Museums – Illicit Cultural Property

Marlowe on the Real Issue with the Glyptotek Head

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Marlowe, Associate Professor of Art; Chair, Department of Art & Art History; Director, Museum Studies Program.

Some Key Facts on the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Portrait of Septimius Severus and the Corpus of Bubon Bronzes

The over-life-sized bronze head of Septimius Severus at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen has been much in the news lately. Turkish officials are calling for its return because for the last 50 years (up to and including the museum’s own website), the museum has asserted that the head originally belonged to an over-lifesized bronze body [2] that, until recently, had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The body was seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in March, and has now been returned to Türkiye.

I have been researching these artworks for several years and am in the process of preparing a large publication (on an open-access, updateable, bilingual website) of all that I have learned. I offer here a brief summary of the main evidence concerning the Glyptotek head with the goal of ensuring that all parties involved in the discussions, including journalists, have the relevant facts at their disposal (something that has not been the case in all of the recent reporting). My main concern is that the discussions seem to be focusing on the wrong issue. The question of whether the museum’s bronze head can be proven to go with that particular body is a secondary matter. The key issue is whether it comes from a particular Roman site in Türkiye whose looting in the 1960s is a matter of well-established fact. I’m grateful to Derek Fincham for sharing his Illicit Cultural Property platform with me for the purpose of presenting the evidence on this question.

In May, 1967, Turkish authorities, acting on a tip about a large-scale act of archaeological looting, arrived at the village of Ibecik, where they discovered a large, ancient bronze statue hidden in a local house. Eventually, the police persuaded the homeowner, together with a number of other villagers, to reveal where the statue came from. In the following days, archaeologists from the nearby museum at Burdur conducted an emergency excavation at the site, known in antiquity as Bubon, and found a large three-sided platform and several free-standing statue bases [3].

The pedestals of the looted bronze imperial statues at Bubon, after Jale Inan, 1993.

These were inscribed with the names of fourteen Roman emperors and empresses, suggesting that this room had once been filled with statues, and that it may have been a shrine for the worship of the emperor and his family, a practice we call the “imperial cult.” But the statues had all disappeared, with the exception of the one the authorities had recovered (this statue is today in the Burdur museum) [4].

The one Bubon statue that remained in Turkey, at the Burdur Archaeological Museum. Photo by Izabela Miszczak

The Turkish archaeologist Jale Inan investigated, and was told by the villagers that they’d been selling the statues as they found them to a dealer, netting as much as 90,000 Turkish lira for the largest and best-preserved figures. Their accounts are vague and contradictory, but they admitted to selling at least nine or ten statues as well as many additional fragments, including heads, arms and legs. Most were nude male figures, they reported, but one was clothed, and at least one was female. One of the male nudes, the largest of the group, was nearly 9 feet tall, and was the only figure in the group that was completely intact.

Meanwhile, starting in the mid-1960s, a number of bronze figures, portrait heads, and body parts began showing up on the art market. We now know that at least two of these were trafficked by the same person: both a bronze female head at the Worcester Art Museum (whose bust may not belong to the original work) and the head at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek were first sold by the notorious Robert Hecht. (The latter piece of information had been a tightly-kept secret in Copenhagen, and only became public knowledge earlier this month thanks to reporting by Camilla Strockmann.) It is very possible that Hecht – who had been barred from Türkiye in 1962 for trafficking in looted antiquities – was behind the entire group.

