It is actually fascinating to watch visitors in exhibitions. A museum experience can differ greatly depending on an individual's preference. Some enjoy walking alone and reading the labels or books; some like renting audio equipment and almost ubiquitously Chinese and Japanese like posing for snapshots in front of the artwork. For others there are guided tour options.

Guided tours have basically two different types. The regular ones that highlight the collection of the museums which may be offered on a regular hourly basis. The tours with special topics, on the other hand, may either link different objects that people usually do not associate together or interpret some collections from a unique perspective. For the obvious reasons, the special tours are not offered frequently, at least not repetitively.

But there are actually not too much difference between the two types. To some extent, both are unique. Unlike the museum labels or audio recordings, human beings are subject to change. Not only that each individual guide is different in personal preferences, backgrounds and presentation tyles; but also each tour may differ to tailor the specific interests of the presenting visitors.

Most museums for sure give the first type of guided tour. But it is the second type that I am particularly fond of. The general guided tours tend to focus on the objects themselves. There are pieces of facts here and there: who, when, what content, what material, what technology, what did critics say and how it is praised now etc, the same of which one may be able to find through some online search; but there is seldom connection in between.

However, special topic tours narrow down the selection that would make a presentation more meaningful and coherent. Frick Art Center in Pittsburgh does not have a large permanent collection, but its seasonal special exhibitions ("William Bouguereau and his pupils,", "From J.P. Morgan to Henry Frick", etc) were always intriguing. For such special exhibitions, curatorial efforts are more prominent because the show (how the works are presented, what works are selected) is as much based on the artistic value appreciation as a show case of either a scholarly or museological study. To look at individual ones may miss the whole point of the curatorial perspective, which makes each such exhibition special. (In contrast, artworks in the permanent collections are there on the wall possibly because some rich guy donated them 80 years ago.)

Thus, large museums, because of their colossal collection breadth and depth, are in great advantage to give such special guided tours. Met has a room dedicated to Corot and has more than multiple paintings of Caspar David Friedrich accompanied by other painters from the golden age of Denmark. Under such circumstances, there is a chance to learn systematically and methodologically through examination between time-line, location changes and through pair-comparison.

I remember the fascinating interview of an avid collectior in the "Art and Antique" magazine. Collecting evolves through different phases. There is a time when you spend 5000 dollars to buy a painting and immediately hang it on the wall with pride. Then next you may find you are struggling to find a suitable spot for a 50,000 dollars painting. Ultimately in the last phase, you may immediately put a painting worth half a million into your storage place. I may sympathize the "poor" rich collectors trapped by the limited space, but on the other hand what are shown in his living space must be well wrought through his accumulated years' experience and knowledge; thus it did not surprise me collectors at this level featured in the magazines display their collection in an organic and breathable way, almost yearning the visitors to listen to their stories.

Museums can be regarded as the ultimate collectors that have put in storage artworks that otherwise would be worshiped like shrines at individual's home. But that does not make the curatorial effort of presentation easier. Brooklyn Museum of Art displays artworks based on topics: landscape, genre, portrait, religion, etc; while Carnegie Museum of Art divides art history into several periods (in general a few decades) and displays artworks based on their creation date. Probably only Met has the luxury to display artworks by each school or even each individual. Under whatever way or order artworks are organized, they are missing other linkages or presentation possibilities.

Even at the Met, when one is surrounded by Corot's poetic landscape, he or she may fail to see how later impressionists were influenced from his plein-air execution since these galleries are not directly connected. On the other hand, there are some story telling display within the museum such as period rooms that the collection of objects works together for a vivid narration. More or less, it is up to the curator to fabricate a convincing period settings with some original, some fake objects to convey a sense of history, artistic and social context. There are so many nuances such as the position and size of windows, the fabric on the tables or the cushions of some chairs that without being told visitors can hardly grasp the purpose of the exhibition. In both cases, special topic tours would be beneficial or even important for the enhancement of museum experience.

Here are the links to the calendar of the major museums.

MET

MOMA

GUGGENHEIN

FRICK

New York Historical Society

For Brooklyn Museum of Art, print-out version of guided tour is available on the front desk.

Most Chinese of my generation have an inexplicable profound love of Monet and his impressionism fellows. When Internet was not available in most of China in the late early 1990’s, Western Art seldom reached the public outside the major art institutes. Among the few magazines for English language education, quite a few chose famous artworks for their covers and occasionally some biographical articles were published not for art purpose, but instead as general reading materials. That was unfortunately or in some way fortunately my first art education. I remember Rembrandt’s dramatic light, a few Flemish works, but most often there would be some Impressionism works.

