Curators

The exhibition of French painting that opens today at the Walters Art Museum is the kind of museum show that's the opposite of a blockbuster. Instead, Deja vu: Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces is a narrowly focused, intellectually rigorous and exhaustively researched inquiry into a topic few people other than art historians, curators and artists themselves ever think deeply about. But if that sounds like a snooze, it's not. One reason is that the paintings on view are, for the most part, really good-looking artworks and some of them are quite spectacular.

Jane E. Katz, the retired Evergreen House museum's assistant director, died Tuesday of cancer at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. She was four days short of her 69th birthday.For 30 years, she administered the museum's rare book and paintings collection, rooms of antiques, grounds and private theater of the John Hopkins University-owned 26-acre estate. The complex sits between Notre Dame and Loyola colleges in North Baltimore."Without question, she was the linchpin who brought it and held it together at Evergreen," said Dennis O'Shea, the Hopkins official who oversees the 48-room mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

THIS WEEK in Glenelg, some 6-year-olds have become scientists, some 10-year-olds have become curators and others have become surveyors, excavators, geologists and explorers.If you think some digging is going on, you're right. Glenelg United Methodist Church is holding its vacation Bible school, and the theme is "The Great Bibleland Dig."Donna Brackins is the coordinator of the program, which offers 110 children age 3 through fifth grade the chance to learn more about the life of Jesus Christ.

A merciful break in the heat made the weather glorious Sunday for this year's Artscape Festival. Wandering among the crowds, I noticed that many people were out with their pets.No one bothered them, but the sight of so many dogs with their masters reminded me of an incident from a previous Artscape involving my own beloved pooches.We had taken our two collies, Simon and Bridget, to Artscape that year, decked out with ribbons in their hair and colorful leashes. Lots of people came up to pet them, and invariably they compared them to the Lassies of television, movie and book fame.

Velvet Elvis lives a lowdown life, stuck in cheesy motel rooms, smoky barrooms, swap-meet sales. Velvet Jesus gets hawked by the highway, sold from the backs of pickups with Velvet Sinatra and Velvet John Wayne.For sheer kitsch value, black velvet paintings have always had fans. But respect for the highbrow variety -- yes, there is such a thing -- has been hard to come by until recently.But in places such as chic, white-walled Huntington Beach Arts Center in Southern California, an art form generally scorned and reviled in museum circles is now being celebrated.

If the Baltimore Museum of Art were to post a want ad for the next open curatorial position, it might read as follows:"Wanted: Expert in 20th-century art, preferably one with particular interest in Matisse. Team spirit a must."The last line of that job description is a telling one. Doreen Bolger, who became the museum's director nearly two years ago, is a champion of using curatorial teams to create exhibitions. Bit by bit she is fashioning a museum staff with that in mind.Her goal is to create a steady stream of original exhibitions that will draw on the BMA's permanent collections -- including a reinstalled Cone Collection -- as well as works borrowed from other institutions.

WASHINGTON -- With year MDCCCCLXXXXVIIII (as Roman numerals were used in year M) yielding to year MM, give thanks for Arabic numerals. Consider also the texture of life when the first millennium ended.There was disagreement about dating that end. Some people dated the beginning of the Christian era from the Resurrection, so 1000 was 33 years premature.Others said the beginning of the era was nine months before Christ's birth, on March 25, Lady Day, the day the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear a child.

In mid-January, a catalog of old master paintings for sale at Sotheby's, the New York auction house, arrived at the Walters Art Gallery, where Joaneath Spicer, curator of Renaissance and baroque art, picked it up in the museum library.One of the paintings caught her eye. It was a rare, exceptionally well-painted depiction of a Moorish officer, the handiwork of one Bartholomeus Maton, a little-known Dutch master of the late 17th century."I could see from the catalog that even though the painting was by a fairly obscure artist, it might well be something we would be interested in because of the subject and because it appeared to be very well-executed."

WINTERTHUR, Del. - If Paul Revere had made all the silver cups and spoons attributed to him, he would not have had time for his famous midnight ride.Curators at the Winterthur Museum here repeat this wry observation out of exasperation and a sense of triumph. Exasperation over the prevalence not only of faux Revere silver but of many other misidentified and faked art and antiques on the market and even in respected collections like their own. And triumph because, with high-tech investigative methods, they are increasingly able to expose artistic impostors.

TALBOTT SPRINGS Elementary School students and staff have been through a busy April, having fun and discovering some history along the way.Teacher Carrye Jones helped the fourth- and fifth-graders in the gifted-and-talented program research life in the United States during the first half of the 19th century.Then they took a field trip to the Baltimore City Life Museums to look at clothing, hairstyles, etiquette, dances and parlor games.They did so well that Elana Burgess, Tony Chadwick, Jane Choi, Matt DeBeal, Rhett Greenfield, Lindsey Jurd, Jordan Klarhan, Suzanne Lamb, Jerry Miller, Allyson Mizia, Jeffrey Quarrick, Christina Conran, Vernetta Madden, Eric Rose, Lindsay Good, Joey Harman, Rasheeda Johnson, Christina Lansay, Chase Nelson, Tony Rengel, Judith Sarkodee-Adoo, Jemime White, Clare Wickman, Alex Andrade and Neal Remington were invited to return and perform dances for visitors to the museum.

