February 2007 Archives

If you try to build it, some neighbors will always protest (no matter what "it" is).

And so it goes with the planned new Allston facility for the Harvard University Art Museums, which I described in yesterday's post .

Today's Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, ran an editorial today, debunking community concerns about the new facility as "unfounded" and "misplaced."

A neighbor fired back:

Telling residents that they are effectively wrong either in reasoning or taste is not a good position to begin the negotiation. Use your words carefully or you will cause the University more cost in the long run.

The community comment period, which is part of the governmental approval process, ends this Friday, the Crimson reports.

Geoff Edgers' Exhibitionist blog for the Boston Globe has more details about the neighbors' objections. He also wrote to CultureGrrl that neighborhood opposition was "what did in Renzo [Piano's] project down by the river under [former Harvard museums director James] Cuno."

Will Harvard's aging art museums never be able to get their plumbing fixed?

I truly hope that this will be my last Glenn Lowry post for a while, because I'm getting as tired of writing about this controversy as MoMA must be of reading what I write.

But I can't leave the topic without explaining in further detail why the secret supplementing of Lowry's compensation is not just unorthodox, but potentially unethical.

We may never know whether there were actual (as distinguished from potential) conflicts of interest that resulted from the decision of individual collector/trustees to slip the director extra millions, without approval from the full board, through a private foundation set up for that purpose. I'd like to think that every decision and recommendation made by Lowry during his distinguished tenure was informed by only the purest of motives.

But money buys influence, and because that influence can be abused, it should be in plain view, not hidden behind the screen of an enigmatically named New York Fine Arts Support Trust. Because of the way this was contrived, people are now, with some justification, leaping to conclusions like this one from an anonymous comment posted on Richard Lacayo's Time magazine blog, Looking Around:

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that their [the funders of the Trust's] approach to managing Lowry (through secret payments and other means) is as tied in to their activities as private collectors as it is to their philanthropic activities on behalf of the museum.

If this assumption is unfair, it is nevertheless a natural outgrowth of how the compensation of Lowry was mishandled. People (like Lacayo, in his recent post) will now question whether decisions about acquisitions, exhibitions, permanent collection display and administrative practices may have been unduly influenced by the wishes of the three trustees whose largesse, according to the museum's own statements, made the difference in luring Lowry to MoMA from his previous post. If Lowry ever thought that one of the Trust-funding trustees had fallen short as a MoMA board member, it would be difficult to be strongly critical, let alone to request that the trustee step aside.

It's not enough to say (as Lowry did Saturday, when talking about acquisitions at ADAA's panel discussion) that important decisions are made not by the director alone, but by the trustees, in consultation with the staff. True, there are checks and balances on the director's having his way. But his recommendations have great sway.

There should be no question as to whether his recommendations, pronouncements and actions are influenced by anything other than the best interests of the institution. Now that the Trust is out of hiding, such questions will always be the elephant in the boardroom.

These suspicions and misgivings are not good for the health of the institution. What's more, because MoMA and Lowry are such leaders among museums and were held in such high regard, the ethical posture of the entire field has been compromised. In this respect, MoMAgate is even worse than Gettygate.

This may make Sen. Grassley happy; it makes CultureGrrl very depressed.

Can't Queen Elizabeth bankroll the conservation of her own artworks?

Apparently not, judging from this announcement from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts of its "Rule Britannia!"---a show (opens Apr. 28) of 16th- and 17th-century paintings "whose core will be unprecedented loans from the collection of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain."

To get the royal loans, the museum apparently had to pay royally:

The royal paintings to be on view at VMFA customarily hang in a variety of the queen's premier palaces, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and St. James's Palace. Some have never been publicly exhibited before. VMFA has agreed to contribute to the conservation costs of a number of these paintings.

I guess times are tough at the palace. If so, I hope that "The Queen," which won the Best Actress Oscar for Helen Mirren's impersonation, paid the monarch for her high-grossing story.

With yesterday's earthquake in the Chinese financial markets having created aftershocks around the world (including Wall Street, where my trading husband and son somehow managed to stay out of trouble), perhaps it's a good time to steer you to an incisive article, "Money Talks Mandarin" (no link), in the March issue of Art in America magazine, which provides a detailed look at how the hot contemporary art market has been operating in China (at least until yesterday).

It takes the form of a conversation moderated by A.i.A.'s managing editor, Richard Vine, with Christopher Phillips, curator at the International Center of Photography, and Barbara Pollack, a freelance writer who covers Chinese contemporary art.

A few tasty outtakes:

Phillips: China has exploded onto the world scene as a new economic superpower, and even those who were initially skeptical about Chinese contemporary art have come to see it as a visual emblem of the country's astonishing rise....I'd say that in the past two years, Chinese contemporary artists have created a fascinating market disruption by circumventing the galleries altogether and sending works directly from the studio to Sotheby's or Christie's

Phillips: I've observed that many people in China have a kind of ingrained skepticism about the current economic boom, an unshakable feeling that it will all crumble as rapidly as it has taken shape....There's an instinctive urge to capitalize immediately on any fleeting opportunity before it disappears.

As the men in my family tell me, one down day does not a bear market make. We'll have to wait and see how the next Chinese contemporary art auction, containing more than 300 lots, weathers the economic storm next month at Sotheby's, New York.

Here's an interesting segue from my last post: A day-long conference, free of charge, organized by Fordham Law School's Office of Public Programming on Nonprofit Law, Economic Challenges and the Future of Charities will be held on Mar. 30 in New York.

Hot-button topics include "Searching for Greater Accountability of Nonprofits: Recent Legal Developments and Proposals for Change." (Attention: Sen. Grassley)

Nothing will be more hot-button than what the organizers describe as "the centerpiece of the conference"---a "discussion between Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art...and Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, about entrepreneurialism in nonprofit organizations and the future direction of arts organizations." The moderator will be Robin Pogrebin, cultural reporter for the NY Times.

Can someone else please ask Glenn The Question this time?

Robin???

The detailed report in Sunday's Washington Post about allegedly unauthorized expenses that were charged to the Smithsonian Institution by its top official, Secretary Lawrence Small, makes me wonder the same thing I wondered when the NY Times ran its exposé of Glenn Lowry's unorthodox compensation:

Is someone from Sen. Charles Grassley's staff leaking information related to its investigations of museums?

James Grimaldi of the Post reports:

The [Smithsonian's] board last month accepted the [board's audit] committee's decision to dismiss the findings [by acting Inspector General A. Sprightley Ryan] and defended Small's expenses as "reasonable." The regents also decided to rewrite several rules to authorize many of the transactions that had been deemed in violation of policy.

