October 2006 Archives

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror, in the process of being dismantled today at Rockefeller Center.

I overheard a Rockefeller Center employee tell a tourist today that "Sky Mirror" was being removed to allow unobstructed views from Fifth Avenue of the soon-to-arrive Christmas tree. But he added that it might go back up after the tree comes down. Let's hope this is more than hearsay! No official word yet from Barbara Gladstone, Kapoor's dealer, who had told me that she was trying to sell the piece for around $5 million.

I keep going back to the Minnie Mouse sex tapes on YouTube---not because I'm an costumed-character pervert, but because I keep wondering if Disney's going to protect Minnie's trademark, if not her honor, by shutting this down.

Sure enough, the first copies of the video did come down, but were replaced by a shortened version, with a Spanish-language description. And this one was not even behind the 18-or-over firewall.

A legal analysis was posted Thursday in the online magazine Slate, which explains how YouTube gets away with this and other seeming violations of copyright and trademark. According to Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and co-author of "Who Controls the Internet?", Section 512 of the Copyright Code protects YouTube and other sites that provide user-posted content, by virtue of the law's "notice and take down" provision:

That means that if Jon Stewart notices an infringing copy of "The Daily Show" on YouTube, Comedy Central can write a letter to YouTube and demand it be taken down. Then, so long as YouTube acts "expeditiously" and so long as YouTube wasn't already aware that the material was there, YouTube is in the clear. In legal jargon, YouTube is in a "safe harbor."

That's why, Wu suggests, Google's recent purchase of YouTube might not turn out to be what the NY Times has termed a "litigation-laden landmine."

Actually, Jon Stewart (or his network, Comedy Central) did notice infringing clips (as how could they not?) and on Friday, the network's owner, Viacom, sent a letter to YouTube demanding that it take down clips from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,'' and "The Colbert Report,'' according to an anonymous Viacom source quoted today by Reuters. The purging has begun.

CultureGrrl is no lawyer, but I have a feeling there's another side to Wu's legal argument: How long can YouTube/Google manage to pull off this see-no-evil act, knowing full well that people are posting things without legally proper permission (shades of Napster)? Like many other things about content on the Internet, the blurry lines drawn by YouTube and its users will need clarification.

The California Attorney General's office, fresh from its Getty follies, has just announced that "the Weinstein Company [run by ex-Miramaxers Bob and Harvey Weinstein] will be the first motion picture firm to embed anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) in DVD versions of movies that depict smoking."

I hate smoking as much as the next concerned parent, but if you're going to start tacking on wholesome anti-vice messages at the end of raunchy flicks, where does it all end? Having just seen (and admired) the latest Martin Scorsese meditation on depravity, "The Departed," I can envision as many PSAs "embedded" in that DVD as there were product advertisements inserted before the start of the movie: alcohol, drugs, handguns, unprotected sex---this movie has it all, including a prosthetic penis. But no nicotine, as far as I can recall.

I think the proper practitioners of parenting are parents---not movie moguls. Let's just say that "no animals were harmed," and leave it at that.

So you thought Ronald Lauder was dipping into his own fortune to pay the entire purchase price of Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I"?

Think again.

Did the Neue Galerie's board know in advance that Lauder's megabucks purchase commitment would result in the sale of three Schieles that had been displayed at the museum earlier this year? And why was the board's approval needed for the sale, if the works are all privately owned by Lauder?

Those are just two of the questions raised by this surprising development, reported by Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock. Assuming her report is accurate, the exact nature of the public/private partnership between the Neue Galerie and its chief benefactor urgently needs public clarification.

I'm getting "Verklempt Over Klimt" all over again: Just three months ago, CultureGrrl reported that Lauder told me "he had no intention of selling the works [that he owned] at the Neue Galerie [which constitute some 80 percent of its holdings] and that the foundation was backed by 'enough money for the next 200 years.'"

How quickly intentions change.

Meanwhile, Ronald's brother Leonard, chairman of the Whitney Museum, "declined to be interviewed" for Robin Pogrebin's article in tomorrow's NY Times, which states that the museum "has all but decided that moving its expansion to another site [the High Line, downtown] would make more sense" than building the long-planned Renzo Piano-designed expansion, which would have been added onto the museum's existing facility.

And all this confusion of purpose on Halloween eve. Trick or treat?

CultureGrrl hopes that the upcoming Cecilia Beaux show is the beginning of the High Museum's intention to rely more on its own collection (which includes two Beauxs) and on its own curatorial talent, rather than shelling out big bucks for the fundraising campaigns of other institutions. High-rent shows, which even the Met is now organizing, perniciously up the ante for museum loans everywhere. These days, loan shows increasingly come not only with reasonable costs but also with kickbacks.

Since it opened its Renzo Piano-designed expansion last November, the High of Atlanta has already raised the stakes twice: first, by agreeing to bestow $6.4 million on the Louvre for the renovation of its decorative arts wing, in exchange for a series of three exhibitions. The total cost, including the renovation donation, will be a hefty $18 million.

This munificence doesn't even get the High an exclusive: The Denver Art Museum recently announced that a modified version of the first Louvre show, which is now at the High, will travel to Denver's even more recently expanded facility. A Denver spokesperson, Andrea Kalivas Fulton, said that future Louvre exhibitions were also being discussed, but added that disclosing financial arrangements for shows "is not something we've ever done." She said that her museum had no idea whether the fee it would be paying for the first show, arranged through the High, included a tithe for Louvre renovations.

The second exhibition in the Louvre's Atlanta trilogy will be mostly antiquities, with some Houdon thrown in. The website preview for the third episode shows no images of artworks---only postcard-worthy photos of the Louvre itself. And its description sounds like one big promo for the French museum:

"Louvre Atlanta" will explore the Louvre of today and tomorrow. Exhibitions under development for this year will highlight the development of the present-day Louvre and its new relations with society and the world.

And now the High has announced that it is "developing an exhibition of three newly restored panels from Lorenzo Ghiberti's celebrated 'Gates of Paradise,'" the famous gilded bronze doors, adorned with sculptural reliefs, from the Baptistery in the Piazza del Duomo, Florence. The exhibition is "tentatively scheduled" to travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum. The High is again (according to a NY Times report) digging into its pockets, this time to come up with funds for the restoration of a 14th-century silver altar in the Museum dell'Opera del Duomo.