There are today approximately ten bronze heads and a dozen bronze bodies currently residing in public and private collections around the world (mostly in the U.S.) that almost certainly came from Bubon. I say “almost certainly” because of course the networks that move illegally plundered antiquities from the ground, smuggle them across borders, and deliver them to the high-end galleries of Europe and the U.S. are designed to cover their tracks. These are laundering operations – the original stain is supposed to be invisible by the end. But fortunately in the case of Bubon, enough facts are known about the looting and the pieces themselves that we can identify some clear criteria for determining whether a particular bronze was almost certainly looted from the site:

Does it depict a Roman emperor or family member, or could it have been part of a statue that did? (There may have been non-imperial statuary that was also looted from the site, but for now I’m focusing on pieces that can be associated with the imperial shrine.)
Did it surface on the market at some point between 1964 and the early 1970s?
Does it feature small square bronze patches on its surface? These patches, typically a couple of centimeters long, are the hallmarks of the local bronze workshop that produced these works. The ancient metalsmiths laid the patches in sawtooth patterns along the seams when they soldered together the individually-cast components of these large bronze statues, and they also used them singly to strengthen weak spots in the bronze surface [5].

Example of the distinctive patchwork, from the statue recently seized at the Met

As far as the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s portrait of the emperor Septimius Severus is concerned, there is no doubt that it meets these criteria. The museum purchased it from Hecht in 1970. The line of square patches around the neck where the head was originally attached to the body in antiquity is very visible [6].

Sawtooth patches on the Ny Carlsberg Copenhagen head

We can also add to the evidence the fact that one of the statue bases at Bubon is inscribed with the name Septimius Severus, so we know there was a portrait of that particular emperor at the site. These are the key facts that should be determining whether the museum is going to return the head to Türkiye. Whether or not we have correctly identified which of the headless Bubon bodies the head went with is a separate question. We know it almost certainly went with one of the bodies from the site.

There is also the fundamental fact that the head has to have come from somewhere – from some over-life-sized bronze statue of Septimius Severus that was produced in the ancient workshop that used the unusual patchwork technique. What is the likelihood that there was another such discovery by looters, right during the very same period that the looters at Bubon turned up their bonanza of imperial bronzes? It’s worth remembering how extremely rare statues like these are in the modern world; for every bronze portrait or statue that has survived from the ancient Mediterranean, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of surviving marble works. That is because bronze is precious and can be melted down. Over the centuries the vast majority of ancient bronzes were recycled and turned into things like coins, weapons, nails and the like.

And even if this is all just an extraordinary coincidence, and the Ny Carlsberg head comes from some other looted site, the patchwork itself still strongly ties the piece to Türkiye. This means that unless the head came to the museum with an export license from the Turkish government, it has to have been smuggled out of the country in violation of Turkish cultural heritage laws. Public and private collectors in Europe and North America sometimes suggest that countries of origin didn’t care about their ancient artifacts and did little to protect their cultural property during this period, and that by collecting ancient art, they are “saving” it. But in fact, Türkiye’s deep concern around these issues is evident in its efforts to keep Hecht out of the country, by the police intervention at Bubon in 1967, and by Jale Inan’s tireless efforts over the course of her career to draw attention to the tragic history of this site, whose market-fuelled plundering destroyed what would have been one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of the century.

In sum, we know the Septimius Severus head was looted from Türkiye and trafficked by one of the art market’s shadiest characters. Why is the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek defending its right to own stolen property? What are the museum’s ethical principles?

* * *

Even though it is a secondary matter as far as the choice facing the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is concerned, while we’re here, here is the evidence that connects the Copenhagen head with the body that was recently seized at the Metropolitan Museum and returned to Türkiye:

According, again, to Jale Inan, the feet of the Met statue fit the indentations on the statue base with Septimius Severus’ name. So the head that was attached to this body has to have been a bronze portrait of Septimius Severus. No other viable candidate has turned up in the 56 years since the body surfaced on the international market.

In recent statements to the press, the director of collections at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Rune Frederiksen, has suggested that the association between the head and the body was just an idea that his predecessor, Fleming Johansen, had come up with out of nowhere at some point in the mid-1970s after the museum had acquired the portrait. In fact, the link between the two pieces had long been known among experts. The Met body was referred to as Septimius Severus as early as 1967, the same year it was acquired (along with several other Bubon pieces) by the Boston dealer Charles Lipson. Cornelius Vermeule, the curator of Greek and Roman art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, discussed Lipson’s statue as a portrait of Septimius Severus in a presentation that year at the annual meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America. He mentions it again as Septimius Severus in an addendum to his 1968 book, Roman Imperial Art in Greece and Asia Minor (Belknap Press, p. 546). There is, of course, no valid reason to identify this headless body as Septimius Severus without the connection to a portrait head of that ruler. It is highly unlikely that Vermeule would have done so in front of his colleagues at the archaeologists’ conference if he didn’t know that the evidence behind it was solid.

