June 2007 Archives

Okay, I lied.

The press release on the new Center for Curatorial Leadership, designed to prepare curators to assume museum directorships, seemed significant enough to force me to break my self-imposed, summer-fun gag order. CCL is funded by former MoMA president Agnes Gund and directed by former Brooklyn Museum European paintings chair Elizabeth Easton.

The expenses-paid (by Gund) program will cover a six-month period, with three weeks of intensive training and study, and a one-week residency. Ten fellows, who must be working curators and "proven scholars and leaders," will be chosen for the first go-round, by a small committee of current and former museum directors. Better hurry and fill out your application, though: Deadline is July 31.

Particularly notable is the quote in CCL's announcement from the Metropolitan Museum's director, Philippe de Montebello, about the urgent need "to win the battle of the 'curator/director' over the 'administrator/director,' a profile with which increasingly boards of trustees are instinctively more comfortable."

Is Philippe worried about who will be chosen as his own successor? I know that many Met curators, who feel that he has been strongly supportive of their work, want him to remain there forever. (De Montebello is on CCL's advisory committee.)

For the full press release, click the link below:

CultureGrrl has generously given Lee the day off. There will be a lot of lazy days this summer. But I did give you a lot to chew on yesterday. And I still owe you more tasty tidbits from "Lee's Rhine Journey" (cue the Wagner).

Today's New York press conference at the Italian Cultural Institute, at which Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli (fourth from left, above), announced recoveries of objects illegally removed from Italy, was more interesting for what I learned afterwards in one-on-one, on-the-record discussions with Italian and U.S. investigators than for what was officially announced to the largely Italian press corps in attendance.

Robert Stiriti (second from left, above), attaché at the American Embassy in Rome for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told me that criminal charges "are pending" in Italy (but have not yet been filed) against an American private collector who owned several objects (including the marble sarcophagus of a child) recovered by ICE on Oct. 20 from his New York residence. He would not give further information about the collector, other than to say, "He is not well known." Stiriti said that seven objects came from that collector; images of only six were provided to the press, along with images of five objects recovered from other sources.

Antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg, who figured prominently in my most recent post (about the Metropolitan Museum's Etruscan chariot), was also a key player in today's restitution story: Giovanni Nistri (third from left, above), commander of the carabinieri's special unit for cultural patrimony, told me that two of the recovered objects---a 4 1/8-inch-high bronze Etruscan figure of a nude athlete, and a 6 3/8-inch-high bronze Etruscan figure of Nike, had been discovered by Italian investigators on the website of Eisenberg's Royal-Athena Galleries, which voluntarily restituted them when shown evidence of their theft from an Italian museum and an archeological site, respectively. Nistri explicitly stated that Eisenberg had had no prior knowledge of the works' problematic histories and had cooperated in their restitution.

Eisenberg told me that he had sold the bronzes in the 1980s to collector John Kluge, who put them up for auction at Christie's on June 8, 2004. Eisenberg repurchased them there (for $6,573 and $9,560, respectively). He said that he had also voluntarity returned other pieces, when he learned that they had been illegally taken from Italy.

Rutelli also announced that an agreement had been signed with Princeton in connection with Italy's claim for objects from the university's art museum. He did not announce further details, but did tell me afterwards that the accord involved loans of significant objects to the museum from Italy. Cass Cliatt, Princeton University's media relations manager, would only say: "We are in final negotiations."

Finally, Rutelli enigmatically mentioned that he hopes for additional "good news from our American trip," in connection with negotiations in New York "with other cultural public and private institutions....Cooperation is the golden word"...not to mention the implied threat of legal prosecution.

Bronze Etruscan chariot, inlaid with ivory, 2nd quarter of the 6th century B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art

While we breathlessly await today's repatriation press conference by Signor Rutelli, let's talk about another Italian object-of-desire, the Metropolitan Museum's Etruscan chariot. (It was claimed not by Italy, but by the village of Monteleone di Spoleto.)

As you may recall, the Met, in its publicity materials for its new Greek and Roman galleries, describes the chariot as "one of very few complete chariots to survive from antiquity." Despite its importance, it had been off view since the early 1990s, until its much heralded reinstallation last April.

Now comes an article in the July/August issue (not yet online) of Minerva: The International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology, which claims that the celebrated 6th century B.C. conveyance is a forgery or, more precisely, "a pastiche of ancient and modern elements."

The author of the 12-page article (sent by him to CultureGrrl) is the London-based magazine's editor-in-chief, Jerome Eisenberg. Although he did not identify himself to me as such, he is also director of the Royal-Athena Galleries in New York and London. The gallery's website lists his substantial credentials as a dealer and antiquities expert.

He believes that the chariot's "three large panels and one kouros figure are...forgeries," which were "fabricated between about 1890 and 1902, to complete the remains of a genuine chariot." To support this conclusion, he cites exhaustive, detailed and highly technical evidence, including a long list of compositional mistakes made by the forger, such as an "excessively elaborate helmet...[that] has no counterpart in ancient art." His technical examination, performed over three days in 1971 with the permission of then curator Dietrich von Bothmer, revealed metal, patina and chiseling of modern origin, he wrote.

