July 2007 Archives

Should I cross Max Anderson off my list of hot prospects for the Metropolitan Museum directorship?

Here's what he wrote me in response to yesterday's Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met? An Update:

Jacqueline and I are having a great time here and are in no hurry to leave!

Let's see. If James Houghton were to call and say, "Max, we really need you at the Met," would the New Yorker-in-exile say, "Thanks, Jamie, I'd rather be in Indianapolis"?

Anderson also e-mailed this link to the prototype for the Indianapolis Museum's new website, launching soon. Although not fully functional yet, it looks to have many nifty features. Anderson was always the tech-friendliest museum director, even way back when he was at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, Atlanta.

In other Met prospect news, Glasstire, an online visual arts journal in Texas (supported in part by the Texas Commission for the Arts), took exception to my endorsement of Timothy Potts for the post.

Rainey Knudson, in his July 30 entry, wrote:

Potts has made some interesting acquisitions and made a good hire in curator Malcolm Warner, but is hardly regarded locally as a big success story.

Maybe in accepting the Fitzwilliam top spot in Cambridge, England, he's going where his talents will be better appreciated. But the reasons for his precipitous and unexpected resignation from the Kimbell have yet to be revealed. Could this compromise his spot in the influential CultureGrrl rankings?

Speaking of unknown reasons for a director's departure, did the shock announcement today of Lisa Dennison's even more precipitous flight (leaving at the end of August) from the Guggenheim have anything to do with differences with Tom Krens? She was certainly taking the New York museum in a different (and to my mind, desirable) direction, privileging the permanent collection.

And what should we make of this statement, quoted in the above-linked NY Times article, by Bill Ruprecht, chief executive at Sotheby's, where Dennison will focus on international business development:

We've been working a lot with the Guggenheim recently and have gotten to know Lisa. She's great with clients.

"Working a lot with the Guggenheim"??? Is it deaccession time?

UPDATE: Sotheby's has just issued a press release, giving Dennison's new title as executive vice president, Sotheby's North America. Guggenheim spokesperson Betsy Ennis says that the recent working relationship between the museum and the auction house has consisted of Sotheby's sponsorship of the upcoming Richard Prince retrospective (opening Sept. 28) and the Guggenheim's participation museum in the recently announced Sotheby's credit card program.

Deaccessions? "I thought that was a joke! Absolutely not."

Today is the deadline imposed by Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli for an antiquities agreement with the J. Paul Getty Museum. Failing a settlement, he had threatened the museum with "a full-scale embargo," which would mean "an end to cultural and scientific collaboration" between Italy and the Getty.

Here's what Ron Hartwig, the Getty's vice president for communications, told me yesterday (Monday) about this showdown:

We are having useful correspondence with Minister Rutelli. We are hopeful we will find agreement. This is not the time for further comment.

Meanwhile, Cass Cliatt, media relations manager for Princeton University, told me a few days ago that there was still no final agreement between the university's museum and Italy in their separate antiquities negotiations. Rutelli publicly (and, it seems, prematurely) announced in New York on June 28 that an agreement with Princeton had been signed.

I assume that the LA Times will be on this case later today. Its art writer, Christopher Knight, recently characterized Rutelli's campaign against the Getty as "old-fashioned political demagoguery, pitched to voters back home."

I will update if there is news today from Italy.

UPDATE: No reply yet from Italy to my request for comment, but the important word from the Felcholino duo at the Los Angeles Times is that Italy has, for now, taken the Getty Bronze out of the discussion, making it much easier to find consensus.

Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino report:

A senior Italian official said the culture ministry decided that the fate of the statue should not be negotiated until a new criminal investigation into the statue's discovery and export from Italy is complete.

The Friends of the Barnes Foundation, who are the enemies of the Barnes' move to Philadelphia, have established a legal defense fund for donations supporting its planned court challenge to the move.

Its solicitation of financial support lists the following recent developments favoring its cause:

---The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners is joining us to reopen the Barnes matter in Orphans' Court.

---Our attorney, Mark Schwartz, has prepared an excellent case and we believe this time our petition will be heard fully with all the facts presented. The petition will be filed in a few days.

There are only two problems: The Philadelphia political, cultural and philanthropic establishment is determined to secure the Barnes for their city, and the Orphans Court, where the Friends of the Barnes are filing their petition, has already ruled that the Barnes can move. Overturning that decision is a longshot.

If the Friends are to succeed, they will probably have to convince the political powerbrokers that the Barnes can survive and thrive in Merion, and that ripping a cultural resource from a community that wants it, in contravention of the express wishes of the institution's founder, is not only bad policy but also bad politics---also a longshot. Possibly working in their favor is the difficulty of securing the site for the new Philly facility. Calling Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell!

I had to be dumbfoundedly amused by my discovery, at the end of yesterday's de Montebello appraisal in the NY Times, that the men who happened to be my former top three choices for the Metropolitan Museum's succession---Neil MacGregor, Timothy Potts and William Griswold---were listed (in the very same 1-to-3 order) by Charles McGrath as "among the names most frequently mentioned" for the top post at our country's top art museum.

They were merely the names mentioned by ME as the directors whom I (in my seasoned, informed judgment) believed would do the best with the post. They were certainly not the "names most frequently mentioned," which would probably bump to the top of the list three whom I kept off mine: Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, who had told me flatly that he didn't want the job, but who now has additional deal-killing baggage; Met curator Gary Tinterow, whom some believe is being groomed for the job; James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, who has a high profile as an articulate spokesman for the profession on major issues.

I myself would revise my own list, which is now nearly nine months old---half a lifetime, in gossip years. I still like MacGregor but still doubt he wants it (even more so, now that he's just announced his own ambitious expansion plans for the British Museum).

Griswold and Potts had better not take the job any time soon: As McGrath himself mentioned, they've just signed on to new posts, at the Morgan and the Fitzwilliam, respectively. If Philippe really does hang on for a good while longer (and I know of no reason why he shouldn't, if he wants it), then those two again become top prospects.

And another museum director must surely be added to the upper ranks of CultureGrrl picks: Michael Govan, whose energetic, creative and principled leadership of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the short time that he's been there surely demands inclusion on shortlist provided by Philippe to Met chairman James Houghton.

Govan also has a lot of major unfinished expansion business at his current post. Ripeness is all, and I think perhaps the most ripe is my prior Number 4 pick, Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, who has the advantage of insider status, as a former Met staffer and a former New York museum director (who was the latest casualty in the Whitney revolving-door director syndrome). That is surely a somewhat controversial but, I think, wise choice---just as Philippe was at the time of his ascension.

For my 2002 Wall Street Journal appraisal of Anderson's Whitney tenure, which had the unfortunate timing of appearing very shortly before his departure from that post, go here.

Philippe de Montebello is the last of a breed. Who can succeed him at the Met?

So reads the teaser on the front page of the arts section of today's NY Times online.

But Charles McGrath's valedictory (for tomorrow's "Arts & Leisure" section but online now) for a very active director who's not ready for his valedictory, says almost nothing about who might succeed Philippe. That's reserved for the last two paragraphs, which come almost straight out of CultureGrrl.

McGrath writes:

Mr. de Montebello's successor is a topic endlessly gossiped about in the museum world. Among the names most frequently mentioned are Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum in London; Timothy Potts, who will step down in September as director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and later take over at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England; and William M. Griswold, currently the director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, who is to become the head of the Morgan Library and Museum next year.

James R. Houghton, the chairman of the Met's trustees, keeps a list in his desk drawer of people who might take Mr. de Montebello's place. "It's in case Philippe gets hit by a bus," he explained recently.

CultureGrrl readers may think that they've heard about those names and about Houghton's little list before...because they have (here and here).

Marbles Moving Day Approaches

The creators of the New Acropolis Museum, now finishing construction in Athens, have always said that they would leave empty gaps in their installation of the Greek-owned blocks from the Parthenon frieze, in the hope that Great Britain would eventually fill those voids by sending the slabs from the frieze that are now in the British Museum.

But during a recent slide presentation in New York---showing the current appearance of the new museum, as well as renderings of what it will look like when it opens (possibly in late 2008)---Dimitris Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, revealed a new approach to the problem of the missing marbles. Instead of an empty space, the slide showed an image of one of the Greek-owned marbles chockablock with a copy of the British-owned slab that would have originally been beside it on the façade of the Parthenon. Together, they completed the relief of a horse. So that there would be no confusion between the original and the copy, the latter was veiled by a scrim, making it appear like a "ghost," as Pandermalis put it.

Pandermalis said that he felt encouraged by some recent discussions with the British about the marbles, and Bernard Tschumi, architect for the new museum, said that he is "convinced that those veiled marbles will create a public understanding of the necessity of completing the narrative....I've always thought that it might change the mind of the British Museum."

In the unlikely event that this happens, the continuous procession that the frieze was meant to depict will still have some gaps, because some parts of it were lost in various upheavals, including the conversion of the temple into a church in about 450 A.D. and a direct hit by a shell during a Venetian siege in 1687, when the structure was used by the Turks for military purposes. In the new installation, those gaps will be used as points of entry into the space.

The Greek-owned marbles, which had weathered badly over the years, have all been cleaned using lasers, Pandermalis said. They are about to be hoisted down from the Acropolis to the new museum, by a crane relay. The photo, above, shows a trial run, using a copy of one of the blocks.

Did I start something? A week ago, I mentioned Seattle's venerable peep-show palace, leering at the Seattle Art Museum from across the street, a few feet away from the Four Seasons luxury hotel and condominium complex that's now under construction.

