Visit a Hidden-Gem Museum

Economist.com has been running a web-only series of columns this summer spotlighting “hidden-gem museums” around the world. The pieces are beautifully written, and do an excellent job of placing the houses of art in historical context. The first was July18, about the National Museum of the Renaissance at the Chateau d’Ecouen. The column points out that although attendance rose to 85,000 visitors last year, that’s not particularly good, especially considering its location in Paris. July 25 spotlights the Museum of Handbags and Purses in Amsterdam.  On August 1 is the dryly-headlined Arles together now, about Museon Arlaten in Arles, France. Lack of marketing, promotion and amenities visitors have come to expect, such as a café and a catalogue, kept down visitor totals to 55,000 last year. Yet the back story is fascinating; blending its creator, the poet Frederic Mistral, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, and Vincent Van Gogh. The column points out that the latter admired Mistral, yet probably never met him. The loan of a Van Gogh would complete the picture: “Now that fate has reversed the reputations of the two men, the presence of a Van Gogh in the Museon Arlaten would send visitor numbers shooting up.” The three most recent museums covered are The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York; designed by and filled with the art of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi (August 9); The Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C., on August 15 (not far from where I live, and the only one of these spaces I’ve visited) and The Wallace Collection, in London on August 22.  The latter is due for a sudden boost in visitors beginning in October, when it begins an exhibition of 25 new paintings by Damien Hirst. The hidden-gems column has been a pleasant summer diversion. Let’s hope it gets extended for another season.