How Much Art Is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Right Now?

Why museums hide masterpieces away

In major museums around the world, some truly great works of fine art are hidden away from public view. What are they – and why can't we run into them? Kimberly Bradley finds out.

T

The numbers don't lie. At New York'due south Museum of Modern Art, 24 of 1,221 works by Pablo Picasso in the institution'south permanent collection can currently be seen by visitors. Just 1 of California conceptual artist Ed Ruscha'due south 145 pieces is on view. Surrealist Joan Miró? Nine out of 156 works.

The walls of the Tate, the Met, the Louvre or MoMA may look perfectly well-hung, but the vast bulk of art belonging to the earth'due south pinnacle fine art institutions (and in many countries, their taxpayers) is at any time hidden from public view in temperature-controlled, darkened, and meticulously organised storage facilities. Overall percentages pigment an even more than dramatic picture: the Tate shows near twenty% of its permanent collection. The Louvre shows eight%, the Guggenheim a lowly 3% and the Berlinische Galerie – a Berlin museum whose mandate is to evidence, preserve and collect art made in the metropolis – 2% of its holdings. These include approximately 6,000 sculptures and paintings, lxxx,000 photographs, and 15,000 prints past artists including George Grosz and Hannah Höch.

"We don't have the infinite to show more," says Berlinische Galerie director Thomas Köhler, explaining that the museum has 1,200 sq yard in which to brandish works acquired over decades through purchases and donations. "A museum stores memory, or culture," explains Köhler. But here, like in other museums around the world, many works rarely if e'er run across the light of twenty-four hours.

A spatial deficit is only one reason why not. Another is way: some holdings no longer fit their institutions' curatorial missions. Bottom works by well-known artists may besides languish – their hits hang on museum walls; their misses lie forgotten in flat files. Works that come to a museum within estate acquisitions "might sit effectually in crates for years, waiting to exist sorted," explains Köhler. Some works stay under wraps due to delicacy or damage – and different institutions have varied storage and rotation policies, depending on a drove's nature and scope. While London'southward National Gallery uses a double hang organisation, thereby increasing the number of its permanent works on view, the Albertina in Vienna possesses more than than a meg Sometime Master prints – many of them centuries old and very sensitive. The percentage on view is thus very low, even if most of the holdings are kept onsite. (Other museums continue their caches in secret offsite warehouses.)

"Having 5% of your national collection on evidence is something people discover hard to empathise," says British curator Jasper Sharp, who was the commissioner of the Austrian pavilion at the 2013 Venice Bienniale. Many fine art institutions are thus coming up with ways to show their stuff, and so to speak. "In that location is a great motion to open collections," adds Precipitous. Also digitising images of the permanent collection (which many major institutions are currently in the process of doing), one way to display holdings is the thought of the Schaulager (translation: 'storage display') – in which visitors tin can see works archived, on sliding racks, behind glass, or during restoration.  The Hermitage's storage facility opened in 2014 and offers guided tours of collections long unseen; a number of US museums, like the Brooklyn Museum of Art have also created attainable storage centres. Other museum expansions – the Tate, the MoMA, and the Met are just a few currently underway – are meant to increase space for permanent collection viewing.

Until visible storage is everywhere – or museums grow and then large that everything is on view, like a massive database – here are a few examples of wonderful things not often seen, and why.

Albrecht Dürer, Young Hare (1502)
Albertina Museum, Vienna

Albrecht Dürer, Young Hare, 1502 (Corbis)

Dürer's famous watercolour and gouache drawing Young Hare is a masterpiece in observation; its impeccable rendering served as benchmark for centuries thereafter. As 'Vienna'southward unofficial mascot', the piece of work on paper is also the Albertina'due south prize possession, merely it'southward non often on evidence. Subsequently a maximum of three months, Young Hare needs v years in dark storage with a humidity level of less than 50% for the newspaper to adequately residuum. It was on view briefly in 2014 later on a suspension of ten years, and will announced  again for a short time in 2018, before it goes back into hiding. The museum holds millions of works on paper, and is thus able to show "less than 1% – maybe even 0.1% – of our drove," according to deputy manager Christian Benedik, just, as mandated by the museum's original owners (part of the Habsburg royal family unit) every graphic work has a facsimile that can be viewed more readily, including one of Young Hare. A Google Cultural Institute Gigapixel paradigm of the Hare is digitally viewable – the better to see the reflections in the bunny's eyes with.

Henri Matisse, The Swimming Pool (1952)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Henri Matisse'southward The Swimming Pool installed at MoMA (Corbis)

The undulating ultramarine waves and swimmers of Henri Matisse'south The Swimming Pool, a big paper installation fabricated for the artist's dining room in Prissy, are in fact currently on view in the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cutting-Outs until February 10 at New York's Museum of Modern Art. But the work, acquired by MoMA in 1975, was out of sight for nearly 20 years. Its burlap bankroll had become discoloured and brittle; the white paper frieze on which the blueish cut-outs were mounted was stained. The long process of the work'south restoration was indeed the impetus backside this highly acclaimed exhibition that represents Matisse'southward last major work series; later the exhibition closes, the work volition exist unpinned and returned to customised, climatised storage cases. But the situation behind its temporary retirement isn't completely unusual – often, an artwork needing restoration volition look months, even years for an update.