Yesterday, "Lusty" got national attention in the even more venerable Wall Street Journal:

In Seattle...the 149-room Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences under construction will offer its 36 homeowners access to all hotel services, including the spa, pool, room service, personal shopping, valet and 24-hour concierge service. For those services, buyers are paying between $2.5 million and $10 million for apartments that range from 1,300 square feet for a one-bedroom to 10,000 square feet for a customizable floor plan, despite being next door to the Lusty Lady strip club.

...or maybe because of it?

I just had an I-don't-know-what-to-make-of-this moment.

The website of collector Charles Saatchi's own gallery has just posted a screed by one Steve Pulimood, an Oxford doctoral candidate, about the recent fortunes of Damien Hirst's shark, which was a star attraction of the "Sensation" show of Saatchi's own collection.

Either the website's blog operates with editorial independence or Saatchi is happy to provide the forum for someone to take digs at rival collector Steve Cohen (who bought his shark for $8 million, only to have to replace the disintegrating beast) and at the Metropolitan Museum (which decided to put the shark on longterm display, almost seven years after its director penned a NY Times Op-Ed piece debunking "Sensation").

Pulimood writes:

It's startling how quickly the bristling avant-garde becomes the banal picture-postcard. Why a museum that is slow to the mark on contemporary art...should be so interested in pandering to the market is evidence of the rapidly expanding scope of what is considered establishment art. Central Park's new shark will make more than a splash. Even if the beast belly flops in the long run, right now it seems to be a veritable coup for the Met over their peer institutions....

Since the time of the industrialists, nothing has changed in the American, milk-mustachioed envy of the European avant-garde. This move by the Met alters our sense of what America's grandest museum considers within its often shortsighted, conservative bounds.

Milk-mustachioed? (Got formaldehyde?)

Calvin Hunt (Tlasutiwalis), Thunderbird mask and regalia, 2006

You'd expect no less from a museum whose director's name is Gates (as in, stepson Bill Gates), but the Seattle Art Museum, which I visited a few months ago for the Wall Street Journal (here and here), has the most sophisticated and sensitive use of technology in its galleries of any museum where I've touchscreened.

Mimi Gardner Gates wanted technological enhancements that aided visitors unobtrusively, without detracting from the art, and that's what she got. The computer stations are tucked discreetly into areas that don't compete with the main attraction, and they are loaded with user-friendly, layered information about the artworks and the artists. I particularly liked the material about a Native American mask and costume (above) that presented its creator, Calvin Hunt, talking about his work and showed footage of him wearing it while dancing in a ceremony.

I also appreciated something that I've never heard before, but which should become standard equipment in any museum that employs audio: It's something relatively new, called a "sound shower." One of my pet peeves in museums is the use of sound, be it music or speech, that pertains to only one part of the exhibition but is heard throughout the larger space. More than once, I've experienced the cacaphony of competing audios, making tranquil contemplation of the art nearly impossible.

The speakers of the sound showers pinpoint the sound to the one spot where it is relevant to what you are seeing. For example, the sound from a video being shown in one gallery is directed at the bench stationed directly in front of the screen. During my visit, before the public opening, one or two speakers did need some fine tuning: They were broadcasting their sound in the wrong direction---a problem that I assume has been corrected.

My favorite technological moment at SAM was the state-of-the-art digital presentation of one of the museum's great treasures, a "Poem Scroll with Deer," 1610s, by Tawaraya Sotatsu and Hon'ami Koetsu. Although only a small section of the scroll is revealed in the display case at any one time, the entire work (including sections not owned by Seattle) can be "unscrolled" on a large wall screen controlled from a freestanding computer station. The program also translates the poems displayed on the screen and provides information and images about the recent conservation of the work.

I was not surprised to learn that the mastermind behind this project was Curtis Wong of Microsoft, whom I've interviewed several times over the years, and who first came to my attention as the creator of the then pioneering CD-ROM, "A Passion for Art," about Albert Barnes and the Barnes Foundation.

If you want to see Wong's latest tour de force (created in close collaboration with Yukiko Shirahara, SAM's curator of Asian Art), you don't have to fly to Seattle; you can go here.

The one thing I don't understand, though: Why would a museum that is so technologically surefooted in its galleries put up with such a clumsy website?

My fellow (anonymous) art blogger, Mr. Modern Kicks, turned three this week. Congratulations, JL, and thanks for reminding me to be less obsessive-compulsive about blogging!

Stephen Persing, an administrative assistant in the director's office at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, responds to NY Times Editorial Snarks the Shark:

I have to disagree with you regarding Damien Hirst, and especially the shark. To me, contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum has always seemed the poor cousin, perhaps because it is just one facet of the museum, whereas there are whole institutions devoted to modern and contemporary art in the area. I would like to see the shark end up somewhere unexpected, where it is not just one more masterpiece on the walking tour.

Mr. [Steve] Cohen [the collector who owns Hirst's shark] lives in Connecticut: Why not a museum there? I ask this not just because I work at a Connecticut museum, but because the shark would do far more to benefit to a smaller institution than it can do for the Met.

And about Hirst in general---I love the shark, though I regret that it had to die for the artwork. For me, the more explicit the message in Hirst's work, the more tacky and less interesting it is. His recent pickled animals, in crucifixion scenes and St. Sebastian poses, are overblown and trite. The skull is not just a vanitas, it's a Vegas vanitas. You come away hoping for more than the artwork can give. The shark succeeds because of its plain presentation. Glitz is hard for an artist to handle, especially an artist of limited talent, like Damien Hirst.

What's the most popular show at the Museum of Modern Art right now? The Richard Serra blockbuster, right? Well, I did practically bump into aging rock star David Byrne last week, when he was exiting the Serra that I was about to enter on the second floor. Here's a picture of him leaving MoMA a few minutes later. (Will this get me on Gawker Stalker?):

But celebrity sighting notwithstanding, on the weekday afternoon when I roamed MoMA's galleries, the great Serra show, which I thought would be a blockbuster, was rather sparsely attended, on both the second and sixth floors. I amused myself by making some museum mischief, when I stepped on the rolled steel plate that is part of "Delineator," the first Serra you come upon on the sixth floor. By occupying that slab, you are meant to be "mentally activating the space" (in the words of ARTnews critic Barbara MacAdam) which is between it and its companion slab, mounted on the ceiling and perpendicular to it.

But there is no sign informing visitors that they can step on the art, and everyone avoids it. When I broke the taboo, some people looked horrified, but I assured them it was okay, and noted that the guard, standing right there, seemed to be fine with it. Soon, about 20 people were heeling the steel. I tried this experiment several times, with the same result. The guard did tell me that, while it is allowed [and, in fact, is appropriately part of experiencing the work], walking on the plate is not actively encouraged, because some shoes might leave a mark.

Much bigger crowds were at the other exhibition sharing the sixth floor---curator Anne Umland's intelligently chosen and cannily installed survey of art made from 1965 to the present, drawn from MoMA's permanent collection. What Is Painting? opened July 7 beneath the critical radar, but was a big hit with visitors interested in a compact primer in the various movements and affinities that have engaged painters during the past 40 years.

The show also provided an opportunity to view some of MoMA's very recent acquisitions, including 2005 works by Marlene Dumas and Luc Tuymans that are "fractional and promised gifts," in this era when such gifts have lost many of their advantages to donors.

What I really liked about this exhibition was that the introductory wall text directly credited the curator: "This exhibition is organized by Anne Umland, Department of Painting and Sculpture." I'm a proponent of curatorial bylines.

There was one other big draw for MoMA's summer visitors, and here's a crowd intently gazing upon it:

It's Dan Perjovschi's "What Happened to Us," permanent marker on wall, which did indeed "tame MoMA's monstrous atrium," as I had suggested it might. You can view two video clips of Perjovschi scrawling on MoMA here. The "permanent marker" becomes impermanent after Aug. 27.

Remember how Glenn Lowry and Yoshio Taniguchi found an innovative solution to a signage problem at the new MoMA?

Well I just revisited the Museum of Modern Art's sixth-floor bathroom, scene of numerous CultureGrrl complaints, and found that Glenn and Yoshio had come up with some more simple (if not elegant) fixes to vexing flaws:

No more "water cascading over the counter and down to the floor," as I had previously described the sinktops. An absorbent towel does the trick:

What to do about the complete lack of ventilation on a hot summer day? A trashcan propping open the door lets in some needed air:

But not all is yet well in the restroom: The "dingy lighting"? Still dingy. And changing those inadequate bulbs has left some unsightly results:

You've got to hand it to MoMA, though: They did budget for a good supply of Windex. Remember how Seattle disappointed its architect and used translucent railings, because clear ones would get too smudged? MoMA's clear railings looked fine to me:

I discovered that the problem of slippery floors that I had previously complained about in the new MoMA is not limited to the indoor galleries. I wasn't allowed into the sculpture garden to revisit the Serras, because it had rained earlier that day and they were afraid the surface might be too slick.

Chemical Cuisine, Au Crocodile Style

In today's Bloomberg, restaurant reviewer Richard Vines performs the pleasant (but probably unnecessarily redundant) service of informing us about the greatness of the much reviewed El Bulli restaurant in Spain. Eating 40 "fabulous" course is a tough job, but, hey, someone's got to do it!

