Royal Excess Of Kings and Queens

'Royal Treasures From the Louvre' review

Kenneth Baker

Updated 7:34 p.m., Friday, November 16, 2012

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  Jewel-encrusted shell-shaped cup circa 1650.

   Photo: Daniel Arnaudet / SF

"Royal Treasures From the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette," which opens last Saturday at the Legion of Honor, brings into view an array of decorative art objects that have seldom, if ever, left France.

The exhibition serves as "a kind of prologue, an overture," Louvre director Henri Loyrette said in conversation, to a five-year programming agreement between France's greatest museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

"Royal Treasures" and the long-term agreement arose, Loyrette said, from discussions with John Buchanan (1953-2011), when he was director of the Fine Arts Museums.

"When you do a big exhibition, it's almost always a one-shot," Loyrette said. "A few curators work a lot together for a long time, and that's it. It's not long lasting and not very significant for the institutions themselves. It's more interesting to have this process on a regular basis, which involves all the staff, not only the artistic questions, but education and publications, all that makes a museum today. ... So we had this idea of a five-year partnership."

Refurbishment of the Louvre's 18th century decorative arts galleries occasioned the substantial loans that "Royal Treasures" entailed. But the five-year agreement between the Paris and San Francisco institutions will mean modest projects at first.

The two already planned involve bringing together companion works by single artists owned by the respective museums: paintings by the British Romantic John Martin (1789-1854) and portrait sculpture by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828).

Anticipating public curiosity about the possible loan of Louvre's greatest hits by artists such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Jacques-Louis David, Loyrette said, "We hope to go through various techniques and departments over time. In the far future, we will have a large exhibition. But we have just begun to discuss it."

"Royal Treasures From the Louvre" will have its constituency, but that does not include me.

I am as much in awe as anyone of the feats of craftsmanship presented here with unexceptionable stagecraft. Consider the 1756 "Figure of a Naiad," with its porcelain figurine stranded beside a gilt-bronze palm tree on the gilt-bronze island of a base. As fantasy landscape sculpture, as well as a product of expert collaborators, the "Naiad" is hard to top.

Plenty of other things here, including the stone-inlaid "Mosaic Tabletop With Emblems of Louis XIV" that serves as one of the exhibition's signature images, will have jaws dropping.

But is yet another "treasures" exhibition the best use of a city museum's straitened resources? The question ought to reverberate though museum culture today. "Royal Treasures" and its ilk on the exhibition front reduce museum-going to the higher window shopping: No, you couldn't afford this - though today's robber barons could - but why, apart from the sting of injustice, should you care?

"Royal Treasures" tries gingerly to make the case that Louis XVI, who lost his head to history in 1793, had more public-spirited bones in his body than his executioners credited. He, after all, first established what became the Musée du Louvre as a public exhibition space.

But the excesses of pre-modernist courtly taste play poorly in postmodernist retrospect. (Startlingly, Marie-Antoinette looks like a minimalist of her day in the account of her affinities given here.)

"Royal Treasures" might seem to have anticipated a Romney presidency, had it not been planned years earlier. Instead, it merely rekindles the Reaganite vision of private wealth and public squalor that has polluted not just politics but also American imagination for decades.

Royal Treasures From the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette: Decorative arts. Through March 17. Legion of Honor. Lincoln Park, S.F. (415) 750-3600. www.legionofhonor.famsf.org.

Kenneth Baker is The San Francisco Chronicle's art critic. E-mail: kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Royal-Treasures-From-the-Louvre-review-4044284.php#ixzz2Cbg2WAe1

Norman Rockwell Exhibitiion at Crocker Art Museum

American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell, Triple Self-Portrait, 1959. Oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 34 1/3 in. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, February 13, 1960. ©1960 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. From the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum.NOVEMBER 10, 2012 – FEBRUARY 3, 2013

This exhibition celebrates the full range of Norman Rockwell's artwork, including rarely circulated works from the collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Included in the presentation are original oil paintings of some of his most famous illustrations, drawings, war bond posters, and numerous covers that Rockwell created forThe Saturday Evening Post over nearly five decades. In addition to the artworks on view, personal correspondence and archival photographs offer insight into the life of one of the country's most beloved illustrators.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

American Chronicles has been made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Masterpieces Program.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This exhibition is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Masterpieces Program; the Henry Luce Foundation; Curtis Publishing Company; Norman Rockwell Estate Licensing Company; and the Stockman Family Foundation.

