From the Director's Chair
June 2008
I’ve mentioned in past newsletters that our plans for the reinstallation of our permanent collection were causing anxiety in certain quarters- namely, those inhabited by specialists such as art historians, critics, and connoisseurs. On more than a few occasions, this resulted in published articles and statements on blogs critical of what we were doing, sight unseen. "I haven’t seen it myself," went one blog, "but it sure sounds like dumbing-down to me." One critic for a major international monthly journal declined our offer of airfare so that he could see it himself and wrote a short, adversely inclined piece in which he listed all of the high-tech interactive stations, thereby making it sound as if the DIA was displaying more interpretive devices than art objects. More typical was the response of another writer for a major monthly who came to see what we were doing. After seeing the eighteenth-century dining interactive (below), she said, "When you described this to me in New York I thought it sounded tacky, but now that I see it-it’s charming." A professor at a certain nearby university wrote, "Today was the first chance I had to get to the DIA. WOW. . .I must tell you, I was a bit wary about the plans for the DIA’s new interpretive strategy. . . I wasn’t sure if it would work. I am no longer concerned, the exhibits are brilliant! They are beautiful, and the context you’ve created for the art is substantive and accessible."
I have to say there was a high degree of confidence on our part, as we developed our plans, that we were doing something significant. While we were breaking new ground for the treatment of the permanent collection, much of what we were doing had been pioneered and tested in special exhibitions for quite a few years. During the project we were able actually to try out specific proposals in such special exhibitions as Degas and the Dance, Magnificenza! The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, American Attitude: Whistler and His Followers, and Ter Borch. I, for example, had serious misgivings about the large size proposed for explanatory panels, but when I saw how effective they were in the highly aesthetic Whistler exhibition, helping the viewer read and look at the art in comfort (no shuffling backwards and forwards to read, then look, then read, then look again), I was convinced. Others have questioned the size of the panels and the use of white labels throughout, and there are certainly things we already know we need to revise, but overall the response has been favorable, overwhelmingly so.
At a colloquium I attended, the director of the National Gallery in London was asked about visitor response to a new program. "Good heavens," he responded, "nobody writes to me about the art; I get letters from retired colonels in Hampstead complaining about the price of a cup of tea in the new cafeteria!" And that is usually very much the nature of a director’s incoming mail from visitors: about ten complaints for every compliment. But since the Grand Opening, my mail and e-mail have been unbelievably complimentary. For a while, I stopped wearing my "trademark" bow tie to work: it took too long to get through the building because of visitors stopping me to express appreciation about how the art-art that many had looked at for decades-now spoke to them as never before. It was profoundly gratifying, humbling even, to see love for art expressed in this way.
Of course, this is the work of many colleagues, both on the DIA staff as well as consultants and contractors who, together, have taken the DIA to a new place in the history of American art museums. My colleagues and I are being asked to make presentations around the world, and other art museums are sending staff to see what’s been accomplished here. It’s a moment in the sun to enjoy even as we continue to examine and improve on what we’ve achieved, address the museum’s financial challenges, and continue to meet and, we hope, exceed the expectations of our members and visitors. Our work, as they say, is just beginning.
Graham W. J. Beal
Director
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