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Article Excerpt
The Dead Man Policy
In April 1911, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University presented its first exhibition of work by a living artist, a small loan show of paintings by Edgar Degas. Best known for its collection of early Italian Renaissance paintings, the Fogg had not previously sought to enter the field of (what was then) contemporary art. An announcement in The Harvard Crimson underscored the novelty of the occasion by noting, "The painter was born in 1834, and is still living." (1) Given Degas's advanced age at the time (seventy-seven), it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the Fogg was the first museum anywhere in the world to mount a show of the artist's work. Indeed, the Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by H. G. E. Degas would be the only museum show dedicated solely to Degas during his lifetime, which ended six years later in 1917.
Shortly after the show closed, Fogg Museum director Edward Forbes delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums, held that year in Boston. In it, he discussed the contribution of the university art museum to the broader cultural and intellectual life of the college campus. Chief among the questions he posed was: "What sort of original works of art shall the university exhibit for the students to look at?" By way of response, Forbes turned, to the example of his own institution:
In the past, the policy of the Fogg museum has been to exhibit the work of men who are dead. ... This year we made an innovation and have recently held an exhibition of works by Degas; and in the print room at present is an exhibition of etchings by modern masters, some of whom are alive. The advantages of exhibiting modern works of art are various. The students like it. The artists of today speak in a language that students readily understand. Art is not dead. It is not a memory of the past, nor a butterfly preserved in a glass bottle. It is among us, and is part of our life. We should be alive to the tendencies of our day. The difficulty is, first, that all modern art is not good, and we wish to maintain a high standard. In having exhibitions of the work of living men we may subject ourselves to various embarrassments. Artists sometimes have feelings. We do not wish to be always in hot water, and make ourselves unpopular by refusing them if we do not think their work is up to our standard. If we attempt to discriminate between the good and bad art of today, people will say, "Judge not that ye be not judged." (2)
After weighing both the benefits and drawbacks of displaying contemporary art, Forbes ultimately endorsed what might be called the "dead man" policy of museum exhibition. His endorsement did not appeal to posterity as the guarantor of artistic value nor to the aesthetic superiority of the old masters. Instead, Forbes observed that living artists have feelings which may be hurt by their exclusion from the museum and that the museum may, in turn, be subjected to embarrassment, "hot water," and unpopularity as a result of its rejection of those artists. (3)
The notion that artists "sometimes" have feelings implies that they sometimes do not or that their feelings are, in certain cases, negligible or otherwise irrelevant to the concerns of the museum. In Forbes's account, living artists pose a potential hazard insofar as they may become hostile toward museums that do not embrace their work. Forbes does not address the (presumably) happier relationship of the museum to those contemporary artists it deems worthy of exhibition. In the case of the Degas show at the Fogg, no one had to worry about the artist's feelings since he was apparently never told about the exhibition. (4) As all of the pictures were on loan from collections in New York or Boston, contact with the notoriously difficult Parisian artist was deemed unnecessary.
It is not only the feelings of the living artist, however, but also those of the museum that seem to be at issue for Forbes. "We do not wish to always be in hot water, and make ourselves unpopular," he writes, speaking in the voice of the museum. The museum "wishes" to be admired and supported, not scorned and unpopular. It just wants, in other words, to be liked.
Although Forbes defended the "dead man" policy in 1911, he recognized that it was already in serious decline, if not quite at the point of demise. In 1916, the Fogg acquired its first work by a living artist--a seascape by John Singer Sargent completed that year. The painting was purchased through newly donated funds reserved (by the donor) for the acquisition of contemporary American art. (5) Though Forbes reluctantly accepted the gift, he never relinquished his misgivings about the museum's acquisition of "modern art," a term synonymous in his usage with the work of living artists. (6)
I have returned to Forbes and the Fogg Museum circa 1911 for two reasons. First, the question of "why and how we work on living artists" concerns the historical past no less than the present. The question today is shaped in part by the prior attempts of curators and scholars--and, in a different sense, of artists--to grapple with it. The second reason stems from the surprising longevity of the "dead man" policy within academic art history, a field closely affiliated with yet distinct from museum practice.
Throughout most of the twentieth...
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