Behind the scenes of an art exhibit

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
9/25/05

The mood in an art gallery is usually one of hushed, well-ordered stillness. The images and artifacts are at arm's length, yet untouchable. Viewers see only a clutter-free space meant to mesmerize.

What you don't see is the planning and preparation that make the mood possible.

"Here we are finally, after four years," said Erin Budis Coe last week, looking with satisfaction at the nearly complete installation of "Adolph Gottlieb: 1956," the latest show she's curated for The Hyde Collection.

The new exhibit, with 23 paintings and works on paper by the abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb, opens today in the Wood Gallery and remains through Dec. 11.

For the public, it's a chance to get a substantive look at a year in the life of a major 20th-century artist. For the Hyde's staff, it's a chance to take a breath at the end of a journey from inspiration to reality.

Conception
"This show came to fruition basically because of this one work, and because I'm inquisitive," said Budis Coe, pointing at a 1956 gouache on paper called "Composition." It was given to The Hyde by Stephen and Nancy Sills in 1999, a few months after Budis Coe joined the museum's curatorial staff. She was thrilled by the donation.

"It was the kind of call curators dream of getting!" she said. "Abstract expressionism isn't really a strength of our collection, and I want to fill holes any place I can."

Budis Coe learned that "Composition" was one of 36 works on paper Gottlieb created in 1956, and she became intrigued by the idea of an exhibit that would reunite the works. She called Sanford Hirsch, executive director of The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation in New York City, which has managed Gottlieb's collection since his death in 1974.

Hirsch and Budis Coe decided to collaborate on an exhibit that would include Gottlieb's paintings on canvas and paper from 1956. That year, Budis Coe said, marked the beginning of Gottlieb's transition from an "imaginary landscape" style -- using strong horizon lines to counterbalance chaotic brushstrokes with more stable shapes -- to the "burst" style of paintings like "Black, Blue, Red."

The '50s were also an important period of transition in art history, as abstract expressionism displaced surrealism and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York.
Gottlieb and his contemporaries -- including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Wiliam de Kooning -- believed in painting "almost automatically, through their subconscious," explained Budis Coe. The result was typically a melange of shapes and colors that each viewer could intrepret differently.

Wishing, waiting

In 2001, Budis Coe wrote a wish list of works she hoped to include in the show and turned it over to Robin Blakney-Carlson, the Hyde's collections manager.

Blakney-Carlson jokes that her job title "means I go after the unpaid bills." But she's really more like a fairy godmother. It's her job to grant the curator's wishes by requesting loans of works from private collectors and other museums, coordinating shipping and receiving arrangements, and managing the budget.

Each lender has different, specific requirements for how their works should be handled, Blakney-Carlson said.

"You try to be sweet to everybody," she said, "and let them know you really care about what they're requesting. If you're arrogant, they could just as easily say, 'Sorry, nope.'"

Being sweet helped, but so did Hirsch's connections in the art world.

"We really got what we wanted," said Budis Coe. The exhibit includes works from 13 different lenders.

It took about two weeks for the Hyde staff to prepare the gallery for the exhibit, in a process that's reminiscent of "Extreme Home Makeover." They removed, inspected, and shipped out the works from the previous show ("Painting Lake George"); rearranged and painted the walls; and installed new lighting.

The borrowed pieces arrived on refrigerated trucks and were unloaded under tight security, then left to sit in their crates for at least 24 hours.

"A piece may have come from California or overseas, or it's been a rainy day, and it needs to acclimate," said Keith Jablonski, facilities manager at The Hyde.

Workers wear cotton or Nitrile gloves before touching any of the artwork, so oils from their skin don't do any damage.

"Believe it or not, human hands are fairly rough compared to some finishes," Jablonski said.
His staff must strip themselves of sharp objects before working with the art. "You don't want to be leaning over a painting and have a screwdriver fall out of your pocket."

Budis Coe placed photocopies of the paintings on the gallery walls where she thought she wanted each work placed and she used a scale model of the gallery to "play house" with the setup of the exhibition walls before the works arrived.

"You do the best you can to guess what will work, but you still end up moving things around after uncrating," Budis Coe said.

She changed her mind about the placement of one of the larger paintings because "it looked too claustrophobic on that wall."

The only snag in the process was the delay of one of the exhibit's key pieces, "Black, Blue, Red," on its way from the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany. The massive steel case enclosing the 6-foot-high painting had excited suspicion among airport customs agents, and it arrived a few days behind schedule.

"When you're in the museum business, you have to be flexible," Budis Coe said.

Work in progress

By Tuesday, the gallery's white walls were coming to life as the staff shed the paintings of their packaging. Some works were already hanging, while others, on foam blocks, leaned against the walls. White gloves and tools for measuring and hanging paintings lay on a table in the center of the room, next to a wooden crate marked "Fragile." Budis Coe looked flushed, like a new mother.

The back wall featured a striking oil-and-enamel painting -- "From Midnight to Dawn" -- with a bold black 'J' diving across a vibrant blue canvas. The work will be the focal point for viewers entering the gallery.

"We think it was probably the first painting Gottlieb completed in 1956," Budis Coe said, "so it makes sense that it should be the first thing people see."

The Gottlieb paintings are among the largest ever displayed in a Hyde gallery, she said.
She's particularly excited about "Groundscape," a 7-foot-by-12-foot oil painting on canvas that hasn't been on public display in at least 25 years.

"It's a symphony of color and brushstrokes, so spontaneous and yet so large. It's just incredible," Budis Coe said. She began college as a studio art major, but dropped it to focus on art history. "When we unwrapped this painting, it was the first time since college that I've wanted to pick up a paintbrush again," she said.
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