group, a
consortium of senior museum professionals. “But endowments are looked at
by younger people as dead money. They think, ‘I’m giving you a dollar
to do something different.’ ”
What
is more, there is a swelling debate about the merits of different types
of charitable giving, with many arguing that arts institutions are less
deserving than social and health causes. Writing in The New York Times
last year, the philosopher Peter Singer said that “a donation to prevent trachoma offers at least 10 times the value of giving to the museum.”
This
line of thinking is “a matter of some dismay to a generation that
worked to build out community engagement in museums,” Ms. Robinson said.
“All these things are great, but it’s as though museums appear to
represent a lesser value and less moral use of time.”
And
not only are 20- and 30-somethings today more interested in social
causes like education, the environment and international aid than they
are in the arts, but because of shifting demographics, there may simply
be fewer wealthy young patrons to write checks.
“We’re
seeing some significant changes in income distribution,” said Dan
Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. “You’ve got
a shrinking middle class. And there’s a huge amount of wealth and
philanthropic capability that is centered in a smaller number of people
than was previously the case.”
Already anticipating this generational changing of the guard, some museums are racing to pursue younger donors and trustees.
At
the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, 75 percent of the board
membership has turned over in the last seven years. That has brought new
life to the Walker, which focuses on modern and contemporary art. But
it has also meant the loss of several stalwarts who could be relied on
for big checks and sage advice.
“Most
of the oldest generation has completely gone off,” said the Walker’s
director, Olga Viso. In its place, Ms. Viso said, a group of trustees in
their 50s and 60s has moved into senior leadership roles and begun
giving at higher levels, while a younger group of trustees in their
early 40s and even late 30s has joined the board.
Among
the more youthful members Ms. Viso has recruited of late are John
Christakos, founder of the furniture company Blu Dot, who is in his late
40s and serves as the Walker board’s treasurer, and Monica Nassif, the
founder of the fragrance and cleaning companies Caldrea and Mrs. Meyers
Clean Day.
As
well as being proactive, another way to attract young donors and
trustees is to be a cultural powerhouse. Many prominent art museums in
major metropolitan areas, in particular, are so far navigating this
transition with ease.
“The very big institutions are doing very well,” said Ms. Robinson of the Museum Group. “They have a gravitational field.”
Take
the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has well-oiled machinery
for cultivating young patrons and turning the exceptional ones into
trustees at MoMA or its sister institution, PS1.
“We’ve
been doing this since 1949,” said Todd Bishop, MoMA’s senior deputy
director of external affairs. That was the year that it set up the
Junior Council, a group for young patrons. MoMA refreshed the effort in
1990 with the founding of the Junior Associates, a membership group open
to those 40 years old and younger.
At
a recent Junior Associates event, about 50 young patrons gathered to
sip white wine in the museum’s lobby after work, giant Brice Marden
paintings looming over the makeshift bar. The occasion was a private
tour of MoMA’s retrospective of the German sculptor Isa Genzken, hardly
the most accessible show.
After
45 minutes of schmoozing, the Junior Associates dutifully followed
Laura Hoptman, the curator, on a walk-through of the sometimes jarring
exhibition. Ms. Hoptman spoke of Ms. Genzken’s “physicalization of sound
waves” and the artist’s battles with depression.
Not
all of the Junior Associates were impressed, but others delighted in
the access. David Snider, 28, grew up in Boston, where his parents were
involved with the Institute of Contemporary Art. Mr. Snider, who works
at a real estate website, has recruited 10 friends to the Junior
Associates since joining, and said the group’s events “resonate with
people because it’s not just another happy hour.”
“There are very few Junior Associate events where two-thirds of the time isn’t about learning,” he said.
At
the end of the tour, with young patrons standing amid Ms. Genzken’s
flamboyant sculptures, Ms. Hoptman implored the young guests to stay
involved with MoMA, and keep giving. “It’s groups like the Junior
Associates that allow us to do this, to keep pushing,” she said.
Absent
this tireless wooing of a younger generation, museums can quickly slip
up. The Delaware Art Museum is facing funding challenges now, in part
because of the erosion of individual giving by moneyed locals.
Wilmington,
where the museum is, has fallen on hard times, and the wealthy families
that once supported the arts there have seen their fortunes divided up
over a number of generations.
“This is a scenario that’s playing out in other places as well,” said Mr. Bell of the American Alliance of Museums.