Meanwhile, Michael Shapiro, director of the High, plans to deliver a talk Nov. 7 on "The Pleasures and Challenges of the Entrepreneurial Art Museum" at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass. He will explore the "relatively new and widening gulf that has developed between the practices and values of larger, collection-rich art museums [i.e., the Louvre] and those of a more nimble, aspirational breed of museums [i.e., the High]."

"The Entrepreneurial Art Museum"? That sounds more like the lecture that the Louvre's director, Henri Loyrette, should be giving. After all, entrepreneurs are the people who devise new schemes to make money, not questionable ways to spend it.

CultureGrrl thanks another Cecilia Beaux enthusiast, Christine Giviskos, assistant drawings curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, for pointing out that the High Museum's upcoming Beaux exhibition is not, as the Atlanta museum claims, "the first critical examination of [her work] in more than 30 years."

"Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture" was, in fact, mounted at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, a bit more than a decade ago: Oct. 6, 1995 - Jan. 26, 1996.

Didn't the High's research, if not its curators' memories, manage to come up with this?

CultureGrrl readers know I've been hard on the High (here and here). Atlanta's recently expanded High Museum of Art has been in the forefront of a problematically proliferating phenomenon: the willingness of certain institutions to buy a higher profile by spending huge rental fees for shows from sister institutions that should treat them as colleagues, not cash cows.

But now the High has a different sort of show in the works---one that is high on CultureGrrl's wishlist: The museum's own curator of American art, Sylvia Yount, will mount the first exhibition in 30 years devoted to American painter Cecilia Beaux. I had just mused about such a show (albeit one that would also include comparisons to Cassatt and Morisot) in my review of the Metropolitan Museum's "Americans in Paris" exhibition.

Now, I know I'm powerful, but I can't claim that the High suddenly dreamed up this idea in response to my designating Beaux as "the discovery of the [Met's] show." Nevertheless, from the description in the press release, it sounds pretty close to what I had wished for:

"Cecilia Beaux, American Figure Painter" will illuminate Beaux's work by exploring issues of gender, class and the importance of place in relation to Beaux's identity and reputation as the leading female artist working in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition features approximately 85 works, including oils, works on paper and decorative objects, and will be on view in Atlanta from May 12 through September 9, 2007, before traveling to the Tacoma Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

COMING NEXT: The high stakes of high-rent exhibitions.

Will van Gogh's famous but elusive "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" soon return to the art market?

Reader discretion is hereby advised: This is a speculative item, following up on another speculative item---an article that I published on Mar. 7, 2000 in the Wall Street Journal. In that piece, I tried to do for the iconic van Gogh (which had fetched $82.5 million in 1990 at Christie's) what Marc Spiegler, a writer for New York Magazine, recently tried to do for Picasso's $95-million "Dora Maar au Chat"---figure out who might own it.

My interviews then with artworld sources led me to one likely candidate:

One possessor of "Gachet"-level paintings, Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl, "has an extensive collection, never comments on what he owns or sells and hardly ever lends," according to William Poppe, managing director of Normandy Asset Management in New York, which advises Mr. Flöttl on his fine-arts transactions. "If we did own 'Gachet,'" declared Mr. Poppe, "we wouldn't have any comment." Mr. Flöttl...received unaccustomed publicity late last year when he sold a major Cézanne to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for a price that Scott Schaefer, the museum's curator of paintings, indicated was more than $50 million.

Flöttl received some unaccustomed and considerably more unwelcome publicity this week in the Wall Street Journal (to which I can't link), Bloomberg News and today's Royal Gazette (the daily newspaper in Bermuda). In the words of the WSJ's report, Flöttl and eight others have been named by Austrian prosecutors "on charges ranging from embezzlement to fraud" as the result of an investigation into links between Refco, a U.S. commodity brokerage firm, and Bawag PSK, a Vienna bank for which Flöttl traded from New York. "Refco investors and U.S. prosecutors allege [that Bawag] sought to hide its own bad debt that largely was a result of Wolfgang Flöttl's trading losses," according to yesterday's WSJ. Bloomberg reported that Flöttl was charged with "involvement in the improper use of funds."

Flöttl has previously denied involvement in the Refco scandal, and his lawyer, Martin Goldenberg, told the Royal Gazette this week that Flöttl "feels strongly that no crimes have been committed."

Whether or not he owns, let alone plans to unload, "Gachet," Flöttl has already in the last few years sold several works for less than he paid for them, according to reports by Carol Vogel in the NY Times. One of those was Picasso's again-famous "Le Rêve," which he bought at Christie's for $48.4 million in 1997 and later sold to Steve Wynn (of errant elbow fame), for a reported $42 million.

In her coverage of the 2001 antitrust court proceedings against Sotheby's, Vogel reported that the auction house in 1998 had given a $240 million loan to Flöttl, "who had been a major buyer and seller at auction for years."

When I wrote my WSJ article, curator Gary Tinterow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who had unsuccessfully tried to borrow "Gachet" for an exhibition, told me that he knew who the owner was---a major collector of "all sorts of distinguished European pictures---old masters as well as Impressionist and post-Impressionist" and "someone who doesn't lend."

Whether or not the van Gogh is (or ever was) in Flöttl's possession, his current predicament may have significant art-market ripples. As for "Gachet," the comment made to me more than six years ago by John Leighton, then director of the Van Gogh Museum, still holds: Noting wistfully that his institution badly needed a good portrait by the artist, he expressed confidence that the painting "at some stage will appear again."

(For a photo of the Flöttl with his wife, Anne Eisenhower, granddaughter of the former President, go here and scroll down to the 11th row of couples' photos.)

Judging from Ben Brantley's NY Times review today of the Dylan/Tharp "The Times They Are A-Changin'," I think CultureGrrl has found a new calling: reviewing Broadway musicals on the basis of their advance radio ads. (For an excerpt from Terry Teachout's similarly dismissive Wall Street Journal review, go here.)

It looks like the best Dylan show in New York is still at the Morgan. And, running through Jan. 6, it should still be open after the Broadway show folds.

Meanwhile, when it comes to my recent appraisal of the Museum of Modern Art's Brice Marden show, Roberta Smith, in today's NY Times, agrees with Lauren Hutton, not CultureGrrl. She calls the show "a quietly magnificent retrospective." But she never mentions anything about the drawings, other than to say that they are "a medium integral to Mr. Marden's development." The extensive drawings display was a major (and to me, superior) part of the show. Did Roberta not find her way down to the drawing galleries on the third floor?

And if not, does that not say something about MoMA's post-expansion penchant for inconveniently dividing up major shows between distant parts of the building? What happened to the museum's previously stated intention to integrate media in the new facility, so that works on paper would not seem quite so marginalized?

