Been to a Museum Lately?

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PaulSF

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Mar 30, 2006
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Cincinnati, OH
Today I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to see an exhibit on Picasso and his influence on other artists of the modern era. Some of these artists that were featured include Jasper Johns, Arshile Gorky, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jackson Pollack.

Naturally, I spent as much or more time checking out the framing as I did the artwork! The Picasso pieces were generally put in beautiful frames, especially some exquisite hand-carved 16th and 17th century Spanish and Italian frames. There were also a fair amount of float frames. Some made sense, and some were just completely overwhelmed by the powerful abstract art they contained.

Then there were those lovely paintings where the artist just nailed slats of wood to the sides of the canvas. Most of those were then put in float frames, but a couple were just hung on the wall that way. And there were a couple of Andy Warhol canvases that were...dare I say it? yes, just hung on the wall as gallery wraps. SHAME ON YOU, SFMOMA!!!!

One of the Lichtenstein's was way cool -- it was done in his signature cartoon style, but painted on a sheet of plexiglass. I tried to slip it under my shirt and get it out the door, but they caught me. My shirt ain't that big.

A good lesson of this exhibit was seeing how well many of these cubist and abstract pieces looked in ornate antique frames from previous centuries. Too many customers come in with an abstract piece and say "I'm thinking just a black frame, I don't want the frame to overwhelm the art." But you don't have to go with a simple (and boring) black frame on these pieces. Picasso says so.
 
Somewhere I read that Picasso was one of the first to put glazing on canvas ...pre 1900... if I could only remember where I read it. :shrug:

go Picasso :thumbsup:
 
optium no doubt.

i was at the moma and the guggenheim last year doing the same thing (paying equal attention to the framing as well as the art). on some of their canvases for spacers they had these really obtrusive tan blocks lining the sides. is there some super secret museum reason for these? because they looked poorly done.
 
I was at the Dali museum last Dec. (deciding whether my next career included the phrase, "ya want fries with that?"-OR- "good morning, Artisan Framer, how can I help you?") It looked liked most of the paintings and drawings had the original framing on them. Ratty silk wrapped mats, huge pieces of dust under the smudged glass, and paper art slipping from crooked hand cut mats. The show was impressive, and the guide was very informative, but ya think they coulda ran a swiffer through the place before they let the public in!
 
Bus man's holiday

Well Paul, we do all need to get out to galleries and museums in our own cities. I know I need to do so more often.

We also go to museums when on holiday and examine the frames. (We also visit frame shops.) Last year in Boston for paren'ts weekend, we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, among others. There it seems that some of the art is actually exposed to the elements. We saw art glazed without spacers, and frames with gaping corners. This is not the first time we have seen poor preservation framing in museums, and one wonders about who their conservators are. I do like the empty frames on the wall where the originals were stolen in a famous heist. Kind of creepy, but interesting.

In Victoria a couple of years ago we saw similar problems at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. I wanted to tell the docents that they urgently needed a preservation framer! The Emily Carr paintings were so beautiful and so badly framed.

We also visited the Kennedy memorial library and museum in Boston last year. Now there is a beautiful presentation.

SFMOMA? Paul, this is very disappointing. My only hunch is that museums take the traveling exhibitions as they are, and the frames come with them. I don't know who handles framing upgrades. They can't bring them to me--my insurance wouldn't cover it!
 
matt medium said:
i was at the moma and the guggenheim last year doing the same thing (paying equal attention to the framing as well as the art). on some of their canvases for spacers they had these really obtrusive tan blocks lining the sides. is there some super secret museum reason for these? because they looked poorly done.
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure what you're describing. By "block" so you mean that they didn't run the whole length of the leg? If you can describe what it is I'll be visiting MoMA next week and can ask the guy in charge of their framing/exhibition department.
 
I'm looking forward to that Picasso show coming to Mpls. this year. My son just loves Picasso, and it should be eye-opening for him to see how he influenced other artists.
 
Kirstie, I spent 2 full days at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, in 1983. I'm still not sure why, but to this day, it is my favorite museum of all time. I guess because it's so un-museum-like, as if we were stepping back in time to Mr. and Mrs. Gardner's home when they actually lived there. That's probably why the art is left exposed to the elements, unchanged since the Gardners put it there, and I believe that was part of her request when she bequeathed to the public.

Almost eerie, but I truly loved it, and hope someday to go back. I'd make the trip just for that museum!
 
Kirstie, regarding the Gardner museum -- the terms of Isabella Stewart Gardner's will specified that all the art had to remain just as she left it. They aren't allowed to move any of the paintings from one location to another, and I guess they aren't allowed to update any of the framing either.

My favorite painting there is El Jaleo, by John Singer Sargent, that is at the end of that long tiled hallway on the ground floor.
 
Some docents for the PAM and I were discussing this very problem just this morning with a collective of Patrons.

Most museums don't have in place an outline or program of repair, concervation, or even framing. With out a directive in place, there is no impitus to conform or even care. And for many museums, their prime goal is to just get people in the doors and stop them from taking the artwork home with them when they leave.