The inspector general's letter and accompanying audit report were kept confidential at the request of Small's office, according to Grassley's staff. Copies of the letter and report were obtained by The Washington Post.

Why might the board, which is chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., have decided to give a the Smithsonian's controversial chief officer a pass on this one? Were they inappropriately validating a waste of taxpapers' funds? Or did they perhaps think that the small magnitude of possibly inappropriate expenditures made this an example of monumental political posturing over a molehill?

Let's examine the numbers for a moment: The unauthorized expenses flagged by the inspector general amounted to nearly $90,000 over a six-year period, according to the Post. That means less than $15,000 a year in possibly dubious extravagances. Of the six-year amount, $27,000 went for "car service while on travel." Larry, take the subway!

Even the inspector general was only mildly censorious in his letter to the Smithsonian board's audit committee: "Some transactions might be considered lavish or extravagant."

I'm not a defender of Small's policies and practices at the Smithsonian. But I do think that the "scandal" here may be a run-amok politician who has latched onto a man-of-the-people cause by targeting "elite" institutions. And he's milking it for more than it's worth.

Harvard is, by far, this country's best-endowed university, and its art museums are among the most distinguished at any institution of higher learning. So imagine my surprise when I opened my father's copy of the March/April issue of Harvard Magazine, the publication sent to alumni, and read about the substandard physical state of the Harvard University Art Museums:

Some facility is needed urgently in which to put a quarter of a million art objects, and the staff who look after them, so that the aged building on Quincy Street in Cambridge that houses the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums can be vacated, rebuilt, and made ready for a genuinely revolutionary new educational role. The building at present is in such decline that it cannot be accredited as a professional art museum.

Daron Manoogian, PR Manager for the Harvard University Art Museums, provided me with more details about these sorry conditions:

The largest portion of our building on Quincy Street has never had a major renovation since it opened in 1927. It does not have a climate control system (with the exception of storage spaces) and many of the mechanical systems in the building (heating/cooling, plumbing, electrical) are in desperate need of updating. It's been known for some time that a renovation is necessary, but it's been tough to plan because it involves completely emptying the building. Also, complicating matters, our renovations directly affect the History of Art and Architecture faculty and the Fine Arts Library that both share our facilities. You can imagine why this has taken so long to come to fruition.

What I can't imagine is how such a rich university can set such a poor role model for future stewards of museum collections. There was a previous false start on this urgently needed renewal, described here.

The Quincy Street building will be vacated in June 2008 and rebuilt by architect Renzo Piano. Highlights of the collections will be displayed at the university's Sackler Museum across the street, with the rest moving temporarily to a new facility, designed by Kevin Daly, at the university's Allston campus (about a mile from Harvard Square). Construction on that is scheduled to begin this fall, with completion in 2009. The new facility will be devoted to modern and contemporary art, once the Quincy Street building reopens, possibly by 2013.

The battle over the Albright-Knox Gallery's controversial planned deaccessions moves tomorrow to the Buffalo Common Council, which will hold a hearing on this issue.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo News published an editorial on Saturday supporting the upcoming disposals at Sotheby's, which it said were regrettable but necessary to give the museum "[financial] resources for collecting."

Speaking of Sotheby's: Change you calendar; the time of the conference call during which it will discuss its 2006 earnings report has been moved up to 10:15 a.m. this Thursday.

Modern Art Notes links to updates on another controversial deaccession: Fisk University's planned sale of a signature Georgia O'Keeffe, "Radiator Building---Night, New York," that was bequeathed to it by the artist.

In the annals of weird stories about Salvador Dalí, this could be one of the weirdest:

Forensic scientist Michael Rieders revealed at the annual meeting of the Academy of Forensic Sciences in San Antonio that he had taken DNA samples from 19 places on two feeding tubes that had been in Dalí's nose in 1984.

To what use might Dalí's purported nasal DNA be put? According to the London Guardian, it might provide "clues to his artistic genius. Perhaps he had a mild form of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder which fueled his creativity."

Why didn't Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling think of this?

But wait, there's more: Guardian reporter James Randerson notes that Rieders, a toxicologist and lab director at NMS Labs, Willow Grove, Pa., has a more commercial application in mind for the swabbed samples:

"Dalí collectors will want to use the DNA profile to help establish whether the huge amount of supposed Dalí paraphernalia [including purported Dalí artworks] that exists is real. There are many Dalí objects out there, some on eBay, that are claimed to have been in the possession of Dalí," said Dr. Rieders.

"Let's be clear about this," he added. "I have no intention of creating a cloned army of surrealist artists."

That's a relief! Come to think of it, though, Dalí might actually have liked that form of propagation.

Here for your literary exegesis is the text of the CultureGrrl-Glenn Lowry Q&A at yesterday's ADAA-sponsored panel discussion on museum collecting, which I referred to in yesterday's post:

Rosenbaum (addressing the entire panel): You spoke a bit about the symbiotic relationship among collectors, artists and museums in order to help form collections. Where do lines have to be drawn between symbiotic and something that's subject to possible conflict of interest and abuse? I'm thinking partly of the partial funding of Glenn Lowry's compensation through individual trustees, which we just learned about in the Times. Are there potential conflicts? How do you guard against such problems?

Kathy Halbreich (director of the Walker Art Center): He was probably their best acquisition.

Panel Moderator Tom Eccles (executive director of Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies): I'll take another question.

I thought that ended that, and I was left with a very large omelet all over my face. But then, much later, Lowry addressed me directly, at the end of his answer to another provocative question: Lisa Dennison, director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, had risen from the audience to challenge the proliferating phenomenon of "friends" groups, consisting of American benefactors providing financial support for foreign museums. With such perks as dinner at Tony Blair's house offered to Friends of the Tate, "what's a poor American museum director to do?" she plaintively queried. (Chatting to me afterwards, she joked that in asking such an impertinent question, she was trying to imitate me. Talk about bad role models!)

At this point, Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, unchivalrously pummeled the poor American museum director, as only the British can, with a cleverly dry and sarcastic reply about how sorry he felt for the Guggenheim and how flattered he was by her question. Lowry subsequently chimed in with more temperate support of "friends" support groups. Then he unexpectedly returned to my earlier question, on which he had previously been silent:

Lee mentioned the issue of how do you insure that the boundaries are well understood, so that public museums don't become the preserve of private patrons, although they're always going to have an intersection with private patrons, because the majority of works of art in any art museum come from gifts. In the case of the Museum of Modern Art, the tradition has been that no one curator, and certainly not the director, has the authority to accept a gift or for that matter to buy a work of art.

He went on to note that a committee of the board must vote on each acquisition, and "it is not unusual that a work of art is not approved."