It was gutsy of Gary Tinterow, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's catch-all curator of 19th-century through contemporary, to deliver a public lecture Tuesday on the hot-button topic of "the history of the Metropolitan's involvement with contemporary art---its strengths and weaknesses---as well as the creation of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art."

This merger of two chronologically sequential departments under the auspices of a 19th-century specialist raised fears that contemporary art would be marginalized---an impression strengthened by these recent comments by the Met's traditionalist director, Philippe de Montebello. Tinterow's talk did little to dispel those fears.

He began his discourse (the lead-off event in this year's "ArtTalks" series sponsored by the American Federation of Arts) with a recital of the various bequests that had enriched the Met's 19th- and 20th-century collections.

Then he jolted his listeners awake with a startling littany of the gaps in the collection of our nation's premier "encyclopedic" art museum. The Met may have its Duccio, but its missing-in-action roster of modern and contemporary art includes:

---Matisse: "We have his early works and his Nice works, but few of the heroic years so well represented at MoMA---his work from the 'teens."
---Mondrian: "One small work from his high abstract period."
---Surrealism: "We lack quite a bit in having a representive selection."
---Duchamp: None.
---German Expressionism: A small number, including Dix and Beckmann.
---Russian Constructivism: "None at all."
---Postwar European: "Very little."
---Pop Art: "Weak, except for Warhol....Last year we made our first acquisition of a work by Rauschenberg, from David Geffen's collection."
---20th-Century Women Artists: "Insufficient....I wish we had a great early Frankenthaler to put with the big boys."
---Important Contemporary Artists: Nothing by Beuys, Andre, Ruscha, Richter, Marden, Hesse, Serra.
---Art of the Last 20 Years: "Very thin."

Tinterow then conceded the obvious: "There's a lot of work to be done." He added, however, that "we can't possibly represent every artist of interest to us in the permanent collection."

So what ARE they going to do about it?

COMING SOON: How the Met is trying to fill its contemporary generation gap.

The big Getty news of the day is the new antiquities acquisitions policy but let's also give the J. Paul Getty Museum credit for getting back to basics with Tuesday's opening of its new 7,000-square-foot space for photography. What's the point of having a world-class permanent collection of photographs, if you don't set aside adequate space to display it? Now they have.

The Getty's photography trove, which is the museum's only collecting area that ventures into contemporary territory, began opportunistically in 1984: Two important collections became available---those assembled by collectors Samuel Wagstaff and Arnold Crane. Now the museum has some 31,000 photographic works and is inaugurating its new galleries with a show of 160 gifts, promised gifts, and loans from Los Angeles collectors Bruce and Nancy Berman.

Christopher Knight offered glowing praise praise for the show and the new galleries in yesterday's LA Times. But he also had harsh words for the "banal" modern outdoor sculpture that has sprouted up around the Getty's campus, acquired last year from the collection of late movie producer Ray Stark.

At least the conversation about the Getty is starting to focus on artistic interest, not conflicts of interest.

This just in: Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, makes good on his pledge to develop a new set of acquisitions guidelines, to help prevent the Getty from getting embroiled in future antiquities controversies.

The Getty guidelines (reproduced in full here) require that the following be provided in connection with future Getty antiquities acquisitions:

---Documentation or substantial evidence that the item was in the United States by November 17, 1970 (the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) and that there is no reason to suspect it was illegally exported from its country of origin, OR
---Documentation or substantial evidence that the item was out of its country of origin before November 17, 1970 and that it has been or will be legally imported into the United States, OR
---Documentation or substantial evidence that the item was legally exported from its country of origin after November 17, 1970 and that it has been or will be legally imported into the United States.

It is notable that the Getty chose 1970 as its cutoff year, not 1983, which is when the U.S. adopted legislation to implement the UNESCO Convention. And this is a much more stringent standard than the one that was announced in February by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stated that it will consider acquisitions of antiquities known to have been out of their countries of origin for merely 10 years.

The Getty's previous policy required objects to be from "established, well-documented collections" and published before 1995.

The Getty guidelines further state that all provenance information "shall be made available to the public upon written request," with one major loophole: Provenance information can be withheld if, "in the opinion of the Museum Director and the Getty Trust's Office of General Counsel, specific circumstances dictate otherwise." (Would such "specific circumstances" include a seller's requirement of confidentiality?)

Also, an acquisition "will be published no later than in the annual report for the year in which it was acquired."

What about an object with problematic provenance that is already in the museum's collection? The Getty's actions "may, in the appropriate circumstances, include a return of the object to its country of origin or restitution of an object to an earlier owner, provided such a return or restitution is consistent with the Trustees' legal and fiduciary duties as stewards of a charitable trust."

Now if only the Getty could just settle its little tiff with Italy.

Now that Sotheby's has posted its promising sales results for the first three weeks of October, it has also put back up on its website the results for the previous nine months. CultureGrrl had previously flagged the mysterious disappearance of its 2006 monthly sales figures, which occurred after September 2006 showed a slight decline from September of the previous year.

This month, with $325.35 million in sales during the first three weeks, should easily surpass the $328.93 million in sales for October 2005 (scroll down). Nineteen additional auctions were scheduled for this week.

Today is the diamond annversary of CultureGrrl's link to the capital of the artworld. I'm looking forward to gazing out my window while I lie in bed tonight and seeing both towers finally lit at the same time. What took them so long?

The world's only 14-lane suspension bridge, the GWB was designed by Othmar H. Ammann. Its total traffic last year was 107,224,000.

And it's always a beautiful sight!

I'm sure that when my Brice Marden appraisal appeared earlier today, CultureGrrl readers around the country were asking themselves, "But what does Lauren Hutton think?"

Now we know!

I can understand why, as reported in today's NY Times, the Whitney Museum might want to consider ditching its on-site expansion plans for the trendy environs of downtown. Its Renzo Piano-designed proposal for Madison Avenue suffered significant modification in response to neighbors' critiques and government reviews, and there is still an unresolved lawsuit from local opponents. The High Line, in a comparatively undeveloped area, will probably pose fewer restrictions and attract younger crowds.

Whitney press spokesperson Jan Rothschild confirmed to CultureGrrl that dropping Piano's plan is one of the possibilities now under consideration. The museum, she said, is in discussions with New York officials about use of the city-owned High Line property (which was to have been the site of the now scrapped new facility for the Dia Art Foundation). Other possible sites, Rothschild said, are also being considered.