What spawned this discussion was that we are now exihibiting a wonderful collection of early 19th century Impressionist paintings. Most are in grand Spanish and French Baroque or Louis XV or hot washed Regency I & II frames..... except one which is in a 3" wide 2" thick black block frame.

The answer is "there is no directive or will to spend money".
 
Why yes I have...

I spent a few extra days in Baltimore after the show for some R&R. I spent last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday commuting back and forth to DC.

The best museum experience I had was the National Portrait Gallery. It's of the same caliber as the National Gallery, but a smaller and more intimate space. It was a wonderful experience to spend an afternoon with Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Patton, John Waters and hundreds of other distinguished ladies and gentleman of our history. Even Queen Elizabeth II was there, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The best part? On the upper floors they store their collection not on exhibit. So? It's stored hanging behind glass so it can be viewed by the public at any time, even when not on exhibit. They even had drawers housing smaller pieces like old tintypes. You press a button and it slides out, and then tiny LED bulbs light up so you can see better. Press the button again and the motors slide it closed.

Oh, it gets better. There's the Lunder Conservation Center. That's where the conservation labs are located. They all have floor to ceiling glass walls so that the public can watch the conservators as they work. Cool. So I was standing there as a gentleman behind the glass was showing another a frame. He noticed me standing out there, came out and asked if I was with the tour. I replied I wasn't, but could I be? He invited me in. So get this: I got a two-person, 2 1/2 hour tour of the frame conservation lab and the gallery from the director of frame conservation. He showed us some examples of the very best of the American frame making tradition. Absolutely incredible work. And he dragged us (willingly) from gallery to gallery showing us some of the best frames and pointing out the work he had done on them. It was the best afternoon I spent in DC, and I just feel awful that I don't have his name handy. I got his card but I'm recovering from moving right now, so it's around somewhere.

And by the way, they do put a rigid backing on their paintings, for all the reasons we've discussed.
 
Well, I'd offer to do some reframing of museum pieces for free, just to have the opportunity to work with something of that quality. Even if it's just changing out the mats, I'd do it.
 
I must admit that lately I have stuck to viewing exhibits of sculpture or 3 dimensional works of art just to keep my blood pressure nice and low.

When the Armand Hammer Exhibit was going around the country decades ago I got so steamed I was ready to write a letter to Mr. Hammer himself - gosh the framing and matting and artworks were in a very sad state of repair!

And I cannot stand to go to local art shows - OY! Once I went to the most prestigious local art group's yearly fandango and the piece of art that won the highest award was a gorgeous pastel by a really talented artist - hand cut white mat (butter knife, methinks) many specks of carp visible on said mat, filthy grimy glass - and to top it off - a pre-Neilsen metal frame - which was also filthy and scratched.

Now the only galleries I go to or openings I attend are ones where I have done all or most of the framing! Then I can walk around and admire the artwork again and ignore the framing completely!

Ah, bliss.....
 
Mar, Armand would have laughed, and given you a call just to tell you "yes, I know".

We were discussing the disgusting framing of the show vs the nice framing he was asking for to go on the watercolors of his new pony that Salvador Arelleno had painted. That's when I found out that the art wasn't his... he was just the organizer.

The framing was all done or undone according to the museum or private collections directives. He didn't touch anything. A few even came apart during the show... something that is very hard to happen considering how they are treated in shipping.

But for the snobs, the "art" is everything, and the frame is adjunct.
 
"Hot washed" may mean frames that were "scrubbed down" removing most of the gesso and gilt from the frame; there is a term for this that escapes me at the moment. There was quite a fad for this, I believe in the 1930s. And before shuddering at what was done, remember, at the time, many of those frames were out of fashion and of no value, thus the updating.

Variations in museum framing may depend on budget issues, as well as on the tastes of an administration, and as subject to change as any private owner. Monet may have preferred a painted frame, but when a wealthy owner or museum wanted to display their prized possession, they may have opted for a massive gilt frame. And on the other hand, 19th century paintings in fussy (but original) Victorian frames become "early American folk art" when swapped into a simple frame (or as is often seen, just keeping the gilt liner and tossing the rest).

Very often museums and collectors do not bother to update framing, and you can often tell by the framing style in what decade the art work was acquired, as it will reflect the taste of the time. Loan exhibits are great examples of this; I once saw an exhibit of Dutch interior paintings - most, as expected were in the ebonized ripple molding, or tortoise veneer you would expect, but some were in gilt French frames, etc. It was a good visual exercise in how frame choice affected the perception of the art.

Sorry to be so long winded, but just returned from a museum hopping weekend, and at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY, there is a wonderful exhibit of still life paintings from the Medici family (with some incredible frames). A related exhibit of modern interpretations of these same paintings by Shimon Okshteyn was in an adjacent room. The artist embellished frames to re-interpret the art. Some of these are on his web site. Might really freak you framers out!

http://www.okshteyn.com/paintings-2005a.html

Joseph
 
Oh my.........:icon9: :icon9:

Are you sure Hildy from "While You Were Gone" (Or was it "Trading Spaces"?) didn't get at a couple of those?