For most of the Chinese students, Rembrandt is hard to appreciate. His brushworks can hardly be appreciated without standing in front of the real paintings; and his subjects mostly human beings in the context of religions or history necessitate a not-so-short introductory article which never existed in such magazines. Impressionism paintings, on the other hand, choose the landscape which always has a universal appeal regardles of regions or languages. What’s more, without any difficulty its bright and high contrast style always caught my eyes immediately even on a small print compared to the dim forehead/nose light from Rembrandt.

In the early 1980’s, China in the post-Culture-Revolution period, was in a cautious mood to catch up with the world with respect to art. On the one hand, there had been a void in Western Art appreciation (except Russian schools) for such a long time, anything that could fit in would do. On the other hand, the shadow of linking Western Art with reactional, degenerate and debauchery forms still lingered. Even though the young generation would love to embrace the current trend, their minds were not ready. For them, the unavoidable ideological wrap on top of futurism, abstract, or pop art had to wait another 10 years to disintegrate when the capitalism itself gradually rooted in the political and economic infrastructure.

Thus, Impressionism, the newest or the latest classical Western Art, naturally became the top choice or the safe bet. Impressionism has been around for more than a century, thus its archaic identity marks its irrelevant to the current capitalistic world. However impressionism, by and large, is still active in the Western world. The painterly looking was such a departure from the traditional art that it for sure shocked the eyes of young Chinese artists at that time. Most importantly, the way impressionists painted: plein-air, broken color, complimentary vivant color-theory, dry, chalk style brush stroke, and even the pointillism that are characteristics of Impressionism liberated people’s mind about what defines art. (I remember an article talked about artworks is not a snapshot of realism, but an emotional representation under a controlled mind of intellectual.)

When I came to US, I went to National Gallery of Art and Art Institute of Chicago where I spent most time in those impressionism galleries. They are hard to miss because these galleries are filled with Asian faces. The aesthetic pleasure from looking at the artworks far way to get a whole feeling and then speculating the creation procedure with close-by study had such a charm that it would be so boring afterwards to look at works by the 18^th century old masters. For visitors with no or little Western Art background, the ones that please the eyes win.

But as I returned at the second and third time in the National Gallery of Art at DC, I began to get tired of the vivid color pallets of the paintings. Artworks, for both the creators and the audience, are supposed to be liberating-- or at least inspirational; but were they painted by habit? Years later, I read the book by Wolf Kahn who said artists once grasped the new skills should move on otherwise their spontaneity would fall into the victims of their habit. I began to question myself whether it is a fallacy to rely purely on eyes whose pleasure tends to be superficial. After all, aren’t great artworks glorifies more at the second or third look?

At the same time, I was attracted by a beautiful autumn scene by Corot in the National Gallery of Art. It was low-key in tone, comparatively small in size and harmonious in color; but there was a profound nostalgia in the painting: a dirt road, rustling trees and a traveler on horse. It is something that I have not experienced before, but somehow I knew how Corot must have felt about it when he painted. That began my love to Barbizon school, which preferred poetic and personal expression of humble or mysterious landscape under unified dark tone.

Today, when I look back, it may seem a little bit absurd that I was not obsessed by Impressionism at that time, but I did appreciate that at least Monet brought me into the galleries and museums. The history of art is a long chain of different schools and styles, all of which contribute. A new style must have some sort of prototype before and serves as foundation to later ones. Interestingly, Henry Ward Ranger, the founder of Old Lyme School and the most important American Barbizon School painter left the art colony four years after he started the group, simply because Child Hassam brought a sharp change to the style in the artist colony. 

“It is too civilized”, Ranger said when he left. (But he kept good personal relationship with Hassam.) Later Ranger, in an interview, expressed what he thought about the impressionism:

They did not recognize that a “low-tone phase of nature painted too light is as false as a high-keyed phase painted too low.” In the end, this school, which began in defiance of convention, created rigid conventions of its own with only certain colors representing light. Purple was always shadow and nature was painted just as it was. Earlier artists painted in studios and the paintings were the refined result of long and ardent toil out-of-doors.

The ever-changing transient light, that is quintessential Impressionism, is not what defined the Northeast. In some way, the New England autumn scenes find their voice through Ranger by his fastidious application of yellow, brown glaze for an overall warm atmosphere. Even in Pittsburgh, I felt the autumn overwhelmingly breadth-taking, with nostalgia and sorrow. The depth, silence and smell would make a light pallet-execution unbearable for puritan ethics. True, there is color even in the shadow; but as Ranger put it there must be a fundamental law obeyed in the art that persists through all ages: a quality that is always sane and untouched by all passing fads.

