ArtCurious News This Week: January 13, 2023
Happy Friday, and Happy New Year, listeners! Welcome back to with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. Today is Friday, January 13, 2023.
This week’s stories:
New York Times: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job.
New York Times: Opinion + Letters: Fired by a College for Showing a Painting of Muhammad
The Art Newspaper: New York's Frick Collection acquires its first-ever Renaissance portrait of a woman
The Art Newspaper: Genesis of Phil Collins’s collection of Alamo artefacts questioned ahead of museum opening
Financial Times: Marina Abramović on Anne Imhof
ARTnews: Viral TikTok Joke About the Mona Lisa Being Stolen Generates Mass Confusion
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Episode Transcript
Hello, everyone, and happy New Year! We are back at it with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. I’m your host, Jennifer Dasal, and one of my resolutions is to bring you this news show more frequently this year. Let’s do it.
Today is Friday, January 13, 2023.
And this past week has been full of levity as well as some serious allegations and questions. First off, my art community was abuzz after the New York Times published an article about the firing of an adjunct professor from Hamline University, a small liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Earlier last fall, the adjunct, who was teaching a global art history class online, displayed a 14th century image of the Prophet Muhammed, the founder of Islam. This work of art is considered to be, in the words of one historian of Islamic art, a, quote, “masterpiece of Persian manuscript painting,” unquote, and it is now part of the collection of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, a prize work of medieval art that has been displayed and published about many times. However, to many Muslims, the visual representation of the prophet is absolutely forbidden—a subject that I touch on very briefly in my book, ArtCurious, by the by—and some consider the professor’s decision to include this image, and another 16th century representation, to be disrespectful and Islamophobic, with some even referring to the act as a kind of hate crime. After the professor was reported to campus authorities by at least one student, the university opted to sever the adjunct’s teaching contract. And this has been huge. Why? Because it’s a tricky story that concerns a lot of big, thorny issues: things like academic freedom, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, religious sanctity, the widening of the so-called “canon” of art history, and so much more. It even backs into the all-too-true fact that adjunct professors are seen as super-disposable in the realm of higher ed, and not only can they lose their jobs at any time, and practically for any reason, but they are also very lowly paid. It’s also a story made even trickier once you learn of some of the preparation that went into the showcasing of these images of Muhammed: that the professor acknowledged her aim to show these works on her written syllabus at the beginning of the academic semester; that she asked students to be in touch with her in advance to discuss any concerns; that, on the day of the incendiary lecture, she provided a two-minute warning so that those who felt that her inclusion of these works to be sacrilegious could look away, exit the lecture, and so forth. Was this warning enough? What could, or would, be an appropriate amount of warning?
I want to note here that I am all for free speech, and all for acceptance and tolerance in any and every form. But it’s difficult to understand where the line can be drawn between safety and personal expression and academic integrity and freedom. And I confess that I can see both sides and have no answers to share. I do know that organizations across the U.S., including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, are calling upon Hamlin to reinstate the professor. Others, though, are quick to villainize her, or Hamlin, or the student who came forward with the original complaint. There seem to be no winners here. And that’s incredibly frustrating. One of my favorite responses to the matter, though, weighs culpability on both sides. In a letter to the New York Times, Michael Rigsby of New Haven, Connecticut, writes, quote, “In the rush to identify villains and heroes, we lose sight of the complicated possibility that a) the professor was justified and well intentioned and b) the student was nevertheless genuinely offended by the professor’s decision to show the image. Or that a) the professor gave opt-out options in advance but b) the student didn’t feel empowered to exercise them fully. If the university had begun with a presumption that all of these things were simultaneously true and had attempted to find a better conflict resolution process along the lines of restorative justice, both the student and the professor might have felt that they had benefited from the conflict.” Unquote.
If you’d like to read Rigsby’s letter in full, as well as the entire New York Times article and other opinion pieces, those are linked today in your podcast show notes and on the blog for today’s episode—http://www.artcuriouspodcast.com
Next up, we have two stories about museum collections—one positive, and one… potentially concerning. First up, the great news. The Frick Collection in New York City announced this week that they recently acquired the very first Renaissance portrait of a woman in the institution’s nearly century-long public history. The Frick, established via a bequest from the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, boasts an incredible—and incredibly beautiful—collection of European paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts. But until recently, their lauded Renaissance collection drew attention for the portraits of men that have hung there, by artists like Tintoretto and Titian. But portraits of women from the Renaissance? Not one could be found in the Frick’s holdings. That changed in 2022, when Portrait of a Woman, by the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni, entered the collection as a gift from a former trustee. Portrait of a Woman, which dates from around 1575, shows us a lady in a gorgeous pink and gold brocade top, a pristine white neck ruff, and bedecked in all manner of gold and pearls in earrings, a large necklace, and even adorning her hair. She gazes out to us viewers with a calm, almost insouciant gaze, and she’s a stunning sight. She was a star of an exhibition dedicated to the artist Moroni that was held at the Frick in 2019, so the addition of the work to the museum’s permanent collection feels almost like a homecoming. She officially went on view at the Frick’s temporary Madison Avenue location yesterday, January 12, so if you’re in the New York area, definitely go check out this gorgeous addition—and remember that the Frick offers “pay what you wish” admission every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 PM, hint hint.
