road trip 2015: hiatus for conference

The luxury and ease of the road trip will now be interrupted while I attend the 33rd annual conference of the Visual Resources Association in Denver. It's kind of a jolt to be in a city and on foot but I found a good breakfast place this morning. The places I'd noticed in the guide from the registration desk seemed to be chain-like or pretentious but I headed out toward one of them with an open mind. And there in the next block was the neon sign of Sam's Diner and Bar, looking rather dive-ish but picturesque.

What a treat. The clientele was a mix of businessmen, shabby guys, and all around normal folk of a wide variety of types, along with a waitress in short shorts. And it actually was in the guide and has been featured on the Food Network according to a sign in the window.

So the conference begins. Workshops now and I would probably go up to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver but it doesn't open until noon. Maybe the Denver Art Museum or Clyfford Still Museum which open at 10 am.

road trip 2015: a couple more courthouses

I wrote about my enjoyment of courthouse squares a couple posts ago. The Hall County courthouse in Grand Island is a lovely Franco-Flemish revival building. It is not in a square though it may have been. Now, U.S. 30 Eastbound runs right in front of the courthouse.

There's a picture of the Sherman County courthouse is the previous post and between Grand Island and North Loup, I stopped in St Paul to look at the Howard County courthouse and found the historical village too.

road trip 2015: progressing across Nebraska

We lived in North Loup, Nebraska, when I was in tenth and eleventh grade. My dad was pastor of the Seventh-day Baptist Church and we lived in the parsonage where my mother had lived as a child when her father was pastor of the same church. My brother had connected me with Joni Goodrich Kuzma who is several years younger than I am. I called her from main street, in front of the cafe.

Joni lives in Kearney now, about 70 miles away, but her brother Jim lives in North Loup. She called him and he came to main street to find me and we had a nice chat. He called the current pastor, Scott Hausrath, who said he would be happy if I came over to the parsonage to see the house. Off I went. Pastor Scott is a fine man and we had a good talk about the house and other things.

The house was familiar and Pastor Scott really enjoyed talking to someone who knew the house's history, first hand.

We lived there before I became a collector of shermaniana but the next street to the West is Sherman Street and there's a Sherman Reservoir in a neighboring county, yep, Sherman County. There was still a bit of ice on the reservoir even though this week has been up to the low 60s. The courthouse in Loup City, the Sherman County seat, is fairly plain but that's not a problem.

After being in North Loup and finding Sherman Reservoir, hidden in the unassuming and beautiful hills of central Nebraska, I headed toward Kearney to visit Joni. We had a fine chat about old times, where and what we were now, and life and even a bit of politics. And then it was off to western Nebraska with their advice that U.S. 30 (Lincoln Highway, again) would be a good choice since I'd be looking for overnight accommodations and the bluer highways might have few choices. U.S. 30 goes on the North side of the North Platte River and Interstate 80 goes on the South side. I think my choice of speed is about 70 miles per hour. The speed limit on U.S. 30 was 65 and it gave me a chance to go about as fast as I would on the interstate but with more things to see as I progressed.

I spent the night in Ogallala (it's fun to say) which is about 20 miles from the Colorado border. There are more pictures of North Loup and the Nebraska landscape in my Flickr photostream.

road trip 2015: will she ever forgive me?

Early in this road trip, I stayed with Sara Jane Pearman in Cleveland. We were talking about my destinations and Sara Jane mentioned the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, which hadn't been on my list. I stopped:

The museum building is a nice deco building from 1931 with an understated and sympathetic addition by Norman Foster, opened 1994. The fountain court and Founders Room in the old building are beautiful deco spaces. The main entrance is now in the space between the old and new buildings:

The special show was "American Moderns" from the Brooklyn Museum. Some really fine works by well-known folks like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, along with good stuff by Augustus Tack and Francis Criss. The permanent collection has lots of good stuff too. Particular favorites were a diminutive collection of blocks by Sol LeWitt; a Kay Sage surrealist painting; landscapes by Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Hill; a Sargent portrait; a William Merritt Chase painting of a man with coffee and cigarette and lady in hammock; an N.C. Wyeth advertisement for tires with some Indians and a car driving away; two Vibert paintings (The King of Rome and The Grasshopper and the Ant); the landscape Stone City by Grant Wood that has been interpreted as a man's butt; and a lovely painting by Mariano Fortuny.