This
year, the museum of Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va., was moved to
sell a painting by George Bellows for $25.5 million to fund its
endowment, a task usually met by donors.
Hoping to avoid the plight of Delaware, some museums have doubled down on recruiting new board leadership in recent years.
Donald
Fisher, the late co-founder of Gap and a longtime board member of the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was particularly passionate about
the issue.
The
museum’s director, Neal Benezra, remembers that at a board meeting
eight years ago, Mr. Fisher pounded his fist on the table and said: “We
need to prepare for this and we shouldn’t be nominating anyone over the
age of 50!”
The
museum has not followed Mr. Fisher’s advice to the letter. “But it was a
powerful statement,” Mr. Benezra said. “And Don, as was often the case,
was not wrong.”
Since
then, the museum has worked hard to rejuvenate its board, with half of
the trustee positions turning over in the last 10 years. Mr. Benezra
hosts regular dinners for potential young board members, introducing
them to longtime trustees including Mr. Fisher’s son, Robert, and
Charles Schwab, the financier.
“It’s
a way of engaging in a very personal way people who are already close
to the museum and getting them to understand what the experience of
trusteeship might mean,” Mr. Benezra said.
Among
the new faces in the San Francisco museum’s boardroom are Marissa
Mayer, the Yahoo chief executive, and the prominent entrepreneur Dave
Morin. Those additions represent the museum’s success in forging ties
with the technology industry, which is minting thousands of new
millionaires in the Bay Area.
A
similar story has played out across the country in recent years. In
Boston, which has also enjoyed a boom in venture capital and
biotechnology investment, the Institute of Contemporary Art has embarked
on a refashioning of its board at the same time it built its first
permanent building ever, a waterfront structure designed by Diller
Scofidio and Renfro.
“While
we were building a new building, it was critical that we build a
community in Boston to support contemporary art,” said the institute’s
director, Jill Medvedow. “We tried to find people that were not already
on other boards. We looked to the venture, tech and biotech communities.
And we managed to transform the board of trustees.”
Thanks
to those new faces on the board, Ms. Medvedow was also able to bolster
the institute’s endowment, increasing it from $1 million when she took
over in 1998 to $20 million today. Nearly half of that came from people
under the age of 50, she said.
Among
the younger trustees are Jonathan Seelig, co-founder of Akami
Technologies; Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android, the operating system
acquired by Google; and Hal Hess, an executive of American Tower, the
cellphone company.
Mr.
Hess was initially drawn to postwar American painting, but, with some
hand-holding by the institute’s curatorial staff, grew to love
contemporary art as well. He is now on the finance committee, where he
has gotten to work closely with James Foster, a more seasoned board
member who is chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Charles
River Laboratories. “It’s given me an opportunity to be involved at much
deeper level,” Mr. Hess said.
Such mentorships are a hallmark of effective board succession plans.
“You’re
not born a philanthropist,” Mr. Benezra said. “With a board that’s 65
members strong, it’s very easy for new members to feel unengaged.”
To
avoid any alienation, many museums encourage new trustees to join
committees as a way of working with other board members and learning the
ropes.
The
former Wells Fargo chief executive Richard Kovacevich is chairman of
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s finance committee, allowing
younger trustees to learn from a legend. “They observe how they think,
how they act, how they interact with the staff,” Mr. Benezra said.
“Mentoring is a big part of what we do. It’s how newly elected trustees
find their way.”
Another
accommodation made for younger trustees — who may still be in the prime
of their careers — is the division of responsibilities. At the Peabody
Essex Museum, for example, the board has two young co-chairmen — Samuel
Byrne and Sean Healey — instead of one leader.
“They’re
still building their careers and fortunes, and this allows us to divide
responsibilities and provide coverage for people who are extremely busy
and lead very demanding lives,” said Mr. Monroe, the Peabody’s
director. “It’s worked very well for us, even though it’s unorthodox.”
And
while in some cities, like Wilmington, family wealth fractures over the
decades, many fortunes remain intact across generations.
In
Minneapolis, the money made by the Dayton family, which founded the
Target Corporation, continues to have an impact at both of the city’s
major art museums.
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Bruce
Dayton, 95, is still on the board of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
after 72 years, making him, the institute says, the longest-serving
trustee at an American museum. His son Mark, the governor of Minnesota,
has an honorary seat on the board. And Mark’s son Eric, who is in his
early 30s, is among the youngest members of the institute’s board.
