November 2006 Archives

I need to get far away from the world of allegedly stolen antiquities: to a museum that has barely begun to form its own permanent collection, most of which is art from the 21st-century; to a place whose scheduled opening was delayed (but not nearly as delayed as the Museum of Modern Art's new education and research wing).

I'll bet you've all got it. What you may NOT have is much (or any) posting from me until Monday. However (and I may live to regret this), I do now own a laptop, so I may not be able to restrain myself. We'll see how obsessive-compulsive I am about feeding the blog-beast!

Tom Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum when it was considering a joint acquisition with oil mogul J. Paul Getty of the celebrated Greek bronze statue of an athlete, discusses the historical background of the current ownership controversy:

The old man, J. Paul, insisted before he purchased the bronze (to share with the Met in exchange for the Met's lending the Boscotrecase frescoes the the Getty indefinitely) that the Italian government grant permission in writing [for the two U.S. museums] to acquire and exhibit it.

Why can't the Getty simply respect the donor's [J. Paul Getty's] wishes and hand it back to Italy?

Christian Kleinbub, assistant professor of art history at Ohio State University, published a pro-Getty letter to the editor in yesterday's LA Times. Here's a somewhat more pointed letter that he wrote on Tuesday to CultureGrrl:

I write to share my own feelings on the recent negotiations between [Italian Culture Minister Francesco] Rutelli and American museums, for I believe it has gone too far. Too many members of the Italian elites view Americans (as many do) as barbarians, unworthy and uncomprehending of their art. It is ironic that, given the many things that Americans have done to enhance the accessibility of artworks in Italy, the Italian Cultural Ministry cannot work itself towards a compromise over a statue on which it has dubious claims. I, like many of my colleagues, sniff opportunism and even nationalism at work here.

I hope that I am not the only person who finds it ironic that the Getty Bronze, a Greek
statue, sank while being borne to Italy---the spoils of Roman power.

COMING NEXT: Tom Hoving blogs back on the Getty.

Terracotta Kylix, Greek, Laconian, ca. 560-500 B.C., composite of a man, a sea creature and snakes, attributed to the Typhon Painter from Cerveteri, necropolis of Bufaloreccia, lent by the Republic of Italy

Size and ceremony aren't everything, but the low-key loan by Italy to the Metropolitan Museum of an 8 1/2-inch wide drinking cup (above), displayed inconspicuously today in a case with other small objects, contrasted sharply with the dramatic public unveiling yesterday of the colossal statue of "Eirene" at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Italian journalists and CultureGrrl tagged along this afternoon as the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, and Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli met face-to-face for the first time. Rutelli, an urbane, articulate and media-savvy politician (married to a prominent Italian journalist) was formerly mayor of Rome and since April has been Italy's culture minister and, more importantly, its deputy prime minister.

After exchanging pleasantries in Italian, French and English. and admiring objects arrayed in the Met's galleries, de Montebello and Rutelli held a brief closed-door meeting, after which Rutelli pronounced himself completely satisfied with Italy's cooperative relationship with the Met, and de Montebello recited a list of the many loans made by the Met to current exhibitions in Italy. When I asked Philippe whether the subject of Italy's designs on certain objects from the collection of Met benefactor Shelby White came up during the private discussion, he shrugged and was silent.

Journalists got a better sense of Rutelli's determination to repatriate illicitly exported antiquities at an event earlier in the day at the Italian Cultural Institute. To general applause from the mostly Italian audience, he publicly declared: "All works of art that have been stolen have to come home!"

In conversation with me afterwards, he reiterated Italy's position that the Getty's bronze statue of an athlete should be regarded "stolen," because it was "smuggled" out of Italy without an export permit. He also took issue with the Getty's assertion that the statue had been found in international waters. But more important to him is what he described as the "moral aspect" of the controversy.

Mixtec Bell, Mexico, c. 1200-1521

The show was so nice, I'll say it twice: I adored "Gold" at the American Museum of Natural History. It came across like your best 8th-grade science and social studies teachers combined---plying you with fun facts; dazzling you with fascinating illustrative materials (huge, fancifully shaped gold nuggets, gold ingots, gold jewelry, Beyoncé's gold Grammy, and, let us not forget, the gold penis shield); and illuminating, in the liveliest possible way, everything you could possibly want to know about this versatile mineral. On top of all that, the curators found creative ways to tangibly illustrate gold's unique properties---from a 12-by-12-by-8-foot room entirely lined with just three ounces of gold leaf (to demonstrate the metal's malleability) to a scale that informs you how much you'd be worth if your weight were in gold instead of mere flesh and blood.

So why am I mildly disgruntled? When I got to the museum shop (brandishing the wrong metal---a platinum credit card), I found that although I could buy all manner of gilded geegaws, there was no catalogue for this show. I had wanted to bring all those chunks of gold and knowledge home with me in one sumptuously illustrated volume. But all the the shop clerk could offer me was a lackluster "companion book," bearing no specific connection to the show. The best "catalogue" turns out to be the extremely rich website for the show.

The strong publishing program that I've come to take for granted at major art museums is missing from the AMNH: Steve Reichl, the museum's director of media relations, told me that producing catalogues, which had been tried for a few previous major shows, had proven to be "too much work and not worth it. We're not set up for it." Maybe they should pick the brains of the publications department at that big art museum across Central Park.

And while they're at it, AMNH should sometimes try to borrow some objects from the Metropolitan Museum's extensive collections. The historic gold artifacts from around the world that are displayed in the AMNH's exhibition are mostly drawn from that museum's extensive collection---appealing but not of the uniformly exceptional artistic quality that is standard at the Met.

Better yet, New York museums should go a step further and consider coordinating major exhibition projects. Several institutions in the Berkshires are doing just that, in jointly planning next summer's Season of Dutch Arts.

I have previously mentioned how desirable it might have been for the Museum of Modern Art and the Met to have presented "Dada" and "Glitter and Doom" simultaneously, to allow the public to compare two very different takes on the same historical period.

Similarly, what if several New York City museums had simultaneously mined their golden riches to enrich their audiences? Admittedly, this might require a more cooperative spirit than this big city's highly competitive cultural institutions usually manage to muster. But the synergistic rewards might be well worth the effort.

Maybe they can get together to explore the theme of AMNH's next show in what seems to be its continuing series devoted to the material used for jewelry (diamonds, amber and pearls, thus far). What's likely to be next? (CultureGrrl consults her jewelry box.)

Silver!

I surmise that this statue from Italy...

"Eirene" (Goddess of Peace), Roman, Imperial Period, late first century B.C. to early first century A.D., (Height: over 9 feet) Marble, body from Mt. Pentelikon, Greece, head from the Greek island of Paros, Lent by the Republic of Italy

...is intended to substitute for this statue, returned to Italy on Sept. 28 by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:

"Sabina," Roman, Imperial Period, ca. 136 A.D. (Height: 79 1/2 in.) Marble, probably from the Greek island of Paros

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and Boston Museum of Fine Arts director Malcolm Rogers, last seen together in Rome, had another joint photo opportunity at a press conference today at the museum, where the colossal Goddess of Peace, to reside in Boston for three years, blessed the auspicious beginning of Italy's promised loans of works of comparable importance to the 13 pieces that Boston relinquished in response to Italy's ownership claims. According to today's press release:

In Italy, the head and torso [of "Eirene"] had been displayed separately, but MFA conservators have joined the two pieces together for display for the first time in modern history.

Michael Brand, the beleaguered head of the Getty Museum, knows no peace and has brought his angst to the pages of today's LA Times. His Op-Ed essay largely recaps previous statements (here and here), giving his side of the reasons for the breakdown of negotiations with Italy.

He ends, in time-honored Op-Ed fashion (and I should know) with a pointed dig at his adversaries that will not win him any points at the negotiating table (if he ever manages to get back there):

We acknowledge that the Getty must do its part to resolve this matter. But Italy must resist the temptation to allow political concerns to eclipse the goal of art museums around the world to give the public access to our shared art and cultural heritage.

I feel Brand's frustration, but calling his opponents names---politically motivated or, even worse (as he does), "emotional"---is never a good strategy for restoring an atmosphere of cooperation and goodwill.

Architecture critic James Russell, in today's Bloomberg, has the guts to publish what CultureGrrl thought but dared not say: Renzo Piano may not be the Whitney Museum's best choice as architect, as it relocates its proposed expansion from well-mannered Madison Avenue to the gritty High Line. Russell writes:

The Whitney has pledged to continue with Piano, but his Madison Avenue design expressed constraint rather than aspiration. The museum's intentions would be more convincing if it chose an architect who could create the robust presence the Gansevoort setting demands. It does not need another of the spindly glass-and-metal pavilions---impeccable in their way---that Piano has reproduced in an increasingly formulaic way since Houston's brilliant Menil Collection of 1987.

The problem is: How, at this late date, could the Whitney possibly dump Piano, who has patiently devoted so much time to designing, tweaking and defending the most recent of the museum's three aborted expansions? And how could you pitch this project to other big-name architects, given the Whitney's dithering track record? Has anyone contacted Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who are already at work reimagining the High Line?

Can Christie's claim a new auction record for a Qing Dynasty ceramic without appending a big asterisk, when the buyer turns out to be the consignor's own sister?

Bloomberg reported that Alice Cheng was the Hong Kong auction's winning bidder today, at $19.5 million, for the Qing porcelain bowl sold by her own brother, 80-year-old Hong Kong art dealer Robert Chang. The final price (which includes the buyer's premium) trounced the top end of bowl's presale hammer-price estimate, $7.8 million.

This brought to mind another Great Moment in Auction History, when a "record price" for contemporary art was set by Willem de Kooning's ''Interchange,'' auctioned at Sotheby's, New York, for $20.7 million in 1989. The only problem was, the dealers who won the bidding, Mountain Tortoise Company of Tokyo, couldn't pay for it. Nonetheless, this dubious record continued to be trumpeted by the auction houses for years to come.

It's a variation on the old philosophical question that begins, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it..."

The question raised by the current Roundabout Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House" is:

If a character is excised from a play and no one notices, does it nevertheless violate the author's intentions?

The answer: YES.

Ever the college English major, I decided to prep for my recent night at the theater by re-reading the play, which I had seen many years ago. Imagine my surprise when "The Burglar" (aka "The Pirate" or Billy Dunn) never appeared, let alone served his literary purpose as a comically pragmatic foil to the charmingly frivolous, self-indulgent members of the Shotover household. He is also meant to be correlated with the real pirate of the piece, the self-important but eventually unmasked Boss Mangan, Shaw's stereotypic capitalist. At the end of Shaw's full version of the play, the thief and the businessman together meet a violent death, as they seek shelter from bombs in a gravel pit. Mangan blows up alone in the current production. The rest of the characters, fully exposed and energized by the excitement, are spared. (Have I just spoiled the ending?)

Nowhere is this textual expurgation mentioned in the program distributed to audience members. Nor have I seen it discussed in any of the several reviews I have read. Admittedly it's a long play, and more than one audience member gave up after the slow first act (in which Billy Dunn does not appear). But if they're going to shorten it, they should at least tell us.

Although Dunn is a secondary character, Shaw puts him to good use, intertwining his checkered past with the histories of the master of the house, Captain Shotover (who talks about him, early in the play), and his servant (to whom the burglar had once been married). Dunn provides both comic relief and additional insights into the character of the Captain, whom he says "can divine water, spot gold, explode a cartridge in your pocket and see the truth hidden in the heart of man."

Such an otherwise splendid production should have given Shaw his full measure of verbiage.

Fourth time (Graves, Koolhaas, Piano, Piano) is the charm? Carol Vogel of the NY Times gets the High Line scoop (to be published in tomorrow's paper, but online tonight). CultureGrrl gets to link. (What, me jealous?) The Coalition of Concerned Whitney Neighbors, as well as the Defenders of the Historic Upper Eastside and the Hotel Carlyle Owners Corp., get to pop the champagne corks and focus their wrath on Aby Rosen's proposed 30-story tower, instead of on the Whitney's aborted nine-story addition.

No details about the new plans yet on the Whitney's website, even though, according to Vogel's exclusive and highly detailed report, the museum "reached a conditional agreement" five days ago to buy the property for its new building from the city. Why should this information vacuum surprise me? The most recent press release posted under Expansion News is "Landmarks Preservation Commission Unanimously Approves Whitney Expansion and Renovation," May 24, 2005.

No matter what happens, there's always something for land-use lawyer Sandy Lindenbaum to do. I'll have to remember to ask him sometime if he bought that Klimt I caught him ogling!

UPDATES: Here and Here.

The disturbing breakdown in negotiations between the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Italian Culture Ministry revolves around competing claims for one object---the ancient Greek statue of an athlete---formerly dubbed "The Getty Bronze." Purchased by the museum in 1977 for $3.95 million, it is now called the "Athlete of Lysippos" by the Italians and described by the Getty as the "Statue of a Victorious Youth" (probably not by Lysippos but by a later Greek sculptor working in the second or third century B.C., according to the Getty).

