GLENN LONEY'S MUSEUM NOTES

38 Tons of 168 Stone Specimens on View
In New Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth

The new anagram stands for the Hall of Planet Earth, recently opened at the Museum. If there aren't any rock-samples from Mount Arrarat—with skid-marks from Noah's Ark—that's not because museum expeditions haven't scoured the planet for minerals to exhibit in this amazing high-tech chamber.

Far older than any Middle Eastern rocks is the zircon crystal from Australia. It's nearly 4.3 billion years old. This may create some theological problems for those who believe God created the earth only some 8,000 years ago.

The planet has obviously been spinning in orbit much longer than that, as these exhibits make clear. But the newest sample is some sulfur, collected as soon as it solidified on an active volcano in Indonesia, in 1998.

With giant video-screens, fascinating self-operated computer-programs, and immense samples of rock formations from around the world, this is a hall to which both kids and adults will want to return many times.

It has been designed to investigate five major questions about the Earth's existence:

· How has Earth evolved?

· Why do ocean basins, mountains, and continents exist

· How do we "read" rocks to discover Earth's history?

· What causes climate and climate-changes?

· Why is Earth habitable?

Among the 86 tons of rock which were collected for this hall, the 168 specimens on view come from 25 countries and 5 ocean-floor regions. They have been brought to the Gottesman Hall from as far as Antarctica and as near as Central Park West & 90th Street.

Only 38 tons of the samples are actually on display. You can imagine the girders which must be under the floor of the hall. The floor of the 1930s hall has actually been raised to create the impression that some rocks are rising out of the ground.

In order to provide actual-scale exhibits of layers of sedimental and volcanic rock—as well as sections showing the upthrusts of earthquake activity—some displays show only a thin wall of rock, bonded to stabilizing backing. This also cuts down the tonnage.

Sulfide chimneys come from 7,000 feet below the ocean's surface. They still appear to be in saline solution. An eclogite from Zermatt—site of the Matterhorn—was collected at 13,776 feet above sea-level. And there's an ice-core from Greenland!

Museum experts are not exactly boasting when they note that this is "one of the most outstanding collections of geological specimens ever displayed in an exhibition hall."

Among the varied attractions for visitors is the Dynamic Earth Globe. Sitting under this eight-foot-diameter hemisphere, spectators watch the earth rotate from outer space, with clouds dispersing to reveal its topography.

Then there's the Earth Event Wall. It's six by eleven feet and shows storms, earthquakes, and volcanic activity from around the world on a daily basis.

Somewhat similar is a five by ten-foot video screen, alive with current and archival footage of live lava flows, disastrous floods, shattering thunderstorms, and slowly flowing glaciers. This is linked with "Sounds of the Earth," including quaking benches, which makes the experience even more real for visitors.

The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth will link the bulk of the American Museum to the new Center for Earth and Space. This will include an astonishing replacement for the old Hayden Planetarium, to be inaugurated in 2000 AD.

There are so many exhibits and monitors in the new hall that it cannot accommodate the crowds it is sure to attract, once the word is out. It is actually ingeniously designed to encourage incremental-information-circulation once one is in the space.

That is: Learn as you move along!

If you cannot come to the museum soon, visit the hall on the museum's website: www.amnh.org/rose/hope/creatinghope

Drawings & Texts Reveal 15th Century Life in Europe

Making such carefully reproduced multiple copies—as well as simply rebinding precious manuscripts and early printed books—also makes the originals temporarily available for museum exhibition, with all pages and sides exposed.

The Met's recent display of the "Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux" was made possible by unbinding for reproduction. And now, at the Frick Collection, the fascinating "Medieval Housebook" of the Counts of Waldburg Wolfegg is similarly on view.

It has been in the family's possession for over 300 years. Even if it had been loaned for exhibition in its bound state—which it was not—only two facing pages could ever have been shown at one time.

So this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look very closely at some very ingenious and informative drawings of Medieval Life and Customs. The pages and the drawings are larger than those in Jeanne's "Hours," but the illustrations are still amazingly detailed for the size of the pages.

