CultureGrrl

Brandeis in the fall

Brandeis University's embattled Rose Art Museum finds itself without a fall show...again.

The Boston Globe reported today that James Rosenquist suddenly had second thoughts about supplying his works for a one-man show that had been hastily scheduled at the embattled museum after three other artists---Bill Viola, Eric Fischl and April Gornik---had abruptly pulled out of an exhibition of their works that had been scheduled to open in September. Their decision had been a gesture of protest against Brandeis' refusal to renounce any future sales of works from its collection to address the university's financial shortfalls.

The Globe's Geoff Edgers writes:

Rosenquist said that complications in the aftermath of a fire last year, which destroyed his Florida home and studio, about $18 million worth of art, and personal items, have made it too difficult for him to participate in the exhibition, which was to have opened Sept. 22 featuring some of his massive paintings, along with other works.

The stage is set: Photo of Lea Bondi

The lobby of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York had the festive air of a Bar Mitzvah reception, sans liquor and hors d'oeuvres, with perhaps 50 farflung Bondis from all generations reuniting for the ceremony celebrating the $19-million settlement from the Leopold Museum, Vienna, to the heirs of Lea Bondi Jaray, the Austrian Jew from whom Egon Schiele's "Portrait of Wally" was wrongfully expropriated by the Nazis in 1939.

Although aware of the dangers of staying put during the Nazi era, Lea had resisted leaving Vienna without her cherished painting. She relented at the wise insistence of her husband, but spent the rest of her life trying to reclaim her still astonishingly luminous masterpiece, which cast its spell on me today at a press viewing before this morning's commemoration of her memory and celebration of the settlement:


Egon Schiele, "Portrait of Wally," 1912

Before providing my own information and commentary (in a subsequent post), I yield the floor to two of the speakers at this morning's gathering. First, Andre Bondi, Lea's grandnephew, who spoke movingly and emotionally of his father Henry's efforts to right a historic wrong. When Andre tearfully ended with a description of his late father's reaction to a favorable legal development in the protracted case, there were few dry eyes in the house:



Next come comments from former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, whose 11th-hour subpoena (subsequently quashed), temporarily prevented the painting's being returned from an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art to its Austrian lender, Rudolf Leopold, buying time for prosecutors to put together a plausible legal case for restitution.

In his remarks, Morgenthau hit a couple of off-key notes: He called his desperate attempt to restrain the painting a "Hail Mary." (I admit, though, that I can't come up with a good Hebrew or Yiddish equivalent.) More surprisingly, in comments that came before those captured in my video clip, the D.A. extended his thanks to the Leopold Museum for agreeing to the settlement. Had he perused the jarringly unconciliatory statement issued by the Leopold Museum Private Foundation (more on that in a subsequent post), Morgenthau might have been a bit less thankful. [UPDATE: When I last checked, the above link to the museum foundation's statement had ceased working. But, for now, you can find the statement by going here and then clicking on "Portrait of Wally Returns to Vienna."]



I happened to share the elevator with Morgenthau as he headed from the ceremony to the gallery where the painting is displayed (through Aug. 18, after which it will return to the Leopold Museum).

Suddenly, a strange thought occurred to me:

Q: Mr. Morgenthau, have you ever seen the painting?
A: No, I haven't.

I couldn't quite believe it, so I asked again as we walked towards the gallery:

Q: You really never set eyes on the painting, during all the years when it was in storage?
A: No.

So it was with great anticipation that I hoisted my mini-video camera for the fateful encounter.

Here's what I saw:



He walked right past it! He never so much as glanced at the comely "Wally," focusing instead on the other luminaries with whom he was about to share a photo-op. At the end of the above clip, you can hear him telling Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, "Someone asked me if this was the first time I saw it."

Here are the museum's director, the heirs' spokesperson and assorted legal honchos, ready for their close-up. ("Wally" was to the right, beyond my camera's range.)


Left to right: David Marwell, director, Museum of Jewish Heritage; James Hayes, special agent-in-charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Andre Bondi, Lea Bondi Jaray's grandnephew; Howard Spiegler, attorney for Lea Bondi Jaray's estate; Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Robert Morgenthau, former Manhattan District Attorney and current chairman, Museum of Jewish Heritage

Although I had stopped filming, I watched Morgenthau's face the entire time. As far as I could see, he never set eyes on the breathtaking masterpiece that had been the object of his quest for justice.

As we exited the gallery together, I couldn't resist asking Morgenthau if he had looked at the painting. He quipped:

Beautiful. It's one of my best works!

In a sense, I suppose, he was right.

COMING SOON: Some offstage heroes of the "Portrait of Wally" settlement.