Eisenberg first reported his misgivings to the Met in 1968 and read a paper on the subject at the December 1989 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. AIA abstracted his report in its American Journal of Archaeology in 1990. "Coincidentally, the chariot was taken off diplay that same year," says Eisenberg's new article, which was occasioned by the reinstallation.

Harold Holzer, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, to whom I sent a copy of Eisenberg's latest article, had this to say:

There is nothing new or convincing here. It is a rehash of an old argument, discredited then, ludicrous now. Such diagnoses from a distance deserve far less credibility than the up-close, highly technical observations of professionals from both New York and Italy who worked on its restoration for years. It looks wonderful for 2,600 years old, but its age and authenticity are not in question.

Philippe de Montebello, at a cooler moment

The Associated Press reports that the Metropolitan Museum was evacuated at 4 p.m. today because of a brief power outage in Manhattan and the Bronx: "Visitors were forced to sit on the outside steps in the sweltering heat," according to AP.

Gee, weren't they allowed to go somewhere else and maybe get a cold drink? Is Philippe really THAT powerful?

Logo for Andrew Sullivan's blog, "The Daily Dish"

Veteran cultural and political commentor Andrew Sullivan, in his blog for The Atlantic magazine, The Daily Dish, today quotes from my Art Basel post on "Snap-Judgment Art" (who knew he read me?) and mints his own coinage, "Speed-Purchasing Art" (a takeoff on "speed dating," I suppose). Sullivan is a fearsome speed-blogger, dashing off 10 posts before lunch!

Now I feel I must be fair to the fair: Unmentioned in my prior post on Art Basel was the section of that art mart which I DID enjoy, even though I arrived at the first-floor level of the cavernous convention center at the very end of my eye-numbing visit.

There I browsed, not groused, through the sprawling displays of "Art Unlimited," self-described as "a platform for works that exceed the scope of conventional art fair exhibition booths and frequently even of galleries, museums, and other traditional art exhibition venues." It was a haven for large-scale sculpture, video projections, installations, wall paintings, photographic series and performance art. Although these outsized works were for sale, the atmosphere was mercifully uncommercial---more like MASS MoCa than the mass mayhem on the art-futures trading floor upstairs.

I'll single out two works that were sights for my sore eyes:

Pierre Huyghe's L'Expédition Scintillante, Act II: Untitled (light box) was familiar from his 2002 Hugo Boss Prize exhibition at New York's Guggenheim Museum, but its ever-changing purple haze was more haunting than any of the light shows in the Whitney's Summer of Love, and the musical accompaniment, Satie's "Gymnopédie," was the perfect balm to soothe the savage critic.

The unlikely popular favorite of the show was Jeffrey Vallance's wacky-yet-profound "Popular Ties," 1979, wherein he sent a letter, along with one of his neckties, to approximately 200 presidents, monarchs and prime ministers (not to mention the Pope), from whom he requested one of their own ties. "The exchange of ties," he deadpanned in his letter, "will help to strengthen the links between our cultures."

On display were the many revealingly businesslike, whimsical, or loony letters he got back, along with the requested well-worn sartorial ambassadors of culture. Perhaps the most literal-minded response came from Austrian President Rudolf Kirchlager:

In spite of the fact that I am not convinced that the exchange of neckties will really strengthen the links between the American and the Austrian nations or our cultures, I will send you enclosed a necktie I used rather often, to be included in your collection.

Those of us who were Frazzled in Basel spent a long time lingering at this clever display, our faces transformed by lopsided grins.

Who needs to go to Washington? Today you can attend yesterday's uncomfortable Senate hearing on Smithsonian governance reform from the comfort of your own desk chair. Just click here.

I think Sen. Diane Feinstein was a bit hotheaded in insisting that the Board of Regents find a new Smithsonian chief executive yesterday. These things do, appropriately, take time. And this is a more important post than most.

As the wife of someone who trades on the floor of a stock exchange, I got a good laugh from the photo chosen by the NY Times to illustrate its headline, "In a Tough Hearing, Smithsonian Is Urged to Find a New Chief Fast."

It shows Cristián Samper, the Smithsonian's acting secretary, looking numb and holding his forehead in weary disbelief---the classic newspaper shot of a stock trader on a day when the market tanks big time.

Markets do rebound, eventually. So will the plummeting reputation of the Smithsonian.

...and the kitchen sink.

It's a bit late for me to provide you with detailed follow-ups on all of the above stories, which have perversely developed in my absence.

But I can make partial amends by giving you select links to the recent news coverage of the above-mentioned topics, to make sure you're up to speed. (Actually, you're probably more alert than this jet-lagged laggard.) For the most part, you'll have to do without my usual analysis (which, I suppose, may be a GOOD thing!).

I should acknowledge that I'm especially indebted to the Art Law Blog for links to articles and documents related to the legal issues connected to many of these stories. You will also find some informed commentary in lawyer Donn Zaretsky's postings (as well as repeated digs at me for being a "radical conservative" on deaccessioning).

So here's my CultureGrrl countdown of artworld controversies that we've all been breathlessly watching:

---To keep the Barnes Foundation from moving from Merion to Philadelphia, Montgomery County offers to raise $50 million through the sale of bonds to buy the Barnes' land and buildings and lease them back to the foundation. The Barnes says no: We're moving to Philly. A good summary of the recent developments, from Michael Rubinkam of the Associated Press, is here.

---Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle rules that Fisk University can not sell any of the works in its Alfred Stieglitz Collection, given to it by Georgia O'Keeffe, including the O'Keeffe and Hartley that it had hoped to deaccession. The case is still set for trial in July, in Davidson County Chancery Court.

---The Lynchburg News & Advance publishes an editorial opposing contemplated sales of art from the Maier Museum of Randolph-Macon Woman's College. The college gets a new president, John Klein, while a group of students and donors opposing the school's decision to admit men files a petition in Virginia Supreme Court.

---Two major recent reports [via] are issued about the Smithsonian Institution's governance gaffes---one from the Smithsonian's governance committee (here); the other from an independent review committee formed by the Smithsonian in March to scrutinize former Secretary Lawrence Small's compensation, expenses and "related governance issues" (here). A search committee for Small's replacement has been named. You already know who I nominate for the job.

---The IRS publishes new proposed revisions to the Form 990 tax return filed by many nonprofits. Possibly inspired (or given more urgency) by Sen. Charles Grassley's museum-cleansing crusade, the changes are designed to enhance the transparency of nonprofit operations. Details are here and here.

---Lawrence Pollard, arts correspondent for the BBC World Service, London, and author of this piece about the exhibition of Bactrian Hoard at the Musée Guimet, Paris, e-mails me to suggest that the concerns recently raised in the NY Times about inadequate financial compensation for the Afghan lenders have merit: "I came to the conclusion that at best the Afghans were being treated ungenerously, and at worst an accusation that they were being ripped off would not have been far from the truth."

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli

Just when Karol Wight gets the "acting" removed from her title as antiquities curator at the Getty (as reported in today's NY Times), The Great Repatriator girds his loins to stride again through our land.

This just in from ANSA, the Italian news agency:

[Italian Culture Minister Francesco] Rutelli is off to the United States this week and said he expects "to bring something back."

The report also reveals that "Italy on Monday handed back to Pakistan a precious haul of stolen antiquities....Pressed by reporters, Rutelli confirmed that this was "a message" for the Getty."

Another ANSA article (this one, in Italian) reports that Rutelli, on Thursday, will attend an archeological repatriation ceremony at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York. Tiziana Benini, press officer for the Italian Ministry of Culture, would tell CultureGrrl no more, other than to say (in an e-mail), "We have to wait only two days to know!!!"

Can you stand the suspense?

Dealer Ernst Beyeler (seated) in his booth at Art Basel

I've always wanted to go to Art Basel. Now I have.

But I left the cavernous Swiss Exhibition Center with the same reaction I had at the Armory Show in New York last February:

I JUST CAN'T LOOK AT ART THAT WAY!

I got there a week ago Saturday, several days after the VIPs had come and gone, so most of the art I saw probably constituted second or third hangs, with the gallery booths, in many cases, staffed by second- and third-stringers. So my poor impression may be partly a function of my poor timing.

But what most alarms me is that the sea change wrought by the growing importance of art fairs and auctions means that most purchase decisions are now being made under these frenetic, crowded conditions, far removed from the undistracted, unhurried contemplation that subtle, complex and profound pieces require to produce their effect. Under such harsh conditions, works that lend themselves to being easily comprehended in a brief glance are the species most likely to survive and thrive.

We are entering the era of Snap-Judgment Art.

Or as Todd Levin, hedge-fund manager Adam Sender's art curator, recently told Bloomberg's Linda Sandler:

There's been a proliferation of 'art fair art' produced specifically for art fairs. It has a certain kind of wall power and can be digested and consumed very quickly.

Veteran art-market writer Souren Melikian recognized the same sea change in his report for the International Herald Tribune on the recent Impressionist/Modern art auctions in London:

The sale revealed a striking shift away from complexity and nuances to simple overall effects that allow instant apprehension. When enhanced by easy name recognition, the impact on paintings or sculpture was phenomenal.

Although my sightings of artworld luminaries at Art Basel were few, I did get to chat briefly with legendary Swiss dealer Ernst Beyeler (above), presiding over his eponymous booth, which displayed not only his gallery's wares, but also works belonging to his Fondation Beyeler (whose enchanting Renzo Piano-designed exhibition space, in nearby Riehen, I also visited).

Beyeler's latest acquisition: Basel-born Sam Keller, outgoing director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami, who next year will take the helm at Fondation Beyeler. The dealer said he did not foresee major changes, but Keller had previously told Sandler: "He wouldn't have taken a young guy like me if he'd wanted the museum to be a mausoleum."

But even as presently constituted, the Fondation Beyeler is no mausoleum: Now drawing large crowds: a sprawling Munch retrospective that seems larger, but not as well chosen, as the Museum of Modern Art's recent show devoted to the same artist.

Getting back to the fair: How did Art Basel do? Before it opened, its organizers had predicted 56,000 visitors and $500 million in sales, according to Sandler. The post-fair press release touted up 60,000 visitors. Here's all it had to say about the fair's financial results:

Its outstanding sales results give impetus to the art market. Art Basel has impressively confirmed its undisputed position as the world's premier art show and done justice to its reputation as an art event with international impact.

Whatever the numbers, the effect was numbing.

Did you all miss me, artlings?

Not only was I sojourning in Europe, but my Internet died the day before I left (so I had to post my leave-taking remotely) and it was still down for two days after I got back. My burned-out modem is being replaced as I type this. It must have been overwhelmed by all those hot stories!