Although this manuscript has long been called a "Housebook," it is not, as the name might suggest, a manual of housekeeping, baking-hints, home-repairs, or even planting, harvesting, and brewing.

Some of these concerns are indeed addressed and included in the illustrations. But it is primarily a curious collection of texts and visuals, prepared by various artists, covering a range of lordly & noble concerns.

These include Medieval Warfare, Defense of Castles, Medicine, Mining, Smelting, Minting, Fireworks, Heraldry, and Tournaments. There is also a charming section devoted to the Children of the Planets and those who are born under their zodiacal signs.

Curiously, there is a mysterious nobleman who guides the reader through the various disparate sections of the Housebook. Even though texts and illustrations have been created by more than one scribe or artist, this gentleman wears the Order of the Pitcher over his left shoulder throughout. And he shows the varied visuals to a female companion—as well as to the reader of the Housebook.

The Frick is not the only American museum invited to exhibit these rare pages. But it is the only one to focus attention on the scholarly problem of who was responsible for creating some of its most astonishing illustrations.

To demonstrate the possible authorship of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, exhibition curator Timothy Husband has assembled a collection of some 24 drypoints by this remarkable artist. There are also some stained-glass images similar to drawings in the Housebook.

But this master was not the only major talent involved. There's also the Master of the Genre & Tournament Scenes, about which nothing is known, save what can be gleaned from his drawings.

Such questions of authorship are certainly not crucial to enjoying the visual riches currently at the Frick. But they might intrigue you, nonetheless. The drawings surely will!

You can even buy a copy of the facsimile in the gift-shop. For only $1,980—but it also has a companion commentary volume edited by Christoph Graf von Waldburg Wolfegg.

For more limited budgets, there's an illustrated booklet for $12.95. And a handsome catalogue from Munich's Prestel Verlag, for $35: "Venus and Mars: The World of the Medieval Housebook."

Lost Bullfight Salon Painting Reconstruction Implied
From Masterpieces "Dead Toreador" & "The Bullfight"

Similarly, when art-lovers pause to enjoy Manet's "The Dead Toreador" at Washington's National Gallery, are any aware that it is also a surviving remnant of that same painting?

To the casual viewer, they don't seem related in colors or composition to each other. Only the subject-matter links them.

Now, for the first time, they have been reunited at the Frick. With the aid of period descriptions of the despised original, radiography of the separated canvases, and computer-generated simulations, it has been possible to suggest a reconstruction of this lost salon painting.

When Manet first showed his "Incident in a Bullfight" at the Paris Salon of 1864, it was denounced and derided by art critics.

Shocking in its portrayal of a toreador's goring by an enraged bull, it also offended Public Taste. This was a time when all things Spanish were very popular.

But few Parisians—possibly including Manet—had actually experienced the bloody duel which is a bullfight.

The public and critical rejection of his ambitious and visceral salon painting was a blow to Manet. But he was not one to waste canvas or tears. So he cut up the larger painting and reworked two sections of it.

Centenary Gustave Moreau Retrospective
Is a Not-To-Be Missed Met Museum Exhibition

Indeed, some famed Salon canvases are so steeped in sentimentality, historicism, moral messages, pretentiousness, or coldly technical display that they invite mockery.

Not so with the often dazzling painterly showmanship of Gustave Moreau. The richness of color and decoration in some of his historical and mythical canvases, illuminating biblical fables and classical legends, is amazing. It is almost in a class by itself, compared with other Parisian painters who sought the recognition of Salon exhibition.

The current Met Museum retrospective of some 175 works marks the centenary of his death. And, while some of his major works do seem very much a product of his age, there are some later watercolors and sketches which suggest Abstract Expressionism.

As most were studies in color and form for larger works—and were not shown or sold during Moreau's lifetime—it may be pushing the critical envelope to designate him as the Father of Abstraction.

