GLENN LONEY'S MUSEUM NOTES

The Pierpont Morgan Library:

The priceless heart of the complex has two chambers. One is the handsomely furnished and lofty room Morgan used for his personal office. There are several fortunes worth of Renaissance artworks on view.

The other impressive space is the great Library, with walls and balconies of glass-paned cases of rare books. The room is dominated by an immense Medieval fireplace and a richly worked tapestry.

Here Morgan could admire his priceless Medieval manuscripts, his Gutenberg Bible, and his Limoges Enamels. He also received guests here, basking an aura of wealth and power which can only be imagined now.

There are also several exhibition galleries, a research library & archives, a large second-floor auditorium, and a postmodernist glass atrium for lunches and afternoon teas. When you visit the Morgan, you aren't going to see only old books.

The darkly noble old Morgan Mansion—built for Morgan's son—which is linked to the Library by the Atrium has an excellent arts bookshop, impressive period rooms for conferences, and abundant areas for conservation, administration, and storage.

The Morgan Library and the Frick Collection are the two most impressive examples of the lavish lifestyles of American Robber Barons still surviving in Manhattan. And they are both open to the public.

In E. L. Doctorow's novel, "Ragtime," Coalhouse Walker barricaded himself in the Morgan Library to make his last stand. When this event was made a climactic moment in the motion-picture, Morgan spokesmen were worried that some copy-cat might try to make fiction into fact.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. Now that the fiction is repeated eight times a week onstage in the musical, "Ragtime," perhaps they feel more accustomed to the idea that "it's only a story."

Manhattan Art News & Notes:

New at Cooper-Hewitt Museum:

"The Huguenot Legacy: English Silver 1680-1760"

But the genius and skill of French Huguenot designers and craftsmen—working in silver and other precious metals—gradually made it possible for them to survive, even to thrive.

Until King Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The edict had guaranteed the Protestant Huguenots limited religious freedoms. That event set a great emigration in motion. But Huguenots had been departing long before 1685.

Some Huguenot silversmiths sailed to the Americas. Some went north to the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia.

But some of the most talented designers in silver crossed the Channel to England. There, their often ornate and fanciful designs found royals, nobles, and wealthy merchants who knew how to appreciate their impressive creations.

Currently at the Cooper-Hewitt—the National Design Museum of the Smithsonian—more than a hundred of these remarkable works of Huguenot English Silver will be on display. All the pieces are from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection.

Among the designers and craftsmen represented are Paul de Lamerie, Paul Crespin, Daniel Marot, and Jean Tijou. English silversmiths were also influenced by Huguenot designs.

The late 17th century also saw the introduction of coffee, tea, and chocolate into England as elegant beverages for the upper classes. This provided French designers with the opportunity to create a wide range of handsome tea and coffee pots, caddies, sugar-casters, and creamers. Not to overlook the often elaborate silver trays they crafted for these objects.

The popularity of continental soups and stews required impressive, even fantastic, soup-tureens. Noble silver candlesticks and candelabra were much in demand.

New silver from the New World—as well as old church-silver, melted down after cities, provinces, and entire nations became Protestant—fed the increasing demand for handsome tableware and ornaments.

England's many embassies abroad—to impress the rulers and aristocracies of other lands—also had to be equipped with elaborate silver services for dining and entertaining. These were commissioned by the Jewel House, a department of the Royal Household.

While some of the remarkable silver vessels and flatware on view echo baroque or neo-classical styles, much of the 18th century silver design and decoration is influenced by French rococo. That is far fussier and more delicate than the baroque.

Looking at the elaborate engraved designs and patterns for silver manufacture, it's saddening to realize that some splendid ensembles were created, only to be melted down a century or more afterward—to pay gambling debts or stave off bankruptcy.

How fortunate that so much silver of value and beauty has survived. And that collectors like the Hartmans have diligently sought it out and preserved it.

GEOMETRY IN STEEL--Franz Weissmann's studio full of colorful forms.

He and his family did not have to flee Hitler and the Nazis. They had left long before Hitler came to power and annexed the entire nation of Austria.

During World War II, in fact, Weissmann was a student in Rio at the National School of Fine Arts. In 1948, he founded the first school of Modern Art with a colleague.

His colorful and distinctive sculptures—like Alexander Calder's sheet-metal Stabiles—can be found in many public places in Brazil, as well as in major museums in Rio and São Paulo.

An impressive selection of his works is now on view at the Heidi Neuhoff Gallery [41 East 57th Street] until the end of May.

The exhibition title, "Geometry in Steel," is certainly apt. But it doesn't suggest the bright basic colors Weissmann uses to clad his steel shapes.

By cutting, bending, and welding steel plates, Weissmann is able to create planar and solid geometric forms which are both intriguing and puzzling.

Some, like a Möbius Strip, seem to defy the rules of geometry. One work appears to be a series of right-angles cut from one square of metal. On closer examination, it's clear that cannot be so. But the welds which join the elements are so finely done, they are almost undetectable.

