Detroit Institute of Arts and the shark
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No, that’s not an escaped Damien Hirst shark in the picture; it’s John Singleton Copley’s 1782 painting ‘Watson and the Shark,’ a tour de force of visual reportage that tells the story of a dramatic rescue from an attack on a ship’s 14-year-old cabin boy, Brook Watson, who went overboard for a swim in Havana Harbor. Copley’s hair-raising painting of the life or death struggle was so popular — an 18th century ‘Jaws’ — he painted three versions, including this one in the magnificent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
According to another hair-raising story in Wednesday’s Detroit Free Press, the museum itself might be in a life or death struggle. Mark Stryker reports that the DIA’s combined budget shortfalls ‘have totaled nearly $100 million in the past decade.’ The museum is scrambling to reorganize, but officials expect a staggering 2009 shortfall of $17 million — half of its $34 million operating budget.
The DIA has one of the greatest art collections of any American museum, ranking in the top half-dozen or so. Museum spokesmen say they have enough endowment funds to buy up to a decade’s worth of time to right the listing ship. But the city’s long-running economic woes are well known, and the current battering of the U.S. economy will not make matters any easier. The Freep’s well-informed, deeply disturbing story is worth a read. [via]
— Christopher Knight