Now, for museum collection news that is drawing more questions, and that’s the concern over the authenticity of the artefacts currently in the collection of British singer Phil Collins, which have been promised to a soon-to-be-completed museum dedicated to the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas--a 13-day siege that proved to be central in the so-called Texas Revolution. The singer originally agreed to give his collection of items about ten years ago, but now that the as-yet unnamed Alamo museum is approaching completion, scholars have started to get a little anxious.
As a collector, Collins has been working for the past three decades, amassing everything from weapons and ammunition, to ephemera, like a receipt for the purchase of a horse, saddle, and bridle. Collins even documented his passion in a 2012 book titled The Alamo and Beyond: A Collector’s Journey, noting that his collection was formed from a mix of archaeological excavation—some of which was completed at the singer’s behest and with his funding—as well as purchases from dealers. But recently some historians, most notably Bryan Burroughs, Jason Stanford, and Chris Tomlinson, authors of the 2021 book, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, have called some of Collins’s items into question as so-called “deceptive” pieces. While Collins himself has not commented upon the allegations of inauthenticity, the Alamo’s senior curator, Ernesto Rodriguez, told The Art Newspaper that these pieces still hold value. Rodriguez says, quote, “There were a few items [with provenance issues]. But those will help us tell a different side of the Alamo story… Unfortunately, people are focusing on a couple of items and making the entire Collins collection seem invalid. The collection not only tells the story of the Texas Revolution but also about how people collect and the perils of collecting.” Unquote.
To be fair, Rodriguez is right on this account. This is a problem that isn’t limited to Alamo artifacts but is one that has created massive issues for collecting across the board, affecting everything from Native American artifacts to ancient Greco-Roman goods, and far beyond. Provenance gaps and object and history counterfeiting is an ongoing scourge, and this is just the latest example.
Let’s take a little break before we get back to more ArtCurious News This Week. So please support me and the show by listening to a couple of ads or join me over at Patreon and support this show ad-free for the price of a latte. That’s just $4 a month for ad-free content over at patreon.com/artcurious. We’ll be right back. Thanks for listening! Or perhaps I should say, thanks a latte! (ugh, sorry).
Welcome back to ArtCurious, and our News this Week. For our last couple of stories today, let’s bring the silly. First up, it was a moment when even the art world elite proves that they can be fooled by contemporary art—celebrities, they’re just like us! In a celebration of the artist Anne Imhof in the Financial Times recently, artist Marina Abramović revealed that on a visit to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, she found herself flustered after arriving seven minutes late to view Imhof’s exhibition. After being hastened through a staff entrance, she noted, quote, “I found myself in front of a wall of industrial lockers and my first reaction was to put inside the heavy bag I was carrying. I felt someone touch my shoulder. ‘This is the work of Anne Imhof,’ they whispered. ‘Here is where the exhibition starts.’” I love stories about people being fooled by art—it’s something that has long roots in art history dating back to even the ancient Greeks, and I even covered this in a past episode of ArtCurious News This Week when I discussed the sculpture of American artist Mark Jenkins that passersby believed to be a woman in some kind of emotional or medical distress. It’s always a little reminder of the power of art—that it can bring us joy, move us to tears, and occasionally confuse and deceive us. And it’s also a nice reminder that even the great Marina Abramović, an art goddess herself, can be fooled by art.
One last story, and one that harkens back even to the verrrry first episode of ArtCurious. A few days ago, a TikTok user posted a video of police cars zooming by the Arc de Triomphe, atop which they overlaid text reading, quote, “POV: your in Paris when the Mona Lisa has been stolen.” Unquote. (And yes, “your” in this case was misspelled based on its grammar, but that’s not important to the story today.) What is important is that this was a prank, with the TokTokker claiming in additional videos, quote, “The Mona Lisa is gone. We spoke to the staff there [meaning the Louvre], and they can’t say anything.” Unquote. Okay, so that’s not the most hilarious or original jokes, but the TikTok went viral, and according to ARTnews, it has been viewed more than 9 million times as of this recording. And some of the viewers went so far as to believe that it was true, leading to a strange surge of confusion as to the condition and whereabouts of the work. Rest assured: the Mona Lisa is still on the wall of the Louvre. And as ridiculous as it may seem, in a year in which art has been under attack by climate protestors and the Mona Lisa herself was caught up in the action when she was smeared with cake, there’s a sense that almost anything is possible. But the theft of the Mona Lisa? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that that’s almost entirely impossible at this juncture in history.
That’s all I have for you today, everyone--thanks for listening to ArtCurious News this Week. I have LOTS of great stuff coming down the pike for 2023, including an awesome trip to the Netherlands with Like Minds Travel in celebration of the largest Vermeer exhibition in history. You wanna come with me? You totally should. Check out all the details on my website: artcuriouspodcast.com. In the meantime, thank you all for your support and for listening today—until next week, stay curious.
