Circus World repairs, prepares

By Brian D. Bridgeford / News Republic


With the beginning of the live performance season May 16, staff and contractors at Circus World Museum are busy repairing damage from last year's flooding while staff gets more than 50 wagons ready for Milwaukee's Great Circus Parade in July.

Museum Executive Director Steve Freese gathered Thursday morning with the executive committee of the Circus World Museum Foundation. It is the non-profit group that runs the museum on behalf of the Historical Society of Wisconsin. He reported on a variety of issues including fundraising efforts, ongoing restoration of circus wagons for the Milwaukee parade and repairs from heavy June flooding on the museum grounds.

Outside, workers from Blum Excavating of Baraboo used a backhoe and shovels to uncover a section of the foundation of the historic Ring Barn. When the area was the winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the barn was where circus performers such as horse riders practiced their acts.

Freese said pressure from water that flooded the Ring Barn baandsement drained away damaged the foundation on both sides of the building. Officials of the Wisconsin Department of Administration estimate it will cost about $105,000 to repair, he told committee members.

As the Blum employees freed the foundation from the earth, sections could be seen where many of the foundation's large limestone blocks were missing.

Ben Blum, son of company owner Dean Blum, said the foundation would be repaired using the same stones.

Freese said the courtyard between the Feld Exhibit Hall and the Ring Barn also suffered from being soaked and the soil beneath it is settling, causing the asphalt surface to become uneven and break up.

Freese said he plans to have eight-foot-wide sidewalks constructed to connect the exhibit hall and Ring Barn. The rest of the courtyard will be left in grass, as it was when the Ringling Brothers used the site.

Flooding over much of the museum's main parking lot continues to cause settling, including the growth of sink holes "big enough to put a car in," Freese joked.

"They're looking at whether they need to take the asphalt entirely off and re-do the (gravel) base, or if it only needs to be repaired in the spots that are causing the problem," he said. "We don't know that answer yet."

During the flooding, the Baraboo River reached high enough on its south bank to cover parts of two rare and historic circus railroad cars, the Ringling baggage horse car and an advertising rail car used by the Al G. Barnes & Sells Floto Combined Circus, he said. CWM plans to move them further up the bank so they can be displayed in a covered shed with open sides.

"The Al G. Barnes, it was up past the trucks, which is what they roll on, it was inside the car," Freese said. "(Water) was probably up six or seven feet on it."

They must also move two large electrical transformers on the museum grounds away from flood-prone areas, he said.

Freese told the News Republic repairs might cost about $330,000 all in all. Some of that has already been paid by the museum's insurance provider and the Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are promising to spring for much of the other repairs, he said.

In addition to repairs, CWM is continuing the restoration of a house the Ringing Brothers used as an office and the Ringling train shed west of Broadway near Lynn Street.

In the Deppe Wagon Restoration Pavilion, Rock Springs sign artist Joan Stevens was painting golden scroll work on the dark green side of the newly-reconstructed Ken Maynard Air Calliope, a type of musical circus wagon. In January, the same wagon had been stripped to bare wood and the CWM carpenter was working to replace parts destroyed by wood rot or old age.

Stevens said she gets a sense of pride and peace using traditional hand techniques to decorate CWM's historic wagons.

"Now a days, a lot of stuff we do is just cut on the computer, it's canned," she said. "This is actually re-creating something that was originally created by hand. This is much more fulfilling," Stevens said.

CWM Wagon Superintendent Harold "Heavy" Burdick said work has been done on about three-quarters of the museum's wagons as parade day approaches, including repairs to 200 steel-rimmed wooden wagon wheels.

"We'll have about 52 wagons in the parade," he said. "We'll have five wardrobe wagons for our costumes."

Freese expressed pride in the work museum employees and volunteers are doing as they prepare for the Great Circus Parade July 12. He said the colorful circus wagons will be ready for the parade and have been beautifully refurbished for future visitors to see.

"Very nice, he said of the calliope. "They've done a fantastic job restoring that."

The schedule of the CWM 2009 performance season is available on the museum Web site. It lists a clown make up show, interactive children's circus, a tiger adventure, magic show and a classic American circus performance, along with other fun and the year-round museum exhibits.

"We'll have 11 live shows daily beginning May 16," Freese said.

Information about Circus World Museum, its hours of operation, performances and exhibits may be found online — www.circusworldmuseum.com

Museums Fear Lean Days Ahead

Since it opened last month at the Museum of Modern Art, “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night” has been attracting several thousand people each day to the second-floor galleries. Visitors can be seen waiting in line for tables at all three of the museum’s restaurants, and MoMA’s shops are reporting a 5 percent increase in sales over a year ago.

But in executive offices several floors above the bustle, officials are wondering how long the good times will last.