Weissmann's "Mondriana" is a salute to Piet Mondrian—who raised simple elements of geometry and bold elemental colors to the status of High Art. This sculpture also echoes the boldly colorful geometric furniture of Gerritt Rietveld.

Three intersecting square black metal frames enclose two right-angled metal plates. One is colored bright blue, the other bright yellow. Not as complicated as most Mondrian canvases, but in tune.

Weissmann's forms often define space, not by their solidity, but by the voids they create. He could be a Taoist in his appreciation of empty spaces waiting to be filled. Even if only by the viewer's imagination.

GEOMETRY IN STEEL--Franz Weissmann's studio full of colorful forms.

They are so sleekly designed and so brilliantly polished that they appear to be High Tech decorations. And the fact that they move in various fascinating ways certainly does invite the viewer to set them in motion.

They are very Modern in inspiration, but there is also a wonderful whiff of Retro Art Deco about some of them.

In the current show at the Davidson Gallery [41 East 57th Street], De Movellan's "Sail" is especially appealing. It is shaped like an elongated diamond, with small stainless steel sail-like elements attached to slim wood sections of "mast."

De Movellan's "Flame" seems a much simpler version of this basic idea.

"Points" is also more elemental and more abstract. Elongated wedges of tiger maple and mahogany are articulated on aluminum and stainless steel.

For complexity, there's "Cluster," a fascinating construction of circular and semi-circular hollow shapes which rides on two shiny bars.

My favorite is "Nine Step Infinity" which looks at first glance like a Postmodernist wall-clock with only nine hours on it. But each of these nine elements—made of shiny metal sails and polished wooden rods—revolves as the entire sculpture revolves.

You can be sure Sue Coe wouldn't even touch a Big Mac. And she certainly won't wear fur, leather, feathers, or buttons made of horn.

At least that is what viewers can intuit from Coe's ferocious and repeated attacks on the horrors of slaughter-houses, the ghastly executions of fur-bearing animals, and the sadistic practices of Vivisectionists.

This is hardly Grandma Moses Territory. But it is in keeping with Galerie St. Etienne's longtime championing of modern German and Austrian artists of Social Protest, such as Käthe Kollwitz.

Sue Coe's current show at the Galerie [24 West 57th Street] is not a random collection of optically screaming indictments of Cruelty To Animals. But Coe's style is always rough and raw, to convey the depth of her outrage.

The new show is a cycle of works that is more Hogarthian than those of that famed visual moralist/satirist himself. Coe calls it "The Pit: The Tragical Tale of the Rise and Fall of a Vivisector."

It was inspired by Hogarth's allegorical images in "The Four Stages of Cruelty." Not by "The Rake's Progress."

Its anti-hero is the pathetic Pat, who loves his boyhood pet, Pit. This is a Pit Bull dog Pat's father abandons on the road, enraged at Pat's sissy affection for the animal.

What happens to Pit after that is horrific. Pat, however, at first seems to prosper, becoming a lab technician.

But he ends working for a firm that conducts needless and endlessly cruel experiments on lab animals. One day, a dying Pit is brought into the lab, but he is so disfigured Pat cannot recognize him.

Unfortunately, Pat has caught a terrible disease from one of the lab's experiments. And he dies as horribly as Pit, himself turned into a lab animal.

This is strong stuff. If you saw Sue Coe's previous visual indictment of the meat-packing industry, "Porkopolis," you may have some idea of her savage anger.

FREE FREE FREE--Cover of your free comic-book, "The Invisible City."

Titled "The Invisible City," it chronicles in elemental text and cartoons the most emblematic moments in the night-jobs of various Manhattan workers on the Graveyard Shift.

These are based on true stories, "as told to artists Grennan & Sperandino." For New Yorkers who have never had to work the Lobster or the Graveyard Shift, these storyboard cells may be a revelation.

For those who arrive bright and early at various municipal offices—including school and college classrooms—it may be difficult, however, to believe that people have been hard at work all night cleaning the premises.

The apparent purpose of this subsidized exercise in reducing realities to cartoon make-believe must be Increased Civic Awareness.

Can these comics be Consciousness-Raising about the considerable daytime lifestyle sacrifices night-workers must make?

Actually, as some of the colorful panels point out, there are also real compensations in working through the night. Usually without overbearing bosses and overweening colleagues!

Night-workers can, in fact, be Free Spirits!

At one CUNY college, a TV instructor was constantly annoyed at the dirt and dust which never seemed to vanish from studio floors or office desks. Late one night, he returned to make Polaroid photographs of the janitors—or Sanitary Engineers, as they preferred to be titled—fast asleep on studio couches.

In retaliation, they didn't even come round to sleep—let alone dab at the dirt—for six months. Until he apologized. As city workers, they could not be dismissed of course. Or disciplined.