Of the eleven heads that have been associated with Bubon, only the Copenhagen head is broken off from its body well below the ancient seam that joined the head and body at mid-neck. If the head indeed comes from this site (see evidence above), it must go with one of the few Bubon bodies that is missing the entirety of its neck. There are only two candidates that meet this criterion. One is the statue recently seized at the Met. The photo that was produced when the head and the body were briefly brought together in Copenhagen in 1979 certainly looks awkward [7].

The NCG head and Met body, as tested in Copenhagen in 1979

But the awkwardness may be due to the incorrect positioning of the head (Inan hypothesized that it may have been turned to the right, toward the raised arm; at any rate it certainly would have been lower) and to the deformations of the metal caused by the violent process that ripped the head from the body so far below the ancient seam. The other potential candidate for a match with the Copenhagen head is a bronze body in an identical pose as the Met statue, and likewise bearing the tell-tale bronze patches, that was recently resold by Royal-Athena Gallery (it is listed in the 2006 catalog, along with a female body, as originating at Bubon). I have seen this privately-owned body in person. My impression is that it is too small for the Copenhagen head. Of course, a sustained scientific examination is needed to know for sure.

Frederiksen is right to emphasize that more research must be done to determine which statue the head belongs with; as he told the Turkish paper the Daily Sabah, “we have to compare the breaks of the torso and the head.” It is noteworthy, however, that Frederiksen has not tried to deny that the Septimius Severus head came from Bubon. That, and not its association with the Met head, is what should determine where it belongs today. Indeed, the only way we will ever be able to compare the breaks as Frederiksen advocates is to reunite the pieces.

Key Bibliography:

İnan, J. 1979. “Der Bronzetorso im Burdur-Museum aus Bubon und der Bronzekopf im J.-Paul-Getty-Museum,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 27/28 (1977/78) [1979], pp. 266-287.

İnan, J. 1994. “Neue Forschungen zum Sebasteion von Bubon und seinen Statuen,” in Akten des II. Internationalen Lykien-Symposions Vienna, 6.-12. Mai 1990, ed. J. Borcchardt, J. and G. Dobesch, Vienna 1993, pp. 213-239.

İnan, J. 1994 . Boubon Sebasteionu ve Heykelleri Üzerine Son Arastirmalar, Istanbul.

Kozloff, A. P. 1987. “The Cleveland Bronze: The Emperor as Philosopher,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, 82-113.

Lubos, M., 2016, “Bubon Bronzes – New Perspectives,” Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Izmir. Monographies Instrumentum 51, 2016, 265-73 (to be used with caution).

Vermeule, C. 1980. “The Late Antonine and Severan Bronze Portraits from Southwest Asia Minor,” in Eikones. Studien zum griechischen und römischen Bildnis. Hans Jucker zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Bern, 1980), 185-90.

Smash and Smash at the Dallas Museum of Art

Both the Dallas Museum of art and an alleged vandal had a very bad Wednesday evening last night. Dallas police have said that a young man of 21 allegedly went up to the glass doors of the Museum, smashed his way in using a metal chair, and then began breaking display cases and their contents. And the damage was considerable.

One of the smashed objects was this amphora, and according to the DMA website, it dates to the 6th Century and depicts a battle between Achilles and Prince Memnon of Ethiopia.