Moreau's financial independence and his fascination with fantasy and intuition set him apart from the more conventional masters of his time. Myths, both pagan and religious, invited flamboyant fantasy and technical brilliance.

As in his "Salome," a bejeweled vision of an oriental court, lavish and opulent enough to make later generations of stage and cinema-designers feel inadequate. The great Viennese director/impresario Max Reinhardt was surely inspired by this and other Moreau masterpieces.

The technical precision and detail of Moreau's rendering of scenes, landscapes, mythic beasts, elaborate costumes, and imagined gods, fabled saints, or historic personalities may seem related to the picture-book craftsmanship of the Pre-Raphaelites. But his visions are far more mysterious, dream-like, even surreal.

Among the 40 paintings are some astounding canvases. One of the most famous is customarily on view at the Met: his "Oedipus and the Sphinx." This caused a sensation at the Salon of 1864, the exhibition that so disappointed Manet, who showed his despised bullfight canvas.

Moreau's vision of "a man of mature age wrestling [ed] with the enigma of life" is shown in the creative context of a score of preparatory studies—watercolors and drawings.

As is another great Salon painting, "Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra." The fabled Hydra was a huge and deadly snake. If a hero cut off its head, two more sprouted in is place.

Its lair was littered with the bones and rotting corpses of those who had tried to vanquish it. Moreau, from his sketches, was clearly concerned not only with an arresting representation of the dead victims.

He was also fascinated with an accurately reptilian evocation of a monstrosity no one had ever seen. He studied biological source-books and drawings of snakes.

Moreau's horrifying Hydra has a central lethal head, flanked by hissing heads on both sides of its scaly coils. Hercules was a very brave hero, but he had help in destroying this menace.

The Met's exhibition—which is so thronged with visitors that it's difficult to get near some paintings—documents a constantly developing painterly sensitivity and a haunting imagination.

There is a catalogue of the exhibition. I didn't receive a copy, so I cannot discuss its contents. It should be a valuable souvenir, even in paperback, for it has 162 color visuals among 291 illustrations. Published by the Art Institute of Chicago, it's priced at $29.95 in the Met shops.

At the Met: Cézanne to Van Gogh:
The Collection of Doctor Gachet

Both men were doctors, and both were friends with the modern masters they so fortunately collected. But they belonged to different generations. And Doctor Gachet had the advantage of not living near Philadelphia.

Although he maintained a medical practice in Paris, Dr. Gachet lived largely at his house in Auvers-sur-Oise. Here he was at home to a number of distinguished artists.

At his death, the house was crammed with paintings, sketches, watercolors, engravings, and even souvenirs of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists.

For the following half-century, his son and heir Paul Junior kept this amazing collection to himself, shared only with a few friends. As did his father, he enjoyed copying some of the masterworks.

Even a family friend, a local seamstress, Blanche Derousse, made some fair copies of important works. In the current exhibition, her efforts, as well as those of the Gachets, père et fils, are also on view. The doctor's alias was Paul van Ryssel. His son took Louis van Ryssel as his brush-name.

The existence of these copies has contributed some confusion in attributions. But—as with the discovery of forgotten Moreau preparatory sketches and studies never intended for sale—some small works, considered beneath the standard of the artists in question, are neither copies nor forgeries.

The exhibition texts note this, especially in regard to Cézanne. Dr. Gachet came to own a number of his very minor works, "whether by gift, purchase, or rescued from the back corner of his studio."

Some of these, "painted on cheap cardboard supports, may have been merely exercises, or even experiments gone awry."

Paul Gachet fils said of one work—which he felt fell "quite short of Cézanne's ideal"—that it was "highly probable that had it not been left at the house, it would no longer exist today."

Apparently, Dr. Gachet was something of a magpie when it came to collecting. Even if it was only a scrap of paper one of his friends had sketched upon.

As Gachet's friends included Van Gogh—who painted the famous Gachet portrait, Pissarro, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Guillaumin, he had formidable opportunities to collect both scraps and masterpieces.

