LY #53 Busman's Holiday

I came up to Portland yesterday to look at art and the "art crowd."

An excess of good spirits kept me from my keyboard last night.

I call this a busman's holiday because I attended a "business" meeting of the members of the Portland Art Museum, 50 minutes of speech-making.  And, you know, I can't turn off my speech professor critical faculties just because I'm out of town and about to go to a party.

According to the agenda handed out at the door, it was the 121st annual meeting of the museum's membership.  I put "business" in quotes because the one piece of actual business completed by us folks in the Whitsell Auditorium was to vote "aye" on the names proposed for the incoming board of trustees.  There were no candidates running in opposition and it was an oral vote.  The outgoing chair of the board, Jim Winkler, put the names on the screen and then asked for both the yeas and naes to be spoken at the same time.  He then said, after many voices in the large room sang out an "ay" sound' that there were more "yaes".

So it wasn't a real vote.  I assume that all the real decision-making was done off stage.

The true purpose of the meeting was to congratulate the board and the members for the great year the museum experienced.   Winkler started the evening with a smoothly delivered, albeit completely "read" speech about all the different exhibits and community members served by the museum, with an emphasis on children.  The kids on the Powerpoint were a nice balance to an audience of grayheads like myself.

The incoming board chair, who had the same name as the auditorium, was not a fluent speaker.  He got caught in a loop around the thought that we should communicate with him and that he was in favor of communication.  He looked down at his paper three times, saying "oh no" then looked back at the audience.  He reminded me of some of my more nervous student speakers.

The third speaker, a younger man whose name escapes me, gave a solid financial overview with simple pie charts showing where the museum's operating expenses came from and how member had grown the last year with 15,118 members renewing and 2532 new members.

The best part of the meeting was an Oregon Public Broadcasting produced short about a truly creative fundraising event in which invited member paid $500 each to attend an event where seven of the curators pitched particular works of art as the possible next purchase by the museum.  It was a fascinating exhibition of public speaking prowess at work, edited, of course, for television so we only heard bits and pieces of the persuasive speeches given for the different works.

Portland Art Museum

After the meeting there was a member's party with Japanese food, Oregon wine and beer, and demonstrations of martial arts.  The galleries were open until nine and members followed docents around to hear about the samurai armor and other current and permanent exhibits.

And, as I learned to finish up such stories when I worked at the El Gato newspaper in high school, "A delicious meal was served and a delightful time was had by all."

Walter Benjamin was wrong about the "Work of Art . . ."

This week Laurie Taylor talked about Walter Benjamin on his BBC program Thinking Allowed.

A few years ago I read a complaint from a recent graduate in the U. of Chicago in the alumni magazine that he was assigned "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in three different classes.  I too had to read that work for at least two classes, once in my PhD program at the University of Utah and the other while attempting to get an MFA in creative writing.

Even at the time of my first reading back in 1986, I questioned some of Benjamin's claims, especially this one:  "that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art." By "aura" Benjamin meant a work's authenticity, the traditions and energy of its creation (which may have a religious or in some way worshipful source).  "By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."    Thus, a work's aura, its authenticity, becomes less important once the work itself can be reproduced.

I questioned this claim the first time I read it and then came to believe that Benjamin was clearly wrong when the when the Portland Art Museum brought Titian's La Bella to Stumptown in November, 2011.  A short commercial produced for the museum uses language that treats the painting like a touring celebrity:  "straight from Florence, Italy for her only West Coast appearance."  Titian himself is called "the most celebrated artist of Renaissance Venice."  Going to visit this painting is considered a far more exciting experience than just looking at the perfect online reproduction.   As The Art Newspaper reports, art museums around the world still experience significant attendance each year of people wanting to see the originals.

I believe that reproductions have actually increased the aura (and appeal) of original works of art.   A further example of the celebrity of the Old Masters is this wonderful "flashmob" video from the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam.  The painting "The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out"  by Rembrandt may be seen at the Rijksmuseum's website.