Lecture— 50 Years a Curator: Whatever Happened to the Art World We Knew?

good afternoon and a warm welcome to the Harvard Art Museum's I'm Martha Tedeschi the Elizabeth and John Moores Cabot director of the Harvard Art Museum's and I'm delighted that you've joined us today for a very special lecture in a week in which Harvard is celebrating commencement and when so many alumni are returning to campus for their reunions it seems a fitting time to reflect on the changes in our world and the lessons of the past decades I can't think of anyone I'd rather listen to on this topic than our distinctive distinguished colleague and friend Theodore East Evans jr. longtime curator of American art at the Harvard Art Museum's and now our cherished curator emeritus also of course curator before that at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston and at Yale University today Ted will reflect on the sea changes in the world of museums in the art world since he began his career in 1961 and he's entitled his talk 50 years a curator whatever happened to the art world we knew in a moment my colleague Ethan Lazar who is head of our division of European and American art and also has the honor of bearing the title Theodore East Evans jr. curator of America here at Harvard will introduce Ted and speak in great career and impact as a scholar and curator before we bring Ethan up however I want to say on a personal note that one of the great pleasures of coming to Harvard 22 months ago was the opportunity to get to know Ted and his wonderful wife Susan after a lifetime of admiring and relying on his seminal contributions to the scholarship of American art which is also my field a brilliant curator known for his excellent eye Ted has done so much to build the fine collection here at Harvard creating a legacy which will enrich the lives of students scholars and visitors for generations to come as well his books have inspired so many of us enthusiasts collectors curators scholars setting a standard of excellence that is another important legacy and which has helped to forge a stronger and more mature field of American art it is no exaggeration to say that Ted is one of the great art historians who has walked the hallowed halls of this museum and that the Stebbins name like that of Sly or Forbes can be credited with a profound and lasting impact on the museum and thus on research and teaching at Harvard and on the larger world of art before we begin a few words of thanks that's always my job today's lecture is made possible by the Robert and Margaret Rothschild lecture fund in addition modern and contemporary programs that the Harvard Art Museum's are made possible in part a generous support from the Emily Rho Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer jr. fund and finally I want to thank all of you who are here today who play an ongoing role in our community at the Harvard Art Museum's as members as fellows as supporters of the American art program and as our ambassadors in the larger world you sustained us and you inspire us and we're deeply grateful it was my friend and former director Jim Kuno now president of the Getty Trust who as director here lured Ted out of retirement in 2001 a masterstroke if there ever was one I feel very fortunate and I know Ethan lesser joins me in this the Ted is part of our Harvard art museums family and I wish to thank you Ted for your very meaningful friendship and support and now let's bring Ethan lesser up to the podium thank you [Applause] all right well welcome everyone and thanks Martha and good to see so many friends and supporters and friends of Ted and Friends of the Harvard art museums in the audience this afternoon and my job is to introduced one of the great one of the great art historians one who over the course of his long career has really shaped our discipline or field of American Art Ted I think was a leader among a small group of of curators and scholars whose books not sufficient defined on Canon established artist bodies of work and raise questions that we in the field continue to debate today and you know don't started here in a sense because the graduated from Yale he got his PhD from Harvard in 1971 and he did that remarkably after receiving his JD so we have fjt PhD of the way art historian which is unlikely but rare and powerful combination and then took up his first curatorial post of the Yale art gallery 1968 and in 1977 he lived here to Boston where and spent 22 years as curator of American paintings at the MFA in the during his period in this system astonishing statistics he acquired some 300 paintings they organized them 19 children was about 1 in here and this included seminal projects that we all remember that I remember the lure labeling it a new world masterpieces where I've been painted and of course Martin Johnson he did an artist about hematite is being the authority the world's authority and then the month as I said their brief retirement Ted came back here to Farber back to a place where he started as a curator from air Cunard from 2001 to 2012 and then as consultant to the curator and then hasn't curator emeritus and I think that Ted left of course does market every institution where he worked but nowhere nowhere was this impact as profound many as it was here at this museum like you know it's baseball season so my men Ford's up like some great Slugger who have his best hitting seasons at the end of his career so Trey had his best seasons here here at the fog why and I say that because when Ted okay when Ted arrived in 2001 there was believe it or not no american art department here at the old fog no american art department and Ted went on to establish and later to raise money to endow the department in a curatorship which was named in his honor and it's a position I'm very proud if sometimes daunted to hold today and during his time here tug down they built this department but also uncovered Harvard's astonishing American art collections which the field and the art world and indeed this university had largely overlooked he organized exhibitions and published books and major catalogues to tell the world about these collections and to put Harvard on the map as a serious place for American art Ted's two-volume catalog of our paintings collection is an indispensable resource topping out if you know these books at a combined 1,100 pages and these catalogs along with other books that Ted published during his years here Chronicle our holdings and feature many of the works that Ted acquired during his own tenure works by artists like Jacob Lawrence and Raphael peel and Georgia O'Keeffe that filled significant gaps in our collections than that you can find hanging up stairs in the galleries so I'll close by saying how much this great scholar and curator has enriched the lives of so many of us in this audience and for me it is a pleasure and great privilege to count Ted as a friend and mentor and advisor and I know that Ted has been thinking about the question at the heart of this talk for some time 50 years a curator what happened to the art world we knew please join me in welcoming Ted Stebbins is this working yes Ethan thank you Martha thank you I always like the introduction portion best of these of these programs the decade ago I