Members
of the Dayton clan also remain involved at the Walker. James Dayton,
49, is the current board president, having become a trustee when he was
just 41.
However, the changing priorities of today’s youth are reflected in the concerns of the various generations of the Dayton family.
“When
I talk to Bruce Dayton about the best moments of the museum, he talks
about the meeting when we acquired the Bonnard,” said Ms. Feldman, the
Minneapolis institute’s director. “That’s not the focus of his grandson,
Eric, who works with us much more on audience engagement, the M.I.A.’s
brand and attracting new audiences.”
And
when the San Francisco museum realized it had to shut down its existing
building to begin a huge expansion, in part to display the Fisher
family collection, it turned to its board for advice on how to proceed
in the interim. Instead of renting one space as a temporary home, the
museum decided to engage in a series of public programs that would bring
the collection into the community.
The
young designer Yves Béhar, then on the board, became involved with the
process and helped develop a program for Los Altos, a city in Silicon
Valley, where the museum currently has 10 installations on display.
“It probably wouldn’t have happened without him,” Mr. Benezra said.
Yet
as young professionals jump from job to job, taking their families
across the country, many museums are having a harder time forging
lasting ties with community leaders.
“It’s
a significant challenge for us,” said Mr. Monroe of the Peabody Essex,
noting that his museum was still fortunate to have strong support from
donors in Boston.
Also
exacerbating matters is that in recent decades, jobs, professionals and
wealth have concentrated in urban areas, leaving smaller regional
institutions in the lurch.
At
the Walker, Ms. Viso had a wonderful young patron who was working at 3M
and getting progressively more involved with the museum. But after a
few years he accepted a job at Pepsi and moved to New York.
“In
the corporate community in particular, there’s a lot more transition
and change,” Ms. Viso said. “It’s not the norm for people to stay here
for 20 years anymore.”
Ms.
Robinson of the Museum Group noted that in some colder climates, older
trustees were now fleeing during the winters, making them less reliable
board members. Some of these snow birds then forge relationships with
museums in balmier locations, like Miami, which has a vibrant arts
community.
“The
transience issue will come back to haunt everybody,” Ms. Robinson said.
“Institutions need steady, lifelong relationships with supporters, and
the opposite ends of the age spectrum are equally mobile, but for
different reasons.”
Other demographic changes are also at play, forcing museums to rethink the future of their boards and major donor bases.
“Many
museums are white both literally and figuratively,” said Mr. Bell of
the American Alliance of Museums, noting a dearth of diversity at the
highest levels of many museums.
And a new generation, raised on pop culture, is not always eager to support niche collections.
“If
a museum’s primary collection area is antiquities, its not so easy to
find young people to join that board,” said Robert Fisher of the San
Francisco museum board.
All
these changes are coming to a head as museums see their funding mix
gradually change. Instead of relying on a handful of major donors to
carry the museum each year, many are trying to nurture an “Obama
fund-raising model” — smaller donations from a vastly larger audience.
Ultimately,
however, museums may have to accept that the next generation coming
into positions of power may simply be less generous to museums than the
baby boomers have been.
“It’s
one thing if you grew up in a philanthropic household,” Robert Fisher
said. “But to expect that young people will turn around and start making
million-dollar gifts because someone asks them to is unreasonable.
Someone who’s 35 and made a lot of money may not give it away until
they’re 50. It takes patience.”
Yet on balance, museum directors and their trustees think that, with time, millennials will rise to the challenge.
“I’m
certainly optimistic,” said Mr. Schwab of the San Francisco museum. “If
not, museums will degenerate and will eventually fall into the hands of
government budgets and be in a death spiral. I hope that’s not the
case.”
Correction: March 25, 2014
An article on Thursday about efforts by art museums to attract a
new generation of benefactors incorrectly included the Detroit Institute
of Arts among financially ailing museums that are under pressure to
sell art from their collections to help fund their operations. While the
Art Institute faced the threat of having part of its city-owned art
collection sold, the money from the sale would have gone to the city in
its bankruptcy proceedings, not to the museum itself. The article also
referred incompletely to the source of pledges intended to avert such a
sale. The pledges came from local and national foundations as well as
from the museum itself, not just from local groups.
El Ayuntamiento de Barcelona ha adquirido en una subasta una moneda carolingia emitida en la ciudad en el siglo IX, entre los años 814 y 840.
