March 2007 Archives

Journalists got a tour from architect Rafael Moneo today of his new annex to Prado in Madrid. The construction is done but the annex will not open to the public until the fall.

It includes temporary exhibition space, print and drawings rooms (allowing display of Goya prints now in storage) and a sunlit space for sculpture in a space that had been occupied by the relocated cloister of "the 15th-century Jeronimo church, which was [controversially] removed stone by stone and reassembled inside the extension," reports Ciaran Giles of the Associated Press.

El Pais, the Madrid newspaper, has the photos. They look gorgeous.

Guggenheim Museum fan Tom Frenkel responds (belatedly) to Guggenheim's Extraordinary Spanish Extravaganza (now closed):

You rightly comment that there is little explication of the paintings on the walls. However, I was pleasantly shocked to find that many of the museum guards were young people who knew their stuff (art history majors?). I asked two or three of them some reasonably searching questions (including the story behind the Zurbarán "Uneaten Meat" painting) and got really good answers. Nice change from the usual museum security people I see other places, who often look and act like warehouse nightwatch people.

Very retentive readers of CultureGrrl may remember that I alerted you to a conference on nonprofit law, which was held today at Fordham Law School in New York.

It included a discussion between Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art and Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center, moderated by Robin Pogrebin, cultural reporter for the NY Times.

She had the chance to ask the question that would have been un-duckable, in front of an auditorium full of lawyers: What were the reasons behind Lowry's unorthodox compensation package, which was first exposed in a front-page story in her own newspaper?

She got close, mentioning the departures of Barry Munitz from the Getty and Lawrence Small from the Smithsonian over compensation irregularities. She asked, in this connection, whether Levy and Lowry (good name for a vaudeville act) thought there was "too much oversight or too little."

Levy warned that observers should "beware of generalizing" about other institutions from a few examples, and added, "I find that governance practices are becoming more rigorous."

Lowry chimed in that "governance is a work in progress" and that "best practices change and evolve over time."

One thing that has "changed over time" is the method of Lowry's compensation, which in 2004 was brought into line with customary museum practice.

If there was ever a cue for a respectful but pointed follow-up question, this was it. But Pogrebin dropped the ball (as the Times has on this whole story). I assume that her throwing the game was deliberate, because she's a top-flight reporter and knows what to ask.

Chalk it up, then, to a referee's sense of good sportsmanship or to some groundrules established before the coin toss.

John Lawrence, a midwest collector of medieval art and manuscripts, whose holdings were featured in a 2002 exhibition at Oberlin College (scroll to Page 3), responds to CultureGrrl's various censorious posts on museum deaccessions (to which I added two earlier today):

Many of the pieces that I have acquired in my extensive collection came from institutions, and many of the individual leaves came from books that were "broken." I have spent many years denouncing this practice and in consideration of the donation of my collection, I have written terms that are quite punitive if this should happen. However, as I follow your website, I am reconsidering any donation.

I am quite vocal in denouncing this practice in my public speeches and presentations. I view these sales as the greatest form of hypocrisy that I can imagine by these institutions that are supposed to be the guardians of our heritage.

This is one of the chief dangers inherent in deaccessioning---that the goodwill of present and possible future donors will be jeopardized or lost. It's something that Thomas Jefferson University should ponder seriously, before it hocks two more Eakins portraits of its distinguished faculty.

In a letter sent Monday to the Tennessee attorney general, Fisk University revealed that art dealers have offered to pay $20-25 million for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building." The financially strapped historically black university wants to sell that iconic painting (as well as a Marsden Hartley) to raise money for construction and endowment, but the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, which represents the artist's estate, sued to block the sale. The paintings are from the Stieglitz Collection, donated by O'Keeffe to the university in 1949. At that time, the Fisk's president had agreed that the collection would remain intact, the NY Times reported in February.

Fisk had struck a deal in February with the attorney general to seek donations that would allow it to keep one or both of the paintings. This unsuccessful attempt was subject to a 30-day deadline, now expired.

Ralph Loos of the Tennessean reports:

Some [of the proposals from dealers] include offers that would allow Fisk to occasionally exhibit the art. None of these proposals would allow Fisk to keep the art.

The O'Keeffe Museum, driving a hard bargain, has agreed to drop its suit if it is allowed to snap up "Radiator Building" for a mere $7 million. The deal would require court approval.

According to a report by Reginald Stuart in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education (which focuses on minorities), the university's letter to the attorney general "gave no hint as to whether Fisk will attempt to back out of the deal with the museum."

In this context, it is worth reviewing the guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors, regarding deaccessions by university and college museums:

Deaccessioning and disposal from the collection must result from clear museum policies that are in keeping with AAMD's Professional Practices. Deaccessioning and disposal from the art museum's collection must never be for the purpose of providing financial support or benefit for ther goals of the university or college or its foundation.

The other shoe has just dropped: Robert L. Barchi, president of Thomas Jefferson University, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the medical school intends to sell the two remaining Eakins paintings in its collection: "Portrait of Benjamin H. Rand" and "Portrait of William S. Forbes."

Peter Dobrin reports that Barchi issued this statement:

We do not intend to sell any of our artworks other than the Eakins paintings, even if approached. While the mission of Thomas Jefferson University as an academic health center does not include the acquisition or display of artworks, we will continue to honor our tradition of commissioning portraits of Jefferson's distinguished faculty and maintain our current artworks.

They''ll "honor their tradition," except in the case of their most pricey masterpieces. This time, if anyone comes to the rescue, it should be those most concerned about honoring tradtion: incensed alums of the university, some of whom were vocal in their distress over the "Gross Clinic" sale. Failing that, local museums should be given a more realistic time frame to come up with an offer: a minimum of 90 days.

Philadelphia museums just can't keep competing (as they tried to do with The Gross Clinic) with market levels set by the likes of Alice Walton and other money-no-object collectors.

Carol Vogel reported in yesterday's NY Times on the conservation of the Metropolitan Museum's Etruscan chariot (illustrated, above, on the book cover of "The Stolen Chariot"), but mentioned nothing about the controversy over its ownership. Maybe she didn't want to dignify a stale claim (based on events of more than a century ago) by taking it seriously.

But then she leavened the piece with a "Did she really say that?" final quote from Met curator Joan Mertens:

Our aim is to show things as they are. We aren't a pastry shop---and this don't need tart.

Carol, that quote just don't ring true. Are you sure she didn't say: "We ain't no pastry shop"?

At least today Vogel makes it up (scroll down to third item) to the Seattle Art Museum, which was snubbed by the "Expansion, Coast to Coast" feature in Wednesday's special "Museums" section. She even lets museum director Mimi Gates give a PR plug to a certain large Seattle-area company run by her stepson, Bill. She doesn't mention the relationship, but I guess we're just supposed to know that.

Alex Barker, director of the Museum of Art & Archaeology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, supplements my report on collection sharing by the Smithsonian in yesterday's post, Another Smithsonian Resignation and Musings on a "Future" That's Already Here:

Quick reminder: In addition to SITES [Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service], the Smithsonian also has the Smithsonian Affiliations Program, which provides portions of the SI collections to partner museums around the country on long-term loan. The framework for distributing collections for view without losing long-term control is already in place.

That program, as described here, "allows emerging and established museums to obtain Smithsonian collections for a prolonged period."

Jean-Baptiste Oudry, "Rhinoceros," Staatliches Museum Schwerin

After a while, I tired of the editorial puffery (from which I exclude Holland Cotter's provocative think piece) in yesterday's NY Times Museums section. So I found myself focusing on what that section is really about: the ads. Some of these were more interesting than the articles, in terms of what they said about the institutions.

So let's get right down to the meat of the matter and give credit where credit is due. You've heard of the annual Clio awards for advertising excellence. Introducing (drumroll) the Lee-o's for creative museum self-promotion:

Most Astonishing: The Getty Museum wins this category, hands down, for its two-page rhinoceros (see above) centerfold, proving that the museum with the most money has no qualms about flaunting it, despite a much criticized history of notoriously extravagant expenditures.

Most Lame: No serious competition here, either: "Come for the Weather, Stay for the Art," from the Los Angeles County Museum. Perhaps it should be, "Come for the Smog, Stay Stuck in Traffic." (Now I'm in big trouble with the LA boosters.)

Best in Show (and I'm NOT kidding on this one): "What will you find this time?"---a truly engaging full-pager from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, depicting a Monet "Water Lilies" gazed at wistfully by an "Amulet of a Frog" who presumably would like to hop onto one of those lily pads. It's charmingly understated and clever, and the tag line perfectly captures what I like best about wandering around museums---serendipitously happening upon something unfamiliar and captivating.

If Sen. Charles Grassley really WERE looking for truth-in-advertising violations (a previous joke of mine that backfired), he might cast a critical eye on "Life Takes Root Downtown" from the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The ad claims that the oak saplings planted in small openings atop the hollowed-out granite boulders of Andy Goldsworthy's outdoor installation "honor those who perished and pay tribute to those who survived. They flourish today, and will for generations to come."

Last Sunday, while sipping coffee with my mother in the museum café overlooking those boulders, I commented to her that the piece was sending an unintended message, because (from my vantage point, at least) it appeared that only one sapling had actually survived the winter.

At least we have proof that there is still a strict wall between advertising and editorial on the "Museums" section: the Seattle Art Museum took out a half-page ad trumpeting the May grand opening of its expanded facility, but on a U.S. map titled, "Expansion, Coast to Coast," which the Times speckled with more than 40 construction projects, the entire Northwest (as ruefully noted yesterday by Regina Hackett in her Seattle Art to Go blog) was blank.

It's not just Smithsonian Institution's secretary, Lawrence Small, and under secretary for science, David Evans, who have flown the coop.

There are two other high-level disturbances, announced before the Small Squall, that will occasion more headhunting: Marc Pachter is retiring in October from the directorship of the National Portrait Gallery; Richard West will be leaving his longtime post as director of the National Museum of the American Indian this fall. Also up for grabs: the acting directorship of the National Museum of Natural History, now that Cristián Samper has been named as Small's acting replacement.

It now appears that Evans might have stayed on at the Smithsonian, had he not been passed over for the acting secretary's spot. The Washington Post reports:

Evans said Small's resignation after revelations of large housing and travel expenditures didn't trigger his own decision to leave, but he said he was surprised that the Smithsonian had "hopped over" him to choose Samper as acting secretary. "Frankly, that was a little disappointing," Evans said. "I thought one of my proudest accomplishments was bringing him aboard. . . . But I have the greatest respect for Cristián."

Sounds like he was more than a little miffed.

Meanwhile, I just noticed the mysterious Panama Connection: Samper arrived at the Smithsonian in 2001 as deputy and then acting director of its Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Ira Rubinoff, named as Evans' acting replacement as undersecretary, was director of that same Panama enclave since 1974.

Maybe spending time at a far remove from Washington Mall politics is a wise Smithsonian career move.

How do you impose a news embargo until tomorrow on information that you have made available online to the entire world today?

I just found out from Richard Lacayo's blog, Looking Around, that Richard Rogers, co-designer with Renzo Piano of Paris' Pompidou Center and, more recently, architect of Terminal 4 in Barajas Airport, Madrid, has been named this year's winner of architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize.

After getting the heads-up from my blogging colleague, I surfed over to the Pritzker Prize website, where I learned that he and I are uniquely disqualified from talking about any of the details provided about Rogers' prize, because we're members of the media: "All Materials are for publication/broadcast on or after Thursday, March 29, 2007."

So talk amongst yourselves: Navigate to the above-linked website, hit "Click To View 2007 Laureate Announcement," click the "Media Kit Text," and find out all the things that Richard and I are dutifully withholding from you because we're the meekly compliant media. You can freely access the press release announcing the 2007 award; the citation from Pritzker jury; the names of members of the jury; information about Lord Rogers of Riverside; and the "fact summary" of his works, exhibitions and honors.

"His story," we are told, "could well be the subject of a fine biographical motion picture." (Help! The Embargo Police are coming after me.) He is the fourth architect from the United Kingdom to be so honored (joining James Stirling, 1981; Norman Foster, 1999; and Zaha Hadid, 2004).

You can also learn the top-secret 2007 ceremony site, chosen before Rogers was picked, but particularly fitting. (I won't say another word.)

MEMO TO THE PRITZKER COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE: If you want to impose a press embargo in the future, don't spill your secrets to the entire world online. Apparently the Washington Post and the NY Times aren't as obedient as I am.

Come to think of it, the prize is based in Chicago, but Rogers isn't. What day is it now in London?

Carol Kino's article in today's NY Times "Museums" section about Stolen Artworks and the Lawyers Who Reclaim Them (less charitably termed "Bounty Hunters" in the headline of Kelly Crow's Wall Street Journal article on the same theme last Friday) has reminded me to follow up on a celebrated artworld case about which I wrote the following for the WSJ, back in 1999:

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

Nearly two years and three court decisions after the New York Times first reported the tangled story of the painting's convoluted journey from the collection of Viennese art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray to that of Viennese ophthalmologist Rudolf Leopold, "Wally" is still languishing under house arrest at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which had borrowed her for a 1997 exhibition.