Working at another CUNY college, I arrived each day to find my desk-top smeared with the greasy remains of Col. Sanders' chicken-wings and sticky puddles of coffee and Coke©. The janitors had their midnight feasts on my desk because it had a phone with an outside line.

When I made a big daily show of scrubbing the surface clean, this was reported by some daytime custodial staff. And a job-action was threatened.

Professors, it seemed, had no right to clean their own areas. But no one else was going to do it either.

If Mayor Giuliani abolishes tenure for city teaching faculties, he should do the same for other employees—including Sanitary Engineers.

These are not issues addressed in "The Invisible City," however. They will have to wait for the Resurrection of Walt Kelly and a Retro Comics Tradition.

In the meantime, while supplies last, you can get your free copy of the current comic-book by calling: 212-960-3942. Or search for: www.publicartfund.org

In the Shadow of Abraham Lincoln
At the Cooper Union for Science & Art—

"Reopening Europe: Curating Beyond 2000"

In early April, they gathered in the Village at Cooper Union—in the Great Hall where Abraham Lincoln made such a great impression.

Their announced topic unfortunately had nothing to do with Freeing the Slaves. Not even curatorial slaves to current fads and fashions in the International Art World.

After the last disastrous Dokumenta X in Kassel—curated by Catherine David—it seemed time to give the very idea of international art shows a rest.

But no! The forthcoming edition of this showcase of artistic imitation and poverty of imagination will be curated by Okwui Enwezor, a native of Nigeria. Dokumenta XI is scheduled for 2002.

Currently, Enwezor is an adjunct curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. And he was Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997.

He was joined on the panel at Cooper Union by Francesco Bonami, who is Manilow [Barry?] Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Until recently, he was US editor of Flash Art International. And he is still Artistic Director of the Fondazione Sandretto ReRebaudengo per L'Arte.

So he is certainly in a position to know about these things.

As is Maria Hlavajova. She's Director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts-Bratislava—which nearby Viennese still call Pressburg.

The capital of independent Slovakia is only 45 minutes from downtown Vienna. So it's fairly easy for her to contribute to PROFIL, the Austrian equivalent of Time.

She and Bonami have been chosen to co-curate Slovenia's answer to Dokumenta. This edition will be called Manifesta 3. It's planned for 2000 in Ljubljana. If NATO is not still bombing the Serbs out of the Balkans…

Also at the conference-table was Paolo Colombo, who usually works in Geneva as Director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain.

But this fall, he will show his international curatorial skills on the Bosphorus. This September, his taste and insights will be demonstrated at the 6th Istanbul Biennial. Of which he is the artistic director.

Lynne Cooke moderated. She's Curator of the Dia Center for the Arts.

The well-attended discussion was made possible by cooperation of Cooper Union Extended Studies Program, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and the Public Art Fund, the same folks who are giving away comic-books about people who work at night in New York.

Unfortunately, I'm still in the dark—even having listened closely to the panelists—about such matters as: "What artistic and cultural currents define a European community for the contemporary arts?"

Or this problem: "What are the contexts and possibilities of artistic and cultural interchange between Europe and other centers of contemporary art in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America?"

Would you please repeat the question?

Other European cities have been so honored in previous years, but they were major capitals like Berlin, Madrid, and Copenhagen.

Weimar, in German Thuringia, has long been a sleepy little provincial town. Especially during the long years of the German Democratic Republic, when it was almost impossible for West Germans to visit. And extremely difficult for foreign journalists like your reporter.

But Weimar has a very special place in Europe's Cultural History. Here, the reigning Duke, Carl August, engaged the great German poet, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to run his Court Theatre.

As well as to advise him on most other matters as well, including investing in dollars and pounds sterling.

Goethe's great contemporary, Friedrich Schiller, was also a Writer-in-Residence in Weimar. Nor were the talents of the remarkable Hungarian pianist, composer, and lover, Franz Liszt, lacking.

Bernd Kauffmann—the Intendant/Impresario for the myriad cultural events planned this year—has been at work for several seasons to make sure hardly a minute will pass without something cultural worth seeing or doing.

In addition to avant-garde productions in the National-Theater and in other odder venues, there will be a number of art-exhibitions and art-actions. There will also be social seminars and public discussions of issues raised by the darker shadows of Weimar's and Germany's History.

The infamous Nazi Death Camp, Buchenwald, is only a short distance from the Neo-Classical Mausoleum in which Goethe is buried. There have recently been some questions about the body in the sarcophagus: is it really that of the author of "Faust I & II"?

Not to worry. Goethe's remains were apparently carefully preserved during the Communist Era. Only the bones now remain.

But Kauffmann has had Goethe's famous Garten-Haus copied, so the hordes of tourists expected in Weimar won't wear out the floors of the historic Garden-House.

For more information about Weimar and its Culture Year, check out: www.weimar1999.de [Loney]