helped raise funds as Ethan said for a new department and a good friend of mine suggested that that the chair be named for me which I thought at the time was a nice idea but I didn't realize how thrilled I'd be every time I hear anyone mentioned Ethan's title I get a chill on my back and extremely grateful the having such a talented talented occupant of the chair is makes it all totally worthwhile today as you'll see I'm gonna ramble back and forth between reminiscences and a more professional look at what's happened to the art world in the last fifty nine years or so in case you have to leave early I'll jump to my conclusion change is inevitable and while some aspects of the new art world seem puzzling and bothersome many things about the art world and the world in general have changed for the better I think as I hope to show you know I forgotten where you do these things oh good let me first say a word about this museum and how I became an art historian the teaching of our history in America began with legendary figure named Charles Eliot Norton who began teaching art history at Harvard in 1874 first first-in-the-nation 20 years after he began the Fogg art museum now the Harvard Art Museum's with an S was founded completely unexpectedly with mrs. fogs unsolicited bequests $200,000 and their collection here you see the original the original Fogg Museum that little neoclassic building on the left and you see a bust of mr. Fogg Martha and an ether nom we'll talk later but that bus should be sitting outside the entrance and will be shortly I hope the first director of the museum was Charles Herbert Moore who was three of whose works you see here Moore was a terrific water colorist and draftsman he was a friend and colleague of Norton's he taught drawing here and he was a friend of John Ruskin whose portrait he painted which is at the left so more in the sense of too much of forgotten figure began the long tradition of drawings drawing being important at Harvard three of his works here the mr. Moore died in 1938 years before I was born so I didn't know him but the the major requirement for choosing someone to speak today is that they be elderly I have the astonishing experience of having known every one of the Harvard directors 10 Harvard directors that I've known them all since more the most amazing was mr. Forbes who was appointed director in nineteen nine retired in 1944 and when I was in John Coolidge's Museum class 1965 mr. Coolidge said would you mind picking up mr. Forbes and bringing him to dinner I thought that mr. Forbes but it was so I drove by picked up mr. Forbes brought him to a class dinner and got to know him the great thing about working here at Harvard is he you get to live for a long time Paul sax I knew he was our next door neighbor in the Adirondacks great connoisseur of drawings really the founder of my field had the house next door I didn't know him well I was a little kid I'd see him going off to his writing cabin in the woods still at work in the 1950s so was it was a privilege knowing him next was John Coolidge whom of course I knew very well the director of the museum teacher of the museum class and mentor someone who really changed my life and made my career impossible Agnes Monken great connoisseur of drawings a slightly scary character the first class we had with her someone said someone said isn't that drawing made by Degas and she said oh my god if I ever hear you say daga again you'll be out of here in a minute it's dugal so that was almost I saw a career almost crumble and Seymour slive I took several courses from great man great teacher and another mentor the charge charming Danny Robbins I knew Peter browner and I do less well Jim Kuno I knew very well as was said he hired me asked me to come here at the request of Mary Rose thank you Mary Rose and Tom let's I've worked with closely only Tom I think of everyone anyone in the country could have gotten this impossible possibly difficult building built and Tom did that and as soon as it was done disappeared in the night and finally Martha Tedeschi who has the promise of being one of the great directors of this this institution terrific terrific person as you've already seen my first experience with art took place some 60 years ago in the fall of 1959 I was about to start my senior year at Yale my wife and I had a tiny apartment and of course no art and my best friend Jack Hynes said oh you should have a painting so he was already collecting people came from Pittsburgh and he was an art history major I was a major in political science and economics I was planning to become a United States Senator he was planning to study art and literature he lent us this painting on the right by Fritz winter whose work incidentally is included in the exhibition that I hope you'll see upstairs in venture we hung it then we invited Jack over for dinner to thank him for the loan and he said oh my god you've hung it upside down so we put it the right way around and my friend and classmate gave me my first lesson in looking at art by fall we were both in Cambridge he was at the business school I am mistakenly went to the law school I still don't know why and and he said we should go down to Sotheby's to see the Rembrandt gets old I'd heard of Rembrandt I hadn't heard of Sotheby's at the time I still knew nothing about art we raced a Logan Airport I was always game for whatever Jack would suggest we raised to Logan Airport on November 15th we paid $12 a piece for the Eastern Airlines shuttle and we found ourselves a couple of hours later standing at the back of our Black Tie gathering where the famous auctioneer Lewis Marion was hammering down a piece after piece if that's for me the piece after piece and then there was a pause and then out came Aristotle examining the bust of Homer which you see here on the right bidding began rapidly reached a million dollars which had been estimated as the likely price and then there were just two bidders and then Douglas Dillon built bid a very distinguished looking guy in the front row bid 2.3 million for the Metropolitan he was the president of the museum by the highest price ever paid for a work of art and that one won the painting by sheer good luck I had witnessed the very moment that the modern art world began from then that story was front page news in The Times and elsewhere after that the art world increasingly became a subject of popular interest and the press luckily I was there to witness another landmark sale 56 years later in November 2017 just last fall when Christie's sold Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi for 450 million dollars the new record for a single work of art it's caused a lot of controversy has been written about a huge amount in the press first is it a fake no it's absolutely not one sees this in the extraordinarily beautifully painted right hand of Christ and comparison to the to the right hand in Leonardo's lady with an ermine croco in additions even to my eye certain parts of the painting Christ's hair and certain parts of his robe seem unmistakably Leonardo more importantly than what I think the leading authority on Italian Renaissance painting is Keith Christiansen at the Met he was Keith as an eminent figure was a former student of the one and only