Batah Kuhuh Alligator Gar Fish Effigy Bottle

Another smashed object was this lovely more recent effigy bottle depicting an Alligator Gar by the artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

Details released by police about the incident seem to indicate the perpetrator was just really frustrated after an argument with his girlfriend. Motion sensors inside the Museum alerted security to the intruder, but he apparently also called the police himself.

In a statement the DMA noted “This was an isolated incident perpetrated by one individual acting alone, whose intent was not theft of art or any objects on view . . . However, some works of art were damaged and we are still in the process of assessing the extent of the damages.”

So hopefully then enough fragments were recovered that these pieces may be put back together again. And if so, who knows, maybe the cool Alligator gar effigy bottle will become world famous, like the Mona Lisa, which suffered an attack from an attention-seeker last week. Remember, it was the theft of that painting in 1911 by artist Vincenczo Peruggia which first sent that work into art stardom.

Tommy Cummings, $5 Million of Ancient Art Destroyed at DMA in Overnight Break-In, The Dallas Morning News, https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/visual-arts/2022/06/02/5-million-of-ancient-art-destroyed-at-dma-in-overnight-break-in/ [https://perma.cc/H3TD-NEWT] (last visited Jun. 2, 2022).

University of Aberdeen will repatriate a Benin bronze to Nigeria

The University of Aberdeen has joined other forward-thinking institutions such as the Humboldt Forum museum in Berlin and announced that it will return a Benin bronze to the Nigerian government. In a statement the University announced the return because of its “extremely immoral” acquisition, and called on other Museums in the United Kingdom to conduct their own inquiry and follow their lead. I could not be more proud of my former University and I hope this move will continue to push other institutions holding on to their colonial treasures to pursue justice for these objects and the creator cultures which desire their return.

Benin’s cultural patrimony was looted by British forces in 1897 during a violent dispute in which a British delegation was attacked, and then a large Punitive Expedition was assembled and exiled the leader of benin Oba Ovonramwen. The British destroyed Benin City and took back to Britain bronze sculptures, brass plaques, and sculptures created with the lost wax process. The Kingdom of Benin as I understand had been a capable and vibrant trading partner with Europe for hundreds of years, but in the 19th Century drive to colonize Africa, the culture and independence of the Kingdom of Benin was an inconvenience for the British empire and so was eradicated and impoverished.

This return continues a rich history of repatriation by the University. Neil Curtis, who head’s Aberdeen University’s museums and special collections said in a statement:

The University of Aberdeen has previously agreed to repatriate sacred items and ancestral remains to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has a procedure that considers requests in consultation with claimants. An ongoing review of the collections identified the Head of an Oba as having been acquired in a way that we now consider to have been extremely immoral, so we took a proactive approach to identify the appropriate people to discuss what to do.

The University museum has a small but lovely collection, and its location, the former Marischal College in central Aberdeen is being renovated, so there were not large numbers of visitors that will be disappointed in not being able to see this object on display. But that should not diminish the just result here. This head will be returned and viewed in context at a new cultural complex in Benin City which will be designed by David Adjaye.

University to Return Benin Bronze | News | The University of Aberdeen, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/14790/ (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

University of Aberdeen to Return Pillaged Benin Bronze to Nigeria, the Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/university-of-aberdeen-to-return-pillaged-benin-bronze-to-nigeria [https://perma.cc/R4GD-QNQX] (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

Catherine Hickley, University of Aberdeen to Return Benin Bronze Looted by British Troops to Nigeria, The Art Newspaper, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/university-of-aberdeen-to-return-benin-bronze-looted-by-british-troops-to-nigeria (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

Alex Greenberger & Alex Greenberger, Scottish University Becomes First to Repatriate Benin Bronze to Nigeria, ARTnews.com (Mar. 25, 2021), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/university-of-aberdeen-returns-benin-bronze-1234587803/;

University of Aberdeen to Repatriate “looted” Nigerian Bronze Sculpture, BBC News (Mar. 25, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-56513346 [https://perma.cc/M9NE-SXQ9].