“We know there’s a storm at sea and we know it’s going to hit land and it could get ugly,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the museum’s director. “But we don’t know how hard it will be or when it’s coming. So we are trying to make educated guesses.”

As a result, the museum instituted a temporary hiring freeze last week as well as a 10 percent cut in its general operating budget that will be revisited in December.

Across the country directors like Mr. Lowry are bracing for the effects of an economic crisis that could change everything from the size and kinds of exhibitions a museum presents to the acquisitions it could afford and the merchandise it should offer in its shops.

Already the financial-market meltdown has diminished the endowment funds that cover museums’ day-to-day operating expenses. Lehman Brothers, for years a crucial sponsor for museums across the country, is no more. Surviving banking institutions and corporations that also have been the bedrock of exhibition support are likely to give far less or cut off gifts altogether.

Even the most beneficent of museum trustees are feeling the pinch. So are paying members, like the 115,000 signed up by MoMA who fork out anywhere from $50 (student membership) to $60,000 for their privileges. Directors and curators are thus in a holding pattern, waiting to see if year-end gifts materialize or membership revenues take a tumble.

“Caution is the word of the moment,” Mr. Lowry said.

At the Brooklyn Museum, which opened a critically praised retrospective of the British artists Gilbert and George two weeks ago, officials are already fretting about a midcareer retrospective next June devoted to the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. So far no money has been raised for the show, said the museum’s director, Arnold L. Lehman.

“There is no safety net,” he added. “We’re being squeezed at every end.”

Yet slowly and methodically, museums have been mapping out strategies for dealing with the potential shortfall.

Although few anticipated the global shock waves that accompanied the market slide, internal planners had long been aware that a downturn was in the making. Even as far back as late-2001, when terrorism insurance became a major issue, museums predicted a drop in loans and urged curators to focus on inventive shows drawing from their permanent collections.

Evidence that museums have been more creative with their holdings ranges from MoMA’s van Gogh exhibition, which uses the museum’s “Starry Night” as its centerpiece, to “Kirchner and the Berlin Street,” which revolves around two seminal paintings owned by the museum, although both shows include loans from the United States and abroad. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which for years has been presenting shows based on its holdings, will open “Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography” on Nov. 4, featuring 30 works from its holdings.

Many predict that the impact of the slowdown will become far clearer at the end of the year, by which time most individuals will have made their annual tax-deductible donations. Museum officials will also be holding their breath to see whether loyal donors continue to give art or will be forced to sell part of their collections to raise capital for themselves.

“There is bound to be belt-tightening across the board,” said Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I imagine a lot of donors who are leveraged will probably be postponing decisions until the first of the year. A lot of people are waiting to see what happens, which means things will be put on hold.”

Mr. Govan said that he also wondered how the economic crisis would affect memberships, a crucial revenue stream for all museums. “We’re competing with buying gas and going out to dinner,” he said.

The Los Angeles museum’s memberships, which bring in about $8 million a year, range from $25 at the student level to $50,000 for members of the Director’s Circle (a status that affords what the museum terms “intimate dinners with artists and the director”).

In New York, meanwhile, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office has asked the department of cultural affairs, which decides how much city money each museum receives, along with other city agencies, to reduce its spending by 2.5 percent in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and make an additional 5 percent cut in the next one.

Since most of the museums’ big loan shows are planned years ahead, development offices are scrambling to arrange financing for exhibitions that won’t open for several years. While few officials will discuss the matter for attribution, most admit that the effort is more difficult than ever.

Still, not all supporters are cutting back. So far the discount retailer Target, for instance, continues to finance 1,500 free days a year at more than 70 museums across the country even though it reported that its sales are down 3 percent from this time last year.

Supporters like U.B.S. and Bank of America said last week that they were still planning support for museums next year, although they declined to provide figures. Many point out that cultural philanthropy is not only a way of building good public relations with arts audiences but also a way to telegraph that they are still in business and confident.

At Bank of America, which announced this month that it wanted to raise $10 billion in additional capital because of weaker-than-expected earnings, officials said they had no plans to stop supporting cultural institutions. “In times like these it’s especially important,” said Rena M. DeSisto, Bank of America’s arts and culture executive.

Customer surveys indicate that clients appreciate the company’s support of the arts, she said, so “it’s a marketing decision.”

Although she declined to say how much the bank has invested in the arts over the last few years or intended to spend in 2009, Ms. DeSisto said the bank had helped to finance “Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters From the Cleveland Museum of Art,” which opened last week at the Detroit Institute of Arts; “Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples,” which opened on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and goes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May; and “Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety and Myth,” which arrives Feb. 14 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

U.B.S., which is perhaps best known in the art world for sponsoring the Art Basel fair in Switzerland and its counterpart Art Basel Miami Beach, said it planned to continue supporting such contemporary-art projects. “But this year we have to be more diligent with every dollar spent, ” said Peter Dillon, head of sponsorship at U.B.S. in America. “And get more for our money.”

