MUSEUM LAYOUT PRAISED FOR SCHLEMMER EXHIBIT

“The installation here in San Diego is really superb and helps the understanding of the exhibition,” said Arnold Lehman, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. His museum organized the exhibition of works by German artist Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park through Oct. 12. Lehman was in San Diego last week for the show’s opening festivities.

This is the first comprehensive exhibition of works by Schlemmer to tour the United States. One of the great humanists of our century, the artist throughout his career explored the theme of man in harmonious relationship to his technological environment. After service in World War I, he joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar, the famous art school founded by architect Walter Gropius, whose purpose was to unite the fine arts and crafts.

Schlemmer’s colleagues at the Bauhaus included such prominent figures as Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Steven Brezzo, the museum’s director, believes that it is “one of the most significant exhibitions to come to San Diego in the last few years.”

He added wistfully, however: “I hope people come.”

Lehman’s words of praise for the installation were especially appreciated by the museum’s head of installation and design, Darcie Fohrman, who has been responsible for the overall look of the museum since 1979.

Her most recent achievement was the spectacular, colorful and complex Dr. Seuss exhibition, which ended at 4:30 p.m. Aug. 17. Fifteen minutes later, Fohrman and her crew of “12, more or less,” moved into the galleries. They had just 2 1/2 weeks in which to dismantle the Seuss show, pack it and ship it out for its national tour, then unpack and install the very different Schlemmer show in time for a major patrons’ reception the evening of Sept. 3.

It was a remarkable feat.

“A turn-around time for two such major exhibitions would ordinarily have been a month at least,” the experienced designer said.

But the museum staff did not have a month. Brezzo had picked up the Schlemmer show just two months earlier, when he learned that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, originally scheduled as its sole West Coast venue, would not, for technical reasons, participate in its national tour.

Acting quickly, Brezzo obtained local support from Gwendolyn Stephens, widow of William T. Stephens, a former chairman of the museum board, to bring the show to San Diego.

The Schlemmer exhibition presented museum designer Fohrman with a number of special problems, in addition to the very short lead time.

Numbering 200 works of art, it demanded more running footage of wall space than any other exhibition that Fohrman had worked with at the museum. There was a very basic problem of finding a sufficient number of temporary walls to carry the paintings, drawings, reliefs and photographs without visual crowding.

The first thing Fohrman did was to cut pictures out of copies of the exhibition catalogue and, with the aid of a model of the galleries, lay out a miniature installation.

Another problem was the variety of works that the Bauhaus master had created--sculptures, wall reliefs, masks and costumes, as well as paintings and drawings. Pedestals were appropriate for some works, but others required special treatment. The ballet costumes, for example, are displayed on open wire supports in a stage-like setting. The art of installation involves much more than deciding where to hang pictures on the walls.

Most visitors would be unaware of the subtle problem presented by faintly pink wood frames with green tinted glass. Against an inappropriate wall color, the works of art would recede from view. Visitors would see the frames instead.

There was also the very technical demand of conforming to required light levels without separating delicate works on paper from the paintings to which they are related, which can tolerate stronger illumination. Fohrman solved the problem through judicious groupings of works and mixing of lights.

“The hardest thing to decide on,” Fohrman said, “was the colors for the walls.” She tested two dozen colors repeatedly until she arrived at a combination of several bluish grays and grayish pinks. The pink walls absorb the pink frames and enhance the works of art. The calming blues are a direct borrowing from Schlemmer’s works.

“Another big problem,” Fohrman said, “was avoiding museum fatigue for visitors. There were so many works we simply had to stack some, but not too many. We tried to pace the show so it would be comfortable and yet have some surprises.”

Fohrman’s tour de force was to conclude the installation with Schlemmer’s dramatic designs for the theater and ballet. Elsewhere, they had appeared in the middle of the exhibition.

“You were visually exhausted by the show in New York,” Brezzo observed. “The theater works at the end here with the video segments from Schlemmer’s ‘Triadic Ballet’ give visitors a pickup.

“The exhibition is also more open here than in New York. Darcie designed an installation that carefully took into consideration the artist’s techno-aesthetic sensibility. It has a wonderful fluidity while complementing the hard-edge aspects of Schlemmer’s work.”

Fohrman’s own evaluation is: “It’s basically an understated installation to bring out the qualities of the artist’s work.

“My job is to be a kind of interpreter.”