I See Beauty In This Life

'I See Beauty' - Rural California photos

ART

Patricia Yollin

Published 12:59 p.m., Wednesday, November 7, 2012  S.F. Chronicle

A young man gathers mulberry leaves on a silk farm in 1907. "Miss Wool California" of 1968 poses with a sheep. Forty-three years later, cowboys warm up at a rodeo in Salinas.

These people come alive in a new exhibition at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, titled "I See Beauty in This Life: A Photographer Looks at 100 Years of Rural California." Their images are among 150 or so pictures that show a side of the state that is little known and rarely seen.

"We're happy to buy our oranges from Esparto (Yolo County), but nobody even knows where it is," said writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton.

The exhibition she created represents a new direction for the 141-year-old nonprofit, inaugurating a "Curating California" program that invites accomplished state residents, such as Hamilton, to delve into the vast holdings of the historical society.

"What we really want to do is bring the collection out of the storage area," said Jessica Hough, managing curator of exhibitions. "We send somebody in and see what stimulates them."

Hamilton spent six months exploring the archives, which contain about 500,000 photographs, and a sister collection with 23,000 more images housed at the University of Southern California. The historical pictures she selected date back to a shot of a flour mill in 1880. She also included 24 large color photos she took last year - traveling 10,000 miles around the state - for her "Real Rural" multimedia project.

"When you picture rural California in your head, some very familiar images come up," Hamilton said. "The Central Valley and that landscape, maybe the timberlands in the far north or the deserts in the south. But those images are pretty limited."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/I-See-Beauty-Rural-California-photos-4016960.php#ixzz2BeuR15H5

Art vs. Food: A Sociological Saunter

An Essay of Opinion by William Deresewicz,   from the New York Times of October 26, 2012

“Eat, Pray, Love,” the title goes, but a lot of peopleLike art, food is also a genuine passion that people like to share with their friends. Many try their hands at it as amateurs — the weekend chef is what the Sunday painter used to be — while avowing their respect for the professionals and their veneration for the geniuses. It has developed, of late, an elaborate cultural apparatus that parallels the one that exists for art, a whole literature of criticism, journalism, appreciation, memoir and theoretical debate. It has its awards, its maestros, its televised performances. It has become a matter of local and national pride, while maintaining, as culture did in the old days, a sense of deference toward the European centers and traditions — enriched at a later stage, in both cases, by a globally minded eclecticism.
Just as aestheticism, the religion of art, inherited the position of Christianity among the progressive classes around the turn of the 20th century, so has foodism taken over from  never make it past the first. Nor do they have to. Food now expresses the symbolic values and absorbs the spiritual energies of the educated class. It has become invested with the meaning of life. It is seen as the path to salvation, for the self and humanity both.

But food, for all that, is not art. Both begin by addressing the senses, but that is where food stops. It is not narrative or representational, does not organize and express emotion. An apple is not a story, even if we can tell a story about it. A curry is not an idea, even if its creation is the result of one. Meals can evoke emotions, but only very roughly and generally, and only within a very limited range — comfort, delight, perhaps nostalgia, but not anger, say, or sorrow, or a thousand other things. Food is highly developed as a system of sensations, extremely crude as a system of symbols. Proust on the madeleine is art; the madeleine itself is not art.

A good risotto is a fine thing, but it isn’t going to give you insight into other people, allow you to see the world in a new way, or force you to take an inventory of your soul.

Yes, food centers life in France and Italy, too, but not to the disadvantage of art, which still occupies the supreme place in both cultures. Here in America, we are in danger of confusing our palates with our souls.

Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html

An American In Paris: Edward Hopper Restrospective Opens

The NightHawks

By Thomas Adamson, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — A major Edward Hopper retrospective in Paris reveals that
the 20th century painter famed for his rendering of American life drew
inspiration from France.

