Once again, it's time for the art world's perennial Vegas knickers-twist. This time, the huffing has to do with Newsweek's report that the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art has guaranteed the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, $1 million for its loan of the 21 paintings in Claude Monet: Masterworks From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The show opens Friday at Bellagio and runs into September.
The gallery is programmed by PaperBall, a division of New York's Pace Wildenstein Gallery, which is run by Marc Glimcher. The idea of a for-profit organization shelling out cash to exhibit masterworks owned by a nonprofit museum simply galls some observers. Newsweek's Steve Friess (an occassional Weekly contributor) and Peter Plagens, while noting that museums pay each other loan fees, scoff that "Boston's hiring out Monets to help Glimcher make money in Las Vegas (not to mention jacking up the demand for the other Monets that Pace Wildenstein has for sale) seems to break new ground."
This is a peculiar formulation. Monets have filled numerous blockbuster shows and already command astronomical prices, thanks to their enduring appeal. It's hard to imagine this show is going to shake new billionaires out of the tree. And the conclusion is bland, as if the authors could not really come up with a reason why the fee is wrong; it simply "seems to break new ground." Can anyone spy a "slippery slope" around the bend?
Neither Malcolm Rogers, the Museum of Fine Art's director, nor Andrea Bundonis, the gallery's president and Glimcher's spouse, would reveal the amount in question, but Bundonis acknowledges, "It's a substantial loan fee." Rogers says, "It's a significant reason, but it's not the only reason" that Boston is shipping its Monets westward. Rogers calls his institution "the world's largest privately funded museum," implying it has to be creative in financing itself. To buttress the point, he observes that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently slashed its paltry $100,000 subsidy to $40,000.
Rogers had to think twice to recall that the Boston MFA owns "nearly 40" Monets, "plenty to go around." Blessed with one of the world's most impressive collections and saddled with the responsibility to pay its own way, the MFA under Rogers has launched other ambitious ventures, including a branch in Nagoya, Japan, that opened five years ago. Sound familiar? Not surprisingly, Rogers admires Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation, whose empire includes a Strip outpost. "He's a traditional museum director, but with vision," says Rogers.
But Rogers does not expect a similar permanent presence in Las Vegas. Bundonis only allows that, "We hope it's the beginning of a long-standing relationship."
It would be hard to top Monet, however, in terms of public appeal. Any exhibition by the prolific impressionist draws record crowds. No doubt this traces back to the accessible agreeability of his work, a fact that belies its original questing nature. The Bellagio show covers the chronology of his career, from "Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden in Argenteuil" (1875) through "Water Lilies" (1905). The pond blossoms consumed much of his later years, the subject matter becoming increasingly abstract. Fortunately, the show pauses to peruse an example of Monet's serial painting: two views of the Rouen Cathedral, which he painted repeatedly to prospect nuances of light and tone.
This is a crowd-pleaser, although Bundonis says that, "all of our exhibitions … tell a story." Art-loving Las Vegans know not to expect astringent intellectual inquiry from our Strip-based venues. Somehow we muddle through.
Some of us suspect, too, that our deliriously crass little village is the real culprit when critics carp about the arrangements that bring art here. The art world, let's not forget, has ever been about money. No doubt, the slope turns slippery somewhere, but not in this deal.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.