Monet: Bellagio ignores detractors, snares coveted works

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004 | 8:22 a.m.

Monet loved nature. He loved the outdoors. He loved to paint light, air and gardens. He loved to travel.

What the artist would have thought about his work hanging in the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas is up for grabs.

But don't ask Andrea Bundonis to speculate. She's beyond hypothetical ponderings, ivory tower criticisms and strange analogies of mixing fine art with tourists and gamblers.

"Las Vegas is a city like any other city in America," said Bundonis, president of Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art (who lives in New York). "Why should Las Vegas not have art like every city in America?"

Referring to critics who deride Las Vegas as an appropriate forum for high art, Bundonis added, "It's insulting that this response has been perpetuated.

"Art should be for everyone."

Bundonis might as well be echoing Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with whom Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art partnered for "Claude Monet: Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" opening Friday at Bellagio.

The controversial Rogers, whose revamping of the MFA has been called the "Boston Massacre" by critics, has a reputation for his enthusiastic efforts to deliver art to the masses.

Rogers' lending of the Monets to Strip gallery is not completely out of character, which is lucky for Las Vegas.

"Masterworks" features 21 Monet paintings that capture the artist's evolving form. It is the largest loan of Monet by the MFA in more than a decade.

The exhibit is chronologically arranged. It begins with "Rue de la Bavolle, Honfleur," an 1864 oil-on-canvas that precedes his notoriously recognizable impressionist style. It ends at Giverny with Monet's 1905 "Water Lilies."

"Several different painting campaigns are represented," Bundonis said. "We certainly wanted to have work from his early career. What we really wanted to do is continue in this tradition to present a story of the artist."

Mixed in with the paintings of flower beds and sea coasts are two winter scenes, "Snow at Argenteuil" (1874) and "Entrance to the Village of Vetheuil in Winter" (1879). Also included is "Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden in Argenteuil" (1875). Two renditions of the Rouen cathedral and haystack and grainstack paintings are featured.

The gallery will also display a reproduction of an early Monet caricature, the style of art he created before French painter Eugene Boudin encouraged him to paint scenes of nature.

Teaming

The exhibit is expected to be a huge draw. The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art is extending its hours to accommodate the crowds.

"Bringing a Monet show anywhere is really a big deal," Bundonis said. "Past shows consistently break records in attendance."

Rogers says he sees the lending as a "win-win situation."

"We're trying to find new audiences," Rogers said Monday via telephone from Boston. "We are always interested in our art being seen in different places, particularly with national and international offices.

"I myself have spent some time in Las Vegas. We all know what a big effort Las Vegas is making to raise its level of excellence."

Bundonis and Marc Glimcher formed PaperBall, a subsidiary of Pace Wildenstein, to operate the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

PaperBall gives Glimcher and Bundonis the opportunity to present various periods in art (Pace Wildenstein represents 20th-century artists and estates).

"We have these dream exhibits we'd love to do but our gallery here in New York does 20th-century work," Bundonis said. "Monet falls into that."

In April, Glimcher and Bundonis approached Rogers, a longtime friend of the Glimcher family, about borrowing the Monets.

"They were enthusiastic about the partnership," Bundonis said. "They liked the idea of a new audience and it gives them a chance to raise money for the museum."

Regarding attendance at Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Bundonis said work that is rare and unusual brings in the crowds, "work that is not so easy to see or that they'd have to make a big trip to see it -- have to go to Russia for Faberge or Monet, the East Coast.

"Certainly for us in terms of visitors the most well-attended exhibit was Faberge. Calder is 20th century, Warhol is 20th century."

Controversy

Bundonis is aware of the attacks made on the partnership with MFA, explaining, "Some people see it as controversial saying, 'Why would this museum loan its work to Las Vegas?' "

A recent article in Newsweek magazine quoted/paraphrased Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight as saying that "the MFA 'ought to be ashamed of itself' for selling out to private interests."

Bundonis, who was in the middle of crafting a letter to Newsweek, rebutted, "It's disappointing and really surprising that an art critic in a town that has several museums where major blockbusters come on a regular basis would say that MFA and Rogers should be ashamed of itself.

"These days (raising money) is a tough thing for museums to do, especially the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It receives less than $40,000 a year in funding."

Additionally, the article suggests the Monet partnership not only helps Glimcher make money in Las Vegas, but raises demand for other Monets Pace Wildenstein has for sale.

But Pace Wildenstein deals only in 20th-century art, Bundonis said.

"We don't have any Monets," Bundonis said.

In response to Knight's comments, Rogers said simply, "I thought he was overreacting."

On Sunday Rogers faced attacks from critics in a Boston Globe article (headlined "MFA's Monets: dicey deal?") which, like the Newsweek story, referred to the arrangement between the museum and for-profit gallery as unorthodox.

In its defense, Rogers is quoted as saying, "I think people are extraordinarily priggish and narrow-minded if they don't understand this."

A longtime collector of impressionism, the MFA is known to have one of the greatest Monet collections outside of France. It has been reported that the MFA was paid $1 million to lend the collection.

"We can't confirm or deny that," Rogers said.

Whether the two parties will collaborate in the future is yet to be determined, Rogers said.

But in his acknowledgement in the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art catalogue for the exhibit, Rogers indicates it's a possibility: "Nothing defines Boston's collection passion more than Monet, and so it was only appropriate to inaugurate our relationship with a show of 21 of the finest examples of the master's work."