I'm now back to posting, but more sporadically than during the September-to-June art season, so I can enjoy some summer fun and, more importantly, research and write a scintillating book proposal.

I'll give you a hint: It's a biography of a defunct American museum director. (The director's defunct, not the museum.) Doesn't that just make you want to log onto Amazon right now, to reserve your copy? Actually, my subject is a person whose pioneering exploits and wide-ranging achievements transcend the mild-mannered job title. Marion Seldes gets the title role.

Oops, I think I've just given it away. If you know who she is and have some background info that you think might be useful to me (that means you, Tom), please do drop me an e-mail!

But you're probably not all that interested in my summer plans or my would-be book. You're all ears for my Art Basel babble. I'll probably postpone my summer sloth for just a bit, since we do have so much to catch up on, including many Rhine Journey tidbits, and updates on previous CultureGrrl stories that haven't stopped unfolding while I've been off the case.

COMING NEXT: Art Babel: The Instant Messages of Snap-Judgment Art.

Elisabetta Povoledo, in her NY Times article last week about the never-ending trial in Italy of former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True, seriously muddied the waters with her lead-off quote about the actions of private collectors in acquiring allegedly "looted objects" and later donating them to museums:

It was a "sophisticated method of laundering," a prosecution witness testified on Friday in a trial courtroom here.

This led me to believe that the article was going to somehow link Getty-purchased antiquities to money laundering, which would have added a whole new front to the already serious Italian campaign against American museums and collectors.

Then, seven paragraphs down, Povoledo decided to complete the partial lead-off quote (uttered by trial witness Daniela Rizzo, an Italian archaeologist), giving it an entirely different twist from the one originally suggested:

Objects from their [private owners'] collections went on display in major exhibitions, "becoming known to the public and the scientific world, after which they ended up in museums," Ms. Rizzo said. "It was a different, more sophisticated method of laundering artifacts" [emphasis added].

The provenance of artifacts was indeed cleaned up by museums, although not very convincingly: When I asked the Getty's then director John Walsh, on the occasion of the 1997 opening of the J. Paul Getty Trust's new campus in Los Angeles, how he reconciled the 1996 acquisition of the largely unprovenanced Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman collection with the museum's unambiguous strictures, adopted in 1995, against acquiring unprovenanced antiquities, he said (as I reported in the May 1998 issue of Art in America magazine) that he felt comfortable with the acquisition because the Fleischman trove had been "shown, published and known in the profession for quite a long time." The chief prior exposure was, in fact, the Getty's own 1994 exhibition and catalogue (above).

It's hard to tell whether Povoledo is also muddying the waters with her excerpt from her discussion with Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri. She reports that Ferri told her he would "draw my own conclusions," after the end of True's trial, as to whether to bring charges against private collectors who had purchased allegedly looted antiquities. For the Times reporter to use only that vague quote to support the notion that "American collectors might one day find themselves at the defense table" seems a bit of a stretch.

Just two weeks ago, Povoledo had in fact reported quite differently on the issue of possible prosecution of private collectors:

Italian officials say that Ms. [Shelby] White is under no legal obligation to return anything but that they hope to appeal to her sense of fairness.

The Italians have asked for the return of nine objects owned by White, a major donor of objects and cash to the Metropolitan Museum. Those talks, Povoledo reported on May 26, broke down "over a demand that she never be pursued by Italy again."

Closure is something that seems to elude almost everyone in their antiquities negotiations with Italy.

And now, CultureGrrl fans, you will have to do without me for a while: I'm going on a busman's holiday, which includes Basel, among other art venues, but (probably) not blogging.

See you later!

Here's what J.Tucker Martin, the director of communications for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, says about the AG's involvement in the possible art disposals from the Maier Museum:

Our office has been in contact with counsel for both sides of this issue, the college and the alumnae. We will continue to stay in contact with them, and in fact Attorney General McDonnell has tasked the Chief Deputy Attorney General with this. However, traditionally, the role of this office in such situations is limited. In Virginia the Office of the Attorney General has two basic functions when it comes to charitable trusts. We ensure that they are handled legally, and that any proceeds from properly conducted transactions remain in the Commonwealth. This is quite different from the role that attorneys general in a small number of other states (New York, for example) play in charitable trusts, which is far more active.

Not much help there, it appears.

---Carol Vogel gives a comprehensive and cogent round-up of the Venice Biennale, in today's NY Times. Randy's been Dandy, but Vogel's the Mogul.

---Malcolm Warner is named deputy director of the Kimbell Museum, and will become acting director once Timothy Potts leaves for the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, Sept. 1. Clearly the Kimbell feels that the window for "transition" allowed by Potts was too small to accommodate a new-director search. Maybe Warner will eventually get to remove "acting" from his title. He has been the museum's senior curator since 2002.

---Sara MacDonald, press officer of White Cube in London, indicates that her gallery is getting closer to closing on a sale of Diamond Damien's skull: "The work is on reserve but has not been sold as yet."

---As reported by Stephan Salisbury in the Philadelphia Inquirer, a Philadelphia City Council committee has approved a 99-year lease for the Barnes Foundation to occupy the current site of a youth detention center. The plan will next go to the full council. But the problems in securing the site still haven't been solved. Meanwhile, the Friends of the Barnes Foundation are now arguing for National Historic Landmark status for the Barnes' current facility in Merion.

