A Chat With Doreen Bolger
The BMA Director Discusses Art & Life
February 26, 2008
By Martha Thomas
-
Email This Post
Print this article!
Digg
del.icio.us
Mahalo
StumbleUpon
YahooMyWeb
Sometimes when she’s in a meeting in her office at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Doreen Bolger gazes across the room to a painting that shows pastel-colored horses — pink, yellow, blue — leaping down a slope. It’s called The Wild Asses and sometimes, when someone is ranting and raving in a meeting, the work gives Bolger a sense of perspective and makes her smile.
February marks 10 years since Bolger became director of the BMA. Much has changed in that decade. The museum, along with a number of other city cultural institutions, abolished admission fees in 2006, a move that increased BMA attendance by 18 percent in the first year. (There also has been an 86 percent rise in family program participation.) All the while, the BMA has retained a 90 percent membership rate, and annual support has increased to $1.9 million.
The museum also has received substantial gifts: A year ago, philanthropist Dorothy McIlvain Scott promised $10 million to endow operations and programs for the American Wing, the largest individual gift in the museum’s history. And last fall, the BMA received an anonymous gift of $5 million to endow the director’s position, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Bolger’s appointment.
Who’s your favorite artist?
In the whole world? I love Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent. In our own collection, for some odd reason I can’t explain, [my favorite work] is an 18th-century French painting by Chardin called The Game of Knucklebones. Which is completely not what I ever studied.
What do you like about it?
It shows a woman who is playing knucklebones, which is almost like jacks. She’s throwing a ball and it’s suspended in the air, which for an 18th-century painting is a bit unusual. The knucklebones are from the bones of a sheep. They’re spread all over the table. She’s in informal dress; she looks as if she could be a scullery maid, but she’s probably an upper-class woman. It’s obvious that she should be sewing and instead she’s fooling around. It’s very charming. She’s young and vibrant-looking.
What especially appeals to you?
I like the informality of it and the naturalness of it, even though I know it was contrived. And [I like] the idea of someone putting aside what they are supposed to be doing to enjoy themselves.
What is the difference between the way an art scholar looks at such works and the way the public looks at them?
The more you know — the more you’ve learned about works of art — the more you can appreciate certain aspects of them. But there’s an element of personal experience in art: Everyone brings something that is valid. That’s why looking at art is a social experience. A museum should be a social experience.
How has eliminating the admission fee changed the social experience of going to the BMA?
It has changed everything. First of all, you don’t have to make a big plan to come here or worry about it so much. You can just come here as much as you want. Going free [means] we’ve had to change everything we do. We made the transition in a very short time frame, and we’re constantly reexamining everything. We’re working on a lot of programming that will encourage people to have experiences and to share those experiences with others.
How does the BMA mesh with Baltimore’s other artistic offerings: the gritty streets of The Wire, the campy sense of humor and self-mockery of John Waters, the homegrown exuberance of the Creative Alliance?
Those things aren’t separate at all — they all work together. There is so much traditional art here: at the BMA, the Walters, the Historical Society. Then you look at the work being done by living artists in this city — artists teaching at MICA, working with the Creative Alliance. We have wonderful emerging galleries; we have the Sondheim prize that the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts is working on. We’re collaborating with them to show the work of the finalists here.
So there’s some exchange, a creative synergy?
Just Friday night I went over to Atomic Pop in Hampden. Laure Drogoul, who won the Sondheim prize two years ago, had a performance piece called Musical Apparatus for Orchestral Knitting. It was a knitting orchestra: She put guitar pickups on knitting needles and sounds were coming out. The experience available in Baltimore to a regular person is so varied: You could have seen Matisse during the day and then participated in the knitting project as an active contributor to the creation of that artwork.
Did it remind you of your time in New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the alternative art scene was emerging?
That was an exciting time, but what’s exciting about Baltimore is the scale, the intimacy of it. There’s so much in New York that you can’t even figure out what to do first. Here in Baltimore there is plenty to do. But you can get your arms around it. You can actually meet people and talk to people who are in decision-making positions about the arts. When I am in the grocery store, people walk right up to me and stand there and talk to me about how they feel.
Likewise, I can call up Barbara Mikulski or Paul Sarbanes or Ben Cardin. The access you have to your mayor, your representatives — all these people are here, and you can talk to them and they’re interested in talking to you. There’s a good side to Smalltimore. Everyone is connected in one way or another; nobody is hiding.
About the recent gift to endow your position at the 10th anniversary of your appointment: How did you feel when you found out? Was it like winning a MacArthur or an Emmy?
It was more mellow. It was kind of like getting a great Mother’s Day present. You know a great Mother’s Day present isn’t just about the mother: It’s about the father and the aunts and uncles and siblings. There’s a larger context than just one person. You can be a leader of an institution, but an institution is not about just one person. It’s about a team. But it feels really good to know how much people love this museum.
How did your passion for art — paintings mostly — start?
When I was a child I drew all the time and painted and sculpted. But I also had verbal skills. At that point in history, verbal skills were definitely preferred to visual skills. At school I was encouraged to do more writing and to be more academic than to be really creative. At the same time, I realized I would never be a great artist. By the time I got to college and realized there was such a thing as art history, I was astounded. I hadn’t known it existed. It was just the right thing for me.
Are you ever tempted to pick up a paintbrush now?
Oh, I do. Mostly I draw. I make drawings for people I care about. I also like to sew. I made clothes for my daughter when she was very little, and she got to an age when she said, “This is enough, Mom.” She’s interested in sewing and so is my son.
Some of these skills are being lost, aren’t they?
I think we’ve lost so much pleasure in simpler things that take a lot of time. When you do a cost-and-return analysis on them, they aren’t worth it. How much time does it take to make a pillow cover or a little drawing for someone as a token of affection: It takes hours. Why would I spend time chopping vegetables to make my own vegetable soup? But those are all the things that we share, that make life better.
We live in a world where we say we are connected because we can e-mail each other, but it’s important to really have a face-to-face experience with someone. When you’re sitting and talking to someone, you can see their facial expressions, you can smell their skin, the room has a certain kind of light to it and you’re sharing a meal. That’s a different kind of experience than sending someone an e-mail.
Take that back to the museum: When we think about what a museum is and what a museum has to offer, it’s that total, immersive experience. In a museum, someone can experience a great object in a room with a certain atmosphere — with a friend, a child or someone they don’t even know. That is the way the museum brings people together, teaches them about other cultures and times, gives them a place to have those experiences — in a world where rushing around is what we’re used to.
We’re talking about the lost art of slowing down, which brings us back to your favorite painting in the museum, of a woman taking a break from domestic work, expressing vitality and youth. How does this speak to you?
There’s something about that act: stopping what you are doing, enjoying the moment. Maybe it reminds me that I should do that more often. When we’re driven, high-achieving people, we get on this path of progress, progress, progress. In 2005, at the end of the year, I decided to do this thing: to become 10 percent more selfish. What would it look like to be 10 percent more selfish?
I figured it out. It was easy. I only sleep four hours a night, so that gives me 20 hours per day; 10 percent is two hours. [Of that time] an hour or an hour and a half is now spent walking every morning. I also give myself permission to do things — sometimes when I think I should be doing something, I let myself do the thing I want to do.
Is yours a job to retire in? Is there any place to go from here?
I think we have this sense of progressive career growth: Your job has to be ever bigger, you have to supervise ever more people, your budget must grow. I think that encourages people not to savor where they are at the moment. It’s important to be where you are. In an institution, it’s only over time that you know what needs to be done and you have the capacity to do it.
