The Smithsonian Castle sits about midway on The Mall’s south side. It is a twelfth century French Romanesque structure designed by James Renwick and built in 1847-1855. (Renwick designed as well St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.) It is one of those American buildings that broke with the stronghold of Greek revival architecture and is similar in spirit to the work of, later, Frank Furness, H.H. Richardson and Richard Morris Hunt. It is the earliest building on the Mall if not the first. While it stands today as something akin to a Victorian folly, architecturally it adds a bit of spice to the now more common beaux arts revival buildings and the more recent 60’s modern structures that continued to adhere to the dictates of classical symmetry and balance. All of these provide an example of the late development of American architecture: until the construction of I.M. Pei’s National Gallery East Building in 1974 all of the architectural entities on the Mall referenced European precedents.
When I visited Washington in 1964 I believe this building was closed to the public. It is now open although there is little to see here. In the main hallway, its sense of open space frustrated by two rows of tall columns down the length of the room, there is a gift shop, an information counter, and a cafeteria which serves soup, sandwiches and an assortment of breads, pastries, and beverages. There are tables set up for dining in the Great Hall, or one can take his lunch outside into the gardens at the back of the building. The restoration is lovely and while it presents no overall impression due to the vertical distractions, it is a welcome break from the architectural pretensions of its neighbors.
Two of the most unusual museums in Washington, or elsewhere for that matter, are the National Museum of African Art and the Sackler Gallery. Both of these museums are underground beneath what is now the Enid Haupt Gardens behind the Smithsonian Castle. In the late 1980’s these four and half acres were excavated to a depth of 57 feet, about seven stories, and the African Museum was built on the east side, the Sackler on the west. The museums are accessed from Post Modern kiosks in the far back corners of the garden, one on either side. Underground it is possible to access one museum from the other, (they are in essence one structure), as well as the Smithsonian Information Center which sits to the west of the Castle. I think I read in the literature that the hallway leading from the two museums toward the Castle is 231 feet long. There is a sharp left turn and then an escalator four floors long up to the elevators for the Information Center. Knowing that you are six floors underground gives all of this corridor a real sense of doom. Little about the use of the space there, which is sparsely decorated, dispels that gloom.
Both these museums have a central stairway that winds down an atrium. Hanging in the center of the open space at the African Museum there is an art work of stylized monkeys cut from black ¾ stock, possibly ebony. Each monkey is actually a calligraphic ideogram that means “monkey” in different languages. Each is about eighteen inches wide and thirty or so inches tall. Each has an upward reaching arm and a hanging tail that ends in a hook. The overhead hand of one fits into the hanging tail of the one above it creating a chain of monkeys seen first on edge and then full face, rather like the chains of colored paper children make at Christmas time. As you pass through the museum and descend the levels down to the “top” on the bottom floor these monkeys are always present but you think little of them. However, at the bottom, there is a pool of water continuously fed by a fountain and the bottom monkey hovers about one half inch above the water. “Damn!” I said to myself: someone knows how to use a tape measure. Suddenly, looking up 57 feet, it was all very exciting and wonderful.
The works displayed in the museum are really wonderful but it is yet another new museum that appears to have more public space that display space. I would have no objection to wandering through galleries filled with overstuffed vitrines of objects d’art. I know that is the “old way” of doing things, but I have found that where the old prevails, such as the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, I can have just as much fun, if not more, visually rummaging through the thousands of things that are piled together, picking out for myself the occasional masterpiece.
I was also surprised by how much space was given to the special exhibition of works by Yinka Shonibare MBE, British born (1962) Nigerian artist. Shonibare uses Dutch wax printed fabrics that have the colors of African fabrics but I think the design motifs might be those and others. I’m uncertain if he designs and makes them. But from them he makes, or causes to be made, European period costumes which he then puts on headless white manikins and arranges in tableaux depicting his view of European history or recreating moments from great European paintings such as Watteau’s The Swing,.
These are charming, funny, and many-layered having a strong political undertone, so the museum writes. Much of that political sensibility comes from his having heard Margaret Thatcher suggest a return to Victorian values. As an African, Victorian England was, to his experience, a colonial power which exerted its will through rape and plunder, as he shows us here.
What was most extraordinary to me was the time and expense required for some of these (many are room size) as well as for all of them as a series of art works. Either the artist is independently wealthy or someone is funding his projects.
I was very happy to find that the entrance to one of the largest of the works was boldly marked as for adult audiences. (This showed a social grouping paired off and the couples, or triads, engaged in anal intercourse …a political statement. Ahem.) In the area around the Mall there is a very strong sense of a dedication to tourism and especially to touring families. There are very few examples of the nude in art in the art galleries, even by the great masters. Several times during my week here I have had a passing thought that too many things are being under represented or watered down, there is a too strong patronage to so called “family values” and too little to the best traditions of the fine arts. The danger of this is that it nurtures the belief of sexually hysterical Americans that nudity is the equivalent of explicit sexuality, that it is immoral. I disagree: sexuality and morality are two different things. The nude, expressive form, is something yet again. Museums should help the public understand that.