I read a long time ago about a groovy new warehouse and loft district in Omaha. I didn't get to walk about in the area but I did drive through on my way out of town after finishing at the Joslyn. One of the streets I was on was as pockmarked as the Meatpacking District used to be in New York City. On a nice Sunday morning, it was very tempting to linger but I wanted to get to Lincoln to see the Sheldon Museum of Art and to have a coffee and chat with Jonathan Walz, a curator there. Something came up for Jonathan so I didn't get to see him in situ.

After I got to Lincoln, I checked my email and Facebook and Sara Jane asked if the casts of the Chartres jamb figures were still in the front lobby. Oh, that's right: that's what she was particularly interested in at the Joslyn. I don't remember them, I was in the main front lobby of the old building, I don't think they were there. Will she ever forgive me for not verifying their presence or absence?

The Sheldon Museum of Art is part of the University of Nebraska and the building was designed by Philip Johnson at about the same time as the Amon Carter Museum:

Two special shows were on view: Will Wilson: Critical Indigenous Photograph Exchange, and Bracketing the Reading: Thinking Through Photography. Both were pretty darn fine and included some pairing of works. The Wilson was heavily comparative. The Bracketing show included a Vik Muniz view of a minimalist exhibition with works by Carl Andre and others and there was an Andre floor piece nearby.

I had seen the Gee's Bend quilt show at the Whitney some years ago and loved the postage stamps that featured the quilts. The From Quilts to Prints show was a very interesting spin: the design of the quilts in print form.

Paintings from the collection, mostly American, were on display in the permanent collection galleries. Again, some really enjoyable art: a Martin Johnson Heade still life with oranges, the Grant Wood portrait of Arnold Pyle, a Dove and a Demuth in the corner of one gallery, a really nice recently-acquired Lee Krasner in bright colors with a Frankenthaler and Morris Louis in the same gallery.

A chorus and instrumentalists were rehearsing when I arrived. The concert started at 3 and I was captive for a while in the South galleries since the only egress was across a balcony above the singers. Normally, I'd love to fall upon a concert but this was full of endless alleluias and I had a different agenda. As the audience clapped, I slipped across the balcony over to the elevator, and down and out.

Heading West. I am now in Grand Island, Nebraska, and tomorrow probably brings a trip to North Loup where my family lived when I was in high school and a visit with someone who lived in North Loup when we were there and now lives in Kearney. Kearney State used to sponsor a competition for academic achievement for high school kids, a sort of compensation for the nerds and geeks who weren't on sports teams. I was second in penmanship and not the last in Spanish. Back to Sara Jane: she taught at Kearney State for a short while before heading to Cleveland for grad school.

road trip 2015: courthouse squares

I love towns with central squares with a courthouse. Here's the courthouse for Seward County, Nebraska, in Seward:

The shops around the square include the Cafe on the Square where I had the lunch special, a Hawaiian Burger. It was tasty and the waitress was friendly. And the coffee was good. There were also two shops that sold books: a gifts and books shop and a thrift shop with a visible wall of books and "books" was included on the window listing of available stuff. The theater was showing "Selma" as well as another film. Not bad.

And here's the Merrick County courthouse in Aurora, Nebraska:

The courthouse square is surrounded by shops that look like a viable mix of practical and frivolous (aka antique shops). And there was a gifts and books shop. That's better than Alfred.

Agnes and Arthur, together again

I love it when I see an Agnes Martin work that evokes Arthur Garfield Dove, just as I love both of these artists whenever. It isn't often that I see works by each of them installed within sight of each other. These two works were on opposite walls of a small space in the Richard Meier building of the Des Moines Art Center. Sigh.

The Des Moines Art Center is three-buildings big, by the architects Eliel Saarinen (1948), I.M. Pei (1968), and Richard Meier (early 1980s). The parts of the building work together beautifully. The collection works well in the building.

road trip 2015: on to Iowa City

Just a quickie since we're moving toward lunch with Harlan and Steven. Yesterday was mostly on blue highways from Valparaiso, Indiana, just South of Chicago, on U.S. 30 (Lincoln Highway) and others. I stopped in Plainfield, Illinois, and found the Opera House and Masonic Block.

Both were built in the 1890s and the local Historic Preservation Commission very kindly had a walking tour brochure in a covered box near one of the historic markers.

More blue highways until Peru, Illinois, where I joined the Interstate 80 crowd. I got to Iowa City mid-afternoon and talked and talked and talked with Deb and Diana Kruse before some homemade minestrone soup and then off to a lecture at the University of Iowa by Carole Paul on the Grand Tour.

