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Here come the grownups: The good news about Timothy Rub
Timothy Rub's challenge
Victoria Skelly
After a yearlong search for a successor to the late and the much beloved Anne d'Harnoncourt, the Art Museum recently announced the appointment of Timothy Rub, chief of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Rub, said the Art Museum's board chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, brings "a proven track record in scholarship, connoisseurship, excellent management and fund-raising skills."
This is really good news. I had expected that an excellent manager with fund-raising skills would be hired for this position, but it's significant that the board chose a director who has distinguished himself with skill in scholarship and connoisseurship as well.
Rub, it seems, like Phillipe de Montebello of the Met in New York, is an "object" man— by which I mean someone who takes delight in the act of looking at an object. As the art dealer Richard Feigen put it in Tales From the Art Crypt, "There is an energy, a passion that can be communicated when the connoisseur observes the beautiful, the aesthetic, the soul engaging."
We can expect that Rub's management style will reflect this orientation.
Dancing mummies
You might expect that connoisseurship skills would be obvious among the most important criteria for choosing a leader responsible for a collection such as the Art Museum's. But the museum world lately has tended to de-emphasize the importance of knowledge of objects.
Since the '70s, when Thomas Hoving of the Metropolitan Museum showed the world "how to make the mummies dance," economic constraints on museums have ushered in a new breed of manager— someone whose dominant skills are fund-raising and the administration of art as commerce.
The Art Museum, once a temple for contemplation, scholarship and the education of the sincerely engaged person, has increasingly become a Disneyland of sorts that lures the public at large with popular entertainment. Today an art museum must somehow appeal to everyone— all sections of its community— even if much of its collection and historic focus are significantly compromised in attempting to do so.
The children's hour
A museum must now also provide schooling for elementary-age children. Disproportionate emphasis has been placed on engaging the young with the art of the museum— a goal so noble that few observers have dared to question the importance of this activity in the broader context of a museum's mission.
As someone who has worked with the volunteer program "Art Goes to School" in both my suburban school district and outside, and has worked in museum programs designed to reach children in city schools, I can attest to the enriching educational benefit of exposing all children to art and artists. But this emphasis on educating the young at the Art Museum shouldn't supplant the energy and funds that should be applied to the more important roles of scholarship and connoisseurship of objects.
Barnes banned kids
Albert Barnes, by contrast, dictated that children be forbidden from his Foundation's galleries— not out of mean-spiritedness (in this case, at least) but because he preferred to focus on the aesthetic education of mature individuals. Energy consumed in appealing to the young, he perceived, would have undermined his foundation's primary role.
Developing a mature aesthetic sensibility— becoming an "object person"— requires many, many visits to museums and galleries. But even this experience has become compromised. Try to effectively engage with a work of art while several noisy sessions of restless children and exasperated docents are operating nearby. Try to probe the depths of a work while being jostled by semi-anxious adults fidgeting with their acoustiguides. Are we to be thankful that the Art Museum has allowed us (for a price) merely to be exposed (as the children are) to the art?
Today's shallow artists
Much of what passes for art today seems singularly appropriate to meet the specific demands of this new attention-deficit audience. Can it possibly be that some of this art is now developed with this audience in mind? What Jeff Koons has to say can be grasped in a twinkling. Those who spend too much time wondering about what Bruce Nauman's art really means— well, I think Nauman has had the joke on them.
Timothy Rub's commitment to the object in managing the Art Museum is underscored in his support for a free admission policy. The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Baltimore Museum of Art are relatively local examples of museums that have avoided the "entertainment complex" model of museology. Both offer free admission to all at all times, and the experience of visiting either is qualitatively different from visiting Philadelphia's Art Museum.
On a weekday at the Baltimore Museum I observed only a few school buses. The children inside were quietly absorbed in purposeful activity. Why does it seem that every time I visit our Art Museum, dozens of school buses and hundreds of noisy unengaged children constantly cross my path?
Back to basics
In their preoccupation with attendance, fund-raising, political savvy and real estate development, many museum boards have lost sight of basic principles in measuring the effectiveness of their leaders. If a museum's programs and exhibitions earn the interest and respect of serious art lovers and scholars, the audience and the money should follow.
Perhaps the Art Museum should decrease its current emphasis on fund-raising with the general populace, whose commitment can only be transitory, because the Art Museum has increasingly offered them less and less of substance. Perhaps instead it should focus on stimulating large potential donors for thoughtfully chosen acquisitions which would in turn excite the broader public, as was the case with the purchase in 2006 of Eakins's The Gross Clinic.