On the next level there is an exhibition of 58 works from the 525 piece Tishman-Walt Disney World Collection. Mr. and Mrs. Tishman put the collection together beginning in 1969 and in 1984, when it was recognized as the premier African Art collection in America, it was sold to the Disney group who intended to make a museum for it in Florida. That did not pan out and so in 2005 it was given to the Smithsonian. It is a superb collection; each of the pieces is really wonderful. But, again, there was not enough of it. More! More! Encore!
The Sackler Gallery.
I had high hopes for the Sackler, hoping to see something to equal what I have seen at the Chicago Art Institute or the Minneapolis Art Institute but was soon discourage to find that I was to be disappointed. It is a fine collection but there seems to be little of it that is on view and by the time I had made my way down another atrium with spiral staircase it seemed to have run out of energy or interest or perhaps both.
There was a beautiful exhibition of a Middle Eastern Book of Omens, extremely old but in excellent condition, and while I appreciated seeing it I was aware that at this time of my life I don’t really need or want to go off on yet another tangent of a new found interest.
I saved my energy here for the permanent collection only to be greatly disappointed. It begins with an exhibition of bronze and jade for which I have little interest at all. And I’m afraid the ceramics, which I love, when I finally made my way down to them, could not overcome the sense of malaise creeping over me.
In the atrium at the bottom level there were six very oversized pieces in what might have been porcelain …bowls two feet in diameter and a vase eighteen inches high. These were contemporary works referencing the old style in enamels rather than glazes, a technique in which the old techniques are used to create bright contemporary works. I would say that all six of the pieces succeeded admirably.
The Freer Gallery.
With a focus on the Asian arts, both Near East and Far East, the Freer Gallery is an absolute gem of a museum. In a very self contained, modest, classic revival building, on the Mall to the west and behind the castle, creating the feeling of what it must have been like to be in a Roman villa, there are 19 galleries around a beautiful, quiet courtyard. The art works are beautifully placed in these galleries and in the hallways as well as the hallways downstairs where there is a bookstore and public rooms. Each of the galleries is exquisite and I would think that this is the finest collection of Asian arts in this country. Though I often lament that the works on display are too few, the things shown here are so wonderful and so command the attention that anything more would exhaust the visitor.
Among the standouts in the collection were a gallery of illuminated Islamic manuscripts, a gallery of Japanese screens that are the finest I have ever seen, magnificent Chinese ceramics including a Sung Dynasty sgaffito, a design cut through the white slip to reveal the gray body clay, a pottery style that I have always regarded as my favorite …masterful hand drawing on an object’s surface …and six or so vessels from the Sung Dynasty with rabbit’s fur glaze …of which there is nothing finer.
But the most extraordinary are the first two large pieces at the entrance to the Chinese ceramics gallery, each piece with a painted design over the unglazed body. The interpretation tells us that when these were made, c. 2,500 BCE, the ceramics tradition in China was already two thousand years old. That is so hard to imagine.
Mr. Freer, a Detroit industrialist, was introduced to the Asian arts by James McNeill Whistler. Not only did he introduce him to those arts he encouraged him to build a collection. Advice well taken. In addition he collected Whistler’s work and there are two galleries here showing it, as well as the Peacock Room, a room Whistler designed and decorated for a gentleman in London. When that man died Freer bought it and had it moved and installed in his home in Detroit.
When I saw this museum in 1964 I thought it odd that someone could amass so many objects that seemed to me of secondary or minor importance. But with forty five years of art study under my belt, I am now bowled over by the excellence displayed here. I had the opposite responses to the Peacock Room: forty five years ago it was the epitome of elegance and refinement. Now it seems to me just another hand decorated room, of which I now know there are many. Many! I don’t know that I now find it all that interesting, especially in light of the fact that I don’t remember knowing many years ago, that this room was made for the display of the tenant’s vast collection of blue and white ceramics. I’ve seen so many of those collections in country houses presided over by yuppie decorator/housewives that I have pretty much lost my taste for it.
As a child I was aware that Whistler’s name was well known, especially in connection to the painting Whistler’s Mother. But over the years I have seen very few of his works in American museums. I was curious if Whistler’s reputation might not be somewhat lessened because Mr. Freer owned so many of his works: they number in the hundreds. If so, that is obviously a down side to having a wealthy patron.
I know from my own experience that there are American museums with larger collections of Asian Arts that might possibly have even greater depth and breadth. But none of them can equal the character of this museum, nor are their wares displayed in such a way as to command the attention and elicit the response as this one does. If you are in Washington and have time for only one event, do not miss the Freer.
Monkeys grasping for the moon:
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/xuBing.htm
The African Museum:
http://africa.si.edu/index2.html
The Freer and Sackler:
http://www.asia.si.edu/
Online exhibitions at the Freer and Sackler.
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online.htm#
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