The influence of El Bulli's chef-owner Ferran Adria had reached Emile Jung at Au Crocodile in Strasbourg, France, where my husband and I lunched during our recent Rhine journey. I was glad to see Vines mention that the otherwise dignified diners in Spain were snapping photos of their food, because, feeling slightly tacky, I felt impelled to do the same (above) when a chemical experiment called dessert was being performed at our table. Our waiter said that the "'extreme' iced meringue, warm red berries and litchi sorbet" was a relatively new addition to the menu, inspired by the inventions of El Bulli.

The meringue was still fuming from its immersion in the "extreme" coolant (contained in the silver canister to the left and rising from the plate on the right, above) when it was set before us. We were instructed to eat immediately, for the full effect. When fumes plumed through my nose, I understood the meaning of "laughing gas."

Who would have thought that art would make it into last night's Democratic Presidential debate?

It made a cameo appearance during the discussion of education, when Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico actually said the "A"-word.

Let's go to the transcript:

RICHARDSON: I would have a major federal program of art in the schools...
(APPLAUSE)
... music, dancing, sculpture, and the arts.
(APPLAUSE)

Instead of "No Child Left Behind," which most of the candidates seemed to repudiate, it could be: "No Child Left Uncultured."

Arts education also received strong verbal, if not financial, support yesterday from New York Mayor (and possible presidential aspirant) Michael Bloomberg..

Jennifer Medina reports in today's NY Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city's Department of Education will require all schools to maintain arts programs, and that principals will be rated in their annual reviews on how well they run those programs.

The announcement came just months after the department infuriated arts groups by eliminating a multimillion-dollar program to finance arts education.

Art is also on the mind of France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is considering whether more of his countrymen might attend French museums if admission were free, according to Alan Riding in yesterday's NY Times. But one of France's most prominent cultural figures seems to be more of Richardson's mind.

Riding reports:

"One learns to read at school, one doesn't learn to see," Pierre Rosenberg, the former president-director of the Louvre, wrote recently in the Paris daily Libération. "For decades art historians have been united in demanding that the history of art be required teaching in high schools."

This, Rosenberg feels, is the key to attracting more of the French to their country's tourist-thronged museums.

In any event, it's refreshing that nationally prominent politicians are giving the arts even a few minutes of serious thought.

But I don't know about turning political journalism over to YouTube videomakers. That leaves out a whole demographic---those of us (i.e., most of the middle-aged and elderly) who have never made a YouTube video. Some of the older people who did pose a question for last night's debate were accompanied by their more tech-savvy kids.

Yesterday's BlogBack on CultureGrrl by Denver music critic Marc Shulgold (in which he defended tough critical appraisals and took issue with my post on the possible role that reviews played in tenor Jerry Hadley's suicide) struck the raw nerves of at least two of his grieving friends.

Before I share their comments with you, let me clear up some confusion, which was evident in the e-mails I received from each of these correspondents: Shulgold's views are not my views on the sensitive issue of whether critics can sometimes go too far in their negative appraisals of artists. But I respect the many critics who, I'm sure, disagree with me on this. I wanted to air the opposite side of this thorny question.

In About Last Night today, my fellow AJ blogger Terry Teachout takes issue with me directly and addresses the larger issue: In response to the angry reactions he received to this post (in which he quoted from his own highly negative 1999 appraisal of Hadley for Time magazine), he observed that "the critics who wrote of [Hadley's] vocal difficulties in 1999 were only reporting well after the fact what was common knowledge in the opera world. The damage had already been done, and I'm sure he knew it."

Here are the reactions to Shulgold's BlogBack by two who knew Hadley and took his death very personally.

---Alexander Frey, a conductor and pianist, writes:

I was probably Jerry Hadley's best male friend. We gave concerts in Europe and the United States, shared an apartment together a few summers ago and he stayed at my place in Berlin when here. We helped each other through various crisis. We had been through the fire together.

Jerry and I were preparing to record three new recital compact discs this coming season. We were rehearsing the past couple of seasons whenever our schedules permitted. The repertoire was very difficult, but I knew, really knew, that these recordings would be the definitive performances of those pieces. Jerry was in excellent voice in our rehearsals. Even though he was one of my dearest friends, I can still view his work objectively as a musician.

He became Leonard Bernstein's favorite tenor with whom to work. Bernstein told me that Jerry was the greatest American tenor. Great conductors are very particular about the singers with whom they perform and record. Bernstein choose Jerry above all other tenors to perform the title role in his own "Candide" (also featured on DVD and CD). In addition, he was one of the favorite musical partners of such conductors as Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, John Mauceri, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, and Kurt Masur. They frequently choose him to perform and record with them.

I think that is proof enough that Jerry Hadley wasn't a "nice tenor," [as Shulgold called him] but a great one.

---Christine Mullin, another friend of Hadley (who sang at her wedding), writes:

Those of us who knew Jerry and, like myself, grew up with him in our little rural community of Manlius, Ill., admired him for what he was able to accomplish and the obstacles he was able to overcome to do what he did.

Jerry gave the music world a great deal and could have done so much more. As I've been reminded recently, we must try to remember the good times!

Verlyn Klinkenborg

Brent Staples

It is rare for an individual artist to attract the attention of the NY Times editorial board, and it's usually because of controversies over content involving sex, religion or politics. Damien Hirst's only transgression---in some eyes, not mine---is crossing boundaries of taste and making lots of money by so doing.

In their Friday editorial, Dumping the Shark, the Times' opinion-page wonks took the occasion of the Metropolitan Museum's imminent exhibition of Hirst's shark to raise a stink about artworld excesses. They began by decrying the dead fish's "lamentable afterlife suspended in formaldehyde."

But what really exercised the board was Diamond Damien's financial success:

No artist has managed the escalation of prices for his own work quite as brilliantly as Mr. Hirst. [Don't his dealers do this?] That is the real concept in his conceptualism, which has culminated in his most recent artistic farce: a human skull encrusted in diamonds.

One wonders if the editorial board's self-declared culture experts (above)---Verlyn Klinkenborg, who also counts agriculture and environmental issues as his beats; and Brent Staples, who also covers education and racial issues---consulted with the paper's art critics before harpooning the beast.

I do agree with the opinion-page pundits on one thing, though: The skull IS the culmination of Hirst's conceptualism---the ultimate and most telling realization of his idea that we are not "such stuff as dreams are made on." We're just stuff. Hirst rubs corporeality (to which he imparts a morbidly fascinating beauty) in our face.

The diamond-studded "farce" is, for me, a powerful expression of his concept that no matter how much we may encase ourselves in the material trappings of success and self-importance, we're ultimately, underneath it all, skeletons and entrails. This may be at once the most extravagant and the most chilling vanitas ever created.

The ultimate irony would be if the new Yorick, a fellow not "of infinite jest," but of infinite wealth, became a piece of ostentatious decor for some megabucks mansion. He belongs, as Hirst himself says, in a museum.

And the shark, perhaps his most iconic work, belongs at the Met---not just on loan, but on permanent exhibition.

I can't blog about the resolution of the Harry Potter saga, because I don't know if my 23-year-old daughter Joyce has finished the final volume yet, and I do know that she reads CultureGrrl. It would be a crime to be a spoiler for your own daughter! But if you know how it turned out, you'll know how I feel about it by reading this earlier post.

It's an amazing phenomenon that so many young adults, who befriended Harry when they were barely into their teens, are still as intensely involved with him as they were in the beginning. A newspaper photo I saw of readers who were triumphantly brandishing their newly purchased copies showed a group of excited devotees who appeared to be about my daughter's age.

I suppose I should confess that, despite my daughter's enthusiastic exhortations, CultureGrrl---like fellow AJ blogger Scott McLemee, whose Quick Study focuses on books---has not read the sacred text. I started once, but just wasn't that into it. Trying to be a good mother, I did accompany Joyce to the first Potter movie, after which she explained to me that you really had to have read the book to fully appreciate the movie. (I did better with her recommendation to read García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude.")

But all you Hogwartsians should get ready for J.K. Rowling's book tour, coming this October to our shores---Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York's Carnegie Hall. She will read from "Deathly Hallows," answer questions and sign copies. Details are on Rowling's website.

Will Harry's creator turn to young-adult fiction, now that she has so many grown-up fans?

Marc Shulgold, music critic for the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, takes issue with Did Reviews Kill Jerry Hadley?:

I'm betting that few in our professsion would agree with your take about Jerry Hadley. Clearly, this was a troubled soul. And, almost as clear is the fact that his troubles were hardly the critics' fault.

Jerry Hadley was a nice tenor, but hardly a great one. I'm sorry he's dead, and I'm sorry he was depressed and suicidal. But don't blame the critics. He was doing his job and we were doing ours. We just report what we see and hear. We can't worry too much about hurt feelings. If we did, we'd be looking for other work.

My Thursday post on the sometimes venomous effect of cultural criticism, occasioned by the shocking suicide of tenor Jerry Hadley, has elicited thoughtful and sensitive responses in the blogosphere.

Composer Daniel Felsenfeld in his blog, Felsenmusick, titled his post about my post, A Little Bit of an Overreaction, but he agreed that "critics should savage with caution and not relish....She [CultureGrrl] is also right at being dismayed at the disproportionate in-print backlash against John Harbison's "The Great Gatsby" and Mr. Hadley in the title role--it did seem extra (and undeservingly) vehement." A paradox vexing many artists, he said, is that "you have to be sensitive enough to be tuned in and therefore excellent, and yet thick skinned enough to suffer the slings and arrows."