La
moneda, que fue comprada por el consistorio el pasado 24 de abril en
una subasta en la ciudad por 11.980 euros, será expuesta temporalmente
por el Museo de Historia de Barcelona (MUHBA) y posteriormente pasará a
formar parte del Gabinete Numismático del MNAC, ha informado el teniente
de alcalde de Cultura, Jaume Ciurana.
Según ha explicado Albert
Estrada, conservador del Gabinete Numismático del MNAC, la moneda es un
ejemplar de dinero de plata emitido en Barcelona bajo la autoridad del
emperador carolingio Luis el Piadoso, monarca que continuó las emisiones
monetarias iniciadas bajo el reinado de su padre y predecesor, el
emperador Carlomagno, después de la conquista de Barcelona en el año 801
por un ejército comandado por él mismo.
En el anverso de la
moneda ahora adquirida aparece una cruz y a su alrededor el nombre del
emperador Luis el Piadoso en latín, mientras que el reverso está ocupado
por una inscripción en letras mayúsculas -una característica recuperada
de la antigüedad romana- con el nombre de Barcelona escrito en tres
líneas (BAR-CINO-NA).
El aspecto formal de esta pieza, de la que
se conocen en el mundo nueve ejemplares, fue común a todas las emisiones
de las otras cecas del imperio -Barcelona era una de las 40 ciudades
emisoras-, algo que "se atribuye a que se trataba de piezas producidas
por monederos itinerantes que acompañarían a las tropas".
El
sucesor de Luis el Piadoso, el emperador Carlos el Calvo, fue el último
monarca carolingio que hizo directamente emisiones monetarias
barcelonesas, pues cedió parte del lucro de la moneda a los obispos de
Barcelona y los condes de la ciudad asumieron, en la práctica, la
fabricación de la moneda poniendo siempre el mismo nombre del emperador
Carlos, con independencia de quien reinara. La ruptura con la monarquía
franca se consumó cuando el conde Ramon Borrell (922-1017) acuñó su
propio nombre en la moneda, con lo que se iniciaban las emisiones
condales y después reales de Barcelona.
En opinión de Estrada,
este dinero de plata es "una pieza mítica, pues de la época carolingia
prácticamente no tenemos testimonios y es además una moneda difícil de
encontrar, sin ejemplares conocidos en España, porque habitualmente, a
la muerte del rey, se recogían las monedas y se volvían a acuñar". La
moneda perteneció, ha precisado Estrada, a la importante colección
numismática barcelonesa de Manuel Vidal-Quadras, pero tras su muerte en
el siglo XIX, se le perdió la pista, seguramente vendida a un
coleccionista extranjero.
La adquisición del dinero de Barcelona
de Luis el Piadoso, "además de completar un vacío en las colecciones
numismáticas públicas de la ciudad, también permite recuperar un
patrimonio de la ciudad, que la vincula con la Europa de Carlomagno y
sus sucesores", ha añadido Ciurana. El teniente de alcalde ha revelado
que en la misma subasta "el ayuntamiento no pudo comprar por una
cuestión económica otra moneda, ésta acuñada en tiempos de Carlomagno". Otra moneda, desaparecida En el mismo acto, el Servicio de Arqueología de Barcelona ha incluido una nueva pieza en su página web
en la que invita a los ciudadanos a dar pistas sobre el paradero de una
moneda desaparecida. Esta nueva pieza es, ha explicado la responsable
del Servicio, Carme Miró, un dracma ibérico de Barkeno
(siglo IIIaC) desaparecido durante la Guerra Civil española en 1936 y
que se encontraba en el Gabinete Numismático de Barcelona, procedente de
la colección Pujol i Camps.
De este dracma sólo hay noticia de
dos ejemplares en el mundo, uno en el Museo de Copenhague y esta moneda
de Barcelona que desapareció en 1936. Este dracma ibérico, de plata,
imita los dracmas griegos como los acuñados en Emporion, y presenta en
el anverso una cabeza femenina y en el reverso un caballo alado o Pegaso
y la inscripción Barkeno.
En palabras de Miró, la importancia de
esta moneda es que aparece por primera vez el topónimo Barcheno, origen
del nombre de la ciudad seguramente y que "nos habla de una ciudad
griega que aún no hemos encontrado".