In other words, while not responding directly to the controversy over his accepting supplementary compensation from a private foundation funded by individual trustees, he did seem to be saying that any theoretical conflict of interest the director might have would not be enough in itself to compromise museum actions.

I'll let you be the judge as to whether that response satisfies. I'm still hoping for more comprehensive comments. But for the moment, I was relieved that some egg got wiped off my face. Adopting Serota-ian rhetoric in this post would be churlish. Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I need to thank Lisa for informing me yesterday that the Guggenheim has now (finally!) put the names of curators up on its walls, giving credit to the authors of its exhibitions. Do I get to take some credit for these credits?

And will more museums follow suit?

Have I been trying to get Glenn Lowry to comment directly and publicly on the compensation controversy?

Am I CultureGrrl?

Through his beleaguered PR spokesperson, Lowry and I have been in discussion about a discussion, but so far we have not been able to agree on the journalistic ground rules. That may be the end of it, but I still hold out some hope.

It seems that I disappointed at least one blogger by not showing up for the opening press conference for The Armory Show on Thursday, where Lowry spoke and then reporters got to ask questions:

Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City blogged about me before the press conference, saying that she hoped "CultureGrrl will be there to harass the poor man [Lowry], so that loathsome job doesn't fall on me."

I guess Paddy opted not to be "loathsome" after all, because the Washington-based culture blog Ionarts reported that none of the attending journalists questioned Lowry "concerning his latest scandal at MoMA---no fun at all."

Pinning down the elusive Lowry is a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. Sounds like a job for my fearless and loathsome alter ego.

So I dutifully crossed the Hudson early this weekend morning, when I really should have been in bed until noon, to attend the Art Dealers Association of America-sponsored panel on "The Museum as Collector." The discussion had little to do with museum collecting; lots to do with museum expansions and installations. It was held at MoMA, so Lowry was both host and a panelist.

Of course, CultureGrrl had to ask the first question, trying to drag the elephant into the room.

This occasioned some suppressed gasps from the audience and some wagon-circling by the other museum-director panelists. But to my surprise and gratitude, Glenn later came to my rescue, quite gallantly, by answering the part of my question that didn't deal directly with his compensation.

Those few of you who were not among the multitudes of dealers and museum personnel who packed MoMA's auditorium this morning will have to wait a bit longer to learn the details. (I wrote most of the above before I had left for MoMA.)

I must leave you hanging, because I'm off to dinner and a movie with friends (if I still have some). We're seeing "Venus" with Peter O'Toole, and I'm afraid that I'm part of the target audience---people of advanced years.

Now if only I could learn to act my age!

I've gotta run, but not without telling you that your assignment for today, class, is to pick up a copy of today's Wall Street Journal, to read the front-page story about how Stanford University president John Hennessy's close and problematic ties to the tech industry have earned him, in the past five years, "fees, stock and paper stock-option profits totalling $43 million."

And I'm complaining about Glenn Lowry?

On the front page of the Pursuits section, another must-read: Jacob Hale Russell describes how the Getty Museum's photography curator Weston Naef has built the collection through "back-scratching, schmoozing and hope."

I thought that photography would be the least likely part of the Getty's trove to be enmeshed in problematic collecting practices. Having read this article, I think I was wrong.

More on all this later.

Oh great. Los Angeles has a country music station again, but they did it by bumping a classical music station.

I guess I should be careful what I wish for! Like I said:

Pop trumps country trumps classical.

The Oldies? Don't get me started.

Sotheby's today announced its planned spring launch of mySotheby's, with a vast array of new online services, including "secure 24/7 access to buying and selling history and open balances with real-time account updates, pre-registration for bidding paddles, instant magnification of lot images, personalized lists of upcoming lots, saved searches, robust communications tools and paperless options for invoices and statements."

In addition, starting in New York in May, you can watch evening sales in streaming video. (Do we get to see the happy faces of the winning bidders?)

Meanwhile, the stock closed yesterday at $40.15, Sotheby's highest closing price since May 13, 1999.

Here's the complete press release, detailing the coming technological enhancements.

I know I told you I was going to the Armory Show, and I know I'm letting you down, but...

I JUST CAN'T LOOK AT ART THAT WAY!

I don't know how people can enjoy art, let alone make decisions about acquiring it, in crowded supermarket conditions (Aisle 3, Louise Fishman---two large, lovely abstract paintings that were sitting on the floor, not hanging on the wall, at Cheim & Read; Aisle 4, cross-dressing belly dancer).

I'm even more mystified about how people buy art over the Internet. An overwhelming percentage of dealers' offerings that look attractive to me on the web disappoint me in person. If I bought art that way, I'd be doing lots of return shipping. Maybe this works if you've seen comparable examples of the artist's work and you can trust the dealer's (or your adviser's) judgment.

Call me old-fashioned, call me over the hill: I escaped from Pier 94 after about 40 minutes of bewilderment. Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, was walking in just as I was getting my coat, joining a flock of MoMA curators who were flooding the zone, including Joachim Pissarro, who was perusing the booths with collector and onetime Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz. Yesterday was a preview day to benefit MoMA's exhibition fund.

I did score a thrilling museum-director trifecta, also glimpsing the Guggenheim's Lisa Dennison at the fair. But the smartest of the bunch was the Whitney's Adam Weinberg, whom I spotted later that night, from my pauper's perch in the loge, in a side orchestra seat at the final installment of Tom Stoppard's trilogy, "The Coast of Utopia."

Definitely a more satisfying experience.

Here's the update from today's Buffalo News on the Albright-Knox deaccession battle, which was to move to the Erie County Legislature today.

Colin Dabkowski reports on further developments:

The Buffalo Art Keepers...plan to file a petition in State Supreme Court early next week to force the gallery to stop the sale....The litigation by Buffalo Art Keepers...plans to refer to a July 1987 version of the museum's collections-management policy....That policy states that there should be "no sale of masterpieces; nor, in terms of our own collection, of very important works."

In October, the Albright-Knox board voted unanimously to remove that clause, saying in meeting minutes released this month that "the 'no masterpieces' restriction in the current Collections Management Policy is deemed to have been overridden by the adoption of the [2001] Strategic Plan."

Speaking of masterpiecies, the Benin bronze head of an Oba and the Aztec stone figure of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue have recently been removed from the Collection Highlights page on the museum's website, as predicted. After all, they're at Sotheby's, not in Buffalo.

Dabkowski also reports that Charles Banta, the museum's board president, sent a letter to museum members declaring that the planned sale was "squarely within" the board's legal province. Banta insisted that the board had acted legally and "its decision cannot be overturned by public referendum, by vote of the members or by a court of law."

That remains to be seen.

On March 1, you can find out about Sotheby's financials, when its earnings report for 2006 will be released. Only publicly traded Sotheby's, not privately held Christie's, releases details on profits (as distinguished from gross totals of public auction sales).