I particularly appreciated The Power of Words, a reaction to my post by Li Robbins for CBC Radio 2's blog:

I like that Rosenbaum emphasizes that it is the spirit in which the criticism is offered that matters. This is a delicate notion, but I know what she means. It's easy to be cruel, much harder to critique thoughtfully -- and perhaps even in such a way that someone might actually benefit from hearing the criticism.

Perhaps this sad final curtain can be a wake-up call (or a tone-down call) for performing and visual arts critics who delight in the arch put-down and the clever insult. Art is hard; cheap shots, easy.

My longtime friend and passionate operaphile, Bill Schwartz, who introduced me to that art form in my teenage years, still has vivid recollections of Hadley in the title role of Massenet's "Werther" at the New York City Opera in the 1980s. The finale, he said, moved him to tears.

Here's what Hadley told Allan Kozinn of the NY Times, at that time, about that role:

"What I'm hoping we can manifest, in this production, is that decline from youthful exuberance to the real loathing of life of ends in Werther's suicide."

This excerpt from Donal Henahan's NY Times review of that performance is, in retrospect, chilling:

In this production, Werther actually shoots himself onstage during the instrumental prelude to the last scene instead of being discovered already dying by his beloved Charlotte....Luckily, Werther shoots himself in the stomach rather than in the head, and evidently with a small-caliber bullet, so that he is able to carry on vocally for quite a long time after doing the deed.

This time, Hadley shot himself in the head.

In the continuing effort to convince the Barnes Foundation that staying put in Merion could be financially viable, the town's commissioners passed an ordinance last night to allow an increase in visitation from 400 per day, three days a week, to 450 visitors per day, six days a week. Some 100 elementary and secondary students would also be admitted daily.

In a letter today to Barnes president Derek Gillman (whose name is therein misspelled), commissioner Brian Gordon also helpfully suggests:

Visitation would be increased by allowing ticketing to occur at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the new Please Touch Museum at Centennial Hall in Fairmount Park. Ticketing at these sites would encourage visitors to see those sites and then travel a short distance to the Barnes in Merion via shuttle bus.

Nice gesture, good ideas. Only trouble is, the current Barnes board, against the wishes of the town, Montgomery County, and CultureGrrl, doesn't want to do any of this. They'd simply rather be in Philadelphia.

UPDATE: Guess I was right. Here's Gillman's official response to the latest Merion move:

Although this ordinance will permit the Foundation to obtain revenue from additional visitors, that revenue will not be sufficient to alter in a substantial way the adverse economic situation that caused our board of trustees to seek permission to move the gallery art collection. It will not come close to providing the additional revenue sources that are essential to the financial health of this and all not-for-profit educational institutions.

The Barnes continues to move forward with the selection of an internationally acclaimed architect by the end of the summer and the forthcoming preparation of the site on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

It is the hope of the locals that their late-found spirit of cooperation, with its attendant financial benefits to the Barnes, has sufficiently altered the desperate situation that made Judge Ott rule as he did. They may yet try to test this in court.

Model of Jean Nouvel's Louvre Abu Dhabi

In two articles just posted on its website, Human Rights Watch targeted the Louvre and the Guggenheim in reiterating concerns about labor abuses affecting construction workers in Abu Dhabi. Gulf News reports that the Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Abu Dhabi (above) "will shortly enter its design and engineering phase....A 10-member delegation of French ministry officials and representatives from museums and five top cultural institutions" recently visited Abu Dhabi to discuss the plans.

Human Rights News, an HRW publication, describes here and here the watchdog group's concerns. Below is an excerpt from the report on the Louvre. The Guggenheim's tracks the same language:

Human Rights Watch in February 2007 sent the French government and the Louvre Museum [and the director and chairman of the Guggenheim] private letters highlighting its concerns about the exploitation of migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and underscoring the legal obligations to respect the rights of workers there, but to date has not received a reply....

Specifically, Human Rights Watch urges the Louvre to require that its UAE partners not withhold workers' wages, not confiscate passports, document and publicly report work-related injuries and deaths, and forbid recruiters from unlawfully collecting recruiting, travel and visa fees from workers. The Louvre should establish an independent and transparent oversight committee to monitor labor practices at the Abu Dhabi Louvre. In addition, the French government should ensure that the Louvre and its UAE partners are taking these important labor rights measures and urge authorities in the UAE, which is a member of the International Labour Organization, to ensure workers' rights to bargain collectively, form unions and strike.

CultureGrrl addressed the human rights issues concerning migrant construction workers in Abu Dhabi here and here.

I remember going to "The Great Gatsby" at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999 with low expectations. The reviews were unfavorable to the opera, as well as to the singer in the title role.

And I remember saying to my husband after the performance that I was pleasantly surprised. The opera engaged me musically and, especially, literarily, since it closely adhered to Fitzgerald's language. Tenor Jerry Hadley, dismissed by the critics, gave, I thought, a musically satisfying and dramatically credible performance. It's not a role that calls for a sumptuous sound; I thought he ably met its demands.

So it's sad to think that what should have been a career triumph turned out to be the beginning of his end (which surely had other contributing factors, such as a depressive disposition).

Critics have to call it as they see it. But perhaps this singer's suicide suggests that journalistic discussion of the shortcomings of artists needs to be done in a different spirit, with more sensitivity, than exposés of professional malfeasance. When we criticize how people perform their jobs, we're attacking what they do. If they're unethical, incompetent or merely wrongheaded, that's fair game for a hard-hitting appraisal. But when we disparage an artist, we're attacking who they are. Whenever they perform or create, they're completely exposed and putting their entire beings on the line.

Maybe it's appropriate, in this context, to quote the second sentence of Fitzgerald's masterpiece---advice given to the narrator, Nick Carraway, by his father:

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

The advantages that we journalist-critics have are that we're adept with words, which can sometimes be weapons, and we're generally not in the public eye ourselves. We just cast a harsh spotlight on those who are.

Here are some aperçus from my visit to the expanded Seattle Art Museum that didn't make it into yesterday's Wall Street Journal article (probably for good reason):

Seattle's venerable peep-show palace (above) took credit for what had been erected directly across the street. SAM's environs are---how shall we put it?---a "neighborhood in transition." Vagrants and bankers pace shoulder to shoulder. Pawnshops and cut-rate discount joints are in close proximity to this:

The new Four Seasons luxury hotel and condominium complex, rising (above) on the corner of Lusty Lady's side of the street, will occupy land that had been owned by the museum. Collector/donors Bagley Wright, honorary chair of the museum's capital campaign, and his wife Virginia, a SAM trustee since 1959, will be taking up residence there.

Taking up residence in the cozy nooks of SAM's façade were some pesky pigeons (including the one nestled in the rectangular niche, above). "We'll have to call the pigeon consultant again," sighed architect Brad Cloepfil, when I mentioned my avian sighting.

Here (above) is the the first view visitors get of the galleries, as they step off the escalator. As I described it in my WSJ article: You find yourself somewhere in the middle of the contemporary installation, at the Pop stop. Straight ahead, you are literally confronted by what appears to be a stop sign, except that it says "Go" ---a work by Iain Baxter. Your eyes are immediately drawn past that sign to the spotlit presence, through a doorway at the far end of the gallery, of one of SAM's star acquisitions---John Singleton Copley's "Dr. Silvester Gardiner."

If, when ascending to the galleries, you look to your right instead of straight ahead, you see the component of the new building that most causes architect Cloepfil to cringe---the white translucent railings that fence in the overlooks to lower floors throughout the museum. Cloepfil wanted these transparent, to enhance the feeling of continuity and flow, and to allow dramatic views, such as the sight of Cai Guo-Qiang's careening cars. (You can barely glimpse the nose of a Ford in this photo.) For SAM, it was a housekeeping issue: The translucent railings are easier to keep clean than fingerprint-smudged clear glass.

Photo by Eduardo Calderón

Above is the improbable "wow" space of the museum: a porcelain room, of all things. In seismically challenged Seattle (watch out below those cars!), every bit of crockery had to be fitted into an earthquake-resistant mount. The pieces are arranged by color and theme, not by period or geography, but a catalogue in the room provides visitors with details about each object.

I hope to revisit Seattle in future posts: Maybe I should provide more substantive reactions!

Daniel Brinkmeier, the Field Museum's manager for international community outreach by the environmental and conservation programs, responds to My NPR Soundbite on the Museum Propaganda Initiative:

It is interesting for me to see this discussion come up about State Department support for U.S. museum exhibits, training, and programming in other countries through the new MCCA funding program. I can only speak about this based on my own experience, having had two AAM-IPAM [International Partnerships Among Museums] museum exchanges, in the former Zaire in 1991 and, more recently, a very lengthy relationship with AAM-IPAM from 2002-2005, to develop a new natural history museum and teaching collection based at a university in northern Bolivia. This museum training and exhibit development effort was completely community based. That is, the content for what we did with the Bolivians came from the Bolivians, and nobody else.

To be honest with you, with the funding situation being what is, the State Department's providing these funds can really make a huge difference for institutions like ours and our collaborators in other countries. In our case, we have been able to apply these funds to areas that fall outside of normal funding efforts from Washington---indigenous communities, remote areas of the Amazon, students and poor rural families.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced yesterday the results of an inventory of Russian museum collections: More than 160,000 artifacts are said to be missing.

The inventory was ordered last summer by President Vladimir Putin, in the wake of the inside-job theft scandal at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

So what's going to be done about it?

Canada's CBC News reports:

Medvedev recommended wrapping up the investigation, even in cases where it is unknown where the art has gone, and concentrating on addressing the problems of Russia's museums. Many museums need extensive repairs and the commission is also discussing better security.