From 22-25 April, the Director-General of ICCROM went on mission to the École du Patrimoine Africain (EPA–School of African Heritage) in Benin. He was joined by the President of the ICCROM Council and Director of the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF),
Ms Marie Lavandier, who was in the country for a workshop on the
‘’Preservation of African Image Heritage: West African Image Lab”. This
workshop was co-organized by EPA, the Art Conservation Department of the
University of Delaware (United States), the Curatorial Department of
Photographs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (United States), the Centre de Recherche sur la conservation des collections (France), and the Resolution Photo association in partnership with the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation (Senegal).
The Director-General’s mission had three objectives:
1) To assist as Vice-President at the 7th Council of EPA.
2) To meet Beninese authorities in order to reinforce the links between Benin, EPA and ICCROM.
3) To see EPA’s recent achievements and contribution to various projects in Benin (for example, the Royal Palaces of Abomey, Garden of Plants and Nature (JPN), the Slave Route in Ouidah, and town planning and rehabilitation of public places in Porto Novo).
El derrumbe de las Torres Gemelas
sigue muy presente entre los más de 2.000 millones de personas que en
cualquier parte del mundo presenciaron el atentado terrorista contra el
World Trade Center. A cuatro meses de que se cumplan 13 años desde el
evento, la ciudad de Nueva York da un paso clave para tapar el gran
vacío que quedó a la vista en la Zona Cero tras retirarse los escombros, con la inauguración del Museo de la Memoria del 11-S.
Para los neoyorquinos
que vivieron el 11-S y las personas que perdieron un ser querido, será
más un lugar de peregrinación que un museo. Para el que lo vivió desde
la distancia, será una oportunidad para estar más cerca de lo que vio
por televisión. En los dos casos, pretende ser un punto para la
reflexión. Está a la vez concebido para adaptarse a los acontecimientos
actuales, para que los que nazcan hoy entiendan qué pasó ese día a
través de la vida de los que murieron y los que salieron en su auxilio y
explicarles las consecuencias.
El pabellón que da
entrada al museo está situado entre las dos cascadas artificiales en el
espacio que ocupaban las Torres Gemelas, junto a la estación diseñada por el Santiago Calatrava.
Es una estructura de aluminio y cristal obra del noruego Snoetta. Las
dos muestras de las que consta transcurren bajo las dos cascadas en el
parque memorial, a unos 20 metros bajo tierra, equivalente a bajar unas
siete plantas. La plaza hace de techo y el granito que da sustento a los
altos edificios de Manhattan de suelo.
Una columna de acero que formaba parte de la fachada de una de las torres. / Memorial Museum 9/11
Ahí comienza el
descenso. La luz del pabellón principal se va dejando atrás conforme se
avanza hacia la oscuridad de la profundidad. Todo se va presentando poco
a poco, para el que visitante vaya acostumbrándose al espacio y pueda
situarse. El primer resto con el que se encuentra el visitante es un
doble tridente de acero oxidado, un elemento estructural que daba
sustento de la fachada en la Torre Norte. En la muestra hay otra columna
que tejía el exterior del rascacielos, completamente retorcida por la
fuerza del impacto de uno de los dos aviones usados como proyectil.
Desde la rampa ya se
puede ver la dimensión del museo, de unos diez mil metros cuadrados, y
emergen algunos los objetos que fueron recuperados de entre los
escombros, como un enorme trozo de la antena que hacía de mástil en la
Torre Norte. El muro de contención que protegía el complejo del río
Hudson hace de pared. Entre la escalera mecánica y la que se puede subir
a pie está colocada la que sirvió a los servicios de emergencia y
residentes para escapar.
El espacio es por su
naturaleza confuso, por eso se intentan desde el primer momento orientar
al visitante recurriendo a su experiencia de la tragedia. Los grandes
elementos, como una ambulancia o los dos camiones del servicio de
bomberos, son los que más imponen. Pero es imaginar las historias
personales que hay detrás de los artefactos más pequeños, como las alas
que llevaba en la solapa de su chaqueta una azafata del vuelo 11 de
American Airlines, los que más impactan.
La insignia que perteneció a Betty Ong, azafata del vuelo AA11 que se estrelló contra una de las torres.
En el suelo puede verse
también la base de las columnas que dieron soporte a los dos
rascacielos. Tras 10 años de trabajo y discusiones, todavía sigue
predominando el debate sobre si el museo va a ser más un monumento a los
fallecidos o una atracción turística. Durante seis días estará abierto
las 24 horas a los familiares de las víctimas y los que vivieron
directamente los atentados. El 21 abrirá al público, a un precio de 24
dólares. Los martes por la tarde será gratis.