Ironically, the American Period Rooms now displayed and treasured in the major art museums were born with little anticipation of being appreciated in themselves as art. Yet, even the notion that the period room was introduced as backdrop for displaying antique objects is not totally correct. In most cases, the silent rooms, dimly lit, cannot speak for themselves. Visitors, who step into the well or the corridor, can always be satisfied by narrowing in on something that ineterests them. In such a warm homely ambiance, one may easily forget to ask such an important pro-curatorial-perspective question. "How and why were these monstrous rooms moved into the museums?"

It was not accidental that the birth of period rooms coincided with the beginning of the Colonial Revival in the 1910's and 1920's. On the one hand, the great war had crashed the ideal images of old civilization in general American public. For them, the hierarchical societal system crowned by aristocracy and nobility upon which the culture and moral standards are based disintegrated with bullets, bombs and gas. The tastes, matters and characteristics of Europe after the great war evolved in such a mad speed that went beyond of the grasps of ordinary Americans. Thus for such a period, Americans either lost interests or couldn't keep in emulating the cross-Atlantic life style, which provided a unique opportunity for them to look back with ease at their own cultural ancestry.

Such an examination of the past didn't come in an objective way considering the social milieu which witnessed the foregone of an agricultural country. First, the kindled interest in colonial American at that time bears a tint of Romanticism reminiscence of the past. Citizens in industrialized metros longed for the missing notions that males took the challenges to civilize the wilderness while females stayed home from the colonial period. The symmetric and orderly of early American homes was an outlet for them to seek the missing “kindness, comfort and safety” in their real life. Second, patriotism played and obvious but important role in such a movement. Americans not only began to take the pride of the cultural past but also took the notion of supremacy and glory in Colonial period.

When the influx of new immigrants came to US at the turn of the 20^th century, Colonial life-style was asserted as superior in that it advocated hardworking and home-centered family standard while the repose of the architecture commanded respect and obedience of social conduct.

In particular, two important milestone events laid the foundation for the birth of the period rooms. Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 showed two period settings. The Connecticut Cottage and the Old Log Cabin New English Kitchen. (An early similar setting happened in Brooklyn at the Sanitary Fair, a romantic nostalgic way of raising money for the Civil War. A wonderful print is still available from BMA’s library.) After the exposition, furniture makers saw a great opportunity of showing furniture in a historical setting for promotion. Such practice even was introduced into the department stores in big to create a homey ambiance.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, Americans had gotten used to accepting period settings for their inherited nostalgia and sentimentality of the past, but not aesthetic values. However, the experimental Hudson-Fulton Exhibition in 1909, for the first time, featured exclusive and comprehensive American Art in an American art institution, thus completed the notion that period rooms are the assembly of higher morale standard, pure and unpretentious life style, glorified past and beautiful artifact. It is true that there were other events or museums which preceded or contributed the concept of period rooms; but none can match the far-reaching influence of these two events which attracted so many audiences.

Recently there are more times than I can realize that I speak of Brooklyn, the borough where I live, not only because it is huge in terms of both land and population, but also because I feel strong sense that Brooklyn should be differentiated from Manhattan, which people associate with fast-pace life-style of rude and indifferent trendy people.

Based on Kenneth Jackson, the professor and scholar at Columbia University, as many as a quarter of all Americans can trace their ancestry to people who once lived in Brooklyn's 81 square miles. It is here that I began to learn of Dutch Colonial living and expanded my knowledge of Victorian architecture, because the borough, with its more than 400 neighborhoods provides the best textbook ever for anyone who wants to indulge in American culture and history.

Non-Brooklynians can hardly appreciate Brooklyn, partly because the name itself brings ones of the dusty memories of industry declination and racial strife & violence, partly because there is simply a more glittering attraction on the other side of the East River. (Carey in Sex and City moaned that even the cabs don’t go to Brooklyn. Well she is wrong.

Sitting here facing Prospect Park, I wonder how the course of my antique and art interest would have meandered if I were living in Manhattan. First of all, the apartment would be much smaller. Thus what can be deployed around the rooms would have to be more limited. (A recent article from NY Times actually mentioned some yuppies’ happy story ending in Brooklyn Heights where they hosted parties in such “roomy” space that made their Manhattan friends jealous.) Secondly, it will certainly change what "should" be collected.

Of course any object, as long as size permits, can fit in rooms of any style. The question is whether it is appropriate or what is appropriate?

What is an appropriate style for Manhattan apartments? I don’t have a firm opinion on that.

