The recent announcement that the Art Institute will pack up 92 impressionist works—the core of its flagship collection—and send them off for an extended sojourn in Texas next year arrived like a stealth bomb. In a press release issued November 2, the Art Institute explained that this “unprecedented loan” to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is related to its own renovation: the impressionist galleries will be closed for sprucing up before the grand opening of the modern wing in 2009. The list of works that’ll be hitting the road is astounding, including 5 by van Gogh, 6 by Degas, 7 each by Cezanne and Manet, 12 by Renoir, and 26 by Monet. The dailies dutifully reported the news as if there weren’t a giant, surreal “huh?” hanging over it and as if there were no money changing hands, leaving readers to wonder, mouths agape: Why the impressionists? Why so many? Why so long? Why Texas?
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Three days later, Washington-based national arts reporter Tyler Green slapped a For Rent sign on a copy of Caillebotte’s iconic Paris Street; Rainy Day and mounted the image at the head of his well-read artsjournal.com blog, Modern Art Notes. Green blasted the Art Institute for masking a rental as a loan and for having the gall to present it as “an historic occasion for the Art Institute.” This is “stretching the museum’s credibility,” he wrote, claiming that even Art Institute director James Cuno “pretty much held his nose when discussing the rental” by saying it’ll produce “scholarly residue” in the form of a catalog. Suggesting T-shirts emblazoned with “Chicago pimps out Caillebotte,” Green described the “loan” as the “re-monetization of art held . . . in a public trust” and called for the Art Institute to come clean on the nature and terms of the transaction.
The Kimbell has had its share of notoriety. In 2000 it was revealed that the museum’s board had paid two of its members—the founder’s niece and her husband—a couple million dollars for what would have been generally considered volunteer services. A few years before that the museum hatched a plan to graft an addition to the Kahn building, a concept so reviled by the world’s leading architects that it never happened. But now, like the Art Institute, the Kimbell has hired Renzo Piano to design an expansion, this time a separate building on the museum’s grounds. And there are other overlaps between the two institutions, including former and current officials; Warner, for example, spent several years at the Art Institute in the late 1980s as a researcher. He says the impressionists’ visit was devised about a year ago by Cuno and (then) Kimbell director Timothy Potts. Cuno says the idea, broached by Potts, seemed like a good way to keep the art on view when it would otherwise have to be stored. When the Art Institute’s renovation is done and the goodies reinstalled, he adds, viewers will have a “better sense of the [collections’] narrative.” The impressionist galleries, which will be closed from May to late December (the Texas show will be up June 29 through November 2), will “conclude the chronological sweep to the end of the 19th century, from which you’ll launch into the modern wing.”
