Akron Art Museum: Heading for a jackpot?

In an ideal world, a museum wouldn't think of parting with one of its highly prized works. But Mitchell Kahan, the director of the Akron Art Museum, must live in the real world in which collections must be nourished by acquisitions. So it explains why Kahan, with a keen eye to the museum's future, is an advocate of carpe diem in sending a multi-milion dollar photograph to Christie's for auction on May 8.

The piece is the creation of contemporary photographer Cindy Sherman, who had set the photo auction world ablaze last year with another work that soared to $3.89 million at Christie's - a record for photographs. It is labeled "untitled #96" (see above) and drawn from Sherman's "Centerfold Series". All of the self-photographed images are of Sherman, who appears in various disguises. The AAM acquired "untitled #96" in 1981, when Sherman created it. Talk about foresight!

When I spoke to Kahan, he conceded that it isn't easy to give up a work by a photographer so highly valued in the art world. But he says the sale - estimated to fetch $2.8 million to $3.8 million - will sweeten the museum's $2 million available for acquisitions. Thus, he says, there will be greater opportunity to acquire distinguished pieces for AAM for future generations.

Oh, I should mention that Kahan won't be total bereft of Sherman's work. He has another one in the vault. That lessens any regret of shipping one of the two off to a New York

City auction house.

Akron Art Museum: Major coup with Escher exhibition

AN EXHIBIT CARD at the Akron Art Museum quotes the artist M.C. Escher as asking:

"Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?"

After viewing the 130 works by the late Dutch artist that currently hang compellingly in teasing challenges to your wits, you may conclude that only a person of Escher's extraordinary talent could get away with asking that question. And to his credit, the answer must be yes - or maybe no. One can never be certain that what you are seeing is actually what you are getting from him.

Since the show, appropriately titled Impossible Realities, opened on Feb. 12, more than 10,000 visitors have streamed to the museum to see up front the originals of what they may have only seen on calendars, greeting cards or posters.

The artist has puzzled us with stairways that lead to nowhere and circular imagery that has no beginning nor end.

The art history books have given scant attention to Escher, perhaps because the experts never seem to agree on whether he is an illustrator or a crossover from some other genre. Indeed, you can buy an Escher book at the Museum shop that taunts you by asking, "artist or graphic artist?"

But it doesn't reach far for an answer. If we could sketch the question in as an image on paper, as Escher might, you would find yourself hopelessly at a loss for a clear explanation. (Or, check Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, a strange composition of nudes in bubbles or peering out from odd containers.) Still Escher. who died in 1972, does force one to consider another physical order to the universe which is valid today in the political upheavals and bizarre political rantings that are alien to the many who prefer a saner world.

A good example of how Escher unapologetically disrupts our stream of consciousness is Metamorphose II, inspired by a Italian coastal scene strongly suggestive of Positano. Here, a cascade of white buildings with red tile roofs descends to a castle in the sea. Fair enough, but the castle also represents a chess piece with other pieces beyond it and more - an ever-morphing series stretching to 12 feet! At the same time, the white buildings are illusory. The roofs form stairways. But look again, stare if necessary, and roofs become floors at the base of houses above it. It is optical trickery created by an artist who once described his work as "a game - a very serious game."

Count this show as a a major coup for the museum, which is only the second American gallery to present the Eschers (the first was in New Britain, Conn., home of the Greek owners who stationed them in Athens' Herakleidon Museum, where the collection will return upon leaving Akron.)

From the AAM's director Mitchell Kahan, to its staff, there are circular smiles for the attention the rare collection has gained during its stay here. So much, in fact, says curator Ellen Rudolph, that an extension of the exhibition is being considered beyond the scheduled May 29 closing.

For now the AAM is also showing a collection of Herman Leonard's superb photographs of American jazz artists; and Cleveland artist Sarah Kabot's spacious graphic installations that create "interventions" in human perceptions - optics that change our awareness of what we see.

Hooray for the Akron Art Museum for this once-in-a-lifetime experience! Allow yourself enough time to examine the wonderful Escher drawings to decide how this artist has re-ordered the planet for you. You can look at the commercial reproductions of his work in your more leisurely moments at home.

Akron Art Museum show: A sobering urban tale

THERE'S A remarkable show under way at the Akron Art Museum that is a sobering narrative of a great American city that has long been mired in grotesque decay. The exhibition is titled "Detroit Disassembled" and tells its bleak story with a series of starkly revealing large-format photographs by New York-based photographer Andrew Moore. You will be troubled by the desolate images that you see, but the best artistry is of necessity always evocative.

The trajectory of Moore's work is not meant to comfort the viewer. Instead, it is what it is: a tale of urban neglect that can embrace the decline in many other once-teeming cities, but even more so in Detroit's scattered ruins ranging from Henry Ford's now eerily disfigured executive suite with is green carpet ridged and bunched up in distorted squares, to the abandoned Jane Cooper Elementary School building that nature has now surrounded with scrubby untended prairie growth. (The crisply edited wall tags note that the houses around the school were razed for an industrial park that was never built.

The interiors of certain auto plants are nothing more than rubble. A house that once provided family's shelter and hearth is fully masked by vines. No matter which way you turn to view another photo, there can be no escape from a sense of stark abandonment.

All this, in the past half century as the auto industry lost its way. Political corruption deflected the city's real needs, vandalism flourished and crime found many opportunities to thrive as residents fled to the suburbs. There is a reference in museum material to Pompeii. But it suffered a natural disaster two millennia ago. Still, as one who has walked the paths of Pompeii's excavated ruins, I could wonder about the victims without feeling a tug of belonging and loss about something that happened so long ago. With Moore's photos, however, you must ask how it could have happened in a way that left the city of nearly 2 million residents in 1950 with less than half of that today. A third of the city's land is vacated. The irony of modern industrialization that now stands exposed to its dark side is a guilt that an entire generation can share as a social burden. There's no attempt by this exhibition to disguise that message.

Some Deroit natives have understandably considered such a baring of the city's open sores - "ruins porn" - as an unfair indictment that singles out their city against all others. But Andrew Moore has looked in on other places around the world, too - say, Cuba and the border regions of Russia, for his images. With this show, it was Detroit's turn. Whether intentional or not, there are no people in the photos to engender life. It is simply discarded and rotting non-human matter.

The photos were loaned to the museum from the collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell. Bidwell is an Akron advertising executive. The show, a premiere exhibition, runs through Oct. 10. It has drawn many visitors and interest continues to grow, says Barbara Tannenbaum, the museum's Director of Curatorial Affairs. She says the photos will likely move on to other venues, but nothing is set. Moore will lecture at the museum on Thursday, Sept. 16 at 6:30 p,m. followed by a book signing. . The event is free.

In one of the pictures, someone has scrawled on a wall: God has left Detroit. There are steps being taken today to fill the vacancy with the combined efforts of City Hall, foundations and the Federal government. In the introduction to the show, questions are asked:

"Decay is but one step in a cycle that advances to renewal and growth. Moore's documentation of crumbling Detroit contains glimmers of hope. Will Detroit become America's Pompeii or will it lead the way to a new model for America's shrinking post-industrial cities?"

The jury will be out for awhile. Meantime, mark this down on your calendar as a show you can't afford to ignore. It is a harsh reminder that our society will have to find a way to do better.

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