When Nora O'Brien hosts guests at the secluded Victorian farmhouse she has painstakingly restored, friends have been known to carp about the deafening chorus of summertime tree frogs. "I've had dinner parties where people say, 'Can't you make them shut up?' " said the 49-year-old landscape company owner and mother of three. But she and dozens of other families across the state are willing to put up with such inconveniences. For them, living rent-free inside a Maryland state park outweighs getting chased by skunks, startled by snakes or clearing horse droppings from unpaved driveways that double as public riding trails.

Jennifer B. Bodine was in her last semester at Roland Park Country School, struggling academically as graduation loomed. She realized that she probably should have kept her mouth shut. This was the 1960s, when seniors there had a little-known tradition. Every spring, they chose a day to strip their school uniforms, set them ablaze in a trash can, and romp around, at times in their underwear, to celebrate impending freedom. "Why I mentioned this [at home], I'll never know," she said last week, shaking her head.

The exhibition of French painting that opens today at the Walters Art Museum is the kind of museum show that's the opposite of a blockbuster. Instead, Deja vu: Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces is a narrowly focused, intellectually rigorous and exhaustively researched inquiry into a topic few people other than art historians, curators and artists themselves ever think deeply about. But if that sounds like a snooze, it's not. One reason is that the paintings on view are, for the most part, really good-looking artworks and some of them are quite spectacular.

Reader Richard M. Caplan recently wrote to ask why I don't review online exhibitions. "By limiting your reviews to `brick-and-mortar' buildings, you may also be limiting your audience," Caplan suggested. "Many more people have access and are willing to use computers than visit galleries," he added. "If you were to review virtual fine art galleries, I believe you would open up the art world to many more people while they are sitting at home." Caplan, who told me he is an accountant by vocation, exhibits his own black-and-white photographs on his Web site, caphoto.

The idea of an emerging artist is a familiar but still rather amorphous concept. It can mean young artists fresh out of bachelor's or master's degree programs who are embarking on professional careers. Or it can refer to artists who are well-experienced but whose works have only recently crossed some major threshold of visibility in the art world - a major museum exhibition, for example, or the proverbial solo show in a prestigious New York gallery. And it can mean everything in between as well.

When Helen Delich Bentley, the former Maryland congresswoman and journalist, cleans out her closets, museums take notice. Curators working for the American Textile History Museum in Massachusetts descended this week on Bentley's Lutherville home, combing for days through the racks and racks of clothes, shoes and hats the political powerhouse had amassed over the years. In the family room, there were racks of heavy wool suits by American designer Pauline TrigM-hre and intricate evening dresses by Oscar de la Renta.

NEW YORK - Yesterday's convention castoffs could be tomorrow's Smithsonian exhibit. Larry Bird and Harry Rubenstein want the hats off delegates' heads, the buttons off their lapels and the posters that were discarded at the door. Where others see goofy political gewgaws, these Smithsonian Institution curators see history. Every four years, they prowl the conventions, politely inquiring whether delegates might consider parting with their political paraphernalia. "Sometimes you're just met with this incredulous look," Bird said.

An apparently irresistible urge to immediately exhibit every sketch, doodle, pencil smudge and curlicue that pop into an artist's brain seems epidemic in Baltimore, which may or may not be a good thing. Consider s'Lottery, the current show at Maryland Art Place that runs through Feb. 7. The exhibition presents works by 15 artists chosen at random without, the organizers proclaim, benefit of "selection panels, jurors, curators, rules, regulations or restrictions." What is amazing about this experiment in democracy is how well it seems to work despite some uneven patches.

In the largest private gift to its operating endowment in its history, the Walters Art Museum received a $750,000 donation from Robert and Nancy Hall of Baltimore, museum administrators recently announced. The gift completes a challenge grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The $1.75 million Mellon grant was awarded in December 2001 on the condition that an additional $750,000 would be raised within three years. About 15 months before the deadline, Hall, an investment advisor, and his wife, a volunteer docent and member of the museum's board of trustees, contributed the entire amount necessary to meet the grant's requirements.

Facing serious financial problems, the Contemporary Museum has closed the exhibition space at its Centre Street headquarters and is beginning a new fund-raising campaign to save the institution. The museum's staff will remain in the building, however. Nonetheless, board chairman Michael Salcman vigorously insisted upon the institution's continuing viability. "As Mark Twain once said, reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated," he said, adding that he hopes the gallery will re-open in a year.