Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kröller-Müller Museum - May 29, 2004–Sep 12, 2004

Hello Fellow Docents,

A trip to SAM is highly recommended.

There are two rooms full of Van Gogh; a room of Impressionists; a room
of Cubism; a few Mondrians and more ... sheer and complete joy.

Regards,
Sanjeev

Self Portrait, 1887 

Please sign your blog entry!

Hello Fello Docents,

Please do sign your blog messages ... the blog doesn't capture your
email address and thus, unless you sign your entry, we don't know who
sent it in!

Regards,
Sanjeev

Danny Pierce

Fellow docents,

The City of Kent is showing a retrospective of prints by Danny Pierce--from 1950s to present.  It is up in a city building-open during business hours and free of course.  Stop by if you are in the area.  There is a piece by Danny Pierce that is included in the fourth installation of the Building Traditions. 

Thanks Sanjeev for establishing this blog. 

PS. We just returned from a vacation to the Southwest and did get to see the Spiral Jetty and Lightning Fields among many other great things--ask me if you want more information.

London Fire Destroys Artworks

LONDON, May 26 � A fire that began on Monday and ripped through a
warehouse in east London has destroyed millions of dollars worth of
work by leading contemporary British artists, dozens of them from the
vast collection of Charles Saatchi, the warehouse's owner and Mr.
Saatchi said on Wednesday.

Among the works that have been lost are pieces by Damien Hirst, Sarah
Lucas, Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread and Jake and Dinos
Chapman, all part of the influential and showy Young British Artist
movement championed and sustained by Mr. Saatchi for the last 15 or so
years.

Well-known works destroyed in the fire, which raged for two days and
leveled the warehouse, included Ms. Emin's "Everyone I Have Ever Slept
With 1963-1995," a tent on which she had stitched the names of dozens
of past lovers; and the Chapman brothers' "Hell," a series of nine
miniature landscapes depicting the horrors of war that took them two
years to make and that, according to some reports, cost Mr. Saatchi
�500,000, or about $905,000.

The fire broke out early Monday in an industrial park full of small
businesses, spreading from another building into a warehouse belonging
to Momart, a company that specializes in handling, storing and
transporting art and antiquities. A spokesman for the Metropolitan
Police said that the fire was being "treated as suspicious" � which is
routine in such cases � but would not confirm reports that it had been
caused by explosions in gas canisters stored in a building adjoining
the art warehouse.

In a statement Momart, whose clients include Tate Modern, the Tate
Britain, the National Gallery and Buckingham Palace, said that it had
lost 5 to 10 percent of the artwork it stores. It declined to estimate
the cost of the works that had been destroyed, but news reports
speculated that the pieces were worth millions of pounds.

Momart is highly respected in London and, according to its Web site,
www.momart.co.uk, has handled most "major exhibitions in the U.K. over
the past 20 years."

In its statement issued late Wednesday Momart said the fire was so
fierce that company officials had not been allowed onto the site,
known in Britain as an industrial estate, and thus had been "unable to
ascertain the exact condition of the works that were stored there."
The company said however that "it would appear that all the buildings
on the estate have been destroyed."

Momart also said that confidentiality agreements meant it could not
provide details of the works that had been destroyed or the clients
who owned them. But it said, "We can confirm that the facility
contained works owned by a wide range of commercial galleries and
individual collectors."

Details of the works that were destroyed trickled out all day
Wednesday, though. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hirst, Jude Tyrell, said that
Mr. Hirst had lost a number of pieces from his personal collection,
including 16 of his own paintings depicting butterflies and "spinning"
designs, as well as works by Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas and Angus
Fairhurst. "Charity," a 22-foot-tall bronze statue by Mr. Hirst owned
by another collector, which news reports said was worth more than �1
million (about $1.8 million), was also destroyed, Ms. Tyrell said.

Mr. Hirst, best known for work like his dead shark floating eerily in
a tank of formaldehyde, is one of the most important figures in the
Young British Artist movement. To the extent that the movement had a
specific beginning, it was when he commandeered an abandoned warehouse
in 1988 and organized "Freeze," a show of his and his friends'
taboo-breaking works in video, sculpture, painting, collage and
photography that investigated themes like life, death and the angst of
existence.

A number of pieces from "Freeze" were destroyed in the fire, said Will
Paget, a spokesman for the Saatchi Gallery.

Mr. Paget said that Mr. Saatchi had lost about 100 pieces but that his
collection was evenly spread out among six warehouses, only one of
which had been destroyed. But Mr. Saatchi was said to be devastated at
the loss of so much of the collection he had lovingly and cannily
built up.

"Many of these works are great personal favorites of Charles Saatchi
and works he considers to be completely irreplaceable for the history
of British art," Mr. Paget said.

In a statement Ms. Emin said she was "very saddened" at the loss of
works that "had great personal and emotional value and are
irreplaceable." She added, "It is a great tragedy for British culture
that so much art was destroyed in the fire."

Several of the artists, including Ms. Emin, Mr. Hirst and the
Chapmans, are represented by the White Cube, a gallery that, as much
as Mr. Saatchi, is strongly identified with the Young British Artist
movement.

Jay Jopling, the gallery's director, said he did not yet have a
complete list of which works had been destroyed. "A number of our
artists have been affected by this terrible tragedy, and everyone is
in a state of profound shock," he said.

As for the Chapman brothers, whose depictions of mutilated plastic
dolls with extra limbs and genitals in strange places have attracted
attention and opprobrium, they reacted to the fire by telling The
Daily Telegraph that "Hell," the piece that was destroyed, was "only
art" and that they could make it again.