Typically corporate museum members, who spend $25,000 to $40,000 for their subscriptions, gain free admission for their employees and, at the higher end of largess, use of the museum for parties. Now as these corporations go to the bargaining table, they are asking for more — advertising on bus shelters and street banners, in magazines and online — in exchange for less.

From the museums’ side, gift shops that in good times offered expensive jewelry, china or furniture are beginning to lower their price points, several directors said.

But even in the face of leaner times, some directors are trying to find an upside.

“Making the best of our permanent collections is no bad thing,” said William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.

And if art prices start to nosedive, said Mr. Govan in Los Angeles, “maybe we’ll finally be able to afford to buy things.”

Mr. Govan and others said that in tough times, museums that viewed one another as competitors might find themselves working better together.

And some directors argue that museums are not simply a great escape, but good value compared with a movie that can cost about $12 and end in two hours. At a museum, many said, visitors can spend an entire day and often take in a movie, too.

Then there’s the more cosmic view. “Art doesn’t lose its emotional or artistic value,” Mr. Govan said. “That doesn’t change no matter what the economy.”

Chazen Celebrates The Circus

It's spring, and the circus is coming to town -- in the form of two new art shows that will open Saturday at the University of Wisconsin's Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.

The shows are "Ringmaster: Judy Onofrio and the Art of the Circus" in the large Brittingham Galleries VI and VII and "Harry A. Atwell: Circus Photographer" in the smaller Mayer Gallery.

Both exhibitions will be on view through June 29. Admission is free and open to the public.

The Chazen will also host a special weekend of circus celebrations, featuring performers, music and food, on May 9 and 10. Information about these events and other exhibition-related programming will follow. (For more information, including parking and gallery hours, call 263-2246 or visit www.chazen.wisc.edu.)

The Onofrio show features life-sized sculptures of performers, animals and circus acts and will be exhibited alongside examples of banners, posters and carvings drawn from the Circus World Museum collection that have inspired her work.

Onofrio constructions are carved, molded, painted and assembled from wood, fiberglass, beads, ceramic shards and collected objects. A documentary of the 1920s and 1930s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and a filmed interview with artist Onofrio will be available in the Ringmaster exhibition.

"Harry A. Atwell: Circus Photographer" features 42 black-and-white photographs by Harry A. Atwell (1879-1957). It is a survey of his career photographing the golden age of America's tented shows. Atwell, a prominent Chicago publicity photographer, was hired for his first circus assignment around 1910 to travel with the Ringling Bros. Circus. Over the next 40 years he amassed more than 5,000 negatives, now in the collection of Circus World Museum in Baraboo.

Atwell's images of roustabouts, Big Top crowds, sideshow performers, and center ring stars capture "Circus Day," when shops, schools and factories shut their doors so that everyone could enjoy the fleeting pageantry of the traveling shows.

Related events include Circus Celebrations on May 9 and 10 and Onofrio's artist's talk on Friday, May 9, at 6 p.m., Room L-140. Admission is free.

There will be a "Big Top Gala" -- with circus band music, aerial acrobats and contortionists -- the same night, May 9, from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is $8 for museum members, $12 for non-members. Refreshments, circus treats and a cash bar will be available.

On Saturday, May 10, the Chazen will host "Circus Day: A Family Event" from noon to 4 p.m. in Paige Court. Admission is free. Entertainment includes the Mazo Movement Arts Center, Cycropia Aerial Dance, Truly Remarkable Loon and other performances, activities and a chance to try out circus acts. There will be circus snacks and exhibition tours. (Children ages 4-12 should be accompanied by an adult.)

On Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Room L-140, UW-Madison Professor Jill H. Casid will lecture on "Circus, Circus: Repeat Performance in the History of Photography." (Gallery hours will be extended to 7 p.m.)

On Saturday, April 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave., there will be a screening of Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" (1928) and short films. Seating is limited. Doors will open at 7 p.m.

On Monday, April 28, at 5:30 p.m. in Room L-140, guest lecturer Murray Zimiles of the State University New York-Purchase will speak about "Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: From the Synagogue to the Carousel, from the Sacred to the Secular."

On Thursday, May 1, at 4:30 p.m. in Room L-140, UW-Madison Professor Henry Drewal will lecture about "The Odyssey of an Image: Circus Snake Charmer Becomes African Water Goddess!"

On Friday, May 2, at 6:30 p.m. in Room L-140, show curator Cassie Wilkins will give a gallery tour of and talk about the Onofrio show.

Free drop-in tours of both shows will be given on Tuesdays at 3:30 p.m. from April 29 through June 24. Meet in Paige Court. Exhibitions curator Cassie Wilkins will lead the May 6 tour. Other tours will be led by docents