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,