The lecture was held in Art Building West, designed a few years ago by Steven Holl and damaged by the 2008 flood. Here's a view of the interior:

Gotta go help in the kitchen. I'm being called.

road trip 2015: Napoleon, Ohio

The morning started quietly but became rather a smash when the cabinet over the dryer at Sara Jane's fell off the wall. It was the liquor cabinet and the crème de menthe spread its green color and minty smell all over the dryer and floor (etc.) and scared poor Kiri into the closet. So ... later start than anticipated but I got off at about noon with a queer green cast to my hands.

I hit the blue highways after the expressways 271 and 480 from Sara Jane's. So that's U.S. 20 to U.S. 6 (Grand Army of the Republic Highway). It was getting on time for a stop and I had noticed that there was a Napoleon, Ohio, not too far off. Imagine my delight as I neared the center of town to see a courthouse tower across the river.

Not only a courthouse but my short leg-stretching walk before finding a latte also uncovered this charming little arts and crafts church.

Back on the highway, it was U.S. 6 into Indiana. I stayed on 6 but it didn't have many amenities like motels or hotels. Checking the map, I switched a bit South to U.S. 30 (Lincoln Highway) and found, alas, a Fairfield Inn in Valparaiso. Not exotic in the least but, for the moment, it's home. It doesn't smell like crème de menthe.

road trip 2015: first couple-three days

The VRA and ARLIS/NA annual conferences are unusually close in time and place this year. When I first heard about the two March conferences in mid-late March and in Denver and Fort Worth respectively, I figured it was time for a road trip. What started out as a four-day trip in a one-way rental car between the two conference cities turned into a month-long trip in my own car, Hieronymus, with stops along the way in both directions.

I set off on Monday, the 2nd, driving on blue highways and through the Allegheny National Forest during this winter of particularly vigorous snow and cold. I stopped at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., to see the show curated by my friend Darren Lee Miller: Performing Blackness, Performing Whiteness. It was especially interesting to see the works in Darren's company. Lots to think about and to remember from an earlier trip to Allegheny to see another show that Darren put together.

And then it was on Cleveland where I landed at Sara Jane's just after dark. She has been quite house-bound in the heavy snow so we took advantage of that as we ate take-out Mexican (sadly, without margaritas) and talked about everything: art, her writing project on early Netherlandish sculpture and the influence of the textile trade, life, growing older, weather, old graduate school chums.

Tuesday was museum day for me in Cleveland. This was my first visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art since the latest building project was completed. Several favorite works from grad student days had not been on display when I was last there. But now, NOW! There they were: the Saint Jerome and the lion by Tilmann Riemenschneider that greeted me every day as I went to the CMA Library to study--

and also Riemenschneider's Saints Stephen and Lawrence, the Annunciation by Albrecht Bouts, the Inness landscape, the El Greco crucifixion, the Hours of Charles the Noble, etc. It was delightful to be with my old friends. So familiar, so fine.

As I was turned around from the Riemenschneiders and started toward the next gallery, I noticed that John and Jacquelyn were in that gallery. They were on their way East after Jacq's post-doc at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. We did lunch and had a wonderful visit and then went back to our serious art-looking.

When I was done at the CMA, I went out for coffee and then to the Museum of Contemporary Art and then the mania really set in. My first trip. As you approach from the West, the doorway is wonderfully understated. I didn't realize that I was coming in the secondary door but I loved it. I got to the front desk to see that they had a Joyce J. Scott show. I had seen her show at Tulane during the Prospect.2 biennial in New Orleans in late 2011 and really love her work.

She does sculptures with lots of beadwork but also African sculpture, crocheting, glass shapes, porcelain figures, whatever works. She also deals with race and gender so it was rather a performance of blackness and whiteness all in one. But that's not all: the other two shows at MOCA were by artists I knew about. They had Ragnar Kjartansson's The Visitors; Kjartansson has gotten a lot of press for his recent works at the Venice Biennale. The third artist was Jessica Eaton who was at Alfred to give an artist talk last year. Not only great artists but the building was really fine too. It's a little like Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin without being so self-conscious.

Poor Sara Jane had to put up with mania all evening but I think she rather got a kick out of it. It didn't hurt that she, a beader, could tell me that she had actually met Joyce J. Scott.

the curator and the cataloger

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, painted by Rembrandt, and one of the great Dutch paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Walter Liedtke, Curator of European Paintings, was tragically killed in the Metro North commuter train accident in early February. My good friend, Daniel Starr, Associate Chief Librarian at the Watson Library at the Met, wrote the following tribute to Liedtke, which I post here with his permission. The tribute was sent on February 5 to the list of the Art Libraries Society of North America.