Sidney Freiburg here at Harvard and Keith has studied the painting carefully and agrees that it's an authentic work but this is a big but the picture is in damaged condition at restoration the petition of that the furnace the blower all around the face prevents us from seeing it anything like the way Leonardo would have intended who would buy such a work at this price it was purchased by an Arab Prince even though the Muslim faith forbids the depiction of human form the under bidder was a Chinese billionaire so there were no Americans involved and they toured the the last couple of hundred million of the bidding the art world has become completely irrational totally international and price no longer has any relationship to aesthetic quality and one of the that's one of the downsides of today's art world Christie's promoted the painting is the greatest discovery of recent times even though everyone knew it had been floating around the art world for six or seven years been bought inexpensively at a New Jersey auction been offered to a number of museums various dealers got in and out of partnerships on it some made money some lost money but Christie's promotion their marketing of the picture was just outstanding I don't want to use the word Kong but but let's call it an amazing amazing marketing success for for Christie's the same day at Christie's at the morning sale I bought the untitled work on the right by Roland Penrose for $9,000 it's almost exactly the same size as that Leonardo and I personally would rather have it on my wall it's not as depressing for one thing it's a fascinating collage by a fascinating collage made up of tiny photographs which you can't see here Penrose was a prominent British surrealist and I was thrilled the other day in Chicago when I saw one of his works hanging with the dollies Magritte's the great surreal surreal pictures of the chicago collection i often advise collectors buy the object that pleases you and moves you pay no attention to the name of the artist you're not an autograph collector you're collecting works of art Leonardo naturally leads us to Michelangelo the other towering figure of the Renaissance the met earlier this year had on view one of the greatest exhibitions in its history or my experience many of you I know saw it show 133 of his drawings and a number of his sculptures the largest such gathering that we'll ever see it was amazing and even more amazing worthy behind long lines of people outside the museum waiting to get in and then as you see here on the right long lines waiting once you're inside the museum now to get in what's one of the biggest changes in my lifetime when I began museums were essentially empty they were for a small elite and now there's a huge widespread public interest in them our 1,600 art museums today draw 65 million visitors a year with the Met leading the way with 7 million exhibitions have become more and more ambitious almost every work is now deemed lendable I still don't quite trust this new technology but so far these incredibly fragile works are being shipped all around the world a few years ago the Harvard Art Museum's the fog LED it's a whole group of Bernini but SETI you see two of them on the left to the Met and the Kimball and they all survived these in my day as a student these works not only weren't moved they were kept in one cabinet and they were never moved even a few inches that were thought to be so fragile so I don't understand this but as long as it works it works yesterday or the day before the Gardner Museum closed its extraordinary exhibition of Fra Angelico if you missed it and if you're uh if you live within a hundred miles of the area you should be very ashamed that was it really absolutely beautiful stunning world-class exhibition to see these mostly in the in Europe use you go for the big FRA Angelico's at Cortona and elsewhere and seeing these these small panels these little altar pieces and being able to examine them up close even on the last day of the show there weren't huge crowds it was just an amazing experience they were made in 1430 and 1450 it was hard to imagine how anyone ever dared pick up a paintbrush after that but but they did I remember the first the first blockbuster was the Mona Lisa Jackie Kennedy asked the French to send the Mona Lisa to America and Andrew Malraux agreed so the Mona Lisa came to the Metropolitan and the National Gallery 1963 they came for a month each at each museum and in those two months time a million people saw it and the depths of winter lined up in the cold the draw of the single work of art people hoping to connect with greatness and with history and with this probably the most famous work of art in the world meant something papa in a few years time art had become popular one of the bad news things is that exhibition catalogs have grown tremendously when I was first going to exhibitions I would carry around the small paper X paper catalogue I'd make notes in it for future reference nowadays you need a small cart to carry around the catalogue which are sponsored by the hernia doctors I think of America why exactly did such crowds pour in to see Leonardo and Michelangelo the Mets the Mets exhibition I don't need that yet the Mexican meth exhibition was titled the divine Michelangelo and that gives us a clue people in this confused age where traditional values seemed under siege seek the authentic and the inspirational the greatest painters are seen as having divine god-given talents and people want the uplifting experience of seeing the best that humanity has achieved this brings me back to my own entry into the art world well at law school I wrote my my third-year paper on the tort liability of the art expert I mean the question was when could art experts be sued for giving expert opinions by way of preparation I interviewed Professor Jacob Rosenberg here at the Fogg he was curator of prints a Rembrandt expert and we talked about how he went about making his decisions most important he admitted me a law student to his graduate seminar on connoisseurship and it changed my life this course came his book which I still look at regularly on the quality of drawings completely outdated in many ways now but still a wonderful thoughtful study about on the subject of what my generation regarded as the key issue in art history that is a quality the questions of quality and authenticity the practice of connoisseurship as it's known knowing roseburg changed my life and he gave me the tools of a professional to practice and he secured my admittance our first into the harvard graduate program in art history and then the meet and then a couple of years later when he went to Washington as the Krantz professor at the National Gallery he took me with him as the as the Chester Dale Fenollosa really the beginning of my career I was I was very very lucky in one piece of luck for me and for my fellow graduate students was that the field was small so Barbara Novak John Wimber ding Bill girths and the handful of others all all moved and we thought we deserved it of course but we were just really lucky we moved from one good job to the next because the work the weren't many competitors it was a it was a goal that Golden Age that way it's worth mentioning that the director