American Magazine: November 2013

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ALICE DENNEY ON COLLECTING “MY ADVICE would be to look at a lot of art. If you look at a lot of art in museums and galleries and studios, and you see what you’ve never quite seen before, pay attention. When I first saw Barney [Barnett] Newman’s work, I thought, this is nothing. But there’s something about it that makes you take a second look. I remember seeing Howard Mehring’s white-on-white painting. I had not seen anything like it, so I invited him to be part of Jefferson Place [Gallery]. Ken [Kenneth Noland] also was struggling about where to take his work, so I brought him into Jefferson Place too. I even bought his blue circle painting with orange for $200—which I eventually sold. Later that same painting became part of the Andy Williams collection and recently went at auction for $2 million. But back then, no one would buy Ken’s work or Jasper Johns’s or a lot of people who are big names today. “KNOWING the artists is really a big part of it. For example, I bought a little [Robert] Rauschenberg that was sitting in Leo Castelli’s bathtub in the bathroom of his gallery at 477 East 77th Street, his early gallery before he moved to SoHo. Who knew we’d all become such good friends? But we did. So always try to meet the artists. Get a sense of their integrity, their spirit, their seriousness. And go to every show you can. Do this, then go home, and if there’s something you really remember, it’s something you should try. “IT’S A GOOD IDEA to find artists when they are young, before they’ve made it, and follow them. If you’re starting out but don’t have a lot of money, get to know the artists and the dealers who can point you in interesting directions. Really, it can be a full-time job.” A group of artists ponied up $100 each to join; for $200, Denney rented a big, second-story space at the corner of Jefferson Place and Connecticut Avenue NW. In fall 1957, the Jefferson Place Gallery opened with a roster that included AU fine arts faculty—painters Helene McKinsey Herzbrun, Ben “Joe” Summerford, and Robert Gates and sculptor William Howard Calfee—and local painters Mary Orwen, Shelby Shackelford, and Kenneth Noland. “We got loads of publicity,” Denney says. “It was so new, this idea of a gallery that wasn’t also selling jewelry or books.” The buzz attracted a young reporter named Tom Wolfe, who became a regular at Jefferson Place. “He was bored in D.C.,” Denney remembers. “He said this was the only place in the city where there was any excitement.” Despite the many people who came to look at the “contemporary stuff” by artists from Washington, New York, and the West Coast, few actually bought anything. “I practically had to beat people up,” she says, “to get them to pay $125 for a Jasper Johns drawing that today would go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Denney and her friends were ready for a cultural sea change. That change came in November 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy as president. “He and Jackie actually seemed to have some interest in the arts,” says Denney. The Kennedys imbued the capital with a new spirit, inspiring Denney and friends to talk seriously about starting a world-class institution focused on modern art. In 1962 the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, backed by a high-profile board and an energetic staff, made its debut with a Franz “HE [TOM WOLFE] SAID THIS WAS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE CITY WHERE THERE WAS ANY EXCITEMENT.” 20 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2013
Kline retrospective, the first ever, honoring the artist who had died the previous spring at the age of 51. The show and the gallery, which was located in a spacious, renovated town house just off Dupont Circle and conveniently down the street from the Jockey Club, got lots of press—in all the right places. “It was a great start,” says Denney, who was then assistant director. “But the question was, would we be able to maintain this high level?” The answer was a resounding yes, the proof being a major exhibition titled The Popular Image, which opened in 1963. In this multivenue showcase for pop art, Denney brought together a lineup of impressive but not yet famous artists that included Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Jasper Johns, George Brecht, and James Rosenquist. Oldenburg held a happening at a dry cleaning place on P Street NW. New York’s experimental Judson Dance Theater—a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists based in the Village—performed at the America on Wheels roller skating rink in Adams Morgan, showcasing dance pioneers Steve Paxton, Carolyn Brown, Yvonne Rainier, and David Gordon. And Rauschenberg made history with the premiere of his iconic performance piece, Pelican, which was created for that space and in which the artist skated around with an open parachute on his back, an homage to the Wright brothers. “The art press loved us,” Denney remembers. But the mainstream media, including Time and Newsweek, ran pages mocking the new art and the show, calling Washington’s effort to be hip deluded. On the other hand, international art impresario Pontus Hultén, then director of Sweden’s modern art museum, Moderna Museet, was so impressed, he told a reporter that it was “the best and most important assemblage of pop art that I have ever seen.” Having brought pop art