That’s the Broughton touch. A trained professional might have selected different art, but the soft-spoken Arkansan is much closer to impresario than curator, and considered by some to be the best in the business when it comes to staging large art expos. A former minor-league baseball player with no formal education in the arts, Broughton, 56, was an administrator in Memphis city government when the mayor asked him to coordinate a show of Egyptian artifacts in 1987. He borrowed a 47-ton statue of Ramses the Great and launched the city’s highly successful annual series of exhibitions. Mostly his shows have thrilled the public, even if they irk more traditional curators who say art belongs in museums, not in a Southern convention hall. His 1991 “Catherine the Great” drew crowds nearly as large as the entire population of the city. “He’s a Ringling Brothers kind of guy,” says Peter Schaffer, co-owner of A La Vieille Russie, a high-toned New York gallery of Russian art, “and he does a damn good job.”
Too good, for some. Broughton has now gone private, introducing free-market principles into the polished, not-for-profit world of art exhibition. In Florida, he negotiated an unusual contract with a group of investors eager to build St. Petersburg’s tourist trade. In return for mounting shows like “Treasures,” he’ll take home a percentage of profits from the sprawling gift shop. (He won’t discuss the terms, but a Memphis city official said Broughton’s asking price for a contract there approached $1 million for each successful exhibition.) Similarly the Kremlin, in a break from standard practice at major Western museums, is providing the art in return for desperately needed cash. Technically “Treasures” is on loan, but Broughton predicts the Russians could earn up to $500,000.
To many in the art world, that’s a distressing amount of capitalism. “Those of us with classical training feel a loss here,” says Miami Herald art critic Helen Kohen. “This is a carnival sideshow.” But even she admits that Broughton has merely advanced longstanding trends. Successful museum shows have been commercial ventures at least since “King Tut” – not the boy-pharaoh himself, but the landmark display of antiquities from the Egyptian Museum that toured the United States in 1977-79. The first big-budget blockbuster exhibition, “Tut” ushered in the age of glitzy promotion and lavish merchandising. At the National Gallery in Washington, the souvenir stand sold reproduction “Tut” baubles, and since then most major museums have become virtually hooked on tax-exempt revenues generated by their gift shops.
Broughton has taken the formula a step further. His Florida International Museum is really not that at all: there’s no permanent collection and no staff of curators beyond the specialists he plans to hire for each exhibit. The building was an abandoned department store until he nabbed it free of charge. For “Treasures,” galleries were decorated using molded plastic foam to evoke gateways, moody chapels and the glorious sweep of a Kremlin throne room (though some critics have called the dramatic lighting merely dim). A family of Russian artists spent three months repainting actual murals from the vaulted central chamber of Moscow’s Faceted Palace, all in keeping with Broughton’s simple philosophy: to sell, art must tell a story. “Let’s face it,” he says. “There’s not a large percentage of [Americans] who appreciate art for art’s sake.”
But there are lots of people who can enjoy three centuries of Romanov pomp. Actor Cliff Robertson, playing fast and loose with Russian pronunciation, guides visitors on a dizzying audio tour of Russian decorative arts. They pass the sable-trimmed crown worn by Peter the Great, spun-gold and brocade coronation robes and a 17th-century courtier’s boot overgrown with tendrils of tiny pearls. It’s a show dominated by large scale and precious metals. When New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a Kremlin exhibit in 1979 100 objects made the 4,600-mile trip from Moscow. Broughton imported 270, including Empress Anna Ivanovna’s garden carriage and an enclosed sleigh that once bore a young princess over frozen paths, drawn along by dwarfs.
Then comes the gift shop. Visitors leaving “Treasures” have no choice but to file past shelves of fake Fabergers, paperweights, pairs of “KGB Micro Binoculars” priced at $95, even dusty cans of Russian cherries. Jim Broughton Jr., 32, got much of the inventory for fire-sale prices at the conclusion of last year’s Goodwill Games in Russia. Fifty separate items were custom-designed here, including shorts, fannypacks and sweat pants stamped with the double eagle “Treasures” logo. “I felt like I was walking from that show into the underwear section of a department store,” said Anne Odom, a curator visiting from the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C. Otherwise, she loved the show.
Broughton says the criticism doesn’t sting. With funding for the arts now a matter of national debate and corporate sponsorship tapering off, even museum traditionalists are looking for new ways to finance exhibitions. “Museum directors don’t work free of charge,” he says bluntly. “Ultimately, someone has to pay for art, whether it’s the taxpayer or the guy who buys a ticket at the window.” Already, he has private-sector imitators across the country, many working with cash-strapped museums in Russia and China.
The Czars show ends June 11, then moves to Topeka. Meanwhile, back at Broughton’s Florida headquarters, tourism and civic pride are booming. Some 1,600 St, Petersburg residents have volunteered as cashiers and docents. Down the street at the normally quiet Museum of Fine Arts, admissions have tripled since “Treasures” opened last month. Minutes after seeing Faberge’s Tricentennial Egg, a miniature portrait gallery of all 18 Romanov monarchs, retiree Teddie Schwarz is still visibly excited. In a town that has tried for a decade, and failed, to lure a pro ball club to its empty ThunderDome, “Treasures” feels like a new beginning. “With all the bad luck St, Petersburg has had,” says Sehwarz, “I think this is overwhelming.” With fans like that, Broughton can take a little heat.