Beginning in 1949—forty years after his father's death—Paul Gachet fils began donating most of the family collection to French state, especially the Musée d'Orsay.

Among the treasures are Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait [1889] and his "Portrait of Doctor Paul Gachet" [1890], as well as the good doctor's visored cap worn in the actual portrait.

There are eight images of Dr. Gachet in the first gallery of this show. None is the work of Van Gogh, though some are certainly copies.

One of them is by the doctor himself, as Paul van Ryssel. Another is by his son, Louis van Ryssel.

The fifty paintings and drawings loaned from the Musée d'Orsay have never been seen before in the United States. Nor have most ever been seen outside that museum since their donation.

Among the 130 works, there are some ten paintings each by Van Gogh, Guillaumin, and Cézanne. Notable is the latter's "A Modern Olympia."

Works that once belonged to Dr. Gachet have also been loaned by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and other public and private collections in Europe and America.

This is a most unusual exhibition of masterworks, amateur copies, painters' props, and Gachet souvenirs which won't be seen again in this conformation.

There is a catalogue of the exhibition, bearing the same title. I didn't receive a copy, so I cannot discuss its contents.

But it is by Anne Distel and Susan Alyson Stein, co-organizers of the show at the Met. Ms. Distel is Curator in Chief at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where Dr. Gachet's son deposited most of the family collections.

It should be a valuable scholarly resource and art-lover souvenir, for it has 117 color illustrations among 500 visuals. Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., it's priced in hardcover at $60 in the Met shops.

Brooklyn Museum Shows Snowy Scenes
By Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Gauguin, & Others

But this is now High Summer—though the days are getting shorter—so you can really cool off admiring the brilliance of Sisley, Monet, and even Gauguin in suggesting the rigors and charms of snow and light and shadow on French surfaces, natural and man-made.

The painterly summer attractions of the Côte d'Azur for some of the Impressionists are well known. The sunny South of France was magic for Monet. But the reverse of the climatic coin/canvas is seldom spotlighted.

Because these painters were so intrigued by the play of light on colors and forms, effets de neige, or snow-effects, offers a different viewing experience of their varied talents and skills.

They soon discovered that snow is not best—nor universally—rendered with white or even grayish gradations of white. But the blue shadow of a snowbank, when first shown, drew critical and public catcalls: "Everyone knows snow isn't blue!"

The Impressionists, after all, made quite an impression on the Parisian artworld by visually disproving many optical certainties that "everyone knew."

The wintry scenes at the Brooklyn Museum are attractively displayed. But there is just so much an artist can do with a ploughed field, some bare trees, and stolid, dumpy French village houses. Mansard roofs look even more spooky under a mantle of snow.

So, when you come upon Monet's glimpse of vivid color in "The Red Cape," you may find your wintry mood lifting a bit. Nonetheless, Monet was very good with ice, especially when it was breaking up.

An interesting visual footnote is the inclusion of some classic Japanese woodcut snowscapes by Hiroshige. Such oriental imagery had enormous influence on most of the Impressionists.

There is of course a handsome and informative catalogue, issued by the Phillips Collection, with Philip Wilson Publishers, London. It is replete with essays and documentation, but it covers only those works in the original DC exhibition—which was later shown in San Francisco.

The Hiroshige woodcuts have been added from the Brooklyn Museum's own collections. Several additional winter scenes have also expanded the range of the exhibition.

Period winter photos by Eugène Cuvelier, a friend of Camille Corot, may have inspired Monet to paint winter scenes as early as 1865. There are more modern photos of snow scenes by Ansel Adams and Harry Callahan—who have no French Connection.

But a winter landscape by Maurice Vlaminck is on view. As is Monet's "La Seine à Port-Villez, effet de neige." This dates from 1885, but was only recently discovered.

Also included are winter views by Georges Seurat and Albert Marquet.

