THE MAN BEHIND THE BIG ART SHOW
Michael De Marsche has introduced Colorado Springs to the big honking art exhibition: Chihuly, Warhol, Peter Max — shows with mass appeal.
It’s appropriate that in choosing his first speaker for the Fine Arts Center’s reopening, the center’s president and CEO went for the guy who invented the blockbuster art show: Thomas Hoving.
Hoving, De Marsche’s role model, shook up New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art — and the entire museum world — four decades ago. “He was the first one in the museum world to say, we’re not going to exist any longer on this small group of people who give us big dollars,” De Marsche said. “Before him, museums were almost like private clubs.”
Hoving’s Thursday lecture will unofficially kick off the Fine Arts Center’s reopening, after an enormous, unprecedented expansion. (More official opening events are set for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.) Hoving will speak about his life and career — beginning with a recounting of the three-day drunken spree that led him to a lifetime of art connoisseurship, and ending with a lesson on how to become an art connoisseur in five minutes or less.
“Let the works of art talk to you,” he said in a phone interview from his New York home. “They’ll tell you — good, better, best.”
At the Met, Hoving says that he had no choice but to innovate.
“The Met was dying when I took over,” he said. “Part of the American wing was going to be condemned — people were falling through the floors.”
He benefitted from a supportive board. “During the museum’s centennial in 1972, we decided to try everything,” he said. “If it worked, we’d keep it. If it didn’t, we could say, it’s just for the centennial — we’ll never try that again.”
Among the innovations: A contemporary costume show, with live mannequins paraded on a runway — “The New York Times didn’t consider costume as art,” said Hoving — and a short play in the galleries that would begin unobtrusively, as if the actors were museumgoers.
But his most famous accomplishment was the 1976 King Tut exhibit, which drew more than 8 million people. It’s widely regarded as the first blockbuster exhibit. “It’s not true,” Hoving said. “I stole the idea from the Europeans. But I’ll say it was my idea.”
Since leaving the Met 30 years ago, Hoving has concentrated on writing, publishing 25 books. He’s generous with his opinions and stories — whether it’s his views on “For the Love of God,” Damien Hirst’s $100 million diamond-encrusted platinum skull — “If I were still running the Met, I’d buy it,” he said — or his experience cleaning a portion of Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel.
“I told (Gianluigi) Colalucci, I’m not going to be responsible for ruining the Sistine Chapel,” he said. Colalucci was the head of the restoration team.
Hoving is looking forward to his second visit to the Fine Arts Center. “I’m a great admirer of Michael De Marsche,” he said. “He’s done a splendid job of igniting people’s interest.”
Though Hoving is honored that De Marsche has followed in his footsteps, he says he’s not sure he’s a good role model for museum directors. “That’s taking a dangerous tack,” he said. “It’s like bombarding your own foxhole. There are writers at The New York Times who still haven’t forgiven me.”
details
The Artful Tommy: Thomas Hoving, America’s Culture Scamp, Reveals How He Zig-Zagged His Way Through the Art World
When: 7 p.m. Thursday; museum preview begins 5 p.m.
Where: Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St.
Tickets: $45 members/$49 non-members ; 634-5583 (preticketed only — no general admission) Also: 9 p.m. Thursday, Thomas Hoving reception and book signing, $30 members/$34 non-members