Meanwhile, Sotheby's stock hit $40.50 on the NY Stock Exchange this morning, then backed off. The last time its closing price reached $40 was May 13, 1999.

Does the smart money know something? Or are we just feeling ebullient today, because there are so many art fairs this week in New York? ("Why not collect some art-auction stock, dear, while we're in a buying mood?")

As the increasingly indispensable Kate Taylor recently reported in the NY Sun:

Seven art fairs is a first for Manhattan. It's a reflection of the strength, or some would say giddiness, of the art market, and the tendency for collectors today to focus their buying activity during a handful of major events a year.

She also got some tasty quotes from Pace Wildenstein's Arne Glimcher:

If I had my druthers, there'd be no art fairs. Collectors, who used to spend a great deal of time looking for works, comparing quality, are now involved in event and destination shopping.

Glimcher denounced Art Basel Miami as "the most vulgar art event I've ever been to."

I knew there was a good reason why I didn't go there!

But now all that terrible vulgarity is right across the river! I can literally see 55th Street and the Hudson, site of The Armory Show, beckoning from my office window. The important collectors are already there, snapping up the choicest works before the hoi polloi shuffle in.

So I hope my blog readers will excuse me, while I take a little time off today for bad behavior. But don't worry. I'll get high-minded again tonight by attending the third and final installment of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia.

Let's see, where are we now: Moscow? Paris? No, Herzen's in London!

CultureGrrl has just obtained a copy of the 1998 tax return for the New York Fine Arts Support Trust, the private foundation that funneled money from David Rockefeller, Agnes Gund, Ronald Lauder and Laurance Rockefeller to the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry.

It shows that more money went directly to Lowry in 1998---$422,953---than in any of the five years reported to the NY State Attorney General's office. This gives support to what I asserted in a previous post: The Attorney General's Charities Bureau did an inadequate and incomplete investigation by agreeing to MoMA's proposal to provide it with Additional Compensation Information going back only to 1999.

Payments to Lowry in 1998 were made monthly, according to the tax return, and ranged from $16,265 in January, April, June and October to $73,979 in December. All of those payments are listed as "charitable cash contributions" to Lowry.

The NY Times article that broke this story provided a bar chart (not online) of Lowry's compensation by the Trust (but without specific dollar amounts for most years), going back to 1995. MoMA says that this chart is inaccurate: Much of that money did not go into Lowry's pocket but to other MoMA-related purposes. However, the Times has run no correction, and likely would have done so had MoMA provided documentation of the actual compensation. The record, whatever it is, needs to be set straight.

Lowry has consistently declined to go on the record to give his side to this story. This is the first time I can think of when this usually outspoken director has not promptly responded to a negative story in a major newspaper by firing off a well reasoned, well written letter-to-the-editor. It's certainly happened to me!

His silence on this one is deafening.

Sophia Loren Necklace and Earrings Set, Bulgari. Gold, diamonds. Bulgari Collection

When in come to marketing tie-ins for corporate support of museums, as discussed in Robin Pogrebin's article in today's NY Times, nothing has as much conflict-of-interest potential as grants for exhibitions showcasing objects with direct connections to the grantor's own products. Perhaps the longest-running example of this phenomenon is the succession of Tiffany-themed shows at the Metropolitan Museum, sponsored by Tiffany.

At least the Met's shows are related to its own collections and organized by the museum's own curators.

Now we have a nonprofit group, the National Jewelry Institute, which for more than two years has been organizing displays that are partly supported by major jewelry firms and are now touring major museums.

At the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is NJI's Masterpieces of French Jewelry, with sponsors including French jeweler Boucheron.

And at the Field Museum, Chicago, is the NJI-organized Treasures of the Titans, which "features more than 30 exquisitely crafted accessories designed for or owned by 20th-century icons from the realms of art, politics, entertainment, and industry....The exhibition presents jewelry as exquisite works of art worthy of close inspection," says the Field.

But Judith Price, former owner of Avenue magazine, who is NJI's president, told me that the most important criterion for selecting the jewelry for "Titans" was not "how beautiful the object was," but the importance of the objects' owners---an eclectic bunch including Sophia Loren (above), Elton John and Madeleine Albright. The museum's website doesn't list the sponsors at this venue, but sponsors for the touring exhibition include Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Perhaps the most dubious NJI outing was its first: Masterpieces of American Jewelry, which premiered at the American Folk Art Museum, New York, an institution whose mission was not previously associated with displaying luxury goods. Here are the folk-art aficionados who showed up for the opening bash. The incongruity is perhaps best explained by the fact that Ralph Esmerian, the museum's chairman emeritus, is also vice chairman of the NJI. The institute's chairman is Ashton Hawkins, former vice president, secretary and counsel of the Metropolitan Museum.

For a complete list of the jeweler-studded corporate sponsors of NJI-organized shows, go here.

"Super Vision" installation view

MoMA, Albright-Knox, Barnes, Eakins...I'm so tired of being negative. So (apologies to the Grammy Mammys) I'm ready to make nice!

I may have had mixed feelings about the new Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed building for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, but once I made my way up to the art displays on the top floor, they had me from "hello."

The introductory wall text for the new ICA's main inaugural show, Super Vision, not only foretold a thought-provoking, engaging exhibition, but also provided the opening chapter for the lucid explanatory text that accompanied every object.

This was a show with big ideas; I'd like to see more of this kind of creative curatorial exercise. Fearing critical disapproval, many museums reflexively turn to one-person shows, rather than going out on a curatorial limb by assembling what the ICA's director, Jill Medvedow, calls "idea-based shows." (The ICA's next high-concept show, she said, would be "The Blues," examining the "oppression, marginalization and interiority" experienced by society's outsiders.)

"Super Vision" is a clever play on words that headlines a witty and pointedly topical show. The title alludes to the enhanced vision that various kinds of high-tech devices now facilitate, the "supervision" of our lives by new forms of technological surveillance, the heightened vision of artists, and the striking optical effects of their art, among its intriguing connotations.

The introductory wall text does a better job of explaining these underlying concepts:

The boundaries of vision have never been more fluid. We are now able to see in ways that we never have before, from the cellular to the cosmological, from the digital to the virtual. Superhuman vision---once a childhood fantasy of comic books and cartoons---is fast becoming an everyday fact of life through remarkable advances in technology.

Art has responded to these powerful shifts in the nature of vision. Artists now capture contemporary visuality with dazzling perceptual effects, warped geometries, and seamlessly manipulated images.