But when a museum gets a deserved reputation as a revolving door for directors and architects, who will want to work there? Will Piano join the ranks of Michael Graves and Rem Koolhaas as distinguished architects who spent considerable time and creative energy on aborted Whitney expansions?

And will the current Whitney director, Adam Weinberg, join the Guggenheim's Thomas Krens in mounting a mini-retrospective of his institution's unbuilt facilities?

Will someone please use some Bounty paper towels (preferably soaked in cleaning solution) on Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror?

Nearing this Friday's announced end of its five-week display at New York's Rockefeller Center, its "polished stainless steel" urgently needs polishing: Its cloudiness is not just a reflection of the sky, and it also bears numerous vertical stains that seem to be issuing from the seams between its steel segments.

This no longer clear surface negates the publicity description from the Public Art Fund, which calls the piece a "non-object"---"a sculpture that, despite its monumentality, suggests a window or void and often seems to vanish into its surroundings."

Also worse for wear is another Public Art Fund project still up yesterday at the southeast entrance to Central Park, two days past its announced closing date: Sarah Sze's Corner Plot (below).

Described in the publicity as "in pristine condition," it has now suffered some deterioration of its bricks. What's worse, the substantial condensation now obscuring its windows all but obliterates the view of Sze's intricate constructions inside.

It's amazing how many jaded New Yorkers pass this odd fragment of an apparently sunken apartment building without giving it a single glance. Curious children, however, invariably peer into the windows and climb the walls.

MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass., is about to announce its plan to transform a three-story, 27,000-square-foot building on its campus into a "quasi-permanent living archive" for 50 of Sol LeWitt's intricately engrossing but far too ephemeral wall drawings. The galleries, designed by the artist himself, are to open in Fall 2008.

The $9-million cost ($6 million raised to date) will also fund a three-volume LeWitt catalogue raisonné and an endowment to support the installation for 25 years. The project will increase MASS MoCA's gallery space by 30 percent.

Organized in partnership with the Yale University Art Gallery, this is the first realization of director Joseph Thompson's longstanding dream to complement MASS MoCA's temporary exhibitions with a "core collection" of works and projects too large to be permanently displayed in conventional facilities.

The man has vision, lots of raw space in empty factory buildings, and the persistence and patience needed to carry out unconventional ideas.

The Propitious Garden of Plane Image, Third Version, (photographed unfinished in May 2006), 2000-2006, oil on linen, six panels, overall 72 x 288 inches, collection the artist. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, © 2006 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

How I wish I had never read this article about Brice Marden's intimate relationship with Bounty paper towels! I don't know if my feelings about the over-thought, overworked quality of his "loopy doopy" paintings (to borrow Sol LeWitt's phrase for his own squiggly phase) were excessively influenced by what I had learned about Marden's mop-ups. His squiggly phase (more conventionally described as calligraphic) was preceded by his Kelly-like colored-panel phase and his Ryman-like monochrome phase.

In his catalogue, Gary Garrels, curator of the Marden retrospective that opens Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, acknowledges the artist's propensity for obsessive reworking:

Marden, in examining paintings he has already released to the world, has occasionally decided that he wants to continue to work on them. The continuing evolution of a single painting can often parallel the challenge Marden has set himself throughout his career. For the conclusion offered by "finishing" is only temporary.

To my mind, the best works in the show, which I viewed yesterday, are the drawings---fluent, flowing and lyrical, in contrast with paintings besmudged by second guesses and doubt.

Like MoMA's recent Elizabeth Murray retrospective, this one ends with work on which the paint has barely dried: two sprawling six-panel versions of "The Propitious Garden of Plane Image." In the catalogue and again at the press preview, Garrels felt he needed to define the word "propitious" for the vocabulary-challenged. Maybe we're not great judges of art, but at least give us credit for SAT words!

Maybe I should Bounty this review.

Former J. Paul Getty Trust board member Barbara Fleischman replies to my report about her "new cultural philanthropy":

I was interested to read your comments regarding my support of arts and cultural reporting at Columbia University.

What propelled my decision to be part of this initiative was the irresponsible and scurrilous reporting of Marion True's case and where it seeped over into untrue, manufactured stories about my husband and me. This has been a most unpleasant and sobering experience.

Thus, I am encouraged at Columbia University's project to educate journalists on the need for ethical, truthful, and responsible reporting and am delighted to be of help.

Apparently, when I quipped that it looked as though she had "no hard feelings" about the LA Times' coverage, I couldn't have been more wrong.

(Part I is here.)

The mandarins of the Mainstream Media like to debunk blogs as superficial at best, trashy at worst. But properly deployed, a blogger's cards can trump the more traditional players at their own game. Here are a few tricks that nimble CultureGrrl of the Blogosphere can execute but that plodding Rosenbaum of the Mainstream Media can't:

---Link to primary source documents: Reporters can briefly summarize reports and allude to the contents of documents or statements that may be available in full on websites. With a click on my links, visitors to my site can read the whole thing. Even newspapers' websites frequently fail to provide their readers with such resources.

---Relentless follow-up: If someone says he intends to do something by a certain date, I can keep him honest. Traditional reporters, who need more substantial rationales for follow-up articles, often drop the ball. I can run a small item to update a story.

---Provide early-warning signals: Newspapers usually report trends that have already happened. I can spot early indicators and flag them.

---Scoop the slowpokes: Sometimes reporters do get things into the paper (or at least onto its website) right away; often they don't. My speed of publication is limited by how fast I can type.

---Guide the debate: Because my opinion is prompt, pointed and (I hope) respected, I can influence the deliberations of slower, more widely read opinionmakers.

---Hone my own voice: I believe my writing has improved since I started blogging---first, because I'm constantly writing; second, because I'm free to be more inventive and colorful (and occasionally off-color), without worrying about the tone-it-down sensibilities of editors. I have a penchant (if not a talent) for wordplay. Now I can indulge it.

What I can't do, alas, is make money: Nobody pays me to blog. While some established practitioners do profit handsomely, newcomers need to build audience before they can build ad sales or other forms of support. Although I enjoy knowing that an elite group of artworld movers and shakers, as well as members of the general art audience, read me regularly, my labor-intensive blog is, financially, a slog.

As for Linda Greenhouse (mentioned in my previous post), I hope she keeps writing for the NY Times, despite the fact that she has now outted her own political views. A new assignment as an Op-Ed columnist would be the appropriate form of discipline for the crime of opinion-mongering. After all, Maureen Dowd could definitely use some female companionship!

