The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 28

PAGE C6 THE CITIZEN'S WEEKLY JUNE 17, 2001 in UUU 3J if on tie Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) It took three years that's lightning speed 100 staff and $1.8 million to put together the National Gallery's blockbuster exhibit I sf ,4 Until her death last year, Primavesi was the oldest living model of Klimt, who did a painting of her in 1913, when she was nine years old. Her mother also posed for Klimt Two of Mada Primavesi's nephews one of whom lives in Quebec, the other in Peterborough provided the gallery with family photos of Klimt and of Primavesi, and a study for Klimt's painting, Portrait of Mada Primavesi The Ottawa exhibit reunites that painting, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, with a work featuring Mada's Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi, from a Japanese museum. "To me it's just very moving. My grandmother and my aunt are together for the first time since the 1920s," says nephew Christian Primavesi. "I'll bring lots of handkerchiefs to the show." Collins also hit pay dirt when he visited Austria's national archives in Vienna, where he found letters concerning the scandal that threatened to erupt over Hope I.

The letters show Klimt was persuaded to withdraw Hope 1 from plans for a 1903 show after the Austrian ministry of culture, objecting to nudity in the painting, threatened to refuse to lend three other works for the exhibit Collins' primary challenge as a researcher and writer was to find overlooked information about the works. In doing that he also came up with a new theory about Klimt's painting The Allegory of Love, on loan for the Ottawa exhibit from the Historical Museum of Vienna, in which mysterious heads float above the embracing couple; the meaning of these figures, which include an old woman with unkempt hair, a skull representing death and single male face with angry eyes, has never been adequately interpreted. "I think this woman is, in fact, having an affair," Collins says. "These are all the implications and consequences of her action." By last March, the master plan for the location of the pictures in the National Gallery was complete. Curators and designers had spent months huddled over a model of the exhibition space, moving around miniature reproductions on the model's walls to determine the best groupings.

For the exhibit's walls, designers had carefully chosen pale hues of rose, grey-green, silver-grey and ivory to enhance the works' rich colours and gold leaf. Staff in the education department selected the most important works for inclusion on the audio guide and incorporated period music by Debussy, Mahler and Wagner. They also organized a lecture series, and a June 23 fashion show that will feature Klimt-inspired designs by students of Ottawa's Richard Robinson Academy of Fashion Design. By June 1, the works, delivered in guarded, climate-controlled vehicles, had started to arrive at the gallery from Montreal and Toronto airports. All works are escorted by an art expert who represents the lender.

Called a courier, this person supervises the loading and unloading of the crate on the plane, travels to the gallery where a report on the work's condition is conducted, and watches as the work is hung by gallery staff. The strike by 200 technical and service workers at the gallery, which began May 10, had little impact on the Klimt show since most of the work had been completed, Col- by-Stothart says. "It's a question of bringing shipments in, unpacking them and putting them on the wall. It's very intense, but it only involves a few people." Because blockbusters such as the Klimt are expensive and complex, museums tend to collaborate, pooling their ability to get loans and taking turns displaying the works. But the National Gallery did the Klimt show alone, making Ottawa the sole venue.

The gallery knew lenders would be reluctant to part with the works for more than three months because of their fragility. They employ delicate materials such as gold leaf, jewelry and glass, Colby-Stothart says. The projected revenue from entrance fees is $1.1 million, plus additional revenue from parking, the book store, and catalogue sales. "It's all about doing this at an absolute level of excellence," Colby-Stothart says. Maria Cook writes for the Citizen.

JUU'r'ifK PAT MCGRATH FOR THE CITIZEN'S WEEKLY Jacques Naud hangs Klimt's 'Portrait of Johanna Staude 1917-18' in the National Gallery. The painting is on loan from the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. BY MARIA COOK eventeen days before the opening of the blockbuster show of Austrian symbolist artist Gustav Klimt at the National Gallery of Canada, the eight rooms of the special-exhibitions area stand empty, smelling of fresh paint The thick, glossy catalogues are en route by boat from Verona, Italy. And the stars of the exhibition 121 stunning masterpieces worth a total of $400 million will begin arriving within days from collections in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan, under the watchful eye of jet-lagged art escorts and security guards. Karen Colby-Stothart, chief of exhibitions management is dashing up and down the hall of the gallery's administration wing.

