Monet In Normandy
David Steel Interview - Larry Wheeler Interview

Interview with Lawrence J. Wheeler, PhD., Director, North Carolina Museum of Art

UNC-TV: How did the idea for the “Monet in Normandy” exhibition develop?

Wheeler: The curators and I had been talking about a Monet exhibition for some time. David Steel came to me several years ago just following Rodan and said, “You know, we should build an exhibition around the two great Monet paintings that we have, both of which were painted in Normandy. Maybe we could get six or ten paintings, do a small focus exhibition.” I said, “Let’s focus on making it a major exhibition.” It is a very prestigious exhibition. Any museum would love to have this exhibition without question. I am so proud of the scholarship which supports the exhibition as well. A beautiful catalog was developed in support of this exhibition, published by Rizzoli, a very prestigious publishing house. The scholarship presided over by Rick Brettell and David Steel is superb.

UNC-TV:  Why is it so important to see these paintings in person?

Wheeler: When you see the paintings in the exhibition, the images you might have seen in art history books or in advertising can’t do them justice. He was a master of the Impressionist technique and the dabs of color and they way they play with light and just the richness of texture, the romance of the countryside and of the scenes, who doesn’t respond to such beauty?

I think that you have to experience the power of art by being there, it is between you and the picture, it is between you and the artist. And you get a sense of his genius and of his creativity and you see the way the paint was laid down on canvas and you see the beauty of the color. And I think you will admire also the preservation of these paintings and how fresh they still look.

UNC-TV:  Why was it necessary to partner with other museums on this exhibition?

Wheeler: It was necessary to have considerable underwriting of the exhibition because to do a Monet exhibition we knew at the outset would be extraordinarily expensive and post-9/11 insurance rates escalated beyond belief. So to bring paintings in from throughout the United States, to bring them in from around the world, we knew it was going to be an expensive proposition.

We could charge other museums a very hefty fee for participating in this show but we finally decided that we would just share the cost with the three participating museums and they liked that idea. We then became co-organizers, we divided up the labor of creating the exhibition, we divided up the cost by three, and the burden was removed from any one institution and shared by all.

But you know, cost isn’t the real measure of this. If it is worth doing I’ve found that the support will be there, not only from the sponsors but by the people who come to see it.

UNC-TV: Why is this an important exhibition for the North Carolina Museum of Art?

Wheeler: I think we are building a reputation for bringing great works of art to the community. Most recently Matisse, Picasso, before that Rodin. These are names that people recognize. Monet though, that is sort of a special experience that is reserved for special places. You go to New York to see a great Monet show or Chicago or to Paris, not to Raleigh necessarily. But I think that it is building the prestige of the institution to be able to gather these very important paintings to be enjoyed by the people here.

UNC-TV:  Why did San Francisco premiere the exhibition in July? Why didn’t the North Carolina Museum of Art show the paintings first?

Wheeler: We wanted the exhibition to be present in Raleigh in the fall. We think it is our strongest season. Traditionally it is the beginning of the cultural season in most communities and certainly it is here. We could have been successful with Monet in any time of the year, but the best time of year for us was certainly the beautiful North Carolina fall. And we wanted people to come to North Carolina from all across the United States if they will, not only to see the show but to see the new Triangle, to see North Carolina and the beautiful fall leaves.

UNC-TV:  Why would you encourage North Carolinians to come see this Monet exhibition?

Wheeler: There is not a single painting in the exhibition that is not worthy of attention. You will be drawn to the water lily paintings, of course. And you will be drawn to the haystack, of course. But it is our hope that you will see paintings that you’ve never seen before, not even seen images of before. Some of these paintings are in the United States for the first time. So enjoy every single brush stroke in every single painting.

Monet was one of the great painters of our civilization. We respond to the energy, we respond to the technique, we see beyond the surface of the picture, we North Carolinians, and so it is you know, it is a special thing for us to be able to enjoy it together.

UNC-TV: Could you talk a little bit about the quality of the art in this exhibition?

Wheeler:  When curators organize an exhibition it is around an idea or a set of ideas and in order to express that idea they go for the very best works of art that they can find. There are many works of art by Monet that could have been included in this exhibition but which were not by curatorial choice; they thought they were not strong enough to stand together with the rest of the pictures in the show.

You can look at a single painting and be moved by it. But when you are confronting 50, 51, 52 of these paintings all together and your eye moves amongst them you cannot help but be emotional. It is really quite an experience.

UNC-TV:A catalog was also developed for this exhibition. Can you talk about that?

Wheeler: We were fortunate to have the support of some of the best scholars in the United States working on this exhibition. David Steel, curator of European art, has been diligent in his scholarship on Monet now for several years and we were able to engage Rick Brettell who is probably the greatest scholar on Monet and on Impressionism to do many of the essays in the catalog. Lynn Orr, a great curator of European art at San Francisco participated, as did Heather Lemonedes in Cleveland. So this panel of experts, this panel of scholars, brought even more power, the power of words as well to the exhibition.

UNC-TV: How important were private collectors to this exhibition of Monet’s paintings?