When I introduced the VMFA Artmobile’s exhibitions back in September, I opened with its third show on Italian Renaissance art. I had no reason for doing this other than the unexpected. I thought it would have been too cliche to open with the first show. Regardless of whether that was a good reason, let’s go ahead and look at that first exhibition now, Little Dutch Masters.
Historical Background
Extant notes from the archive suggest that Leslie Cheek, Jr., Director of the VMFA and one of the Artmobile’s creators, decided to feature the Dutch Golden Age early in the program’s development. A handwritten note in one of the folders lists possible exhibition themes, and Dutch art is among the subjects listed.
Dutch art remained a primary topic as the Artmobile proposal came together. Conceptual drawings of the Artmobile interior featured an imaginary Dutch art exhibition in the proposed gallery. Interestingly, one of these works resembles Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. For me at least, this detail gives a sense of Cheek’s ambitions for the project. Aside from being the creation of one of the Dutch Golden Age’s most revered artists (at least from a modern perspective), the painting belongs to the Met. Maybe I’m projecting, but I see an aspirational quality in the sketch. The VMFA is positioning itself as a peer of one the biggest art museums on the East Coast, its vehicle worthy of exhibiting its renowned works. As we’ll see in a future post, the VMFA followed through on these ambitions with its second show by showcasing objects from the Met.
The final exhibition consisted of loans from the personal collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. If the name sounds familiar, you’re right. His dad, Walter Chrysler Sr, founded the automotive company of the same name. Jr., on the other hand, made his reputation as an art collector and cultural benefactor. He counted Virginia as one of his many homes, and regularly patronized its museums. The VMFA was among his beneficiaries, though the Chrysler Museum would arguably benefit the most.
Little Dutch Masters toured cities across Virginia for two years. While Cheek had hoped to tour it longer, demands for objects from other institutions necessitated changing the vehicle’s contents.
What’s in Little Dutch Masters?
The exhibition featured sixteen paintings. “Little” referred to the relative fame or esteem of the artists, not the physical size of their works, though many of the paintings were intimate in scale. In essence, the show focused on artists whose names don’t immediately come to mind if you’re not an expert on that region. They’re good, but they’re not the most famous artists of that place or time. So no Rembrandts or Vermeers here (though Rembrandt would appear in a later Artmobile exhibition). Some of the exhibition’s artists included Gerrit Dou, the studio of Hieronymous Bosch (arguably the most famous in the group thanks to such bizarre paintings as the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych), and Adriaen van Ostade, among others.
In addition to showcasing quality pieces, the VMFA worked to make the Artmobile appear as gallery-like as possible. The walls were covered in monkscloth, a popular exhibition material at the time. Individual spotlights illuminated each of the paintings. To increase its touring efficiency, the museum also recorded audio tours and period music that could be played while visitors toured the exhibition, enabling visitors to learn about the paintings as they looked.
The Artmobile: Accommodating Modern Life through Dutch Art
A lot of publicity from the period emphasizes the efficiency of the Artmobile as a touring experience. The museum claimed visitors could visit the entire exhibit in about 15 minutes. The Artmobile emphasized its ability to match modern life’s fast pace, inviting viewers to pop in before returning to their busy day. It’s a different approach from movements like slow art, which counter the frenetic nature of modern life by demanding prolonged, undistracted looking.
Overall, visitors seem to have enjoyed the show, though some audience members expressed confusion over the Artmobile’s purpose. One woman thought it was a photography studio, while a child tried to buy candy there. According to a survey conducted by the museum, schoolchildren most enjoyed Ludolf Bakhuizen’s Warships on a Rough Sea, followed by Pieter Brueghel the Younger‘s The Kermiss. Boys seem to have especially liked Warships, and curators speculated that girls were simply following along in the boys’ opinions. That says as much about midcentury gender politics as it does about art preferences.
My Thoughts on Little Dutch Masters
Readers familiar with my academic background can probably guess that I have a soft spot for this show. My master’s Qualifying Paper was about tooth-pulling scenes in Dutch art, after all. I recognized several of the names as I went through the catalog, but I also encountered many unfamiliar ones, which speaks to the vastness of Dutch art as a field.
Content aside, what especially interests me about this show is how it frames the VMFA’s ambitions as a progressive institution during the midcentury. For the VMFA, the Artmobile represented more than outreach: it innovated exhibition practices. Through the use of modern automotive technology, the VMFA claimed to have solved the question of getting art to the people without physically endangering it. By creating its own mobile gallery, the museum could send its works anywhere without worrying about on-site conditions. Subsequent conservation research would challenge this, of course, but in the 1950s, the Artmobile was the vanguard of outreach work.
Yet for all its emphasis on modern exhibition methods and transport technologies, the Artmobile’s canon, at least in its early years, is a conservative one. It sticks to European art and other categories you’d find in encyclopedic museum departments. Its presentation of these categories is also conventional, and doesn’t do any radical reframing of the works featured. I dive into the implications of this conservatism more deeply in the dissertation, contrasting it with the more innovative exhibition work happening at the main museum at the time.
Changing Times, Changing Art
Little Dutch Masters reflects the institutional aspirations of the VMFA at midcentury. Those aspirations center modern technology while propagating the conservative, Western canon visible in established art museums along the East Coast. The VMFA could have gone in other directions, such as promoting contemporary art or developing a canon of Southern art. At this time, however, demonstrating that it could do encyclopedic art history as well as the big institutions was its priority.
Of course, times change, and so has the Artmobile’s focus. In its current iteration, diversifying the established art canon has become much more important. Its current exhibition features works by women, people of color, and other marginalized voices. Given that museum critics have become much more vocal about questioning the institution’s necessity in society, such diversity makes sense. Whereas the Artmobile of the 1950s emphasized its progressive agenda though technology, the current artmobile focuses on content. After all, artmobiles are old hat at this point. Simply having a gallery on wheels isn’t enough to demonstrate your commitment to advancing the museum. What you have on board is just as important.
Next Month’s Exhibition
So there you have it for Little Dutch Masters. This will be my last Exhibition of the Month post for the year. Rest assured though, we’ll be back next month with another show as we return to the Neighborhood Circulating Exhibitions. Until then, be well, and see you next year.