Flash forward to 2007: "Wally" is still languishing in storage, but not at MoMA. Having been seized by the U.S. Customs Service, it is now in a warehouse run by the Department of Homeland Security. According to MoMA's deputy general counsel, Stephen Clark, "No trial date [at U.S. District Court in Manhattan] has been set."

The Times reported that New York art-restitution attorneys Lawrence Kaye and Howard Spiegler are "helping the heirs" of the Viennese dealer in their effort to recover the Schiele painting from the Leopold Museum, Vienna, which had lent it to the MoMA show. The heirs assert that it had been confiscated from Jaray by the Nazis and should be returned to the family.

Spiegler told CultureGrrl today that an effort early last year at mediation in the case had failed, but he was hopeful that the matter would be resolved in court by "the end of this year or the beginning of next."

The law's inexcusable delay means that this innocent artwork has been sentenced to indefinite confinement, providing pleasure to no one---except, perhaps, the lawyers who, along with the District Court, are holding her hostage instead of expeditiously resolving the ownership dispute.

UPDATE: Eric Gibson has an insightful piece in today's Wall Street Journal about Small's failings and what needs to be done to improve the Smithsonian's governance here. (That piece mentions me.)

Cristián Samper, acting secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since the sudden resignation of Lawrence Small, already has his hands full: It was announced yesterday that he accepted the resignation of David Evans, the Smithsonian's under secretary for science, effective Apr. 21, and named Ira Rubinoff, director since 1974 of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, to be acting under secretary. "The Smithsonian will begin a search for a permanent replacement in the coming weeks," according to the announcement.

An oceanographer, Evans assumed his post in September 2002, during Lawrence Small's tenure. His purported reason for leaving seems a little thin. According to the Smithsonian's press release:

Evans noted that he has been speaking widely on a variety of science topics, and he has begun to outline a book.

"While it is with great affection for all of my colleagues and some reluctance, I feel that I must resign my position at the Smithsonian to adequately chart my own course.

Sounds like the start of a shake-up.

Meanwhile, as pundits begin to muse about how the Smithsonian should change under its new leadership, there have been calls echoing through the blogosphere (here and here) for a new program whereby the Smithsonian would systematically share its collections with audiences around the country.

How about the OLD program---the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), which for the last 55 years has been shipping exhibitions drawn from the Smithsonian's holdings to over 250 communities around the country each year?

Perhaps Richard Lacayo and Tyler Green have something more ambitious in mind. These relatively modest, low-cost packaged displays---consisting of collection objects, photographic images and interpretive text---go to museums, libraries, science centers, historical societies, community centers, botanical gardens, schools and even shopping malls. Back when I was "cultural programs chairman" for my children's school, I booked one of these offerings. But some of them are geared towards more illustrious institutions, including art museums.

A long list of past SITES exhibitions is here. Those currently available are here.

I'm going to have to issue a little disclaimer about my last post, which was intended (obviously, I thought) as a spoof.

A highly sophisticated communications officer for a major museum (who shall remain nameless to protect the credulous) has just sent me this anxious e-mail:

The Grassley reference is a joke, no?

YES, OF COURSE it was a joke!

I guess I should have realized that when it comes to the senior Senator from Iowa, museums have entirely lost their sense of humor. Sen. Charles Grassley is (as far as I know) NOT combing tomorrow's NY Times "Museums" section for truth-in-advertising violations (although, apparently, museums don't put anything past him). Nor, alas, has Grassley ever leaked anything on any subject to CultureGrrl.

This loopy incident reminds me of the time I wrote a satire for the Wall Street Journal about the plans for the Guggenheim Antarctica. Some readers (those who lived closer to the North and South poles) e-mailed comments indicating they actually took it seriously.

Hereafter I shall designate my serious posts with a capital "S" and my frivolous ones with a very large "F." (Just kidding! KIDDING!!!)

UPDATE: The link for the Museums section is here.

Tomorrow's the moment you've all been waiting for---publication day for the NY Times' special Museums section, which this year promises us "a look at the growing number of contemporary art museums and at the interplay between them and the art market" (i.e., selling older art to buy the next new thing?). The Times will also venture beyond Manhattan to bring us "reports from Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas and other cities." How enterprising!

And let's not forget one of the section's chief raisons d'être: scads of ads from museums, hawking their upcoming exhibitions.

Speaking of which, CultureGrrl proudly presents her latest scoop: Sen. Charles Grassley, looking for truth-in-advertising violations, has just leaked to me the contents of ads placed in tomorrow's Museums section by several New York City institutions.

Here are some highlights:

Brooklyn Museum: Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape---See the eponymous ex-New York Public Library painting for one last time in New York, before it migrates to the Ozarks.

Metropolitan Museum: Marvel at the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court...audaciously named for antiquities collectors as controversial as they were discerning!

Museum of Modern Art: The perfect setting for all your corporate parties.

Guggenheim Museum: Experience the Age of Enlightenment at "Citizens and Kings: Portraiture in the Age of David and Goya." Ummm...quick, get me rewrite!

Steven Miller, executive director of the Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ, and adjunct faculty member at Seton Hall University's graduate program in museum professions, responds to The Secretary Vanishes: Smithsonian's Lawrence Small Resigns:

I think the best news in the museum world today is the resignation of Larry Small at the Smithsonian. He never should have been hired in the first place. He had no extensive on-the-job or governance background in any of the various academic disciplines represented within the Smithsonian. He had a similar glaring lack of experience in leading a major nonprofit cultural entity.

Small was a banker/financial type [formerly at Citibank and Fannie Mae]. How often do we hear that cultural institutions should be run like businesses? That was why Small was hired by the Regents. No sooner was he hired than problems flared: First he was cited [and sentenced to community service and two years probation] for owning South American cultural materials that contained parts of endangered species.

Then he decided he would close major research components of the Smithsonian. That caused a huge uproar. He continued to knock around ignorantly and in the process alienated some significant donors. Finally, his outrageous salary, perks and unauthorized expenditures did him in.

We can only hope that this time the Regents get it right when they hire.

Lawrence Small, chief officer of the Smithsonian Institution, has resigned effective immediately. He had been under fire for unauthorized expenses (here and here).

Today's Smithsonian press release that announced the resignation reports:

Cristián Samper (sam-PAIR), director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, will be Acting Secretary while the Regents conduct a nationwide search for a permanent replacement....

"My priority in the coming months will be to strengthen the public trust in the Smithsonian Institution and ensure that our priority projects and activities continue on track," Samper said.

The last straw may have been the Senate's passage last week of a budgetary amendment to freeze the planned increase in the Smithsonian's allocation until it complied with a detailed list of strictures regarding employee compensation and ethics.

Small will not get a severance package, the AP reports.

At the recent museum law conference that I attended recently in Philadelphia, John Huerta, the Smithsonian's general counsel, shared with attendees the importance of instituting a "strategic communications plan" for "deliver[ing] a consistent positive message," and developing a "crisis management team and plan" to deal with "firestorms" as they erupt.

Time to activate those plans. For starters, maybe they should study the IRS's "Suggested Governance Guidelines for Tax-Exempt Organizations" (here and here), reproduced on the website of the Association of Art Museum Directors and released by the IRS on Feb. 2:

A successful charity pays no more than reasonable compensation for services rendered....Director compensation should be allowed only when determined appropriate by a committee composed of persons who are not compensated by the charity and have no financial interest in the determination. Charities may pay reasonable compensation for services provided by officers and staff. In determining reasonable compensation, a charity may wish to rely on the rebuttable presumption test of section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulation section of 53.4958-6.

I'll let Huerta look that up.

Albright-Knox objects offered Friday at Sotheby's auction of Indian and Southeast Asian art were hammered down for a total of $6.1 million, bringing the grand hammer-price total (including Tuesday's Chinese art sale) to $22.2 million. More sales to come.

The highlight of Friday's deaccessions was the life-size granite figure of Shiva as Brahma, Chola Period, ca. 10th-/11th century, selling for $4,072,000 with buyers commission ($3.6 million hammer), an auction record for an Indian stone sculpture. It had been in the Buffalo museum's collection since 1927.

Meanwhile, a member of the Albright-Knox, Joanna Gillespie, weighed in with a long letter to CultureGrrl taking issue with Katka Hammond's BlogBack criticizing the museum's actions in rounding up pro-deaccession votes from the membership. Some excerpts:

Katka blames the defeat of the Buffalo Art Keepers (BAK) resolution against the Albright-Knox's decision to deaccession on the "organization and power that we were unfortunately unable to overcome." In doing so, she inaccurately states what the BAK and the Albright-Knox actually did prior to the special meeting of the membership.

The Albright-Knox did not engage in a mass proxy mailing. Instead, board members, select gallery staff and volunteers made personal phone calls to as many members as possible, in an attempt to personally answer questions, get supportive proxy votes (of course!) and encourage attendance at the meeting.

IAC Headquarters as a Billboard Backdrop

In his appraisal of Frank Gehry's new building in New York for IAC, Barry Diller's media and internet empire, the NY Times' architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, writes:

Mr. Gehry's structure...looks best when approached from a distance....Viewed from the south, the forms appear more blocky. This constantly changing character imbues the building's exterior with an enigmatic beauty.

There is nothing "enigmatic," let alone beautiful, about the view from the south that the greatest number of passers-by will get of this ungainly building---the sight from cars approaching from the main north-south thoroughfare along Manhattan's western edge. The Times accompanied Ouroussoff's review with four photos of the building, but omitted the view, above, that reduces Gehry's latest oeuvre to a backdrop for an enormous billboard.

At first glance out the car window, it appears as if the Gap ad for "the boyfriend trouser" is literally affixed to the building. Maybe Diller needs to make one more strategic real estate investment, acquiring the next-door seedy parking lot, trimmed with barbed wire, that has punctured his architectural balloon.

The Senate yesterday passed by voice vote a budgetary amendment introduced by that scourge of museums, Sen. Charles Grassley, that would freeze a planned $17-million increase for the Smithsonian Institution until it complies with a detailed list of strictures regarding employee compensation and ethics. As noted in Grassley's press release, the amendment still needs to survive the Congressional budgetary process.

You might not know that, however, from today's Washington Post article, which declares: "The measure specifically caps [not "would cap"] salaries for any executive at the Smithsonian at $400,000, the current pay for the U.S. President. Small's compensation this year is $915,698." The article's only subtle indication that this is not a done deal comes four paragraphs later, in this sentence: "A Smithsonian spokesman said that officials routinely don't comment on bills or amendments until the process is completed on Capitol Hill."

Over at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the museum's 30 commissioners have rallied behind embattled director Elizabeth Broun in a paean to her "inspired leadership" posted on the museum's own blog, Eye Level. (Scroll to the "Comments" section below the item on the negative report by the external review committee.)

At least peace now reigns in the land of the elbowed Picasso: Steve Wynn and Lloyd's of London have reportedly reached an undisclosed settlement in their dispute over Wynn's insurance claim for the damage to "Le Rêve." The casino executive accidentally elbowed a hole in his own painting right before it was to have been purchased for a reported $139 million by hedge-fund mogul Steven Cohen. David Glovin of Bloomberg has the story.

Linda Nochlin at the "Global Feminisms" Press Preview

At a time when the Feminist Movement is struggling for acknowledgment, if not allegiance, from the high-achieving young women who have benefited from it, along comes the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, trying to perk up that drooping "ism" for the 21st century through its inaugural exhibition, "Global Feminisms." The show excludes the founding mothers of feminist art in favor of works created no earlier than 1990 by artists born after 1960.

It was curated by that founding mother of feminist art scholarship, Linda Nochlin (above), as well as the curator in charge of the new center, Maura Reilly. The center also encompasses a permanent installation of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" and rotating shows related to Chicago's iconic work, displayed in the new Herstory Gallery, which draws on works from the permanent collection.

Global Feminisms, to July 1. will be followed by "Global Feminisms: Phase 2," Aug. 3-Feb. 3, featuring a smaller selection of works in a smaller space. (The current show overflowed into 10,000 square feet of regular museum space, beyond the 8,300-square-foot Sackler Center.)

The current Global Feminisms show is a grab-bag of media and messages, politically correct in its global diversity but lacking a central guiding curatorial intelligence that might have made it something more empowering than a let-your-hair-down exercise in international consciousness raising. Raising questions about disparities in artistic quality in this context seems somehow besides the point.

But it IS worth raising questions about curatorial assumptions, as expressed in wall texts such as:

Global Feminisms artists...prefer to explore lesbian motherhood, primate wet-nurses, male pregnancy, the dark underbelly of childhood, cyber-feminist marriages, honeymoons without husbands and seductive tombstones.

Gee, I guess that leaves ME out! (For those as puzzled as I was, "cyber-feminist marriages" refers to Tanja Ostojic's "Looking for a Husband with an E.U. Passport.")