Today marks my six-month blogging anniversary---a fitting moment to reconsider what lured me into this demanding pursuit---a somewhat unconventional and inconvenient genre for a tradition-bound journalist.

What started me thinking about this was not my anniversary, but this recent NY Times piece by Byron Calame, the paper's public editor.

In roundhousing Linda Greenhouse, who is the Times' veteran Supreme Court correspondent, Calame added this snide aside about blogging: "Postings of personal opinions on blogs beyond the Times, unrestrained by self-discipline, are easy for critics to find and fashion into a dossier attacking the credibility of the reporter."

In flogging blogs, Calame joined the ranks of other distinguished media critics: Nicholas Lehmann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, in The New Yorker; and Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, who on Apr. 21 wrote an anti-blog screed for that page (to which I'm not permitted to link).

Greenhouse got reprimanded by Calame for public punditry after pummeling the Bush administration's policies and practices in a speech delivered to fellow Harvard/Radcliffe alums. Who can blame seasoned writers like Greenhouse, who have seen and understood so much, for longing to express long-suppressed views, informed by their accumulated wisdom?

Which is why, almost six months ago, I started this blog. But now that I've shed my self-effacing cultural journalist's persona for my feisty alter ego, CultureGrrl, there's no going back: I can never again pretend to be a dispassionate observer when I interview sources on topics about which I've expressed strong views (and neither can Greenhouse). It doesn't matter that I've held opinions all my life and that I am still capable of straightforward reportage. What matters is that I am now perceived by both sources and readers as biased on hot-button topics. That may compromise my credibility as a fair and accurate reporter.

That's okay with me. I feel ripe to mature from chronicler to interpreter. I still exercise strong journalistic chops, but now I apply them to buttressing my opinions and to influencing the opinions of others.

COMING NEXT: What CultureGrrl can do that Rosenbaum can't.

I haven't acquired these tomes yet, let alone absorbed them. (What I'm reading now is George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House." I've got tickets!)

But on the assumption that CultureGrrl's readers share some of her interests, here's what I plan to peruse in the near future:

Collecting Contemporary by Adam Lindemann (Taschen)---From the publisher's description, it sounds like this includes tasty tidbits from some major artworld players: "The main body of the book brings together tell-all interviews with the biggest players in the global art market: the Critic (Rimanelli), the Dealer (Boesky, Brunnet/Hackert, Coles, Deitch, Fortes, Gagosian, Gladstone, Glimcher, Hetzler, Lybke, Perrotin, Rosen, Shave, Wirth), the Consultant (Cortez, Fletcher, Heller, Segalot, Westreich), the Collector (Brant, Broad, Habsburg, Joannou, Lambert, Lehmann, Lopez, Paz, Pinault, Rothschild Foundation, Saatchi), the Auction House Expert (Cappellazzo, de Pury, Meyer), and the Museum Curator/Director (Dennison, Eccles, Heiss, Lowry, Peyton-Jones)."

Building the Frick Collection: An Introduction to the House and Its Collections by the Frick's chief curator, Colin Bailey (Scala)---CultureGrrl readers know about my fondness for single-collector "jewel box" museums. The Frick is the gold standard. From the description in the Frick's press release: "Bailey not only carefully documents the construction of the Gilded Age mansion that today houses the museum but examines how its creation influenced Frick's taste during the final years of his life. Bailey's work draws from several biographies of Frick as well as from recent studies of domestic architecture and interior decoration during the Gilded Age, setting the house's construction--Frick's last great achievement--in context."

The Girl with the Gallery by Lindsay Pollock (Perseus)---I'm interested in this book for its subject matter (dealer Edith Halpert) and also as a possible role model for a project that I'm considering for myself: a biography of another important female artworld trailblazer---not a dealer, but a museum pioneer. Here's the publisher's description: "In 1926, Edith Gregor Halpert, just twenty-six years old, opened one of the first art galleries in Greenwich Village and set about turning the art world upside down. Her Downtown Gallery, which she ran for forty-four years, laid the groundwork for the art market's modern era, and its aggressive promotion and sales tactics." (Available Oct. 30)

Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock by Kirk Varnedoe (Princeton University Press)---This is an edited version of Varnedoe's last hurrah before his untimely death in 2003: his series of lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, in which he presented "a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction" (according to the publisher's description). "He frankly confronts the uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art produced in the last five decades. He makes a compelling argument for its history and value." I was moved to tears by the video of the poignant conclusion of these lectures, which was shown at a memorial gathering held at the Metropolitan Museum. With his brilliantly audacious insights and frighteningly fluent articulateness, Varnedoe was one of those blazing lights of whom it can truthfully be said: We shall not see his likes again. A talk commemorating the publication of Varnedoe's book will be given at the National Gallery on Dec. 16 by Varnedoe's successor as chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, John Elderfield. (Available in November)

This article in today's NY Times about the self-portraits of an artist with Alzheimer's struck a chord with me. That's because I got my 92-year-old father to strike a chord for me yesterday. He had joyously played jazz standards all his life, but now usually declines when I ask him to entertain me. One of my favorite photos of him, a copy of which sits atop my own piano, shows him at the center of a crowd of beer-swilling, cigarette-smoking World War II soldiers in uniform, who sing lustily while he thumps the ivories.

Yesterday, Dad treated my mother and me to all his old arrangements, which I've know by heart from childhood. A little rusty, a little scrambled, but they were still in his fingers---an extraordinary feat, considering his memory's general disarray.

Unmentioned in Denise Grady's Times article (in the Health section, not the Arts pages) is the more famous case of an artist who continued to paint while descending into dementia---Willem de Kooning. Grady quotes a neurologist, Dr. Bruce Miller, about the characteristics of Alzheimer's-influenced art. It's a description that could be be applied to de Kooning's late work:

The art becomes more abstract, the images are blurrier and vague, more surrealistic. Sometimes there's use of beautiful, subtle color.

I was also struck by the similarity between William Utermohlen's last self-portrait (reproduced with the Times piece), and a late skull-like self-portrait of Picasso---the final, harrowing work in the Museum of Modern Art's 1996 "Picasso and Portraiture" show, so brilliantly curated by William Rubin.

Here's the response to CultureGrrl from Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, on the recent negative comments by Italy's Culture Minister regarding antiquities discussions with the Getty:

We do not intend to comment on the continuing negotiations until we're ready to announce a final agreement.

Apparently, the Italian negotiators do not share this reticence.

