Viewers seldom think about how large international loan exhibitions come together, but in the case of “Manet and the Sea,” the intelligent and beautiful show (through Jan. 19) at the Art Institute of Chicago, organization should be given some thought, as it has made what’s there seem all the more remarkable.
In the fall of 2001, Juliet Wilson-Bareau, an independent curator and scholar in the works of Edouard Manet, proposed to the institute a small exhibition based on the French master’s American Civil War paintings.
Institute curators Douglas Druick and Gloria Groom thought the show could be expanded to give the first concentrated look at the evolution and influence of Manet’s marine paintings, but Wilson-Bareau preferred to stay with her idea and brought it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
That meant any further exploration of Manet’s water pictures would have to follow the Met show immediately because it would build upon the same pieces and they might not be loaned again. So where a large exhibition and catalog usually require four to five years of preparation, “Manet and the Sea” — which the institute co-organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art — had fewer than two, even though it involved interconnections among several artists that enriched as well as complicated matters.
Druick and Groom have worked at the institute since 1986 and in the same department since 1989. Such experience gave them fairly clear ideas about what was possible in the exhibition and what works were necessary to flesh it out.
Colleagues in Philadelphia — curators Joe Rishel and John Zarobell — immediately agreed. The institute would send out loan requests to museums and collectors, then keep after them until getting the desired results. Philadelphia would take on the responsibility of the exhibition catalog, producing four essays in-house and farming out several others.
In the end, a team of 10 was joined by institute designer Joe Cochand, who came up with an installation that reflected the exhibition’s open-ended nature. Here, once more, was a race with the clock, for the show in the space before “Manet and the Sea” was extended, necessitating Cochand’s walls to be built away from the site.
Many details, such as avoiding dark colors so as not to have to paint walls twice, were influenced by shortness of time. Yet the installation turned out to be one of the museum’s most persuasive and psychologically appropriate.
Nothing tells quite like experience. Druick had organized “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South”; Groom, “Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel, 1890-1930.” Both were landmark exhibitions that brought new insight when others thought everything already had been said. Such probity marks all aspects of “Manet and the Sea.”
Special is any exhibition that looks at familiar artists from a different angle and casts light on areas of their work that had never been examined fully. Druick and Groom again have given Chicago one of those exhibitions. (It will be in Philadelphia from Feb. 15 through May 31 and in Amsterdam from June 18 through Sept. 26.)
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Does anyone remember the Arts Club of Chicago from about 10 years ago? It still had its interior by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but little else as positive. A longtime artistic director had left, to be followed in quick succession by two novices who ran the place with little taste and no talent for organization. A great institution was starting to be referred to — not without justification — as “a lunchroom for old people.”
Then, in February 1994, things began to turn around. Progress was slow, and the attention of anyone not a member was distracted, first, by the sale of the Club’s great Constantin Brancusi sculpture, then, the demolition of the building and most of the Mies interior and, finally, the opening of new quarters that were at once condemned for conservatism and praised for beauty.
Never was it said during any of those years that the Club had once again become a place to go for exhibitions and special programs, yet surely it had, though one is hard-pressed to pick the moment at which that happened. It should be clear by now, however, who was responsible, because despite a temperament that enjoys functioning beneath the level of radar, director Kathy Cottong has for almost a decade made all the difference.
This year’s exhibitions — for Peter Doig, Robert Grosvenor and Alice Neel — were particularly good, not least because no other institution in town would have mounted them. They had nothing to do with fashion and only showed curiosity about the work itself, regardless of the time in which it was done or the “cutting-edge” appeal of the artist.
All of Cottong’s exhibitions have been like that, which means they have precisely fulfilled the Club’s mission by remaining independent of the curatorial narrowness that presents the same few artists again and again in every major American art center. In that, there is something of her mentor, A. James Speyer, a late curator of 20th Century art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
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But mounting exhibitions is only a part of what Cottong does. Unlike her predecessors, she’s responsible for every aspect of the club, from coordinating programming to resolving problems of the dining room. So although she works with different committees on which sit a host of vivid personalities, hers is the presence that touches them all and so is felt throughout the club, if only as an energy that seems to have come with the building.
The board of an organization such as the Arts Club chooses a director to carry out its mission and maintain its tone. If the choice is right, both will happen and the director will appear to function mainly in the background. If the choice is wrong, either mission or tone — or both — will suffer, and invariably the director is remembered as having occupied the foreground.
That people elsewhere notice the Arts Club — the Doig show recently was discussed in an international magazine — without anyone here having noticed it’s the achievement of the director indicates just how right Cottong has been for the job.
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Chicagoans of the year
In 2003, Chicago ushered in a new theater for music and dance and witnessed the closing of several smaller ones. We watched the record industry to do battle with downloaders, even as local labels flourished. We were treated to several bold, dramatic new buildings — even if a certain stadium by the lake received most of the attention. For the 19th year, baiduhai critics have selected as Chicagoans of the year the artists, entertainers and administrators who have had an impact in our city and on the national scene. The critics who contributed to this package are Alan Artner, Robert K. Elder, Chris Jones, Blair Kamin, Julia Keller, Greg Kot, Michael Phillips, Howard Reich, Sid Smith and John von Rhein.
About the photos: Although some of the images appear to be manipulated by computer, they are not. All of the images are unaltered photos shot in real environments. Black-and-white head shots of the subjects were taken, then made into prints (or in the case of the photo at right, slides for projection). These were then placed in surroundings appropriate to the subjects’ disciplines. The photographer’s approach was inspired by the creativity, energy and variety of these accomplished individuals.