Jackson Pollock, Mural on Red Indian Ground (1950)
Tehran Museum of Gimmicky Art, Tehran

Jackson Pollock, Mural on Carmine Indian Ground, 1950 (Wikimedia Eatables)

In the last years of the Iranian Shah's rein, during a particularly flush oil-smash menses, the Iranian queen Farah Pahlavi assembled a formidable drove of modern art, now valued at several billion US dollars. The Picassos, Pollocks and Warhols (among many other household names) in Tehran's Contemporary Art Museum were viewable from the museums' opening in 1977 until the Iranian Revolution in 1979 at which time the art was deemed 'Western', ie corrupt and unsuitable for viewing. Curators spirited the art abroad into a climate-controlled basement vault – there, it has been prophylactic not only from climate extremes but too knife-wielding revolutionaries. The artworks are often lent to other world institutions, but display in Tehran depends on who is leading the country – a few works were mounted in a Pop Art/Op Art show here in 2005, merely any works depicting nudity or homoerotic overtones, like Bacon's Two Figures Lying on a Bed With Attendants, remain subconscious.

Franz Marc, The Large Blue Horses (1911)
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Franz Marc, The Large Bluish Horses, 1911 (Wikimedia Commons)

The Walker Art Center's current incarnation dates from 1940, and its showtime acquisition was The Large Blue Horses past the German painter Franz Marc. The painting – which Adolf Hitler had deemed 'degenerate' and whose sale to the Walker in 1941 was finalised the calendar week bombs fell on Pearl Harbor – represented the museum's first foray into modern art, at the time a daring move. In the intervening decades, the Walker'southward curatorial emphases accept shifted: the museum is known for its post-1960s holdings and operation programs, and the painting is seldom shown. "Information technology'due south been ane of these mythic works in the collection that rarely gets exhibited," says curator Eric Crosby. "This is a work that is very much fundamental to the Walker'southward mission in the 1940s – but every bit contemporary art has inverse we take less context in which to exhibit information technology." Nonetheless, the Marc is on view there now until September 2016 in a special anniversary exhibition Fine art at the Heart, 75 Years of Walker Collections.

Edward Kienholz, The Art Prove (1963-1977)
Berlinische Galerie, Berlin

Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, The Fine art Testify, 1963-1977, Berlinische Galerie, © Nancy Reddin Kienholz (Kai-Annett Becker)

At the Berlinische Galerie, American artist Edward Kienholz's The Art Show –a large-calibration installation of visitors viewing an exhibition, with ventilators where their mouths should be –is rarely on view simply because its scope requires an entire gallery within the museum. Co-ordinate to museum director Thomas Köhler, Kienholz's work, an example of Aggregation art, also takes a great deal of energy and fourth dimension to assemble properly. Portions of the piece – a effigy'due south vintage spectacles, for example – as well often need to be replaced, sending the restoration team to flea markets.

The Coronation Carpet (1520-30) and Ardabil Carpet (1539-40)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

The Coronation Rug, 1520-30 (Los Angeles Land Museum of Art)

It's a tale of two carpets, times two. The Ardabil Carpet is well-known to visitors of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The lusciously detailed Persian textile is covered to preserve its centuries-old fibres and lit for but x minutes each hr. But in that location is a slightly smaller version at the Los Angeles Canton Museum of Fine art (LACMA), along with second like rug chosen the Coronation Carpet, so named because it was laid earlier the throne at Westminster Abbey for the crowning of Edward Seven in 1902. The LACMA rarely displays either, because of their large size and farthermost sensitivity to low-cal. It pays to be cautious: a mere chip is all that's left of the Coronation Carpet'due south mate, on display at Berlin's Museum of Islamic Art.

Tino Sehgal, This is Propaganda (2002)
Tate Modern, London

British-born, Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal turns art storage on its head. Why? As performative piece of work – executed not by Sehgal himself but by his trained 'interpreters' – it is completely immaterial. Unlike other artists in this field, Sehgal also stipulates that no record whatsoever remains of the work – no photos, no recordings, no press releases; but the experience. That dominion even extends to institutional sales agreements of his slice – a sale like that of This is Propaganda, which Tate bought in 2005, is verbally executed. The creative person, the buyer, a lawyer and a notary are present; all rules and regulations around the piece are committed to a designated person'due south retention. So This is Propaganda (which sees a gallery baby-sit singing "This is propaganda, y'all know, you know, this is propaganda, Tino Sehgal, This is propaganda, 2002" to every visitor who enters the space) exists only in the mind. Imagine that.

If you would like to annotate on this story or anything else you lot have seen on BBC Civilisation, head over to our Facebook  page or message the states on Twitter .

parracallather.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150123-7-masterpieces-you-cant-see

Share this post