FINE ART MUSEUMS, THREE WAYS (Cheri)

Another esoteric post that maybe no one will care about, but I can't help myself!

I got into a string of museum-related experiences earlier this year in a roundabout way, by reading the book Metropolitan Stories: A Novel, by Christine Coulson, who actually worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 25 years before leaving to write.

I'm thinking I may have read this book on Kindle, as I'm sure I would  never have picked it up based upon the cover . . . too highbrow.  I urge you not to judge this book based on its cover.

Once again, it was a magazine recommendation that led me to this book, which I loved!  Although it billed as a novel, it is really a set of intertwined short stories set at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I read quite a bit of magical realism, charming books that are set in "the real world," but in which some things happen that really couldn't according to the laws of physics.  (Most time-travel books are a subset of magical realism.)  Several of the stories fall into this genre, and I think they are the most successful at pulling the reader into the delight of museums that exhibit items which are very far removed from our own lives.

From Metropolitan Stories, I moved to Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Danny Danziger:

This books views the Met through recreated interviews with about 50 employees and a few trustees of its Board of Directors.  (I call them "recreated" interviews because the author rewrote the content as if each interviewee had sat down and talked in free-flowing, consistently well-composed prose.)

I'll freely admit that this book would be more interesting to those who are interested in art history, internal politics, and organizational skills, but it also has fun chapters in which people like a florist who provides arrangements for the Great Hall, the Chief Security Officer, and a waitress in the Trustees' Dining Room describe what they do and the effect the Museum has on their lives.

I'd never given much, if any, thought to what museum curators do, and reading about maybe 30 different curators' jobs seemed daunting, but it was the growing interest in this book that made me consider watching the movie Close to Vermeer, which showed locally this last week.

Here is a link to the movie's trailer:

Mark decided to go with me to see the movie.  I was delighted, and he had a great time time, too.

The movie is primarily about the preparation for the largest-ever exhibition of Vermeer paintings, held by Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, but there is a substantial subplot about whether various paintings that the Museum was seeking to include were actually painted by Vermeer. 

This provided a glimpse of the internal politics that I saw in the Behind the Scenes book, as a curator speaks to another after the (presumably subordinate) second curator had spoken at length with a newspaper about a questioned painting.  The younger curator had stated that the painting was a genuine Vermeer, despite the fact that the representatives of our National Gallery of Art - which owns the painting - had just met with and explained to the Rijksmuseum curators why they believed the painting was not genuine.

I loved all the moments of adjacent art:  the sinuous line of an oh-so-steep stairway in one curator's home, haunting woodwind and other orchestral music in the background, the rich textiles on the walls of the Rijksmuseum's permanent exhibits.

Surprisingly, there were also many humorous moments in the movie, such as various people's explicit and implied thoughts on the merchandise that museums make to sell during exhibits such as this.  (OK, that doesn't actually sound too humorous.  Trust me, there were several times that the whole audience laughed!)

If you have the opportunity, do see this movie.  This San Francisco Chronicle review identifies Bay Area theaters that are showing it, as well as another related movie that is also showing in the Bay Area.

Image credit:  Food Network

We have a great gelato company here in Winston-Salem, Cafe Gelato, that has a couple of shops.  We stopped at one on the way home after seeing the movie and got to talking with the owner as we savored our cups.

What a surprise!  She is from the Netherlands and had been there while the Vermeer exhibition was open.  We had a lovely discussion about art techniques and the historic superiority of Dutch physical therapy equipment! 

(She hadn't attended the exhibit, but no surprise.  The Chronicle article says that black-market tickets were selling for as much as $1,000 each.)