Todo lo que había en
las Torres Gemelas quedó comprimido tras el colapso. Algunos objetos
pudieron ser recuperados durante la excavación. Los cientos que están en
las muestras, dejan claro los responsables, no contienen ningún resto
humano que se sepa. Se estudió todo hasta el último detalle antes de
poder mostrarlos. El único sitio que no podrá visitarse es donde yacen
los restos sin identificar de las víctimas, otra de las decisiones del
proyecto que creó grandes diferencias entre las familias. Paola Berry
perdió ese día a su marido. Cree que el Museo ayudará tolerar el vacío.
Al llegar al fondo el
visitante tiene dos opciones. La muestra bajo la cascada sur pretende
recordar a las 2.983 personas que fallecieron el 11-S y en el primer ataque al garaje en 1993,
recurriendo a objetos personales, fotografías y comentarios de sus
seres queridos. La muestra en la norte cuenta la historia de ese trágico
día y lo que sigue sucediendo tras los eventos. Esta bifurcación es
otro reflejo de la emotividad y la polémica que rodeó desde el inicio a
este proyecto. Como explica Tom Hennes, responsable del diseño de la
muestra, se trata ahora de abrir el espacio la Zona Cero tras el
derrumbe.
Como explican los
responsables del proyecto, el reto ante la enorme importancia histórica y
simbolismo del evento era encontrar un equilibrio entre la experiencia
individual y colectiva. Para ello, el trabajo de composición se basó en
cuatro principios: memoria, autenticidad, escala y emoción. Y aunque se
concentra en lo que pasó en Nueva York, también hay espacios para
conmemorar las pérdidas en el Pentágono y Pensilvania. Además, trata de
mirar al futuro, para que se vaya adaptando. Será como un archivo que se
va actualizando cada día.
Hojas de papel escritas a mano que se encontraron tras el atentado. / Memorial Museum 9/11
La caverna es quizás el
lugar más simbólico. Allí se erige la Última Columna, de unos 11
metros, repleta de fotos y mensajes de los que participaron en el
rescate. Durante toda la muestra, diseñada por el equipo de Steven
Davis, se pretende crear la sensación de enorme vacío que se sintió el
12 de septiembre de 2001, el día después de los atentados. El sonido
está muy presente en todo el recorrido. La muestra concluye con una
proyección titulada The Rise of Al Qaeda. “Hemos intentado que sea la experiencia más sensible, respetuosa e informativa posible para el visitante”, afirma Davis.
Como indicó el
exalcalde Michael Bloomberg, presidente del Museo Memorial, el espacio
“cuenta la angustiosa historia de una pérdida inimaginable” pero a la
vez relata historias de coraje y compasión que deben servir de
inspiración al visitante. Y el mensaje que se pretende lanzar a los
familiares de las víctimas y a las futuras generaciones, añadió, es que
“nunca se olvidará” a las personas que se perdió ni las lecciones que
aprendimos ese trágico día.
Joe Daniels,
responsable del Museo Memorial, insistió durante la presentación en la
importancia de que se vea la instalación como un lugar de reflexión.
“Este Museo expresará lo que aquellos que nos atacaron no entendieron,
que los vínculos que nos unen se refuerzan de la manera más
extraordinaria cuando nos enfrentamos a las circunstancias menos
imaginables”, expresó. El objetivo, como indica la directora del centro
Alice Greenwald, es “poder inspirar y cambiar la manera en la que la
gente ve el mundo”.
Por Omer Freixa
Silencio, quietud, orden, contemplación, admiración... Solo se oyen
nuestros pasos. Esa es la imagen que suele deparar un museo al
visitante. El día 18 de mayo celebran su día internacional. Y conviene
recordar algo de su historia. En una de las cuatro acepciones del
diccionario de la Real Academia Española de la Lengua sobre el
significado de la palabra museo, ésta los define como lugares “en que se
guardan colecciones de objetos artísticos, científicos o de otro tipo, y
en general de valor cultural, convenientemente colocados para que sean
examinados”. La definición apunta a la exhibición de “objetos”. Por tal
se entienden artefactos e incluso animales embalsamados, entre otros. No
obstante, hubo otra variedad en su historia. Hasta hace menos de un
siglo, ciertas exposiciones no presentaban objetos inertes,
precisamente, sino hombres y mujeres de carne y hueso, vivos. Y, hasta
fecha reciente, algunos museos exhibían piezas humanas junto a muestras
de lo considerado “historia natural”.