Philadelphia is fortunate to have attracted a leader with such promise as Timothy Rub. This treasure, our Art Museum, deserves no less than a director with commitment to the object. Let's hope the city's civic, cultural and business leaders support his endeavors, leaving him sufficient breathing space to manage the Museum as he sees fit— as a museum and not an entertainment extravaganza.♦
To read a response, click here.
This is really good news. I had expected that an excellent manager with fund-raising skills would be hired for this position, but it's significant that the board chose a director who has distinguished himself with skill in scholarship and connoisseurship as well.
Rub, it seems, like Phillipe de Montebello of the Met in New York, is an "object" man— by which I mean someone who takes delight in the act of looking at an object. As the art dealer Richard Feigen put it in Tales From the Art Crypt, "There is an energy, a passion that can be communicated when the connoisseur observes the beautiful, the aesthetic, the soul engaging."
We can expect that Rub's management style will reflect this orientation.
Dancing mummies
You might expect that connoisseurship skills would be obvious among the most important criteria for choosing a leader responsible for a collection such as the Art Museum's. But the museum world lately has tended to de-emphasize the importance of knowledge of objects.
Since the '70s, when Thomas Hoving of the Metropolitan Museum showed the world "how to make the mummies dance," economic constraints on museums have ushered in a new breed of manager— someone whose dominant skills are fund-raising and the administration of art as commerce.
The Art Museum, once a temple for contemplation, scholarship and the education of the sincerely engaged person, has increasingly become a Disneyland of sorts that lures the public at large with popular entertainment. Today an art museum must somehow appeal to everyone— all sections of its community— even if much of its collection and historic focus are significantly compromised in attempting to do so.
The children's hour
A museum must now also provide schooling for elementary-age children. Disproportionate emphasis has been placed on engaging the young with the art of the museum— a goal so noble that few observers have dared to question the importance of this activity in the broader context of a museum's mission.
As someone who has worked with the volunteer program "Art Goes to School" in both my suburban school district and outside, and has worked in museum programs designed to reach children in city schools, I can attest to the enriching educational benefit of exposing all children to art and artists. But this emphasis on educating the young at the Art Museum shouldn't supplant the energy and funds that should be applied to the more important roles of scholarship and connoisseurship of objects.
Barnes banned kids
Albert Barnes, by contrast, dictated that children be forbidden from his Foundation's galleries— not out of mean-spiritedness (in this case, at least) but because he preferred to focus on the aesthetic education of mature individuals. Energy consumed in appealing to the young, he perceived, would have undermined his foundation's primary role.
Developing a mature aesthetic sensibility— becoming an "object person"— requires many, many visits to museums and galleries. But even this experience has become compromised. Try to effectively engage with a work of art while several noisy sessions of restless children and exasperated docents are operating nearby. Try to probe the depths of a work while being jostled by semi-anxious adults fidgeting with their acoustiguides. Are we to be thankful that the Art Museum has allowed us (for a price) merely to be exposed (as the children are) to the art?
Today's shallow artists
Much of what passes for art today seems singularly appropriate to meet the specific demands of this new attention-deficit audience. Can it possibly be that some of this art is now developed with this audience in mind? What Jeff Koons has to say can be grasped in a twinkling. Those who spend too much time wondering about what Bruce Nauman's art really means— well, I think Nauman has had the joke on them.
Timothy Rub's commitment to the object in managing the Art Museum is underscored in his support for a free admission policy. The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Baltimore Museum of Art are relatively local examples of museums that have avoided the "entertainment complex" model of museology. Both offer free admission to all at all times, and the experience of visiting either is qualitatively different from visiting Philadelphia's Art Museum.
On a weekday at the Baltimore Museum I observed only a few school buses. The children inside were quietly absorbed in purposeful activity. Why does it seem that every time I visit our Art Museum, dozens of school buses and hundreds of noisy unengaged children constantly cross my path?
Back to basics
In their preoccupation with attendance, fund-raising, political savvy and real estate development, many museum boards have lost sight of basic principles in measuring the effectiveness of their leaders. If a museum's programs and exhibitions earn the interest and respect of serious art lovers and scholars, the audience and the money should follow.
Perhaps the Art Museum should decrease its current emphasis on fund-raising with the general populace, whose commitment can only be transitory, because the Art Museum has increasingly offered them less and less of substance. Perhaps instead it should focus on stimulating large potential donors for thoughtfully chosen acquisitions which would in turn excite the broader public, as was the case with the purchase in 2006 of Eakins's The Gross Clinic.
Philadelphia is fortunate to have attracted a leader with such promise as Timothy Rub. This treasure, our Art Museum, deserves no less than a director with commitment to the object. Let's hope the city's civic, cultural and business leaders support his endeavors, leaving him sufficient breathing space to manage the Museum as he sees fit— as a museum and not an entertainment extravaganza.♦
To read a response, click here.
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