The museum's director, Tom Sokolowski, had previously escorted our press group through a tour of his Downtown Pittsburgh institutionThe most important temporary display, which Sokolowski left us with too little time to explore on our own, analyzed a match made in heaven (much more so than Picasso/Degas)---a show entitled Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp/Andy Warhol, curated by Matt Wrbican, the museum's archivist.

Included were a canny juxtaposition of a Duchamp bottle rack with a Warhol array of dusty Coke bottles arranged in a sectioned crate, as well as a 1963 snapshot by actor Dennis Hopper (currently the subject of LA MOCA's critically slammed retrospective) showing Warhol, the actor/writer Taylor Mead (longtime member of Andy's circle), and Hopper's then wife, Brooke Hayward, who were all on hand for the opening of Duchamp's retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum.
$17,000 in cash, and, let us not forget, the widely reported autographed poster of the nude Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Janet Landay, AAMD's executive director: Who's in charge here?

This appears to be a case of the left side of the mouth not knowing what the right side is saying:

As I reported on Monday, Kaywin Feldman, the new president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, stated in her July President's Message, posted on AAMD's website, that member institutions (including her own Minneapolis Institute of Arts) "are posting lists of objects to be [emphasis added] deaccessioned on their websites." In other words, the public would get a heads-up in advance of disposals.

But wait a minute! This just in from Janet Landay, AAMD's executive director, in response to my request for examples of institutions now giving the public notice of "objects to be deaccessioned":

I'm happy to clarify regarding Kaywin's President's Message. She was referring to the new AAMD deaccessioning policy and the provision: "A member museum should publish on its website within a reasonable period of time works that have been deaccessioned and disposed of." The policy doesn't require museums to post in advance of deaccessioning, but of course they are free to do so.

Have any institutions (other than Indianapolis) done so? That had been my question, which received no answer.

Perhaps Kaywin is the best interpreter of her own President's Message, which clearly endorses prior notice of proposed disposals, as a way to "demystify common museum practices and increase public confidence in the stewardship of our cultural heritage." But did she miscommunicate when she referred to "objects to be deaccessioned"?

"To be," or not "to be"?

Once Journalist X finally does get around to publishing his or her exclusive interview with Feldman, perhaps AAMD's leader will communicate directly with the rest of us and her meaning (or lack thereof) will become clear.

Anne-Marie Wagener, director of press and PR at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), responds to AAMD Tweets Again: President Feldman's Inaugural Missive:

Just to let you know that you are correct in saying that the MIA does not have any deaccessions posted online. That's because we do not currently have any deaccessions in the queue. In Kaywin's letter she did say that the MIA, along with other museums, will post lists of deaccessioned objects in future and that's exactly the process we're in now.

We have a Collections Development Plan that was created last year by the curators as required by our assistant director of curatorial affairs, Matthew Welch. I've just spoken with Matthew who explained that this fiscal year (which started July 1), as part of the plan, the curators have been charged with reviewing portions of their collections, identifying objects for possible deaccessioning, and writing justifications for review by the director and a trustee committee.

So we're just beginning to compile lists of works for deaccessioning in the future. I hope this helps clarify the MIA's position on the issue and we will certainly be posting upcoming deaccessions as they happen.

Still no word about what other AAMD member museums (aside from the Indianapolis Museum of Art) have committed to posting deaccessioned objects in advance of their proposed disposal.

Kaywin Feldman

Having dipped its toes into the roiling social-media waters with its AAMDIndy tweets (which chronicled last month's annual meeting), the Association of Art Museum Directors recently launched a permanent MuseumDirectors page on Twitter. At this writing, it features only one substantive tweet---a link to Kaywin Feldman's first president's letter. That missive includes an important nugget of information that was news to me.

Feldman writes:

Many museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where I work, are posting lists of objects to be deaccessioned on their websites.

I have long been a proponent of museums' giving the public a heads-up about works selected to be expelled from the public domain, before those disposals have already become a done deal. But I was familiar only with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's efforts in that regard. I have searched in vain for a link to prospective (or even completed) disposals on Minneapolis' website. (There's nothing about this on that museum's web page for Collection-Related Online Resources.)

I have a query in to AAMD and Minneapolis for that link, as well as for details about other museums that have taken a laudable leap towards greater transparency about proposed art sales. I'll update here, if and when I get an answer. [For update, go here.]

Feldman's letter features a non-working (at this writing) link to a must-read ARTnews article by Robin Cembalest, about AAMD's strategic plan and new initiatives. Another non-working link references Feldman's own letter to the NY Times, rebutting the Brooklyn Museum-bashing article by Robin Pogrebin.

