Art: Staying For A While At A Museum Near You

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By Peter Plagens

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You might call it "calendar creep." Art-museum exhibitions in America and abroad are running longer and longer these days. New York's financially constricted Guggenheim Museum just closed its video show "Moving Pictures" after a run of almost seven months, Scotland's National Galleries won't take down its big exhibition of "Warhol to Koons" until it's been up almost as long and the St. Louis Art Museum is letting viewers see "The Art of African Cloth" (which opened last July) until March 2. What gives? According to Lars Nittve, director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, "The thinking is that it doesn't make sense to take down an exhibition if it still has pulling power." That pull, according to many museum people, is a result of a larger potential audience than there was a decade or two ago: more folks who'd just as soon hit a museum as the cineplex, and more cultural tourists wandering the streets. "These six- to 12-month exhibitions give the public the opportunity to come back, look again and think again--and perhaps to give the art exhibition back some of what might be described as its lost dignity," says Nittve.

True, but with the recent economic slump and lingering travel jitters from 9-11, the longer exhibits also allow museums to cut costs. One or two shows a year cost a lot less to install, uninstall, insure and advertise than a half-dozen exhibitions. And as one museum official put it, "Museums need visitors, museums need money. More and more, politicians expect museums to be run like companies." Neal Benezra, head of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, says that while the balance sheet is obviously a factor, "we are now more engaged with our collection. And we do want to be different from more entertainment-oriented kinds of institutions. We want to be a slower, more contemplative place." Renewed attention to homegrown and home-owned art is also more frugal: it's cheaper to bring up an exhibit from the basement than fly it in from Paris. SFMOMA will let its exhibition of primo modern works from the collection of big-time local donor Phyllis Wattis remain in the galleries from Jan. 31 through mid-June, and lyrically minimal paintings by Ellsworth Kelly stay on the walls from the heart of the summer through Jan. 5, 2004.

But not every exhibition is going to proceed as leisurely as a picnic painted by Renoir. Art is still relatively fragile and suffers from prolonged exposure to bright light and body heat. Private lenders don't like to be separated from their treasures for too long, especially if the works will be sent from city to city, packed and unpacked, for a big touring show. Nevertheless, it's nice that something in this frantic, broadband universe is slowing down. Now museums might even be able to invoke that old movie-poster line about their featured exhibitions: "See it again with someone you love."

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