Victorian Photos of Palestine:
"Revealing the Holy Land" at the Dahesh

With the development of photography, for the first time Europeans and Americans—especially devout Christians—could see the legendary biblical sites they had previously only known from reading and imagining.

It must have been a rude shock for many of them. France's Gustave Flaubert—who accompanied photographer Maxime Du Camp—was appalled:

"Jerusalem is a house of bones surrounded by walls. Everything is rotting there—in the streets dead dogs, in the churches the religions."

America's Mark Twain came along later in the century, but his cynical comments, in "Innocents Abroad," suggested matters had only improved in the streets.

Currently, the Dahesh Museum is showing a remarkable selection of 19th century photographs of Jerusalem and other areas of the Holy Land. The 92 vintage prints and two photo-albums are drawn from the collection of Michael G. and Jane Wilson.

Titled "Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine," this exhibition was shown initially at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It focuses not only on photography which aided biblical scholarship, but also that which helped establish the British presence. Until they were dislodged from their Mandate by the creation and recognition of the State of Israel in 1948.

Photographs of the sites of the Stations of the Cross reveal how weathered, decayed, and neglected the architecture of the ancient city of Jerusalem had become under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Even Muslim holy sites looked shabby.

Almost all of the photographic prints are in dark sepia, which makes the ancient stones look even more distressed.

Actually, when I photographed the Wailing Wall in the 1950s—when Jewish Jerusalem was still separated by a wide strip of No-Man's-Land from the Old Arab City—it didn't look so very different from James Robertson and Felix Beato's 1857 print.

A century later, however, mine was in Kodachrome and looked a bit more colorful. But sorrowful Orthodox Jews were still davening in front of the Wall. [These images are available for editorial use from my Infotography Archive at the Everett Collection, 104 West 27th Street, NYC 10010/Phone: 212-255-8610.]

Among the other early Holy Land photographic explorers whose work is on view at the Dahesh are George Bridges, Ernest Benecke, Auguste Saltzmann, Francis Bedford, Francis Frith, and Frank Mason Goode.

There are posed photos of real inhabitants as well as Europeans in local costumes. Real genre photos were difficult to obtain, not only because poses had to be held for some time, but also because natives were wary and superstitious about having their images captured.

The Dahesh Museum is customarily dedicated to the exhibition of European Salon Paintings, of which Dr. Dahesh was an avid collector. But he was born in Lebanon—which was once considered part of the Holy Land—so it's appropriate to have these ghostly images of the Ottoman Empire's neglectful rule in the Middle East shown in his museum.

In the light—or darkness—of political developments in this area in this century, the words of England's Archbishop of York, William Thompson, in 1865, now seem oddly proprietary:

"This country of Palestine belongs to you and me, it is essentially ours…. It is the land towards which we turn as the fountain of all our hopes; it is the land to which we may look with as true a patriotism as we do this dear old England which we love so much."

The Israelis put paid to those silly notions.

But that has not stopped hordes of American Fundamentalists and Millennialists from flying over to inspect the Holy Sites, including Megiddoh—where the final End-of-Time Battle of Armageddon will be fought.

Enterprising Israelis have made it into a kind of Theme Park for Christian tourists.

Go to the Dahesh Museum and see how the Holy Land looked, both before Israel and Armageddon!

Her immense manipulated photo, titled "Empty Dream," shows bathers on a synthetic beach, with four synthetic images of Mori as a Mermaid. Viewers are invited to find all four of the Mori Mermaids. This isn't easy, but it is something banal to do while thinking about Mariko's underlying metaphoric message.

Also on display are such works as "Play With Me," featuring Mori as a sexy computer-game construct. Mori extends the image of attractive modern women as cyborg fantasies—absurd female stereotypes—in "Birth of a Star." Suggestively outfitted and made-up like a trendy pop-star—complete with purple hair—she even offers a sample song on an accompanying CD!

Included in the exhibition are large Mori installations such as "Esoteric Cosmos," which is shown on four billboard-sized screens. These are computer-manipulated images of such locales as the Painted Desert, the Gobi Desert, the Dead Sea, and a Stalactite Cavern. To Mori, they evoke the Buddhist Forces of Nature: wind, fire, water, earth, and empty space.