Or, my Gramma Maudie, reincarnated?

Whoa..........!!!
 
Although not apparent on his web site, these paintings are large - appoximately 4 x 6 ft. They are primarily monochromatic, and one in the exhibit, but not on web, was strangely beautiful, as the frame was completely encrusted with pearls.

Joseph
 
During the late 1800 there was a plethora of old water guilded frames. It was cheaper for the impressionist painters to buy an "old" frame and in the school of "anti-establishment", "hot wash" [scrubbing with boiling hot water] off most of the guilding, and bole along with much of the gesso. This left a whitish carved frame with bits and pieces of black, gray and tan bole and tiny flecks of gold that were still caught in the nooks and cranies.

In furniture, the reverse was imitated by whiting rubbed onto the wood and flecks of color and gold applied.... this was called French wash or Pickeling.

By the 1930 the "making" had replaced the "washing" and so the difference of a late 1800s Impressionist frame, and a Mid 20th is markedly different.

One of the classic adages of finishes is "it's not always what you put on, but what and how you take off."

I think it also applies to strip joints also. :D
 
josephforthill said:
I once saw an exhibit of Dutch interior paintings - most, as expected were in the ebonized ripple molding, or tortoise veneer you would expect, but some were in gilt French frames, etc. It was a good visual exercise in how frame choice affected the perception of the art.
Click to expand...

There are some amazing "Gilt French frames" that are very much Dutch and NOT French. The black ebony or ebonized frames were reflective of the Calvinist leanings that dominated Holland, but too, there were many guilted frames that were reflective of the Rococo, Baroque as well as the French sweeps of the time. After all, Paris was the "Capital of the World" for almost 400 years.
 
..There are some amazing "Gilt French frames" that are very much Dutch and NOT French. ...

Of course. But in this particular exhibit, with many loaned items from private collections, there were a number of frames out of period, and obviously selected according to the owner's interior decoration rather than historical accuracy. Sometimes thinking outside the box (or frame) works, but some of these combinations were less than successful.
 
framer dave: hope too you had time for Walters Art Gallery, Balto Museum of Art and the Visionary Art Institute on Light Street a walk away from the Innter Harbor. The last being a place where "visionary artists"--those guys who see visions either messianic or otherwise--exhibit their works. Would've been as interesting as schlepping all those miles to DC
 
We had a weekend in London for my 50th - Tea at the Ritz ...did the galleries, or all we could.

Tate Modern - which is in an old power station - the main space is the turbine room - huge. A sound installation - flat speakers on all walls about 20' apart, on the ceilings too, all playing different things, some music, some prose, one just saying 'Look out - look out' (that was on a ceiling above a staircase).

Stand in the centre of it all and it was just weird, all these different sounds, then each individual speaker becoming clear as you got closer, with the rest of the din in the background. Dunno what it was all about but I really liked it.

National Gallery Turner, Constable, Monet etc etc.

National Portrait gallery which included a video of David Beckham sleeping and an absolutely amazing life sized oil of Judy Dench, positioned and lit in such a way that you turned a corner and saw her like she was another viewer, just like you, walking towards you.

But the weirdest was the Saatchi gallery - plenty of Rothkos and Pollacks. But they had filled one room with recycled/reclaimed engine oil, built a passage in the middle of it, oil at waist height, you could walk into it sort of thing, just one person at a time, no touching, but you could blow on it.

The room just had bare oak panelled walls and a couple of chandeliers, all perfectly mirror-imaged in this black smelly mass, like looking down into another room.
 
That sounds like an interesting experience, walking through the oil room. The thing is (I could be wrong, but I think) those fumes are toxic.
:eek: Rick
 
Joseph - those embellished frames are about the coolest art I have seen in a long time!!! THANK YOU for restoring my faith in the art world!!!

Right up my alley - yessiree Bob! I am inspired - must embellish more frames, must embellish more frames, must embellish.....
 
Ha! Mar!! When I saw those frames, first thing I thought of was "Wait until Framar sees these, she's gonna flip!"

Go get your glue gun, girl!!
 
Well, Framar, you are so close to Rochester - go see them "in the flesh".

In the Medici still life section, the curators did an interesting thing with the hanging of the exhibit, making it appear that each of the paintings was hung by an iron "ring hanger" on the top rail of the frame.
 
Well, yes - I did think of actually going to Rochester but it would have to be on a Sunday and the exhibit is only up to the 27th of May (unless maybe I forgot to look at the year and......) - That would be my 4th reason to go there: Gallery, Rochester Horses, Roz (!) and dear friends who keep begging me to visit!

Hmmmmm.....
 
Give yourself a day off!

Sounds like a good excuse to give yourself a day off!! Post the sign and GO!!!

Elaine
 
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