Artwork on loan leaves empty space at museum

Crystal Bridges selective in works sent on road

George Wesley Bellows’ 1919 work The Studio is one of three pieces on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

George Wesley Bellows’ 1919 work The Studio is one of three pieces on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Correction: When Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art lent three pieces by artist George Wesley Bellows to another museum, two of the works were in storage and the third piece, which was on exhibit, was replaced by another piece in Crystal Bridges’ 2,000-plus artwork collection, said Diane Carroll, media relations manager for Crystal Bridges. Carroll said the museum exhibits at least 450 pieces at a time and no signs are needed to indicate a work has been loaned because other works are available to take its place. A headline with a Nov. 21 article about Crystal Bridges incorrectly stated that artwork on loan left empty space at the museum.

Before the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened a year ago this month, the Bentonville museum loaned about 60 works to other museums.

But now that the museum is open and attendance is burgeoning, curators are thinking more about what visitors would be missing if a wellknown piece is removed from the walls at Crystal Bridges and shipped elsewhere for another audience.

“It’s not just that they’re removed from the galleries, it’s that they’re unavailable to educators and guests,” said Kevin Murphy, Crystal Bridges’ curator of American Art.

Crystal Bridges currently has eight works on loan to other institutions.

Such is the case withthree pieces by artist George Wesley Bellows that Crystal Bridges has loaned for an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Royal Academy of Arts in London are partners in the endeavor.

The Bellows works are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a historic exhibition that includes 120 pieces by Bellows stretched over six galleries. It’s believed to be the public’s first retrospective look at Bellows’ work since 1966. Bellows was considered one of the country’s greatest artists when he died in 1925 at age 42 of a ruptured appendix.

The three Bellows pieces, part of the permanent Crystal Bridges collection, are Excavation at Night (1908),Return of the Useless (1918) and The Studio (1919). The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition runs through Feb. 18. Before going to New York, the paintings were on view in Washington. The next stop is London. Not all three paintings were included in all three museums’ exhibitions, but by the time the paintings are returned, at least one will have been out for about a year.

The upside of the loan for Crystal Bridges is that the Bellows pieces will be seen in the context of nationally and internationally known institutions like the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, plus private collections.

“In this case, it was clear that we wanted to be a part ofthis exhibition,” Murphy said.

“It helps spread the brand,” he said.

Crystal Bridges’ inclusion in the Bellows tour makes the museum “a player” with respect to the quality of its collection, said Barbara Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown curator of American Paintings and Sculpture for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The New York museum welcomed more than 6.2 million visitors last year and is expecting hundreds of thousands for the Bellows show.

“I think it’s part of their outreach that they’re happy to let people know that they have wonderful things, and we hope that having the information on the labels of their paintings here will make Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art come to life as an entity for New Yorkers,” she said.

THE PAINTINGS

The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit opened to the public Thursday, which hasn’t allowed time for much feedback from patrons, “but I can tell you that I expect New Yorkers are going to be enchanted with these paintings,” Weinberg added.

Excavation at Night in particular resonates with New Yorkers, she said. The scene depicts a vast hole in the ground, which would later be the 8-acre building site for the 1910 version of Pennsylvania Station. The train station was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with an underground rail system that New Yorkers use today. Weinberg sees the painting as a spectacular educational opportunity.

“That painting is not only beautiful to behold and a great testament to Bellows’ skills as an artist, but it also helps New Yorkers understand their history,” she said. “It takes them back more than 100 years.”

Bellows was a versatile artist, constantly changing his interest with respect to subject and style, and the Crystal Bridges loans provide the exhibition with variety in terms of subject matter. Return of the Useless, is an anti-war painting and The Studio portrays Bellows in a Christmas scene with his family.

“I think New Yorkers will really love it because they love getting to know an artist as a human being, and here’s Bellows in his own home with his wife and his children and his mother-in-law and the maids,” Weinberg said of The Studio.The House where Bellows created the painting still stands at 146 E. 19th St., right around the corner from Gramercy Park.

As is common with loans to other institutions, Crystal Bridges officials identified pieces that they wanted. The National Gallery of Art loaned three portraits of women, one by Bellows from 1914, one by John Singer Sargent from 1902 and a head-to-toe portrait by James McNeil Whistler from the late 19th century.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/21/2012