The fact that feminism is no longer (to my regret) a movement with much momentum is demonstrated by Brooklyn's difficulty in finding other venues for the show. So far, it's come up with just one: the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley, the women's college, where it will appear Sept. 19-Dec. 9.

There are many individual works to admire, of which I will single out two. Both are videos in a show so video-intense that you'd better plan to camp out in the Sackler Center for the next few weeks if you want to take it all in (not that I'm recommending this).

The hit of the show, judging from my own reaction and the intense absorption registering strongly on the faces of the jaded press, was Tracey Moffatt's "Love," a montage of battle-of-the-sexes scenes in classic movies, ranging sequentially from romantic clinches to humorous spats to brutal physical violence. With its hilarious surprise ending, it was, hands down, wittiest-in-show.

I was also absorbed in Emily Jacir's somber video (not that I could stay for its more than two hours of footage), "Crossing Surda (A Record of Going to and from Work)," which documents her repeated treks, over several days, through congested Israeli checkpoints, on her way to teaching at a university.

Because Jacir's works are so powerfully subtle in limning the difficult conditions endured by Palestinians in Israel, I was taken aback by an uncharacteristically contentious quote on the wall text accompanying her piece: She asserted that "all people, including the disabled, the elderly and children, must walk distances as far as two kilometers, depending on decisions of the Israeli army," who "shoot live ammunition" when they "decide that there should be no movement on the road."

As it happened, I encountered the artist by chance at the press preview, and learned that she had not wanted that quote to appear. She told me that her comments hadn't come "from a place of anger." The intention of the piece, created with a hidden camera, was not originally to produce art, but to record her experience, she said. (She later e-mailed to let me know that the offending quote had been expunged.)

While we talked, she paused in front of a video by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau, saying that it had particularly moved her. It records Landau standing nude on a beach, using a circle of barbed wire as a hula hoop. Jacir immediately recognized the peaceful Tel Aviv site and responded to what she regarded as the piece's military reference. (Landau had earlier told those of us on the press tour that the barbed wire also alluded to Nazi concentration camps.) This was an instance, which I was fortunate to witness, in which the exhibition created a common bond of sisterhood across formidable barriers.

Finally, the show's not-so-grand finale: During the press tour, curator Maura Reilly said she had "a highlight" for us in the last gallery. This turned out to be "Room for Isolation and Restraint" by Priscilla Monge, a cubicle lined floor-to-ceiling with sanitary napkins, giving new meaning to the term, "padded cell." Venture inside and shut the door, if you dare.

Is this the last word on the feminine condition?

Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) recently posted this powerful video (on its website and on YouTube) of Donny George Youkhanna, expatriate former director general of the Iraq National Museum, discussing the looting of his former museum and of archeological sites in Iraq. He is now visiting professor at Stony Brook University, New York.

Listen up: You don't have to pay "more than $40 million" for David Rockefeller's 1950 Rothko, "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," which he's dispatching to Sotheby's May 15 contemporary sale (as reported by Carol Vogel in today's NY Times).

Why pay a fortune to David, when for just $295, you can get this "100% hand-painted" version of the same painting, on "finest quality linen canvas"? It even comes with "a full and unconditional money-back guarantee"!

Guaranteed fake?

But wait! You can also buy it here in any of 13 sizes. "If there is no size you want, please contact us. We can custom any size for you."

Even Rockefeller can't make you a deal like that!

Whatever happened to copyright protection?

Speaking of Rockefeller's Rothko, you do have to admit that it was sporting of MoMA's longtime trustee and benefactor to check with John Elderfield, the museum's chief curator of painting and sculpture, to see if the museum objected to his selling the painting.

Let's consider Elderfield's options:

"Fuhgeddaboudit, David. Sure, you've been very generous to us already, but we really must insist that you hand over that Rothko too. After all, it's a great masterpiece and, what's more, it has particular significance for us: You purchased it in 1960 at the recommendation of Dorothy Miller, our legendary first chief curator." [It was included in the exhibition, "Dorothy C. Miller: With an Eye to American Art," at the Smith College Museum and in the landmark 1998-99 Rothko show that appeared at the Musée d'Art Modern, Paris, the Whitney Museum and the National Gallery, Washington.]

Here's Elderfield other option (as quoted in the NY Times)---the one that he actually chose:

"We don't need it. We already have five Rothkos from the 1950s." (Two of those, presumably the best ones, are posted on MoMA's website here. You be the judge.)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, on its blog, Eye Level, gives as good as it gets today, by enumerating its accomplishments in direct response to the recent Smithsonian-commissioned report on its art museums. That report, made public two days ago, was sharply critical of SAAM's "intellectual approach to the presentation of the collections and exhibitions, which have suffered from an undue emphasis on social history, politics, and interpretive rhetoric."

The very public rebuttal begins by noting:

The report is silent on many key aspects of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The museum's contemporary art initiatives, national programs, and innumerable collaborations were apparently not known to the Committee. The report does not acknowledge the museum's recent grand opening after a 6 1/2 year renovation of its historic main building, shared with the National Portrait Gallery, which garnered public and critical acclaim. [Actually, it does refer to the "beautifully renovated Old Patent Office Building...whose physical reconfiguration has opened new possibilities of integrated activities and pooled services for both museums.]...

The Eye Level post, written by Jeff Gates, the blog's managing editor (who undoubtedly had a little high-level help), goes on to recount SAAM's initiatives in contemporary art and national programs, although it doesn't address the critique of the presentation of its permanent collection and exhibitions.

It is unusual for museum colleagues to go at it this publicly, but the office of Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian's undersecretary for art, started it.

I just came back from the Brooklyn Museum's press preview for its new Sackler Center for Feminist Art (more on this later), so all I can say to SAAM's director, Betsy Broun, is:

You go, grrrl!

MAN and the Grrl at odds again---but this time we're respectfully disagreeing, rather than lobbing weapons of blog destruction.

We have expressed opposite views on Michael Govan, who had approved an already in-the-works sale of an ancient Indian art from LACMA's collection, but then snatched it from the market and was admirably outspoken against undertaking such deaccessions in the future.

And today Tyler appears to support to the Smithsonian blue-ribbon panel's implied criticism of Betsy Broun of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, who I feel has long served that institution patiently (during its long construction-related shutdown) and admirably. To his question of "Why does the museum exist?" I would say that a walk through Broun's reinstalled galleries provides a good answer: to provide an alternate take on telling the story of American art, tied to the full sweep of our nation's history and its people. Not an unworthy mission.

Our posts about Govan are here (CultureGrrl) and here (Modern Art Notes).

And about Broun---here (CultureGrrl) and here (MAN).

Speaking of alternate takes, I've got to run to see the new Brooklyn Museum feminism festival!

Score a scoop coup for Jason Edward Kaufman in The Art Newspaper, for this report posted Tuesday (and cited yesterday by the Washington Post) about the highly critical findings, publicly released yesterday, of a panel of major museum professionals charged with a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian's constituent art institutions.

Appointed by Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian's undersecretary for art, the panel consisted of: Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute; Vishakha Desai, president and CEO of the Asia Society; Susana Torruella Leval, director emerita of El Museo Del Barrio; Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art; Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum; John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum; James Wood, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The panel's full report is here.

The experts assert that the Smithsonian's art institutions are "drastically underfunded" and they take some unhelpful swipes at architectural deficiencies not easily ameliorated: The Hirshhorn, for example, is criticized for its "unpleasant concrete surface; difficult access; 'uninviting' sunken sculpture garden." It's too late for a do-over by the late founder, Joseph Hirshhorn, and the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Gordon Bunshaft, isn't it?

The report is especially critical of the leadership of the recently reopened National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, collectively now known as the Reynolds Center. These museums, the report says, should be merged under one director and a "national search should be undertaken for an outstanding leader who could fully understand and realize the potential of this...organization." Marc Pachter, director of the National Portrait Gallery, has already announced his plan to retire in October.

So the brunt of the criticism falls on longtime SAAM director Elizabeth Broun, who must feel stung by the report's comment that "we see a need for a better-balanced intellectual approach to the presentation of the collections and exhibitions, which have suffered from an undue emphasis on social history, politics, and interpretive rhetoric."

To be fair, here's Broun's side of the story, explaining why her institution presents its collections with a historical, rather than art-historical, approach. When I visited SAAM and the NPG last summer for my Wall Street Journal article on the reopening, Broun told me:

We made a conscious decision to install [the works in the collection] and interpret them with a focus on the broader context they reveal. We said: "We're in Washington and we think the art community will come anyway. We need to be cognizant of the fact that most of our attendance tends to be tourists and international visitors. Oftentimes they come without major background in art, but they're very interested in the American experience. And they come to us in part because we're an American art museum and because we share the building with the National Portrait Gallery.

So let's focus on that aspect. Art always in one way or another reflects the time in which it was made. We'll sort of pull that thread when we do labels and interpretation. We're not doing illustrations to a through-written narrative. We're just taking the works we love, treating each one individually but looking to find what it tells about something broader in American life and experience. If you look at each art work, we hope you feel connected to something in that period, that age, that time.

I think there's something to be said for taking a different approach from the traditional art-museum treatment accorded to American art at the world-class institution close by---the National Gallery. I have some quibbles with SAAM's installation of its permanent collection, but I think that by and large, if taken on its own terms, it works. If you've read my WSJ piece, you know that I believe that the panel's attack on the mixed quality of the NPG's offerings is valid.

The report gives particularly low marks to the National Museum of African Art:

There has been a longstanding lack of visionary leadership at the museum. The director's protracted illness, the absence of either a deputy director or chief curator, and curatorial departments that are either understaffed or underperforming, contribute to the present discouraging situation. Staff and trustee morale is dangerously low.

At least Paul Farhi, reporting in the Washington Post, has eased our minds about one troubling finding:

The committee said repairs to the museum buildings "are urgently needed" and warned that leaks in the Freer and Sackler's storage areas threaten their collections. Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said that the criticism was "outdated." She said any artworks in vulnerable areas are protected by plastic.

Plastic! That's so reassuring!

Speaking of the Smithsonian's woes: Tyler Green provided links yesterday to the Washington Post's continuing follow-ups on the Lawrence Small compensation controversies, uncovering alleged irregularities that go beyond the initial reports of a mere $90,000 in questionable expenses over six years. And the NY Times yesterday weighed in on this controversy here.

Speaking of losing battles that I have journalistically championed...

A new campaign was launched today in Great Britain, chaired by Parliament member Edward O'Hara, to return the British Museum's portion of the Parthenon marbles to Greece. I've supported the rejoining of the marbles numerous times (most notably in this NY Times Op-Ed piece), on the grounds that the sculptural frieze is a single work, depicting a continuous procession. To split it in pieces violates the integrity of one of the great masterpieces of Western Civilization.

Another Parliament member, Andrew George, introduced a motion last week that "calls on the Government to work with the British Museum to open negotiations with the Greek authorities to arrange for the proper restitution of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens."

"Marbles Reunited," which hosted a kickoff reception today at the House of Commons, bears an uncanny resemblance to Marbles Reunited, a campaign launched in Great Britain three years ago, not to mention Parthenon 2004, which aimed to send the marbles to Greece in time for the Olympics that year in Athens.

The new push is pegged to the expected June 2007 completion of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, designed by Bernard Tschumi, which "will be fully operational in 2008." Failing an agreement with the British Museum, the new Athens museum will exhibit the Greek-owned marbles in a gallery with a view of the Parthenon from whence they came, leaving empty spaces where the British-owned marbles were intended to be.

I'll believe the 2008 opening when I see it: The previously expected 2004 inauguration was clearly missed by a long shot. (Early images of Tschumi's designs are here).

Scheduled to be on hand for today's British campaign kickoff was Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, which is supervising its creation. Another scheduled speaker was our old friend, Nigel Spivey, the host of the art-edutainment television series, "How Art Made the World," who had elucidated classical art by treating us to an extended live beefcake segment of buff ancient Greek wannabes, ludicrously accompanied by the Noel Coward song, "Mad About the Boy."

Play it again, Nigel!

The beaten but unbowed Tom Freudenheim and Katka Hammond, one of the Buffalo Art Keepers (now more appropriately called the Buffalo Art Losers), respond separately to Albright-Knox Post Mortem: A Complete Defeat.

Freudenheim writes:

It's not that I don't agree with you [that the outcome of the anti-deaccession campaign was, regrettably, a "complete defeat"]. It's just that I still retain a tiny bit of my youthful naiveté to believe that this could be the beginning of a revolution. I don't know another example in which local people have publicly pleaded with their museum not to sell treasures they love. But of course, cynicism will likely prevail.

Hammond writes:

I am one of the small band of Buffalo folks who gathered what steam we could in late January (much too late, I'm afraid) to oppose the Albright-Knox's selling off its antiquity masterpieces. We tried to stop the Gallery from gambling the house so to speak, in order to acquire new contemporary works. I've read your comments on this subject with interest, because I completely agree that exploiting past acquisitions is wrongheaded, short-sighted, and an arrogant view of the institution's relation to the primary community it is supposed to serve.