The best hope for the opponents of the Barnes' planned moved to Philadelphia may well be the stubborness of Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who, according to the Inquirer, "has declined to introduce the necessary zoning bill that would make the move possible. Blackwell has cited a number of issues---ranging from parking to community amenities---that she believes still need to be addressed."

---The Arkansas Times recently ran a long, detailed and laudatory article about Alice Walton's planned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Leslie Newell Peacock reports:

[Bob] Workman [the museum's director] said there is "real depth to the collection," especially in the 19th century works, and many will have strong historical significance....Its 20th century pieces will include "major works" in modernism, and while the original cutoff for the museum was the mid-20th century, later works "in the realist tradition" are now being looked at. There will be abstract works, but "more the earlier abstracts." It will encompass "key moments in American art," with historical value largely secondary to aesthetics.

Crystal Bridges' own update on its progress is here.

UPDATE: Cathleen McGuigan, in the June 18 Newsweek, also gives Walton and Crystal Bridges friendly publicity. We're so relieved to learn that "she's a smart businesswoman. She does not go out there limitless," in the words of Nelson-Atkins Museum director Marc Wilson. He and Walton apparently lost out on a joint bid for a "really terrific Grant Wood landscape," when the Wal-Mart heiress stuck firmly to their agreed-upon spending cap of $7 million.

"Artemis and the Stag," sold from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery

The thing that distresses me most about the mega-millions raked in by Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery in its series of art disposals at Sotheby's (including the $25.5 million hammer price, against a $5-7 million presale estimate, for "Artemis and the Stag," above, at Thursday's antiquities sale) is the museum's ability to get away with this massive masterpiece liquidation without a scintilla of censure from its peers or legal authorities.

Where is the Association of Art Museum Directors, which should be more vigorously enforcing its own criteria for deaccessioning? Where is the office of the NY State Attorney General, which ought to be protecting the public's interest in the public patrimony?

They've all looked the other way, leaving the impression that what Buffalo did was acceptable practice. I have explained several times, including here and here, why these sales were not acceptable but deplorable.

The museum recently rewrote its mission, which expedited the expedient sales of major works that could bring major profits. While it now intends to focus almost exclusively on modern and contemporary art, older works were collected and cherished by previous officials at the institution and, in several cases, were great favorites of museum visitors. Now many been sold, not only out of Buffalo but also, largely, out of the public domain: "Artemis" was bought by London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi, on behalf of an unnamed European collector.

Colin Dabkowski of the Buffalo News summarizes the various Albright-Knox disposals here. The most illuminating account I have seen of the "Artemis" auction is Lindsay Pollock's in Thursday's Bloomberg.

Pollock tells us:

Heated bidding from banks with 26 phone bidders and paddle wavers in the room ignited every time something with the Albright-Knox name came up for sale....Gavel prices often dwarfed presale estimates.

Can any other financially pressed museum have failed to notice the market's hunger for works bearing prestigious museum provenance? And can such institutions fail to be tempted, if not convinced, to adopt the Buffalo Solution, now that no authoritative voice has nixed the Knox?

Unless someone with legal and/or moral clout uses it to put a stop---and fast---to such gross betrayals by museums of the public trust, we can expect many more curators to go "Stag." They may gain quick cash to bankroll their own art shopping sprees for their institutions, but the public will nevertheless be the poorer.

Lifting the Lipchitz

Not to Kabul, nor even (yet) to Basel. It's off to Cornell, for my husband's XXth college reunion. (I'm not going to fill in the blanks!)

I hear they're celebrating the return of "Song of the Vowels," the restored Lipchitz sculpture that I saw nearly every day, because I nerdishly trudged to the library nearly every day. (It was right outside the entrance.)

I recognized it instantly a while back, when I was at the Williamstown Conservation Center, where it was awaiting its beauty treatment.

I will probably be partying like it's 1967 (oops) till Monday. But you never know: I might just have to sober up at the Johnson Museum. Whether you want to hear about that is doubtful: You're all partying with Dandy Randy in Venice, so what do you care about visual arts developments in Upstate New York?

Oh, did I tell you that Cornell had selected the now suddenly hot Steven Holl to design their new building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, then dumped him, and is now going with Rem Koolhaas instead?

Go figure.

My doubts about whether the chief source for the NY Times' Afghanistan antiquities article yesterday was adequately vetted for reliability made me think again about the lamentable three-week silence of the paper's new public editor, Clark Hoyt.

My concern for his (and his mission's) welfare prompted me to reread the the May 4 official announcement of his appointment, where I discovered these discouraging words:

Mr. Hoyt will publish periodic commentaries about The Times's journalistic practices and current journalistic issues in general, to appear when he believes they are warranted [emphasis added]. His column will run in the Week in Review section.

What column?

I guess there's just been nothing much to say lately about the Times' "journalistic practices and current journalistic issues in general." Am I the only Times-ologist who used to eagerly anticipate the essay by the public editor (or readers' responses to his essay), published every Sunday in the "Week in Review"?

In the May 4 announcement of Hoyt's appointment, Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, was quoted as saying:

We expect him [Hoyt] to hold us accountable to our own standards, to serve as an advocate for the interests of readers, and to give readers an independent eye into the workings of this great news organization.