"The leadup days are nutty," she says. "I feel like a chicken with my head cut off." It has taken more than three years, $1.8 million and the talents of more than 100 gallery staff and outside specialists to mount Gustav Klimt Modernism in the Making, which opened Friday. "It has to be a fabulous smash hit so that people in Ottawa, New York, Montreal and Toronto are going to want to come," says Colby-Stothart 'And it has to work on a scholarly leveL" The Gallery hopes to draw 140,000 visitors to the three-month exhibition. Three years is lightning speed for the behind-the-scenes machinations needed to organize a major show from concept to opening day, Colby-Stothart says. In preparing the exhibit gallery staff conducted original research on the artist cajoled 38 museums and private collectors to lend 34 precious paintings, 87 drawings and 20 historical photographs of Klimt and his work, produced an audio guide, and prepared a 240-page catalogue in two languages, with articles by international Klimt experts.

Louise Filiatrault, chief of education and public programs, points to a bit of wisdom pinned over her desk: "Moments of profound insight can be traced back to longer periods of preparation." It helped her get through the process of assembling an exhibition, which she describes as making order out of chaos. In January 1998, gallery director Pierre Theberge, who has loved Klimt's work since he was a teenager, proposed a show around Hope 1, the gallery's sole Klimt Acquired by the gallery in 1970, the portrait of a naked, pregnant woman is considered the most important Klimt painting in North America. The artist was a driving force behind Art Nouveau, a turn-of-the-century movement characterized by colourful and fanciful elements rich with symbolism But the gallery needed the participation of Klimt scholars and the Austrian museums that house most of his works. "This is like organizing a huge Christmas party," Colby-Stothart explains. 'You have to get the right participants right from me beginning." The first step was convincing leading scholars such as Peter Vergo, an eminent British authority on Viennese art, American art historians Jane Kallir and Emily Braun, and Marian Bisanz-Prakken, a curator at the Albertina museum in Vienna, to write essays for the catalogue.

The illustrated text is intended to stand as the most recent comprehensive survey of research on Klimt and will be sold around the world The contributors' scholarly credentials "are the only things that are going to get us our loans of artworks," Colby-Stothart explains. "Nobody in their right mind would justify all this effort and expense for a 12-week show" she adds, unless it results "in new research and contributes something of value to the art history database." Meanwhile, Colin Bailey, the gallery's chief curator at the time, was compiling a wish-list of works. The gallery then sent letters of request to 50 institutions and private collectors. Bailey began tapping his contacts in the art world, and three years ago began the first of 15 trips to deliver his pitch. Securing art loans is a delicate and complex courtship that can take years.

"You're really trying to demonstrate to the lender that this is an important event," Colby-Stothart says. "You're telling them: This is the first major exhibition of Klimt in North America. This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reunite Certain works of Lenders typically want detailed information about transportation, packing, climate controls and security. They want to know the credentials of anyone who will handle the work. "Every one of these loans involves an enormous negotiation," Colby-Stothart says.

Born in a Viennese suburb in 1862, Klimt is renowned for the beauty, sensuality and sense of hope his works convey. His works helped set the mood of fin-de-siecle Vienna, then a vibrant centre for arts and culture. His decorative, allegorical and symbolist works were instantly popular in Austria, although his nudes were occasionally censored. In 1897, Klimt helped to found the Viennese Secession, a group dedicated to exhibiting the works of cutting-edge artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Auguste Rodin. There was one unusual, major hurdle to overcome in organizing the show in Ottawa.

Many of Klimt's works had been stolen from Austrian Jews during the Second World War and later turned up in the country's state museums. Some have been returned to the owners' heirs, but others remain the subject of litigation. In fact one Klimt painting planned for the Ottawa exhibition, Woman with Hat and Feather Boa, was withdrawn because a former owner's heirs successfully claimed the work last year from the Belvedere, an Austrian museum "The Austrian lenders have been very nervous about lending Klimt works," Colby-Stothart says. Virtually all lenders demanded guarantees the works would not be seized by authorities on behalf of people claiming ownership. The gallery invoked provincial legislation that exempts foreign cultural objects brought into Ontario for temporary display from court orders to remove them from their host organizations.

In addition, the gallery queried the lenders and researched each work's provenance to determine whether any of the works were in dispute. "I don't think you can possibly go any further in assuring yourself there are no issues," says Colby-Stothart In the course of the research, assistant curator John Collins discovered a Canadian angle to the Klimt exhibit It turns out that Mada Primavesi, one of Klimt's models, had moved to Montreal in 1950, where she opened a convalescent hospital for children and a farm for abused children in the Eastern Townships. Gustav Klimt's 1898 crayonink.