Divided into various sub-themes (Activated Vision, Disembodied Vision, Global Positioning, etc.), the show repositions and reinterprets many art-museum stalwarts in fresh ways. Among the artists whose works in this show I particularly appreciated: Hatoum, Mehretu, Akerman, Ono, Turrell, Richter. I was riveted by Harun Farocki's "Eye/Machine," a chilling two-channel video meditation on the ways in which mechanical and technological "vision," as employed in industry and in the military, have effectuated an eerie global dehumanization.

On a brighter note, seductively reflective silvery objects constitute the show's unofficial bookends: Dominating the first gallery is an orb by Anish Kapoor, who will be the subject of an upcoming ICA one-person show. If I never see another Jeff Koons stainless steel "Rabbit," I will not feel bereft, but there one was (above), standing sentinel in the final gallery, bolstered by an over-achieving label:

When our image is mirrored in its faceless head, this coveted possession suddenly comes to possess us, as if we are trapped in a fishbowl or caught under surveillance.

CultureGrrl says:

Sometimes a rabbit is just a rabbit.

Medvedow had told me that when Bostonians encounter contemporary art, their "perennial" reaction is: "I don't get it." By the end of this show, no one who looked carefully at the art and read the pithy descriptions could possibly come away feeling clueless. The only downside was that if you didn't independently peruse an object first, the persuasive label could well inhibit your own response.

A key reason why this show had me from "hello" was the richly deserved credit accorded its curator Nicholas Baume, as part of the introductory wall text. Curatorial bylines are one of my quixotic quests. Kudos to the ICA for a strong inaugural show (to Apr. 29) that gives credit where credit is due.

Gee, making nice sure does feel good! Maybe I should try this more often.

There is one important aspect of MoMAgate that I have not yet mentioned in my various posts: the effect that these disclosures may have in tarnishing the entire field. Some enterprising journalist or government investigator will now likely be moved to probe further into how museums compensate their directors. I don't know if they will hit paydirt.

On Friday, when I asked MoMA whether its side deal to augment director Glenn Lowry's compensation was "not as anomalous as [Stephanie] Strom's article makes it seem," communications director Kim Mitchell replied:

While it would be inappropriate for us to name other institutions, every organization deals with the issue of accomplishing recruitment and retention goals. We believe that other organizations have used a variety of different mechanisms in structuring compensation programs.

The issue of public trust in art museums was the subject, a few years ago, of a series of lectures that Lowry participated in, organized by James Cuno, then director of the Harvard University Art Museums.

The book that grew out of these lectures, Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust (above), recorded a roundtable discussion among museum directors who participated in this project.

Here's one interchange from that discussion:

Cuno: I think we all agree that a big part of our job today is to respect and reinvigorate the public trust in our museums, in museums as public institutions....

Lowry: I think this is a topic absolutely germane to our profession. I isn't an abstract concept, rather something central to the success or failure of our museums and to the museum profession. And we are far from fully understanding its implications and how to respond intelligently to all the challenges we face in keeping the public trust.

Lowry had better "fully understand" the implications of this latest threat to public trust in museums, and he needs to "respond intelligently to all the challenges" he now faces "in keeping the public trust." He has been uncharacteristically silent so far, choosing to respond to questions from me and from Stephanie Strom of the NY Times and through a spokesperson, rather than directly.

I know Glenn has a busy schedule, but he's back now from Mexico City, and if there were ever a calendar-clearing crisis, this is it.

Michael Heizer, "North, East, South, West," Dia Art Foundation, gift of Lannan Foundation. Photo: Tom Vinetz

Carol Vogel has the scoop in tomorrow's NY Times: The Dia Art Foundation has at last appointed a new director---Jeffrey Weiss, head of the department of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery, Washington, and curator of its current Jasper Johns show. His predecessor at Dia, Michael Govan, is now director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The best news is that Weiss' first order of business will be "to find a site in New York and to develop our program there," Nathalie de Gunzburg, the Dia's board chairwoman, told Vogel. The Dia opened a new facility in Beacon, NY, almost four years ago and subsequently shut down its Manhattan space.

This welcome development may even mollify Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice, who last month lambasted the Dia's desertion of its former hometown as "criminal--instead of renovating its tremendous 22nd Street Chelsea headquarters, establishing another building, or just opening a temporary New York space, the Dia Center for the Arts abandoned Manhattan by shutting down all of its rotating exhibition spaces in the city. It is mind-boggling and heartbreaking that not one of the trustees or the ex-director...resigned over or openly protested this irresponsible action."

Now, if they could just hire enough guards so that one of Dia:Beacon's most important (and definitely its most vertiginous) attractions, Michael Heizer's "North, East, South, West" (above), can be available for public viewing at more times than one 10:30 a.m. "guided tour" each day, for which advance reservations are required. This supervision is necessary to make sure that no careless or reckless art lovers fall into its deep wells.

Even the 10:30 tour will soon be temporarily suspended: The Heizer installation is scheduled to be "closed for conservation," Feb. 26 to Mar 10.

This just in from Buffalo Art Keepers, the group of Albright-Knox Art Gallery members opposed to the planned major deaccessions of works from the Buffalo museum's collection:

The Erie County Legislature will address the issue of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's controversial decision to sell at auction 207 works of art from the gallery's permanent collection at the Feb. 22 meeting of the legislature's Community Enrichment Committee. The auctions are scheduled to begin at Sotheby's in New York on Mar. 19.

The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 22 at 9 a.m. in the legislature's chambers on the fourth floor of County Hall, 92 Franklin St., Buffalo.

I know I'm supposed to keep following the Glenn Lowry story, or some other artworld controversy (like the continuing "Pollock" follies, subject of this article by Geoff Edgers in yesterday's Boston Globe).

But I really need to rescue Tom Stoppard from Ben Brantley.

This morning, I finished reading the third play, "Salvage," in Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" trilogy. Then I opened my NY Times to find Brantley's review of this last installment (which I will see performed on Thursday). He provided this astonishing summary of what Stoppard's dramatically weak but philosophically rich magnum opus is all about:

What can its surviving characters (and for that matter, its surviving audience members) say they have learned through all those years? Only that life is exciting, boring, generous, cruel and ultimately uncontrollable. In other words, life really is a mess, as consuming and capricious as the ocean storms that are evoked so exquisitely by this production's technical wizards.

Only that?

CultureGrrl feels compelled to attempt the difficult task of telling you, in a nutshell, what these cerebral plays---in which the main protagonists are not people but philosophies of life, history and politics---are REALLY about:

Some of the most compelling and influential ideas about history and society have been conceived by individuals whose personal lives and/or limited experience stand in stark contrast to the grand, abstract ideas that they so single-mindedly espouse. But the people most worth listening to (who are often marginalized by history, because their messages are not easily reduced to catchy slogans) are the more nuanced, broadminded thinkers---non-dogmatists, whose philosophies and sympathetic imaginations can encompass the real lives of the diverse, disorderly multitudes. For Stoppard, that's Herzen, as a political thinker; it's Turgenev, as an artist.