Arnold Lehman, the Brooklyn Museum's longtime director, has gotten so accustomed to being picked on by pesky journalists and (occasionally) his own colleagues that he must have been rubbing his eyes in disbelief upon seeing these words of high praise from AAMD's new president:

Under Arnold Lehman's leadership, the Brooklyn Museum has been ahead of the curve in addressing a critical question: What makes a museum relevant in the 21st century, and to whom is the museum relevant?...The Brooklyn Museum has clearly been successful [in] drawing diverse audiences and establishing the museum as a place that matters to its community.

Still, Arnold's pleasure must have been short lived. Kaywin's letter was followed (on the same NY Times letter page) by this derisive missive hurled by Selma Holo, director of the University of Southern California's Fisher Museum of Art and its International Museum Institute:

The Brooklyn Museum has been suckered into the belief that a museum's success can be determined solely by its attendance. It navigates between the shoals of entertainment and education with the so-called edutainment strategy. (The fact is, Disneyland does the entertainment part better.)

As I recently wrote here (in response to Pogrebin's piece and before the publication of Feldman's and Holo's letters), there's a whole lot more to the Brooklyn Museum than "Star Wars" and its like.

But what we all really want to know is: When is Kaywin-favored Journalist X going to publish his or her long-awaited exclusive interview with AAMD's new president? (Or did I somehow manage to miss it?)

Egon Schiele, "Portrait of Wally," 1912

It's getting to be a familiar scenario: After years of legal wrangling, a cultural-property dispute gets settled in favor of the claimants, right on the brink of the trial date.

It happened last year, when the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum settled with the heirs of Paul and Elsa von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the Nazi-era owners of two major Picassos---MoMA's "Boy Leading a Horse" and the Guggenheim's "Le Moulin de la Galette."

And now Herrick, Feinstein, a preeminent law firm in restitution cases, has just dropped this breaking news in my inbox:

The Estate of Lea Bondi Jaray (the "Estate") announced today that the United States Government, the Estate and the Leopold Museum Privat-Stiftung (the "Leopold Museum") have agreed to settle the long-pending case of " United States of America v. Portrait of Wally," which was about to go to trial before Chief Judge Loretta Preska in federal court in Manhattan on July 26, 2010.

The law firm's complete announcement of the settlement is here.

Unlike the MoMA/Guggenheim case, the terms of the Leopold settlement have been publicly disclosed: According to the law firm's announcement, the Leopold Museum will pay $19 million to the estate of the woman from whom the painting was said to have been confiscated by the Nazis. Before the painting returns to the Leopold Museum, it will be exhibited again in New York, "at the Museum of Jewish Heritage---A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, ...beginning with a ceremony commemorating the legacy of Lea Bondi Jaray and the...resolution of the lawsuit," according to the announcement.

This 1912 Schiele painting has been hidden away in storage for more than a decade, while the case dragged on. As I wrote for the Wall Street Journal, back in 1999:

If there were habeas corpus for paintings, "Portrait of Wally" would have been released by now.

"Wally" has been in legal limbo ever since the Museum of Modern Art borrowed it from the collection of Viennese ophthalmologist Rudolf Leopold for an exhibition in 1997. (The case outlived Leopold, who died last month.) If nothing else, American museums have learned from this dispute the necessity of applying for federal immunity-from-seizure protection for international loans.

My ArtsJournal blogging colleague Judith Dobrzynski owns this story. I expect that she'll have more to say.

This is going to take some getting used to.

Thomas Eakins' celebrated "The Gross Clinic," purchased jointly for $68 million in 2007 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, is being returned to public view on Saturday as part of a larger exhibition, after a startlingly transformative restoration overseen by Mark Tucker, the museum's vice chair of conservation and senior conservator of paintings. The overall tonality of the painting is now considerably less dramatic and more subdued, "as Eakins intended it to be," according to the Philadelphia Museum's press release.

What I'm wondering is how the entire cast of the painting has changed so dramatically, through a restoration that the museum insists was accomplished strictly by filling in losses. It does appear (from comments made to the Philadelphia Inquirer, below) that the conservators painted over Eakins' underpainting, from which the top layers had been scrubbed away by overzealous restorers in the 1920s.

See for yourself. Here are the before and after pictures, provided by the museum:

BEFORE:


Thomas Eakins, "The Gross Clinic," 1875, before restoration, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

AFTER:


The same painting, after restoration

The restorers themselves acknowledged the difficult issues posed by this over-cleaned painting, in the conservation information posted on the Philadelphia Museum's Gross Clinic website:

For many years, owners and restorers often did not understand the intentional low key of Eakins's paintings, and felt they would be improved if they looked brighter and higher in contrast. Cleanings motivated by such thinking broke through and removed the final veils of paint Eakins had used to perfect the relationships of tones.