As much I am energized (or sometimes annoyed) by the crowd in the city, as I am sometimes tired of its somewhat ominous architecture. The architectural history of modern Manhattan is a history of negation, a denial of the value of past, a murder of aesthetic souls. (Having said that, I do think the gruesome demolishing of architectural gems in Manhattan--and sometimes saving them-- is what makes New York New York.)

From my observation, buildings of around the 1920’s in the Upper West still bears an aroma that is reminiscent of Edith Wharton’s New York ambience. (Oh well, why should I talk about the places of super rich!) But the apartment complex built from 1930’s onward in the Upper East look less cheer. I can still hang some 19^th century paintings or use a drop-leaf empire table, but it is impossible that passing those rows of apartment buildings void of individuality would not have any effect on my mind. Maybe I would select Ashcan school works since their fondness of observing ugliness of urban livings and their voyeur topic may inspire me to peek into the concrete jungles around.

It is not accidental that modern art galleries flourish in lower Manhattan neighborhoods such as Chelsea, the sleek and inhuman metal feeling of the furniture and the abstract visual art would match those long and narrow condos which were converted from warehouses. The same degree of negation of the past in those super rough or super smooth modern paintings and the sheer color and surface of the modern furniture are the natural choice for lower Manhattan. The crowds are young and 60’s and 70’s furnishing and art have influenced them from their youth. What would I choose if I had lived there? I would say my own works. Don’t I deserve 15 minutes’ of fame?

Most of the early 18th century period rooms in Brooklyn Museum of Art, to my surprise, are displayed without evidence of human presence. This casts a striking contrast with the rooms of later period such as Milligan's library with Nora's Ark.

In the 18th Century American period rooms, furniture, mostly chairs and tables, are placed along the wall. Considering most of the these rooms are sparsely furnished, such deployment has nothing to do with the uncluttering practice which has been done before to de-colonial-revivalize a “misinterpretation” from the early 20th Century.

In the book "American Interiors New England & The South" published in the 1980's, parlor rooms (which are desirable for collection) are described as multi-purpose in the 18th century. Such rooms could be used for entertaining, receiving, dining or business. Such activities required different objects and furniture was moved from room to room or even house to house as seasons changed.

The Twentieth Century associated permanence with functionalities. A table in the dining room or a sofa in the living room (which rarely existed in the 18th century) put viewers in a position much more favorable toward in-use furnishing. True, such ambience seems warm compared to sparsely-furnished rooms, but the simplicity and more or less practicality are the essence in an authentic interpretation of early American period rooms.

Interestingly, when I finally moved to New York, those functional associations began to disintegrate. After all, there is no room for a separate dining or a separate office in most of the New York apartments. Futons are generally used at least to serve as a second bed; fold-ability or “nesting” are other common tricks to save space.

The early New Englanders made furniture mobile because it was expensive; (mahogany furniture was essentially the same as cash, even more desirable) nowadays metro residents are forced to favor multi-functionality because of space limitations. But looking around the apartment furnishings in the Park Slope neighborhood house tour didn't inspire me as much as the barely furnished rooms in BMA did. Even in some most fancy and well preserved brownstones, there lacks a sense of historical integrity, not to mention quality of furnishings that match the price and reputation of the homes. (In general, those brownstones are more cluttered than my two-room apartment!) I was told that New Yorkers move too often to keep good furniture; maybe they should all go to see how Americans did it more than 200 years ago.

In reading the book “American Art In the Barbizon Mood,” I am surprised to find out American Barbizon school is yet to be defined even though the exhibition was held in Washington DC more than 30 years ago. Tonalism is in general used to define the same school, although tonalism itself is such a very vague term that when Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco had the exhibition of American Tonalism paintings, the show featured the painters Whistler and Dewing along side with Tryon and Eaton.

It is not a surprise that such a term as American Barbizon is not firm since the school itself did not last very long. To some extent, it serves as a bridge between the Hudson River School style and American Impressionism. The early works of Inness bear strong influence from Cole and Durand. It was only after the American Civil War that Inness began to forgo the niggling detail that once dominated the large canvases. Later, when Henry Ward Ranger came to Old Lyme to build up his colony, he found out that although he could attract a group of like-minded painters, he could not stop the trend. The Old Lyme sees the rise of Impressionism from Willard Metcalf and Theodore Robinson, both of whom were Old Lyme painters.

But most of all, it is the American Barbizon itself that somewhat distorted, if not betrayed the group of painters that it represented. True, some of them may have seen the silvery grayness of Corot or solemnity of Millet even though it was very rare to see these works within US before the civil war. Some of the painters such as Inness and Robert Crannell Minor even went to Europe for study, however most of these painters grew by themselves and may develop their artistic styles in their own course. To say they are the followers of Corot was more a critic’s idea and dealers’ promotion than their own intention.