Better security---now there's an idea whose time has come. Any new government funding for this?

Exhibit C: The Reverse of the Disputed Warhol

I'm in no position to judge the merits of the case filed against the Andy Warhol Foundation, Estate and Authentication Board over the board's rejection of the authenticity of a painting bearing the image of a famous Warhol self-portrait (the one used on a U.S. postage stamp). All I know is what I've read in the "Class Action Complaint and Jury Demand," 07-cv-6423, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, by the owner of the disputed work, film writer and producer Joe Simon-Whelan.

The other side has yet to file its response to Simon-Whelan's elaborate conspiracy theory about market manipulation, which also alleges that the authentication board possessed insufficient expertise to make reliable determinations. Its members included two respected artworld heavyweights, the late Robert Rosenblum and the late David Whitney.

What I CAN say is that the case raises important questions about the conflicts of interest inherent in the not uncommon situation of an artist's estate that is, on the one hand, active in marketing its own holdings of the deceased artist's works and, on the other hand, engaged in the market-influencing role of deciding which works held by other owners can or cannot be deemed authentic.

The situation in this case is even more problematic, due to the Warhol board's defacement of the rejected work with two stamps (above) that bled to the front of the painting. According to the board's own letter of agreement that is signed by owners seeking its opinion:

Information may be received which causes the Authentication Board to doubt or to change the opinion, if any, expressed by it.

Indeed, it is not uncommon for expert opinion to change over the years. While the board's letter explaining its rejection gives many convincing reasons for its determination, the arguments presented by Simon-Whelan in his complaint at least raise the possibility that reasonable experts might disagree. Even if the prevailing opinion eventually changes, the work and its market value may be indelibly compromised by "Denied." Simon-Whelan alleges that representatives of the estate had themselves twice previously deemed the painting to be authentic.

Would-be legal eagles can now find the entire complaint and exhibits online, using the U.S. Court's PACER system, with which you must first register.

Alan Gilbert

Anthony Tommasini gets his wish. At least my pick, Riccardo Muti, gets the number two spot and is expected to spend six to eight weeks with the orchestra, according to Daniel Wakin's report in today's NY Times.

Lorin Maazel still has two more seasons as the orchestra's music director, before passing the baton.

So how come, under "What's New" on the NY Phil's home page, the first item is: "Food Drive at the Parks"?

UPDATE: This afternoon, the NY Phil home page caught up with the news, and subscribers received a special e-mail, with the following links: Here's his official bio. And here's a list of his concerts for the coming NY Phil season. Looks like the one with Audra McDonald is on my subscription series!

Here's my piece, "The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress," which appears in today's (Wednesday's) Wall Street Journal. Better late than never, as we always say.

Now that it's published, I can blog about some of the things I left out for lack of space and lack of taste. We wouldn't want to offend Rupert Murdoch's sensibilities by mentioning the "Lusty Lady" in the respectable newspaper that he hopes to acquire. (Seattle-ites, you know what I'm talking about.)

COMING SOON: CultureGrrl's irreverant (and irrelevant) photo essay on the expanded SAM. (Cue the pigeon consultant!)

After I sent NPR the link to my post this morning, they changed the mischievous headline. It no longer reads: "State Dept. Museums Plug Cultural Diplomacy."

Now it's: "State Department Funds World Museum Exhibits." That's nothing new, and it doesn't capture what's dicey about the new Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad program. Better would have been: "State Department Encourages Museums to Plug Cultural Diplomacy."

In any event, though I'm tempted to respond at length to Erik Ledbetter's BlogBack today on behalf of AAM, I'm going to (mostly) restrain myself: I don't like to discourage thoughtful dissent from readers.

I will only say that MCCA's suggested project descriptions for Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Pakistan and Peru make it explicitly clear that they are specifically intended to "promote U.S. foreign policy objectives."

That may make perfect sense to the State Department funders, but it's not the proper mission of independent U.S. museums.

UPDATE: None of my readers, aside from Ledbetter, have yet seen fit to comment on AAM's new program. Maybe the readers of this recent CultureGrrl-inspired commentary, just posted in "Give and Take," the Chronicle of Philanthropy's roundup of blogs about the nonprofit world, will be more outspoken.

Erik Ledbetter, senior manager of international programs for the American Association of Museums, responds to my posts (here and here) on the new Museums and Community Collaborations Abroad intiative:

AAM is pleased to see so much attention being paid to our new Museums and Community Collaborations Abroad program. However, when Lee characterizes MCCA as "co-opting museums to promote U.S. government foreign policy objectives," we must cheerfully but firmly disagree

• Only US museums, not AAM or the State Department, can make proposals.
• US museums can propose on any subject and with any partner they choose.
• US museums are in total control of the participating staff as well as the format, structure, and content of their projects.
• Department of State does not vet the proposals at any point in the competition cycle.
• Final selection will be made by a peer review panel composed of a past IPAM participant from a US museum; a representative of ICOM-US (the US National Committee of the International Council of Museums); and a distinguished non-US museum professional.

I did indeed have my one sentence of fame on National Public Radio today, in a segment that they (mischievously?) titled: "State Dept. Museums Plug Cultural Diplomacy."

Does this mean that institutions that imprudently allow themselves be co-opted by political propagandists will henceforth be know as "State Department Museums"?

Taking the other side in this two-minute debate was Erik Ledbetter, director of international programs at the American Association of Museums, which is collaborating with the State Department in administering the Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad program. Ledbetter drew a dubious connection between the new program and the Marshall Plan (the megabucks postwar program of humanitarian relief) and observed that museums' "colleagues---U.S. scholars, not administration officials...will make the final awards." Maybe so, but won't the State Department, which is funding the program to achieve specific objectives, carefully vet the proposals before final choices are made?

Whatever your view, you can listen to this morning's NPR segment here.

And you can comment on CultureGrrl here. Anna McAlpine, AAM's media and communications coordinator, indicated yesterday that she would be sending a response. So far, none has arrived.

I was interviewed this afternoon by Elizabeth Blair of National Public Radio for a segment related to this post, criticizing the new Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad program. With or without my comments, it's scheduled to air tomorrow (Tuesday) on Morning Edition. I'll post a link to the audio, when available.

When Hawass Met Hatshepsut

I don't know about you, but I was not entirely convinced by the confident and unequivocal identification of Queen Hatshepsut's mummy, as shown in exhaustive and dramatic detail last night on the Discovery Channel's 's documentary, Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen. The ennobling of the previously anonymous mummy revolved around the Cinderella glass slipper premise: If the tooth (more or less) fits, it must be the celebrated female pharaoh. The broadcast company had engaged Egypt's publicity-loving Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, to solve the mummy mystery, and he obligingly pursued the case on camera.

Extensive DNA testing and CT scans were done on an array of frightful corpses, but the lucky winner one was chosen because a tooth, detected through scanning, in the female pharaoh's unopened canopic box (which bears her name) supposedly matched a gap, also viewed through a CT scan, in the previously unidentified mummy's diseased mouth.

Unsurprisingly, not all experts are convinced, as NY Times writer John Noble Wilford reported last month:

Other Egyptologists not involved in the project said that the finding was fascinating, but that they would reserve judgment until they had studied the results of the DNA analysis and had some of the evidence confirmed by other researchers.

''You have to be so careful in reaching conclusions from such data,'' said Kathryn Bard, an Egyptologist at Boston University.

That didn't stop the Metropolitan Museum, a few days ago, from appearing to endorse Hawass' discovery in a press release:

Two magnificent statues of Hatshepsut---a woman who ruled ancient Egypt as a pharaoh---are on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this summer, in advance of the re-opening of the Museum's Hatshepsut Gallery later this year. It was announced recently in Cairo that Hatshepsut's mummy---long thought to be lost---has been identified.

If you want to draw your own conclusions, you can see a replay of the documentary tonight on the Science Channel.

But wait: If you go for the mummy, you might have to miss another highbrow documentary tonight: Simon Schama's take on Jacques-Louis David, complete with an actor impersonating the artist. How come no actor had the temerity to pretend to be Rembrandt, last week's protagonist in PBS's continuing Monday-night saga, Power of Art?

Should museums participate in a program that exploits their expertise to promote U.S. government foreign policy objectives?

Jason Kaufman of The Art Newspaper alerts us to a highly disturbing crossing of lines between disinterested scholarship and political agendas:

According to the American Association of Museums' description of its new Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad (MCCA) program, it specifically "targets regions and communities that would benefit most from a better connection with, and understanding of, American people and culture." It was established in partnership with the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which has provided funding.

The Request for Proposals suggests specific "project concepts" for five "pre-qualified" foreign museums, along with the foreign policy objectives that the projects should promote, in each instance. In Kazakhstan, for example, that means encouraging "the development of a Kazakhstani national identity that embraces the multi-ethnic, multi-religious character of the country's population that existed for many centuries....The [Shymkent] Museum [of Natural History] is planning to arrange an expo-bus that will travel in the southern region of Kazakhstan, a traditionally Muslim-concentrated area."

Maybe Borat dreamed this up, "for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan."

MCCA grants will be offered in amounts between $50,000 and $100,000. Final proposals are due Aug. 1.

Let's hope there are no takers. Cultural ties can assuredly improve relations between countries, but not when they are conceived as an instrument of political propaganda. AAM has done a disservice to its members by signing up for this dubious government-curated enterprise.

I invite your comments on this.