and the curators at Harvard at the Fogg at Yale and elsewhere were also the curators that's completely changed now that's a change that I lament the the pattern broke down in the 70s and 80s curators and professors academics now or likely to carry on to different paths although there are people in this audience who have done both as I have and Ethan shows every promise being equally gifted in the classroom as as with the with the objects I think that that pendulum is bouncing back importantly while I'm thinking about drawings and professor Rosenberg I should say as a again that the the serious study of drawings began here Paul Sachs was the founder of the field and because of his influence and his students Harvard built for one of the two or three outstanding collections of Western drawings in the world most recently I'm showing these four pictures because George Abrams recently a class of 54 added to Harvard's collection with a gift of his own extraordinary holding of Dutch and Flemish drawings the two on top are by Rembrandt the two below which looks so similar in many ways are by his colleagues not copyist not not students but excellent artists on their own who worked in styles close to his one of my few few complaints about this building now is that if you look around the building you'll see scattered groups of drawings here and there but nothing to indicate the bedrock importance of Harvard's holding in the field this this institution is the equivalent of the Morgan Library and the Getty in terms of master drawings and I'd love to see a special gallery reinstituted where drawings could be hung during my first year of coursework my friend Carrie Welch asked me one day do you want to go to see the new heeds at voz I hadn't heard of heed or votes but he turned out to be an interesting little-known American painter and voz a distinguished Boston gallery so Dan we went I immediately fell in love with heeds work I organized my first dissertation on my first exhibition on it in 1969 then wrote my dissertation on it he he and I have had a great ride as his work was so varied from his maar scenes that you see above to these mysterious seascapes below and more pictures and more evidence about him are constantly turning up when when he moved to Florida they found his first great patron Henry M Flagler in in st. Augustine and he started painting the Great Florida marshes above and magnolias and Cherokee roses as you see below tourists bought these paintings and they took them all around the country they didn't buy them because they were great art they just bought them because they wanted a souvenir of their travels and that's why so many heeds from Minneapolis and Los Angeles and all over the country turn up regularly in tag sales a couple of generations later the children and grandchildren have no idea who he'd was and so up the pace it's a art dealers dream the auctioneers love to find these these new he's since I've written about hate I became the expert on the painter in the art world the the experts are self-appointed if you there's no different world is still the last wonderfully uncontrolled and sometimes crazy place so I became the heat expert when New Works turned up they bring them to me and when fakes and forgeries turned up I need to for the integrity of the artist I need to figure out which ones are the real ones and which ones aren't the during the 80s and 90s there were two forgers there were two or three forces at work and I got so I could distinguish the hands of each forger so I would know who was producing that work there was a great occasion I see Tony laughing there was a great occasion when Alexander essa veto and the art dealer thought they bought a couple thinking they were real then he then I went in and looked at them said there you've been fooled so then he the runner who brought them he said bring bring a couple more back I want to buy some more so the guy with the fakes came back to Alex's gallery but then as he was of the fake that the guy was walking in the door as a Vito called the police and called nain on one said I'm being robbed and send the police so with our few minutes the police showed up with guns drawn and they saw one of the great great instances of of wrongdoing being stopped in his tracks at the in the art world so now you've had a chance to figure out which is the real one which is the fake so all in favor of the left hand picture being real raise your hands all in favor of the right hand one being real raise your hands so it's about fifty fifty s these are pretty good these are pretty good forgeries and the real one is the one on the left and the fake the fake is the one on the right luckily this is this almost got dicey but at the the MFA has an excellent lab and I was able in the lab was able Harvard has a fantastic research lab also the scientists were able to pinpoint the pigments and the forgery had pigments in it that hadn't been invented during his lifetime so sometimes it's eyeball sometimes you're actually able to to prove it this brings me to changing taste during the 60s and 70s there was a huge excitement about the mid 19th century painters he'd included also Bierstadt whom you see on the top here in lane below great collections were formed the ganses in Los Angeles dick Nubian in Detroit many others who were great museum exhibitions beginning at the met 1970 with their their show called 19th century America then John one burning show 1980 an American light Barbara Novak variety of others wrote important and thoughtful books American art was booming of the market for all American art heated up and Hank included after a while was American Impressionism which you see some examples here it was the market now was being pushed by the price price is no object purchases of Alice Walton who was busy building a new museum in southwest or the northwest corner difficult place to find northwest corner of Arkansas Alice acquired every picture every American painting that hadn't been nailed down and quite a few that had been nailed down such as the action beater and kindred spirits that you see on the on the right her museums really a handsome Museum I was very very pleased when I saw it handsomely designed by our neighbor Moshe Safdie here in Cambridge and I'm flawed applauded Alice's ambition and her success in bringing some great art to the American Southwest the Northeast as you know has got much too much art oh all the museum basements are full of things occur and of things the South because of history the Civil War economics and so on the south and southwest have been are very much barren territory so it's wonderful to see art and it's wonderful that it's not just a lonely museum a million people a year are going to see Crystal Bridges then two major events occurred both bad news for the art dealers first Alice slowed her buying way down as her collection became complete and secondly the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 took place the art market in every field came to a stop and when it resumed the landscape had changed as drastically as it does after a hurricane suddenly almost no one was interested in neither the Hudson River school or the American and Christmas are an older European art for that matter all attention suddenly