Having left the board of the J. Paul Getty Trust, Barbara Fleischman has found a new cultural cause to support. This just in from the newsletter of my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

The Barbara Fleischman Fellowship has been established for students committed to arts and cultural reporting.

I guess that means no hard feelings about the hard knocks from the investigative reporters at the LA Times!

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli on Friday took the occasion of the signing of an antiquities agreement with Switzerland to issue a highly negative assessment of ongoing discussions with the J. Paul Getty Museum over 52 Getty-owned antiquities that Italy claims were illicitly removed from its territory.

According to an Italian-language report by the ANSA news agency (supplied to me by the Culture Ministry), Rutelli indicated that negotiations with the Getty, while "still open," were on the verge of "rupture." The Getty, according to the report, is willing to return only "about 20" works, and "does not want to return the two most important masterpieces," identified as "the famous Morgantina Venus and the Athlete of Lysippos." ANSA reported that without those two sculptures, Italy will not sign an agreement.

Under the accord with Switzerland, which has been a major center for marketing antiquities of dubious provenance, sellers and buyers of Italian archeological objects will now be required to convincingly document their origins.

Italy is also thinking of the possibility of extending the collaboration between the two countries to more recent objects, such as Renaissance art, Rutelli added.

Italy has already signed antiquities agreements with the Metropolitan Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Back in June, Italy and the Getty said they had reached a tentative agreement that would be formalized by the end of the summer. Meanwhile, the trial in Rome of former Getty antiquities curator Marion True resumed last week.

UPDATE: Reaction from Michael Brand, director of the Getty Museum, here.

You know how you can sometimes tell just from listening to a radio ad whether an upcoming musical theater production is likely to be worth seeing? If the selections chosen for the promotion irk you, what are the chances that you'll feel differently about the rest of the music in the show?

I loved "Movin' Out," the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp musical. And you could already tell from the promos for "Jersey Boys" that it would do justice to The Four Seasons. But I'm already dubious about "The Times They Are A-Changin'," choreographer Tharp's take on another singer/songwriter I esteem, Bob Dylan. (It opens on Broadway this Thursday.)

Many people have successfully covered Dylan songs: The current Morgan Library and Museum show provides recordings of many covers in its listening booths, so that people put off by Dylan's grating vocals can still appreciate his oeuvre.

The vocals in the radio ads indicate that Tharp's treatment has given Dylan's rough-edged music a slick Broadway gloss---essentially killing it. According to the show's website, "Dylan has contributed to the orchestrations" and has deemed show "the best presentation of my songs I have ever seen or heard on any stage." I guess he hasn't seen himself.

Tharp's Billy Joel adaptation worked because it was true to his spirit and his music, thanks to its Vietnam-era story line and, especially, the perfectly keyed performance of lead vocalist and keyboardist Michael Cavanaugh (who now, according to his website, is reduced to doing corporate gigs).

The story line of the Dylan show is phantasmagorical and, perhaps, allegorical. An article in yesterday's NY Times Sunday Magazine (which was as much about Alex Witchel's difficulties in interviewing Tharp as it was about the show's gestation), says the play depicts "a traveling circus run by an abusive father at odds with his artistic son; complicating things further is the woman who comes between them."

According to the Times, it was Dylan who approached Tharp, after the success of '"Movin' Out," to give him similar treatment. If this enterprise tarnishes his legacy, he can't say, "It ain't me, babe."

Yesterday, the NY Times ran this appreciative obit by Roberta Smith of Marcia Tucker, the doughty founder of the New Museum.

And today, the New Museum's website has...nothing.

Cecilia Beaux, "Ernesta (Child with Nurse)," 1894, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Curator Barbara Weinberg says she wants visitors to the Met's upcoming show, Americans in Paris, 1860-1900 (opens Tuesday) to ask themselves:

Where have Charles Sprague Pearce and Dennis Miller Bunker been all my life?

Trust me, Barbara, that's not going to happen. But along with the ho-hum journeymen, there are many pleasant discoveries and rediscoveries to be made at this sprawling show---enough to carry you over the dull spots that are necessary to a comprehensive survey of the French sway over late 19th-century American artists.

In fact, this show could be seen as a lesser sequel to one of the greatest shows mounted at the Met in recent times---2003's "Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting." It's a bit of a shock to come to the "power wall" of the current show---a stunning line-up of huge canvases by Whistler and Sargent---and realize that two of the Sargents ("Madame X" and "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit") were also in the final gallery---devoted to the Spanish influence on American painting---that the Met appended to the Spanish/French show. We can infer from this that the Spanish influenced the French who influenced the Americans.

But unlike the previous show, this one displays no oeuvre by the influencers, only works by those influenced. Maybe that's just as well: The great French Impressionists and post-Impressionists were, for the most part, in a different league from their imitators, who would suffer by comparison.

Still, the generous helping of Cassatts, plus fine works by Eakins, Sargent, Whistler and Hassam, make the show a steady source of delight. (However, notwithstanding its label, Hassam's "Allies Day, May 1917" is no longer the artist's "most famous of 30 views of New York's flag-draped Fifth Avenue." For all the wrong reasons, the version formerly owned by Brooke Astor now is.)

For me the discovery of the show was not Pearce or Bunker but Cecilia Beaux, whose work I had sporadically seen but not previously focused on. The three charming, accomplished depictions of women, children and a cat in this exhibition caught my eye and started me mentally curating an all-woman show juxtaposing Cassatt, Morisot and Beaux.

One of the paintings by Beaux, "The Last Days of Childhood," and a Chase picture that CultureGrrl previously reproduced both reference an iconic work that was at the previous two venues for the show---London's National Gallery and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts---but, unfortunately, is not at the Met: Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1," popularly known as "Whistler's Mother." New York did get one less famous but still iconic work that didn't appear in the other two versions of the show: Cassatt's "Mother about to Wash her Sleepy Child" (1880), considered to be her first major painting on the mother-child theme that was so central to her oeuvre.

So what exactly WAS the nature of the French influence, and how did our nation's artists Americanize it? The wall text and object labels don't provide deep insight into this central question. Rather, they document the various points of contact between the Americans and the French, and describe details about the subject matter of the paintings that you can easily see for yourself.

Perhaps the best clue to what the curators (Kathleen Adler from London, Erica Hirshler from Boston and Weinberg) are getting at is provided in a label for a painting towards the end of the show, Edmund Tarbell's "Three Sisters---A Study in June Sunlight" (1890). With its densely painted, light-dappled figures, and its more loosely brushed, verdant background, it "epitomizes the artist's typically American combination of academic fundamentals and Impressionist fluency."