But not too often.

There are so many problematic aspects surrounding Robin Pogrebin's story in yesterday's NY Times about the allegedly "unconscionable" financial arrangements between the National Geographic Society and the government of Afghanistan, for a proposed tour of that country's Bactrian hoard, that it's hard to know where to begin. Critics cited in the article charge that Afghanistan is being shortchanged in the deal although, from the Times account, it's difficult to ascertain exactly what the financial parameters of the arrangement are.

So let's begin with the person who uttered the word "unconscionable" and who appears to be the instigator of this story---Lynne Munson, former deputy chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and good friend of another Lynne who was formerly of the NEH (Cheney, its former chairman, who is the wife of the current Vice President).

Munson, according to Pogrebin, "said she had ceased working for the endowment in 2005 because of internal conflicts within the agency over arrangements for the [Afghan] show."

Here's what an article at that time, from the Sept. 9, 2005 issue of the Chronicle of HIgher Education, said about her exit:

A letter from the NEH chairman, Bruce Cole, announcing Ms. Munson's departure did not cite a reason, fueling speculation among staff members that she was not leaving voluntarily.

Indeed, officials of the society had reportedly become so frustrated during grant negotiations with the deputy chairwoman that they came close to declining the grants. Fredrik T. Hiebert, lead scholar on the National Geographic project, acknowledged disagreements about the terms of the grants but said the issues had been resolved.

The National Geographic grants, as Pogrebin tells us, were for an inventory of the objects now being offered for exhibition. Clearly, the friction between Munson and National Geographic continues, although the reasons for it remain unclear. She now calls the show "a National Geographic monopoly and a very poor deal for the Afghans."

It was odd to see the megabucks deal struck by Egypt for the current Tutankhamun show being held up, in yesterday's Times, as a gold standard for cultural diplomacy. Many observers, including Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum, found that arrangement to be, as de Montebello had disapprovingly described it, "dominated by lucre and the need to make make colossal sums of money for the...circulators and for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities."

At yesterday's Met press lunch, the museum's director told me that he is interested in the objects in the proposed Bactrian hoard show, but that's as far as it's gone. There have been no negotiations, he said. The accord signed last weekend, which included the Met in a proposed four-museum exhibition tour, was between National Geographic and the Afghan government.

Martha Deese, the Met's senior administrator for exhibitions and international affairs, who happened to be sitting at my table at yesterday's luncheon, told me that she didn't understand where the reported controversy "was coming from," since the Afghan government was a full partner in the planning.

One thing we do know: Munson, despite her years at the NEH, has an imperfect understanding of how museums operate. She may be best known to CultureGrrl readers as the author of the traditionalist, anti-cutting edge screed, Exhibitionism: Art in an Era of Intolerance (above), published in 2000, when she was a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Among Munson's dubious arguments in that book was an assertion that the Brooklyn Museum should not have hosted the "Sensation" exhibition because "none of the...artists, whose average age was thirty-five, had been making art long enough for anyone to know whether their work would be worth including in a museum show in even ten years. If these young artists were Brooklynites, their home museum might justify the risk of showing them. But not one of the artists in "Sensation" lived, worked, or even was born in the United States, let alone in Brooklyn."

We now learn from Pogrebin about another dubious Munson notion, "that there should have been an open competition among museums for the [Bactrian hoard] show to assure maximal revenue to aid in Afghanistan's cultural reconstruction."

A museum exhibition bidding war---as if the monetization of cultural heritage weren't already "maximal" enough.

Randy Kennedy has already posted four items today for the NY Times' ArtsBeat blog from Venice, and he did it all in less than four hours: the airport, the parties, the American VIPs, the Canadian pavilion. Now we're cooking.

I knew all that energy he spent stalking the Metropolitan Museum admissions staff and the denizens of Chelsea would some day be put to better use. Here's a guy who knows how to pound the keyboard and the pavement...at the same time!

He's so energetic that I'm getting tired just reading him. You go, boy!

Rendering of the New 2 Columbus Circle

When I was in Seattle at the end of April for the press preview of architect Brad Cloepfil's addition to the Seattle Art Museum, he had invited me to attend the May 3 hardhat tour for his redesign of 2 Columbus Circle in New York, the future home of the Museum of Arts & Design. But after I got home, the invitation was rescinded by his publicist, who informed me that the tour was fully booked.

She also told me:

The NY Times was given an exclusive on this engineering story and everyone else is seeing it now on deep background. This tour really is strictly to inform later articles on the architecture and engineering of the space.

Are there really journalists out there who willingly accede to such "Times First" stipulations?

Put out by this put down, I enviously awaited Robin Pogrebin's "exclusive," which yesterday gave us an advance look at a building that won't be finished for another year and is not yet ripe for useful perusal (as can be clearly seen in the slide show accompanying the article's online version).

Although it did provide a moment of levity, thanks to its loopy headline ("Renovation Slowly Adds Some Light to Lollipops"), Pogrebin's first lick didn't tell me much about the building that wasn't already available to less worthy journalists through Cloepfil's own information packet, which he had distributed six weeks ago at SAM's preview.

That material described (and provided images of) the "series of cuts through the structural concrete shell of the building that admit light and views into the reconfigured gallery spaces." What's more, we learned that "those cuts take this thing right to the edge of its tectonic stability."

