Museum Mile

Good Financial

Fortnight for PMA
By Richard Carreño
Junto Senior Staff Writer Bio
A Non-Profit Profits
It's been a good fortnight, financially, for the non-profit Philadelphia Museum of Art.


OK. Technically, not for profit. But sort of 'for-profit' too; it charges admission to a building that's owned by the public. And more money keeps flowing to its PMA coffers. Some public. Some private.


Last week, it was $40-million in public funds from the Rendell Admnistration.


This week, the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have had a historically cozy relationship with the museum, announced a grant of more than $2-million in private money to the PMA under is Cultural Leadership Program, which dedicates funding to non-profits that 'demonstrate excellence in operations, fiscal management, and programming.'


The PMA itself received a grant of $1.92-million. Its satellite, the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, the PMA's art school in South Philadelphia, was awarded another $96,000.


Happily, the Brandywine River Museum, in suburban Chadds Ford, a brilliant jewel dedicated to American art, also received recognition, $184,000. The Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Centre City, a place I know well, got $30,000.


Lenape Nation to pledge 'friendship' at Penn Museum
From noon through the afternoon, on Saturday, August 21, the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania will join the public in a ritual signing of the 'Treaty of Renewed Friendship' at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.


The occasion, which occurs every four years, commits signatories to work as 'partners' with the Lenape Nation, the principal Native American tribe in eastern Pennsylvania, as 'caretakers of their sacred homeland.'


The museum suggests an admission donation, $10 for adults, $7 for persons 65 or older, $6 for full-time students. Of course, you can donate a free-will offering of your choice. The Penn Museum is actually free.


The Gate: PMA lags way behind the Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has topped the 5 million visitor mark for fiscal 2009, the first time since 2001 that the Met hit that attendance milestone.


The Met's director, Thomas P. Campbell, called the figure a 'landmark' that 'underscores the vibrancy of the Metropolitan Museum's exhibitions and collections for its audiences from around the world....'


In contrast, the Philadelphia Museum of Art reported a fiscal 2009 attendance of 812,479, according to an authoritative listing tallied by the London-based Art Newspaper. Given last-minute adjustments, that figure has likely increased to closer to 1 million.


The museum's world largest gate is held by the Louvre, with a steady 8.5 million annual visitors, the Art Newspaper reported.


LA gets a shot at Eakins too
While the Philadelphia Museum of Art is celebrating the restored The Gross Clinic, Thomas Eakins' masterwork, museum-goers in Los Angeles are also getting a taste of the artist, as well.


In Philadelphia, Eakins is revealed as the genre realist, depicting the raw life of medicine and surgery.


In LA, the genre is Eakins' life-long interest in sports, principally rowing and boxing.


The show, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, titled 'Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Art of Thomas Eakins,' runs to October 17.


No word whether the show includes Eakins' lesser known sporting interest, equestrianism.


A First for Princeton Museum
The Princeton University Museum of Art, one of my favourite hinterland art venues, has appointed Kelly Baum as its first curator of modern and contemporary art, museum director James Steward announced.


Since 2007, Baum has served as a felow for contemporary art. Since that time, according to Steward, Baum has 'greatly invigorated the museum's contemporary art department, expanded and diversified the contemporary collection, and developed an international artist-in-residency program.'

Seeing Double

Celebrated Statues at Philly's
Art Museum are Down-sized

Junto Photos/Richard Carreño

By Richard Carreño Bio
Junto Staff Writer
Some of the statues are enlarged. Or, presented as diminutive replicas. Or, in fact, exact, full-sized copies. Many museum visitors, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, might think they're seeing double.

That's what happened to me recently when I visited the Princeton University Art Museum, and I came across a bronze cast of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. Wait. Wasn't this the same iconic statue that graces the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Great Stair Hall?

Not exactly.

What I encountered was one of those serendipitous occasions when you can see a favorite artwork in a different light. More accurately, in a different dimension.


Like many artists, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), the American sculptor who created the Diana statue, well-known as the stairway's fixating focal piece, created different versions. In this case, two models that differ only in size. Both Dianas portray a nude huntress about to let fly a arrow from a taut bow.

As important, all the statues are originals, all cast under Saint-Gaudens supervision.


At 13 feet high, Philadelphia's Diana, once a copper weather-vane atop the second incarnation of New York's Madison Square Garden (1890-1925), is the taller version. It was also, during its time, New York's highest point, towering 300 feet and the first statue in New York lighted at night by electricity.

Since its donation by the New York Life Insurance Company in 1935, Diana has become PMA favorite as, according to the museum, a 'graceful rendering.... Her athletic fitness and elongated proportions are strikingly modern.'

Princeton's variant, and another Diana at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, are smaller by half. And gilded.

Two other notable statues, miniatures of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet (1824-1910), also have some visitors to the museum doing double-takes.

The Thinker, in its monumental variant in bronze and marble, of course, is one of the world-best known works by Rodin. One reason for that is there are so many of them, at least 20 'originals' worldwide. (These were cast from Rodin's original mold during the French sculptor's lifetime).

One of the 20, now gleaming after recent conservation, is located in front of the PMA's nearby satellite venue, the Rodin Museum on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. What is less known is that part of the PMA's permanent collection is a studio-sized version, about 30 inches tall. Located in the first-floor the European Art (1850-1900) galleries, this smaller variant, an exact model of the full-sized statues, isn't technically an 'orginial' since it was cast by its Parisian founder in in 1926, after Rodin's death.

Joan of Arc, in gilded bronze, also comes in two sizes. And, like the other statues, more than one of one or both of the models are extant.

A smaller version, about 18 inches high and cast around 1874, is also located in the European Art gallery. Philly's full-sized Joan has been a gleaming fixture in the city since the statue was purchased by the Fairmount Park Art Association in 1890.

This Joan is located at 25th Street and Kelly Drive, hardby the museum colossus. Well, until recently that is. The statue has been temporarily removed for a periodic cleaning and conversation. But, if you're travelling, other full-sized originals can be viewed in New Orleans, Paris, and in Nancy, France.

Another One? Who Knew?

Diana at Princeton

Junto Photo/Richard Carreño

You know that Diana statue, the one that looks a lot the one above, that stands high above the grand staircase in the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Who knew? Our golden Diana has a double at the Princeton University Art Museum. (A jewel, by the way).

Actually, there are even four more statues -- somewhere. Their locales weren't cited.

All the statues of the huntress were removed from the old Madison Square Garden building at Madison Square, New York, when the Garden moved uptown and the old venue made wayfor new building. I was surprised. Are you?

-- Richard Carreño