I am extremely sad that these pieces have not only left the Albright, but that they will most likely end up in private hands.

a new MoMA PR person!

Here's the PR on the PR:

Glenn D. Lowry has announced the appointment of Cheri Fein as deputy director for marketing and communications at the Museum of Modern Art. As head of the marketing and communications division [repetitive, don't you think?], Ms. Fein will oversee some 24 staff in the departments of marketing, communications, and graphics. She will assume her new position in April 2007. Ms. Fein is currently a senior vice president at Rubenstein Communications, Inc., in New York.

She succeeds Ruth Kaplan, whose somewhat mysterious departure was unannounced when it happened a while back. The press release tells us only that Ruth "left the museum in March after five years, following the successful completion of the museum's expansion and renovation project." (Actually, they omitted the comma, making it seem as if she left five years after the completion of the expansion---impossible. We hope that Cheri will proofread all press releases.)

It seems to me that Ruth was absent from press previews some time before March. When I finally asked, a few weeks ago, why she was gone, I got the standard seeking-new-challenges reply and was told that she had been doing some consulting work for MoMA after she left her full-time post.

In this PR context, I feel compelled to inform you that my recent post on "How to Manage the Press" (Cheri, it's here) has soared to Number 3 on the CultureGrrl Hit Parade. PR people consulting this for helpful inside tips must be just as disappointed as the perverts looking for carnal cartoon characters in my Number 2 all-time post, More on Minnie Mouse Porn (the unsensational contents of which are actually more timely than ever, given Viacom's lawsuit against Google's YouTube). That post, about possible trademark and copyright infringement in online videos, continues to be savored internationally, thanks to its Number 1 status (which I've mentioned previously) on Google's search engine, under the heading, "Minnie Mouse porn."

I am also stunned and amazed that those who Google "vagina wallpaper" (as many, alas, have done) arrive at this post about a St. Louis art exhibition. It's Number 3 on the list of results for that bizarre Google search.

But, Philippe, you still rock for CultureGrrl's born-to-be-wild readers: My most popular post remains Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met?

Robert Buck, where were you when we really needed you?

According to this afternoon's report by the Buffalo News of today's wildly successful (if thoroughly depressing) sale at Sotheby's of Chinese objects from the Albright-Knox Gallery's collection, the museum's former director finally weighed in, just a little too late to do any good. Buck is today quoted describing the disposals by his former institution as "definitely a public loss, and I think beyond the institution, much of it portends to be a loss for public access."

Colin Dabkowski reports:

Buck and others have said that many of the prized [deaccessioned] items had been permanently on display as recently as the late '90s.

"I think people are being blindsided by the value of contemporary art," Buck said, adding that the today's museums have confused priorities bound to the ever-escalating price of modern art.

This from a museum professional who was very much involved in the contemporary art scene during his tenure in Buffalo and subsequent directorship at the Brooklyn Museum.

Oh, you wanted to know the results of the sale?

The museum's 23 Chinese objects were hammered down for $16.1 million , against a presale estimate of merely $5.5-8.8 million. (Including the buyer's commission, the total was $18,358,000, .) The museum had originally estimated it would net $15 million from all 207 objects it will offer in a series of auctions. Guess they're going to buy a lot of contemporary art.

For Bloomberg's report on today's auction by Linda Sandler, go here.

Read 'em and weep.

I love the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which Kathy Halbreich will leave as director in November. I admire it for its nerve and prescience in taking flyers on lesser-known artists and audacious exhibition concepts. It's a tradition that Halbreich has ably carried on from her legendary predecessor, Martin Friedman.

As her contemporary, I also love that Halbreich explained her departure to Carol Vogel of the NY Times by saying: "I've got at least one more professional chapter. This seems like the right time to go."

So where might she be going? What follows is wild, completely uninformed and unfounded speculation, but what else are blogs for?

I couldn't help but notice what seemed to me a special vibe (no, not THAT kind of vibe) between Halbreich and Glenn Lowry at last month's ADAA-sponsored panel discussion on museum collecting. They seemed chummy. She spoke fondly during the panel discussion about the recent lunch she had had with him. And, most memorably to me, it was she who defended him against CultureGrrl's rude query about Lowry's compensation during the question-and-answer period: She shut down that discussion by declaring Lowry to be "probably their [MoMA's] best acquisition."

Could it be that she's in talks to move to MoMA, which has been trying very hard (but with mixed success) to up its contemporary ante?

I've been speculating about Lowry's next act, even before the emergence of the compensation controversy that now dogs him. The fact is that, with few exceptions, directors who have been through a grueling expansion project seem to leave their institutions soon afterwards.

In that regard, Walker board president Steve Shank told Mary Abbe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune that "he was not surprised by her impending departure because 'after these big building campaigns it is not unusual to have these transitions.'"

Now that the Education Wing is finally done, does Glenn really want to go through yet another expansion project?

But wait a minute! Maybe Halbreich should go to MASS MoCA in the idyllic Berkshires, and Joe Thompson, a resourceful and art-savvy administrator with a Wharton M.B.A., should move from there to MoMA.

And in other contemporary art news: Mark Rosenthal, formerly of the Philadelphia Museum, National Gallery, Berkeley Art Museum, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection, has now landed at the Detroit Institute of Arts as adjunct curator for contemporary art.

I haven't even had my first cup of coffee this morning. Maybe I'd better have some breakfast and calm down!

UPDATE: Judging from today's Q&A between Modern Art Notes and Halbreich, she's not thinking of MoMA, but something "smaller."

On the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page today---coinciding with the first day of a series of auctions of 207 objects from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery---former museum administrator Tom Freudenheim publishes his second WSJ piece decrying the sales. (Here's his first piece, in which he described the importance to him, as a boy growing up in Buffalo, of the earlier, non-contemporary works in the collection that have now been deemed disposable.)

A quasi-journalist nowadays, Freudenheim managed to crash the no-press barrier at the recent museum members meeting where the sale was debated, because he is a longtime Albright-Knox member. In today's piece, he gives an inside view of that meeting and debunks the notion that "this failing Rust Belt community can raise money only by divesting itself of its cultural capital because there's no new wealth to tap. In fact, I've...been told that there are massive fortunes in the region, many of them made locally."

This underlines an important issue that is all too common to the sorry sagas of museum deaccessions: They are an easy expedient for trustees and administrators who aren't doing their job of adequately supporting their institutions with their own gifts and through energetic fundraising.

Freudenheim writes:

Some of those millionaires [in the Buffalo area] are even trustees of the museum. In the old days, writing big checks to support acquisitions and other museum programs was considered every board member's first responsibility. Today, it seems, they prefer to cash in the gifts of earlier generations.

Freudenheim also raises questions about today's museum officials' overruling the considered judgment of their predecessors: "A significant number of the [deaccessioned] masterpieces...were quite intentionally purchased by previous distinguished directors," he notes.

Having lost the battle, he nevertheless optimistically opines that "this storm in Buffalo might be just the beginning of a revolution in which the public begins to reclaim its rights to public institutions and demands an accountability that museum directors and trustees will ignore at their peril."

But the Buffalo example provides little evidence of this so-called peril: The trustees and director appear to have gotten away with their raid on the collection, with the support or acquiescence of most of the local community. The Battle of Buffalo, it seems to me, was nearly a complete defeat.

We need the Michael Govans of this world---respected museum directors who are not afraid to lead the charge against deaccessions---to begin to set things right. The only other hope is that State Attorneys General begin forcefully intervening on behalf of the public for whom museums hold their collections in trust.

So far, there are few signs that either of these things are going to happen any time soon.

For a antiquities gallery that, by its own admission, is trying to clean up its act, Phoenix Ancient Art got a reputation whitewash in Ron Stodghill's article in yesterday's NY Times Sunday Business Section, Do You Know Where That Art Has Been?. Phoenix is clearly pleased with this story: It has posted the piece on its website.

Stodghill reports:

The Aboutaams [owners of the gallery, based in New York and Geneva] are remaking themselves and their business. In a trade that has been full of grave robbers and forgers adding patina to new objects, they are busy digging up documentation for everything they sell in an effort to polish their reputation.

But if they have become so meticulous about provenance, why were they offering, as late as 2003, the ancient Greek bronze, "Apollo Sauroktonos," (Lizard-Slayer), which, by their own admission, bore an ownership history that "was dubious at best," according to the Times report?

As it happened, the Cleveland Museum admired that piece and then did its own scientific research, showing that the life-size work, attributed to Praxiteles (but not necessarily "by" that sculptor, as reported by Stodghill) had been out of the ground for 100 years or more. If that's the case, then the Louvre ought not to have so readily capitulated to recent Greek demands that it not borrow the Apollo for a Praxiteles exhibition. Greece threatened that if the Cleveland loan stayed, its 19 loans to the show would go.

But back to Phoenix: The Times' assertions about the gallery's new policy of providing "detailed descriptions of...provenance" didn't quite jibe with my own experience visiting its exhibition last fall of The Painter's Eye: The Art of Greek Ceramics (images here).

The only provenance listed for some 14 of the 25 works on sale at the gallery was enigmatic at best: "Formerly in the collection of C.J.D., Switzerland."

The catalogue introduction stated:

It is with great confidence that the collection of Dr. C.J.D. greets the public, displayed in its entirety for the first time. The collection mirrors the concerns of the collector: in this case, a scholar and connoisseur of Greek vases whose exacting eye for rarity, condition and, above all, artistic quality were honed both in the university classsroom and as an observer and participant in the European art market.

Collected during the course of his archaeological studies in the 1960s and early 1970s, C.J.D. had the singular opportunity to supplement his scholarly research with the development of his instincts as a collector. The end result is a distinct group of ceramics of great academic importance, each vase presenting an element of painting or iconography that differentiates it from the canon of related works.

For another work in the exhibition, a "Red-Figure Kylix with a Music Teacher and Schoolboy," the only provenance listed in the catalogue was: "Ex-European art market, acquired in the 1980s."

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these objects. I'm only saying that despite the claim that the Aboutaam brothers "are busy digging up documentation for everything they sell," transparent antiquities dealing may still be an oxymoron.

I KNEW someday my prince would come!

Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has rescued me from my lonely anti-deaccession ivory tower with the courageous 11th-hour extrication of his museum's ancient Indian sandstone sculpture of Uma-Maheshvara from the jaws of the art market.

Before hearing this welcome news, I'd been feeling increasingly isolated in what I called my "radically conservative" position that trading up---selling one highly important artwork to buy a work deemed by today's curators to be even more important---is NOT an appropriate collections management strategy. In my view, the "permanent collection" is called that for a reason: Past acquisitions of museum-quality works should not be exploited as assets to bankroll high-stakes plays by today's curators who want a piece of the market action.

As reported by veteran art reporter Suzanne Muchnic in Saturday's LA Times, Govan reclaimed a rare late Gupta-period sculpture from Carlton Rochell Asian Art in New York, where it was about to be offered by the museum for $350,000. He was persuaded to do so by retired LACMA curator Pratapaditya Pal.

Pal told Muchnic:

I felt that I had to save this piece. That's my duty, and I am quite passionate about it.

Unfortunately, not all curators who are passionate about long-ago acquisitions are still around to defend them from today's covetous curators---witness the two sales scheduled this week of Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian art from the Albright-Knox Gallery.

I particularly appreciate these bon mots from Govan:

I'm very conservative on deaccessioning. LACMA's existing policies are standard. You may see those policies change in the future---you will probably see them get tighter---but that will take serious consultation with curators and members of the board....

At LACMA, we are highly under-endowed in terms of acquisition funds. There has been pressure on curators to use deaccessioning [link to my NY Times Op-Ed on LACMA disposals] as a primary tool to improve the collections. I think the key issue is to inspire more generosity in terms of what's available for acquisitions.

Michael, why weren't you on my list of Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met? I guess because you've got too much yet to accomplish in Los Angeles.

Speaking of which, I think Govan's got enough on his plate with LACMA's major expansion, and should curb his appetite to completely reinvent the art museum: His well intentioned notion, recently reported in the NY Times, of snapping up and preserving architecturally important houses in LA County (perhaps repurposing some of them as curators' residences) is one of those outside-the-box ideas that should probably be stuffed back into the box. LACMA has too much construction planned for its own house to think seriously now about buying other people's fixer-uppers.

The best way to accomplish Govan's preservationist purpose is probably through an organization that is specifically dedicated to that mission. Last week in Philadelphia, for example, I heard Carl Nold, president and CEO of Historic New England, Boston, explain to a group of museum professionals how his organization acquires, preserves, displays and sometimes resells (with enforceable preservation restrictions) historic houses.

Maybe Govan should work with HNE to establish a West Coast modernist branch!

With a headline like the one above, I've shot myself in the foot for the the most coveted prize in journalism. Then again, I can't win one anyway, since I'm not on a newspaper staff (let alone a journalist of Pulitzer caliber).