So there you have it.

Holland Cotter jumped the gun today, reviewing the Met's Americans in Paris show in the NY Times before it opens to the public next Tuesday. That's okay: Sometimes you want to be the first to weigh in. What's not okay is the visitors' information, provided along with the review:

"Americans in Paris: 1860-1900" continues through Jan. 28 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It doesn't "continue"; it hasn't opened yet (except for members' previews). So if you go to see it this weekend and the Met won't let you in, just say, "Cotter sent me." If they admit you, you'll know that the Times is even more powerful than we thought!

(CultureGrrl had planned to weigh in on the show next week, but give me a few minutes. I'm on it!)

This just in from the Harvard Crimson (via Andrew Ross Sorkin's NY Times blog):

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will join a New York-based global investment group as a part-time managing director.

The D. E. Shaw Group announced today that Summers "will be involved on a part-time basis in various strategic initiatives and high-level portfolio management activities."

Summers, on year-long sabbatical from the Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government, told the Crimson that "this is entirely within the context of the normal outside activities of a Harvard professor."

But how many profs have a little sideline at "one of the nation's largest hedge funds"? Sorkin reports that "D.E. Shaw, based in New York, had $20 billion in assets under management at the end of last year."

CultureGrrl trusts that one of Summers' "strategic initiatives" will be analyzing startups by female scientists.

(Okay, I know: This has nothing to do with culture. But CultureGrrl's daughter is a female scientist!)

Should every pre-1911 Chinese cultural object that's still in China stay in China?

That's essentially what the People's Republic of China is requesting, in its two-year-old call for the United States to impose import restrictions far more sweeping that any prior agreement forged by the U.S. under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Museum officials, dealers and collectors of Chinese material breathed a sigh of temporary relief at the news that the State Department had "agreed to delay a decision on [China's] controversial request" as reported in yesterday's NY Times

China's request would encompass virtually all types of cultural objects from prehistoric times through 1911. According to the State Department's summary of the request:

The People's Republic of China seeks import restrictions on categories of pillaged archaeological material from the Paleolithic Period to Qing Dynasty [ending in 1911] including, but not limited to:

---Metals: bronze, gold, and silver vessels, sculpture, utensils, jewelry, coins, weapons, and armor
---Ceramic: stoneware and porcelain vessels, sculpture, jewelry and architectural elements
---Stone: vessels, sculpture, weapons, utensils, jewelry, architectural elements
---Painting and calligraphy on wood, paper, silk, stone, fresco
---Textiles: silk clothing, hangings, furnishings
---Lacquer, bone, ivory and horn objects, including inscribed materials
---Wood and bamboo objects, including inscribed objects

By contrast, prior emergency actions and bilateral agreements that the U.S. government has forged under the UNESCO Convention have targeted very specific categories of archeological or ethnographical material.

Opponents of China's request point out that little has been done in that country to police the movement of its cultural property to Hong Kong, which, as described by New York dealer James Lally, is "an unrestricted exit point" for objects going abroad. They further note that the U.S. market for Chinese objects is dwarfed by the market in China itself and in other Asian countries. Why, they ask, is the U.S. being uniquely singled out for these restrictions?

In testimony last year before the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee, James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, observed that the broad range of cultural property subject to restriction under China's request would include "material...often made for the market and...circulated in the trade since at Han Dynasty more than 2000 years ago." Cuno concluded with this recommendation:

I propose that rather than requesting sweeping import restrictions, the Chinese government request protection only for those objects in danger of pillage and only on the condition that it establish and show evidence of encouraging collaborative excavations and the sharing of finds with U.S. teams and museums.

Such partage---"the sharing of finds"---can probably only be expressed as a wish, not a requirement. But the State Department's decision to give more time to this issue encourages hope that a compromise solution, such as Cuno's, is being seriously considered.

CultureGrrl got herself in hot water with the Friends of the Barnes Foundation and Christopher Knight of the LA Times for suggesting yesterday that the $100-million authorization in Pennsylvania's fiscal 2002 capital budget for design and construction of a new Barnes Foundation facility was being blown out of proportion. I took this position because (to my knowledge) no state money was actually given to the project at that time; the budget item merely indicated that Pennsylvania's political powerhouses favored the move.

I still believe that, but let me make amends to the people who share my views on the larger issue by getting to the crux of it: The Barnes belongs in Merion, where its founder put it and stipulated (in his trust indenture) that it should perpetually remain. I believe that the majority of the art lovers and art professionals who have visited the Barnes from outside the Philadelphia area agree with this premise. (Do we need an audience survey?)

There is only one reason why Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court ruled that the Barnes could move to Philadelphia, despite Dr. Albert Barnes' clearly stated desire that it remain exactly as he left it: The judge bought the argument that moving it was the only way to save it.

In my NY Times Op-Ed piece, published before Judge Ott issued his ruling, I made several concrete suggestions as to how to raise "the $50 million that [Barnes] officials say is needed to maintain the galleries and programs in Merion. If these more modest proposals were adopted, the famously irascible founder might merely squirm, rather than roll over, in his grave."

But now, desperate times call for desperate measures: While I may disagree with the Barnes' hometown partisans on some details, I agree with their conviction that the Barnes needs an angel---a major donor (or group of benefactors) willing to fund the rescue.

With all the fundraising and planning that have already gone into the Philly Barnes, It may be too late to effectuate any change in course. But the legal and moral justification for violating Dr. Barnes' vision evaporates if it can be saved in situ.

Admittedly, it would take much money and moral persuasion to get this done at this late date. But big-money collectors ought to be sympathetic to the concept of honoring the memory and intentions of one of their own. And, after all, didn't we just learn that Steven Cohen has $139 million in spare change?

No one (as far as I know) has pointed up this irony about Steve Wynn's elbow-jab to his own Picasso:

Back in 2002, Wynn refused to lend "Le Rêve" to the landmark "Matisse Picasso" show that appeared at the Tate Modern, the Grand Palais and the Museum of Modern Art. He believed that the proposed insurance coverage for the painting was inadequate.

It turns out that it would have been safer at the museum show than it was in his own office.

In 2003, Carol Vogel of the NY Times interviewed Wynn about his decision not to lend:

''I was too afraid,'' Mr. Wynn said. ''There are still too many gaps in the insurance coverage. I can't replace this picture. There's not another painting like it.''