The show's curator Didier Ottinger told the Associated Press on Monday that
Hopper was "a lifelong Francophile" who first visited Paris in 1906. That was
just after an important exhibition of the influential Fauvism movement known
for its strong use of color.

Ottinger said he clearly took influence from participating artists like Henri Matisse
 even though Hopper's palette is more muted. "You can see it in his large, solid
 color masses," he said.

The illuminating collection includes some 128 Hopper works — such as lonely
masterpieces "Gas,""Hotel Room"and "Soir Bleu" — alongside 35 comparative
works from French artists who influenced him.

Hopper, who died in 1967, took two other trips to the French capital in 1909
 and 1910, exploring its salons and grand museums, such as the Louvre.

Among the other artists featured in the exhibit is Edgar Degas, whose work, the
exhibit catalog suggests, encouraged Hopper to incorporate dramatic angles into
 his own paintings. This technique later became one of his artistic signatures, such as
 in his most famous work "Nighthawks" from 1942, which resembles a still from a film noir.

"He always used to say, even late in his life, that he was a post-Impressionist. France
was so important for him," added Ottinger.

The exhibit, which draws from collections in the United States, Spain and France,
 opens at Paris' Grand Palais Wednesday and runs through January 28.

____

Thomas Adamson can be followed at http:/ /Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

@yahooomg on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook 

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  PARIS (AP) — A major Edward Hopper retrospective in Paris reveals that the 20th century painter famed for his rendering of American life drew inspiration from France.

  The show's curator Didier Ottinger told the Associated Press on Monday that Hopper was "a lifelong Francophile" who first visited Paris in 1906. That was just after an important exhibition of the influential Fauvism movement known for its strong use of color.

  Ottinger said he clearly took influence from participating artists like Henri Matisse even though Hopper's palette is more muted. "You can see it in his large, solid color masses," he said.

  The illuminating collection includes some 128 Hopper works — such as lonely masterpieces "Gas,""Hotel Room"and "Soir Bleu" — alongside 35 comparative works from French artists who influenced him.

  Hopper, who died in 1967, took two other trips to the French capital in 1909 and 1910, exploring its salons and grand museums, such as the Louvre.

  Among the other artists featured in the exhibit is Edgar Degas, whose work, the exhibit catalog suggests, encouraged Hopper to incorporate dramatic angles into his own paintings. This technique later became one of his artistic signatures, such as in his most famous work "Nighthawks" from 1942, which resembles a still from a film noir.

  "He always used to say, even late in his life, that he was a post-Impressionist. France was so important for him," added Ottinger.

  The exhibit, which draws from collections in the United States, Spain and France, opens at Paris' Grand Palais Wednesday and runs through January 28.

Masterpieces To Be Found in Unheralded Museums

"Impression: Sunrise"  by Claude Monet

"The Japanese Bridge at Giverny,   by Claude Monet

From an article by Rick Steves last week in the 
San Francisco Chronicle

Not all art masterpieces are kept in the powerhouse museums. Europe is filled with many fine little museums that amply reward those who venture beyond the monumental sights. Smaller places have their own superstar attractions, and because their collections are rarely encyclopedic, you can see everything in one visit and still feel fresh.

Take, for example, Paris' Marmottan and Orangerie museums. Fans of Monet and Impressionism gravitate toward the Orsay Museum, with its impressive collection - and inevitable crowds. But savvy sightseers know they can get their Monet fix - with less competition - elsewhere. Monet himself designed the setting for his great water lily paintings at Paris' Orangerie, where French royalty once grew orange trees for its palaces.

Perched on the edge of Paris and fronted by a lovely park, the Marmottan owns one of the best collections anywhere of works by Monet, including the painting that gave Impressionism its name ("Impression: Sunrise"). After a pleasant stroll through the galleries, you'll still have enough energy to enjoy the museum's park and to wander along nearby Rue de Passy, one of Paris' most pleasant and upscale shopping streets.

Europe's cultural wonders often hide out in fascinating buildings that were never meant to be museums. For instance, one of Michelangelo's "PietÀs" lives in Milan's Sforza Castle, itself a Renaissance palace where Leonardo da Vinci was the in-house genius to the mighty Sforza dukes. The exquisite and famous "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries are among the medieval treasures in Paris' gem-like Cluny Museum, once the mansion of an important church leader.