My interest in the application and selection process was piqued, nevertheless, by the news from Editor & Publisher that Christopher Knight, art critic and commentator at the LA Times, has become a finalist for this year's Pulitzer for criticism by nominating himself, rather than being nominated by his editors, as is customary. Who knew you could do this, let alone make it to the finals this way?

This knowledge gap led me to take a look at the Pulitzer guidelines and procedures, as well as the past winners in the criticism category. (Go here, click on "Forms," then click on "Journalism Guidelines")

Knight may have taken advantage of the guideline that states that nominations may be made not only by editors, but also "in the name of the staff of the newspaper." (Don't get me wrong: I do hope he wins!)

The guidelines also allow entries "by newspaper readers or an interested individual."

But most surprising was this Q&A defining the critics award, under the heading, "How to Prepare an Entry":

Q: What belongs in the Criticism category?
A: Critical writing on such subjects as books, theater, television, movies, dance and architecture.

And art is...where?

For the record: Of the 37 awards for criticism since 1970, a mere two went for art criticism: Emily Genauer of Newsday, 1974; and Henry Allen of the Washington Post (photography criticism), 2000. Sorry, Christopher, they only do it every 25 years or so!

Anyway, Knight, a finalist for the third time, and Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice, who has been twice a finalist (but not this year), are in good also-ran company: Nicolai Ouroussoff was a finalist for his architecture criticism twice (2003 and 2004) for the LA Times and once (last year) for the NY Times. He still hasn't medaled.

The winners in all categories will be announced Apr. 16. "Finalists are not announced in advance."

They're merely leaked.

Real estate mogul and art collector Raymond Nasher founder of the widely admired Dallas sculpture center that bears his name, died unexpectedly yesterday in a Dallas hospital.

"It came as a complete surprise," Steven Nash, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, told the Dallas Morning News.

Much courted by major museums for his superb collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, he opted instead for the single-collector treatment at what is now the three-year-old Nasher Sculpture Center---an indoor-outdoor oasis that, to my mind, is one of Renzo Piano's greatest achievements. It owes much of its success to the sympathetic, synergistic collaboration between architect and client. Its proximity to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Meyerson Symphony Center has created a vibrant cultural district in an area otherwise dominated by highrise office buildings.

For my admiring assessment of the Nasher and other single-collector museums, go here.

He also provided $10 million in construction funds, as well as loans from his private collection, for the Nasher Museum, which opened in 2005 at Duke University, his alma mater.

Now the truth can be told: It was a matter of labor relations.

I caught up Wednesday with Beverly Wolff at the artworld attorneys' ALI-ABA conclave in Philadelphia. She was the Museum of Modern Art's in-house counsel when Glenn Lowry was lured to MoMA with an unorthodox compensation sweetener.

So I decided to pop The Question regarding Lowry's compensation package, whereby some of his income and perks came from a private foundation funded by three Museum of Modern Art trustees. That portion of the director's compensation was essentially hidden from public view, because it was not reported on the museum's publicly accessible tax forms. Those forms made no mention of the enigmatically named New York Fine Arts Support Trust.

Wolff assured me that everything about the structuring of this deal was "legal at the time." (Payments stopped in 2004, the NY Times reported, when the IRS's reporting rules changed.) I was willing to grant that premise for the sake of argument. But why, I inquired, wasn't the deal structured in the traditional way, through the museum's regular budget? In the traditional scenario, the trustees might have donated money to MoMA for the purpose of compensating the director.

Wolff replied that if I thought about it, I could probably figure out the reason. I said that I couldn't. She then provided an explanation that had previously occurred to me, but that I wouldn't have presumed to posit without corroboration:

It had to do with the union. It had to do with staff salaries. Staff members used to say, 'If you have such rich trustees, why don't they provide more money for our salaries?'

In other words, the total Lowry compensation package, had it been known to the staff, might have fueled the labor-relation fires. With its vociferous and (in the museum field) atypical labor union for professional employees, MoMA has repeatedly had highly publicized strife at contract-negotiation time. In the most recent labor flare-up, striking MoMA workers in 2000 had urged city officials to reject the museum's expansion plans until they were paid what they regarded as fair salaries.

Perhaps there were additional reasons for the secret compensation arrangement, which also sweetened the deal for former curator Gary Garrels. But this one makes it easier to understand why the museum feels it can't come clean with a forthright explanation of its misconceived actions.

Nikolai Zavadsky was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $283,000 in damages for his role in the theft of 77 objects from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. He was the husband of the late Larisa Zavadskaya, a curator at the museum.

Last summer it was discovered that her Department of Russian Culture had suffered the loss of more than 200 objects. The curator, who was also said to have been involved in the thefts, died in October 2005 at her desk in the museum.

Zavadsky admitted his guilt in January, but "also blamed his late wife, stating that she was the mastermind behind the thefts," the St. Petersburg Times reported today.

Galina Stolyarova writes:

During the court case, Zavadsky maintained he was selling the stolen goods under pressure from his wife who had "a forceful personality."

Is there a "henpecked husband" defense?

According to the newspaper, only 31 of the missing items have been recovered. The Hermitage "has repeatedly appealed to collectors and antique shop owners, but the recovery process has...stalled. The fate of the other stolen artifacts remains unknown."

Steven Lee Myers, in today's NY Times, reports that the Hermitage's director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, "in an interview before Thursday's verdict, said the museum had already taken significant steps to improve its safeguards. These include additional doors and cameras in storage areas out of public view."

"Additional doors"---providing more escape routes? Maybe the editorial gremlins jumbled a sentence that should have read, "additional cameras focused on doors and storage areas out of public view." We can only hope.

On a more positive note, the Hermitage reports on its website that it has entered into a "protocol of intent" with Italy's Province of Ferrara, Municipality of Ferrara and Emilia-Romagna Region, "setting forth the conditions for preparing and implementing cooperation projects within the framework of a planned program that is tentatively called the Hermitage-Italy Research and Cultural Center."

Among other things, the proposed center may publish catalogues and foster research, exhibitions and professional training programs.

UPDATE ON THIS UPDATE: A faithful reader suggests an alternative (and probably correct) reading for "additional doors" in storage areas: "I guess they might mean doors with locks in areas that have openings (passageways). Doors are things that close openings." Point taken.

UPDATE: Albright-Knox sales get thumbs up from State Supreme Court.

State Supreme Court Justice Diane Y. Devlin heard two hours of arguments in the Albright-Knox Gallery deaccession controversy today and will issue a decision tomorrow, the Buffalo News reported.

Lawyers for the museum and Sotheby's were pitted against Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis and his Buffalo Art Keepers. The disposals are slated to begin on Tuesday, at Sotheby's Chinese art sale. More works are due to be on the block at Friday's Indian and Southeast Asian art sale, with the remainder of the 207 objects offered at four more sales in May and June.

In October, I wrote for Art in America about the Smithsonian American Art Museum's heightened commitment to contemporary art, as evidenced by the myriad new acquisitions in its expanded and renovated contemporary galleries. When it reopened last year, after more than six years of top-to-bottom makeover, SAAM's longtime director, Elizabeth Broun, took me first to the expansive Lincoln Gallery, where the 16th President had his second inaugural ball. With a sweeping gesture, she proudly informed me that "most of what you see here is new." (Read the full AiA article here for more details on the contemporary holdings.)

Today comes an announcement that the museum has invested in new curatorial talent for its big growth area: An old museum hand, John Hanhardt, formerly of the Guggenheim, Whitney and Walker, started in September as consulting senior curator for film and media arts.

Joanna Marsh, currently associate curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum, will move to SAAM on Apr. 30 as curator of contemporary art. She organized many exhibitions in the Hartford museum's "Matrix" series of young or emerging artists, and curated installations of work by Sol LeWitt and Robert Rauschenberg.

But what I really like about her is that, like CultureGrrl, she holds a bachelor's degree English literature (as well as art history) from Cornell University. My degree was a little earlier than hers, though; we didn't double-major in those days!

Having just returned from two days of panel discussions by artworld lawyers and museum administrators, I am amazed by how fixated some are on "managing" the press.

So, here's my advice: The best way to manage the press is not to manage us. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I usually know the difference between someone trying to spin me and someone trying to inform me. If I sense that you're "managing" me, you've aroused my suspicion, not my trust.

I like the Harold Holzer Rule, described yesterday at a three-day conference on Legal Issues in Museum Administration, organized by the American Law Institute of the American Bar Assocation. Sharon Cott, the Metropolitan Museum's senior vice president, secretary and general counsel, confided during a session on "The Lawyer's Role on Crisis Management" that the cardinal rule promulgated by the Met's senior vice president for external affairs is:

Tell me everything.

As I've said before, if someone is assigned the role of public spokesman, he must be kept in the loop so that he can usefully and adequately perform that function. If he only tells part of the story, because that's all he knows, we curious creatures are likely to dig in other places for more. Partial truths usually backfire. And when the full truth emerges, the museum looks like it was hiding something.

So here's the Rosenbaum Corollary to the Holzer Rule:

Tell ME everything.

We all know that rules have exceptions: Sharon confessed that she didn't really tell Harold everything, partly because some of the information (regarding the Met's antiquities negotiations, the subject of her talk) was "legally privileged." Similarly, some information cannot be divulged to reporters because of legitimate confidentiality concerns.

That said, the presumption should be disclosure and transparency, with explanations when something must be kept secret. After all, as Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum recently said, "We're not making weapons here. It's not like we've got that much to hide."

Today's NY Times has a piece by a woman, Patricia Cohen (editor of the newspaper's late, lamented "Arts & Ideas" page), reporting on an effort by an activist-author to train more women to write Op-Ed pieces for newspapers. (I've published six Op-Eds in the NY Times and one in the LA Times.) The article indicates that "65 or 75 percent of unsolicited [Op-Ed] manuscripts, or more, come from men."

But Cohen doesn't even begin to touch the more important question of why there are so few regular female Op-Ed columnists (as opposed to freelance contributors) on newspaper staffs. For many years, the Times has had only one---Maureen Dowd---even though the editorial page editor (who also oversees the Op-Ed page) was, until Jan. 8, a woman. (It is now Andrew Rosenthal.)

The Times sometimes appoints "guest columnists" for short-term Op-Ed stints while regular columnists are away. The last two of those have been women, as if to make up for the chronic estrogen deficit. One of those, Ann Althouse, is a political blogger. (Don't they need a cultural one?)

For an explanation of why women aren't anointed as regular Op-Ed pundits, we go to the one who is, Dowd. Two years ago, in Dish It Out Ladies, she wrote:

There's an intense debate going on now about why newspapers have so few female columnists. Out of what will soon be eight Times Op-Ed columnists---nine, counting the public editor---I'm the only woman....

Men take professional criticism more personally when it comes from a woman....While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating.

Since I've begun this opinionated blog, I haven't felt that my targets' responses have been influenced by my gender. But maybe my middle-aged status makes my nagging just seem age-appropriate and non-threatening. Castration's just not my thing. (Perhaps chains and whips.)

What bothers me most is that women in power may be perpetuating the male stereotype that an opinionated women is, if not a harridan, an oxymoron. Dowd comments:

Gail Collins, the first woman to run The Times's editorial page and the author of a history of American women, told The Post's Howard Kurtz: "There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff, and they're less comfortable hearing something on the news and batting something out."

This reminds me of what I wrote about in my very first CultureGrrl post, almost a year ago: Sreenath Sreenivasan, associate professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism, informed assembled alums at a blogging seminar (which inspired me to start this dubious project) that the blogging community is "very male. There are not many women or minorities." This is supposedly because blogging "takes a leap of faith" and takes an aggressively contentious posture---attitudes that women are presumed to be ill-suited for.

To this Lawrence Summers-like stereotype---that women are not biologically hardwired for expressing strong opinions and (as Collins' said) "batting something out"---CultureGrrl contends:

We're ready to bat 'em out of the park. Just put us in, coach. We're ready to play.

What are this foot and that hand doing beside Dr. Gross?

I now believe it's a good thing, for more than financial reasons, that the Philadelphia Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are sharing ownership of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic." That's because of the thoroughly unconventional but provocatively engaging installation it has received at PAFA, where I viewed it yesterday, in advance of today's public unveiling.

The installation at the Philadelphia Museum, which I also saw at the beginning of its time there, was standard-issue, serious art museum treatment (not that there's anything wrong with that): It was nestled among the artist's oil studies for the painting; his boxing picture, "Between Rounds;" his Schuylkill River scene, "The Pair-Oared Shell"; and a portrait of him by his wife, Susan Macdowell Eakins.

But because PAFA had such a close association with Eakins (who taught there until he was booted out for removing a loincloth from a male model in a women's class), its juxtapositions are more quirky and personal, starting with the startling plaster casts of body parts that have been positioned on either side of the iconic masterpiece.