shifted would take some serious I think serious serious work in cultural psychology to figure out exactly why this happened all attention suddenly switched to the modern field modern art equally astonishing was the change of taste involving 18th century American furniture for me pieces like these are among the great works of American art the amazing Newport desk at the Garvin collection the great Philadelphia armchair on the right these seem to me great works of sculpture but they're now called Brown furniture and work and Edward and we're told the young don't want it in their houses so the young don't know what they're missing I think it's wonderful material but it's um it's fallen out of favor to say the least today 18th and 19th century American paintings are pretty much forgotten a territory with one great exception two weeks ago the collection of David Rockefeller was sold at Christie's and included the Gilbert Stuart that you see here on the left it's one of a dozen replicas of an original life portrait called the Vaughan Washington so it's a replica but by Stewart the painting unexpectedly caused passionate bidding when the dust settled it had sold for twelve million dollars or twelve times the estimate on the right you see Harvard's very similar Gilbert Stuart a work that is traditionally hung in the corporation room but is now here in the museum is it here now even yes you can see it on view Harvard's picture is earlier in the series and it's more lifelike more lively has some landscape behind it it's a superior picture so the question for the for the curator now is is Harvard's picture a twelve million dollar picture or should it go back to the corporation was the high auction price based on artistic quality or are in the rockefeller provenance Americans are nothing if not social climbers and people love to have works that belong to Rockefeller or Elizabeth Taylor the Duchess of Windsor the big auctions in New York make use of those big names curators value is of absolutely no interest to curators except when we're having to insure something over on the market couldn't matter less what we look for when we hang paintings is strictly the wall power the interest the power of the work but an auction price like this especially when you have a very similar one gets our attention as we see from the popular exhibitions like Michelangelo the public still responds to great exhibitions of older masters but in the marketplace as I said older art has been dramatically and quite suddenly replaced by really a feeding frenzy for modern and contemporary work going back to the 1950s my youth the art and the art and architecture of that period was completely serious there was nothing cynical about it in architecture and we think of the Seagram building I think of the secret building I walk past that often in New York Mies van der Rohe 1958 nice headed the Bauhaus before coming to the u.s. the structure is sleek contained graceful taut and has a kind of modernist perfection balance for me it is the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's astonishingly astonishing equally perfect painting number two 1950 one of the great paintings of the era one not celebrated enough which lucky Harvard is lucky enough to own it is on view here in the gallery the films of the period also seemed flawless from here to eternity East of Eden on the waterfront all glorified of the greatness of the American spirit the courage of the individual the grace and decency of the American woman here were two steals from Alaia Alaia cousins on the waterfront of 1954 with Marlon Brando Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden I think for me this is the outstanding film of its time 1973 when I was just starting at Yale Julian and Joann Ganz asked me to a collector's dinner asked me to give a lecture in Los Angeles and had dinner for me the night before and I went over to my place and sat down and they're seated to my right was Marie Saint one of the great moments of my life and hearing her soft that unmistakable voice and then learning that she was a collector of American art which he still is still living still collecting was a magical a magical thing like it on a marriage for all her life to the same kind later we learned that the seemingly perfect figures sports stars like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams directors like Kazan were far from perfect they were more a product of our own longing for heroes I think something coming out of our the heritage of the Second World War when the generals and fighter pilots were all seen to be heroes Jackson Pollock and the artists at the same time were seen to be the same in 1960 we elected a seemingly perfect man as president Jack Kennedy only later did we learn about his ill health his extramarital affairs and so on including one with the American goddess Marilyn Monroe who died of an overdose in August 1962 I still remember it still remember reading about it the perfect world was not so perfect after all we're one where it was one where women were relegated to a second-class role where image candid for more than reality in the weeks following Marilyn's death a young commercial artist in New York reinvented modern art by silk-screening a photo of her and creating a composition with 25 colored images on the left and 25 black-and-white on the right Andy Warhol of course in doing so he Illustrated the banality of the age the stultifying repetitiveness repetitiveness of many events in images the falsity of glamour and he really set the scene for the next half-century of art you'll remember how Marcel Duchamp shocked the art world in 1917 by exhibiting his fountain at the upper left his upside-down urinal to a shocked art world Andy Warhol took up the banner of rebellion against the old values with his Marilyn's and then two years later with his brillo boxes you see on the right one critic arthur danto famously declared that this moment marked the end of art and in a way he was completely correct art had previously been distinguished by its beauty which was now deemed irrelevant and beauty is a word that our historians hesitate has it don't they die no they don't they hesitate they just don't use it and art no after all aren't no longer need demonstrate of the touch are the brushwork are the hand of the individual artists are art need not even be made by hands or may Warhol had a factory are indeed made at all a letter describing plans for a work is widely accepted as conceptual art idea has replaced the skill and craft of the artist an exhibition that I just saw a week ago in New York at the Guggenheim the Vietnamese artist at Dan of all not to be included with not to be confused with Van Gogh demonstrates this perfectly where where Duchamp and Warhol exhibited found objects with at least some arguable aesthetic quality you realize when you see it that the urinal is actually quite graceful a little Brancusi like Dan vu shows us things that lack any aesthetic quality at all except for what we read into them he shows us historical artifacts that you see here including the chandeliers from the Hotel Majestic in Paris where the 1973 peace agreement was signed the engine in the center from his father's Mercedes signaling his father's rise to the middle