''It's not like it's in my living room; it's on public view,'' Mr. Wynn said, referring to his art gallery in the lobby of what was the Desert Inn. So precious is this painting to Mr. Wynn that he is naming his new casino Le Rêve.

Vogel also noted that no one else had withdrawn work selected for the show, despite the terrorism fears that were then making everyone nervous. "The Modern was so hopeful" that Wynn would relent, Vogel wrote, that it reproduced his painting on catalog's cover. Then it had to revisit the printer to re-do the cover, featuring a different Picasso. (CultureGrrl owns a copy of the first printing. Is this a collector's item?)

Wynn's wife Elaine chose to regard Marie-Thérèse Walter's wound as "a sign" that they should hold onto the painting, rather than sell it, as had been planned.

Maybe it was really a sign that they should have lent it.

The Boston ICA has at last announced a firm(?) opening date for its new waterfront facility, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Dec. 10. As the Boston Globe notes, that puts it smack into a scheduling conflict with Art Basel Miami Beach, the hot artworld destination to which many luminaries already have travel plans. Let's see...where would you rather travel in the winter?

Still, a three-month construction delay isn't so bad. Next month, two years after its new gallery building opened, the Museum of Modern Art finally unveils its new Taniguchi-designed education wing at the other end of the sculpture garden.

So fine! There's another art blogger out there (already on my blogroll) who loves the great trashy girl group songs of the early '60s. Check out the audio clip of "I Never Dreamed" by The Cookies, courtesy of Modern Kicks.

Where's Murray the K when we really need him?

First, we learned that the Denver Art Museum's revelers get a little too celebratory, to the detriment of a William Wiley.

Now, Steve Wynn's "Le Rêve" turns into his nightmare: He had planned to sell that Picasso for $139 million to the the unstoppable Steven Cohen, AP reports today. Then Wynn accidentally punched a hole in it. The ebullient eyewitness Nora Ephron, posted her firsthand account yesterday on her blog. And The New Yorker, also yesterday, posted a Picasso post mortem, which ended like this:

Last Friday, when Wynn's alarm went off, at 7 A.M., his wife turned to him in bed and said, "I consider this whole thing to be a sign of fate. Please don't sell the picture." Later that morning, Wynn called Cohen and told him he wanted to keep the painting, after all.

I guess that leaves Cohen with more money for the fall art auctions...not that he needed it.

Scott Gutterman, deputy director of the Neue Galerie, soothes my two worries---over why the image of the museum's star acquisition, Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," has vanished from its website, and why the Nazi-era provenance for Neue Galerie's collection has still not been posted:

"Adele I" is off of our homepage so that we can post information about our next exhibition, "Josef Hoffmann: Interiors, 1902-1913." The piece is on permanent display and has been formally acquired.

As for the provenance information posting, we have had further technical issues, but are planning what we hope will be a final review of the revised website this Thursday, and will post thereafter.

Can someone please find them a good webmaster? A review of the financial ups and downs of Ronald Lauder, whose money bought "Adele" for the Neue Galerie, appeared here, in yesterday's NY Times.

While I deplore the planned move of the Barnes Foundation as much as Christopher Knight does, I find a bit misleading his LA Times report yesterday that in fiscal 2002, long before the Barnes' relocation to Philadelphia received court approval, the Pennsylvania legislature had "set aside" some $100 million for the design and construction of a new Barnes facility.

CultureGrrl had gotten word about this issue at the end of last month, but deemed it a tempest in a teapot: That's because this was merely an authorization, not, as Knight terms it, an "appropriation." Authorizations are not money in the bank, as is made clear in the section on the Capital Budget in the state's explanation of "The Budget Process in Pennsylvania":

Passage of a Capital Budget Itemization Act does not mean that all projects authorized in the act will be implemented....Upon passage of a Capital Budget Itemization Act, Commonwealth agencies are responsible for reevaluating the need for requested capital projects, taking into consideration program changes or other changing conditions. As a result of this review, some projects may be canceled and others deferred.

What the budget item does show is that political powers in the state have long favored the move. But we (and Judge Stanley Ott, who later ruled in favor of the move) already knew that...whether or not we knew about the legislature's premature action.

In the current faltering economy, what are the prospects for the staggering amount of high-priced art about to change hands (or not) at the November sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York?

One factor that stock analysts scrutinize in evaluating publicly-traded Sotheby's is its monthly sales totals, posted on its website. For September, the numbers are down: $78.57 million last month, compared to $79.72 million for September 2005.

But wait. STOP THE PRESSES! Here's a bizarre news flash: I just went back to the Sotheby's website to give you the link for the monthly results (which I had previously copied off the website), and found that Sotheby's has mysteriously removed the pages reporting monthly results for January to September 2006, leaving only the figures for the first two weeks in October (for which there are no comparables in the 2005 figures, which are monthly, not weekly). Did someone decide that no news is better than bad news?

Privately held Christie's doesn't report monthly totals, but does post individual sale results on its website. Since those figures are in the currencies of the different countries where the sales take place, I'll let someone else crunch those numbers. (Christie's press office declined to give me the September totals in dollars.) I did, however, add up the New York sales results for September 2005 and 2006, and this year was the clear winner: $65.82 million for 14 auctions last month, compared to $51.07 million for 11 auctions in September 2005.

As for the series of contemporary art auctions concluding today in London, Linda Sandler of Bloomberg reported yesterday that "prices...may be stalling," based on weekend results at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips. But Sotheby's noted that the £31.4 million total for its London contemporary sales was "significantly over" the £20.6-28.8 million presale estimate. (It should also be noted, however, that the sold total is beefed up by the amount of auction-house commissions, while presale estimates are not.)

And how did London's recently concluded Frieze Art Fair fare? The end-of-fair press release trumpeted a "record success." But the only sales it quantified were those of the fair's yearbook and magazine. And the only "record" cited was attendance.

By contrast, last year's end-of-fair release stated: "Sales figures are predicted to exceed last year's £26 million." This year---no prediction. The final release about last year's sales, issued last November, boasted £33 million in contemporary art sales.

In today's Bloomberg, Sandler reported that Frieze co-director Matthew Slotover blamed the lack of financial data on the fact that "big galleries won't tell us their sales." If they did tell last year, what does that indicate about this year---another case of "no news is better than bad news"?

UPDATE: Here's a more recent (and more bullish) report from Sandler on the London contemporary auctions.

William Merritt Chase, "Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler" (1883), Cleveland Museum of Art

I saw the above painting today at the press preview of a soon-to-open show at the Metropolitan Museum. (More on that later.)

Does anyone else think this prefigures