It seems oddly fitting that a painting that graphically depicts a surgical incision should be surrounded by Eakins' macabre study aides {including those above) for art students trying to learn anatomy.

As the wall text tells us:

Eakins devised a method of casting dissected body parts in plaster to create a record of these investigations and to provide useful teaching tools. Eakins acquired his expertise in dissection while attending classes at Jefferson Medical College [prior owner of "The Gross Clinic"] in 1874.

Also on display in the large gallery with the newly acquired Eakins are PAFA's other Eakinses, as well as its works by artists who reflected "the artistic legacy that Eakins left on the teaching methods of the Pennsylvania Academy." These include Thomas Anshutz and Cecilia Beaux, both of whom had been his students and later became his fellow teachers.

Now if PAFA could only hire a new director and deputy director, to replace Derek Gillman and Kim Sajet.

The buzz here in the City of Brotherly Love is that the Philadelphia Museum is likely to sell art from its collection in order to help fund the $68-million purchase of "The Gross Clinic."

This was touched upon in today's WHYY radio report, which used a one-sentence anti-deaccessioning soundbite from me as well as comments from representatives of the Philadelphia Museum and its Eakins co-purchaser, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Listen here for today's Philly Public Radio segment; click on the Mar. 13 link) .

The most public pronouncement from the Philadelphia Museum on possible deaccessioning came today at the all-day seminar I attended here on Best and Worst Practices in Deaccessioning, organized by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collection Libraries.

When she agreed to participate in this symposium a year ago, little did Alice Beamesderfer know that her institution would be on the deaccession hotseat. The Philadelphia Museum's associate director of collections gave an overview of her institution's deaccessioning policies and practices, and then gamely addressed the Eakins situation head-on:

Deaccessioning should take place only to strengthen the collection by allowing museums to acquire much finer works of art than those that it removed from the collection. If we fall short [in fundraising for the Eakins], isn't it justifiable to sell lesser works, or would it have been better just to let "The Gross Clinic" go?

This was obviously meant as a rhetorical question.

Most interestingly, she quoted from the deed of gift signed Dec. 5, 1929 by Susan MacDowell Eakins and Mary Adeline Williams, the executors of Eakins' estate, who gave the museum a large collection of works by the Philadelphia artist.

The deed reads:

If occasion should arise in which the Museum could in its judgment effect an exchange, favorable to the memory and reputation of Thomas Eakins, of paintings now in the Collection for other paintings, such exchange may be made, provided due care shall be taken by the Museum to preserve always a representative group of the works of Thomas Eakins.

Afterwards, I asked Beamesderfer if I was correct in surmising that the museum is actively considering such an Eakins "exchange." She said that the curators had indeed identified several works by several artists, including Eakins, for possible disposal. But she added that no decision about whether or what to sell had yet been taken, because fundraising continues.

Then I strolled over to PAFA and got a private look at "The Gross Clinic" in its new setting, where it will open to the public tomorrow and remain on view until June 2008 (after which it shuttles back to the Philadelphia Museum).

COMING SOON: MORE ON EAKINS' "GROSS" AT PAFA

AJ Blogger Drew McManus, speaking yesterday on New York Public Radio's (WNYC's) Soundcheck (scroll to the final segment), could not answer host John Schaefer's key question about the impact of the 30 rare string instruments that the New Jersey Symphony bought four years ago and is now planning to sell:

Did the sound improve?

Unlike Drew, I'm from Jersey, and I can answer from firsthand concerthall experience:

Enormously.

The string section had a sensuously rich tone that was a mixed blessing, because it overshadowed the other musicians. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the orchestra was able to attract better string players with these better instruments.

The program that I heard played to the orchestra's greatest strength, favoring works that favored the strings.

You may have noticed that I said "the program." And that's the New Jersey Symphony's biggest problem: As a classical concertgoer, I'm its target audience, but I don't live much farther away from Lincoln Center in New York than I do from the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, NJ. I almost always cross the Hudson for my culture.

It's a shame that the NJSO's board now feels financially compelled to sell the one asset that made the orchestra special and that attracted its current music director, Neeme Jarvi.

Selling the instruments may fix the finances, but it won't begin to solve the orchestra's artistic or geographic problems. It may only exacerbate them.

UPDATE: The Buffalo News reported later today that Albright-Knox members opposed a motion to stop the planned sale of some of the museum's art by a vote of 1,224-428 (including proxies).

A meeting last night of about 600 members of the Albright-Knox Gallery to discuss its planned deaccession of 207 non-contemporary objects was "fairly evenly divided," according to today's Buffalo News.

But Mark Sommer reports that journalists were barred from the meeting. Couldn't one of them have purchased a membership? This was a quasi-public forum, and the airing of publicly expressed views was a matter of public interest.

The newspaper reported that "four lawsuits have been filed in an attempt to prevent the auctions at Sotheby's in New York City." The results of the nonbinding vote on the sales by the members who attended last night's meeting will be published on the Buffalo News site today.

We are all well accustomed to tacky museum gift shop items, but "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," now at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (to Sept. 30), takes schlock to a whole new level of outrageous tastelessness.

Here are a couple of choice items to add to your Museum of Kitsch:

"Ancient Egyptian Dog Collar": $85

Tut Tissue Box Cover: $29.95

Appropriately presiding over the cash registers is a huge photo mural of Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who was responsible for structuring this big-ticket show ($32.50 on weekends; $27.50 weekdays) as a major moneymaker supporting the preservation of Egyptian antiquities.

I passed on the $240 King Tut CD Cabinet, but purchased the $49.95 catalogue, which includes a CD of the audio tour.

The 1970s Tutankhamun exhibition, which I saw twice at the Metropolitan Museum, was one of the highlights of my museumgoing life. The current show often seemed more about theatrical presentation than about the objects. By the last gallery, I wanted to throttle the Egyptian elevator-music chorus, whose intrusive "ah-ah-ahs" were a constant source of noise pollution.

The best part of the viewing experience: The galleries on a late Monday afternoon were sparsely attended.

I'm off today to the land of the Boy King. That could be one of two places: Cairo, or the city where they hand out these ancient artifacts:

Some art scribes go to Maastricht, "on a press trip funded by the Dutch."

I'm going dutch treat (on my own dime) to do some digging in Philly, where I'm bound to get myself in dutch.

If all goes according to plan, you can hear me briefly pontificating about deaccessioning, one more time, on Philadelphia public radio (WHYY, 90.9 FM), tomorrow morning (probably around 6:30 a.m., repeated at 8:30 a.m.). I'll be responding to questions put to me by reporter Joel Rose, whose renewed interest in the Eakins saga is pegged to the display of "The Gross Clinic," starting this Wednesday, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where it is being shuttled from the Philadelphia Museum. The two museums co-purchased the painting from Thomas Jefferson University for $68 million.

Speculation continues that it's only a matter of time until the Philadelphia Museum announces a plan to sell art to help fund its share of the beyond-their-means purchase. Stephan Salisbury reported in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer:

For the academy's partner in the purchase, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the solution to the same [fundraising] conundrum has yet to emerge; but an art sale is almost certainly forthcoming, officials there say.

I'll post a link to the broadcast segment when it's up. And I'll try to keep in touch with you, sporadically, from my laptop.

The moral quandary posed in yesterday's The Ethicist column in the NY Times Sunday Magazine was the flip side of my own recent experience as an interviewer of applicants to my alma mater, Cornell University. Cornell's been good to my entire family, so I felt I owed it some small service.

Interviewing seemed like a natural, since it's something that I know more than a little about. But I limit my role to providing a bit more information about the applicant to the university and vice versa. I'm not interested in being a judgmental gatekeeper, although I do express extra enthusiasm for the candidates I particularly admire.

The first thing I tell my assigned aspirants is that there's no downside to talking with me: I don't write negatives. (I suppose that those whom I interview professionally wish I'd put them similarly at ease!)

So imagine my surprise when read in the Times yesterday that Keith Lublin of West Bloomfield, Mich., has nothing better to do with his time than to "routinely Google" his unfortunate interviewees, whereby he "discovered that one posted information on his blog that reflects poorly on him. May I ask him about the blog? May I mention it to the university? Should it affect the score I give him?"

Since when have the interviewers of these hapless applicants become private investigators? Should we check their credit scores too?

The Ethicist, Randy Cohen, wisely counseled Lublin:

Put down the mouse and step away from the computer. You should not Google these students in the first place, let alone make your dubious discoveries a factor in college acceptance.

But at the end of his morality tale, Cohen appended this shocking update:

Lublin checked with the university and was told not to ask the student about the blog but to include its URL with his report.

Blogger Beware: Your invented posting persona may be taken dead seriously. (My vainglorious alter ego, CultureGrrl, has been similarly misconstrued.) Your adolescent fantasies may reach the humorless Dean of Admissions, via the Google snoop.

In the college admissions game, cybersleuthing works both ways, as I recently discovered: I interviewed a student of Greek heritage and we naturally got to talking about my trip to Greece and the Parthenon marbles. I asked her opinion about the controversy, and mentioned that I had written a NY Times Op-Ed piece urging that the sundered portions of the frieze be reunited.

"I know," she coolly informed me. "I Googled you."

I suppose that shouldn't have surprised me, but I was momentarily dumbstruck. It just proves once again that in this search engine-driven world, everyone knows more about you than you think---even (or maybe especially) high school seniors.

In yesterday's post for his ArtsJournal blog, On the Record, Henry Fogel commented critically on the taboo against applauding between movements at a classical concert. I disagree with him...up to a point.

I've recently had two experiences at the NY Philharmonic where a group of people sitting in the back of the orchestra broke the taboo. I wrote about the first one in my post, Philharmonic Philistines, where I noted that the orchestra itself offers helpful advice on its website, regarding When do I applaud? (This link has changed since my previous post.)

My second recent applause-between-movements experience occurred one week ago, with a frail but still musically masterful Kurt Masur making a very emotionally moving return podium of the orchestra where he is music director emeritus. The very pronounced tremor in Masur's hands contrasted with the energetic virtuosity of the very youthful solo violinist, Sergey Khachatryan, who wowed the crowd in the Sibelius Violin Concerto.

The soloist's convention-defying casual dress for his Philharmonic debut was matched by the impetuous inter-movement enthusiasm of a group of high school marching band musicians from Chicago, sitting a few rows behind me. It was a great concert for them to attend, not only because of the talented role model onstage, only a few years their senior, but also because they will never again hear a better rendition of the march-like third movement of the Tchaikovsky "Pathétique" symphony.

I don't agree with Fogel's pronouncement that the tradition of not applauding between movements "is born of a snobbishness, a device whereby some people can feel superior by showing visibly that they know the piece isn't over yet."

I plead guilty to being a cultural snob, but I'm against a burst of extraneous sound within a piece for more substantial reasons: I prefer that my absorption in the music be uninterrupted. (And don't even get me started on all the coughing and whispering that can also sometimes interrupt the flow of a piece.)

That said, if a loosening of protocol is what it takes to get more young people into classical concert halls, so be it.

Latest Design for Parrish Art Museum, View from Montauk Highway
© Herzog & de Meuron 2007

As a cost-cutting measure, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY, intends to opt for less expensive building materials (i.e., concrete floors, rather than wood) than initially planned for its new facility designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Construction estimates had risen to "close to $100 million," according to director Trudy Kramer, and had to be pared down to $55-60 million. The museum has raised about half the funds.

The Long Island museum today submitted a formal application to the Southampton Town Planning Board for a 62,974-square-foot facility, to be constructed in two phases. Phase One is composed of 42,274 square feet, including gallery space, classroom space, a 260-seat, flat floor auditorium, a central lobby (containing café and museum shop), staff offices, curatorial and general support spaces, and a partial basement. Phase Two provides an additional 20,700 square feet, including administrative and support spaces and an expanded gift shop and café.

Original plans called for a 79,000-square-foot facility. Kramer told me that a third phase of construction is planned to achieve that size. The phased construction is dictated by economic exigencies.

Herzog & de Meuron's design is conceived as a network of exhibition spaces, reminiscent of a colony of artists' studios. It will be located on a 14-acre site in the village of Water Mill.

Kramer, 65, having directed the Parrish for 26 years, intends to step down at the end of 2007: "They must hire someone who can plan for the future," she said.

Maybe the Getty's appointment of Malcolm Bell III to its panel assessing Italy's claim to the museum's so-called "Aphrodite" or "Morgantina Venus" is not as gutsy as it appeared to me when I wrote yesterday's post.

According to a Nov. 9, 2006 article in the NY Times, "Malcolm Bell III, an archaeologist who has directed a dig at Morgantina for many years, says there is no scholarly evidence to suggest that the [Aphrodite] statue came from there."

And from Bell's own Nov. 28, 2005 Op-Ed piece in the Times:

The Getty's controversial ''Morgantina Aphrodite'' is an extremely rare example of the sort of cult statue that once stood within a Greek temple. While, as some have asserted, this remarkable work may come from Morgantina (a site in Sicily where I serve as co-director of excavations), no proof of its origin is known, and its subject is just as uncertain. The market destroyed the evidence.