That's my literary sermon for today.

I've been deeply troubled from the moment I read the NY Times' revelations about Glenn Lowry's secret side deal to supplement his compensation as MoMA's director. That's because I knew I had to come out swinging, but I didn't want this assignment. I have sometimes strongly disagreed with Glenn, but I've always admired his energy, vision, talents and, yes, his integrity.

Let me start by saying that MoMAgate is not the Gettygate: There are no allegations of misappropriation of museum funds, although we now have to worry about what Sen. Charles Grassley's exhaustive investigation may yet uncover. Jason Kaufman's article for The Art Newspaper this month (not linked) reveals that Grassley sent a letter to MoMA, dated Nov. 29, asking for every possible shred of information about MoMA's governance. I suspect (but don't know) that Grassley's investigators might have been the initial source for Stephanie Strom's exposé in the Times.

According to Kaufman, who obtained a copy of Grassley's letter:

The [Senate Finance] Committee...asks for comprehensive information, going back up to 10 years, about gifts, tax filings, lobbying efforts, employee compensation and the awarding of no-bid contracts....In addition, the committee will review the museum's policies regarding conflicts of interest. The inquiry also reaches into how MoMA invests in endowment and how its money managers are selected and compensated.

I formerly thought that this was an unwarranted and unreasonable fishing expedition---Grassley's retaliation against MoMA for leading the museum charge against recent changes in the tax law regarding fractional gifts of artworks.

Now I think that Grassley may actually have something to fish for. The potential conflict-of-interest problems inherent in Lowry's convoluted compensation are troubling, as Time magazine critic Richard Lacayo observed yesterday in his blog, Looking Around:

[Lowry] was quietly beholden to museum trustees who are also major collectors. Which in turn could raise other questions, for instance, about decisions the museum makes about which works to highlight in its exhibitions or permanent collection, especially works or artists that might be important to those collectors.

It's likely that the four individuals (David Rockefeller, Agnes Gund, Ronald Lauder and Laurance Rockefeller) who funneled funds and real estate to Lowry, through the enigmatically named New York Fine Arts Support Trust, did so with the best of intentions. The museum's director of communications, Kim Mitchell, told me yesterday:

The donors were determined to recruit Glenn Lowry for the position, yet they were also cognizant of exerting a dramatic change to the existing museum culture, especially related to compensation. They chose the mechanism of the Trust to make these funds available for the museum in order to accomplish the recruitment goals.

Maybe, as Mitchell further asserted, "Glenn was not involved in the donors' decision to provide their donation through a Trust mechanism."

Nevertheless, the machinations of this "mechanism" were designed, in part, to keep the full extent of the director's munificent compensation out of the public domain, where such information, by law, belongs.

What's even more troubling is the possibility that the full extent of Lowry's compensation may not have been known even to the museum's own trustees: One of my written questions yesterday to Mitchell was:

Did the entire board know, in advance, of this [Trust] arrangement and did the board formally approve it? If not, why not?

Mitchell informed me that the proposed funding by the Trust was not brought before the museum's full board but only to its executive committee:

The compensation negotiation and recruitment was handled by the executive committee, including Donald Marron, who later became head of the Compensation Sub-Committee of the Board, a new committee initiated by Glenn.

But what's most disturbing about this questionable arrangement is that the funders of the Trust and the museum's then attorney, whom Mitchell said approved the deal, should have known better. And if they didn't, a smart museum professional like Glenn certainly should have. It's hard to turn down a generous compensation offer, but it should have been made and accepted the open way, not the sneaky way.

Mitchell noted that "since 2004, all of Mr. Lowry's compensation has been fully undertaken by the Museum and reported on the Museum's tax forms." Fine, but it should have been that way from the get-go.

MoMA disputes the Times' assertion that the trust "paid him [Lowry] a total of $5.35 million." Lowry actually pocketed about $2.24 million, Mitchell indicated. Some $760,000 in Trust funds went to the museum's capital campaign and $150,000 went to former MoMA curator Gary Garrels. Substantial money also went towards the purchase of Lowry's former apartment, which was later sold in arrangement that Mitchell described as follows:

The Museum sold the Gracie Square apartment for $3.4 million in 2004, of which Glenn retained $1.3 million, in lieu of any future deferred compensation to which he would have been entitled. This was part and parcel of the renewal of Glenn's contract, which resulted in the Museum absorbing all of his compensation into the operating budget and requiring that he live on premises in Museum Tower [the Cesar Pelli-designed building adjoining MoMA].

We don't yet have the full story on this. For one thing, the accounting of Additional Compensation Information, detailing the Trust's payments to Lowry, which MoMA provided to the IRS after the NY State Attorney General's office initiated an inquiry, is incomplete. It goes back only to 1999; the deal was struck in 1995. When I asked Mitchell why the crucial first years were omitted, she replied:

The Museum proposed the posting dating back to 1999 and Attorney General's office agreed.

The Attorney General's office should NOT have agreed. And MoMA should make public the complete accounting.

The bottom line is that the Trust's secret mission, and Lowry's acquiescence in it, violated the public trust. As a member of the public, and a longtime chronicler of Lowry and MoMA, I feel personally violated: I'm a natural skeptic and cynic, but I had trusted Glenn, in matters of museum ethics, to do the right thing.

Will he now resign? Here's Mitchell's reply:

Glenn is not contemplating stepping down. He was not involved in the formation of the Trust and his compensation is not excessive, given the leadership role he has played over the last 12 years. He has the full support of the Board of Trustees.

SHOULD he or any of the implicated trustees, who have worked so long and tirelessly for MoMA's benefit, now resign?

I just can't bring myself to say yes.

Should they give a complete public accounting of what happened, why it happened and how procedures will change going forward?

Absolutely.

[My previous posts on this subject are here, here and here.]

Here are my New York Public Radio broadcast remarks on the Glenn Lowry contretemps. I sounded much less lively than on my previous radio outings, because I felt no relish in talking about this.

You can listen to me here or below:

It figures that just when I decided to shamelessly promote CultureGrrl, in today's most frivolous post, my radio host omitted all reference to my blog. Serves me right.

COMING SOON: More on the subject of the Trust that betrayed our trust.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be featured in a brief live phone interview about the Glenn Lowry story on New York Public Radio's "All Things Considered," today at 5:40 p.m. I should have some new details to report.

You can hear it live on WNYC, 93.9 FM in the New York City area, and online at http://www.wnyc.org.

I'll be posting a link to the audio, once it's up.

