Kitchen-Sink Updates: Smithsonian Hearings, Denver's Roof, Antiquities, Saltz, Pulitzers

So many loose ends, so little time:

---The broken link for viewing last Wednesday's Smithsonian hearings by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is finally working, writes Liz Horrell, on behalf of the Senate Webmaster.

---Denver Art Museum spokeperson Andrea Kalivas Fulton updates me on who will foot the bill for replacing and/or repairing the leaky roof on the Denver Art Museum's new Libeskind addtion: "It's our understanding that insurance will cover the roof."

---On the same day as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's press preview for its new Greek and Roman galleries (more on this later), the Indianapolis Museum of Art has issued a press release announcing its "moratorium on the acquisition of archeological objects which lack documentation of removal from their probable countries of modern discovery prior to 1970." This resembles the Getty Museum's policy and goes farther than the policy of the Association of Art Museum Directors---the guidelines which are followed by the Met. AAMD's policy recommends that a museum should not acquire an antiquity of uncertain provenance unless the object can be shown to have been "outside its probable country or countries of origin" for at least 10 years.

---In his first New York magazine review, former Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz takes a nostalgic trip to "a time and place when the market had nothing to do with history and art was guided only by artists acting on their own."

---And the prize that Jerry always wanted, was twice a finalist for, but never got has just been announced: The 2007 Pulitzer Prize for criticism goes to [drumroll]...Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly, "for his zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater." Erudite eater??? No wonder I'm gaining weight! (Speaking of which: Philippe, why did you tell me today that I should skip lunch so that I could squeeze between a column and a display case for the in-the-round view that I craved of a Greek volute-krater? Is my figure less than Greek?)

But I digress....Message to snubbed Pulitzer finalist Christopher Knight: If you can't take the heat, get into the kitchen.

Memo to all art critics: Get over it. The Pulitzer jury just isn't that into you.

(Let it not be said that I don't follow up on my stories!)