The work, depicting scenes of disaster and chaos, was made from 5,000
figures portraying skeletons, Nazis, soldiers and deformed humans that
had been cast and hand-painted by the artists.

Although he later said that "on a scale of 1 to 10 of how annoyed I
am, I'd say about 11," Jake Chapman also joked to The Telegraph that
the work "can't be burned, because it's hotter in hell than it is in
there." He added, "I suspect, in fact, it will, in fact, have gone up
in value if it has been burned to death."

looking for questions

Hi All,

Anna and I are working on a project for July that will kick off a quarterly series of small installations from the collection. We are going to try some more in-depth interpretive strategies with them and are planning to use the series to try to answer, or at least discuss, some of our visitors’ most frequently asked questions. I would love to hear from you about the most frequent questions you get from visitors. I am interested in general questions (i.e. “why is that art?” “how did that get chosen to be in the museum?” “why can’t I touch the art?” “why isn’t my favorite painting from the collection on view?”) vs. questions about specific artists or exhibitions. Thanks for your help!

Tara

Tara Young
Associate Curator of Education
TACOMA ART MUSEUM
1701 Pacific Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402
253.272.4258 x 3016

 

 

REMINDER: Memorial Day break

Hi All,

 

I wanted to remind you that there is NO training tonight or on Monday, because of the Memorial Day holiday. The next Active Docent training will be Wednesday, June 16 or Monday, June 21, which will be a preview of the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition with Patricia McDonnell. You are also welcome to come to the Visual Thinking Workshop with Anna on Wednesday, June 9 (I know some of you couldn’t make that last time).

I’m out tomorrow and Friday, as well as the Monday holiday.

 

Have a great week!

Tara

 

 

Tara Young

Associate Curator of Education

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, WA 98402

253.272.4258 x 3016

 

 

Michelangelo's David Restoration Complete

May 25, 2004 � After a clean-up marked by bitter controversy, Italian
cultural authorities have unveiled Michelangelo's restored David,
saying that the project was a success.

Funded in equal parts by two charities � the Dutch foundation Ars
Longa and Friends of Florence, whose members include the singer Sting
and the actor Mel Gibson � the 400,000-euro ($480,200) cleaning
program removed gypsum and yellowish spots of beeswax but left the
masterpiece "the same as ever," according to the restoration team.

David has been cleaned! 

FAQ

Hi All,

 

Anna and I are working on a project for July that will kick off a quarterly series of small installations from the collection. We are going to try some more in-depth interpretive strategies with them and are planning to use the series to try to answer, or at least discuss, some of our visitors’ most frequently asked questions.

I would love to hear from you about the most frequent questions you get from visitors. I am interested in general questions (i.e. “why is that art?” “how did that get chosen to be in the museum?” “why can’t I touch the art?” “why isn’t my favorite painting from the collection on view?”) vs. questions about specific artists or exhibitions.

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Tara

 

 

Tara Young

Associate Curator of Education

 

TACOMA ART MUSEUM

1701 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, WA 98402

253.272.4258 x 3016

 

 

We have been Googled !

Hello Fellow TAM Docents

If you Google for TAM Docents, this blog comes up as the first entry!

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=tam+docents


Regards,
Sanjeev

What is a Blog

Hello Sid,

Blog = weB LOG

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The
activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog
is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that
allows people with little or no technical background to update and
maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in
chronological order with the most recent additions featured most
prominantly.

We just email the mailing list address (tamdocents@googlegroups.com)
and the blog will be automatically updated for the world to see.

http://tamdocents.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Sanjeev

What?

Sanjeev, I am showing my ignorance, but what is a blog? It obviously works very well and shows some delightful pictures. Sid Cloud

Portland trip

It is wonderful to see the photographs from our trip to Portland on Saturday. I had a wonderful time. Thank you Tara for organizing this trip.

Janet Hoffman

Mailing List Frequently Asked Questions

Here a few Frequently Asked Questions on the mailing list:

Q1. Can anyone email the list ? Will I get more spam.

Ans: No, only people on the list can email the common mailing list
email address. All others email is rejected. (Currently, only active
docents and Tara are on this list.)

No more spam. Google will only forward email coming from our email
accounts. All other spam will be rejected by Google.

Q2. Can I send email from my 'other" office/home email address.

Ans: No! Send email to Sanjeev and he'll add that (other) account to
the mailing list. Then, you can send email from either of the
accounts.

Q3. I am getting too much email. Are there other options?

And: Yes! You can get a "Digest" version; in which you get one email
per day of all the conversation of that day. Let Sanjeev know if you'd
prefer this option. (Let's wait to see how much email talking we do
before you jump to this!)

Regards,
Sanjeev

Mailing List + Portland Trip Photos

Hello Fellow Docents

The mailing list should be working.

Email to tamdocents@googlegroups.com goes to *all* docents.

If you click "Reply-To", the Reply-To goes to *all* docents.

We can use it to discuss art, musuem exhibits, new shows in town,
docent slot swaps, etc etc.

Note: All mail automatically will be blogged too.
http://tamdocents.blogspot.com/

***

The Portland bus trip photos are up on the blog.

http://tamdocents.blogspot.com/

Tara, Thanks for all the arrangements - trip, lunch, snacks, tickets,
gallery visit et al

Was much fun seeing and *recognizing* Robert Yoder's other works.

(Also, did you know some Isamu Noguchi's stamps that are available at
the post office? )

Regards,
Sanjeev

Isamu Noguchi at the Post Office !