The lighter and more colorful foundation layers exposed by overcleaning were never meant to be seen in finished pictures. This is what happened in the "The Gross Clinic's" operating theater tunnel; Eakins underpainted it in the red-orange color, adding the dark tone and figures to the painting at a later point. Attempting to lighten this dark passage, a restorer in the 1920's discovered the color underneath and, for whatever reason, preferring it to Eakins's deep tone, inappropriately uncovered it.

By clicking the Conservation Plan tab on the same website, we also learn:

The removal of the 1961 varnish and retouching in the cleaning will reveal the actual state of The Gross Clinic, that is, the condition of Eakins's paint with all the alterations and incidental damages incurred over 134 years exposed. At that stage of the treatment, the visual gap separating the painting's present appearance from the way it looked originally will be widest; however, what survives of Eakins's own work will also be clearest.

The question of what should be done, ethically, philosophically, and practically, to reconcile the changed appearance of a painting with its original state is the defining challenge at the core of every restoration. The path to be taken in our restoration of "The Gross Clinic" will be the subject of ongoing discussion as we move through the present examination phase, and into the treatment.

The museum's officials discussed the outcome of that "ongoing discussion" with Stephan Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer, for his recent article on the restoration.

Salisbury reports their somewhat defensive comments:

"It's only by patching in at a microscopic level every little loss that we see here and working with the documentation that the picture starts to come together again," Tucker [the conservator] said.

"He's not covering up any of Eakins' paint. He's just filling the damages," interjected [Kathleen] Foster [senior curator of American art].

"Restoration is provisional. It reflects taste," Tucker said. "It used to be denied that it reflected taste, but we admit the bias. So in this restoration we are going to take the tunnel back tonally to where it is here [in a 1875-76 Eakins wash drawing]. Now the rules of conservation say you can't change the known character of the original. Well, we're not doing that. We're changing a damaged area. This is not original paint surface. This is an underpainting....

Said Foster: "It's completely reversible. You can get back to this [unrestored state] at any time."

I'll be unable to attend Thursday's "Gross Clinic" press preview; I'll be elsewhere in the same state on a five-day work-cation (posting sporadically, if at all, until next week). But I'll be delighted, when I do get the chance to visit, to see my wish at last granted: Thomas Eakins' two medical masterpieces---"The Gross Clinic" and "The Agnew Clinic"---will finally be exhibited side-by-side.

Although both have long resided in Philly, this is said to be the first time that they've been seen together in the same room.


Eakins, "The Agnew Clinic," 1889, on long-term loan to Philadelphia Museum from the University of Pennsylvania

Over at HuffPost Arts, I've amplified a bit on my recent CultureGrrl post about the Museum of Modern Art's new Matisse show.

I included a couple of additional photos and quoted from the conclusion of curator John Elderfield's remarks to the press, which got cut off at the end of my CultureGrrl Video.

When I opened my July 26 issue of the New Yorker today, I was amused to find Peter Schjeldahl's review of the show accompanied by a huge, across-the-fold image of the same painting that I had caught him staring at during the press preview:


Schjeldahl eyeballing Matisse's "Blue Nude," 1907, from the Baltimore Museum's Cone Collection

Like me, Schjeldahl regarded this show as "largely a forensic exercise, attended by scholarly minutiae and the lavish use of X-rays, infrared reflectograms laser scanning, and other current gadgets of the field....Their [the curators'] finicky documentation...puts me in mind of meteorologists taking barometric readings outdoors in a hurricane. Their findings are obviously germane but well short of compelling, in terms of a viewer's experience."

The paintings and sculptures may be timed-ticketed blockbuster material, but the dry interpretive texts surely aren't. It seemed that the preeminent Matisse expert Elderfield, in talking to the press, understood the need to hit all the artistic points that the labels had missed in the organizers' zeal to set before us all the nuggets of information about Matisse's methods that had been scientifically excavated.

I'll have a bit more to say about one of the paintings in the show, probably next week.

Last Wednesday I reported that Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum had suddenly subbed a Rosenquist exhibition for its previously announced fall show, "Atmospheric Conditions," which was to have featured works by Bill Viola, Eric Fischl and April Gornik.

The museum's website had said (and still says, at this writing) that the original show was postponed due to "scheduling conflicts." I suggested last week that this development was "perhaps another sympton of [the Rose's] disarray."

On Saturday, the Boston Globe's indispensable Geoff Edgers moved the ball down the field. Edgers reports:

Three artists whose work was to be featured in a September show at the Rose Art Museum are pulling out until Brandeis University makes a legally binding promise to preserve the campus museum's valuable permanent collection.

Bill Viola, a renowned video artist, and painters April Gornik and Eric Fischl have postponed the show "Atmospheric Conditions'' until Brandeis administrators sign an agreement not to sell art from the collection, according to Gornik.