Displaying items by tag: southern methodist university

The National Center for Art Research at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University released its inaugural report assessing the health of the nonprofit arts sector. The comprehensive report, which is available online at smu.edu/artsresearch, was created by integrating organizational and market-level data and assesses the industry from multiple perspectives, including sector/art form, geography, and size of the organization.The report is the first of its kind for the arts.

The National Center for Art Research is helmed by faculty at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts and Cox School of Business in collaboration with the Cultural Data Project and a number of other national organizations. The Center’s first study was able to determine the extent to which managerial and artistic experience and decision-making impact an organization’s performance.

The National Center for Art Research’s director, Dr. Zannie Voss, said, “In this first report we took a deep dive into eight of the areas of performance identified, and by studying these averages, tried to answer the question ‘all else being equal, what makes one arts organization more successful than another?’ Some of the findings were as one would expect, but we did find some surprises. Perhaps more than any other industry, arts organizations are driven by managerial and artistic expertise. Being able to estimate the value of this expertise in an organization’s performance is the single most valuable result of our first study.”

In 2014, the Center will partner with IBM to launch an interactive dashboard that will be accessible to arts organizations nationwide. Participants will be able to enter information about their organizations and see how they compare to the highest performance standards for similar organizations. The website will also foster public discussion of best practices and solutions and offer an online resource library with helpful tools and templates.

The Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas has acquired a major work by Francisco Goya. Portrait of Mariano Goya (1827), which was acquired thanks to the Meadows Foundation and a gift from Mrs. Eugene McDermott, has not been on display in over 40 years. Completed just months before Goya’s death, the painting, which features the artist’s grandson, is one of less than a dozen portraits painted by the artist between 1820 and 1828. The masterpiece is currently on view at the museum.

Mark A. Roglán, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, SMU, said, “The Meadows Museum will celebrate its 50^th anniversary in 2015, and the acquisition of this extraordinary work by Goya is a wonderful way to begin that celebration…The work stands as the pivotal linchpin in our growing collection. Indeed the acquisition of the Goya caps off many notable additions to our collection this year and marks a new phase in achieving Algur H. Meadows’ dream to create a ‘small Prado in Texas.’”

Spanning from the 10^th century through the 21^st, the Meadows has one of the foremost collections of Spanish art in the world. In addition to Portrait of Mariano Goya, the museum has five other Goya paintings and complete, first edition sets of all of his major print series.

Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts will present the seminar “The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime” this fall from October 14 to October 18, 2013. The seminar will be helmed by retired art crime specialists from the FBI and Scotland Yard and will explore issues relating to art management, operations and collecting, famous art crimes, and international repatriation efforts.

The seminar will include lectures by two renowned art crime investigators – Richard Ellis, a former detective with New Scotland Yard who helped lead the Art & Antiques Squad for over a decade, and Virginia Curry, a former FBI undercover agent and Art Crime Team member who has worked on a number of high profile cases. The daily talks will be complemented by trip to museums, galleries, and auction houses to speak with various arts managers. Topics will include security and provenance issues, Nazi thefts during World War II, the looting of Native American art, and issues of rightful ownership.

“The World of Art and the Fine Art of Crime” has been made possible by the Meadows School’s division of Arts Management and Arts Entrepreneurship.

The Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas has acquired an album of drawings, photographs and letters amassed by the sugar tycoon and art collector William Hood Stewart. Stewart was an avid collector of European art and the Modern Spanish School and his holdings include correspondence with artists such as Jean-August-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and Jéan-Léon Gerôme as well as with fellow collectors. The Meadows Museum acquired the album from New York’s Spanierman Gallery for an undisclosed amount.

The collection will be presented at the Meadows Museum in the exhibition The Stewart Album: Art, Letters and Souvenirs to an American Patron in Paris from August 25 through November 10, 2013. While Stewart had a sizable estate in his hometown of Philadelphia, he spent much of time in Paris, socializing with the artists he so admired. Stewart’s unique collection provides a glimpse into the careers, personal lives and artistic developments of a number of important European artists.

In 1898, Seven years after Stewart’s death, his collection was broken up at an auction and paintings were dispersed among the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a handful of other institutions. The Meadows Museum is planning to organize an exhibition that will reunite parts of Stewart’s collection that were separated over 100 years ago.

Dallas’ Southern Methodist University and Philadelphia’s Cultural Data Project have joined forces to launch the National Center for Arts Research. The Center, which is the first of its kind in the United States, will conduct, analyze, and assemble arts research as well as investigate issues concerning arts management and patronage. The Center will make all of its finding public to art leaders, funders, policymakers, researchers, and the general public.

Through extensive studies and follow-up analysis, the National Center for Arts Research plans to create a comprehensive depiction of the health of the country’s arts sector. The Center, which launched on February 13, 2013, plans to collaborate with I.B.M. to create an interactive dashboard that will allow arts organizations to compare themselves to their peers.

Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University said, “Arts organizations must have a more research-driven understanding of their markets and industry trends in order to more deeply engage existing audiences and reach new ones.” Along with management and patronage, the National Center for Arts Research will specialize in the impact of the arts on communities across the U.S. as well as fiscal trends and stability of the arts in the U.S.