               
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Little-museums-offer-big-treasures-3884200.php#ixzz27QKMi6Wu

How Children Succeed: Opinion and Book Review

High School

    

College

The publication of a new book, entitled “How Children Succeed,” written by Paul Tough, a former editor of the Times Magazine, is such a timely reminder that education remains the country’s most critical issue. In “How Children Succeed,” Tough argues that simply teaching math and reading — the so-called cognitive skills — isn’t nearly enough, especially for children who have grown up enduring the stresses of poverty. In fact, it might not even be the most important thing.

Rather, tapping into a great deal of recent research, Tough writes that the most important things to develop in students are “noncognitive skills,” which Tough labels as “character.” Many of the people who have done the research or are running the programs that Tough admires have different ways of expressing those skills. But they are essentially character traits that are necessary to succeed not just in school, but in life. Jeff Nelson, who runs a program in partnership with 23 Chicago high schools calledOneGoal, which works to improve student achievement and helps students get into college, describes these traits as “resilience, integrity, resourcefulness, professionalism and ambition.” “They are the linchpin of what we do,” Nelson told me. Nelson calls them “leadership skills.” Tough uses the word “grit” a lot.

On some level, these are traits we all try to instill in our children. (Indeed, Tough devotes a section of his book to the anxiety of many upper-middle-class parents that they are failing in this regard.) But poor children too often don’t have parents who can serve that role. They develop habits that impede their ability to learn. Often they can’t even see what the point of learning is. They act indifferently or hostile in school, though that often masks feelings of hopelessness and anxiety.

What was most surprising to me was Tough’s insistence, bolstered by his reporting, that character is not something you have to learn as a small child, or are born with, but can be instilled even in teenagers who have had extraordinarily difficult lives and had no previous grounding in these traits. We get to meet a number of children who, with the help of a program or a mentor who stresses character, have turned their lives around remarkably. We meet Dave Levin, the founder of KIPP, perhaps the best charter school chain in the country, whose earliest graduates run into problems when they get to college — only 21 percent of them had graduated after six years, according to Tough — and then begins stressing character traits to turn things around.

And we also meet Nelson, the founder of OneGoal, which takes disadvantaged students when they are juniors in high school — most of whom believe that college is an unattainable goal — and transforms them into responsible young adults who can succeed in good universities. OneGoal has a “persistence rate,” as Nelson calls it, of 85 percent, meaning that that’s the percentage of students from OneGoal who are making their way through college. (The program hasn’t been around long enough to have a graduation rate.) By comparison, nationally, around only 8 percent of the poorest students ever graduate from college. Nelson told me that OneGoal is expanding to Houston next year, and it hopes to be in five cities by 2017.

I hope it happens. Tough’s book is utterly convincing that if disadvantaged students can learn the noncognitive skills that will allow them to persist in the face of difficulties — to reach for a goal even though it may off in the distance, to strive for something — they can achieve a better life.

It is easy to get discouraged about the state of education in America. Maybe that’s why the presidential candidates aren’t stressing it. Which is the other thing about “How Children Succeed.” It’s a source of optimism.

Aquatic Model of SF Bay and SJ Delta Open in Sausalito

San Francisco Bay Model, Sausalito

Mary Ellen Hunt

Published 05:57 p.m., Wednesday, July 18, 2012

[From San Francisco Chronicle]

At first sight, the San Francisco Bay Model is utterly overwhelming.

Standing on the observation platform, above the acre-and-a-half scale reconstruction of the Bay Area's waterways, you can scan from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta across San Pablo Bay to the Pacific Ocean. As you descend the ramps to walk closer to the edge of the waterways, you can examine the Port of Oakland and Alameda, or gaze across the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate and beyond.

This fascinating and unique facility is one of the Bay Area's best open secrets - a remarkable tool that enables visitors to visualize and put the ecology of the bay's watershed into context. It's a terrific way to educate kids about the effects humans can have on our natural water systems. Best of all, it's free.

Built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1957 as a way to examine the impact that John Reber's proposed dam system would have had on the bay, the model demonstrates in a concrete way the delicately interlinked natural and man-made systems that bring fresh water from the Sierra Nevada, down rivers and creeks, to meet the salt water of the Pacific Ocean.