What your next Museum visit may be like

This is as close as we’ll be able to get to the MFA Houston for a while…

I miss museums, and it sounds like the next time I visit one I’ll look like I’m trying to rob the place.

Garty Tinterow, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston offered some insights into how his institution is planning to safely reopen, whenever that may be. He did a useful Zoom interview with the Houston Chronicle’s Molly Glentzer, and here’s a brief excerpt:

Q. When do you expect the museum to reopen, and what will be different?

I check my mail every day but the crystal ball hasn’t arrived yet. Opening by July 1 seems to be feasible, given our most pessimistic models. The pandemic will bring permanent change to art museums such as ours. We’re going to have to live with this virus for quite some time. Our biggest challenge is learning gradually; it’s going to have to begin with baby steps. We’ll all learn how to visit a museum differently. We are adopting procedures for low-touch entrances, exits and visits. We’re going to change the way we deliver information so individuals so they won’t have to touch things or pick up things that aren’t their own. An attendant with a mask and gloves will open the door. You’ll probably be wearing a mask. We won’t hand you gallery guides unless they can be sanitized; you’ll probably download material on your own device.
Many museums provide a textbook case of how to live in this new world. For a survey of the Association of Museum Directors, we calculated how many visitors we could admit based on the square feet in our display spaces. If they have six feet of circumference around them and move through the space as equally distributed as atoms of oxygen, how many people would there be? Probably 800 at a time. We can easily accommodate that. They won’t be in one space; they’ll be throughout our campus in multiple buildings. Maybe, if we have a film program in Brown Auditorium, people can be seated on every other aisle and alternate seats. There is room at the MFAH for social distancing.
Gary Tinterow

Molly Glentzer, What Will Your next Visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Be Like?, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 23, 2020, https://www.chron.com/life/article/What-will-your-next-visit-to-the-Museum-of-Fine-15223418.php [https://perma.cc/4S7T-8VLT].

European museums to hold Benin Bronze meeting

Benin Bronzes at the V&A Museum in London, via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benin_Bronzes.JPG

Ben Quinn’s piece in the Guardian sheds light on an interesting forthcoming conference which hopes to “establish a permanent display” of Benin material in Nigeria. The Benin bronzes are in many museums in the West, and viewing them gives me to very different reactions. On the one hand, they are terrific to look at, with wonderful detail. But on the other, many of these objects were seized by the British Empire during an 1897 Punitive Campaign. That campaign was as bad as it sounds. To give a brief overview, a British official and his advisors were sent to uncover whether there was ritual human sacrifice taking place in the Kingdom of Benin. When the official and his advisors were killed by the King of Benin, the British responded by destroying the city, and looting as many as 900 of the Benin bronzes to compensate for the costs of the exhibition. Many of these objects were purchased by museums.

Nigeria has requested the return of much of this material, but the museums and collectors who currently possess them have often refused to enter into a dialogue. These negotiations for the return of material can be difficult and contentious, but they do not have to be. Here is hoping the meeting, which will take place in the Netherlands’ National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden will lead to a productive dialogue in the same way that Yale’s return of material to Peru or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act operates.

Quinn’s story highlights the ethical case driving the dialogue, but also some of the challenges:

“I think that among this generation of curators there is an eagerness to find ways towards reconciliation,” said Dr Michael Barrett, senior curator at Stockholm’s Världskulturmuseet. “We are one of the smaller participants in this and it is very early but we are eager to continue with discussions.”

Among the issues still to be resolved are insurance costs and security arrangements. European curators and their west African counterparts are also keen to establish a legal framework that would guarantee the artefacts immunity from seizure in Nigeria.

John Picton, a professor at Soas University of London (formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies) and a former curator of the National Museum in Lagos, said: “The moral case is indisputable. Those antiquities were lifted from Benin City and you can argue that they ought to go back. On the other hand, the rival story is that it is part of world art history and you do not want to take away African antiquity from somewhere like the museums in Paris or London, because that leaves Africa without its proper record of antiquity.”