Nomenclature is the least of the disagreements between the Italians and the Getty. Here's a rundown of the arguments on both sides of the Battle of the Bronze:

THE ITALIAN ARGUMENT

According to an Italian-language article from the ANSA news agency, which the Italian Culture Ministry says accurately represents its position, the ministry asserts that the bronze was stolen and illegally exported. The article points out that that the claim of a fisherman (who died in 2004) that he had found the bronze in "extraterritorial waters...has never been proved." Even if it was found in international waters, Ugo Zottin, head of Italy's Carabinieri for Cultural Property asserts that the statue was illegally exported from Italy, traveling from there to Switzerland and Frankfurt before arriving in the United States. "There are no documents that prove its legal exportation," Zottin said. (The 1977 NY Times article by Grace Glueck that reported the Getty's purchase said that the bronze had been held "for the last six years" by Heinz Herzer, a member of the international dealers consortium Artemis. Herzer was based in Munich, not Frankfort. A New York spokesman for Artemis, asked at the time of the Getty's purchase if there might be a "patrimonial challenge" to the bronze, replied, "No country has exercised a claim to it.")

THE GETTY'S ARGUMENT

On Nov. 20, the Getty sent Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli a 20-page memorandum to "clarify why we believe the Getty's ownership of the Bronze is not subject to challenge." Some excerpts:

In 1964, the Bronze was pulled up in Italian fishermen's nets 30-40 miles off the coast of Italy, well outside of Italian territorial waters, which at that time extended only 6 nautical miles from shore. Over the years the fishermen who found the statue have offered to guide governmental archaeologists to the findspot. The Italian Ministery of Culture has never acted on this offer, despite the possibility that the lower legs and feet of the Bronze possibly could be recovered there. Had the government believed the statue was found in Italian territorial waters, it is unclear why it did not attempt to find the missing portion of the statue for scientific purposes, let alone to support its claim of ownership....

The discovery of the Bronze did not result from the intentional pillaging of an archaeological site within national boundaries....The rationales behind the measures to stem the illicit trade in antiquities are not implicated in this situation.

What does seem clear, among all the brickbats and caveats, is that a cautiously cooperative relationship has degenerated into an adversarial one. It now appears that that the objects that the Getty had hoped to return in exchange for a far-reaching accord, including loans of Italian antiquities, may instead be used as courtroom evidence against the Getty's former curator, Marion True, now on trial in Italy on charges of trafficking in illegally excavated antiquities:

"The pieces will come to Italy not as a concession on the part of the Getty but as a seizure, the result of a procedure that is part of our legal process," Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the Culture Ministry, told Elisabetta Povoledo of the NY Times. Fiorilli indicated that the returned objects would be used to support the charges against True.

Michael Brand, director of the Getty Museum, had invited Minister Rutelli to stop by for a chat during his trip this week to the U.S. But the detailed schedule supplied to CultureGrrl today by the Ministry lists no such visit.

So much for goodwill and cooperation.

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli is in Washington today to hold a press conference and to meet with government officials in the White House, Congress and the State Department, as part of a whirlwind three-city tour. Tomorrow he meets with officials of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Wednesday he is scheduled to meet in New York with the Metropolitan Museum's director, Philippe de Montebello, according to a spokesperson for the Italian Culture Ministry.

Presumably, he will be nailing down the specifics of the accords forged between Italy and the two museums, in which Boston and the Met will relinquish objects claimed by Italy in exchange for loans of comparable Italian antiquities, as yet unspecified.

UPDATE: Rutelli and Boston MFA director Malcolm Rogers will hold a press conference tomorrow afternoon "to unveil a major antiquity loaned from Italy" to the Boston museum.

COMING SOON: More details on the battle over the "Getty Bronze."

While you impatiently await my first post of the new week, please note that I did hit the keyboard over the Thanksgiving weekend. (So catch up, if you've been away.)

More importantly, please scroll down my righthand column, where you will see, for the first time, links to some of my articles published in the Mainstream Media---the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times and Art in America magazine.

That should keep my groupies busy, while I laboriously translate some Getty-related material in Italian:

"Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la diritta via era smarrita..."

(Brush up your Dante.)

MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

NY TIMES ARTS & LEISURE
Two Painters: So Alike, So Different (Caravaggio/Hals)

NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Arttifacts to Artworks
American Indian Installations
Morgan Library Renovation
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Expansion (designed by Rick Mather)
Crisis in Art Bibliography (Getty and BHA)
Profile of the Met's Tom Campbell
Elevating American Indian Art (Nelson-Atkins)
Landesman Produces Controversy
New Modern Wing at Art Institute of Chicago
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)
National Museum of the American Indian

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

HUFFINGTON POST:
My columns for HuffPost Arts

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
[Note: The AiA links, alas, are no longer active.]
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NPR:
Crystal Bridges controversies
Crystal Bridges Museum's $800 Million (from American Public Media)
Smithsonian's "Hide/Seek" Controversy
Sotheby's Polaroid auction (at 1:20)
AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

WQXR, NEW YORK CLASSICAL RADIO
Rising Ticket Prices
New Museum's Dakis Joannou exhibition
Modernist Abstraction Exhibitions in NYC

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
NY State's New Deaccessioning Rules
American Folk Art Museum sells building to MoMA
Art Deaccessioning: Right or Wrong?
Musical Diplomacy on "Soundcheck Smackdown"
Vermeer's "Milkmaid" at the Met
Art in the Obama White House
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO
Getty Museum's antiquities scandals (at 22:38)
Getty Trust's New President, James Cuno (at 12:10)
Getty and LA MOCA Directorship Controversies (at 44:30)
Reminiscences about James Wood (at 19:28)

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

Do not miss...I SAID, DO NOT MISS Tom Wolfe's electric kool-aid acid bath for real estate developers, on Page 10 of today's NY Times "Week in Review" section. Aby Rosen, who rallied artworld support from such luminaries as artist Jeff Koons and dealers Lawrence Salander and Larry Gagosian for the 30-story Norman Foster glass tower he wants to build over five-story 980 Madison Avenue, gets the Sherman McCoy treatment from Wolfe as the author's new version of the misguided Master of the Universe.

This cannot be mistaken for a fair-minded treatment of the battle between preservationists and developers: Foster, a celebrated architect whose recently completed Hearst Tower in New York received almost universal acclaim, is nowhere mentioned as the architect for Rosen's "Mondo Condo glass box." But, boy, Wolfe sure writes the hell out of this hot-button issue and it's a potent polemic!!!!!

(By the way, the best vantage point for gazing upon an unobstructed Hearst Tower is the upper deck of the ferries traveling from Weehawken, NJ to midtown Manhattan. Its facets glisten in the sun.)

We breathlessly await Norman Mailer's, Gore Vidal's and John Updike's responses to their authorial rival in letters to the editor. Power to the writers!

Or, as we said in the '60s, "Write On!"

Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum, responds to CultureGrrl's previous post, identifying him as "a key advisor to Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, whose extensive collection of ancient art was later given to the Getty":

While serving as a curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Greek and Roman Department until 1987, I actively encouraged the Fleischmans to donate their collection to the Met (certainly not to the Getty!). Even after leaving the Met to become a museum director, I wrote entries for the touring exhibition of their collection, believing then as now that objects lacking provenance are no less deserving of being published.

Leading U.S. museums once made a distinction between antiquities already in private collections and antiquities bought directly from the trade. That distinction has, over the last few years, become viewed by many of us as arbitrary, and a growing number of art museum professionals today believe that a bright line must be drawn when considering acquisitions from any source, so as not to unintentionally foster looting or the illicit trade.

Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, leaped to the defense of Michael Brand and the J. Paul Getty Museum in a news report broadcast Wednesday on NPR.

Unmentioned in the radio report is that Anderson, a Greek and Roman specialist, played an important role in the development of the Getty's antiquities collection: He was a key advisor to Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, whose extensive collection of ancient art was later given to the Getty. Anderson wrote a number of the entries for the Getty-published catalogue of their collection, "A Passion for Antiquities." Among the 26 objects that the Getty has now agreed to return to Italy is the object on that catalogue's cover---a South Etruscan terracotta of a Maenad and Silenos dancing (see Item 20 on this illustrated list of the 26 objects).

Here's what Anderson said on NPR, reacting to the breakdown of negotiations between the Getty's director, Brand, and Italy's culture minister, Francesco Rutelli:

I suppose the Getty makes a convenient foil by virtue of its extraordinary wealth and the fact that it has a past, in the 1970s and early '80s, of behaving with less than exemplary standards. But I think that all changed, ironically, under Marion True's tenure as curator and under John Walsh as director, and Michael Brand is simply trying to think to move the ball down the line to a kind of reciprocal approach of understanding that the past practices of the museum were not on par with what is expected today.

The Fleischman Collection was acquired by the Getty on John Walsh's and Marion True's watch.

UPDATES: Those of you linking to this post from ArtsJournal, please see my updates here and here.

A little Thanksgiving news bite with your turkey:

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli today held a press conference in Rome, where he "pinn[ed] the blame on the John [sic] Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for a halt in the return of pillaged art treasures," according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

"The talks broke down because they suspended them. It was a unilateral decision," Rutelli charged today. To which the Getty's director, Michael Brand, replied, in a promptly drafted, detailed response to the press conference: "We remain open to resuming discussions with the Ministry at a moment's notice."

As explained in its press release on Tuesday, the Getty is refusing to return what Italy now says it must have as a condition for signing an agreement: the bronze sculpture that Italy calls "the Athlete of Lysippos" but that the Getty calls the "Statue of a Victorious Youth," (which is probably not by Lysippos but by a "later Greek sculptor working in the second or third century B.C.," according to the Getty's latest research). The Getty argues that there is no legal basis for relinquishing the sculpture, which is believed to have been found in 1964 by fishermen in international waters but which may at some point have been illegally exported from Italy. The Getty acquired it in 1977 and it promptly became the museum's signature work, dubbed "The Getty Bronze."

Meanwhile, ANSA reported, Rutelli is preparing to meet with Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello in New York on Nov. 29, "to go over some of the fine print of the February accord." In that agreement, the Met agreed to relinquish 21 objects in return for long-term loans from Italy of works "of equivalent beauty and importance."

In his response to the Italian press conference, Brand wrote:

During our meeting with Ministry officials on November 17, we offered substantial compromises, including the immediate transfer of full title to the Cult Statue of a Goddess [which Italy calls "the Morgantina Venus"], if the Italian government would join the Getty in conducting further research. We also were prepared to offer additional compromises, but unfortunately, our discussions ended when the Ministry issued an ultimatum that any agreement must include the return of the Statue of a Victorious Youth.

We remain open to resuming discussions with the Ministry at a moment's notice. I know the Minister is coming to the United States next week, and if he believes further discussions might allow us to find a way to reach a comprehensive collaborative agreement, I stand ready to meet with him. In fact, my hope is that the Minister might visit the Getty Villa, the only museum in the United States dedicated to Roman, Etruscan and Greek art and culture, so he can see for himself the impact the magnificent works of art displayed there have on the American public. It is for the people who value art and history that we must find a mutually satisfactory solution.

Or, as the Pilgrims said to the Indians, let's talk turkey.

(Click the link below to see the entire Getty press release, responding to Rutelli's news conference.)

I'm a bit late opining on the Gold show at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but I did already tell you it was "extraordinary" and give you a tantalizing preview.

The virtue of my procrastination is that when Roberta Smith of the NY Times weighs in before me, I have the luxury of linking to her and saying, "ditto."

However, she did not have the luxury, in a family newspaper, of zeroing in on the provocative object I highlighted last week. And since she focused, at great length, on the ways in which the show was more than worth its weight in gold, she leaves me with little more to do than what I do best: quibble.

That, however, will have to wait till next week. Right now, I've got to hug the visiting Joyce with the Golden Hair, Gild the Turkey and braise the cardoon.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM CULTUREGRRRRL!

MoMA's new Archive Reading Room, with a view of St. Thomas Church © 2006 Timothy Hursley

From the fleeting impressions I got during yesterday's brief press tour of the public spaces in the Museum of Modern Art's new Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, it appears that architect Yoshio Taniguchi's design concepts for MoMA work better here, on a more human scale, than they do in the monumental gallery building that opened two years ago. The less cavernous atrium of the education wing echoes the prior wing's vocabulary of white slabs, interrupted by glass-walled overlooks, staggered at different levels. But here, it comes off as visually interesting, instead of oppressively intimidating.

The education wing boasts what the gallery wing was originally supposed to have but didn't: abundant natural light and breathtaking views of the sculpture garden, unimpeded by fritted or extremely darkened glass or by overhangs from lower-level canopies that frustratingly obstruct so many of the views from the gallery wing. The reading rooms feel so invitingly scholar-friendly that I can't wait to do some of the preliminary research on the book that I'm thinking of writing, for which I will need to troll MoMA's archives.

There was one embarrassing glitch on the press tour: I was in director Glenn Lowry's group, and our merry band had to disband from the elevator, which beeped and refused to move, despite the departure of a few volunteers who significantly lightened its load (maximum: 5,000 pounds). Betraying not a bit of the annoyance he must have felt, Glenn cheerfully led us down the decidedly unglamorous fire stairs.

