Vaulting the Walls

Sight

EVERY YEAR, AS MANY AS 500,000 PEOPLE visit the San Diego Museum of Art. If you reside in San Diego, chances are you’re one of them. But whether visitors see the big exhibitions, wander the galleries, sit by the fountain, attend a presentation at the auditorium, eat at the Sculpture Court Café or relax in the garden, they haven’t truly seen the museum——or at least, what it truly has to offer. Very few have. In fact, those who’ve been through all 57,051 square feet of public space, diligently visited all 18 galleries and studied every piece of art in minute detail have likely seen only about 10 percent of the museum.

There’s more. Lots more. In fact, the San Diego Museum of Art has one of the best collections of Renaissance-era Italian and Spanish art in the United States, in addition to numerous works by giants of the art world whose names are known in every household. Right now, most of it isn’t in the galleries but literally underneath them, in temperature- and humidity-controlled, fire safe, dimly lit, high-security vaults.

The SDMA collection really came into its own in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, when sisters Amy and Anne Putnam and other wealthy donors contributed mainly works of 16th- and 17th-century Italian and Spanish art (the museum fully vets its acquisitions for any suspicion of Nazi-era theft). Pieces by Italian and Spanish masters such as Juan Sánchez Cotán, El Greco, Francisco Zurbarán, Giotto and Paolo Veronese——as well as more contemporary heavyweights Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Joan Miró, Thomas Eakins, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Stuart Davis and others——patiently hang on utilitarian metal racks or are stacked on shelves.

So what are they all doing out of sight? Chalk it up to the direction SDMA took for years, during which time it emphasized big summer blockbuster exhibitions, which marginalized the extensive collection. Now, however, under the leadership of executive director Derrick Cartwright, the museum is in the process of renovating permanent galleries for those valuable European works, aiming to draw visitors and admirers of these masterpieces year-round.

“Our shift now is not to throw out exhibitions but really try to show off our collection so that people come not only when there’s a show they’ve read about, but just because it’s a great museum with a great collection,” says Italian and Spanish paintings curator John Marciari, the first such specialist in SDMA’s history. The installation that was in the galleries until six months ago had been there for more than a decade, he says. “And frankly, it was pretty boring. I think maybe it was the world’s most boring installation.”

DRESSED IMMACULATELY in a brown suit, Marciari strolls through the vault, finding something worth getting excited about on just about every rack. The cold, concrete environs, metal racks and sounds of nearby employees remounting a painting with noisy power tools juxtapose oddly with the delicate, beautiful, valuable objects in storage. But the setting also allows for a less formal, more personal experience with the art. One is free to get as close as possible, with no watchful docent eyes anywhere. From this perspective, colors pop, brushstrokes become more apparent, and the level of detail is many times more visible——and appreciable.

The very best of these have come out for “Old Masters in New Light,” a new installation of the permanent collection that’s now open to the public. Under Marciari’s direction, walls were repainted and each gallery rehung from the ground up, with utmost attention paid to the layout, sequencing and perception of works on display.

The old masters have returned——not to reexperience the light of day (the museum’s skylights were covered years ago) but to reap the admiration and appreciation of residents and visitors to San Diego.

Visit SDMA at 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, 619-232-7931; sdmart.org.

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