Chips Off the New Bloch

I like what Tyler Green accomplishes on Modern Art Notes this morning, giving a new perspective to the already much celebrated Steven Holl addition (above) to Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum.

He does something that few critics ever stoop do do: shares with us the effect of the Bloch Building on real people, not just the "experts." Seen-it-all critics, who usually review new buildings and exhibitions under the hothouse conditions of press previews, almost always miss that dimension, which is crucial: The power of the press notwithstanding, art museums do exist to engage the public, not the critics.

By accident, I performed something of the same service in my Wall Street Journal review of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 in Washington. I was unable to get there for the press preview, and showed up when it was populated by civilians. I was amazed at what I saw going on in the spotlit inlaid disk of red Seneca sandstone (meant to suggest fire), at the center of NMAI's expansive wood-floored rotunda:

A succession of celebrants were drawn to the center of the circle: One pre-adolescent boy stood there motionless, gazing upward to the skylight, arms outstretched. A grinning young girl twirled around giddily. Two teenagers sat cross-legged on the red sandstone. Two couples -- one young, one gray-haired -- paused for a kiss in the spotlight. This magical gathering place fosters an immediate sense of intimacy and community among visitors.

The critics generally sniffed at this museum (unlike the Nelson-Atkins, which they loved), bringing their preconceived notions of what an art museum should be and do. That was not what the Native American planners and consultants for their new museum were going for, and it worked very well on their own terms.

Speaking of late reviews...I hear my WSJ assessment of the expanded Seattle Art Museum may be set to run on Wednesday. But it's a little like the new Acropolis Museum: It's been postponed before, so don't hold your breath. You'll get the heads-up on CultureGrrl, once it arrives on the WSJ online.

The Professional Association of Visual Artists in the Netherlands is demanding a halt to the eBay auction of works that were given to the national art collection in return for a fixed income for participating artists. The group "has sent a letter explaining their indignation about the affair to the Dutch Minister of Culture," according to De Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper. (Thanks to Frank van Eykelen, a CultureGrrl reader in Holland, for sending me the translated article.)

Bieke van der Mark reports:

The professional artists association is primarily angry because the ICN has failed to notify artists of their work being auctioned off.

Henk Rijzinga, secretary of the artists's organization, argued that because, under their agreement with the national collection, "artists always retain the right to ask for their work back temporarily...for exhibitions," the art cannot legally be sold. "This auction ruins the market," he added. His group has threatened legal action.

According to De Volkskrant, Marina Raijmakers, a spokeswoman for the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN), which is disposing of the works, said that she was sorry that all the affected artists had not been informed of the sell-off:

The intention was there. We placed ads and sent a letter to as many artists as possible. We could however not hunt down all addresses.

What they could have done, though, is asked for permission from the artists they did find, and refrained from unloading the oeuvre of those who objected or who couldn't be located.

The article also reports:

The Central Museum, Industrion, Museum for Communication, MuseumGoudA and Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal are culling their collections via eBay, concurrently with the ICN. For the past three months, the works have been offered first to other Dutch museums.

EBay for museum deaccessions? Could it be that's why Christie's Live, that auction house's online sales division, didn't attract more interest during its first year?

Roberta Lapucci

It's a painting that was regarded as a copy of a recognized Caravaggio, "St. Jerome Writing," in the Oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta. Now Roberta Lapucci says the version that she recently examined is also by the master.

Roberta Who?

The Associated Press has the story, but fails to identify Lapucci. She's a conservator and has been a faculty member of Studio Art Centers International, an American art school in Florence. Her bio (including Caravaggio credentials) is here.

Alessandra Rizzo reports:

The painting that Lapucci examined in Florence belongs to a private collector in Malta. The collector had sent it to her lab to have it cleaned up for an exhibit featuring the two [St. Jerome] versions side-by-side as part of events marking the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's visit to the tiny Mediterranean island nation in 1607-1608.

The early skeptics, quoted by AP, have already weighed in.

Christie's has just issued two important press releases: The first boasts about the first-year performance of its online bidding service, Christie's Live; the second celebrates the auction house's "Historic Worldwide Sales" for the first half of this year.

I'll discuss the second release next week. For now, you can get Bloomberg's take on it, here.

The release about the "phenonmenal success" of Christie's Live has so many holes that you could drive four trucks through it. So I did: I sent the press office the following four questions, eliciting the same answer for all of them:

We have not disclosed that figure.

Without these answers, it is very hard to assess whether online bidding for high-quality art is the wave of the future or (as it appears) just a drop in the bucket. Here's what I asked:

1) How many lots were purchased through Christie's Live during its first year? [A reasonable and basic question, or so I thought. All they would say is that there have been "28,600 online bids"---not necessarily successful ones.]
2) How many unique individuals (not counting repeats by the same registrant) have bid (not just registered) on Christie's Live during its first year? [We do know that only 52% of the "Live" registrants actually used the service to make a bid, but we don't know how many people that represents.]
3) You say 15% of Live clients are new to Christies. How many clients is that? And how many of those new clients have actually bid (as opposed to just registered)?
4) Do you have any figures on the median and/or mean price of works that were actually purchased through Christie's Live (or any other way of quantifying the price level of bids that it attracts)?

The Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow yesterday crunched Christie's numbers to observe:

The technology hasn't done much yet to boost the auction house's bottom line. Since launching the online venture last July, the auction house says, it has sold $25.1 million of fine and decorative art to online bidders, or about 0.5% of the $4.6 billion in art it sold last year.

Actually, a fairer comparison would be to the $1.68-billion sold total at the 377 sales for which online bidding was actually allowed during the past year. (The $1.68-billion figure was the answer to the one statistical question I asked that DID elicit a useful response.) The big-ticket Impressionist/modern and contemporary evening sales were not on Christie's Live, but may be brought online this fall, according to Christie's PR head, Toby Usnik. But even using this smaller, more relevant sold total, it appears that going online did little to help the bottom line.

An important curator from a major big-city museum (not New York) wrote yesterday to take me to task for suggesting that the Klee Center in Bern should have allowed skylights in the galleries, even if it compromised the condition of the art.

Although skylights would have made Renzo Piano's achievement even more exciting, I never meant to suggest that architectural aesthetics should have trumped the requirements for protecting art. The fact that such a distinguished reader got that mistaken impression leads me to believe that perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear in my post.

What I did say was: "The requirements of the art took precedence over architectural aesthetics." That (obviously, I hope) is a good thing.

Remember how I (perhaps) saved Mathew Brady's sunbathing Abraham Lincoln at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery?

It's not official until the NY Times lady gets that story. This means: If it's not Friday (the day when Carol Vogel's "Inside Art" hits the stands), the news hasn't really happened yet.

Vogel reports in tomorrow's paper (online tonight) that Damien Hirst's shark is indeed set to menace the Met, as suggested by CultureGrrl two days ago. Apparently it's arriving as a loan from Steve Cohen, "for two to three years," not as an acquisition. By then, I guess they'll know if it's starting to decompose or if Hirst has pickled it perfectly this time. Who knows? Maybe this trial lap will give Philippe enough time to befriend the beast.

Vogel also finally puts her imprimatur on the even older Richard Prince disaster story, with the news that he's considering replacing his lightning-struck "Second House" with a customized house created from a ready-made kit. Apparently "a lot of the art was spared" when the house burned down: "It had been removed because work was in progress to improve the building's infrastructure and security system."

...including, perhaps, the prudent addition of a lightning rod?

The Zentrum Paul Klee's Secret Skylight

During my recent European sojourn, I got to see two of the world's most celebrated recent museum buildings, both by Renzo Piano: His Beyeler Foundation Museum, in Riehen (near Basel), more than lived up to its reputation as one of the most perfect confluences of nature, architecture and art ever created. I was enchanted by everything---even the quiet, slow-moving glass elevator, and especially the little frog perched on the ledge of the reflecting pool, just outside a gallery window. It shows what can be accomplished by a single connoisseur (dealer/collector Ernst Beyeler) possessed of consummate taste and substantial resources.

I also admired Piano's Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, but the experience was partly diminished by two disappointments:

First, the dramatic curve-ceilinged, upper-level galleries were closed for a major reconfiguration and reinstallation, because they were being repurposed: Originally designed to display the permanent collection, the top floor, as of this summer, has become the space for temporary exhibitions.

Rotating selections from the permanent collection have been relegated to the more modest lower-level galleries, which now contain an exhibition revolving around a major loan---Klee's Ad Parnassum. This key painting in his oeuvre has not, because of its fragile condition, left the nearby Bern Kunstmuseum in 14 years.

Turning the Klee museum upside down was the idea of the its new director, Juri Steiner, who wanted to place more emphasis on temporary shows that juxtapose loaned works with the permanent collection. First up on the upper level: Paul Klee---Theatre Here, There and Everywhere, to Oct. 14, which includes some 40 works from museums and galleries in Switzerland as well as from the Tate Modern, the Pompidou Center and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.

My second disappointment was my discovery that the upper-level galleries are not skylit. Perhaps because of its greenhouse-like appearance, I had mistakenly assumed that the roof of the museum's three glass-and-steel "hills" admitted natural light.

The museum's curator, Michael Baumgartner, who gave me a quick peek at the peaks, told me that Piano had initially hoped for skylights. But the requirements of the art took precedence over architectural aesthetics.

As the museum's website notes:

The Zentrum Paul Klee will be showing mainly light-sensitive works that can stand a maximum of 80 lux. The future Centre will therefore be a twilight museum. The daylight that trickles in through the roof is regulated and dampened.