This prompted me to ask Arash Yaghoubi, who was on hand as a representative of Structure Tone, the general contractor, whether there had been many glitches during the construction of the education building. He surprised me by launching into what was apparently going to be a detailed recital of the many construction complications, which was soon overheard by a representative of Kohn Pederson Fox, the executive architects. In a few moments, we were intercepted by PR people, who spirited away the young and imprudent Yaghoubi.

From this I surmise that the cause of two-year delay in completing the education wing, which was supposed to have opened simultaneously with the gallery wing, may have been more than the official explanation: slowdowns in fundraising and the decreased availability of construction personnel, caused by 9/11.

Incidentally, I now perceive that museums are probably way ahead of me when it comes to resourcefulness in fundraising: Yesterday I suggested that museums should allow donors to make online gifts, as is being done in Philadelphia's save-the-Eakins campaign. I now see that MoMA (and probably lots of other institutions) already does this, in connection with its capital campaign.

The link to the Getty's full press release on the antiquities stalemate with Italy is now posted here.

The following are excerpts from a press release just in from the J. Paul Getty Museum (and not yet up on its website):

The Getty has decided to return to Italy...26 objects---including a number of highly significant works of art---despite the [Italian Culture] Ministry's apparent repudiation of an agreement signed jointly by representatives of the Ministry and the Getty in Rome on October 5. Among other points, that agreement would have guaranteed long-term loans to replace certain of the objects being returned by the Getty, as well as establish a framework for long-term collaborative efforts.

"While we continue to hope that the Italian government will honor its commitment to work collaboratively with the Getty in the future, as it agreed to do in October, the Getty's transfer of objects is not conditioned on any such arrangement. Quite simply, we believe that transferring these objects to Italy is the right thing to do, whether or not we now receive anything in return," said Dr. Brand.

As previously reported by CultureGrrl, Rutelli last month took the occasion of the signing of an antiquities agreement with Switzerland to declare that negotiations with the Getty were on the verge of "rupture" because of the museum's unwillingness to return the aforementioned sculptures of the youth and the goddess, called by Italy "the Athlete of Lysippos" and "the Morgantina Venus." Now, it appears, the "rupture" has occurred.

In its just-issued press release, the Getty listed the 26 objects it had agreed to return, but it has not, at this writing, posted on its website detailed information and photos, as did the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, when it concluded its amicable agreement with Italy in September.

This seems like the worst possible outcome for the Getty: giving up objects from its collection without getting any closure, let alone important objects that were to have been loaned to the Getty by Italy (as in separate agreements with Boston and with the Metropolitan Museum). The LA Times recently reported that Italy was threatening a "cultural embargo" of the Getty if negotiations broke down.

And this is also bad news for the sacrificial curator, Marion True, still on trial in Italy for her actions at the Getty and, just today, hit with more legal woes: According to Reuters, Greek prosecutors today charged True "with knowingly buying an ancient artifact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13 years ago."

A Greek police source told Reuters that the former Getty curator, "as well as two Greeks and two other foreigners...are charged in connection with [a 4th-century B.C.] golden wreath which was sold to a Getty representative in 1993 for $1.15 million."

MoMA's New Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

Did you maybe think that the new mega-MoMA (with its new eight-story, 63,000-square-foot Education and Research Building poised to open next Tuesday) was big enough to accommodate its needs for the rest of this century?

Clearly you lack the vision and expansionist appetites of Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, who told me this morning at the press preview for the new wing that real estate movers-and-shakers are already salivating over the vacant lot that MoMA has created to its west, after acquiring and demolishing three neighboring properties. Several developers are in preliminary discussions with MoMA, he said, about the possibility of constructing a mixed-use building that would combine private commercial functions with more space for MoMA, probably to be used as galleries.

"The real estate market is hot, and we're not in the real estate business," he told me. "We might see if it makes sense to sell it [the property to the west]....We would retain space for the museum's use and sell the balance to a commercial developer." He added, though, that this was "not an urgent issue," and that nothing had been decided.

Is Glenn too smitten with his role as Master Builder? On the one hand, I think MoMA is already dauntingly large. On the other, I can think of goals I had hoped the last expansion would accomplish that still remain unrealized:

---Exhibiting more of the permanent collection of painting and sculpture: The new galleries display approximately the same number of objects as were shown pre-expansion (although they are arrayed more spaciously).

---Allowing more creative (if temporary) reconfigurations of works from the collection: While the idiosyncratic installations of the experimental MoMA 2000 series were probably too quirky and controversial to be institutionalized, some of that provocative rethinking of the permanent collection could become a regular and enlightening exercise, given the space in which to achieve it.

---Providing permanent space for some of MoMA's monumental icons: Rosenquist's "F-111," Kelly's "Colors for a Large Wall" Serra's "Intersection II" and (if they finally get around to restoring it) Matisse's "The Swimming Pool" ought to be always on view, not just sporadically trundled out for special occasions.

(For a more extensive CultureGrrl critique of the new Mega-MoMA, go here , here and here.)

I would have thought that Lowry, a self-confessed Maalox addict during the prolonged and stressful construction period, had seen enough hardhats to last him the rest of his professional life. But he assured me that the next project would be easier on the nervous system, because it would be largely conceived, executed and worried over by whatever outside developer got the job.

While unable to predict how many stories the new construction might rise, he did say that it would be a vertical building, due to the nature of the site, and its only entrance would be from 54th Street. (I can already hear the rumblings of residents in the nearby apartments, who have endured years of jackhammers.)

He also confirmed that I was right in my recent surmise that he had no desire for Philippe de Montebello's directorial job at the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe, if Glenn just can't stop himself from building things, he should assume a new post as coordinator of cultural construction at Ground Zero. Heaven (and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) knows that troubled project could use someone with Lowry's fearsome energy and indomitable can-do spirit.

You thought perhaps that I'd tell you something about the new Education Wing? Patience, MoMA-ologists!

Here's an enterprising use of the Internet: The fundraising campaign, led by the Philadelphia Museum, to keep Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia now has a website for online donations. Thomas Jefferson University has given local institutions and the general Philly community until Dec. 26 to match the $68 million jointly offered for the painting by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

But stop the presses: Mayor John Street has just nominated the Eakins "for protection under the city's historic preservation ordinance, noting the painting's deep historical and cultural resonance throughout Philadelphia," as reported in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. I first came across Stephan Salisbury's article as a link in The Art Law Blog and it will be interesting to see what attorney/blogger Donn Zaretsky makes of the conflict between the property rights of the would-be seller and the public interest in "historic preservation."

Whatever the legalities, which may have to be resolved in court, there is a danger that the fundraising momentum may be slowed by the expectation that the city may be able to step in and stop the sale. A similar Philadelphia case, over a Maxfield Parrish/Louis Comfort Tiffany mural, resulted in a three-year court battle, according to the Inquirer.

Whatever happens, the online fundraising strikes me as a resourceful approach. Maybe the Friends of the Barnes Foundation should try this.

Maybe ALL museums should.

Before yesterday's happy news about the FBI's recovery of the Toledo Museum's Goya, a CultureGrrl reader employed at an art museum (not Toledo or the Guggenheim) shared his reactions to the shipping slip-ups that reportedly contributed to the theft. His own museum, he said, had a previous incident in which art transporters had wanted "to stop at a motel under non-emergency conditions." According to my source (whose identity I know):

Our head registrar hit the roof when they said that, and told them to keep driving. Part of the point of having two drivers is that one can sleep while the other drives, switching back and forth for the whole trip. Nothing should get in the way of delivering art as fast as possible. They never should have stopped overnight unless it was an emergency--and even then, at least one person should have been with the truck at all times.

People doing exhibition budgets often complain that couriers represent one of the single biggest expenses in getting loans and request that institutions only resort to using them when they really need it. I bet the Toledo Museum wished they had had one on the truck. I also bet that everyone else will be taking this incident into account when deciding whether to send a courier with a loan.

Art lenders have a legitimate interest in knowing the name of the shipping company that lost the Goya, even if, as a Guggenheim official told me yesterday, it turns out to be a transporter of high repute. In the fullness of time, the truth may out.

But if I were that shipping firm, I'd out myself now, rather than wait for law enforcement officials or others to do it for me. And I'd elucidate, in great detail, the stringent new safeguards being instituted so that such a thing won't happen again.

Thanks to tips received as a result of "comprehensive media coverage of the theft," Goya's "Children With a Cart," stolen en route from the Toledo Museum to the Guggenheim Museum, has been recovered in Newark and "appears to be unharmed," the FBI announced today. Previous news reports that suggested the theft had probably been an "inside job" were incorrect, federal agents said.

According to the just-published AP story, FBI spokesman Steven Siegel indicated that "the thieves apparently did not know what was inside the truck when they broke into it. 'It was a target of opportunity. They probably thought it was a truck full of PlayStations,'" Siegel said. He added that there had been no arrests, but the investigation was continuing, according to the AP's Wayne Parry. Few other details were released.

Glad to get back its Goya, the Toledo Museum is taking it home, rather than allowing it to be displayed, as planned, in the Guggenheim's Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso.

The name of the shipping firm whose truck was burglarized has still not been released, but a Guggenheim source told CultureGrrl that it specializes in art transport and "our registrar says it is a company that everybody uses and will still have to use, because there are so few of them and it's the best."

If this is the best, CultureGrrl is depressed!

Go here to find links to letters recently sent to the Senate Finance Committee by the Association of Art Museum Directors, Art Institute of Chicago, Guggenheim Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum, Whitney Museum and Metropolitan Museum, requesting changes in the newly restrictive tax law provisions affecting fractional gifts of artworks to museums.

You can read them along with me.

The detailed article in Saturday's NY Times on the theft of Goya's "Children With a Cart" from a truck that was transporting it from the Toledo Museum in Ohio to the Guggenheim Museum in New York discusses important questions raised by law enforcement officials, who spoke to reporter David Johnston "on condition of anonymity." The painting was en route to the Guggenheim's Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso.

F.B.I. investigators have been looking into why a truck bearing such precious cargo was left unattended and why it stopped at a motel overnight, when the trip could have been easily made in one day.

But the article implicitly raises two other important questions, both unanswered: First, why did the unnamed law enforcement officials leak so much sensitive information to the newspaper when, according to Johnston's own account, "the F.B.I. office in Philadelphia, which is in charge of the investigation, has released few details about the case, hoping to use information about the theft to evaluate any tips." (Johnston's piece originated in Washington, not Philadelphia.) Has the Times piece now compromised this investigation?

And the second unanswered question, of crucial importance to the artworld: What shipping company was involved in this debacle? Clearly anyone in need of art transport has a keen interest in knowing the answer. But although they divulged a surprising number of details to Johnston, "law enforcement authorities did not identify the shipper."

Paradoxically, Johnston wrote a piece just two weeks ago about concerns over news leaks of confidential information from F.B.I. investigations:

Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. has issued a stern message to the bureau's nearly 30,000 employees warning them against leaks of confidential information after recent news articles disclosed criminal inquiries involving incumbent lawmakers, mainly House Republicans.

''There have been a number of recent stories in the press attributing sensitive law enforcement information to 'federal law enforcement officials,''' Mr. Mueller said in an Oct. 26 e-mail message. ''While I cannot say they have come from F.B.I. employees, such disclosures do serious damage to our investigations and risk unfairly tarnishing the subjects of our investigations who enjoy the presumption of innocence.''

Also sadly damaged in this unfortunate episode is the reputation of museums for safely borrowing and returning valuable works owned and cherished by others.

My answer to this burning question: I don't know and I don't much care.

What's more interesting to me is that NY Times art-market reporter Carol Vogel felt compelled to defend her reputation for accuracy by repeatedly asserting that Mexican financier David Martinez, whom she called "obsessively private," is now the proud owner of ''No. 5, 1948.'' Vogel says that painting was recently sold by David Geffen "for about $140 million."

Through his lawyers (as reported Nov. 9 in Bloomberg and two days later in the Times), Martinez has explicitly denied making the purchase.

Yet, in last Saturday's NY Times Vogel again (previously here), asserted that Martinez bought the Pollock.

I have to assume that Vogel is certain that the unnamed sources she has cited are reliable and are in a position to know the truth about the transaction. How else could she stand by her story, in the face of denials by spokespersons for the very man in the best position to know whether he owns "No. 5, 1948"?

What I question is whether the public has such a compelling need to know the buyer's identity that Vogel is justified in privileging anonymous sources over Martinez's own spokespersons. This is not a matter of national security: If Martinez IS the buyer, but prefers anonymity, there's no compelling public interest served by outting him. To call him or his spokespersons liars (which is, essentially, what Vogel is doing), one needs, at the very least, to do better than rely on mere "artworld sources" or even (in her first article) "art experts with knowledge of the transaction." Is that "knowledge of the transaction" direct or indirect, unimpeachable truth or hearsay? Only "sources with a direct role in the transaction" would be strong enough to convincingly override Martinez's denial.

Here's what the Times' own guidelines on Confidential News Sources say on this subject:

Whenever anonymity is granted, it should be the subject of energetic negotiation to arrive at phrasing that will tell the reader as much as possible about the placement and motivation of the source -- in particular, whether the source has firsthand knowledge of the facts.

"Firsthand knowledge," in this instance, would mean a direct role in the transaction.