And what a difference it makes when the so-called Barbizon school crossed the Atlantic! For Millet, the rural life bears the same amount of the sentimentality and elegance as the perfect male and female bodies in the hands of David and Ingres. But for Americans painters, there was no such passion found from mundane peasantry life. How could they, right after the civil war, when farming was still associated with the south and black labor. Thus in William Morris Hunt, there was a broader subject matters that associated with the general pastoral life without giving out the hint of laborious farming.

Barbara Novak, in her book about Hudson River School paintings, said that the grand scaled, untainted landscape is god’s gift to Americans and thus the vistas with magic light show the audience the new continent in the way God perceives it. If so, such notion began to shake in the minds of American who had gone through civil war and Darwinism. The rapid industrialization in post-civil war period saw fast change in Northeast landscape. God’s garden was no long viewed as American’s superiority against the European’s old civilization; instead it gave in for railroad, farming and bourgeoisification. Thus, it was natural that a group of artists began to view the landscape in a more nostalgic mood. Instead of looking down at the grandeur with a dominating control of details and free of any trace of human brush touch, they began to walk into the woods and experience them as human beings. The cool objective mind softened to the stirred emotions that had been constantly worried about the erosion of the landscape from industrialization. Visible strokes were implemented to enhance the live experience as if the landscape breathed its texture into the canvas.

When John Francis Murphy was praised as American Corot in the late 1870’s, he quietly saved those reviews about him but said little. He may have seen some paintings by French Barbizon painters, but the Mecca of Barbizon paintings in US at that time was not in New York but in Boston where Vose Gallery fervently promoted the school. But Murphy didn’t have to speak out for the inspiration of his style: He just lived with it. He took the occasion to visit Walden Pond and transplanted pine seedlings from Thoreau’s cabin to his Arkville Studio.

There, right by the pond, Thoreau already dictated what would be painted after his death by the painters of the next generation:

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. … a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.

I have known the name of the painter John Francis Murphy since I began to study American paintings. He was associated with the American Barbizon and Tonalism schools without geographically joining the Old Lyme Colony.

Thus when a painting of Murphy offered by John Moran Auction’s showed up, it immediately caught my eye.

The painting was dated in 1876 which was a crucial year for Murphy. In 1874, Murphy spent the late summer and early autumn in Keene Valley, a trip that cost him almost all his finished work. The trip was a turning point for the 31 year old painter, it was both a success and a failure. He was photographed in the company of Winslow Homer and enjoyed a sense of professional acceptance from fellow painters like Wyant, Tryon; but when he tried his best at a fashionably large canvas in the manner of Church and Bierstadt, he couldn’t transform lakes and mountains into miracles of light and air. Therefore, there were no further attempts in his career to pursue grandeur or sublimity, in his own words: he could add nothing to a genre already mastered by his “seniors”. In 1875, he left Chicago to live in New York. He lived on 205 East 32^nd Street. His career had a slow start. In fact, the first six months of 1876 brought him only $76 income. But it was this period that he began to mature into his style: the fondness of vapor, shadow, and mystery, all painted in a soft mood.

It is not a surprise that Murphy’s most admired writer was Thoreau. It was the intimate nature, or habitable wildness that dominated his canvases. Interestingly, by the time Murphy was elected to become a full academician, the Hudson River School style gradually became obsolete and Americans grew to favor paintings that appealed to feelings first instead of the intellect or moral sense.

In this painting, I see neither eternity nor serenity. The wind blows, the clouds fleet, the tree whistle. Somber mood comes through the low land bushes that are combed by brooks. Nothing is decisive, or final. But the transient moment has a sheer beauty that can hold eyes long enough as if the beauty lies within the uncertainty. Isn’t it true that sometimes the best sceneries happen at the most unexpected places or moments? Murphy knew it and registered the transient beauty into something lasting ever.

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. So wrote John Adams in a letter to Abigail Adams (1780-05-12).

This telling quote was used by Ronald Freyberger in closing a gallert talk titled American Collectors of French Furniture.

I couldn't have been more happy with the talk, and the twist around French decorative arts to end with a quote by John Adams was just one of many to extend from the knowledge and insights of Freyberger. Had you attended, you would have come away with some decent groundwork on the collectors, what they bought and who bought it for them, as well as an idea of what sold for how much when. Most interesting are the stories an item can tell by tracing it around and around until we find it in the museum.

If this is the kind of thing you're sorry you missed, Freyberger will give the gallery talk again August 23.