Tricentennial Week In Mobile
Jul 2nd, 2002
By THOMAS B. HARRISONArts & Entertainment Editor
First the paintings, then the fireworks.
The Mobile Tricentennial hits the point of no return this week with the arrival of the tall ships and a pyrotechnics display meant to light up the evening sky downtown.
A much quieter celebration got under way Monday morning with a media preview of "American Accents, 1670-1945: Masterworks from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, featuring the Rockefeller Collection," including 87 paintings from the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco.
The exhibition, on view through Jan. 5 at the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center, includes work by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William J. Glackens, Georgia O'Keeffe, Albert Bierstadt, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer and 63 other artists.
This exhibition was organized by Daniell Cornell, associate curator of American art for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, who expressed his pleasure with the Exploreum's preparations for the exhibition.
"It feels good," said Cornell, who wrote the catalog essay. He said he hopes the exhibition, distributed throughout five themed galleries, is both visually compelling and historically relevant.
"My hope is there's a kind of balance where you walk in and have the aesthetic experience of 'Ahhhh!" he said, "but you're able to read the catalog text or the wall panels (and) make sense of the context and how these paintings tell a story about America. Sometimes that is a difficult thing to negotiate."
W. Michael Sullivan, executive director of the Exploreum, said he thinks 120,000 might attend the exhibition. The Exploreum drew more than 127,000 for its "China!" show.
The Mobile Tricentennial Commission has a $500,000 investment in the "American Accents" exhibition, including the man-in-the-white-suit ads featuring Scott Wright. Those ads are running regionally in cities such as Birmingham, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Huntsville.
National exposure never hurts, and the Exploreum got a huge lift when National Public Radio ran a piece about the "China!" exhibition. A photo and blurb about "American Accents" and the Mobile Tricentennial ran Monday on page B1 of the New York Times.
Contractors had a mere three weeks to dismantle the "China!" exhibition and construct 600 feet of running wall space to accommodate the de Young paintings.
"We're not an art museum, but we were very fortunate in bringing in ... real pros to hang the show, the lights, and do the kinds of things we couldn't do," Sullivan said.
"We wouldn't shut it down more than three weeks anyway. We can't do without that revenue, so we're always motivated to get on with next show and get it open."
"American Accents" will run concurrently with National Geographic's IMAX film, "Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West."
It also sets the stage for another Tricentennial event, "Picturing French Style: Three Hundred Years of Art and Fashion," which will mark the reopening of the expanded $15.1 million Mobile Museum of Art in Langan Municipal Park. The French exhibition opens Sept. 6 and will feature 134 artworks from 53 lenders.
Ann Bedsole, president of the Mobile Tricentennial Commission, said financial support has been hard to come by, although the Tricentennial Commission did get a boost recently.
"I have been asking people for money the last three or four years and that has fallen on deaf ears for the most part," she said. "My knuckles are worn out from knocking on doors. All of a sudden, when people began to believe what was going to happen here, we began to get money."
The Tricentennial received two major donations, including "someone who just called and sent a check," said Bedsole. "As somebody who's labored in the vineyards not producing anything, that was wonderful."
Bedsole said "American Accents" can have a serious impact on Mobile's future, and those willing to put their money into the effort "are investing in something that will be ongoing ... beyond this show."
The artwork will tour North America while the de Young is closed to make way for construction of a new building that will open in 2005. The prestigious collection grew out of a 1976 gift from Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III.
"American Accents" was to have begun a world tour in Italy in 2003, after which it was scheduled for stops at the Vatican, then France and Germany. Plans changed with the World Trade Center tragedy.
"After Sept. 11, the director didn't want anything in the air," said Cornell.
When the exhibition closes in Mobile, the next scheduled destination is the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.
For the next six months, however, Mobilians have the de Young paintings all to themselves. Cornell said he spent two hours with the docents. But he said the public must bring their own perspective to the artwork.
"I think the docents have enough material, plus they have their own eyes," he said. "I encourage people to look with their own eyes and think about these works as to what they notice in them -- and what is not in them. Sometimes what is not there is just as important if not more so."