THE TIES THAT BIND
Thomas B. F. Cummins stepped down from his position as chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture in 2012, but he hasn’t lost his exuberance. Framed by a half-mane of less-than-tamed gray hair, he leans back in his chair and speaks animatedly of the new museum’s innovations and his department’s connection to them. “Tom Lentz, in discussion with the faculty…spent a lot of time going over classrooms, [asking], ‘How will we have access to this material?’ making it clear that we can conduct classes in there with the objects [from the collection] themselves,” he says. “From everything that we planned for and thought about, we should have extraordinary access to these collections and some good study rooms.”
Even the public exhibitions will be connected to academic study. Three 1,000-square-foot galleries are reserved as University Galleries, organized in tandem with FAS departments. One will be dedicated to the History of Art and Architecture Department, one will be for other departments, and one will be a new space for experimentation with the concept of exhibition. Even in the main galleries, ties to the museum’s greater purpose of education will be evident. Signs will advise curious visitors to explore further in the Art Study Center, and the collections will be modeled to reflect the way art history is studied. “Our American paintings and works of art are mixed in with our European material,” Lentz says. “In many ways that’s a reflection of the way American art history is now taught.”
When asked how the museum will represent his own area of expertise, Cummins bursts out laughing. “I use the Peabody,” he is quick to say; he is, after all, the Dumbarton Oaks professor of pre-Columbian and colonial art, an area that falls under the jurisdiction of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Yet even Cummins might find reason to walk the Fogg’s walnut-stained oak floors. “The Peabody in particular is important to us, because it’s an enormous and very important collection and it sort of dovetails neatly with our gaps,” Lentz says as he stands in one of the empty gallery spaces. “One of the things we’re trying to do is forge much stronger relations with other collection resources at Harvard.” The new museum will attempt this from the beginning, opening with a showcase of African art borrowed from the Peabody. Though the museum will be using these objects as more of an exhibition than a study collection, Cummins anticipates and appreciates increased dialogue between the two museums, specifically the respective conservation staffs.
Less directly but just as importantly, the museum will work in tandem with many other on-campus efforts to teach art history. “The new museum will create a constellation of buildings and structures, inclusive of the Fine Arts Library, which is one of the most remarkable art history libraries I know, and the Sackler building, where History of Art and Architecture is housed, to create a rich set of resources for the teaching of art history,” says Yukio Lippit, a professor of Japanese art.
Both professors acknowledge the difficulty of balancing identities as a teaching museum and a public museum, but are optimistic about how this particular experiment will work. “It’s a difficult balance to achieve, but I think [the museum has] achieved it thus far, and it will only be able to fulfill this dual mandate better in the future,” Lippit says. Cummins notes that students will have their own entrances to the classrooms separate from the public entrance, and believes the tourist traffic won’t interfere to a great extent. “I say that now,” he adds quickly. “We’ll see how it works.”
BRIDGING THE GAP
“[The original Fogg] was 50 years behind renovation,” Cummins says, calling the old, cramped building with no climate control “disgraceful.” Yet Thomas Lentz and the museum team, who could have easily settled for a modestly improved space, have pulled out all the stops to create what Lentz calls “a real 21st-century art museum” that fulfills its mission as a teaching museum while presenting an expanded collection of objects to the public in new ways, even extending its educational resources to curious visitors.
The collection and the building that houses it are immensely impressive, but it is the people behind the scenes that are truly guiding the museum to connect deeply with the public and the rest of the University. Next fall, when the architects, designers and builders are gone, a new crew will take over—the curatorial staff—which will be just as committed to creating these connections. Lippit remarks that much of the staff is made up of colleagues of History of Art and Architecture faculty, which will undoubtedly keep the museum rooted in the University network. “A museum isn’t just a collection of objects,” he says. “It’s also a human resource.” Even with all its towering spectacle, the new museum hopes to remain flexible, accessible, human.
—Staff writer Tree A. Palmedo can be reached at tree.palmedo@thecrimson.com.