To quote a museum explanation: "Mori uses glamorous images of herself in futuristic scenes that reflect the artifice of contemporary life, while alluding to elements of Eastern spiritual thought."

Dressing up your very cute self in a variety of bizarre and often hilarious costumes and posing in conventional or futuristic environments may not seem the Essence of Zen. But it can certainly get you some attention.

And get you shows of your photos and installations in museums and galleries in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, London, and Chicago.

Initially, Mariko Mori used her sculptural costumes—and her unusual settings—"to communicate her ideas and identity." After studying the current crop of imaginative images, I'm still baffled about her Identity: Cultural Gadfly? Publicity-Seeker? Ardent Egotist? Visual Philosopher?

True, you gotta have a gimmick. But some of Mori's visualizations—punning, gag-ridden, or corny—nonetheless manage to hit a metaphoric esoteric target.

And consider: Major museums don't mount large-scale shows like this on the spur of the moment. Or just because they have some empty gallery-space to fill.

This was carefully evaluated, thoroughly planned—and heavily funded. But does art really have to Mean Something? If Contemporary Life is indeed Artificial, then in comparison to what?

"The Art of Perception" at San Francisco MoMA

To historians and scientists, however, his most important contributions were his painstaking attention to the details of such natural wonders as Yosemite and the commercial and social changes emigrants made in the western states.

In order to record the splendors of Yosemite and other aspects of California's grandeur—previously unknown in the East and in Europe—Watkins constructed a huge camera which could make plates 18" by 20." But even these were not enough to demonstrate the vastness of the landscapes or the sprawl of new cities such as San Francisco. So Watkins developed the panorama effect, often with three sections of wide horizontal images.

Part of the greatest emigration then known to man—the California Gold Rush—Watkins first worked in Sacramento City. His friend there, Collis P. Huntington, would become one of the Central Pacific Railroad's "Big Four." And the great Huntington Library he would found in San Marino has lent Watkins images to this show!

Instead of grubbing in the Mother Lode goldfields, Watkins moved to San Francisco—which remained his operational center. Miners and merchants wanted photos to send to family back east. Young families wanted to record their own beginnings and growth.

But Watkins was even more interested in capturing the rapid development of San Francisco. Many of these vintage images show a city with both shanties and important buildings which have long since vanished. Largely in the 1906 Quake and Fire, which also destroyed all his archive of negatives.

Some of the most impressive images of the great California Redwoods were taken by Watkins. The same is true of his 1861 views of Yosemite-which astonished such worthies as American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, France's Emperor Napoleon III, and President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Yosemite Bill in 1864.

The breathtaking Yosemite Valley—with such majestic mountains as El Capitan and Half Dome—was first seen by white men early in the 1850s. [I have somewhere a full-page account by those astonished explorers, printed on the first page of the Fourth of July edition of a goldrush paper published near the hidden valley.]

Modern collectors know many of Watkins' western nature subjects from the powerful black & white photos of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But Watkins was there first, and his photos are less self-conscious artworks than records of his place and time.

They are also of a sepia or even darker brown tone—which may have deepened over the years in surviving prints. In some images, the color is so dark that details are not easy to read.

Under the reduced light-levels required for exhibition, they seem even darker than they do in the excellent catalogue. Considering the crowds at SFMoMA, anyone really interested in California, the Development of the West, and/or photography will want to have this beautiful volume and study Watkins' work at close range.

Watkins was employed to photograph lands and mining operations for the record or for evidence in legal disputes. Among these images are detailed photos of Hydraulic Mining in the Sierras—which destroyed entire mountains and choked the rivers below in the Sacramento Valley with mounds of mud and sludge.

I was especially interested in his shots of the Malakoff Hydraulic Mine. Engineer Adolph Sutro devised its famous drainage tunnel—and he later gave San Francisco Sutro Baths.