[Consider this a bit of comic relief on a very heavy-hearted day. I wrote this before the Glenn Lowry story broke, and had intended to post it late last night.]

The answer to the headline above is: Absolutely nothing.

No, this is not a new low for CultureGrrl (or maybe it is), but an exploration of the not-so-fine art of blog promotion, which is all about increasing your numbers through Google-friendly keywords, which may or may not be a reliable indication of a post's true contents.

An editor at a very distinguished news organization, who shall be nameless, once told me that his people deliberately sprinkle sex in their headlines to attract more hits.

I will now find out, in shameless Anna Nicole fashion, if merely invoking her sexy name, in a post that has only a little to do with her, will induce hoards of the morbidly curious to arrive at my (formerly) high-toned blog.

As I previously wrote, hapless sensation-surfers still arrive at CultureGrrl by Googling "Minnie Mouse porn." This post, intended as a serious consideration of YouTube and its possible trademark and copyright infringements, has risen through the ranks to become Number 1 of about 139,000 Google-listed entries on that kinky subject. Imagine how disappointed everyone must be when they find out what this post is actually about.

So for all you Anna addicts who arrived here under my false pretenses, let me try to get on topic:

I was very surprised to learn yesterday that I live in the world capital of Smith-ology! Yes, it's really true: The lead story (also shameless) on the "Arts" page of the NY Times informed me that Barricade Books, the publisher of the what is thought to be the only existing biography of the late tabloid queen, is ensconced in my neighborhood. Who knew?

But the person I really want to be is not the suddenly hot Barricade publisher, Carole Stuart, but Jane Hamsher, a blogger at firedoglake, who got her photo (although not her face) on Page One of yesterday's NY Times, accompanying what may be the first front-page article that this newspaper has published about blogging. Hamsher even scored a second photo on the jump page, and this one did show her photogenic physiognomy. (I once got my photo in the Times, accompanying an article that I myself wrote, but that's a story for another day.)

But what I'm REALLY jealous about is the fact that the online version of yesterday's article links directly to Hamsher's blog. When CultureGrrl made her blogger's debut in the arts pages of the NY Times, there was no such link. What's more, when I requested that a link be added, I got this disappointing reply:

We hyperlink to our own topic pages (please notice that all hyperlinks in the story take the reader to internal New York Times pages), and so we can't include the link to your blog.

I think it's time they made it up to me: Yesterday's article shows that the Times is interested in exposing the chaotic conditions under which bloggers produce their copy. So here's an open invitation to reporter Scott Shane, photographer Michael Temchine, or any other representatives of major news organizations who may desire to capture CultureGrrl in her disorderly lair: I'm ready for my close-up.

Just be careful not to trip over the piles of press releases, articles, catalogues and computer printouts with which I adorn my book-lined office!

I sent Glenn Lowry my MoMA post of last night, and offered to publish his reponse in CultureGrrl. Today, I e-mailed him again. Here is his BlackBerried reply:

I am in Mexico city on business and have not yet seen the article and am in no position to comment at this time.

Glenn, you may have thought that building the MegaMoma was tough, but this is the crisis of your directorship. Everything that you built and accomplished is at stake. They have Internet in Mexico City: Get online and READ THE ARTICLE!

Here's what AAMD says in its "Code of Ethics for Art Museum Directors":

The director will act with integrity and in accordance with the highest ethical principles. The director will avoid any and all activities that could compromise his or her position or the institution....It is unprofessional for a museum director to use his or her influence or position for personal gain.

I can only add that I feel personally devastated by the revelations of the NY Times article. I had absolutely no social contact with Glenn, but a longstanding professional relationship of great mutual (I hope) respect. The potential dimensions of the story---a high-risen man, with many admirable qualities, brought down by a fatal flaw---seem the stuff of modern tragedy.

Now where's the catharsis?

This makes me very sad: an article posted minutes ago by the NY Times that might well bring down the directorship of Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art and seriously tarnish the reputation of a museum that is already being exhaustively interrogated, for other reasons, by investigators for the Senate Finance Committee.

Lowry's compensation was, according to the Times, sweetened with $5.35 million over the period between 1995 and 2003, which came to him through a trust funded by four big-money collectors: David Rockefeller, Agnes Gund, Ronald Lauder and Laurance Rockefeller.

Aside from the serious legal and tax issues this raises, which are discussed at length in Stephanie Strom's article, there are major museum-ethics questions: Should the director of a museum, particularly one as powerful as MoMA, be personally enriched by and beholden to individual collectors (or ANY individuals, for that matter)? The conflicts of interest are potentially enormous.

Here is the "Additional Compensation Information" for Lowry that MoMA provided to the IRS, dated Jan. 5, 2007. It details only "some of the payments," according to Strom (who describes others), and goes back only to 1999.

I can only hope that MoMA and Lowry have a good explanation, which they provide publicly and promptly. I'm all in favor of generous pay for directors of major museums. But secret supplementary payments funneled to them by private individuals don't, at first whiff, pass the smell test.

NOT Visiting the Guggenheim: Goya, "El Rey Fernando VII con Manto Real," Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; Photo: All rights reserved © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

The Guggenheim Museum, New York, squeezed a little extra publicity mileage out of its current Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso by convening a no-news press conference this morning to unveil Goya's stolen-and-recovered Childen with a Cart.

But it's been less eager to publicize the recent cancellation of its plan to be only American venue for another show involving the same Spanish master, Citizens and Kings: Portraiture in the Age of David and Goya, which it co-organized with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Louvre in Paris, and the Royal Academy in London (where it is on view to Apr. 20).

A brief press release announcing this unfortunate development is posted on its website (go here and click on the Jan. 26 item). But this notice not been widely distributed (if my own non-receipt is any indication). Another venue is urgently being sought.

Betsy Ennis, the Guggenheim's public affairs officer, provided CultureGrrl with more details about the reason for the sudden cancellation of this major show of 145 works (in its London version), which was to open here in May:

This is due to unforeseen exterior restoration work including the replacement of lights, the reinforcement of the apron slab, and exterior concrete repair. This phase is expected to be completed in September 2007, but the restoration is an evolving process and is subject to change.

"Citizens and Kings" was to be installed on the ramps of the rotunda....[Instead], a staggered collection show, entitled "The Shapes of Space," has been planned for the spring and summer, which will give us the flexibility to respond to the requirements of the restoration. In other words, as restoration work is completed up the ramps, installations of works from the permanent collection will open.

What Ennis couldn't yet tell me was whether the loss of "Citizens and Kings" will likely cause a financial crunch for the Guggenheim, which presumably shared in the costs of organizing it, but now will lose the admissions and sales proceeds that such a blockbuster could be expected to generate.