After a two-year renovation, the Bay Model reopened earlier this year, and longtime fans will be happy to know that the familiar spots around the San Francisco Bay are all still there - including the miniature Golden Gate Bridge straddling the deep channel that leads to the ocean and the Splash Zone miniature ballpark.

Clever pumping systems enable hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to ebb and flow in tides that cycle every 14 minutes - if you watch carefully, you can actually see the water flowing through the Golden Gate, or creeping through the Suisun Slough. In 2000, when computer modeling became a more efficient way to study the impact of changes to the watershed, the Army Corps of Engineers turned the model into a one-of-a-kind educational tool.

It will take at least an hour to fully appreciate the entire facility, and scattered throughout are plenty of hands-on exhibits and video kiosks that the kids will find interesting.

What effect did dredging new shipping channels in the San Joaquin River have on the delta? How did runoff from mining during the Gold Rush change the rivers? How big is that system of dikes and levees in the delta, and what would happen if the levees failed? If you or the kids have walked along the Napa River or driven over the Carquinez Strait, if you've visited Alcatraz or landed on the runways by the bay at SFO, the Bay Model will put all your travels around our waterways into perspective.

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/San-Francisco-Bay-Model-Sausalito-3717931.php

Donating Artifacts to a Museum Affected by Policy

IN the three decades since David Dewey of Minneapolis began collecting Chinese antiquities he has donated dozens to favored museums, enriching the Institute of Arts in his hometown as well as Middlebury College in Vermont, where he studied Mandarin.

Enlarge This Image

Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times

David Dewey bought these Yuan dynasty artifacts from a dealer 15 years ago, but many museums now seek a more extensive provenance for gifts. 

But his giving days are largely over, he said, pre-empted by guidelines that most museums now follow on what objects they can accept.

“They just won’t take them — can’t take them,” Mr. Dewey said.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, is in a similar bind. An antiquities collector, he is eager to sell an Egyptian sarcophagus he bought from Sotheby’s in the early 1990s. But he is stymied, he said, because auction houses are applying tighter policies to the items they accept for consignment.

“I can’t get proof of when it came out of Egypt,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

Across the country measures taken to curb the trade in looted artifacts are making it more difficult for collectors of antiquities to donate, or sell, the cultural treasures that fill their homes, display cases and storage units.

Museums typically no longer want artifacts that do not have a documented history stretching back past 1970, a date set by the Association of Art Museum Directors, whose guidelines most institutions have adopted. Drawn up in 2008, the rules have been applauded by countries seeking to recover their artifacts and by archaeologists looking to study objects in their natural settings.

To read more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/arts/design/antiquity-market-grapples-with-stricter-guidelines-for-gifts.html

America's Portraitist

                                 Thomas Hart Benton  (1889-1975)

          He wanted to be an artist. His father, who considered art an unmanly trade, was furious; the two were never close again. But with the support of his mother, Lizzie, a strong-minded woman with social ambitions, Benton embarked on what would be a long, awkward and episodic cultural ­education.

Still in his teens, he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focusing on illustration and newspaper cartooning. But he soon became interested in painting and decided to head to Paris, where he landed with little money, no French and only a vague idea of how to wield a brush. He stayed for three years, splitting his time between copying old masters in the Louvre and immersing himself in a modern art scene that was, in the years before World War I, on the boil.

Benton’s character, as depicted by Wolff at this point, will remain consistent: a combination of combative self-­confidence and profound uncertainty. In Paris, he played the roustabout bohemian to the hilt, wearing artsy clothes, acquiring a mistress, reading Ruskin and Hippo­lyte Taine, drinking all night, getting into fights. But his painting was shaky, as he tried out a range of styles — Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, abstraction, one after the other, often in combination — with dispiriting results. Whenever he felt he was on to something, he slapped himself down, in a self-destructive pattern that would take other forms later on.