Watkins' photos of the great log & earth dams constructed to build up large amounts of water are most impressive. As are the immense and seemingly endless flumes built to channel the water. Pent-up water would flow down under tremendous pressure to the Hydraulic Monitors and wash away the red-dirt of Nevada County's mountains.

[I spent my formative years on a ranch not far from what were once the "Malakoff Diggins." In fact, we had our own Petrified Forest, laid bare by hydraulic operations half a century before. We'd drive down—and up—the Yuba River canyon to picnic at the Malakoff, then a miniature Grand Canyon with blue and green lakes.

[At the nearby ghost-town of North Bloomfield—photographed by Watkins in its Malakoff heyday—my father was going to buy its old hotel for $400. Its old saloon-bar was still intact, and the tiny bedrooms with single beds were still untouched, even with candles still in Wee Willie Winkie candlesticks by each bed. But the hotel burned down.]

At least Carleton Watkins saved for our own time and the future images of much that is gone forever. The scope and daring of some western mining projects, as recorded by Watkins, is astonishing. A series of wide photos shows the Feather River diverted from its natural bed and into great flumes so gold could be found in the riverbed sands.

In some of the projects, the ethnic division of labor—also practiced in building at least the western sector of the great Transcontinental Railroad—is clearly shown in Watkins' photographs. On a rickety raised wooden plankway, Chinese "Coolies," in their distinctive wide-brimmed wicker hats, are pushing wheelbarrows of earth.

The emigrant Irish are more hazardously employed. But at least they aren't "muckers."

Carleton Watkins' innovative device of positioning some interesting natural or man-made object in the foreground of a deep-perspective picture was especially effective for stereopticon viewing. Astonishing is Watkins' mastery of Depth of Field—everything is in focus.

There are some stereopticon slides and cards in the exhibition. The two side-by-side images may seem duplicates, but they are not. They are slightly displaced, as are the images seen by each eye. Viewed through separate lenses, they merge and appear three-dimensional.

The effect of Victorian stereopticon viewing is recreated—thanks to the 21st century technology of SteroGraphics CrystalEyes© and Silicon Graphics 320 Visual Workstations.

In a special room, there are twelve computers with the liquid crystal glasses that help make the 3D illusion work even better than with a Victorian hand-held viewer. This technology could bring back 3D in a big way. But it has other even more important applications. For more information, check out their website: www.SteroGraphics.com

This exhibition is seen as so important—both in the history of photography and the history of Western America—that it will travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

Modern Artworks on View at DeYoung Museum:
Dorothy & George Saxe Collection of Contemporary Art

But, as these objects—which fill a number of galleries—are said to be only a part of the collection, a promised gift to the Fine Arts Museums, the DeYoung will surely have to build an annex to hold them. That may not be such a problem, as the historic building is seismically challenged, and some are more than eager to replace it.

At the press-preview, the Saxes were on hand to discuss favorite works and their passion for commissioning new work by emerging artists. One Memphis-style cabinet, holding a number of odd objects in containers, proved to be a commission to place fragments of broken artworks in some kind of new artistic context.

Craft Museums and Art Museums for some time have been experiencing a curatorial version of the opera/musical "Crossover." It used to be easy to distinguish Craft from Art. Craft objects were made by hand and were generally useful.

Or at least Decorative—with no real Artistic Pretensions.

The dividing-line has been erased. Much of what is now shown in Craft Museums is abstract and not remotely useful. Though it may well demonstrate remarkable craft-mastery of ancient skills such as weaving, glass-blowing, pottery-throwing, blacksmithing, glazing, and woodworking.

But some of these works aren't even "decorative"—at least not by Martha Stewart Standards.

Among the wide-ranging and generally abstract fantasies of native and foreign ceramicists, glassworkers, weavers, sculptors, and carvers in the Saxe Collection, two stained-glass windows stand out. These show Mr. and Mrs. Saxe—and quite handsomely, but modern, with no 19th century church-window formality or Tiffany jeweled irridescence.

