Viewing page 28 of 55
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
American artist in its collection without adequate payment to the artist. Community Activities 20. We recommend that museums encourage active participation in art activities by the widest possible proportion of the public. 21. Believing that museums should be the art centers of their communities, we recommend that they make available space for local artists to conduct sketch classes, lectures, meetings, forums and exhibitions. We also recommend that museums encourage the founding of municipal art centers, as implementing and expanding the museum's activities. 22. We recommend that museums, with the help of artists' organizations, encourage decoration of public and private buildings by American artists. Publications 23. We recommend that museums publish more books and catalogues on contemporary American art, including monographs on living artists. We suggest that artists' organizations could help such publications by promoting sales to their membership, and by guaranteeing minimum quantities of sales, which would also add to their own revenues. Artist Participation in Museum Activities 24. We recommend that artists in an advisory and consultative capacity, not necessarily as trustees, be affiliated with museum activities, the artists to be selected by artists or artists' organizations. 25. We recommend that museums give special consideration to the employment of qualified artists as docents. General 26. Since any constructive measures for the benefit of American art should be based on a realistic understanding of museums and their problems, we recommend that the various national museum associations, working in collaboration with Artists Equity Association, make a statistical survey to determine the existing resources, activities and policies of museums and other public institutions in respect to contemporary American art. 27. Whereas the mutual interests and problems of artists and museums require more thorough study and deeper probing than were possible in this third Woodstock Art Conference, it is resolved that the resolutions and recommendations of the Conference be referred for further study and appropriate action to the American Association of Museums, the American Federation of Arts, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the College Art Association of America, and Artists Equity Association, with the recommendation that a joint committee of representatives of these organizations be formed to study the whole question; and that another conference between artists and museum officials be called at a time and place to be agreed upon by these organizations. One might have thought that by Saturday afternoon the enthusiasm of the conference would slump after thirty-six hours of hard work, but not at all. This was the public session and the biggest studio at the League was jammed, with the crowd spilling over outside on the lawn where the loud speakers had been set up. Arnold Blanch was chairman of this final meeting and introduced the following speakers: Rene d'Harnoncourt, Philip Evergood, Edith Halpert, Andrew Ritchie, Francis Henry Taylor and Hudson Walker. Each of these speakers gave a good account of himself and expressed the viewpoint that he represented-artist, dealer or museum executive - intelligently and interestingly. Francis Henry Taylor injected a note of realism, when he said: "Therefore, I think it's a mistake to generalize too much about museums as a whole...Nobody seems to differentiate between a museum with an operating income of over a million dollars and a small art center which may call itself a museum, that had an annual budget of $15,000 or $20,000 a year. Those things are all governed by and conditioned by circumstances which are unique and for which there can only be generalities of wishful thinking." His final point should also be quoted: "...the problem that we have to face is the growing separation between the artist and the public. It is a separation which has taken place since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is one of the inevitable results of the age of specialization. How to recapture that confidence between the public and the artist is primarily, in my opinion, the function of the museum. The museum has to be the broker, the spiritual broker, between two vitally important elements of the art world." Everyone seemed to agree that Philip Evergood's speech was an excellent summary of what the whole conference has been about, and so it is printed below: - THE ARTIST AND THE MUSEUM By Philip Evergood "At present, broadly speaking, what is the relationship between the artist and the museum? Let us state the facts simply. The artist, being the maker or producer, must establish a reputation for himself and create a demand for his work which he endeavors to sell in order to provide the necessities of life and the means for the replenishment of materials with which to continue production. In order to accomplish this and thereby be accepted on a professional plane, he must in some way obtain the approbation of the museum, which institution is the only one capable of placing this figurative seal of public acceptance on his product, (1) by exhibiting it importantly, (2) by awarding it a prize, (3) by purchasing it. It stands to reason, therefore, that the artist is anxious to find favor in the eyes of the museum, which alone is capable of bestowing those blessings. The museum on its side, being conscious of its duty as a high custodian of culture, tries to find rare gems of quality it can approve. Thus understandably it tends to be reticent towards the advances of the artist. One might say that here a buyer-seller atmosphere has existed on an almost permanent basis between the producer of art and the establisher of reputations, the serio-comic aspect of the situation being that it is mostly atmospheric as far as any "big business" is concerned. The stupefying and glorious occasion of actual sales have been few and far between, which has made the situation a paradoxical one. Love comes only with union. 4
