In the world of art, the museum blockbuster is considered a similar box-office gamble, a chance for a museum to attract the masses to view rarely seen, borrowed masterpieces.
For the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, which this month opens its first blockbuster exhibit - ever - the exhibit's implementation has had a down-to-the-wire urgency. Such a massive show usually takes at least three years to mount. Yet when "Monet to Picasso" opens June 23, the University of Utah museum will have pulled it off in half that time.
The show features 74 masterworks by Renoir, Degas and Gauguin, the kind of classic paintings, says UMFA Director David Dee, that many Uthans have seen as reproductions but never in person.
"This is an extraordinary opportunity," Dee says, while a complicated choreography goes on just outside his office door, the racing and chasing and focused busy-ness of scores of staff members from curators and docents to construction workers and gift-shop volunteers.
At the ticketing booth, workers take phone and online orders. At the loading dock, 300 headsets arrive for the show's made-to-order audio tours.
In the galleries, staff adjust artworks by a matter of inches. A blockbuster requires the most thoughtful of "hangs." To accommodate enormous crowds - think the Louvre and the Mona Lisa - the artwork is generally higher than usual for better visibility.
Dee and his crew expect some 50,000 visitors over a 12-week run, or approximately 600 ticket-buyers per day. "It's just something the museum has never done before," says project manager Blake Wigdahl, who was hired from the San Francisco Exploratorium to oversee the UMFA exhibit.
When all is said and done, the museum's exhibit expenses of $2.2 million will nearly equal the institution's entire annual operating budget.
Dee has raised $1.35 million from donors ranging from the University of Utah, the state of Utah and the governments of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County to the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and hundreds of individuals and businesses. And he hopes to raise still more. In addition, the exhibit's $15 general-admission ticket price and gift-shop sales are expected to help make up part of that gap.
While "Monet to Picasso" is no "King Tut" - that's the 1972 New York Metropolitan Museum of Art show that set the blockbuster mill in motion nationally - it does constitute a possible sea change for Dee and the Utah museum. "It can bring us to a whole new level," he says, "and help us serve the community in ways we never have before."
Museum officials expressed concern about disclosing the exhibit's cost, worrying about criticism. Dee and his staff stress the museum's commitment to serve the community and have worked hard in preparing this exhibit to avoid hints of elitism. That attention to detail included considering the precise wording for the 70 wall labels, said Gretchen Dietrich, director of the museum's educational programs.
Should the word oeuvre be used to describe a painter's body of work? Or the term "Masterworks," with a capital "M," implying a whole field of art history that might make the average visitor feel unwelcome? "It's our responsibility to bring people along so that they have the best experience they can," Dietrich says. Those efforts included creating tours for the blind and people with Alzheimer's disease, and writing special audio guides for children.
No matter how large the crowds for the show turn out to be, the exhibit signals a new level of ambition for a flagship university museum that, compared with others around the country, could be labeled an underachiever. "Truth is, people don't expect a university museum to be able to bring to people a body of work as significant as this," said Catherine Sullivan of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries.
All this effort comes at a time when the country's larger museums, which pioneered blockbuster exhibits more than 30 years ago, have abandoned mega-shows in the face of criticism about commercialism and cost. Here in Utah, with this exhibit, UMFA is just beginning to ask if size matters.
As "Monet to Picasso" is set to open, we've peeked behind the scenes at what museum officials are hoping will attract a wide audience (links to accompanying stories above).
"We're two weeks out now," says Dee, catching his breath. "And, yeah, it's a little wild around here."
If you go
"Monet to Picasso: From the Cleveland Museum of Art" will be on view June 23-Sept. 21 at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts' Marcia and John Price Museum Building, 410 Campus Center Drive on the University of Utah campus, Salt Lake City. Admission is $15 ($10 for seniors, youths 6-18, and faculty, staff and students with U. ID). Children under 5 and museum members are free.
Group rates available via advance reservations. Tickets are sold as dated and timed entry in two-hour blocks; on sale at the museum front desk or online at www.umfa.utah.edu. For information and tickets, visit www.umfa.utah.edu or call 801-581-3580.