If they have enough disposable income to buy a few things, how can they not? If you love art, you need to gaze at some of it on your own walls.

But kudos to Jen Graves of the Seattle's alternative newspaper, The Stranger, for having the courage to explore in depth an ethical quagmire that may discomfit some writing colleagues, but that needs to be discussed.

She got into the topic of critics' personal collections through a worst-case scenario: a local colleague who allegedly requested gifts of art from the artists he reviewed. Since I have not independently attempted to verify the truth of these allegations, and since the critic denies it, I'll let you click the above link to learn the name and the details.

Of course critics should never ask artists for art. Nor do I believe it's ever acceptable to accept a gift of art, even after a review has already been published. I further believe that there is an inherent conflict of interest in critics' collecting art in the fields about which they write.

In practice, though, I'm not quite that pure: I can't deny myself possession of at least some pieces for my personal delight. I own some contemporary art, all of it purchased.

I am a very small collector: I have just a few things that my husband and I have bought over many years. Since I'm primarily a journalist, not a critic, I'm only a sporadic gallery-hopper and my face is not well known among the dealers in my price range. I believe that the few I've done business with did not know who I was when I bought.

I would never accept a gift from a source; I would certainly never accept the gift of an artwork from an artist or dealer. And there's one more stricture I place upon myself: I will not write about an artist whose work I own. I consider that to be a conflict of interest as well.

Since I own relatively inexpensive works and only a few, that's never created much of a problem. When I win the megabucks lottery and buy this, I may have to change my reportorial beat. Maybe I'll write about tennis.

Jen goes into great detail about practices in the field, including the policies of specific publications. She has broken the taboo against criticizing colleagues. I'd call it a must-read.

They must have done this just to prove they're serious about doing the right thing:

The Getty Museum has bravely put one of the most outspoken critics of museums' antiquities-collecting practices, Malcolm Bell III, on its just-announced panel of scientists, archaeologists and art historians who will "research the origins of the Cult Statue of a Goddess, an object in the Museum's collection often referred to as the 'Aphrodite,' which has been claimed by the Italian Ministry of Culture."

The Italian ministry refers to it as the "Morgantina Venus." Bell is uniquely qualified to examine that nomenclature, as the longtime co-director of U.S. excavations at Morgantina in Sicily (as well as professor of art history at the University of Virginia).

Michael Brand, director of the Getty, has indicated that the museum would transfer full title to Italy, if research (which could take up to a year) demonstrated that return was appropriate. "The museum originally offered to conduct this research jointly with the Italian Ministry of Culture while sharing ownership of the statue, an approach that the Ministry rejected," the Getty stated today.

The new panel will meet May 9 in Los Angeles, to "define a research project that will include the scientific analysis of the small amounts of pollen and soil that were removed from the statue during its cleaning at the time of acquisition, as well as additional stone analysis to supplement the research also done at that time. The art historians and archaeologists will work to narrow the geographic area in which the scientists will focus their comparative analyses."

The four other panelists are: Clemente Marconi, professor of Greek art and archaeology, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Pamela Chester, archaeological palynologist (expert on pollen), New Zealand; John Twilley, art conservation scientist, New York; Rosario Alaimo, professor of geochemistry, University of Palermo (bringing some Italian expertise into the mix).

The Getty has also invited the Italian Culture Minister and the Sicilian Regional Minister of Culture and Environmental Heritage to send representatives.

Meanwhile, on the Getty's other antiquities front, Greek Culture Minister George Voulgarakis announced last week that the two objects that the Getty had recently agreed to return---a 4th-century B.C. gold funerary wreath and a 6th-century B.C. marble kore (statue of a woman)---will arrive in Athens on Mar. 23, to be displayed five days later at the National Archeological Museum.

Will any of this mitigate Marion True's two-nation legal ordeal?

The I. Lewis Libby verdict and Anthony Lewis' Op-Ed piece about it in yesterday's NY Times brought to mind my own uneasy relationships with confidential sources.

Clearly, no national security is at risk in the course of my non-earthshattering artworld investigations: The only WMDs I write about are White Male Dominance in museum and gallery shows. (No, wait a minute. That's Jerry Saltz!) Still, I wish I had a dollar for every time I interviewed someone who declared, at the end of our wide-ranging discussion, "Of course, everything I just said was off the record."

My usual response is to politely deny confidentiality. If I have clearly identified myself as press, such ground rules have to be established at the beginning, not the end, of an interchange that I might not have been party to, had I known that I would not be able to directly use it.

A more difficult case is when a good source insists on confidentiality as a pre-condition for discussion. That's a tough judgment call. I usually insist upon staying on the record, going off only occasionally and for good reason. My job description is dissemination of information, not its suppression. That said, I would gladly go off the record for a "Deep Throat": someone who would be in jeopardy if it were known that he was the source of important information about higher-ups. It is crucially important to verify the reliability of such secret sources: You need to make sure that the confidential tip actually checks out.

My judgment call is a bit easier if the diffident source is also the subject---a person in an important position who ought to be willing speak for himself, on the record. For a source to insist on confidentiality under such circumstances is, to my mind, unfair and inappropriate.

As Anthony Lewis said in his Times opinion piece, the press needs the ability to promise confidentialilty, but "there are compelling interests on both sides of the problem, as many in the press are loath to admit."

I am in favor of a press shield law, protecting the anonymity of confidential sources. But it can only make sense if journalists are not promiscuous in offering anonymity, but grant it only for extremely good cause.

I like what Nicholas von Hoffman wrote about the Libby case in the Feb. 26 NY Observer:

The promise of confidentiality results in more mischief than it does news. A journalist who knows the trade will grant confidentiality to a news source about as often as a policeman draws his gun in the line of duty: It should be a rare and exceptional event....

By promising everybody and his brother confidentiality, media people have made it more difficult to defend reporters threatened with legal sanctions for refusing to divulge the name of a source.

Lewis wants Congress to pass a law giving "qualified privilege" to reporters' pledges of confidentiality, but letting the courts sort out, on a case-by-case basis, the details of which kinds of confidentiality should or should not be shielded. Judges would have to balance the importance of disclosure with the importance of protecting journalists' sources.

It seems to me that leaving such matters up to the courts is pretty much where we are right now. A qualified and deliberately vague shield law might shift the balance slightly more in favor of protection of confidential sources, but not much.

Reporters don't want Congress to tell us what we can and cannot do. But privileges come with obligations: For a shield law to work, we may have to bite the bullet and accept some restrictive standards.

Dubai's Fair Venue

Abu Dhabi may have its Louvre, but rival city Dubai has its Gulf Art Fair, billed as the first major international contemporary fair in the Middle East and opening tomorrow (to Mar. 10).

According to a description:

The event will add to the cultural profile of a city that aspires to become a major center for the global art market, and bring world-class art to the doorsteps of some of the most enthusiastic [and wealthy] new art collectors in the world.

In keeping with the new trend of auction houses' establishing a presence at art fairs that were previously the realm of galleries, Sotheby's has sponsored and organized the fair's educational program. Education doesn't come cheap, however: It costs £1000 for three sessions, which includes a "VIP pass" to the fair.

Judging from the gallery list, it looks like the major U.S. galleries are sitting this one out.

Aspiring to be a major contemporary art center doesn't necessarily make it so.

The Barnes Foundation has officially begun its search for an architect to design its planned new facility in Philadelphia. It appointed Martha Thorne, executive director of the $100,000 Pritzker Prize, the world's most prestigious architectural award, to advise in the selection process for the 120,000-square-foot megaBarnes. Thorne was previously associate curator and acting head of the architecture department at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Should the administrator who helps to award the coveted Pritzker medal (above) also be involved in awarding a lucrative (and controversial) architectural commission?

A "request for qualifications" has gone out to "an extensive group of leading national and international architecture firms," the Barnes announced yesterday. More details on the contents of the letter sent to architects can be found in Skyline Online, the blog of Inga Saffron, architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to the Barnes' press release, the chosen architect will have "to replicate the scale, proportion and configuration of the existing galleries" within the greatly expanded and repurposed facility. This replication, the Barnes asserts, will enable the institution "to remain true to its purpose and character."

I trust that no intelligent architect actually believes this. Whatever one may say about the desirability of the Philly move, engulfing the intimate Barnes galleries in a large modern facility will utterly change its "purpose and character" from what Albert Barnes had envisioned and created.

According to the press release:

The Foundation plans to review the responses in April, select a short list later in the spring and announce its selection by August 1, 2007. Design will begin immediately, and the site will be prepared from the end of 2007. Construction will start on completion of design work.

Time magazine art and architecture critic Richard Lacayo visited the Barnes last Friday. Here is his outraged response to the proposed move, posted yesterday on his blog, Looking Around:

It simply will not be possible to "recreate" the Barnes in a much larger new building on Ben Franklin Parkway, any more than the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside London could be stuffed into the Great Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In an era of big box museums, the Barnes is the ultimate jewel box. The financial problems of the Foundation are real, but the snatch-and-grab solution of relocating the collection to Philadelphia is no solution at all. It isn't salvation. It isn't even euthanasia. It's death by disembowelment.

This puts him in the same camp with the doyenne of architecture criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable and blogger-come-lately CultureGrrl.

Great minds think alike?

The agreement to create the Louvre Abu Dhabi has been signed today, as expected. And today's Financial Times adds more details to what had been reported Saturday by Le Monde (translated by CultureGrrl).

The total value of the agreement for France will be about $1.3 billion (more than Le Monde had reported), according to French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres. (Le Monde today published the corrected figure.)

Adam Jones of the FT reports from Abu Dhabi that the agreement is for 30 years. It will cost Abu Dhabi a whopping $520 million just to license the Louvre's name (in addition to the other fees mentioned in my previous post). Le Monde today reports that some $195 million of the licensing fee will be paid "within a month."

Compare that to the licensing fee for the prototype for this kind of arrangement, the Guggenheim Bilbao, where the "brand" went for a mere $20 million. Nothing has been released about the financial arrangements for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

The FT further reports:

Abu Dhabi's tourism, development and investment company said on Tuesday that it was not specifying which works it wanted to borrow: "There is no request for specific art pieces." The maximum loan period will be two years.

The financials of this arrangement are staggering---an almost impossible temptation for financially strapped museums to resist: "The French culture ministry said that all proceeds would be reinvested in French museums," the FT reports.

Antoni Gaudí, "Palau Güell, Dressing Table," Güell Family Collection, Barcelona, Spain. Photo © Ramon Manent

Who doesn't feel more footloose and festive when sojourning in Barcelona? If you've ever been there, you'll recapture some of the exuberance of Catalan élan at the Metropolitan Museum's latest megashow, Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí, opening tomorrow.

The city and its environs also seemed to unleash a daring creative energy in the four big names who anchor the show: Gaudí, Picasso, Miró and Dalí.

On a less positive note, this exhibition, organized by the Met and the Cleveland Museum (where it first appeared), reminded me of what I liked least about the Met's recent (and mostly admirable) Americans in Paris show. In both exhibitions, the curators spotlighted several lesser-known, also-ran artists as exciting discoveries. But you came away thinking that their relative obscurity was, for the most part, deserved.

The Barcelona show gets off to a slow start with far too many of these ho-hums. Catalan painter Ramon Casas' greatest contribution to Barcelona's cultural life may have been helping to establish the famed artists' hangout, the Quatre Gats, as well as the eponymous art magazine. But the show gives us 17 of his works. Isidre Nonell? Don't even get me started.

Gaudí, as usual, inspires amazement and pleasure. His delightfully askew "Palau Güell, Dressing Table" (above) gets my vote for most-engaging-in-show. And I was engrossed by a Gaudí-related model, created in 2006: "Polyfunicular Model of the Main Nave of the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia." A delicate construction of thread and fabric bags weighted with buckshot, it recreates Gaudí's method of using the arcs in the thread, created by the arrangement of the weights, to outline "the skeleton of the building of inclined supports, parabolic towers, and undulating hyperbolic paraboloid surfaces---a chapel whose form would contain within its equilibrated structure all the loads and thrusts incumbent upon it."

Okay, I admit that this catalogue description fails to capture the ingenuity of the object. You'll just have to be there, and see how it is reflected in a mirror beneath it: Only the inverted image reveals the skeleton of the building, rightside up.

The show ends, literally, with a bang: The last gallery is devoted to the passionate art that the Spanish Civil War wrenched from Picasso (weeping women, "Guernica" studies), Dalí ("Soft Construction with Boiled Beans [Premonition of Civil War]"), González (a bronze "Head") and Miró ("Black and Red Series").

Picasso, as always, dominates. Throughout the show, he is represented by some of his choicest works. Not the least of these: "Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebre," a seminal 1909 Cubist painting that is the latest in the continuing New York museums' retrospective of "Great Paintings that the Museum of Modern Art Should Never Have Deaccessioned."

