While conducting research for our upcoming exhibition Made in America 1900–1950: Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada, I was reminded that planning an exhibition not only requires a lot of thought and hard graft, but sometimes even a little detective work.
Berenice Abbott. What One Artist Craftsman Works With, c. 1947. Gelatin silver print, 23.8 x 19.3 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased from the Phyllis Lambert Fund, 1981. © Bernice Abbott/Commerce Graphics LTD, NYC
One of the 132 photographs in the show, Berenice Abbott’s What One Artist Craftsman Works With, is a case in point. The image shows the workbench of Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, with its floor-to-ceiling array of tools and materials. It’s an exquisite work – beautifully composed, highly detailed and richly toned. As my colleague, Photographs Curator Ann Thomas, says, it shows Noguchi’s “astonishing ability to invent extraordinary forms using workaday tools.” But what was mysterious to me was the dating of the work in the Gallery’s files.
The image was recorded as having been created in “1930?”, but the same records gave a printing date of 1947. I wanted to try to remove the question mark next to the date – to find some definitive evidence for the exact date Berenice Abbott had taken the picture, 1930 or otherwise – so I started digging.
Walker Evans. Berenice Abbott, New York City, c. 1929 1930, printed later. Gelatin silver print, 17.7 x 12.6 cm; image: 16.6 x 11.8 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of Benjamin Greenberg, Ottawa, 1981. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Books on Abbott and Noguchi had them both living in Paris in the 1920s. Abbott studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and worked as an assistant to Man Ray, while Noguchi apprenticed with the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Both returned to New York in 1929.
Could Abbott have taken this picture of Noguchi’s studio just one year after returning to America? I didn’t think so. For one thing, the sculptor’s workbench looks too well lived-in, with a plentiful accumulation of tools, papers, booklets, cans and jars. Secondly, Noguchi’s biography revealed that when he moved away from Paris in 1929 he left his tools behind, only retrieving them in April 1930 while en route to Asia. He was fairly nomadic after that, returning to New York in November 1931, but spending time in Chicago and London until 1934, when he rented a studio for six months in Woodstock, New York. By 1947 he seems to have settled into a studio, according to a dated image in the biography showing a workbench similar to the one in ours.
Yousuf Karsh. Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988), 25 June 1980, printed before September 1988. Gelatin silver print, 50.2 x 40.1 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of the artist, Ottawa, 1989.
I looked closely at our photograph for clues and discovered something resembling an official certificate had been nailed to the workbench. I took my discovery to Photographs Conservator John McElhone who agreed to look at it under the microscope. As he turned the focus knob, a signature emerged: “Spencer C. Young, City of New York, Department of Finance, authorized to collect sales tax and corporate tax.” Back at my desk, a Google search yielded the website for “Spencer C. Young Investments, Inc.,” complete with a detailed family history. Mr. Young’s paternal grandfather, also Spencer C. Young, was New York City’s Treasurer for eight years, beginning in 1946. Bingo!
Given the dating of the tax license, along with the date of the related photograph from the biography, we now believe Abbott made this careful, admiring photograph of Noguchi’s studio around 1947. Another art mystery solved.
Katherine Stauble, Sobey Curatorial Assistant
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Brian Jungen’s socially conscious Court and how it got to the National Gallery
Brian Jungen’s Court, which has just been installed in the contemporary galleries, was donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Vancouver businessman and art collector Bob Rennie. The Rennie Collection, housed in the Wing Sang building in Vancouver’s Chinatown, is one of the largest and most important collections of contemporary art in Canada. Mr. Rennie, principal of the Rennie Collection, is the Chair of the Tate North American Acquisitions Committee and a member of the Tate International Council. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver and sits on the Dean’s Advisory Board to the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. Mr Rennie took some time to chat with us about Brian Jungen, Court, and the importance of supporting and collecting art in Canada.
What is it about Brian Jungen’s work that you like?
At our gallery in Vancouver we collect about 210 artists, 47 of which we collect in depth. Brian is one of the 47 and we have been working with him for a long time. When we take works into our collection they have to fit with the artist’s body of work, or with other parts of the Rennie Collection, and Brian sits well within the identity side of the our collection that often deals with race, injustice and prejudice – a theme that tends to occupy a lot of the collection.
In what way does Court speak to those themes?
With Court it’s a subtle reference. When you look at the sewing machine tables, how they are all used, you can start to picture what happened at those tables. Even if nothing contravened social acceptance, it’s still a tough job to make the apparel these multi-million dollar, hundred-million dollar, basketball players wear. So Court comes out of the fact, or the myth, that child labour goes into making basketball shoes for professional athletes who have been monumentalized in our culture and that contrast of ideas really fit a discipline for us.
If it’s such an important work for your collection why donate it?
When you look at the sheer size of the work I am probably only going to be able to install it once every 20 years. And then you look at our responsibility as a custodian of these artworks and I just thought that maybe it should go to a safer place where it will be shown. And the National Gallery has made a commitment to Brian’s work already, so it really was the right home. I would also say that I am a really big fan of [NGC Director & CEO] Marc Mayer and what he is doing for my country. So that also helped us pick where it would go also.
What is it about Marc Mayer’s approach to running the National Gallery that you like?
I see him really understanding the curatorial practice and making tough acquisitions. That’s critically important for a national museum. Galleries, to an extent, survive on our similarities, they are all museums, but in the end they are all going to be known for their differences. I think that the National Gallery has a responsibility to serve a time, so that when we look back on this time we can see what was discussed in our day and Marc pays attention to that.
Why do you think it is important for collectors like yourself to make donations like these?
Prior to the economic crash of September 2008 we were in a completely different economy for philanthropy and giving, post-September 2008 all bets are off. The way that giving is handled, and museums’ ability to raise funds has been made very, very difficult and I think that because of that reality, really great art collections are going to have to be built off the backs of collectors. The National Gallery, for example, has an $8 million a year acquisition budget, but unfortunately in the contemporary art world that is not a lot of money and if you start to look at pre-contemporary art it’s nothing so, we need collectors to help build collections.
Peter Zimonjic
Senior Web Writer, NGC