And here is what the Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, says about the appropriate circumstances for using confidential sources:

Our policy on anonymous sources is a good one, and bears repeating. It begins: "We resist granting anonymity except as a last resort to obtain information that we believe to be newsworthy and reliable." The information should be of compelling interest, and unobtainable by other means.

The question of who owns the Pollock is interesting in the same way that any gossip about the rich and famous holds a certain fascination. But "compelling interest"? The only people who arguably have a compelling interest in the whereabouts of the Pollock are the scholars who might want to study it or the curators who might want to exhibit it---and they probably have access to "artworld sources" that is equal, if not superior, to Vogel's.

The fate of the world, or even the artworld, does not depend on answering, "Who owns the Pollock?" But there's another question, raised by another NY Times article, that we DO urgently need someone to answer. (Coming Next)

Who need's Otto's Pizzeria? On this, my actual birthday, I headed to the local supermarket to buy myself a present. ("Cardone," on the label, is a variant of "cardoon.")

Admittedly, my example is not nearly as attractive as the one I first spotted at the Guggenheim. It does not sport any of the pinkish tint that helps make Juan Sánchez Cotán's vegetable so strangely alluring.

Still, it's mine all mine, and since the abundantly stocked produce department of Fairway Supermarket, Fort Lee, labels its offerings with more information than the Guggenheim's Spanish show provides for its paintings, I now know that the cardoon, at 99¢ a pound, is "very closely related to the artichoke" and "even tastes like it. It has its own special way of cleaning and preparing it. [You mean I have to cook it?] It's very popular in Europe and it's gaining popularity here because of its deliciousness."

And just think how much more popular it's going to become now, thanks to Cotán and that other old master, CultureGrrl!

An important cardoon update from faithful CultureGrrl reader Rob Krulak, a development officer at the Brooklyn Museum:

Cardoons are on the menu almost every fall (including this one) at Otto Enoteca/Pizzeria on East 8th St. They taste kind of like artichokes, but crunch kind of like celery---in case you want to round out your Cotán experience.

Sounds like a perfect birthday-weekend culinary adventure. Do I have to order them on pizza?

Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627), "Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables," ca. 1602, Collection Várez Fisa, Madrid

In his NY Times review today of the Guggenheim's just opened Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso, Michael Kimmelman leads with three paragraphs archly questioning the museum's motives. Then he finally gets around to calling the show "very grand and quite marvelous."

CultureGrrl would lead with the "grand and marvelous" part. Who can be meanspirited about a show that gives us the rare chance to feast on 11 Zurbaráns, not to mention 12 Velázquezes, 22 Goyas and 35 Picassos (although only four by the show's other title artist, El Greco)?

True, I might have preferred the hypnotic power of the 11 Zurbaráns to have been concentrated in one place. But the Guggenheim opted for a meritorious curatorial concept of demonstrating affinities among Spanish artists tackling the same themes across five centuries. It's a sometimes chaotic but rich mix, with resonances that are sometimes superficial but often illuminating.

Had I but time, I could have spent a few hours absorbing every luminous detail in Velázquez's "Peasants at the Table," which journeyed to New York from the Szépmüvészeti Museum in Budapest.

And part of the fun of such a broad-ranging exhibition is developing a new appreciation for artists you previously knew little about. For me, that was still-life painter Juan Sánchez Cotán. He also introduced me to a new vegetable, the cardoon (that pinkish stalkish thing on the right in the above image).

A few quibbles: I'm not an audio-guide person, and I would have appreciated a little more text elucidating the relationships among individual paintings and providing more background on some of the greatest masterpieces. Surely Zurbarán's monumental but still intimate "Saint Hugh in the Refectory (Saint Bruno and the Miracle of the Uneaten Meat)," from the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville, and rarely seen outside of Spain, rates its own descriptive label.

And the quality of chosen examples by some artists, especially Picasso, was uneven, with a surprising number of works in the show coming from private collections. But Spanish museums were also generous lenders: 15 works from the Prado; 10 from the Reina Sofia.

In an ideal world, I would have wished the Guggenheim to have included an ancillary show bringing Spanish painting right up to the present. Why should a museum whose historic focus was modern and contemporary art, and which now has a satellite museum in Bilbao that collects current Spanish work, stop dead with Dalí and Picasso?

And I also would have desired a more agreeable ending: With 15 of its own designated themes to choose from, why leave us (especially those of us who are non-Christian) in the agonies of crucifixion? I'd sooner consume cardoons.

Disappointingly, the Guggenheim still isn't making good on its promise to give credit to curators in the exhibition wall text---an especially unfortunate omission in this curatorial tour de force: All credit, from CultureGrrl, to Carmen Giménez and Francisco Calvo Serraller.

A must read on the Taste page of today's Wall Street Journal: Eric Gibson, editor of the paper's "Leisure & Arts" page, thoughtfully examines the controversy over recent tax-law changes that severely restrict fractional gifts of works of art to museums. And he advances the discussion by considering this hot-button issue in the broader context of museum collection-building and fundraising.

Interestingly, the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that nonprofits may get "a reprieve from congressional attempts to rein in and further regulate many of their financial practices and governance." That's because of the change in party control of the Senate, which means that Democrat Max Baucus is set to replace the unofficial commissioner of the nonprofit police, Republican Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) as chairman of the Finance Committee.

Diana Aviv, president and CEO of the Independent Sector, a national coalition of nonprofits, told Tribune reporter Charles Storch: "It seems pretty clear that Sen. Baucus doesn't intend to pursue an activist agenda on the non-profit sector."

Gibson would probably say that's a bad thing:

When Congress reconvenes in January, it should agree to revisit the fractional gift provision of the Pension Protection Act as the museum directors are asking--but only as part of a full review of all museum business practices. The point would be to determine once and for all which method of sustaining these institutions is most in the public interest--one tied to philanthropy (and the tax code) or one tied to the marketplace.

Let's put an end to the current practice of mixing non-profit and for-profit. Since the museums won't police themselves, perhaps a little congressional oversight will get their attention.

Gibson is particularly exercised by museums' treating their collections "as financial assets that they can tap at any time"---by selling works as "the tool of first resort" in raising acquistion funds, and by "renting out parts of their collections." He blames the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Association of Museums for being "toothless watchdogs."

AAMD also has a toothless website: still nothing posted about its position on and its efforts to change the new fractional gift restrictions.

A highly provocative piece, Eric!

(A CultureGrrl conflict-of-interest disclosure: Eric is my favorite editor. But he would strongly disapprove of last night's post!)

That gleaming cone in the center of the photo is a gold penis shield, Sinú culture, Columbia---part of the extraordinary "Gold" exhibition opening Saturday at the American Museum of Natural History. Consisting largely of a vast array of objects from AMNH's own collection, this is the show that tells you everything you wanted to know (and some things you didn't) about how that coveted metal has been used throughout history, around the world. More on this exhibition, coming soon in CultureGrrl.

But gazing from a modern vantage point upon that curiously shaped artifact, one can only wonder: What exactly did the male organ look like in 600-1500 A.D.?

Definitely time that I retired---at least for the night. Bob Dylan's Continental Arena concert, from which I have just returned, was good in surprising ways---but you'd expect no less from the chimerical codger. He always comes up with a new take on songs you thought you knew.

Thanks, Paul and Joyce!

If you've been following CultureGrrl very closely, you probably can guess: I'm going to a performance, and it's a birthday present from my son and daughter (who DO read CultureGrrl closely!).

But do come back late tonight, after the little ones are tucked in, and you will be treated to an X-rated CultureGrrl exclusive. I feel confident in saying that this has never before been posted in blogging history (perhaps for good reason).

Don't worry, though. I promise that CultureGrrl will NOT appear in her birthday suit!

Here's something more for you Metropolitan Museumologists (and I know you are legion, because my lead-off piece this week, Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met?, was the most viewed post in CultureGrrl's illustrious history).

Just posted online: the Met's fiscal 2006 annual report. For all you museum finance aficionados, here's the Report of the Chief Financial Officer and here are the year's financial statements, which compare last year's results with the previous year's. (J. Paul Getty Trust, please copy.)

You will learn that although "fiscal year 2006 was an exceptional year for the Museum," with "strong endowment growth," the museum nevertheless ran its fifth straight annual operating deficit, with last year's amounting to $3.2 million. Measures adopted to stem the hemorrhage include "increasing recommended admission rates [the now infamous $20 fee], successfully using telemarketing to increase membership, continuing to adjust pricing for many fee-based programs, ongoing aggressive fundraising goals for both operating and capital costs, and reaching out to new audiences through innovative marketing efforts." And how long did the efficiency experts struggle to come up with this one: "combining, when feasible, evening events hosted by the development and membership offices to save on catering and security expenses"?

One of CultureGrrl's favorite reads in each year's report is the semi-enlightening Objects Sold or Exchanged During the Year (scroll down to the bottom of the page), which includes only those works "valued in excess of $50,000." This list is considerably longer than usual this year, augmented by disposals of some selections from the 8,500 photographs acquired in 2005 from the Gilman Collection. The auctioned Gilman photographs were never accessioned, because the Met considered them duplicates of images already in its collection.

The Met uaccountably never reports proceeds for individual works, even though they are sold at public auction. CultureGrrl, as you may remember, hit the auction databases a while back, and came up with these high-ticket items, cashed in by the Met during the past fiscal year: Benjamin West's and John Trumbull's "The Battle of La Hogue," sold at Sotheby's, New York, on Jan. 26, 2006 for $632,000; Benjamin West's "Portrait of Peter Beckford," sold at Sotheby's, London, on Nov. 24, 2005 for $76,364. Surprisingly, the Met doesn't include the latter in its list.

All told, the Met raised $26,829,579 from art disposals in fiscal 2006 (ending June 30), compared to $538,404 the previous year (when only two over-$50,000 items made the published list).

The money spent on art acquisitions in 2006 was $34.83 milllion, compared to $99.21 million the previous year (presumably boosted by the Duccio.)

And for those of you who actually care about art, not money, you can peruse the voluminous lists of Departmental Accessions and Exhibitions and Installations.

I'm a museum wonk. I actually read this stuff. Now you can too.

In a victory so decisive that it could affect not only current profits but also future consignments, Christie's has won the latest evening-sale heavyweight championships in a knockout: With an auction total (with buyer's premium) for tonight's sale of postwar and contemporary art of $239.7 million, compared with Sotheby's total of $125.1 million the night before, and with totals for last week's evening Impressionist/modern sales of $491.47 and $238.67 million, respectively, Christie's has doubled its rival's purse. What's more, tonight's sale was a record for postwar and contemporary art. A painting by Willem de Kooning (see below) set a new auction record for any postwar work.

Artists from Sam Francis to Robert Rauschenberg to John Baldessari trounced their presale estimates. Previous auction records fell for them and 15 other artists.

The big records were for de Kooning ($27.12 million for "Untitled XXV," the new record-setter for all postwar art), Clyfford Still ($21.30 million for "1947-R-No. 1," compared to his previous auction record of only $3.15 million) and the show's star performer, Andy Warhol, whose "Mao" fetched $17.38 million from Joseph Lau, a private collector from Hong Kong who, uncharacteristically for big-money buyers, allowed the auction house to name him.

Estimated to bring more than "Mao," but fetching somewhat less, was Warhol's "Orange Marilyn" at $16.26 million. (It had brought only $3.75 million at auction in May 2001.) His "Sixteen Jackies" was not far behind at $15.7 million. Any fears of a Warhol glut were dispelled when all eight of his works found buyers, for a total of $59.71 million.

Other strong prices for de Kooning included $9.65 million for his "Woman (Seated Woman I)," an auction record for a work on paper by the artist. However, one drawing by the Abstract Expressionist failed to sell.

The biggest failure of the night was Jackson Pollock's "Number 21," unsold against an estimate of $7-9 million. Even in this, Christie's was relatively fortunate: The drip painting on masonite was not one of the lots in the sale for which Christie's had promised a guaranteed amount to the seller.

In all, 92% of the lots were sold; nine unsold works accounted for 11% of the total amount bid.

"These sales have confirmed Christie's as the undisputed leader at the uppermost echelons of the market," gloated Edward Dolman, Christie's CEO, after the animated bidders had handed in their paddles.

Who could argue? And how will the battered rival strive to become a contender?

Having expressed my eager anticipation of the epic Battle of the Trolls at Sotheby's and Christie's dueling contemporary auctions, CultureGrrl is sad to report that Christie's version of Jeff Koons' "Cape Codder Troll" has beat a hasty retreat: My recent perusal of Christie's website revealed that Lot 71, estimated at $400,000-600,000 (compared to Sotheby's price last night of $300,000 for another troll from the same edition) has been withdrawn from tonight's sale.

I'll just have to troll for something else to write about.

Denying the NY Times's Nicolai Ouroussoff the highly critical last word ("a flop") on Richard Meier's Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, architecture critic Joseph Giovannini, in this month's Art in America, calls it: "at every level a major success....A century from now visitors won't be able to imagine Rome without it....This is a structure that confirms the past of Roman building tradition while opening up to an architectural future."

I can't give comment, since I haven't seen it, other than to remark, as I did in my previous Meier post, that the tenor of the Times review seemed as much influenced by perceptions of Meier as a self-aggrandizing and self-important individual as it was by the quality of the work itself.