A more specifically useful object is Sam Maloof's elegant rocking-chair. It is one of the very few pieces in the show which was clearly designed for a useful purpose.

But it is also an artwork, a virtual sculpture, because Sam shapes the elements of his furniture almost freehand in his Alta Loma workshop. His chairs, swinging cradles, music-stands, and other works are now in major collections, including New York's MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He is a "California State Treasure" and has had many other honors. When the old Corcoran was reborn in Washington, DC, as the Renwick Gallery some years ago, Sam was one of three American woodworker-artists honored in the opening show. His friends Wendell Castle and George Nakashima were also honored.

[I had the pleasure of writing the wall-texts for Sam's works. I'd interviewed him at the time for American Crafts Magazine.]

Early in his career, I'd asked Sam to make me a rocker. Which he did after he got to know me and had visited my apartment, as he prefers to know for whom he is creating a piece. On the underside of the seat, the names of Maloof and Loney are burned into the wood.

But the rails of my early rocking-chair are much shorter than the elegant ones he made for the Saxes. Those runners have evolved over the years.

Other artists on view in the Saxe Collection include the glass-master Dale Chihuly, Linda Benglis, Peter Voulkos, William Morris, Robert Arneson, Wendell Castle, John Cederquist, Manuel Neri, and Nicolas Africano. Some names are very well known on the West Coast but not so familiar on the other side of the Great Divide.

The Saxes have of course wished to encourage emerging artists of obvious talent in the West. But they have also sought out some of the finest new work from Czechoslovakia and other nations.

Many of these colorful and imaginative objects are extremely fragile—and some of those are not small—so one hopes the current seismic stabilization measures at the DeYoung are adequate. Until the Saxes have their own wing in a new and improved DeYoung Museum.

Theatre and Dance Masterworks at DeYoung Museum

The core of these collections was formed in the 1930s by that great West Coast arts patron, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. She was a passionate friend and admirer of the revolutionary modern American dancer, Loïe Fuller—much given to elaborate scarf-dances with long bamboo poles and lit from beneath.

With the Spreckels Sugar fortune and an ardent love of French Culture, she also had a replica of Paris's Palace of the Legion of Honor constructed in Lincoln Park. When her theatre and dance collection grew too large for her mansion, she parked it in the Legion of Honor—one of San Francisco's two great Museums of Fine Arts.

The Spreckels Collections were virtual secrets to the public until Nancy Van Norman Baer in effect rediscovered them and began designing major exhibitions based on them. With a background in classical ballet and trained as an art historian, she was especially qualified to do this

I met her for the first time in 1978, when she created "In Celebration of Loïe Fuller," based upon the museum's own holdings and valuable loans. It was a marvel—and it reminded us that the even more modern dancer, Isadora Duncan, also began in the Bay Area. As did Gertrude Stein, never a graceful dancer, alas.

I was so impressed with Nancy's vision of expanding the collection and mounting new, challenging exhibitions, that I decided to will my own large collection of Theatre and Performing Arts posters to this treasure-trove. [After the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design has had its pick of the larger theatre and non-performance collection for special design features.]

In a 22-year career with the Fine Arts Museums, Nancy Van Norman Baer continued to devise outstanding performing-arts exhibitions. These included "Pavlova!" "Dance in Art," "Bronislava Nijinska: A Dancer's Legacy," "The Art of Enchantment: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes," "Theatre in Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design," and "Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet."

This last triumph I and many other New York dance, design, and art-lovers saw at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Nancy was in fine form, and she even had a Swedish Princess at her side.

This was not only a very interesting show in the matter of innovative designs for costumes, sets, and lighting, but also because few viewers knew much about the Ballets Suèdoise in Paris.

The current exhibition at the DeYoung Museum, in Golden Gate Park, is small but rich. It's a fitting tribute to the wonderful woman who found such graphic treasures and took them out of the museum equivalent of mothballs for all of us to see!

[Loney]