The "trickle" is not readily evident: The ceiling appears opaque.

But there IS one place, which you will never see (above), where Piano got his wish: The roof over the staff offices is transparent, admitting rays so bright that they've installed patio umbrellas over some tables---part joke, part necessity. Pass the sunscreen.

You can access images of the Klee center, including shots of what the top-floor gallery looked like before its makeover, on the website of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. (Click on "Selected Projects" and then on "Zentrum Paul Klee.")

But only on CultureGrrl can you view the secret sunny sanctum!

The Metropolitan Museum's Recognition for Its Controversial Benefactor

During his visit last month to New York, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli not only said he had reached an antiquities repatriation agreement with Princeton University (which Princeton still says has not been finalized), but also, as I then reported, "enigmatically mentioned that he hopes for additional 'good news from our American trip.'"

Now the Italian Culture Ministry has sent me a news article, published last Sunday in the Italian-language newspaper Il Messaggero, which suggests that Rutelli's "good news" might refer to talks with the antiquities collector and Metropolitan Museum patron Shelby White.

Fabio Isman reports:

During his recent visit to the USA, Rutelli found agreement with the Princeton museum and Shelby White, a "VIP" American...with a rich collection...."We are a step away from a final accord....The negotiations are substantially concluded. They will permit the return of important pieces to Italy's possession. ['Possesso' can also be translated as 'ownership.'] Shelby White's gesture is important, because there is no legal obligation for the restitution of works belonging to a private collection."

The NY Times had reported, several weeks before Rutelli's visit, that a final agreement could not then be reached because White had required assurances from Italy that she would not be subject to future claims. The Italian news report does not specify whether that impasse has now been resolved.

Are Rutelli's "agreements" realtà o speranza?

Object of Contention: "Victorious Youth," Greek, 300 - 100 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum

After a quiet period, The Great Repatriator is on the warpath against the J. Paul Getty Museum again. The Associated Press has the story here.

But a much more illuminating account comes from ANSA, the Italian news agency, which reports:

[Italian Culture Minister] Francesco Rutelli reiterated a threat to break off relations with [the Getty] unless all the disputed objects came home by the end of this month.

If it failed to do so, he said, "a fully fledged conflict would be unleashed, a full-scale embargo" that would mean "an end to cultural and scientific collaboration between Italy and this museum."

Rutelli announced that he had sent the Getty his "final proposal for dialogue and agreement." Is this final proposal more final than his last final proposal?

Ron Hartwig, the Getty's vice president for communications, is putting a good face on these developments. He told CultureGrrl:

The Minister and [Getty Museum director] Michael [Brand] have exchanged letters. We are encouraged that communication has resumed and we are hopeful we can reach an agreement. But at this point there is not much more to report.

For my detailed analysis of this hot-button issue, go here.

In a related story, I've several times asked Princeton if the agreement that Rutelli announced last month in New York has actually been signed, but so far there's been no change from what Cass Cliatt, the university's media relations manager, told me two weeks ago: "We are in final negotiations."

And that's final...at least for now.

Bob Shannon, back in the day

Be still, my Motown soul!

At last, I've got a radio station to act as the perfect antidote to too much classical seriousness: WCBS-FM is coming back with its oldies format (and with the great Bob Shannon (above) as one of its deejays)!

I wrote about the temporary demise of that great New York City cultural resource here. And my daughter will be gladdened by the return of K-Rock.

Bloomberg (henceforth to be known as Boomersberg) had the story yesterday.

Today, the NY Times tells us (scroll down):

Intended to attract the younger listeners prized by advertisers, [the prior change in format] cost the station more than half its audience share and nearly 30 percent of its advertising revenues.

For better (and sometimes for worse), Boomers Rule! How much do you bet that the first song they play, when they switch over at 1:01 p.m. on Thursday, is the one that goes: "Still like that old time Rock-'n-Roll"?

One problem, though: It looks like they're lopping off the '50s. What, no Bobby Darin, no Chuck Berry? What are they thinking?

Would anyone like to buy a slightly used HD2 radio?

Installation View of Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," Kunsthaus Bregenz

Last October in the NY Times, Carol Vogel wrote this about Damien Hirst's "replacement" shark, owned by megacollector Steve Cohen:

Rumors have circulated in the art world that Mr. Cohen has promised the work ["The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living"] to the Museum of Modern Art. But Mr. Cohen said that he had made no plans to donate the work to the Modern and that he is unsure exactly where he will put it when the tank arrives in Connecticut.

''Ultimately I think it's a piece that needs to be put in a major museum,'' he said. ''I've had discussions with some, but I can't say which ones, and nothing has been decided.''

Now rumors are swirling that it's going to be shown at (and perhaps acquired by) the Metropolitan Museum. It recently returned to these shores from an exhibition, "Re-Object," that closed in May at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (above).

Sandy Heller, Cohen's art advisor, said he could not comment, other than to say that the piece would be "fantastic at the Met. It would be amazing."

A highly placed Met official with whom I spoke yesterday (and who is in a position to know) could have refused comment or denied the rumor. Instead, the official requested my phone number, ostensibly to get back to me later about whether the Met was circling the shark. (I'm still waiting onshore.) The Met's press office, to which I sent an inquiring e-mail, hasn't yet taken the bait.

Cohen and the Met were co-purchasers of an important Rauschenberg, "Winter Pool," 1959, displayed at the museum's "Robert Rauschenberg: Combines" exhibition last year.

But hooking this cumbersome catch could be against the better judgment of the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, who on Oct. 5, 1999 wrote a NY Times Op-Ed piece (which seems to have disappeared from its website), "Making a Cause Out of Bad Art," which complimented then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for his "aesthetic sensibilities" in bashing the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" show. Hirst's toothy predator was arguably that provocative show's centerpiece, although Giuliani preferred to do battle not with the shark but with Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary."

Perhaps Philippe has now learned to smile at "Jaws." (Pass the formaldehyde.) Do you think that MoMA's well-heeled trustees would settle for a diamond skull?

Were you sorry you didn't grill NY Times culture editor Sam Sifton last time he opened himself up to online questions?

Here's you second chance!

In what seems like a breach of faith with Dutch contemporary artists, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, a government agency, will gradually sell on eBay some 1,000 works, many of which were previously purchased for the national art collection as part of the government's program for subsidizing the output of professional artists.

Another 300 works, considered of better quality, will be auctioned in October at Venduehuis, an auction house in The Hague, according to an Agence France-Press article.

It appears that the permission of the artists was not sought, as is customary when U.S. museums sell works by living artists. Indeed, many museums rourtinely refrain from disposing of such works, so as not to injure artists' reputations.

AFP's Gerald de Hemptinne reports:

Five museums are also taking part in the initiative, which has sparked outrage among some of the artists whose work is up for sale....The [Institute for Cultural Heritage] manages about 100,000 works from the Dutch state's art collection. When the objects are not gracing the walls of Dutch museums, ministries or embassies they languish in depots.

The sales mark the dismantling of an unusual program, much admired by international artists, to remove some financial obstacles to the pursuit of creative careers, by subsidizing artists in exchange for works given to the state. The article does not mention who will receive proceeds from the sales---the artists, the institute, or both. More information about the institute and its collection is here (click on "3" at the top).

Meanwhile, a similar program, the Canada Council's Art Bank, sustained similar challenges in the 1990s, was forced to become self-sufficient (through rentals), established criteria "for identifying works that had never rented, for future divestment," and "purchased new work for the first time in 2000-2001," according to its website. "Despite the shift in emphasis from collecting to renting, the Art Bank has still succeeded in purchasing important works of art and will continue to do so in the future."

Maybe in this era of soaring prices for recent art school graduates, the notion of the starving artist, in need of a handout, is beginning to seem outmoded.

Robie House during exterior restoration. Collection of Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust

In an article about the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater that I wrote for the Wall Street Journal four years ago, I mentioned that its gift shop was selling pricey jewelry "containing authentic construction debris" from the iconic Mill Run, PA, house.

Now Wright's celebrated Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago is undergoing major restoration, providing similar souvenir opportunities. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust:

You can purchase an authentic Robie House brick from a limited number of the home's original bricks that could not be incorporated into our restoration work. Complete with commemorative plaque, certificate of authenticity and history, each rust-colored, iron-spotted, kiln-fired brick is a distinctive piece of this architectural icon.

The price for a 6- by 4-inch piece of the Wright stuff: $250.

The exterior restoration (above) was completed in 2003, but interior restoration continues. The house remains open to visitors during the overhaul.

Do you think New York's fixer-upper Guggenheim Museum will be selling chips off the old façade?

Meanwhile, in other Wright news: Another of his houses has been added to the list of those you where you can sleep over---Duncan House in Johnstown, PA, not far from Fallingwater. Recently moved to its current location from Lisle, IL., 25 miles west of Chicago, it is "one of only 11 remaining prefabricated Wright-designed structures in the nation," as reported by Rachel Adams in the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Here's the website for Duncan House, and here are some photos of its exterior and interior, including (on Page 3) two rather spartan-looking bedrooms. (What, no pillows?)

Now's your chance to own a brick, sleep on a brick...or both!

Second House, 2003. Interior view. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. © Richard Prince

The Guggenheim has been having a bizarrely off-kilter year: First, the theft of a Goya from a truck that was transporting it from the Toledo Museum in Ohio to the Guggenheim's blockbuster Spanish paintings show. The painting was subsequently recovered, but neither the name of the shipper nor any arrests of those involved in the theft have ever been announced.

