Some good news for art lovers who’ve been coronavirus cautious: Exhibitions that were scheduled to leave Memphis in May have stayed in place through the pandemic shutdown and gradual reopening. You have until Sept. 27 to catch up.

“Native Voices, 1950s to Now,” is a mind-bending show from Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas that landed at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in February on the last stop of its national tour. 

Downtown art museum’s veiled design: ‘It is exceeding our expectations’

In a much more intimate show at the Metal Museum called “Rust Never Sleeps,” the artist Sophie Glenn’s furniture made of steel appears at a distance – and up close – to be made of wood that is polished, painted or distressed.

And at Dixon Gallery through Sept. 27, you’ll find “For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design” and a show from the printmaker Maritza Dávila called “Journey.”

Crossing paths at Overton Park 

Emily Ballew Neff, director of Brooks Museum, and Carissa Hussong, director of the Metal Museum, steer institutions that are disparate and distinct.

The expansive mission at Brooks, as Neff often says, is to cover “5,000 years of human creativity.”

The Metal Museum’s purpose is laser-focused on the art and craft of fine metalwork.

But the choppy waters the two directors have been navigating in recent months have some striking similarities. When COVID-19 arrived last spring, both museums closed their doors, took painful steps to reduce and furlough staff, then reopened – slowly and carefully – in mid-summer.

Through it all, the directors of both institutions continued to plan major relocations.

Brooks hopes to leave its century-old site in Overton Park to create a new building – what Neff describes as “a powerful statement about culture” – on the river bluff Downtown.

The museum reopened its exhibition hall with “Native Voices” in July. The paintings, textiles, photographs and videos are startling, exuberant, witty and melancholy, and the show itself was logical for this city, Neff said: “We’re on Chickasaw land; bringing attention to Indigenous culture seemed to be an important thing to do.”

A quote from Fritz Scholder, whose painting “Monster Indian, 1968” is included, sets the tone: “Somebody needs to paint the Indian differently because it is a subject matter that is probably the world’s worst cliché, at least in this country.” 

Entry at Brooks is on a pay-what-you-wish basis through September. People who buy an annual membership now get an additional three months free.

“We are exercising that resilience muscle,” Neff said. 

Lectures moved to Zoom. The normal community day for traveling shows was transformed into a virtual community week attended by 2,500, she said. The exhibition hall, with its 24-foot ceilings, delivers a safer-than-usual indoor space. Neff says the Shelby County Health Department made a surprise site visit and said, “You’re knocking it out of the ballpark.”

And now that COVID-19 numbers are decreasing, more areas of the museum are opening. Neff has a metaphor for that: “The dimmer switch is slowly going up.”

In addition to the whimsical “Divas Ascending” show of suspended sculptures made from opera costumes in the Brooks rotunda, visitors can now enter three more exhibits: “African American Artists in the Permanent Collection,” the Carroll Cloar Gallery and “Arts of Global Africa.”

Neff described museum traffic as “a steady trickle,” of 25% to 50% of normal visitor numbers. “I have colleagues across the country who are envious of that – they have 10 to 20 percent,” she said.

Before the new fiscal year began, Brooks eliminated its marketing department and four positions, and furloughed 29 employees. The majority of the furloughed staff has now returned, Neff said.

And the shows must go on. In February 2021, Brooks’ large exhibition hall will be occupied by “L’Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters,” with 65 posters from “the first golden era of poster art,” from about 1875-1910.

A tenant for Rust Hall 

As Brooks Museum stages an exit from Overton Park to head to the river bluff Downtown, the Metal Museum hopes to move from its 3-acre riverside site to Overton Park and take over Rust Hall, the architectural gem that was vacated when Memphis College of Art closed this year.

“We are beginning to talk to the city; we have to get approval from City Council,” said museum director Hussong of plans to renovate and occupy Rust Hall. “It’s promising but we still have a number of hurdles to jump through.”

After a couple of years of planning, the museum originally hoped it would be starting construction soon, but Hussong said the pandemic might protract the time it takes to raise funds. A $12 million commitment from an anonymous donor was announced previously. In July, the museum’s $40 million capital campaign plan included $21 million for Rust Hall renovations, $15 million for an endowment, and $4 million to convert its current home in the French Fort neighborhood on the river to housing for artists-in-residence.

“Rust Hall allows us to grow,” Hussong said. “More classroom space will allow us to expand our offerings. For jewelry classes, (now) we don’t have a clean space that has ventilation that allows us to do that kind of program.

“We’ve never had a summer camp, because most of the space (at the current site) is exterior, and it’s too hot in the summer.”

And the move would provide breathing space for exhibitions. Hussong recalls smarting over a show review years ago that criticized the lack of space to walk around an object. “It was so frustrating to see it in print,” she said. “Our exhibitions are very tight. Our vision is bigger than the space that we have.”

As Metal Museum planners talk to architects about changes that will be needed at Rust Hall, public health is a design factor.

“The pandemic will inform us as to what some of the renovations will be,” Hussong said. “Everyone will have to prepare for future outbreaks.” As an example, fewer touch points will be part of the design, she said.

Like most institutions, the museum made difficult staffing decisions in the spring – laying off part-time employees and delaying two-year foundry and blacksmith apprenticeships. Reopening started with the sculpture tour of the grounds. Now, if necessary, entry into the building to see exhibit space is timed. The Metal Museum, like Brooks Museum, is seeing about 25% of normal traffic – on a recent week, 100 people passed through, Hussong said. Classes in blacksmithing and welding still aren’t being offered and workshops are limited.

The museum’s largest fundraiser is the annual Repair Days. Coming up Oct. 22-25, it will include an online auction and virtual volunteer gathering this year.

“Whether we will take in repairs is something we’re still waiting to decide,” Hussong said.

“We have been approved by the Health Department to host an in-person Repair Days, but we are still watching the numbers and will not make a final decision until October 1.”

If the grounds are open for the event, limits will be set at 125 people, 50 of them staff and volunteers.

“It’s important to us to keep that tradition alive,” Hussong said. “The volunteers and metalsmiths who participate every year, they come because it’s a reunion.”

Work never stopped at the Metal Museum’s blacksmith shop and foundry. There’s a commission from the Pink Palace Museum to build a skeletal model of the mosasaur, a giant marine reptile that once inhabited this region, along with work for private residents, a project for Playhouse on the Square and one for a hotel.

And a new show will open Sept. 28. “It Takes a Village: A Crowd-Curated Exhibition” will include works in the permanent collection chosen by a popular vote in July.

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