No link to the AiA article. For more, pick up the magazine.

Kate Taylor, in yesterday's NY Sun, quotes CultureGrrl's praise of Christie's auctioneer Christopher Burge. Then she adds some admiration of her own: Burge is "charmingly down-to-earth," compared to Sotheby's Tobias Meyer, who has "knowledge of and passion for contemporary art" but "is cool and unflappable, to the point of being inexpressive."

Back off, Kate. I saw the Brit first---back when he was the new kid in town and New York's master gaveler was Sotheby's legendary John Marion.

I do have to give Taylor credit for doing things right when it comes to comparing apples to apples: In today's report on last night's contemporary sale at Sotheby's, Taylor consistently reports the hammer prices (uninflated by buyer's premium) and (unlike the NY Times) correctly notes that "the sale came in at the low end of its estimate."

If three auction scribes do this, we'll have a movement!

Carol Vogel, reporting on last night's contemporary art sale at Sotheby's, in today's NY Times:

The auction total, $125.1 million, was...squarely in the middle of its estimate, $109 million to $148 million.

CultureGrrl, in last night's post:

Tobias Meyer...hammer[ed] down $110.65 million's worth of contemporary art last night (not including the buyer's premium). That total [was] slightly above the $109.3-million low end of the presale estimate.

As I said in a previous post, the presale estimate, as clearly defined by the auction houses, is a prediction of hammer price. It explicitly excludes the buyer's premium. It can therefore only be properly compared with the sale's total hammer price, not the beefed-up total that adds in the auction house's hefty commission from buyers. Comparing apples (estimated hammer total) to oranges (actual sale total of hammer plus buyer's premium) makes an auction house's results look much better than they really are. This is highly misleading. It serves the auction houses' interests in enhancing their sales' appearance of success, but not the interests of readers in getting an accurate understanding of what really happened.

Sorry to keep hammering at the need to report hammer. But it's a number-crunching concept worth assimilating.

(Apropos the state of the contemporary art market, Katya Kazakina has posted a very tasty interview with PaceWildenstein's Arne Glimcher, in today's Bloomberg.)

"We're thrilled with the result of this evening's sale," declared Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer after hammering down $110.65 million's worth of contemporary art last night (not including the buyer's premium). That total, slightly above the $109.3-million low end of the presale estimate, was Sotheby's second-highest take for a sale of contemporary art.

Statistically, the sale did slightly better than Sotheby's $212.07-million (hammer price) evening Impressionist/Modern sale last week, with 90.9% of the lots sold tonight, compared to 86.8% last week; 14.7% of the total amount bid represented unsold works, compared to a somewhat higher 17% last week.

All told, a good night's work. But how thrilled can you really be when the piece bearing the auction house's second-highest presale estimate fails to sell? Roy Lichtenstein's "Head - Yellow and Black," expected to bring $8-10 million, was one of the lots guaranteed by Sotheby's. That means that the auction house will have to pay the owner a prearranged, undisclosed amount and then continue trying to find a buyer.

Also guaranteed but unsold was Brice Marden's "Au Centre" (1969), two grayish monochrome panels, estimated at $3.8-4.5 million. Even the current MoMA retrospective couldn't stimulate sufficient interest. Another major disappointment: David Smith's "Voltri XVII," unsold against a $5-7 million estimate.

But on the plus side, the top lot, Francis Bacon's "Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe," easily exceeded its $9-12 million estimate, with a hammer price of $13.4 million. Its $15.02-million total price (with the buyer's premium) set an auction record for the artist. Willem de Kooning's "Untitled XXX," 1977, achieved the second-highest price of the night---a strong $9.5 million hammer price, against a $7.5-9.5 million estimate. His "Hostess," while selling below estimate, set an auction record for de Kooning's sculpture at $3.94 million (including premium).

Anish Kapoor enjoyed breakout bidding, when his untitled carved alabaster sculpture from 1999 was hammered down at $2 million, against an estimate of only $350,000-450,000. The work's $2.26-million total price, with premium, trounced his previous auction record of $844,444.

Andy Warhol, with seven works in the sale, had his ups and downs: His "Flowers" blossomed at $6.1 million ($6.85 million with premium), slightly above estimate. But his "Avanti Cars" (estimate: $1.8-2.5 million) and "Dolly Parton" (estimate: $1-2 million) both ran out of gas. The Warhol marathon continues tomorrow night at Christie's, with all eyes on "Sixteen Jackies," "Marilyn" and "Mao"---all bearing presale estimates in the multimillions. Another megabucks highlight: de Kooning's "Untitled XXV" from 1977.

But CultureGrrl is keenly anticipating the Battle of the Trolls: Jeff Koons' stainless steel "Cape Codder Troll" was sold tonight at Sotheby's for a hammer price of $300,000 against an estimate of $250,000-350,000. Christie's goes head-to-head with another little guy from the same edition, more aggressively estimated at $400,000-600,000. Both figurines are catalogued with the same dimensions in centimeters, but different dimensions in inches.

Go figure.

Veteran museum man Tom Freudenheim, in a piece to be published in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal (but posted early on ArtsJournal), beats me to my planned rebuttal of Tyler Green's favorable take on the Albright-Knox Gallery's planned art disposals. And Tom does it far better than CultureGrrl ever could, especially because he calls upon the museum's influence on his own Buffalo, N.Y., boyhood. (I had no idea that Tom had written this piece, until it was posted this evening on ArtsJournal.)

So let me say "me too" to every opinion expressed by Tom tomorrow on the "Leisure & Arts" page of the WSJ. I'll just take his argument one step further by quoting myself---from my NY Times Op-Ed piece, For Sale: Our Permanent Collection:

Many museums [to justify disposals] simply explain that their missions have changed: Works valued by previous curators and visitors are no longer deemed part of the ''proper scope'' of the institution's collecting....If an institution really has no use for certain works that are worthy of public display, it should give or lend them to other public institutions that would gladly show them. Museums' permanent collections belong to all of us. The public has, in most instances, paid for these works through the tax deductions given to private donors. And those donors bestow such works on the public expecting them to be valued for their aesthetic, not financial, worth.

In other words, what belongs in the public domain stays in the public domain (or should). Publicly disclosing your intention to make an inappropriate disposal doesn't make it right.

I don't know how Tyler feels about this, but I think it's great that ArtsJournal hosts two visual-arts polemicists who almost never take the same side on any question. In diversity there is controversy.

Today Modern Art Notes says:

It's always a pleasure to compliment an arts institution for doing something right, especially when it comes to the ever-thorny issue of deaccessioning. But I can't imagine how the Albright-Knox could have handed itself any better last week. In case you missed it: The Albright will auction off $10-15 million worth of antiquities and pre-modern paintings and sculptures. Some of the pieces the A-K is selling are best-ever examples to come on the market, says Sotheby's....It's nice to see the A-K establish what should be considered an industry standard.

To which CultureGrrl, of course, says:

NOT!

(More on this coming soon.)

Otto Dix, "The Dancer Anita Berber," 1925, Loan of the Landesbank Baden-Würtemberg in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, c. Artists Rights Society, New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Health Warning: The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety.

No, it's not the Young British Artists at the Brooklyn Museum. It's the old German ones from the Weimar Republic, flaunting their raunchy decadence in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, the angst-drenched exhibition opening today at the Metropolitan Museum. Never has the pursuit of pleasure looked so grim.

With its unsparing and disturbing depictions of masturbation, prostitution, mutilation, drug use, sadism and syphilis, not to mention abundant eroticism, this is the first Met show that I can remember with a "Parental Discretion" warning at its entrance: "Some works...may be unsuitable for children."

Perhaps it would have been more prudent to put the more hardcore material deeper into the exhibition, Mapplethorpe-style, rather than right at the entrance, where children can easily meander. And it might have been better to integrate preparatory drawings with the paintings to which they are directly related, rather than isolate different media in different rooms.

It would also have been nice if this show could have been coordinated with MoMA's Dada show, which closed two months ago and covered the same between-the-wars period, presenting a more intellectual, experimental strain of provocation.

All the same, "Glitter and Doom" (with an emphasis on the latter) is a tough, powerful show, sharply deviating in its deviance from traditional high-toned Met fare. We assume that its curator, Sabine Rewald, penned its down-and-dirty texts, such as:

Anita Berber was notorious as a dancer and nude performer, an actress, a seductress of men and women, and a cocaine and opium addict....To her contemporaries, she was perversion incarnate.

Wilkommen.

Work in Progress: The Met's Leon Levy and Shelby White Court

With a floor inspired by the Pantheon in Rome and a new expansive skylight above, the Metropolitan Museum is nearing completion of its new galleries for Greek and Roman art. About one-third of the museum's collection was formerly on display; about one-half will be shown when the new galleries open in April, according to Christopher Lightfoot, associate curator.

Above is the view that was afforded to the press today. (We were not able to wander inside.) At the far end is a new mezzanine gallery, where executive offices used to be. It will showcase the Met's celebrated Etruscan chariot, newly restored and returning to permanent public view for the first time since the early 1990s.

This will complete the museum's Greek and Roman master plan, launched in the early 1990s. An image of what the Levy and White courtyard should look like when completed is here. It will house the largest selection of Hellenistic and Roman sculpture ever shown at the Met. What you don't see in either photo is the impressive lifesize Hellenistic male statue from the Leon Levy and Shelby White Collection that greets you as you enter the space. No provenance problems with that piece, Lightfoot assured quizzical reporters.

It's the artworld's favorite parlor game: Who will (or who should) become the next director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the event that Philippe de Montebello finally decides that he's narrated one too many audio guides?

Philippe once told me that he wanted to stay on at least until the opening of the museum's new Greek and Roman galleries. A little later today, I'm off to the Met's press luncheon, which will include a preview of those galleries, described on the invitation as "the grand new 'museum within the museum' for one of the world's great classical art collections, including the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court." The opening is now set for April.

So this seems like as good a time as any for me to ruin my relationships with all the movers-and-shakers in the museum world by being candid about who I think should be considered for the top American museum post and who shouldn't. Philippe has publicly stated that he does not want to be the one to pick his successor. So this sounds like a job for CultureGrrl!

A few general guidelines for my picks: They must have successfully directed a museum with a wide-ranging collection and they must have a background in art scholarship (although PdM had no PhD). They must be articulate, forceful advocates for the profession and its highest standards. A reputation for creative innovation and consensus-building is highly desirable, as is a relatively long prospective professional lifespan. For the runner-up, there's likely to be a pretty good consolation prize: The directorship of the National Gallery of Art in Washington may be up for grabs before long.

I have spoken at one time or another---in person, by phone or both---with all but one of the the people listed below. But I have no idea which of them may actually want the job. A dark horse, which Philippe arguably was, is also a possibility. Finally, I'm not familiar enough with the current director of that breeding ground for New York City art museum directors, the Art Gallery of Ontario, to know whether Matthew Teitelbaum might be a good pick. That said, here are my six favorites, Letterman-style, saving the best (although also the most unlikely) for last.

6) Deborah Gribbon, former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum: She was given $3 million in 2004 to resign that post without suing her employers or talking publicly about her grievances against them. Deservedly well respected in the field, she's never had a chance to display the full measure of her ability, having been on the leash of the Getty Trust's now deposed president, Barry Munitz. I think she and the Met's first female president, Emily Rafferty, could make a dynamic duo.

5) Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.: Now supervising a Tadao Ando-designed expansion plan, Conforti has a strong interest in and influence upon principles of museum governance. A decorative arts specialist, he has shown a deep commitment to promoting art scholarship and he is an outspoken proponent of museums' collegially sharing their objects with sister institutions---at cost, not for profit. He is committed to developing programs that appeal to the surrounding community. But the others on my list have directed larger, more broad-ranging or more prominent institutions.

4) Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art: I've always admired Max's forward-looking, independent thinking, but he now carries a lot of baggage, thanks to his unceremonious departure from the Whitney Museum. He's smart and articulate, cares about developing alliances with universities and art institutions, and has a broad art-historical and management background, having directed a university museum (at Emory), a specialized museum (the Whitney) and now an encyclopedic museum. And he's a former Met man, having begun his career in the Greek and Roman department. But, as I wrote in a recent post, part of his problems at the Whitney may have been due to a lack of the patience, humility and consensus-building skills needed to realize his ideas without making enemies.

3) William Griswold, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: Bill wins hands down for Mr. Congeniality, and I think he's got the professional goods to be a heavyweight. He was acting director of the Getty Museum during the difficult time after Gribbon's resignation, and he was an immediate hit with his community and his colleagues as the new director in Minneapolis, where he opened the new Michael Graves-designed wing. He recently announced his intention to strengthen the museum's commitment to contemporary art with a new (as yet unfilled) curatorship in that field. But he's too new at Minneapolis to make the move now. If Philippe hangs on for a few more years, Griddle Griswold sizzles.

2) Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell Art Museum: An archaeologist by training, Potts is the right man in the right place at the right time. He strongly impressed me when I interviewed him in his Fort Worth office a while back, and again last May when I heard him speak at an Association of Art Museum Directors symposium in New York on "Museums and the Collecting of Antiquities." He was chairman of AAMD's task force that released, in February, new guidelines for borrowing antiquities. He has made impressive acquisitions at the Kimbell, and has presided over first-rate exhibitions. He has the mind of a lawyer, the sensibility of a scholar, and it is the right moment in his career to make the big leap.

And now [drumroll], my top (but highly unlikely) choice to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

1) Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum: The artworld's number-one candidate for sainthood, he is firmly ensconced at one of England's premier museums, after a highly praised directorial stint at another---the National Gallery in London. He is unlikely to move, let alone cross the pond. He not only has the mind of a lawyer, he IS a lawyer (by training). He has tremendous passion for and knowledge about art, as well as the powerful ability to communicate it. In short order, he turned around the ailing British Museum, restoring its finances and morale. He has creatively devised an exhibition program to share parts of the world's patrimony with the countries or societies of origin where these objects from the British Museum's collection have the deepest significance. (But he parts company with CultureGrrl in his refusal to part with or share the Parthenon marbles.) Although not for lack of trying, I have never spoken directly to MacGregor, other than asking him one question from the audience at the aforementioned May antiquities conference.

You may notice that I've omitted four names that often come up in these speculative discussions: James Cuno (Art Institute of Chicago), because I think he talks the talk better than he walks the walk; Peter Marzio (Houston Museum of Fine Arts), because I dislike his penchant for importing pre-packaged, high-rental shows; Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, because I take him at his word (expressed to me once over lunch) that after his high-stress, highwire act at MoMA, he'd like to return to scholarship; the Met's own curator Gary Tinterow, because...well, you know what I've already said about Gary Tinterow (here, here and here).

And now, please excuse me while I get ready to depart for the Met's press lunch, where, thanks to this and other indiscretions, I will probably eat gruel in the galley.

Or maybe I should eat my own galleys!

I trust Anthony Tommasini completely, and apparently the Metropolitan Opera's new "Barber of Seville" was more than fine, once it got off TV and back on home turf. Mercifully for the Met, the NY Times ignored the lame performance on "Late Show with David Letterman."

So, NYC Opera Fanatic, it seems we may have to give Peter Gelb a pass after all!

A blog about which I was previously unaware, NYC Opera Fanatic, calls CultureGrrl a soul sister for my Stupid Met Tricks. I'd tell you the name of this blogger (you know CultureGrrl credits writers whenever she can), but I couldn't find it on his site. All I can tell you is that he's a redhead and has moved to Philadelphia (and thus calls himself "NYC Opera Fanatic in Exile"). Whoever he is, wherever he is, he's got a mighty lively blog.

And two relatively new, sparsely visited, but worthwhile museum-related blogs recently came across my screen:

Museum Blogging: Leslie Madsen-Brooks thoughtfully surveys museum news and issues. Her latest post (Oct. 20) discusses New York Law School's Digital Museums Project, which is examining intellectual property issues raised by digitizing museum collections.

Curating.info: This site is a compendium of curatorial news, job postings and musings on the challenges and hot-button issues confronted by museums' frontline professionals. The Aug. 29 post, Every Curator's Nightmare?, Michelle Kasprzak discusses a show that got shut down less than 24 hours after it opened.

Check 'em out.

This from Gert-Jan van den Bergh, attorney for Marina Mahler (granddaughter of the composer), in her successful claim for restitution by Austria of Munch's "Summer Night on the Beach":

This is a total victory. The claim was a test of how well the restitution laws functions. We need to study the contents of the decision but understand that it has been based on the latest Restitution Law from 2001, in which a central role is given to the idea that remaining files leading to cases of "extreme injustice" need to be resolved. It is for the first time that this criterion has been applied to the restitution of artworks.

Van den Bergh provided the following details about the ownership history of the Munch:

In 1937 the painting had been given by Alma Mahler-Werfel as a loan to the Österreichische Gallery (now the Belvedere) in Vienna. Alma, since 1929 married to the Jewish writer Franz Werfel (her then third husband after Gustav Maher and Walter Gropius) had to flee Nazi Austria in 1938. Unbeknownst to her and thus without her approval, her Nazi stepfather, Carl Moll, whom she in her autobiography consistently called "her arch-enemy," retrieved the work from the gallery and subsequently sold the work back to the museum at a ridiculously low price of 7.000 Reichsmark.

He added that the decision to return the work, announced on Wednesday by Austria's minister of culture, Elisabeth Gehrer, "brings hope for pending and possible new cases involving similar restitution claims." The Mahler claim had originally been denied in 1999 by Austria's Art Restitution Commission.

Sotheby's Impressionist/modern auction Tuesday night would have been considered a great sale...if it hadn't been trounced the next night by Christie's. That, coupled with yesterday's report of its third-quarter results, appears to have sent the auction company's publicly traded stock into a nosedive, as of the start of trading this morning.

Analysts who had dialed into Sotheby's conference call in August congratulated Sotheby's on its "great second quarter." No such salutations greeted president and CEO William Ruprecht during yesterday's conference call. He assured his interlocutors that the 10-cent quarterly dividend to be paid on Dec. 15 "is a reflection of our confidence and belief in the future of the business."

Sotheby's declared a third-quarter loss from continuing operations of $30.4 million, or 49 cents per diluted share, compared to a 2005 loss for the same quarter of $21.96 million. During the conference call, Ruprecht noted that the third quarter "has pretty much always been a loss period." In the news release announcing the results, he said:

As the 73% increase in our fourth quarter Impressionist and Modern results and the 39% increase in our year to date sales make clear, the art market is extremely vibrant and we certainly expect a strong market and sales for the remainder of the year.

Someone please stop general manager Peter Gelb, before he turns the Metropolitan Opera into a laughingstock. Proud of yesterday's embarrassingly lame debut on the "Late Show with David Letterman," the Met has posted this inane backstage look at the singers' preparations for a televised excerpt from Rossini's "Barber of Seville."

We learn, to our consternation, that "Gelb, [Bartlett] Sher [the director], [Maurizio] Benini [the conductor], and other Met staffers waited in the green room, talking about Borat." What, you thought maybe were discussing bel canto? We know that Gelb is trying to popularize opera, but this fatuousness is the wrong kind of populism.

And here's what the singers were instructed to do by Sher, the theatrical director whom Gelb tapped to try his hand at staging this new production, which debuts at tomorrow the Met:

Pretend you're in a rock band! A crazy rock band.

Apparently, the hapless singers' idea of being a rock band was standing still, with wooden expressions, and singing at such a reckless pace that they were raggedly out-of-sync. It was more Gilbert and Sullivan than Rossini, and we can only hope that the performance will come off better in more familiar surroundings. The subtitles provided a hilarious subtext for what the audience must have been feeling:

If this goes on, I'll go insane.
There's no more reason, there's only confusion.
The noise never ceases, it only increases.

Now I love the Met (or I did, when music director James Levine did more of the actual conducting). I can only imagine the maestro cringing in Boston, as he watched the nationally broadcast disintegration of the musical seamlessness that he had worked so hard and long to build.

And now, if you'll excuse me: My Metropolitan Opera Shop holiday catalogue has just arrived in the mail. I've got to order the perfect gift for the opera lover who has everything except good taste:

Met Opera House Snow Globe: Our musical snow globe enchants with The Metropolitan Opera House and City skyline set in a swirl of snow. The rotating base is artfully carved to show the interior of the House, gold curtain and stage. 18-note music movement plays an aria from Rigoletto.

On second thought, I think I'll stick with "Frosty the Snowman."

CultureGrrl is clearly no good at predicting the direction of the art market, but I sure do know how to predict the life of Broadway musicals, from merely listening to the radio ads.

After the reviews of the Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan Broadway bomb hit the newsstands, I observed that the best Dylan show in New York was the exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, which (running through Jan. 6) "should still be open after the Broadway show folds."

And now, on my birthday no less, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" is indeed scheduled to fold its circus tent. But there may be a better Dylan show than the Morgan's coming soon our area: his own---Nov. 16, Continental Arena, East Rutherford, NJ.

No, I'm not talking about antiquities. For that, you can read today's NY Times update, wherein Hugh Eakin (the "Mens Vogue" coverboy) and Elisabetta Povoledo provide more details on the parlous state of the Getty's negotiations with Italy (which CultureGrrl readers first learned about more than two weeks ago).

What I'm zeroing in on is a lack of figures---not statues of Greek athletes, but the kind of figures that are usually published in museums' annual reports, including past reports of the J. Paul Getty Trust itself. The "transparency" to which that the Getty now nominally subscribes is almost completely lacking in the latest (if belated) financial report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2005. You can find the Getty's 112-page annual report here, and if you skip to page 107, you'll see a lot of white space and a modicum of "Financial Information."

On this single page devoted to the money, you will find the total amount of net assets for five years ($7.5 billion in 2005, equaling the 2001 amount, after a dip during the intervening years); the total endowment value ($5.1 billion, compared to $4.9 billion in 2001); and the percentage distribution of investments among five different categories. (Investments in limited partnerships soared from 1 percent in 2001 to 31 percent in 2005---no explanation). And that's it.

Let's not even compare this to the Metropolitan Museum's 17 pages of detailed financial data in its fiscal 2005 report. Let's compare it to the Getty's own report for fiscal 2001, the last one that I happen to have handy on my office shelves.

There, in addition to asset allocation and total endowment, avid number crunchers can find the customary "Consolidated Statements of Financial Position" for two fiscal years, a breakdown of capital expenditures, and the "Statements of Activities" for two years, including such tasty morsels as "total support and revenue," "total expenses," and the difference between the two (i.e., operating surplus or deficit).

Sure, you can cull through the Getty's 199-page tax return, also posted online, and try to ferret out more detailed information. But public transparency means providing such information in a form that is readily accessible, clearly presented and easily understood.

There IS one bit of good news, though: The Getty says the publication of its fiscal 2006 report will occur just months from now, at the beginning of 2007. Let's hope it's not only faster but fuller.

I know I'm supposed to lead with the fact that Christie's auction of Impressionist and modern art last night totaled $491.47 million, by far the highest grossing art auction in history, even without Andrew Lloyd Webber's withdrawn Picasso. Among the nine new auction records were prices for Klimt ($87.94 million for "Adele Bloch-Bauer II," making him second only to Picasso at auction), Gauguin ($40.34 million), Schiele ($22.42 million) and Schiele works on paper ($11.22 million). (All the foregoing dollar amounts include the buyer's premium.) I'm also supposed to tell you that a mere 7% of the lots failed to sell, and that unsold works accounted for a miniscule 2% of the total amount bid.

And I probably should also mention that the Neue Galerie, which sold three Schieles for a total hammer price of $41 million, also bought a recently restituted Kirchner for $38.1 million, trouncing the previous auction record for that artist. And, in that regard, I should also report that when I caught up with Ronald Lauder after the sale and asked if he or the Neue Galerie had bought any of the four Bloch-Bauer Klimts that had sold for a total of $192.7 million (with buyer's premium), he replied, "I can't say." That might not be a stop-the-presses news flash, except that he used those same words when I asked if he had bought the Kirchner. Then he immediately owned up to that purchase, after being informed that a public announcement of the Neue Galerie's acquisition of "Berlin Street Scene" had already been made at the post-sale press conference.

Now that I've finally gotten all that out of the way, what I really want to tell you about is the bravura verve and adroit bid-coaxing skills of veteran auctioneer Christopher Burge, to whom the sale owed at least part of its success and all of its esprit. He self-deprecatingly described himself to the press after the sale as "a performing seal." But, in truth, he had been a master showman---a bobbing, weaving and always smiling seducer of any who might be tempted to try just one more bid...then another...and then just one more.

From the first lot, when he provoked laughter by inquiring, "Are you bidding sir?" to an animated attendee waving his entry ticket, up through the final offering, when he began his recital of acquisitive increments with, "Finally. Is it finally? It IS finally," he was ever ready with a tension-dissolving quip or a sympathetic, "I'll give you time, sir," for those experiencing pangs in parting with multimillions. The brisk pace and quick-witted repartee were in sharp contrast to the stolid, if solid, Impressionist/modern disposals at Sotheby's the night before.

When it was time for his victory lap, Burge proclaimed this "the most extraordinary auction I have been involved with" in his 36 years in the business. "For me, it was an extraordinary moment."

And so it was for those of us---participants and observers alike---who packed the salesroom that night. But please, don't remind me of my recent suggestion that "discretionary, high-ticket art purchases" might be "hypersensitive to economic jitters." Is CultureGrrl permitted to delete woefully boneheaded posts?

Christie's is doing the prudent, if painful, thing---withdrawing Picasso's "Angel Fernández de Soto" from tonight's auction. Because of the threat of continued legal wrangling over the painting's Nazi-era past, there is a "cloud over title that makes it difficult to sell the painting," conceded Carey Ramos, attorney for Andrew Lloyd Webber's foundation, which owns it.

Both the foundation and Christie's maintain that the lawsuit's claims about the painting's alleged forced sale during the Nazi era "have no merit." In addition, Ramos revealed to me in a phone conversation this afternoon that the attorneys for the claimant, Julius Schoeps, had sought to reach a monetary settlement of the case with Lloyd Webber's foundation. The foundation "flatly refused" to enter into such discussions, Ramos said.