La era de los “zoológicos humanos” comenzó
en la década de 1870 y se extendió hasta la de 1930. Se trataba de
frecuentes exposiciones públicas, y muy populares, de los indígenas (en
sus condiciones “naturales”) en las metrópolis europeas y de los Estados
Unidos, muchas veces, exhibidos como parte de una serie que comenzaba
con distintas especies de monos.
En una forma distinta de apreciar los museos a la que tenemos hoy,
tal forma de exponer a determinadas personas adquirió diversas
modalidades, pero lo que les confirió homogeneidad fue el hecho de que,
por tal medio, millones de europeos y norteamericanos apreciaron por vez
primera al “otro”, esa alteridad tan distante y ajena para los
ciudadanos de la metrópoli. Otro denominador común es que, hoy día, esos
zoológicos están ausentes del recuerdo, de la memoria colectiva. Quizá
porque el ser humano tiende a colocar lo embarazoso bajo la alfombra, y
asumir la inferioridad de quien es exhibido es algo hoy sumamente
reprobable, aunque esta frase, expresada a comienzos del siglo XX habría
sido objeto de incomprensión y burlas. En su momento, no hubo
remordimientos, la humanidad de estos seres estaba en duda y, a la par,
más de uno aprovechaba la única forma de entonces para contemplar a un
humano desnudo o semidesnudo.
Los europeos convirtieron a humanos en meros objetos de exhibición,
pese a que Occidente ya entonces pregonara el ideal de igualdad entre
todos. Para 1900, no quedaba rincón del planeta por colonizar. Europa,
en la cumbre. La decisión de repartir África se remató en 1885. Desde
finales del siglo XIX, colonialismo y exotismo se conjugaron a la hora
de organizar entretenimientos centrados en el ser colonizado, su
exhibición era motivo de festejo para la causa imperial y, además,
servía para legitimar la mirada superior de Europa, aumentando la carga
prejuiciosa (esa misma que hoy funciona como argumento para rechazar
inmigrantes africanos, por ejemplo).
Desde 1874, y tomando Alemania la delantera gracias a un potente
comerciante de animales que brilló como artífice de zoológicos humanos
(Karl Hagenbeck), se montaron espectáculos en los que, además de fieras
enjauladas, se mostraban individuos de pueblos considerados “exóticos”.
Entre 1877 y 1912 se realizaron unas treinta exposiciones de
este tipo en el Jardín Zoológico de Aclimatación de París. La afluencia
de público fue masiva y regular. En el primer año recibió un millón de
visitas. El promedio de concurrencia, entre 200.000 a 300.000 personas.
Los exhibidos recibían magras pagas.
Exposición para contemplar indígenas en Alemania en 1928.
Otra variante más politizada fue la de exposición universal,
en la misma ciudad. En 1889, centenario de la Revolución Francesa que
tanto promovió la igualdad y la libertad, 28 millones de visitantes
pudieron apreciar una “aldea negra” con 400 africanos forzados a
trasladarse a tal efecto. En la de 1900, se presentó un cuadro viviente
de la isla de Madagascar, testimonio de la por entonces reciente
adquisición de la Tercera República francesa y de su renovado orgullo
militar y colonial, al que asistieron 50 millones de visitantes. Por la
última, de 1931, transitaron unos 34 millones. Completando la idea de
grandeza imperial, también se celebraron cuatro exposiciones coloniales,
en 1907 y 1931 en la capital, y en Marsella en 1906 y 1922. Finalmente,
para satisfacer una demanda mucho más comercial, aparecieron las compañías itinerantes y los “pueblos de negros”, estos últimos en el marco de las exposiciones, como la citada de 1889.
El Nuevo Mundo no quedó exento de esta “fiebre expositiva”, de modo
que Estados Unidos fue bastante lejos. En uno de los hechos más
vergonzosos, en 1906, a iniciativa de Madison Grant,
racista y antropólogo aficionado, el zoológico del Bronx de Nueva York
colocó a un pigmeo congoleño junto a un orangután con el cartel “El
eslabón perdido”. Daba a entender que el africano se ubicaba entre un
lugar intermedio entre mono y hombre. Y sin pensar cuál sería la
reacción del simio al tener que compartir jaula. Esto muestra que la
suerte de los infelices que eran objeto de exhibición no importaba
demasiado.