The experimentation went on for years after he returned from Paris to the United States, this time to New York City. Yet once back on native turf, he gradually became a different, definite kind of artist, mostly through a process of rejection. Out went the Left Bank wardrobe, the mistresses, Ruskin and Taine, and interest in any European painters apart from old masters. He decided that he despised most modern art, and the artists who made it. Emboldened by newfound confidence, he insisted on sharing his views, as well as an enemies-list-in-formation — Alfred Stieglitz and the young Stuart Davis topped it — with whoever would listen.

It’s possible to read all this as a defensive tactic, a pre-emptive repudiation of a game he suspected he had lost. At the same time, he was finally coming into his own. By the early 1920s, he had worked out a distinctive brand of stylized realism inspired in part by the twisty figures of Mannerist and Baroque artists like Jacopo Pontormo and El Greco. And he had found an application for that style in the vision of a populist, working-class America remembered from his childhood.  [From a book review by Holland Cotter in the New York Times Book Review dated July 1, 2012]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/books/review/thomas-hart-benton-by-justin-wolff.html?pagewanted=2&ref=books
.

Clues . . . . At the Museum

In New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bret Watson took note of a sassy illustration on a medieval brass bowl of a woman spanking her husband. Deciding that tidbits like this were too good not to be shared, Watson devised a way to get his friends to take notice of such delicious details.

Putting to work his skills as a stand-up comedian - and even as a journalist for TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly and Princeton's (his alma-mater) humor publication, Tiger Magazine - he came up with a little game for them to play. To solve a museum mystery, Watson challenged his friends to follow silly clues and a seriously engaging story line that he wrote, effectively taking part in his first scavenger hunt.

Now, having served more than 150,000 happy hunters in New York, San Francisco and five other cities across the United States since starting Watson Adventures in 1999, the 52-year-old Long Island native ensures Watson Adventurers are using their noggins - and each other - to solve murder mysteries, history mysteries and witty riddles.

Watson's San Francisco scavenger hunts - which began in 2002 - reflect a rising Bay Area trend of people hitting the streets in groups to get more face time with each other.

"Part of this whole cultural shift is reality TV," Watson says. "('The Amazing Race') was almost like an advertisement for, 'Hey, there! There are these people out there exploring in the context of a game.' Well, guess what? It exists."

Blame it on the summer sunshine, but young adult friends looking for an unconventional birthday party option, competitive couples, elderly history buffs and families with children are all seeking ways to get out and about to spend time together.

The Wong family from Millbrae used the Watson Adventures Murder at the de Young scavenger hunt to prep for a trip to Europe, brushing up on some cultural trivia.

"We wanted to look at the paintings and the artists," says Nicholas Wong, 10, who joined the hunt with his parents and sister. "A lot of people should do it. It's actually fun!"

For the Mulligans, the company's Munch Hunt was about learning survival skills. While very savvy with a phone, Neale Mulligan's daughter got to work on map reading. It was also about getting along.

"It's like a marriage test, right?" Neale says about high-pressure problem-solving when gelato is on the line with Kate, his wife of 26 years.

For corporations, it may be a matter of economics. In an age of recession and penny-pinching, companies still recognize the importance of investing in their employees to boost morale and productivity. Particularly young companies, progressive in how they treat their employees and build teams, are turning to hunts.

"You watch 'Mad Men' and the team-building there is, 'Let's get drunk,' 'Let's go to a whorehouse' or 'Let's play golf.' ... Those activities are more passive," Watson says in a phone interview from Manhattan. He believes that, in our more modern age, an active exercise has its merits. "A game artificially raises the stakes. It's a great construct for raising the pressure, but in a way that is fun."

Dan Kleiber, president of the Bay Area's Mr. Treasure Hunt, also tries to get employees of his clients, such as Hewlett-Packard and Wells Fargo, to problem solve in ways they might not necessarily be used to.

"People are very resourceful now. They have a tool in their pocket or their purse that is very powerful," he says, alluding to smart phones. Rather than relying on technology, a team-building activity like a hunt encourages participants to draw on the strengths of their other teammates and talk to each other.

"Once people get out there, you get the materials and you give them a team, their eyes light up. They say, 'Hey, this is something I can contribute to.' "

Watson says that eliminating smart phones in his company's hunts levels the playing field, and also ensures that his clues can't be solved while lazing on a park bench.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/07/PKDR1ONO7T.DTL#ixzz1xVFEqaMJ