Have Renovation, Will Travel
Some Famous Washington Artworks Are Returning to Bigger, Better Spaces

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005

For six years, some of Washington's beloved artworks have been traveling the world.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" visited Tokyo.

John Singer Sargent's portrait of turn-of-the-20th-century statesman Henry Cabot Lodge flew to the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington was shown in Seattle and Minneapolis.

A Paul Cezanne self-portrait from the Phillips Collection showed up in Switzerland.

"Osceola, the Black Drink, a Warrior of Great Distinction," one of George Catlin's famous Indian portraits, went to Kansas City.

Romare Bearden's "Empress of the Blues" was on view in Manchester, N.H.

Wayne Thiebaud's "Neapolitan Meringue" was shown in Fargo, N.D.

And now they are almost home.

The rare excursions outside Washington occurred because the Phillips, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery were all being expanded and renovated. The two Smithsonian museums, tenants of the Old Patent Office Building, have been closed since 2000.

While the building was undergoing its $216 million renovation, the staff at American Art organized 14 shows. Almost 950 paintings and sculptures were packed up and displayed in 105 museums. The tours lasted six years. The Portrait Gallery prepared nine major shows and sent 640 artworks on a trek that included Santa Fe, St. Petersburg, Fla., and San Diego.

During its remodeling the Phillips never closed, but the $29 million expansion into a third building limited the exhibition space. So the staff selected 67 masterpieces and devised one show of American works and another of European works. The European masterworks stopped at larger cities, and when the construction took longer than expected, the American art went out to midsize U.S. cities. Works from the Phillips eventually went to 11 museums on three continents.

The shows were popular. Each of the Washington museums reports that about 2.5 million people viewed the touring exhibitions.

The crowds come, says Phillips Director Jay Gates, because few cities have a lot of great art. "We are spoiled in this town. This is an extraordinary city for works of art. In other cities, like Tokyo, you don't have the opportunity to walk from 'The Boating Party' to a Cezanne still life," he says.

One reason for sending art on the road is to avoid costly storage fees. But the main purpose, according to museum directors, was to give new audiences a chance to see signature artworks that for the most part stay put. The Smithsonian museums also wanted to remind people that they continue to be important players in the art world. "The broader principle behind the shows is that the museum is open but the building is closed. You are only open if you are showing your treasures," says Marc Pachter, the National Portrait Gallery director. "This was an opportunity to be alive in so many places."

"These are the works we are reluctant to send on tour, but this was an opportunity to share," says Elizabeth Broun, director of the American Art Museum.

The engagement on the Phillips tour, at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris, runs until March, but the work will be back at the Dupont Circle museum for a reopening party on April 15. American Art and the Portrait Gallery have brought back their artworks and are preparing them for the reopening in July.

Only the Phillips earned any income from the tours. Gates declined to say how much, but he did say the museum earned a "major seven-figure" sum that helped pay for the expansion. The money was needed, he says, because revenue, attendance and memberships fell off during construction.

"The shows had substantial benefits. They helped to sustain the museum at a time when we were smaller. We were deprived about half of our space. We had to relocate people off site and that drove costs up," Gates says.

The Smithsonian museums didn't make money on the shows, which cost American Art $3.6 million.

Much of that cost was recouped. The Smithsonian charged for crating, shipping, occasional travel costs for the staff and insurance, according to Broun. Insurance was the biggest item. The host museums also assumed other costs, which ran between $28,000 and $40,000. "Our goal was to break even. We didn't want to go in the hole," Broun says. "We really feel it is the nation's collection and should be shared as broadly as possible. We shouldn't be using it as a profit center."

The American Art Museum raised $600,000 in a special fund drive to send Catlin's Indian portraits on the road, and also got $3.5 million from the Principal Financial Group for another touring show called "Treasures to Go."

What the far-flung audiences learned, say the directors, is that Washington's museums have remarkable collections. "We could reach a range of communities with different sizes of institutions and different kinds of collections," says Gates.

Broun, of American Art, says the museum reestablished its niche as the primary caretaker of the nation's public collection. "It gave us a chance to showcase our name and create some excitement about our future," she says.

Another byproduct was establishing new relationships with museums. "We learned a lot from seeing how they installed our collections," Broun says. Some of the venues organized companion shows. The Speed Art Museum in Louisville mounted a show of local portraits to accompany one of the Portrait Gallery's shows.

The Phillips also received broader exposure around the world. The catalogue for the exhibition of European art was published in French, English, Italian and Japanese. "That adds to the permanent scholarship and public record of the Phillips family and the collection," Gates says.

Some moments on the tours were priceless. When Gates was in Paris, he met the mayor of Chatou and dined with him at the Maison Fournaise, the actual setting of Renoir's classic painting. The mayor, like millions of others, had never seen the masterwork. He told Gates, "This is a dream come true."