Meeting the Masters

The term masterwork is often employed to evoke the sensations of grandeur and awe and, most of all, greatness in works of art. Including the word in an exhibit title is a sure way of sparking interest. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts as host to “Spared from the Storm: Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art,” through Sunday, has capitalized on the power of this term as an auditory indicator of high (and therefore “good”) art.

What is in store for those who are drawn in by the lure of the elevated and celebrated artworks? Well, most certainly the art is truly masterful and brings to Kalamazoo and the communities of Western Michigan artists and genres that are crucial in the development of Western art of the last 300 years. The art objects individually and as whole are the triumph of the exhibit. The museum goer sees in the three main floor galleries of the Institute, works by diverse European and American Masters including O’Keeffe, Renoir, Picasso, Pollock, and Monet. While the exhibit focuses mainly on painting, superb examples of changing traditions in sculpture and other mediums are exemplified by the works of Rodin, Degas, and others.

Beside the art itself, the origin of the exhibit has aroused much interest at each of the stops on the exhibit’s tour of city such as San Francisco and Colorado Springs. During the chaos and devastation of Katrina in New Orleans, the staff of the New Orleans Museum of Art worked tirelessly to save the invaluable pieces housed in the museum. In order to raise funds for necessary repairs to the building, the NOMA staff decided to put on a temporary exhibit in New York of some of their most prized possessions of 18th to 20th Century artworks. The popularity of the exhibit launched the traveling show that we see now in Kalamazoo. The exhibit is truly a celebration of the preservation efforts of NOMA and is a rare look at the museum’s holding outside of New Orleans.

But has the KIA done justice to the display of these masterworks? Upon entering the lobby of the Institute there is an immediate problem of presentation. The largest piece in the exhibit and the delegated “star” of the show, the 10 ft. tall portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun hangs in power and dominion, precisely where it is easily unnoticeable. Positioned on a temporary wall constructed for the very purpose of hanging this portrait, Maire Antoinette hangs (no pun intended) perpendicular to the main entrance doors. Imagine the possessive power the infamous queen of France would have if she were to face the viewer directly upon entering the space; to immediately confirm the true mastery of the works in the exhibit.

Other problems of display are apparent throughout the galleries. Many of the large-scale paintings originally intended to hang in palaces and grand halls appear completely out of place and context on the stunted walls of the KIA’s contemporary gallery walls. And while to counter this effect the curators have attempted to appropriately transform the space, the transformation seems half-hearted. The layout of the galleries often appears arbitrary and does little to highlight the grandeur of the pieces. The worst of the design equivocations occurs in the second gallery where the wall color is more reminiscent of emergency room scrubs than of the Louvre. The gallery of 20th Century modernists somewhat redeems the previous one, as the neutral wall color and actual architecture of the space appropriately present the works.

Anyone considering a visit to the Institute for a masterly art experience should not be deterred by any errors of presentation. The rarity of opportunity to see firsthand the art that has shaped and recorded the history of the Western World for three centuries proves that it truly is masterful as the art stands (or hangs) on its own as worthwhile experience.