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Last fall I received one of those e-mails catalogers hate to get:

“I see that when one searches Watsonline keyword ‘ter Brugghen,’ you get some recent lit, but not (anywhere in the list) the classic monograph by Nicolson. However, if you go with the Anglicized ‘Terbrugghen,’ you get his book and some of the other key works on the artist drop out. The results should be the same using either form. This would apply also to ‘ter Borch,’ etc. Thanks!”

Over the years I’ve learned that it pays to be flexible about cataloging whenever possible since it usually doesn’t pay to get into long discussions about rules with the unilluminated. So I was willing to make some changes, especially since this message came from Walter Liedtke, our distinguished colleague, who died so tragically in the MTA crash Tuesday.  I added some keywords to our records to address his concern. It was easy to do and didn’t break any rules. Since it was Walter I thought I’d go one step further and explain what was happening:

“I have adjusted our cataloging records to make the improvements you suggest. A keyword search for ‘ter Brugghen’ will now include the Nicolson book (http://tinyurl.com/mlthewj) as well as some of the other titles that were missing. Because Nicolson used the form ‘Terbrugghen’ in his title there is no way for me to make this work appear earlier in the results than number 15 since the ranking is by an algorithm I can’t control.

If you’d like the technical explanation for why the problem arose it is because American libraries use ‘Terbrugghen, Hendrik, 1588?-1629’ as the preferred form of his name based on Princeton’s formulation of the heading in the National Authority File. The different forms matter less in a subject search because all variations will be brought together under the preferred form: http://tinyurl.com/lvj9el7. If someone searches the subject ‘ter Brugghen’ they will be directed to a hyperlink that takes them to the ‘Terbrugghen’ form of the name: http://tinyurl.com/nfsxmw2. Thank you for making these suggestions. It is gratifying to know scholars still use Watsonline and care about these things.”

I never thought I’d get a response, but one arrived quickly:

“[T]hanks so much for this full explanation. I wonder what the ‘National Authority File’ does with Van Dyck. As you'll see in my Dutch and Flemish catalogues, and any scholarly American publication of the past 30 years or so, these artists are all alphabetized as in Europe, so Borch, Dyck, Gogh, Goyen, et al. Anyway, the important thing is that the search reveals what we have. “

This exchange was going much better than I thought possible. Maybe I should have stopped here but I went on:

“When Princeton decided to use ‘Terbrugghen’ instead of ‘Ter Brugghen’ in 1988 they based their decision on how the name appeared in two general Dutch languages encyclopedias in spite of the fact that the book on Dutch painting they were cataloging used the latter form:

1.      Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht, 1986: t.p. (Hendrick ter Brugghen) p. 65 (Hendrick Jansz ter Brugghen, Den Haag (?) 1588-1629 Utrecht)

2.      Grote Winkler Prins, 1974: v. 18, p. 348 (Terbrugghen, Hendrik, 1588 (?)-Nov. 9, 1629)

3.      E.N.S.I.E.: v. 10, p. 1160 (Terbrugghen, Hendrik (1587/1588-1629), Ned. schilder)

Rest assured that whenever the prefix (van, ter, van der etc.) is written separately for a Dutch name the artist is alphabetized by the form following the prefix and there is a reference from one form to the other--except for Van Dyck. Because he died in London the Library of Congress consulted English language sources and decided he was ‘Van Dyck, Anthony’ not ‘Dyck, Anthonie van’ just the way they would treat the American name ‘Van Buren, Martin.’

These are some of the compromises we have to live with because we are part of a national network of libraries.”

Walter’s response showed what a good teacher he was: he always had something useful and interesting to add.

“Actually it's worse overseas. Today Flemish names use the prefix and when compound run it together, so that my colleague in Brussels is (in a bibliography) Vander Auwera, Joost, not Auwera, Joost van der. This is perhaps one of the diseases they caught from the Spanish. Ter, by the way, is a contraction of ‘te der,’ meaning ‘at the.’ Henrick ter Brugghen = Henry at the Bridges.”

We will miss him.

Daniel

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Daniel Starr

Associate Chief Librarian

Thomas J. Watson Library

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Watsonline is the online catalog of the Met. Sometimes we wish that our authority records interacted seamlessly with our bibliographic records, that is, gave a combined result of "ter brugghen" and "terbrugghen." On the other hand, some argue that it is better to let the catalog user know what is happening, as here you are notified that "Ter Brugghen" will be found under "Terbrugghen."