Ben Quinn, Western Museums Try to Forge Deal with West Africa to Return the Benin Bronzes, The Guardian, Aug. 0, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/cambridge-benin-bronzes-loan-deal [https://perma.cc/8YTH-FC4G].

Folarin Shyllon, One Hundred Years of Looting of Nigerian Art Treasures 1897-1966, 3 Art antiquity and law 253 (1998).

Orhan Pamuk calls for a different kind of museum

Orhan Pamuk was a keynote speaker at the International Council of Museums conference in Milan this week. In his address to the conference he called for a different kind of museum. He offered a vision for what museums could be if they put aside their universal mission.

The Turkish author of the terrific The Museum of Innocence (Vintage International), set the literary foundation for a very different kind of museum. The museum occupies a house in the Çukurcuma neighborhood of Istanbul, near the Pera Museum. Each display cabinet is full of objects from time depicted in the novel, which echo the neighborhood’s antique shops. The museum highlights the lives of the characters depicted in his novel, and is a powerful argument that museums which only focus on grand universal cultures and themes have missed the mark:

All museums are genuine treasures of humankind, but I am against these precious and monumental institutions being used as models for the institutions to come. Museums should explore and uncover the population as a whole and the humanity of the new and modern man that emerges from the growing economies of non-Western countries. I address this manifesto in particular to Asian museums that are experiencing an unprecedented period of growth.

The aim of the great state-sponsored museums is to represent a state and that is neither a good nor innocent aim. Here are my proposals for a new museum, some themes on which we must reflect now more than ever.

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Will Internal Audits be the New Norm for Museums?

This Kushan Buddha statue, bought by the National Gallery in Australia is one of the "questionable" objects flagged in the museum's internal review — This Kushan Buddha statue, bought by the National Gallery in Australia is one of the “questionable” objects flagged in the museum’s internal review

Good news for those who want to encourage museums to thoroughly examine their collections. The National Gallery of Australia has determined that 22 antiquities from Asia have “insufficient or questionable provenance documentation.”

Chasing Aphrodite has a comprehensive roundup, including the dealers and collectors who had possession of these objects:

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Cambodia and Museé Guimet reunite Khmer statue

One of the powerful symbols of the gulf separating museums and source communities are the fragments of sculpture which populate so many galleries. It is the best interest of these museums and the source communities to cooperate when possible, which makes the news from Cambodia welcome.

This 7th-century Khmer head has been in the possession of the Museé Guimet for almost 130 years. But now the Art Newspaper reports the statue and the rest of the statue will be reunited:

The head, which has been in the Musée Guimet’s collection since 1889, will remain in Cambodia for the next five years, says the museum curator Thierry Zéphir. It will be reattached to the decapitated body of Harihara, which the National Museum of Cambodia acquired in 1944, after the museum’s conservation team—led by Bertrand Porte of the French School of Asian Studies—confirmed they were a match.

The head was discovered in the late 19th century in a ruined temple at Phnom Da by Etienne Aymonier, a French colonial administrator and the first archaeologist to survey the remains of the Khmer empire. The Lyon industrialist Emile Guimet acquired the fragment, along with other Cambodian artefacts shipped to France for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, for his ambitious new museum dedicated to the religions of the Far East.

The head of the Harihara statue, which represents the combined gods Vishnu and Shiva, will be on display to the public at the Cambodian national museum today.

Hannah McGivern, French museum reunites head with decapitated Khmer statue (2016), http://theartnewspaper.com/news/conservation/french-museum-reunites-heads-with-decapitated-khmer-statue/ (last visited Jan 20, 2016).

“Yamatane” and temporary art

Yusuke Asai, "Yamatane", Rice University, Houston 2014. — Yusuke Asai, “Yamatane”, Rice University, Houston 2014.