to D.C., Denney moved on to the international stage, serving as vice commissioner for the American contingent at the 1964 Venice Biennale. “We stayed at the old American consulate,” she says, on the Grand Canal near collector Peggy Guggenheim’s pink palazzo. “At first Peggy didn’t think much of me or what we were doing, but after a few parties we ended up as friends. We’d sunbathe on the terrace with all this art around, and she’d have her dogs running all over and cocktails constantly coming— it was something else.” Despite the art world politics, Rauschenberg took the overall grand prize, a first for an American. But to qualify and meet the judging rules, his work had to be moved from the ancillary American gallery to the official American pavilion. “The only way to do this in the time we had, basically overnight, was to ferry the paintings over,” Denney says. Time magazine, in its coverage of the American win, featured a picture of Denney resolutely holding a Rauschenberg painting in a U.S. Navy launch, motoring down the Grand Canal to the exhibition grounds. On her return to Washington, Denney was determined not to let the momentum die. She started her own Private Arts Foundation (PAF) and, in 1966, put on the citywide Now Festival, attracting such emerging talent as Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. “Just to show you how much people wanted to be part of it, I put Andy and the Velvet Underground up in the old Cairo Hotel over by Dupont Circle,” she says. “The only payment Andy asked for was four new tires for the car—to get them all back to New York when they were done.” PAF enabled Denney to continue offering grants to artists and to bring theater and performance artists to the capital. But finding space was a challenge. So in 1974, she founded the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) in an old opera house on G Street NW. It quickly became a mecca for those, from curators to collectors, who were hungry for the new. Pegboard covered the walls (“Much easier to hang things that way,” Denney insists), but that didn’t deter the artists, who knew that the WPA could launch careers. But by 1979, Denney was restless. It was time to hand the WPA over to others. For her almost last hurrah, she decided to bring punk to a decidedly unpunky Washington. “People thought we were crazy for doing the Punk Festival. We had fashion, we had the artist “THE ONLY PAYMENT ANDY [WARHOL] ASKED FOR WAS FOUR NEW TIRES FOR THE CAR, TO GET THEM ALL BACK TO NEW YORK WHEN THEY WERE DONE.” known as Peanut Butter, we had all the people you’re hearing about again today.” She pauses. “Look, the Metropolitan Museum had that huge punk-themed opening earlier this year—and a lot of the artists who were in our Punk Festival were in theirs!” After leaving the WPA, Denney continued to look at everything, everywhere. And she still took the time to curate: an Ed Kelly retrospective at Georgetown’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a compelling exhibit in which artists interpreted fashion for Gallery K, and Good Things Come in Small Packages: The Collection of Elisabeth French at the American University Museum in 2010. The latter highlighted Washingtonian French’s longstanding commitment to support young, local artists. “People need to know you can put together a collection without a lot of money or a lot of space to put it in,” says Denney. Two years ago, Denney’s impact on contemporary art was recognized at the 30th anniversary gala of ArtTable Inc., a nonprofit that supports and celebrates women in the arts. The event, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, honored a group that included Alanna Heiss, a major figure in the alternative space movement who founded P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and the Clocktower Gallery; artists Miriam Schapiro and Faith Ringgold; New York Times arts critic Roberta Smith; and the Guerrilla Girls, an underground activist artist group. “What great company,” Denney says. I still can’t believe I was up there on stage with them.” LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 21
Page 1 and 2: PINT-SIZED POP DIVA SHAPES D.C. ART
Page 4 and 5: Six months into her job as WHITE HO
Page 6 and 7: syllabus GOVERNMENT 326 History of
Page 8 and 9: Harvest Home—a cost-effective, en
Page 10 and 11: mastery Malcolm Gladwell’s book O
Page 12 and 13: play The legions of people who walk
Page 14 and 15: DATE: 1619 DATE: 1492 DATE: 1776 -
Page 16 and 17: wonk Q. Why are we so fascinated by
Page 18 and 19: WORK-Wes Barrett, SOC/MA ’10 Whit
Page 21: BY LEE FLEMING She had artist Claes
Page 25 and 26: Naden Krogan Biology, CAS Todd Pron
Page 27 and 28: Jane Palmer Public Administration a
Page 29 and 30: BY MIKE UNGER PUSHED BY THEIR HEART
Page 31 and 32: mental reservation or purpose of ev
Page 33 and 34: house in a safer suburb an hour awa
Page 35 and 36: storytellers to sell products and e
Page 37 and 38: 1960s Jeffery King, SPA/BA ’64, p
Page 39 and 40: thank you ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE MOR
Page 41 and 42: giving BY LIMITING TUITION increase
Page 43 and 44: teamwork WEDDING RESEARCH INTERESTS
Page 45 and 46: memories Excerpts from the Eagle ar
Page 47 and 48: teamwork SHANGHAI EXPRESS Kyle Long
Page 49 and 50: top picks Simson’s most influenti
Page 51 and 52: FACEBOOK facebook.com/americanualum

American Magazine: November 2013

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?