In its press release announcing the withdrawal, Christie's president, Marc Porter said: "We reserve the right to seek damages."

Schoeps' attorneys are expected to file suit over the painting's ownership in New York County Supreme Court, according to Ramos. Because their lawsuit was dismissed yesterday in U.S. District Court merely on jurisdictional grounds, not on the merits of the case, Schoeps can still press his arguments in state court.

Schoeps says that he is an heir to the Berlin banker, Paul
von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who had owned the painting in the 1930s. As reported today by Mark Hamblett in the New York Law Journal:

Schoeps claimed that the Nazis were closing in on his wealthy ancestor in 1934 and the banker was forced to sell the painting or will it to his wife, Elsa, who was then forced to sell it into a depressed art market. Mr. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy died in 1935.

Attempts by CultureGrrl to reach Schoeps' New York and Washington attorneys this afternoon were unsuccessful.

Why does Carol Vogel in today's NY Times say that the sale total for Sotheby's Impressionist/modern auction last night was "right in the middle of its estimate," while CultureGrrl says that the sale total was "slightly below the sale's presale estimate"?

Because Carol Vogel (and we might as well add Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff, in today's Bloomberg) is wrong.

As Sotheby's itself acknowledges, the presale estimate, $219.6-299.8 million, is a prediction of the total hammer price, not hammer price plus buyer's premium (the hefty commission tacked on after the hammer falls). The $238.67 million total, cited by other reporters as evidence that Sotheby's sale achieved its estimate, includes the markup from the buyer's premium. Comparing that figure to the hammer-price estimate is apples-to-oranges. The appropriate figure for apples-to-apples comparison is the $212.07-million total hammer price, which fell below the $219.6-million low end of the presale estimate.

The hammer-price total was not released to me by the auction house's press office until I persisted. Before getting it for me, late last night, a Sotheby's press staffer encouraged me to follow the usual practice: Report the sale total with premium, compare it to the presale estimate, and say somewhere in the story that the estimate does not include the buyer's premium---20% of the hammer price on the first $200,000, and 12% on the excess. Smart as my readers are, I don't like to force them to do that complicated math.

Even Sotheby's officials don't have the temerity, in their official press release, to directly compare the premium-inflated total with the hammer-price presale estimate. But in an e-mailed message to me today, the Sotheby's press staffer sought to perpetuate the myth that the sale had reached its estimate. She wrote: "The sale brought $238.7 million, significantly above the presale low estimate of $219 million."

All true, but so misleading.

CultureGrrl, your intrepid art-combat correspondent, has just returned from the York Avenue bidding skirmishes. It was a businesslike and subdued affair. But the polished, if impersonal, auctioneer Tobias Meyer got the job done, with a total sold hammer price of $212.07 million, slightly below the sale's presale estimate of $219.6-299.8 million. (For a complete price list, go here.)

The only real electricity (and the only big smile from Sotheby's Impressionist/modern head David Norman) came from a long, intense bidding duel between Swiss dealer Doris Ammann, taking her instructions by cell phone, and Sotheby's Impressionist/modern vice president Charles Moffett, who was on the phone with a client. Their quarry was Modigliani's "The Concierge's Son." The blue-eyed boy defied both his $14-18 million presale estimate and collectors' usual predilection for that artist's reclining nudes, by soaring to $27.75 million ($31.1 million with the buyer's premium, close to the $31.37-million record auction price for Modigliani). Ammann, who ultimately prevailed, is the sister of Thomas Ammann, the prominent Zurich dealer in Impressionist and modern art and major collector of contemporary art, who died in 1993, at the age of 43. She declined to say for whom she had purchased the work.

But another Modigliani male portrait, "Paul Guillaume," sold cheaply, causing the front-row buyer, to be congratulated in French by another attendee: "Très bien acheté, eh?" It fetched only $4.3 million ($4.83 million with premium), below it's estimate of $5-7 million. That was not much more than it sold for in 2000---$4.63 million (with premium).

Top price in the sale, as expected, was $35 million ($36.78 million with premium) for Cézanne's "Still Life with Fruits and a Ginger Pot"---a price that equaled its high estimate. So William Acquavella made good on his $18.22-million investment, as he had anticipated.

There were two major flops: Monet's "The Beach at Trouville," which Norman called "one of the finest early Impressionist paintings in private hands," nevertheless failed to sell at $15.25 million, compared to the $16.57 million it had fetched in 2000. And Picasso's "The Rescue," estimated at $12-16 million, went unsold at $10.75 million. Norman said that Sotheby's had "inquiries coming in" about making a deal for that painting, even before the crowd had cleared out of the salesroom. The Picasso was one of only three unsold works for which Sotheby's had given guarantees. (The others were a Schiele and a Nolde.) In all, Sotheby's had given guarantees for 24 works. So, especially if the Picasso soon sells, it appears that the guarantee gambit paid off.

A few more facts and figures:

Sale total including buyer's premium: $238.67 million.
72 lots sold/11 failed to sell (an 86.8% sold rate).
Works that failed to sell accounted for 17% of the total amount bid.

Norman said there was an international mix of buyers, and "some of the consignors in this sale were bidding on lots in the sale," reflecting "a dynamism" in how people are collecting today. He added that some "wonderful results" were achieved for things that had been on the market quite recently.

And don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow (actually, its already tomorrow, so make that tonight), when Christie's takes center stage with its killer Klimts and Gauguin's hatchet man.

According to its press office, Christie's, at this writing, has not yet decided whether to go ahead with the sale tomorrow night of the blue-period Picasso owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber's foundation, in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt in U.S. District Court to stop the sale.

Here is the latest statement released by Christies:

Christie's is pleased that Judge Rakoff has dismissed the case involving the picture "Portrait de Angel de Soto." The last minute action taken by these individuals against a charity is a disservice to the restitution community and the restitution process that has been created to serve those with authentic interests in stolen and plundered art. This kind of inappropriate action does damage to the public, museums and, above all, the true claimant community. We are now in conversation with the owner as to what future actions to take.

CultureGrrl has heard the best museum curators around the country expound on the masterpieces in their museums, but no one beats David Norman, Sotheby's head of Impressionist and modern art, when it comes to a close reading of what to admire in a painting. If you don't believe me, just surf to Sotheby's engaging online multimedia presentation of the highlight of tonight's sale, Cézanne's "Still Life with Fruits and a Ginger Pot." (Go here, click "Launch Minisite," click "Menu" and then click the Cézanne. You'll get there eventually!)

Estimated to fetch $28-35 million, the Cézanne is said by Norman to be one of only five or six great still lifes by the artist still in private hands.

As it happens, I ran into those hands Friday at Sotheby's presale exhibition: Dealer William Acquavella told me that he had decided to market the painting through Sotheby's, rather at his own bluechip gallery, because the auction house has access to more international buyers. "I bought it [for $18.22 million in June 2000] as an investment," he said. "Now seemed like a good time to sell."

We'll soon see. CultureGrrl will attempt to serve as your witty eyewitness to tonight's auction action.

The AP reported, just minutes ago, that U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff has just ruled that the sale tomorrow night at Christie's of Andrew Lloyd Webber's blue-period Picasso can proceed. The AP story gave further details about the allegations surrounding the Nazi-era history of the painting.

Now the question is whether this last-minute ownership controversy will have any effect on bidders.

Bloomberg's Linda Sandler outstrips CultureGrrl today in extracting more detailed information about the amounts of Sotheby's and Christie's guarantees in its evening sales.

She reports that Sotheby's guarantees for tonight's sale total $93 million. Christie's, for tomorrow night's sale, has granted guarantees totaling $165 million, Sandler reports.

But buried in her story is a potential bombshell:

[Andrew] Lloyd Webber's foundation was temporarily barred from selling the Picasso ["Angel Fernández de Soto," estimated to bring $40-60 million at Christie's] after a German collector said it was forcibly sold to the Nazis, the BBC reported today. Alex Jackson-Proes, a spokeswoman for the foundation, said in a telephone interview the matter will be heard in a New York court today at 11 a.m.

My guess is that if there's any evidence that this is more than just a crank prank, the sale will probably have to be postposed. But with this painting so prominently owned and displayed for so many years, why did this come out just now?

If the fingernails of Christie's officials look considerably shorter tomorrow night, you'll know why.

Simple but elegant.

That apparently was industrialist Henry Clay Frick's governing principle in planning the 70th-Street abode for his family and his art---a 1914 mansion that still stands as a monument to his taste and his art collection. At a time when prominent Philadelphians are intent on dismantling the creation of Albert Barnes, it is instructive to read about the intensity with which another passionate collector pursued his own vision for his collection.

In his new book, "Building the Frick Collection," that collection's chief curator, Colin Bailey, details Frick's ideas for the design of his art palace. These principles were first enunciated in his instructions to the architects for his earlier residence on Boston's North Shore:

Frick was determined that the place "be kept as simple as possible" (although there were silver-plated plumbing fixtures in each bathroom)....He insisted that the interior finishes be kept "severely simple," and that "while everything in connection with the house [should be] made of the best materials, we want it severely plain." These terms---and the manner in which they were voiced---will reappear in Frick's dealings with the architect [Thomas Hastings] and decorators of his New York home."

His New York interior designer, Sir Charles Carrick Allom, won Frick's approval by assuring him that "the great point is the placing of all...ornamentation in such parts of the scheme as will ensure with certainty that nothing prevents the eye from travelling always to your works of art....In no cases should great elaboration of ceilings be attempted, for their height is insufficient to place them out of the line of vision when the pictures are under consideration."

This, according to Bailey, "must have been music to Frick's ears"...or maybe a tribute to his discerning eye.

Any doubts that art is in fashion are laid to rest by the November issues of "W" and "Men's Vogue." This month's oversized "W" is "The Art Issue," sporting yet another photo spread of Brice Marden's real estate. It contains some good reads: profiles of artworld movers and shakers such as Michael Govan, the Wildensteins and the Glimchers, and features devoted to such art stars as Jeff Koons, Lisa Yuskavage, Richard Prince, Bruce Nauman and (in a very non-minimalist mode) Richard Tuttle.

The cover of "Men's Vogue" features two Hughs: actor Hugh Jackman and art journalist Hugh Eakin. Although unnamed on the cover, Eakin scores top billing there for his five-page "Raiders of the Lost Art"---reportage from Italy on that country's antiquities recovery efforts.

Who should CultureGrrl run into, gazing appreciatively at Klimt's "Apple Tree I" at the presale exhibition for Christie's Nov. 8 Impressionist/modern sale, but the dean of New York City land-use attorneys, Samuel Lindenbaum. Sandy is the go-to guy for getting the necessary government approvals on just about every major museum expansion project in the city. The Whitney Museum has been no exception: He has lawyered its every iteration, from Michael Graves to Rem Koolhaas to the now endangered Renzo Piano plan.

The Whitney has not divulged how much it has squandered on legal and architectural fees for the Piano plan, although Nicolai Ouroussoff reported in the NY Times that "Max Anderson, the museum's previous director, said the museum spent nearly $6 million in architectural, engineering and legal fees to develop the Koolhaas design. One can safely assume that it has spent far more on its collaboration with Mr. Piano (who is to be retained for whatever project it pursues, the museum says)."

Lindenbaum told me Friday that he didn't know offhand how much his office had reaped in the latest Whitney-go-round, but "I'm sure it's a lot. I keep saying to Leonard Lauder [the museum's chairman]: 'When you finally build that, I'll lose an annuity.'" He added that the latest Piano plan was "not off the table," although the Whitney is seriously considering expanding off site instead, at the High Line.

Do the sellers at the series of major fall art sales beginning tomorrow in New York know something that the auctioneers don't?

They are unloading property with an extraordinarily high estimated value at the upcoming evening sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. But at the same time, many of these sellers have also exacted an extraordinary amount of protection on the downside---guaranteed prices that the auction houses have pledged to pay them, whether or not the bidding reaches the level of the guarantee. These wary sellers don't seem to mind that if prices soar, they stand to forfeit a large cut of the excess amount above the guarantee.

"They're just nervous," said Emmanuel Di-Donna, senior vice president for Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's. "There's no reason to be. There's so much money around."

But these sellers may be reacting cautiously to signs of a possibly weakening economy.

Brett Gorvy, international co-head of contemporary art at Christie's, revealed that guarantees for his sale total some $70 million. For the Impressionist/modern sale, he said, "we probably have about $150 million to $180 million in guarantees."

"We've been very aggressive in going after business," said Gorvy. "We've been aggressive in the guarantees we've put forward and aggressive in targeting certain collectors....The guarantee is often totally in the auction house's favor: We have risk if we don't sell the painting, but if we do sell the painting, the reward is huge"---10 to 50 percent of the amount exceeding the level of the guarantee.

Sotheby's experts declined to reveal to me the dollar totals of their guarantees, but Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal reported that "at least $40 million" was guaranteed in the contemporary sale. Di-Donna said that Sotheby's cut of the amount in excess of the guarantees is 15 to 40 percent. The exact percentage is negotiated based on the size of the guarantee: A higher guarantee (which creates more risk for the auction house) translates into a higher reward for the auction house, if that price is exceeded. Di-Donna said that Sotheby's guarantees are "usually around the low estimate."

