Museum of Fine Arts a little short on wall space

Crowded in during a renovation, the museum's collection could use a little breathing room. But for now, the new locales offer a new perspective.

By Lennie Bennett, Times art critic
Published August 19, 2007

Georgia O'Keeffe's Poppy (1927), one of the paintings in the collection of St. Petersburg's Museum of Fine Arts.
	[Handout photo]

IF YOU GO
In a New Light
"A Special Exhibition of the Permanent Collection" is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, through Sept. 11. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $4 for students. (727) 896-2667 or www.fine-arts.org.

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ST. PETERSBURG - Anyone who has lived in a house under renovation will empathize with the Museum of Fine Arts. Half of the galleries, those that display the permanent collection, are closed while being spruced up in conjunction with the new wing that opens early in 2008.

Most of the collection now resides temporarily in the galleries reserved for special exhibitions, and it isn't nearly enough space even for this edited version. The effect is like having five rooms of furniture crammed into two.

There is an upside to this arrangement. Unlike the Dali Museum, whose curators routinely remix the works, those of the Museum of Fine Arts have mostly assumed the same positions for years. I found myself looking at some of the paintings I have enjoyed for years as if for the first time. As they say in real estate: location, location, location.

Some of the portraits look especially fresh. Michiel van Mierevelt's ruffed and ruffled 17th century lady, Franz Xaver Winterhalter's glamorous 19th century woman in white, and William Bouguereau's peasant girl, also 19th century, connect across the centuries.

The close proximity of Jean Francois Raffaelli's Man With Two Loaves of Bread, Francois Bonvin's pair of peasants and Honore Daumier's working-class man, all painted within 25 years of each other by French artists, show the diversity of styles in the mid to late 19th century, when France ruled the art world.

The three Monet landscapes remain together on a wall, as they did previously, now flanked by his American acolytes Willard Leroy Metcalf and Childe Hassam, making the point that imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but does not usually generate great art.

The back galleries are arranged chronologically which means that African art and Greek and Roman antiquities make strange bedfellows in one small room as do a mix of paintings spanning the 14th to 17th centuries.

The large front gallery is an eclectic assortment. A small selection of the 20th century art typically taken from storage every summer opens the show with Jimmy Ernst's Sea of Grass, Sunset, a perennial team player, and the rarely displayed Westcoastalscape by Syd Solomon. The beloved impressionists are mostly grouped together - Morisot, Renoir, another Monet - as well as the handful of post-impressionist works such as Cezanne's landscape.

On display is a recent acquisition, New Horizons by the prominent American sculptor Albert Wein. He created it from a single block of cherry wood in 1937, a beautiful direct carving of a reclining woman that embodies both classical and modernist influences. The title probably was a reference to the beginning of the end of the Great Depression though it took a few more years to happen and was purchased in honor of the late Charles Mackey, long-time museum leader. It's a timely addition to the collection that looks ahead to the new building.

Maybe the curators should have taken a less literal approach to the temporary space and gone for something like the Barnes Collection's eccentric juxtapositions of African art, early American ironware and impressionist and early modern paintings. But Barnes took years to come up with his unique formula for appreciating art; this is a brief hiatus for the permanent collection that makes us all the more eager for more space as soon as possible.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 16, 2007, 16:27:38]