Don't get me started on that either. But if you must, you can read my further thoughts on that Picasso's lamentable disposal in this Wall Street Journal article.

The London Guardian's art and architecture blog today has an entry written by architect Frank Gehry himself, discussing his plans for the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Who knew that candid blogging was among his many talents?

Some tasty quotes:

We've done the designs and now we're waiting for the final go ahead, any time soon. This really is like nothing we've done before....

Abu Dhabi does throw up some very particular issues for the Guggenheim and the display of art. I don't think we'll be allowed to display nudes, and there are all sorts of concerns about the way women are allowed to be shown.

In Looking Around today, Time blogger Richard Lacayo muses about these strictures:

Will the Guggenheim be submitting shows for approval to a governing body in the emirate? Will they remove offending works pre-emptively?

CultureGrrl asks: Is it kosher to establish a museum named for a Jewish founder in a country that doesn't recognize Israel?

For more on the proposed Abu Dhabi museums, go here, here and here.

A must-read article by architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff on the "Ideas & Trends" page of yesterday's NY Times "Week in Review" section: He critically examines how post-9/11 architecture has been conscripted to "create not only major civic landmarks but lines of civic defense, with aesthetically pleasing features like elegantly sculpted barriers around public plazas or decorative cladding for bulky protective concrete walls."

Taking another swing at New York's planned Freedom Tower at Ground Zero, he says that it "rests on a 20-story, windowless fortified concrete base decorated in prismatic glass panels in a grotesque attempt to disguise its underlying paranoia. And the brooding, obelisk-like form above is more of an expression of American hubris than of freedom."

He concludes:

To some, compromise may be preferable to surrounding our cities with barbed wire and sandbags. The notion that we can design our way out of these problems should give us pause, however. Our streets may be prettier, but the prettiness is camouflage for the budding reality of a society ruled by fear.

I wish he would have taken his argument one step further---spelling out how he thinks architects and civic planners should (or should not) respond to the heightened fear of terrorism. It appears that he believes we should take our chances, opting to enhance our built environment with unfettered architecture, rather than being "ruled by fear."

A provocative notion, meriting serious thought.

I've heard of self-effacing, but this is ridiculous: I just found out from an AP story late last night that the Metropolitan Museum's director, Philippe de Montebello, yesterday received France's most prestigious award, the Legion of Honor medal. As far as I know, the Met issued no recent press announcement about the New York ceremony. (Or did I somehow miss it?)

France's culture and media minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, was on hand to medal Philippe at the French Consulate in New York. (AP got the story from "a transcript provided by the consulate.") Now the peripatetic minister is off to Abu Dhabi!

Speaking of peripatetic, I'm journeying to a press preview at the Met this morning. If I see the honoree, I must congratulate him!

The Washington Post published an editorial on Thursday, taking Lawrence Small to task for his unauthorized expenses as top official of the Smithsonian Institution and criticizing him for refusing to discuss the controversy. (Similarly, the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry, has declined to speak on the record about his unorthodox compensation by a private foundation).

The Post opined:

As distressing as Mr. Small's actions were, the real problem lies with a board that opted to be more lap dog than watchdog.

The Post's editorial raises what, for me, is a more interesting question: Why hasn't the NY Times followed up on the Glenn Lowry compensation controversy (which broke Feb. 16 on its own front page), the way the Post has pursued Small's small-potato transgressions (which involved only thousands, not millions, of dollars)?

There's been no Times editorial, nor any follow-up reporting or commentary by the news or arts staffs. On Saturday, however, the Times did publish a letter to the editor defending Lowry and the manner of his compensation, signed by MoMA's chairman and president, Robert Menschel and Marie-Josée Kravis.

Their letter states:

All payments and compensation were reported on tax forms filed by the [New York Fine Arts Support] Trust, the museum and Mr. Lowry, who paid personal income tax on compensation he received.

However, the museum's own tax returns, available for inspection online, make no mention of the Trust, even though they do list other exempt organizations to which the museum is related "through common...trustee officers." The Additional Compensation Information page provided by MoMA on Jan. 5, 2007 in response to requests by the NY State Attorney General's Office specifically states that the yearly dollar amounts of compensation to Lowry from the New York Fine Arts Support Trust are "information in addition to that set forth in its IRS Form 990s [emphasis added]." And this supplementary page only reports such compensation back to 1999, although payments began in 1995. My attempts to get the full list of payments from the museum have thus far been unsuccessful.

Perhaps the trustees' letter to the Times should have stated that payments and compensation from the Trust were reported on tax forms filed by the Trust and Lowry but NOT by the museum.

UPDATE: Modern Art Notes piles on.

Looks like a done deal. Le Monde reports today:

Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres will go to Abu Dhabi Mar. 6...to sign...an intergovernmental accord permitting the creation of a "universal" museum that will bear the name Louvre-Abu Dhabi.

Here are some of the details about the funds to be provided by Abu Dhabi, as reported by Emmanuel de Roux and Jacques Follorou:

---Total amount that France will receive from Abu Dhabi: about $924 million
---Construction cost of the Jean Nouvel-designed museum: $109.56 million
---Fee for loans of objects from French national and regional museums (including the Louvre): $264 million
---Fees for 40 temporary exhibitions over 10 years: $198 million
---Support for a new French agency to oversee the project: $92.4 million
---Amount to be spent, over 10 years, to acquire art for the new museum's collection: $528 million

What has not yet been revealed is the amount that Abu Dhabi will pay for the right to use the Louvre's name for a period of 10 to 20 years. Other details were revealed in January, including the intention to phase out, over time, the French museums' close involvement and, eventually, to remove "Louvre" from its name.

The museum is scheduled to open at the end of 2012.

The use of collections as cash cows has been the subject of much controversy in the French artworld. An online petition against such use now bears more than 4,600 signatures.

"We have lost a battle, but the fight continues," wrote the petition's organizer, Didier Rykner, in an editorial today on the French website, La Tribune de l'Art.

A press conference will be held in Abu Dhabi after Tuesday's signing, to announce the details of the agreement.

It had to happen. Now it has:

On Monday, mega-collector Charles Saatchi launched a website, Showdown, which will pick new talent, "American-Idol"-style, for a three-month show at his prestigious new London gallery. The winner, voted upon by website visitors, also gets £1,000---not exactly the artworld equivalent of a megabucks recording contract, But, hey, it's a start.

This new initiative is an outgrowth of the popular Your Gallery feature on Saatchi's website, which gives exposure to online submissions from artists around the world.

Ben Hoyle reports in today's London Times:

The [Showdown] website...has already received more than 35 million hits. Over the next six months the thousands of art works will be whittled down to 12 in a series of fortnightly votes. Visitors to the site will rate each work on a scale of one to 10 and the dozen most popular art works will then compete against each another for the top prize. The runner-up will receive £750.

I don't know what this will do for the winning artist's career, but advertising genius Saatchi has once again found an outside-the-white-box way to draw international attention to himself and his collection. His new gallery opens in London's Chelsea later this year.

Maybe CultureGrrl should start one of these competitions: I'd like to get 35 million hits too!

UPDATE: I think the Saatchi sites are being overwhelmed by those hits. I got through once; now they won't reload. Eventually, these links should work!

Here's today's Philadelphia Inquirer story about the efforts by the Montgomery County Commissioners to prevent the planned move of the Barnes Foundation to Philadelphia.

CultureGrrl reported on this yesterday, but what I didn't know was that the county is also trying to block state funding for the project.

Jeff Shields reports:

The commissioners asked their lobbyists to try to stall the release of more than $100 million authorized by the state in 2002 for the move to Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Of that larger "authorized" amount, the state announced in October that it would actually allocate $25 million towards the move.

UPDATE: The Friends of the Barnes now have their own blog to chronicle their grassroot efforts to prevent the move [via The Art Law Blog, Mar. 1 post]

Attention CultureGrrl readers: It's Friday morning, the beginning of a culture-filled weekend (culture-Philled, in my case), and we do need to get ourselves up to speed on the latest cultural news!

So here are some of the top stories chosen by the NY Times for the Arts, Briefly feature in today's "Arts" section:

"Paul McCartney Mum after Divorce Hearing," "Judge Warns Rapper," "Bobby Brown Out of Jail."

Is this the arts briefs or the rap sheets?

But here's what news-hungry aesthetes really want to know: Why did the Associated Press decide to end its weeklong "experimental blackout on news about Paris Hilton"? Could it be because she received a ticket for driving with a suspended license---a story just too monumentally significant to be ignored?

Late last night, you could have found the answer in a 1,000-word piece, Even Ignoring Paris Hilton Makes News, that was among the AP stories linked on the Times' online arts page. Now, alas, it's been replaced by Angelina Jolie to Adopt Vietnamese Child.

We can only hope they'll update tomorrow on how Britney's rehab is going.

I've just come across links to "Related Documents," in a sidebar to Sunday's Washington Post story about the Inspector General's audit of the Smithsonian Institution's compensation of its top official, Lawrence Small. (I had provided you with the link to the printer-friendly version in my post on Tuesday, which didn't include the sidebar.)

Now you can peruse such engrossing primary sources as:

---The Inspector General's mildly admonitory "confidential" letter to the Smithsonian's board

---Sen. Charles Grassley's harsh letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., chairman of the Smithsonian's board.

The Post article also links to three other documents, including Small's employment agreement.

Also now linked, adjacent to the Post's story, are three blogs reacting to it. First on this list: CultureGrrl's contrarian analysis.

The Montgomery County Commissioners today passed a resolution seeking "proposals from law firms to explore legal strategies and options" to keep the Barnes from moving to Philadelphia, as planned.

In January the commissioners had voted to "support the retention of the Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion." The January resolution had stated "that plans to move the Barnes Foundation from Merion to the Parkway in Philadelphia should be abandoned" and "that the Barnes Foundation Board of Trustees should explore all means to maximize revenues from operations in Merion and work with the neighbors in Lower Merion to increase visitation and financial opportunities." The commissioners further recommended that the Barnes trustees "explore avenues to integrate visitation into the Philadelphia tourist experience without relocating the Barnes."

This could, admittedly, be a case of trying to close the Barnes door after the courts have already found that the art can escape the confines of the suburbs for the big city. But perhaps a resourceful lawyer can yet prevail by arguing that enough was not done to save the Barnes in situ, and by demonstrating how the Barnes can yet survive and thrive in Merion.

Perhaps there's still time to respect Albert Barnes' written instructions that his collection remain as he left it, and to honor the desire of culture lovers to preserve this unique and treasured art mecca. But with the Philadelphia powers-that-be aligned in favor of the move, I doubt it.

As CultureGrrl readers know, Sotheby's released its annual financial report this morning. It shows 2006 revenues of $664.8 million, up 29%, and operating income of $197.2 million, up 60%. These were Sotheby's highest annual totals for revenues and operating income in its 263-year history.

Nevertheless, the number of its staff members will be cut this year by about 5%, the auction house revealed today. This planned reduction is driven by a decision to cut back on sales in lower-end categories and "focus on our major clients," according to Bill Ruprecht, president and CEO.

Here is Sotheby's press release, with the financials and comments by Ruprecht.

Here are Linda Sandler and Tom Randall, reporting in today's Bloomberg.

And here's the elephant in the auction room: the latest NY Times dispatch, posted just minutes ago, from the floor of the NY Stock Exchange.

The fundraising campaign to save Turner's "The Blue Rigi" for the Tate Gallery, London, has reached its goal three weeks ahead of its deadline. Some £4.95 million had to be found by Mar. 20 to prevent its export to the private collector who was its winning bidder at auction last June.

Some £3.05 milllion came from a variety of sources: the museum (£2 million); The Art Fund, an independent British charity (£500,000); and a public fundraising campaign (£552,000) that included a "Buy a Brushstroke" gimmick (accounting for £73,281 of the £552,000 total public contribution). The National Heritage Memorial Fund, the government's fund of last resort, had agreed to kick in up to £1.95 million, but will get away with a smaller contribution, thanks to the campaign's success.

The public fundraising appeal continues to Mar. 5, to reduce the size of NHMF's contribution.

And they didn't even have to sell a painting or go into debt.

Looks like the Harvard University Art Museums may have to put up with their substandard digs for even longer than its most recent plans anticipated.

Hailey Heinz reports in today's Boston Globe [via]:

Harvard and Boston Redevelopment Authority officials said last night that they would hold off on plans to build an art gallery in Allston, after local residents and politicians spoke against the proposal and expressed concern that they have been left out of the decision-making process.

Harvard has been buying Allston land in bits and pieces over the past decade. Throughout the process Harvard officials have been meeting with residents to devise ways to expand their campus with minimal impact on local life. Harvard would like to break ground on the science center as early as this summer.

The university had hoped to begin construction on the new art museum facility this fall.

Is there any lesson to be learned from Harvard's rocky community relations in Allston that might be applied to Columbia University's expansion plans in Manhattanville?

If you're planning to a major invasion of a community, proceed cautiously and respectfully, and plan collaboratively.