The loss of this show is all the more unfortunate because it was to be a fitting memorial in his home city for the late Robert Rosenblum, the Guggenheim curator who assembled it along with his colleagues from the other two venues.

UPDATE: Regarding the press release announcing the show's cancellation, Betsy Ennis says: "It was distributed to press" on Jan. 26. If so, I did not receive it: I don't recall it, and it's not in my saved Guggenheim press e-mails. What's more, my search on "Guggenheim" on the NY Times website uncovers no mention of this significant loss of a hometown blockbuster.

Bye-Bye Benin: Bronze Head of an Oba, ca. 1575-1650, Albright-Knox Gallery, Albert H. Tracy Fund

If you go to the Collection Highlights page on the website for Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery, you can see it features two of the 196 works that the museum has now decided to sell at Sotheby's, beginning next month. Below are the links to the objects on the museum's website (catch them while you still can) and the estimated auction prices, provided to me by Sotheby's:

Benin bronze head of an Oba, ca. 1575-1650, $1-1.5 million

Aztec stone figure of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, ca. 1200-1521, $100,000-$150,000

The museum itself deemed these two works so important to its collection that it singled them out for special attention on its own website. What are they thinking in casting off their self-designated treasures?

These are not the only important works: There's the rare massive Chinese limestone Chimera, 6th century ($1.5-2.5 million); massive Chinese inscribed archaic bronze food vessel, late 10th or 9th century B.C. (600,000-900,000); rare Archaic bronze wine vessel and cover 13th-11th century B.C. ($2-3 million); rare granite figure of Shiva as Brahma, South India, 10th-11th century ($3 million); rare Limoges Eucharistic Dove, ca. 1200 ($500,000-800,000).

And the priciest work, which I already cited in my last post on these deaccessions: the Hellenistic/early Roman Imperial "Bronze Figure of Artemis and the Stag," estimated to bring $5-7 million.

I publicize this not to advertise the sale, but to question it.

Don't miss the pithy, pointed critique of the Ground Zero architectural follies in Looking Around, a Time magazine blog.

Richard Lacayo comments:

Remember five years ago, when everyone agreed that the idea behind the rebuilding of the WTC site was supposed to be renewal? You probably thought that meant renewing life. Turns out it was just about renewing leases.

For Tuesday's NY Times article on Gov. Eliot Spitzer's likely support for the Freedom Tower plans that he formerly criticized, go here.

For the current controversy over preserving the "survivors' stairway," go here.

For architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable's highly critical take on the Ground Zero plans, go here.

Is there nothing Mayor Bloomberg can do to salvage the rebuilding process that began with such hope and is ending in such cynicism?

Jennifer Gaby, public relations manager at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, responds to The Vagina Dialogues: Clueless in St. Louis:

Thank you for sharing your post with me. The actual signage states, "The exhibition contains mature contents. Parental discretion advised." The gossip columnist at the newspaper obviously took some liberties when she wrote in the paper that our sign read, "Vagina Ahead," which never happened. Nor was it our intention to display such a sign.

We appreciate both your attention to this matter, as well as your noting of the museum in your blog. Thank you for your support of the Contemporary.

Support? Jennifer, you're a good sport. I guess I should know better than to rely on the accuracy of gossip scribes. I do feel obligated to add that the vagina painter himself, Greg Edmondson, e-mailed me to say, "It's good to see this talked about."

What have I started? Enough salacious salvos.

Go out and celebrate Valentines Day. That's what CultureGrrl is about to do! (And none too soon, you might add.)

Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal, reacts to Burying Albert Barnes in the Philly MegaBarnes:

Whenever I planned to go to the Barnes, the trip got canceled for one reason or another. So I never got there, much to my eternal regret, and I have only followed its recent history in the press.

Are no lessons ever learned?

At least the Hogarth isn't going to auction.

On Monday, as reported by Colin Dabkowki in yesterday's Buffalo News, the Albright-Knox Gallery finally got around to releasing the full list of 196 works that it plans to sell in seven sales, from March to June, at Sotheby's, New York. The museum announced plans to sell on Nov. 10, saying the that the works on its list, not then identified to the public, fell outside its mission to collect modern and contemporary art.

In his Nov. 15 piece for the Wall Street Journal, Tom Freudenheim, who grew up in Buffalo and was former assistant secretary for museums at the Smithsonian Institution, noted that he had not yet seen "the complete list of 'superfluous' objects, but worried that a pledge by the museum's director, Louis Grachos, "never [to] touch 19th and 20th century work," suggested that "Hogarth's dramatic 'Lady's Last Stake' or Reynolds' puzzling 'Cupid as a Link Boy' are up for grabs." (They're not.)

Freudenheim further observed:

These form part of a small but significant group of 18th-century English paintings (also including works by Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence) purchased for the museum by the Knox family in 1945. This doesn't quite conform with the museum's claims that the concentration on contemporary art is "a tradition that has been in place since the museum's inception in 1862."

I became even more interested in the question of whether Hogarth's "The Lady's Last Stake," 1758-60, was going to market after seeing it featured in Pierre Rosenberg's new book, Only in America: One Hundred Paintings in American Museums Unmatched in European Collections. Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre, included it even though he had not personally visited the Albright-Knox. He said he had focused on works from only museum collections, not private collections, "because as a rule...the pictures seen in museums belong to them permanently---they are their property and for the most part inalienable."

If only that were so.

The Hogarth isn't listed in the Albright-Knox's online Collections Highlights, but the list does include works by Courbet, Daumier, David and Delacroix that were purchased by the museum in earlier decades, when the mission must surely have included art of earlier centuries. None of those works are up for sale, but other important works are, including a late Hellenistic/early Roman Imperial "Bronze Figure of Artemis and the Stag," estimated to bring $5-7 million.

Museums' mushy missions are behind many lamentable disposals in recent years. In my recent Philly radio gig, I cited the Albright-Knox as an example of museums' rationalizing disposals from their collection through "mission creep"---revising their former missions to "justify" dumping whole categories of works that they once proudly displayed.

In case there's any doubt about the Albright-Knox's previously more inclusive mission, here's an excerpt from the museum's 1979 catalogue, "Albright-Knox Art Gallery: Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942."

Then director Robert Buck wrote:

Although the collection is perhaps best known for its modern and contemporary holdings, important representations from earlier periods, such as 19th century French and American painting, 18th century English paintings, and Asian art constitute very major segments of the Gallery's collection. The acquisitions policy of the Gallery has long held that efforts to add certain works which elucidate affinities and parallels with the art of modern times is an important pursuit.

Meanwhile, "Buffalo Art Keepers," a group of college professors, artists and other community members, led by local Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis, last week announced a campaign to stop the sales.