Some 47 of the 167 works being offered at Sotheby's two evening sales have guarantees. Christie's has granted guarantees for 49 of the 168 works in its two evening sales.

"Guarantees used to be very rare," according to David Norman, head of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's, New York. They were requested mainly "by estates and museums that had to have certainty." Now that their availability has become common knowledge, they have become "a more common part of the negotiation at the high level of the market."

With the recent strength in the market, Norman said, the auction houses' gamble in offering guarantees has been paying off. "The challenge for us is to predict if there's going to be a market change," he acknowledged. Any work that Sotheby's guarantees, he said, has to be one that "we are willing to own [in the event that the bidding falls short]....The real guarantee you have is the quality of the painting."

One paragraph leaped out at me from the long article by Greg Allen in tomorrow's NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section about art-auction protocol:

"Let me put it this way," said Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby's. "If I were in the luxurious position of spending a large sum of money on art, I would like to have as much information as possible." That means building a rapport with the auction house's specialists, who can provide crucial details about a work's condition, its unpublished reserve price (the lowest price a seller will accept) and what Mr. Meyer called "the level of interest in a work": who else is bidding and what they might pay.

Flag on the play: If auction houses are providing some potential bidders with information about the supposedly undisclosed level of the reserve, they are violating their duty of confidentiality to sellers. And if they are slipping information to favored buyers about who else may be bidding and for how much, they are violating their responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of conversations with potential bidders.

The premise behind auctions is that they provide a level playing field for the participants. Providing the advantage of inside information a favored few would be a violation of that premise and of the trust put in auction houses by buyers and sellers.

Part of Christie's Presale Installation of the Bloch-Bauer Klimts and the Neue Galerie Schieles

In case there was any doubt about the connection between the four Bloch-Bauer Klimts and the Neue Galerie's three Schieles, Christie's has installed them facing each other at its presale exhibition, which opened today. They've been given their own room, its walls embellished with gilt trim, evocative of the Neue Galerie's famous golden portrait of you-know-who. The Schieles are being sold by the Neue Galerie to help fund its purchase of the fifth restituted Bloch-Bauer Klimt, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907).

Schiele's raunchy females make strange companions for the elegant "Adele Bloch-Bauer II." But the Klimts look better than ever, now that they are not outshown by his more dazzling masterpiece. The Schieles' ownership, omitted from the catalogue, is now labeled for all to see: "Property from the Collection of the Neue Galerie."

Interestingly, Sotheby's has its own Adele up for sale next week---probably no mere coincidence, given the market's intensified interest in Klimt and his muse. The Nov. 8 afternoon sale (followed close upon by Christie's Klimt-laden Impressionist/Modern evening sale) includes a 1903 drawing that is similar to one displayed in the Neue Galerie. It belongs to the series of studies for the (reportedly) $135-million painting. This pencil Adele comes relatively cheap---estimated at $80,000 to $120,000, compared to $40-60 million for "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" (1912).

Happy shopping!

It sure seems that way, when it dispatches one of them to "all but take up residence...for several months" on 25th Street. The assignment: to hang out in the Chelsea art scene, "watching its rites and rituals, talking to its pioneers and newcomers, its ground-floor gods and high-floor hopefuls."

Maybe Randy Kennedy should go back to stalking the "ground-floor gods" at the Met's admissions desk.

And another question: Why do all the Chelsea denizens in the Times' photographs look so grim? Are they just tired of running into Randy, or did they read my post yesterday about the possible impact of the economy on the art market?

The more I learn about the recent ownership history of the three Schieles that the Neue Galerie is selling on Wednesday at Christie's, the more complicated it becomes. The museum is marketing these works to help pay for its purchase of Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." If they sell, they will have changed hands three times within about three years.

What's more, Scott Gutterman, deputy director of the museum would not comment on whether more art has been or will be sold to defray "Adele's" cost---reportedly $135 million. The three Schieles are estimated to bring $35-45 million.

We now know who the seller is, only because Gutterman recently confirmed it. In a departure from the usual practice for museum consignments, Christie's did not identify the Neue Galerie as the seller in the auction catalogue. Guy Bennett, head of the auction house's Impressionist and modern art department, at first declined to identify the seller to me, even after the Neue Galerie had been named by Bloomberg. But yesterday, in a phone conversation, he did confirm that the seller is the Neue Galerie.

Bennett also conceded that the information about recent ownership history for the works is inaccurately described in the auction catalogue:

The catalogue says that two of the three Schieles, both watercolors, were previously owned by the Neue Galerie's co-founder, the late Serge Sabarsky, and "acquired by the present owner in 2003." (The third, an oil on canvas, was acquired from the Aberbach Gallery, New York, "by the present owner," but no date of acquisition is given.)

But Gutterman informed me that the present owner---the Neue Galerie---has owned the three Schieles only "in recent months," not since 2003, as stated in the catalogue entries for the watercolors. He said they were donated to the museum by Ronald Lauder, its co-founder and president, some time after the museum's exhibition, "Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections,'' which closed in February. It was Lauder who acquired the two watercolors in 2003 from the Sabarsky collection. (Sabarsky died in 1996.)

Gutterman said that the decision not to identify the Neue Galerie as the owner was made by the auction house: "I can tell you that the Neue Galerie did not prevent Christie's from identifying the museum as the consignor." Bennett, when asked, provided no further insight into the reason for the omission.

When asked how the rest of the purchase price of "Adele" was being funded, and whether any additional artworks have been or will be sold to defray that cost, Gutterman replied only that "the purchasing arrangement is private."

Whatever the deal, and whatever the reasons for the various transfers of the Schieles before their sale, both Gutterman and Steven Thomas, attorney for the sellers, affirm that the Neue Galerie owns the Klimt in full.

Question: Speaking of "internal confusion," what's Manet doing at the Museum of Modern Art?

Answer: He's there because chief curator John Elderfield wants him to be.

Elderfield's monographic show, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian is undeniably engrossing, but it makes you wonder how the museum could justify past deaccessions of works that supposedly didn't fit in with the post-1880 modernist canon. Like the large array of Pissarros in last year's "Cézanne and Pissarro" show, the invasion of 1860s Manets is justified on the grounds that he was a modernist precursor. The Pissarros' presence was also properly understood as an exercise of curatorial prerogative: MoMA curator Joachim Pissarro is the artist's great-grandson.

What's next, Prud'hon? Elderfield is author of a major volume devoted the drawings of that early 18th-century artist.

In reading Nicolai Ouroussoff's trenchant appraisal in today's NY Times of the "self-doubt and internal confusion" evidenced by the Whitney Museum's revolving-door directors and architects, I realized that his (and Whitney director Adam Weinberg's) critique of Renzo Piano's design for the Whitney's all-but-aborted on-site expansion could also apply to what Roberta Smith, in Wednesday's NY Times, termed the "poor layout" of the Museum of Modern Art.

Part of the problem is that MoMA has changed from a horizontal museum to a vertical one, with galleries stacked on six levels. (The Whitney's new galleries would have been stacked on seven levels.) This could be one of the reasons for what I recently called "MoMA's post-expansion penchant for inconveniently dividing up major shows between distant parts of the building," as in the current Brice Marden retrospective---paintings on Six, drawings on Three.

Ladies' lingerie on Two?

Is it the economy, stupid?

If so, these excerpts from Scott Patterson's "Economic Jitters Sap Stocks," posted just minutes ago on the Wall Street Journal's website (to which I am not permitted to link), should give pause to those predicting record-breaking results for the next two weeks of major Impressionist, modern and contemporary auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's:

The string of weak economic reports continued again Thursday [today], knocking stocks lower and dragging the Dow Jones Industrial Average below the 12000 level.....

Weak productivity is bad news for stocks, since it means corporate profit margins could get squeezed....On top of the productivity report, retailers appear to have had a lackluster month in October. According to results tracked by Thomson Financial, nearly 60% of the 43 companies that have reported same-store-sales results for last month have missed expectations.

And let's not even talk about the full-blown slump in the real estate market.

Sure, there's still lots of money around, as todays articles in both Bloomberg and the NY Times suggest. But even hedge funds are not as heady as they used to be, and discretionary, high-ticket art purchases are hypersensitive to "economic jitters."

I was reminded of the delicate psychology of art buying by this passage from Lindsay Pollock's new biography, "The Girl with the Gallery," about pioneering dealer Edith Halpert's efforts to persuade Abby Aldrich Rockefeller to keep buying after the stock market crash of 1929:

Mrs. Rockefeller...was not in a mood to spend. With the spiking unemployment rate and shantytowns springing up around New York, there was something unseemly about dropping money on art. Unmoved by Edith's urgent plea, Mrs. Rockefeller wrote back that she already owned similar works and was making a sincere effort to stay within her budget.

Today's situation is far from a Great Depression, but the mentality of economically uncertain times may already be upon us. This month's major art sales, in which many works recently on the market are returning to market, has an aura of last-chance profit taking. And the high number of works being sold with guarantees (undisclosed amounts that the auction house promises to pay the seller, whether or not the bidding actually attains that level) suggests that sellers are getting nervous that prices may be heading south: Feeling a strong need for protection on the downside, they are willing to forfeit a large chunk of any excess amount, above the guarantee, that may be fetched by the work if the bidding is strong.

COMING SOON: More on guarantees.

Mud Angels Rescuing Florence's Art after the 1966 Flood

Saturday marks the 40th anniversity of the Florence Flood that devastated that Italian city and its cultural patrimony. To commemorate the immense international relief and restoration efforts that followed, Florence will host an international symposium, Nov. 10 and 11, on "Conservation Legacies of l'Alluvione." According to the official announcement, it will "bring together many of the surviving participants in the rescue effort---both the leaders and the so-called 'mud angels' who were in the field."

They and many of today's leading art restoration experts will participate in a fully subscribed series of public discussions on "the flood and its legacy for art conservation and international emergency response." Among those attending: Sen. Edward Kennedy, who had surveyed the 1966 damage, and "the mayors of New Orleans, Dresden and Prague---cities which experienced significant flooding."

So New Orleans now enjoys the dubious distinction of being linked with some of Europe's most celebrated cultural meccas. Would that the intensity of recovery efforts had been comparable.

In the question-and-answer portion of his recent lecture about "the history of the Metropolitan Museum's involvement with contemporary art," curator Gary Tinterow was shockingly candid about the second-class status of such art at the Met. During his prepared talk, he had not only enumerated the many big names in modern and contemporary art who were missing from the Met's collection; he had also listed a number of lesser-known 19th-century artists whose work he had recently seen fit to acquire.

Then, in response to questions, he enunciated this policy for augmenting the spotty contemporary collection:

We're focusing more on the historical gaps. If it's work by living artists, it's likely to be older artists we will be focusing on, at least till we fill the gaps of what we have on display. So we're not making many speculative purchases of works by 30- or 40-year-old artists....

No matter how bright you are, you have no way of knowing that an artist will not make something better next year, and you can't buy the same artist every year. You need some historical perspective to put together a comprehensive collection that makes sense to future generations.

Still, the Tinterow Doctrine seems slightly less restrictive than the non-acquisitions policy for contemporary art that was recently advocated by the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello:

We have pretty much made the decision not to buy very much of this generation. There is plenty of time, if someone emerges as a major artist, to buy that artist 50 years from now.

That would pretty much rule out any artist under 75, and it would also guarantee that when the Met did buy, it would pay multiples over what it could have spent for the same work, were the Met less wary of contemporary.

The nation's premier art museum is trying to bridge its generation gap through temporary one-person shows of contemporary work. Tinterow also noted that New York City "has unparalleled resources" for viewing such art---at other museums and at commercial galleries.

This contemporary cluelessness is a departure from the museum's own previous collecting practices, as Tinterow's own recital of the Met's history of major acquisitions made clear. Today's artworld has no lack of competent experts who feel confident (if not always infallible) in making informed judgments about the work of living artists. One of them should be hired by the Met's Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art and be allowed to exercise the desire to acquire.

Otherwise, that sub-par department should admit defeat and delete the last part of its name.

In an e-mail yesterday, responding to queries that I had sent, Scott Gutterman, deputy director of the Neue Galerie, said that the three Schieles being sold at Christie's to help fund the museum's purchase of its celebrated Klimt "were owned by [Ronald] Lauder and donated to the Neue Galerie."

That means that the museum is the consignor. And that raises some additional questions on which I am now seeking further clarification from Gutterman.

What does seem clear is that the Neue Galerie is sacrificing works that it deemed worthy of public exhibition just months ago, in the museum's 2005-2006 exhibition, "Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections."

The three Schieles, estimated to bring $35-45 million, are being auctioned the same night as the four other Klimts that were returned by Austria to the Bloch-Bauer heirs along with "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (for which the Neue Galerie reportedly paid $135 million). Christie's has guaranteed an undisclosed amount to the Klimt consignors, even if the bidding falls short. The four Klimts are estimated to sell for a total of $93-135 million.

In reply to my query about whether the Neue Galerie may bid on any of these four, Gutterman said:

The other works are certainly of interest, but there are no specific plans to acquire them.