class in Europe and the television washing machine and dryer that his mother received also in Europe from a German welfare agency these are objects completely without important importance except for their associations looking at them and looking at a lot of art now you're lost without the explanatory labels you can you can see the way it works on the two on the left are our shown in the Guggenheim on the famous ramp that leads me to make a comment about the Guggenheim's famous building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1959 I personally love the building loved walking past it I love going in it but it's unfair to say that the museum's directors and curators I've known quite a few of them have pretty much despised it from the beginning it's a very difficult place to install most art although the staff over the years has learned how to acclimate the art with the with the sloping ramps the building emphasizes the conflict between the ambitions of the architect the architect who wants to build a famous structure now that enhances his reputation that's what he has in mind and the needs of the curators who longed only were handsome well it galleries the in this case I'm in the class and the group in the on the class of the old fogies the the best galleries in my experience of the old galleries the net of the old wing of the National Gallery the Cleveland Museum the old Fogg and so on there have been wonderful museums built in our times but only a few I think of Louie Kahn's elegant light filled a museum the Kimble and Fort Worth but most modern museums including I dare say I hope Martha is left for a minute including this one our flawed you find you find up you look around you find places where the the architect of one out and and impose his vision you find other places where the curators got exactly what they want this lecture hall I think it's just about perfect I love speaking here the acoustics everything about it is great there are other other things in the museum I had trouble walking upstairs had trouble passing someone and the little narrow stair going up to the second floor so every every building is a compromise but the power of the architect is great war hallmarks also the end of the portrait as we do it the portrait reached its climax in the Golden Age the Gilded Age portraits of Sargent Boldini and so many others here you see sergeant's portrait of mrs. Fiske Warren and her daughter one of the treasures of the MFA mother and daughter are seated in mrs. Gardner's Museum they were nice-looking people but sergeant had the ability to flatter the greatest gift of the of the portrait painter he made them look more glamorous and more beautiful than anyone ever could and that was his job so the portraits the portraits are magnificent they have very little to do with reality they're more of the reality is the reality of class and aspiration and wishful thinking despite the death of portraiture many portraits are still being painted Harvard still commissioning portraits of its presidents and Dean's I don't know what I'd suggest I used to be on the portrait committee the portraits are pretty pretty horrible mostly they're based on photographs they're painted by artists who weren't very talented but they're Harvard on 300 years of portraits so it's pretty hard to say well now let's substitute photographs I don't know what I do luckily I'm not on that committee anymore landscape still life a history painting are all dead also except for occasional galleries in Nantucket or Palm Beach hard to find those kind of painting some when you find them they aren't any good what does this mean you wonder I think that archeologists in the future will look at us and will conclude that ours was a society that lost interest in history and in nature one positive change one very positive change in our time has been the expansion of values a broadening of taste that's still going on today with the with the with the women's movement the civil rights movement and so on the old white male can and began to be broken down and doors were slowly opened to tons of good and great women artists but also to gay artists ones of color and others a huge gain a huge gain for the richness of the culture as a curator at Harvard here in 2011 I guided the acceptance of a wonderful collection of outsider art much of the work of untrained african-american artists and the rural South you see three examples here the gift of DD and David Barrett Harvard 71 was a difficult process not because of the Barrett's who are the nicest people around but because Harvard had a lot of trouble accepting accepting this unusual unfamiliar art surprised me and that's another subject of another lecture but Harvard can be surprisingly conformist and narrow-minded in some ways I leave I'll leave that to others my own introduction to this kind of art occurred when I first saw the Simon Rodia Towers in Los Angeles in the late 60s they're just a totally magnificent there the work of one man they rise 90 feet tall and they still stand he made them all Italian a krasin may the moment bottle caps and cement homemade remedies as an astonishing act of artistic courage and originality I also loved saw early on they throne the throne of the third heaven is called on the right by James Hampton no one when you see them no one can doubt that these are these are great works of art recently the National Gallery has had a show called outlier art outliers the new term for it used to be called primitive untrained or grassroots artists so once the National Gallery has a show which they just just had a might might be stilt up then the that's the National Gallery has never been a very avant-garde institution so that marks real widespread acceptance of this new a new kind of heart the move to Modern Art has been has been again something we need to work on exactly why it's caused this is the kind of work in the 50s when I was a kid some of you were this is the kind of art that your parents said you know my kid could do that you can't fool me with that stuff well now and 60 years of a dramatic change this is all that people really care about there was a lot of books written a huge amount of education a lot of college courses the time-life series a lot of reasons this happened but now this is this is this is accepted and as you know the very rich have gotten richer everywhere and what they seem to want is this kind of work in 2015 David Geffen sold can Griffin definis I think a Hollywood character Griffin is a is a guy that lives in Chicago so Griffin bought these two paintings Pollux number seventeen eighteen nineteen forty-eight and interchange by de Kooning for five hundred million that even Leo Castelli would have been stunned by that the de Kooning on the right 300 million becomes the second only to the Leonardo in terms of all-time prices I was very surprised to see them both hanging on the walls of the Art Institute of Chicago and I was there when I was there last week and my conclusion could quickly was that the de Kooning it's really a great painting from his best period that the Pollock is smaller than I expected and not nearly as distinguished depending as Harvard's for scholarly oh this is our friend Aggie gund showing that all the collectors aren't just