En muchos casos el traslado a un clima al que el recién llegado no
estaba habituado causaba su muerte. Entre muchos episodios de esta
naturaleza, individuos de Argentina también se sumaron a la triste
estadística, como aconteció en 1881, cuando arribaron a París once
indígenas fueguinos raptados. En la exposición fueron vistos por 400.000
curiosos en sólo dos meses. De ellos fallecieron una niña y una mujer
en los primeros días, dado el trajín de una gira acelerada por Francia y
Alemania.
Bastante antes de la aparición de los “zoológicos humanos”, algunos
europeos se dedicaron a exhibir individuos exóticos en casa. Solo que, a
finales del siglo XIX, esa práctica se sistematizó y amplió.
Por ejemplo, una mujer del grupo hotentote del Sur de África fue
trasladada a París como curiosidad y objeto de investigación. Saartjie
Baartman nació en 1789 en la provincia oriental del cabo Khoisan, en la
actual Sudáfrica pero popularmente fue conocida como la “Venus
Hotentote” y llegó a Londres en 1810 donde causó un escándalo porque los
espectadores la tocaban semidesnuda. Tal fue el alboroto que el
espectáculo se prohibió y ella fue trasladada a los tribunales,
retornando a la capital francesa. Allí, tampoco la pasó bien. Fue
exhibida junto a fieras por casi año y medio.
Murió en 1815, a temprana edad, por una enfermedad poco precisa, pero
seguramente contribuyó la humillación que le produjo ser objeto de
entretenimiento, junto a la dificultad de adaptarse a un medio extraño.
Al morir se le hizo una autopsia y hasta 1974 sus restos estuvieron
expuestos en el Museo del Hombre de París. En 1855, basándose en el
estudio de su cadáver, un etnólogo norteamericano concluyó que los
hotentotes eran los especímenes más bajos de la humanidad. Los restos de
la desgraciada retornaron a Sudáfrica en 2002, tras varios reclamos del
gobierno de Mandela.
Dibujo de la Venus Hotentote.
Al menos los restos de la “Venus Hotentote” quedaron en un museo antropológico. Muchos otros descansaron en museos de historia natural, como el caso del polémico Negro de Banyoles, en España.
En 1825, los hermanos Verreaux reunieron una colección de animales
salvajes de África del Sur, aunque en uno de los últimos viajes
consiguieron el cadáver de un africano, perteneciente al grupo
bosquimano, trasladado al museo que tenían en París, donde lo exhibieron
en una vitrina con escudo y lanza en mano.
Más tarde, a la muerte de los hermanos, la mansión quedó en el olvido
y terceros compraron parte de la colección. Un veterinario catalán, de
apellido Darder, compró el espécimen del bosquimano y montó en 1916 su
propio museo en Banyoles (Girona) donde quedó exhibido hasta 1991,
cuando un médico haitiano lo reconoció como un ser humano y se
horrorizó. Sobrevino un escándalo protagonizado por él en víspera de los
Juegos Olímpicos de Barcelona, en 1992, exhortando a las comitivas
africanas a no participar del evento. El médico obtuvo una primera
victoria cuando la vitrina fue retirada aunque el destino del bosquimano
continuó en discusión. Para evitar un escándalo diplomático, y tras
desclasificar la pieza reclasificándola como “resto humano”, finalmente,
al abrigo de la noche para evitar complicaciones frente a un pueblo que
lo reconoció parte de su patrimonio, fue transportado a Botswana, el país que lo reclamó como propio.
Si hubo más casos de “piezas” humanas en vitrinas de museos de
Historia Natural poco se sabe, porque el pudor y la vergüenza occidental
anularon la difusión de los casos tras las independencias africanas. De
todos modos, sabemos que no se tuvo reparo en exhibir hombres y mujeres
como si fueran parte inerte del paisaje en tiempos coloniales y
previos. Tal visión predomina en cierta forma aún hoy en la concepción
estereotipada que se tiene de África entera. De ella se priorizan los
paisajes que endulzan la vista- En ellos los humanos son un mero
decorado que fascina por su exotismo al ojo occidental. Esto también
forma parte de una historia de los museos. Aquella que no enorgullece
demasiado.