Even scarier is the risky eccentricity of the building's new skin, described as "terracotta, which has an iridescent glaze." During Cloepfil's slide show of his career highlights that he presented in Seattle, he briefly flashed an image of that skin, which certainly caught my attention: It looks like an oil slick.

In his informational packet, Cloepfil tells us:

When it's in flat light, it's going to be a single color and give you the impression of a unified building. But when the west façade is in sun, when the light rakes the curve on 58th Street, that iridescent glaze will go nuts.

Yikes!

He added that "this iridescent glaze is downright swanky." I can think of another word that might better describe it, but I'll hold my reptilian tongue and try to suspend disbelief. I must resist the serpentine temptation to review something I haven't yet seen.

The most glaring omission in Pogrebin's piece was its failure to explain why Edward Durell Stone's original design is now universally described (including several times in her own article) as "the lollipop building."

Credit where credit is due---to the Wall Street Journal's (and former NY Times') architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, who, in her 1964 review (which was generally appreciative, not dismissive), famously wrote that the building resembled "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops."

I wonder if Ada Louise is already sharpening her herpetological metaphors for this building's second skin.

I deliberately waited a couple of days before discussing the new, souped-up Sotheby's website, because the Sunday launch, while fully functional, still looked interim: It was visually barebones, and "receive" was misspelled twice as "recieve." Don't techies use spellcheck?

Today it's proofread, dressed up and ready to go, although still not officially launched, I suppose, because no press release has yet hit my in-box.

What did hit my in-box, at 12:15 a.m. this morning, was a reminder about the imminent auction of an object that I had put on my "Track Lots" list. I had wanted to see how that feature worked, so I naturally chose the most newsworthy lot-of-the-week, "Artemis and the Stag," to be sold Thursday as a highlight of the deplorable deaccessions by the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo. The e-mail, titled "Tracked lots auction reminder," arrived despite the fact that I specifically had turned off the feature for receiving e-mail auction alerts when I had set up my Track Lots request. What I DID ask for was an e-mailed condition report, but there is still no such report available for that object at this writing.

I've previously discussed, here, some of the site's new features, with more complete details at the link I provided to the auction house's February press release.

Perhaps the most crucial improvements are the features for tracking lots (unsolicited reminders notwithstanding) and for creating wishlists for lots meeting specified criteria. In this, Sotheby's plays catch-up to Christie's longstanding Lot Finder. Also nifty is the ability, with selected Sotheby's objects, to magnify details and view three-dimensional lots from different angles.

And Christie's website offers nothing comparable to the Sotheby's Café Cookbook---40 recipes, some illustrated with objects sold by Sotheby's, along with "eight complementary articles exploring the relationship between food and art." The essays may be complementary, but the book is not complimentary: It's a pricey $50. Fascinated foodies are advised: "To learn more visit the café website." But that broken link bumps you back to the auction house's home page.

A more serious letdown came when I clicked the "Place Bid" button on the Albright-Knox bronze (not that I actually possess disposable millions, but I wanted to see where this led). The initial mySotheby's press release had promised "features that provide the instant gratification of placing a bid." But in this case "instant gratification" meant a downloadable absentee bidding form that had to be filled out and either mailed back or faxed.

For true "instant gratification," there's online, real-time bidding at Christie's Live, functional for some, but not all, auctions, once you register and download the required software. Sotheby's, five years ago, had tried online bidding in conjunction with eBay, but found it wanting and has no wish to try again.

Yes! The NY Times ArtsBeat blog has announced (in its righthand column) that it's going to be covering "art in Venice." I'd been hoping The Beat would pound at this summer's European art fairs and festivals. Now it will! But while it's at the Venice Biennale (opening to the public, beginning Saturday, to Nov. 21), is the Times going to cover this dispute?

If they'd also blog Art Basel (June 13-17) and Documenta June 16-Sept. 23), they'd really be onto something.

Meanwhile, Linda Sandler of Bloomberg already seems to have all bases covered.

Damien Hirst, "For the Love of God," 2007, platinum, diamonds and human teeth
Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

What to make of Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God," the $99-million, diamond-studded, tongueless tongue-wagger now preening at White Cube Mason's Yard gallery in London, the centerpiece of his solo exhibition Beyond Belief (to July 7)?

I regard Hirst as inexhaustibly (sometimes exhaustingly) provocative and profound, and the photographic images of the skull (above) look at once perversely seductive and deplorably decadent. I haven't seen it, so I'd best leave further commentary to others.

Martin Gayford in today's Bloomberg opines:

It's simultaneously real art, conceptual art and, what's more, it's a clever joke....Hirst's skull is not only a symptom of excess, it's also a witty comment on the situation. Like Hamlet, he's holding up the head bone and saying, this will be you too. The fact that Hirst and his team will laugh all the way to the bank---perhaps an off-shore account---does not make it any the less darkly amusing. And it doesn't make it less valid as a work of art.

An equally thoughtful but far more censorious take comes from a letter writer to the Glasgow Herald.