sitting around counting their money Aggie guned has a fabulous collection in New York and has a Harvard masters of course sold her her big Lichtenstein for a ton of money in order to to fund criminal justice reform so there is a quite a lot of idealism in the art world as well for scholarly innovative exhibitions the University Museum plays a more and more important role the big museums need large attendance to feed their budget to get the restaurant the bookstore and everybody doing well Harvard continues to set a great example doing exhibitions that add to knowledge really contribute I loved Ethan's show the philosophy chamber where he unearthed Harvard's original museum of art and science unearthing a paintings mineral specimens Native American things astronomical objects and and teaching us something about what learning looked like back then when around 1800 around 1800 hundred and I'm still on view here we show you must see it's upstairs third floor is Lynette Roth's groundbreaking exhibition called invent or it shows us for the first time what happened in Germany in art between 1943 when the war was still going on 1955 who knew that art was even being made in these years astonishing inventive and courageous show exactly the kind of thing a great university should be doing this is one of my favorite walls in the exhibition these 8 by 8 small works by three or four different painters of the mid-1940s the the role the role of the curator has changed which is nice the curator used to be a button to finish this a quiet scholarly person sitting in the back of the library now the curator gets to speak and do wonderful exhibitions and reach out to teach and educate the public all that brings us to Jeff Koons is now 62 years old I'll conclude with a few works words about Jeff he's the most highly regarded living artists both in the market and among scholars the former commodity broker at Smith Barney I just love that part I first became aware of his work in a in a very important exhibition called endgame that was organized by David Ross at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1986 even so for me someone who was aware of Warhol and Duchamp was a shot to see floating basketballs and encased vacuum cleaners presented so unapologetically as ours unlike their predecessors they were art and people stood around them examining their form commenting on their colors as Koons wrote of the vacuum cleaners it is a breathing machine it also displays both male and female sexuality and as orifices and phallic attachments there are no hidden meanings Michael Kimmelman and many of the art critics agreed disagreed Kimmelman wrote this is one last pathetic gasp of the self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 80s I think he was wrong I just liked Combs's work and from the beginning he seems to be an artist that has perfect insight into our sincere a perfect insight into our into our culture which is such a crazy mix of crass materialism bad manners good morality was a great article in today's New York Times about moral people by David Brooks read it if you can our society as you know is very very confused in many ways Koons Koons work sums that up his wonderful big puppy outside the the Guggenheim in Bilbao is so welcoming and cheerful and oversized and fits the mood of the visitor exactly and his and his balloon dog there were five of these five unique blowing the balloon big balloon dogs each one in a different color it was great seeing them at at Versailles as my wife and I did Koons Koons work is as good and as tacky as the Sun Kings own Commission's it got you thinking what a really tacky place Versailles is a wonderful wonderful exhibition so all I'll close with Jeff Koons and the balloon dog which I believe is an art that will last thank you all very very much [Applause] maybe we oughta just stand here trying to take some of your questions okay yeah because I don't think we have a lot of time so thank you ted a wonderful talking i think we could all continue to listen to you all afternoon and i think we have time for a few questions and i will i will kick it off Stubbins curator to Stebbins uh-huh and I asked you you know we saw these turns in your talk different art and fashion turned to modern art what's what's your prediction for the future what next I'm not an investment counselor I I always tell I can only tell people what I respond to Ethan let you stay here so we can admit you can answer questions - I have no idea I have no I would have said the he'd if I'd been advising people I would have said he'd will last forever but but all my favorite 19th century painters have disappeared in terms of the market and so my grandchildren will not be driving those Porsches that they were hoping for but uh but the art is just as beautiful as ever so I think there's no no accounting for no accounting for taste as we know from reading the papers everyday there's no poor no predicting historic could be an omen at Gilbert's story by the way the word on the street is that Mike Bloomberg bought that painting which one the Gobert Stewart Oh Washington so he could afford it yeah other questions from yes thank you for a very fascinating you mentioned morality and I'm thinking about the demise of the note low calorie after 138 years because of selling forgeries and the increasing number of say we should say replicas of forgeries available and the Internet and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about authenticity forgery and scams and how they affect museums in the art world and the curator you well a people often ask me whether I think the question is about forgeries and scams and and people ask me if the art dealers of today are any more unscrupulous than in the past and the answer's no they're and they're no more unscrupulous than than probably in the normal average used-car dealer say but but when they fail I mean when the nerd lers sold up 16 Pollux and Rothko's that weren't Pollux and Roth goes to different collectors and how they did that how they didn't know I just don't know and then when they were found out they just collectors come to me and say oh the dealer guarantees it well what do you do when you go to nerd lers the next day the door is locked and there's a little sign that says closed they just disappeared went out of business in a day so so it's a dicey world it used to be you paid a couple of thousand dollars you got a bad painting you did whatever but now there's so much money involved with so many lawyers and people that it's it's a scarier it's not as much fun scary scary world that doesn't answer your question but the best I could do anybody else thank you go ahead yeah then we'll go to Carol Ted I was a student of yours at Smith in the 60s oh my gosh how wonderfully really come my first class was teaching at Smith it's I loved it oh it was a great class oh I wonder what your thoughts are about the future of art history publishing I mean on the one hand so much more archival information is available online research is so much more easy and thorough on the other hand the university of press of new england for example just went under and that was the process they just went without the business they just went out of business yeah no yeah you didn't know that was