So much effort goes in to thinking about where art belongs, how it should be preserved and conserved. So in many ways I can be guilty of taking the idea of preservation for granted. But more attention should be paid to thinking through what exactly preservation means. After all, preservation comes with costs. And thinking about how much does not get preserved, and how much effort it takes to preserve art and sites can seem overwhelming. Which is why it can be refreshing to just enjoy some art every now and then. Yusuke Asai, a Japanese painter created a massive installation at Rice University titled “yamatane” (Japanese for mountain seed). But you can’t see it any more, it has been “deinstalled”, which was the idea all along. As a result he gently forces the viewer to enjoy and take in the work while you can.

Asai's soil samples from Houston and Texas — Asai’s soil samples from Houston and Texas

He uses dirt and earth as a medium. In Houston he had Rice students and volunteers collect soil samples from around Houston and Texas, which he used to create 27 different shades.

Of his works he says:

I do not decide on a story or meaning before I start painting. Imagery of figures and creatures comes to me in the moent. Fox, bird, cat, and sunshine – everything has a role; parts disappear and something is added. The world accepts it and keeps changing. I begin each work thinking of the countless small things that come together to make a larger world. I choose to use the earth as a medium because I can find dirt anywhere in the world and do not need special materials. Dirt is by nature very different than materials sold in art stores! Seeds grow in it and it is home to any insects and microorganisms. It is a “living” medium.

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‘Art is Therapy’ at the Rijksmuseum

A blinking neon green sign greets visitors at the Rijksmuseum

What should a museum be? Should it be a collection of the world’s masterpieces accumulated in great cities? Should it be a smaller museum devoted to showing the history of a region, town or culture? We think a lot about these big questions around here by responding to questions like ‘Who Owns Antiquity?‘ or what does property and justice require when resolving art disputes.

But in a new project Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have made the case that art can and should be more. Their argument is simple: art can help people leave more interesting and fulfilled lives. Art History as a discipline has much to offer, but the authors argue it should not be the only way to enjoy and experience works of art. Rather than focusing on art historical periods and dates, we can also think more broadly about how the image resonates with the viewer. That’s a bold claim to be sure, but the attempt is exciting and novel in a way that few art museums are able to achieve consistently. De Botton is known for a string of works including: How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Architecture of Happiness, Religion for Atheists, and the terrific The Art of Travel.

The project takes many forms including a website, apps for your phone, a book which makes the full case, and even a new exhibition at the Rijksmuseum.

The exhibition intervention takes the form of large yellow notes which inform and comment on the works on display. Perhaps most remarkable of all, the Rijksmuseum gave these writers access to intervene in the museum on this scale after a lengthy restoration.

So what exactly did they do? Here is one example which reads:

On the wall behind you, probably behind three rows of people, hangs one of the most famous works of art in the world.

This is bad news. The extreme fame of a work of art is almost always unhelpful because, to touch us, art has to elicit a personal response – and that’s hard when a painting is said to be so distinguished. This paintins is quite out of synch with its status in any case because, above all else, it wants to show us that the ordinary can be very special. The picture says that looking after a simple but beautiful home, cleaning the yard, watching over the children, darning clothes – and doing these thngs faithfully and without despair – is life’s real duty.

This is an anti-heroic picture, a weapon against false images of glamour. It refuses to accept that true glamour depends on amazing feats of courage or on the attainment of status. It argues that doing the modest things that are expected of all of us is enough. The picture asks you to be a little like it is: to take the attitudes it loves and to apply them to your life.

If the Netherlands had a Founding Document, a concentrated repository of its values, it would be this small picture. It is the Dutch contribution to the world’s understanding of happiness – and its message doesn’t just belong in the gallery.

Sickness:

Life is elsewhere.

I have a misplaced longing for glamour.

And here, on the day we visited is the view behind us, jam-packed with visitors eager to see Vermeer’s works:

And a close-up version of the terrific Vermeer described in the intervention:

This note resonated with me, and I’m sure many others. How strange that sometimes it is easier to achieve the kind of personal connection to a work of art via technology than fighting cell phones and fellow museum-goers.

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