S. Golden of London writes:

This arrogant use of diamonds for an art work at a time when the world is questioning the origin and implications of such gems [i.e., "blood diamonds"] is unethical. Perhaps what Mr. Hirst calls this "crazy idea" could have been more thoughtfully achieved using synthetic gems. Mr. Hirst appears driven to be the major player in what many consider to be a rather vulgar, macho, low point in art history. One can only hope the future does not lie with this kind of art and art dealing, out of sync with progressive thinking, bigged up to the max, pandering to privileged ideals and perpetuating the sad fact that money talks.

Let's face it: High-minded political and social consciousness is not what this artist is after. At a time when almost nothing in art can shock us any more, Hirst does his worst to mine our deepest veins of unease.

Speaking of publishers' press-copy lists, I just got a copy of the book I was afraid I'd be professionally obligated to read: Danielle Ganek's Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.

Now I'm even more afraid, since it's gotten surprisingly good reviews for its incisive inside portrayal of artworld denizens. And Guggenheim Museum director, Lisa Dennison, even threw it a book party. Ganek's husband David is a Guggenheim trustee---a fact that the publicity material for the book tastefully omits.

This could well qualify as my summer beach book, except that I'm too fair to sunbathe.

So I think I'll go to Art Basel instead. Light airplane reading?

Ralph Frammolino, part of the tenacious investigative duo at the LA Times (also including Jason Felch) that brought down Barry Munitz's presidency at the J. Paul Getty Trust, is one of 60 journalists leaving the paper as part of its overhaul under new publisher David Hiller.

Felch informs me that Frammolino volunteered for a buyout, "feeling his 27+ years at the paper were enough." Jason remains at the paper, but is on leave till August, working with his erstwhile investigative partner on a book based on their Getty exploits, tentatively titled "Chasing Aphrodite" and due out in late 2008 from Harcourt Trade Publishers.

Put me on that press-copy list!

MySotheby's, the auction house's revved-up website, has liftoff. (More on that later.)

The anticipated weekly column of Clark Hoyt, the NY Times new public editor, still hasn't launched.

But later on the same day that I lamented the long snooze of the Times' ArtsBeat blog, music critic James Oestreich finally woke it up, blogging from the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC. That was on May 30, the same day (in the same post) when I called attention to the now three-week-long silence of the yet-to-be-heard-from public editor.

Maybe we should should dub Hoyt "the private editor."

Looks like Sotheby's may be getting ready for the launch of mySotheby's. But couldn't their techies have accomplished this without forcing their website to go dead, just before the important London auctions?

By the way, I'm getting a bit irritated by how Christie's keeps puffing itself, in its press releases, as "the world's leading art business." It now seems that whenever they sell more dollar volume in a particular area (i.e., Latin American art), they anoint themselves (in e-mails to the press) as the "leader in the field," reporting their "market share" percentage from the latest round of auctions (i.e., 57% for Latin American art in last month's go-round). These things do tend to fluctuate---season to season, year to year.

Sotheby's is not immune from foolish self-hype, rushing to complete its press release stating that it had achieved the "highest total ever for sales of contemporary art," shortly before Christie's concluded its own contemporary sales, which put it confortably in the lead.

Did my comment about how market share might affect Sotheby's stock price contribute to its rival's penchant for playing up those percentages? (Incidentally, its stock has rebounded from the time when I wrote that, to $48.43 at Friday's close.)

This battle for the hearts and minds of consignors is getting ugly.

I loved "The Clark Brothers Collect" when I saw it last summer at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, and I still liked it, but not as much, at the Metropolitan Museum (to Aug. 19). The problem is that these Impressionist and modern paintings, while glorious, are very familiar to anyone who's a habitué of these two museums: Sterling Clark founded the Clark Institute to house his collection; Stephen gave many of his masterpieces to the Met.

What gave the Williamstown show its special interest was that it played up the intense rivalry between the two brothers. The Met show puts the art-history approach first. The Clark's version was as much about the act of collecting as it was about the collections. Adding to its edginess: It highlighted several pieces that were sequentially owned by both brothers.

I had been especially fascinated by the story behind Rodin's "Man with a Serpent," a work given prominence in the Clark's show but nowhere seen at the Met. The plaster model is still owned by the Clark Institute; the bronze is in a private collection. Sterling bought the bronze for his brother Stephen (before their epic falling-out) and kept the plaster.

After the brothers fought, Stephen decided to rid himself of "Serpent" and put it on consignment at New York dealer Knoedler. When Sterling heard it was for sale, he mischievously bought back the bronze, without letting his brother know.

The catalogue tells us:

This was the first of several attempts made by Sterling to surreptitiously acquire works from Stephen.

Another interesting contrast between the shows is that each institution put its own patron in the starring role: Sterling was admired for founding the worthy institution that bears his name; Stephen for his more advanced, adventurous taste, emphasized by the Met in its opening wall text.

At least the Met acknowledges the theme of sibling rivalry in a film that it's screening, in connection with the exhibition: "East of Eden"!

One reason why the Met may have prioritized the more traditional art-historical approach is that this temporary exhibition must compensate visitors for the Met's closure of its 19th-century permanent collection galleries, while it renovates them. The cream of that collection is at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, starting today, in one of those increasingly familiar (and lamentable) rent-a-blockbuster money-makers.

For more about the Clark brothers' collections and feuds: Nicholas Fox Weber's The Clarks of Cooperstown, just published by Knopf.

UPDATE: Apparently that book has generated a feud all its own!