the publisher for regional art for architecture that's of local interest varible what does the future hold for those of us who want to publish on Bill local topics the question is publishing and and I don't know you answer that I think it's a great question we we were having this debate in the museum world right now about what does it mean to put a book online as opposed to having a hardcopy book that you can thumb thumb through and I'm very much an advocate of a second I think it's a whole different experience and I think a lot of us are but these books are expensive I mean as Teddy's published how many I think Erica found that there are a hundred and fifty-four references to Ted in our online library system you're gonna ask him he's published one hundred and fifty four books but the answer is that there is pressure because of the expense of the books and you know you access right.we catalogs are expensive if you put them out for free that's the counter-argument on the other side what does it mean what kind of experience do you have from actually reading holding a text as against seeing it online and and who's going to maintain the online resources you know 10 20 50 years from now mhm well that's what's gonna happen to them you know these publications and whether when you're trying to get tenure or something does it count if you published it all right online and right and then and when you hand your first book to your mom that's an important moment it's a it's a real book and you have to say mom if you click here that's not that's right you can't autograph the website again that's so good that's no good so so pass it down to two rows in front of you there's an important person here who knows a lot of stuff thank you for that I I want to know something about your view of the disconnect in my mind of museums that are crap the Michelangelo show you could barely see the drawings at them at the Met the Met has what 7 million 8 million people who come now and of course they're charging when in the old days when their galleries were empty you could go to the Met for free and I remember when you go to the Fogg for free well that's another that's another now we have an explosion of some people going to museums but the the gate is prohibits many from going yeah I'm at the MFA when I was there there would be simultaneous committee meetings one Committee on broadening the audience they'd be sitting there how would we get a broader population on the owners and then the finance committee sitting in the next room saying how high can we push the attendance charge and still keep attendance but so and the craziest thing is the richest university in the universe charging admission for this museum it's something that Martha Tedeschi completely agrees with and it's working on so I'm not critical but it there is something completely wrong of the alumni for God's sake when you see the important officials of the university tellement this this museum should be free and open to people what was the other question Carol I think that that was it I think those committees are still having their different meetings in different rooms with them together they're a girl they're still meeting I'm so glad to have a Smith student here so exciting their first class is incredibly exciting and there I was commuting out from Cambridge and finding 50 young Smith women sitting there I still remember on a very hot day I took my jacket you lectured that of course a jacket and tie I took my jacket off and one of the senior faculty members said we lecture in our jackets so Laurie mister could give that to mr. Coolidge right there you think there ever will be serious art created on the Internet yes any any other questions can you elaborate no I don't know what it's gonna look like I have no idea but I'm sure there will be because that's the future the Internet unforced leak is the future of just about everything and the will don't you think the will and reason to at that I see a that our colleagues did in Boston called art in the age of the Internet speaks to that very question really I'm Lee won the neck submission or a composition yeah yeah yeah so no I can get closed okay yeah when how many more to two more questions okay Tom did you huh yeah Ted I wondered if your thoughts have evolved on the liability of art experts or issues of tort liability and the lie of the liability of art experts unknown that was one of your first yeah I love that there are I love dealing with that artist where there are fakes and forgeries because it's makes life so interesting and and you meet so many absolutely insane people but so in a nutshell the law is that if you give it if you're asked for your opinion you give an honest opinion even if you're wrong you can't be held liable but but of course we all know that that that the more money you have the better law you can get so if you have some crazy wealthy fool who wants to sue you for a long time it's going to be a very unpleasant and financially damaging experience is the conclusion then not to offer an opinion what's that it's the conclusion then not to offer an opinion well you know I think it's disgraceful a lot of museums forbid the curators from giving opinions which i think is really unfortunate because there has to be a Bureau of Bureau of Standards and and if you work for a big museum you're protected the museum will protect you they have they have lawyers and people are much less hesitant to sue the Museum of Fine Arts then then dr. so-and-so all alone so if you work I think if you work for Museum you should be giving but yeah that's a nice tone you should be giving opinions if anyone's been reading about the wodsworth Athenaeum recently they know that these fakes and forgeries are a very live issue even in our Internet age maybe more so in our that's another talk fakes in the age of the internet all right we have one more one more question yeah yeah and fish ullians name right why did what why did it take so long to get Fitz Hugh lanes name right I didn't hear it it's Henry Lane he's asking about Fitz Hugh Lane Fitz Henry Lane oh yeah let's go to a better question yeah Rob that doesn't count okay Dan Horowitz are you mentioned you mentioned correctors that a couple of times and I wondered if you could talk about collecting and collectors you've known what the collectors collectors are fascinating I just gave a lecture of the MFA on them and the that says that's another hour so but but the collectors collect because of the internal need the good collectors all these collectors now paying huge prices at auction are buying for investment I can absolutely tell you for a fact I don't know when it will happen but it's going to turn out to be a game of old maid and though the one who gets the the black queen last is going to be stuck with a very expensive mistake I mean those are bad at 500 million those are bad investments I know so let's leave it at that thank you all very very much in fact [Applause]

Channel: Harvard Art Museums

Views: 18,820

Rating: 4.6764708 out of 5

Keywords: Harvard Art Museums, Lecture, Harvard, Art Museum, art history, Ted Stebbins, art curator, American Art, Contemporary Art

Id: Q2KVmwBezU4

Length: 77min 49sec (4669 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018