Next, the cancellation of the museum's plans to be only American venue for another blockbuster involving the same Spanish master, Citizens and Kings: Portraiture in the Age of David and Goya, the last exhibition co-organized by its late curator, Robert Rosenblum. The Guggenheim had to pull out of the three-museum traveling show because the extensive restoration of its aging Frank Lloyd Wright building involved "unforeseen exterior restoration work, including the replacement of lights, the reinforcement of the apron slab, and exterior concrete repair," a Guggenheim spokesperson told CultureGrrl at the time. A substitute venue had been sought but, apparently, not found.

And now, as reported yesterday by Artnet, a planned Guggenheim acquisition, Richard Prince's "Second House" in Rensselaerville, NY, has been destroyed. Walter Robinson writes:

On June 28, 2007, lightning hit the building, sparking a fire that reduced the wood structure to ashes.

[The Guggenheim later responded to my request for confirmation and comment, and said that the lightning strike was on June 27, not the 28th and that the damage was "significant." See further Guggenheim updates and clarifications, below.]

According to the Guggenheim's 2005 press release on the property's acquisition:

Individual Car Hood sculptures in the house have been acquired by several Guggenheim trustees and patrons and promised to the museum for its permanent collection. The house itself, the other works that comprise its contents, and the land on which the house is located have been promised to the Foundation by the artist.

The Guggenheim had planned to "keep the house open to the public five months a year for at least 10 years, after which time the artworks [would] enter the Guggenheim's contemporary holdings as a definitive example of Prince's practice," according to an essay by curator Nancy Spector.

As (bad) luck would have it, the Guggenheim is poised to open a Richard Prince retrospective, Sept. 28-Jan. 9, in which his "Second House" would undoubtedly have played an important role.

UPDATE: My request for further clarification an comment, sent last night by me to the Guggenheim, has just been answered this afternoon. Betsy Ennis, director of public affairs, writes:

We can confirm that on June 27, 2007, Richard Prince's "Second House," an art installation which was gifted by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 2005, was struck by lightning during an electrical storm. The damage from the fire caused by the lightning was significant and is currently being assessed by the Foundation in consultation with the artist and the insurance company. The suite of Hood sculptures which are being donated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation were not on the premises at the time.

The Met's New Acquisition, ex-Albright Knox

The Metropolitan Museum paid a stiff price to reclaim one of the Albright-Knox Gallery's deaccessions for the public domain. Exceeded in price only by "Artemis and the Stag" at the Buffalo museum's antiquities sell-off at Sotheby's on June 7 was the Elamite (southeastern Iran) copper figure of a horned hero (above), ca. 3000-2800 B.C.

It's the second of the Albright-Knox's orphans to find a good home at a major museum.

Its $3.18-million price (which Bloomberg had previously reported was paid by New York dealer Robert Haber as agent for "an unnamed U.S. museum," now identified as the Met) was even more astonishing than the $28.6 million lavished by dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi (bidding for an unnamed European private collector) on the more celebrated late Hellenistic/early Roman Imperial bronze that was the sale's top lot. The Met's acquisition, a mere 6 7/8 inches high, was estimated by the auction house to bring only $150,000 to $250,000. It's interesting and a bit surprising that the museum was able to muster an amount so wildly in excess of the expected price.

And it's distressing that such a heavy ransom must be exacted from a public institution to rescue what should never have left the public domain in the first place.

Gerhard Richter's Design for South Transept Window of Cologne Cathedral

During my recent Rhine journey, I saw workers behind a scrim, completing work on a monumental new Gerhard Richter south transept window, replacing one that had been destroyed during World War II. The new window is scheduled to be unveiled to the public on Aug. 25.

According to our tour guide, the window design was subjected to computer analysis, to insure that no "unfavorable [i.e., inappropriate] imagery" could be discerned within its ostensibly abstract patterns. (Can't you make out that fuzzy Baader-Meinhof group member in the lower left? Just kidding.)

Richter, who lives in Cologne, is said to have based his design on his 1974 Color Chart painting, "4096 Colors," now on loan from a private collector at Cologne's Ludwig Museum, where it is one of five works by the artist spaciously displayed in a prominent gallery.

My guide could not provide any cost figures, but Artnet reported last August that "the artist is making a gift of the work, whose production cost, some €350,000, is being covered by donations." Donation forms are offered near the cathedral's entrance.

Richter-related links on the cathedral's website (in German) are here and here.

Born on the Third of July: Another Arts Blogger

Not to be undone by the NY Times' arrhythmic ArtsBeat, the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday launched ArtsWatch, but this one appears to be a one-man band: Its sole pundit is veteran culture writer Peter Dobrin (above), whose specialty is classical music (subject of his first two posts). The blog does bill itself as "who's making news, noise and splash in the Philadelphia arts world and beyond," so we can only hope that visual arts will be part of the mix. After all, with the Barnes relocation controversy, the "Fakins" and the imminent expansion of the Philadelphia Museum, there's a lot to opine on.

Speaking of "making splash," please excuse me while I prepare a rain-fizzled Fourth of July, with a terrace view of the likely-to-be-curtailed fireworks, for 14 of my unfortunate friends.

Digital Fly-Through of the New Acropolis Museum

I saw the above video four years ago in New York, when it was presented by the Greek Culture Ministry as part of a larger exhibition on Athens' planned New Acropolis Museum. (For more on that exhibition, go here and click on "03.06.03.)

Since then, much progress has been made. Kathimerini, Greece's English-language newspaper, reported yesterday:

[The Acropolis Museum] will close today so that preparations can get under way for the transfer of some 300 ancient artifacts to the new museum that is being built just 400 meters away....Three giant lifting cranes will be used to help move 5th-century B.C. antiquities from the Parthenon to the New Acropolis Museum at the foot of the hill.

Unmoved are the marbles from the British Museum, which owns more than half of the Parthenon frieze. In what Greek culture officials then called "a bit of propaganda," the above video shows the new museum fitted out with the complete set of marbles. In actuality, the installation will leave gaps in the spots that should be occupied, in the continuing sequence of the ancient procession depicted, by the British-owned contingent. The Greeks have never given up hope that the expatriate marbles would return. But it looks unlikely that those hopes will be realized any time soon.

The new museum is expected to open early next year. But these plans keep getting postponed: Remember when it was supposed to open for the 2004 Olympics? The last time I wrote about this Bernard Tschumi-designed project, it was to open "the first half of 2007."

It's just GOT to happen, eventually!

Last week, in a post about a new organization to train curators for museum directorships, I speculated that one of that group's advisors, the Metropolitan Museum's veteran director Philippe de Montebello, might worried about who will be chosen as his own successor.

In that connection, I've learned from a highly place Met source that each year the museum's chairman, James Houghton (whom I've previously queried about the Met's succession plans), asks Philippe for a list of people who could admirably perform his job if, for any reason, he were unable to do so. My source (not Houghton) could not tell me who was on that list.

That said, museum directors don't always get the chance to handpick their successors, and it's not unusual for boards to opt from someone whose style sharply contrasts with the incumbent: think Tom Krens/Tom Messer; Glenn Lowry/Richard Oldenburg; Adam Weinberg/Max Anderson.

Tom Hoving/Philippe de Montebello was perhaps the starkest contrast of all---the self-promoter vs. the self-effacer. But in that case, oddly enough, the successor WAS the incumbent's pick. Even odder, the new director was a dark horse, lacking a Ph.D., and conventional wisdom doubted he was up to the demands of the job.

Always the contrarian, I indicated (in a long ARTnews profile based on extensive interviews at the time of Philippe's ascension) that I thought the new appointee had the goods.

Was I right?

Thomas Eakins, "Portrait of Professor William S. Forbes," 1905

Another story I missed while I was in Europe was the sale of the third and last remaining Thomas Eakins (above) from Thomas Jefferson University's collection. The Philadelphia Inquirer story had no information about the buyer, so I contacted the usual suspect, Alice Walton's voracious Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and got the following reply from its director, Robert Workman:

Sorry, Lee. As you know, it is our policy to not comment on the acquisitions activity of Crystal Bridges.

Actually, Bob, I didn't know. In fact, there was an immediate announcement in April when Eakins' "Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand," also jettisoned by Jefferson, entered the nascent Arkansas museum's collection. The museum's website provides information about 13 key acquisitions. Museums are not always transparent about their deaccessions, but major accessions are usually news, not secrets.

If Walton did buy the Eakins for her museum, she has nothing to hide: If there's anyone to blame for ill-advised deaccessions, it's the seller not the buyer. In this instance, when the seller was a medical school, not a cultural institution, the sale may have been regrettable; it may have been a slight to the memories of the university luminaries portrayed in the paintings; but it was not a violation of the institution's professional mission.

That said, it's risable that the medical school continues to vaunt on its website The Jefferson Art Tradition, highlighting the establishment in 1982 of its Eakins Gallery for the three (now vanished) masterpieces. That gallery still displays artworks, but the only Eakins in evidence is by his wife, Susan MacDowell Eakins---a portrait of French painter Julien Lemordant, on long-term loan from the French Benevolent Society of Philadelphia.

Even more preposterous is the university's decision to substitute a copy of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" in place of the real thing, now jointly owned by the Philadelphia Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The replica should be called "The Bogus Clinic." Philly wags have another name for it: "The Fakins."

Truth in advertising: "The Jefferson Art Tradition" should be renamed "The Jefferson Art Perdition."