August 2007 Archives

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. has just filed a brief in Davidson County Chancery Court asserting his strong opposition to the settlement agreement between Fisk University in Nashville and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The court will hold a hearing on the agreement this Thursday.

Excerpts from the AG's brief:

This lawsuit has come full circle. It began with Fisk University seeking court approval to sell two paintings from the Stieglitz collection in order to raise money for the school. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum intervened, arguing that Fisk could not sell the paintings in violation of express conditions placed upon the Collection by Georgia O'Keeffe. This Court agreed and enjoined Fisk from selling any of the Collection. Now, the same two parties---Fisk and the O'Keeffe Museum---are back seeking this Court's approval to sell the same two paintings, only now in contravention of this Court's previous order....

This Office is sympathetic to the financial difficulties outlined in Fisk's complaint. But the court has clearly said that Fisk cannot resolve its problems in this way. As this Court noted in its June 12 ruling, Fisk's difficulties provide no legal basis to discard the restrictions placed by Georgia O'Keeffe against the piecemeal sale of the Stieglitz Collection.

Cooper also argued against "removing the signature piece of the Collection [O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building"] and transporting it over 1,200 miles away from Nashville." This, he noted, "does not serve the interests of the people of the State of Tennessee in the Collection.

Let's see. How many miles from Nashville is Bentonville, Arkansas, the site of the Crystal Bridges Museum whose founder, Alice Walton, covets a half-share in Fisk's entire Stieglitz Collection? Only 550 miles. Does that make it better?

Cooper's clout notwithstanding, it does appear that CultureGrrl has had some influence on the Fisk fracas: Walton sent Cooper an amended letter, spelling "Stieglitz" correctly. I guess she must have received my memo!

The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, announces its planned expansion into 29,000 square feet of former factory space owned by MASS MoCA in nearby North Adams. The two art institutions will embark on new collaborative programs. Some museum directors would feel sufficiently challenged by plans for two new buildings by Tadao Ando and a renovation of its existing building, to be designed by Annabelle Selldorf. No wonder Clark director Michael Conforti needs a sabbatical! More from the Boston Globe here.

Damien Hirst reportedly gets his $100 million for his diamond skull and imposes a novel condition on the unnamed investment group purchasing it, according to Linda Sandler of Bloomberg: two or three years of public display in museums. Does he stipulate which museums he deems acceptable and is he confident that museums will want to bestow their value-added prestige on this "investment"? Are there any resale royalties in this contract?

One more for the annals of discordant concert-hall performances: The Orange County Performing Arts Center, Costa Mesa, CA, is suing Cesar Pelli's architecture firm over cost overruns, delays and "design flaws that allegedly can't be fixed, including obstructed sight lines, cramped quarters and a lack of legroom in certain seats," reports Tony Illia in Engineering News-Record. Shades of the Philadelphia Kimmel Center-Rafael Viñoly contretemps.

Don't worry. He's not leaving yet.

But in an interview with Danny Daniziger, the London-based author of the new oral-history book, Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (above), director Philippe de Montebello poignantly anticipates his "one last walk" at the Met.

The book is a series of short transcripts from Danziger's interviews with 49 Met-sters, ranging from George Cuesta of the plumbing shop to James Houghton, board chairman. Despite its tell-all title, there are few juicy revelations and the book's main theme is that people are tickled pink to be associated with the museum and they revere its director. The interviewees are in alphabetical order, putting "Montebello" somewhere in the middle.

These musings by PdM should really have been at the end. Read them and weep:

Nothing lasts forever. One day I'll have to say good-bye to the Met, to have one last walk. I'll be egotistical about it. Probably I'll go at midday when the sun is highest because most of the daylit galleries benefit from maximum zenithal light. Also, I prefer to walk in museums when there are people around....

I don't know what my path will be, but part of the mystery and beauty of my last walk at the Met is that it will not be planned. I'll bifurcate when I choose to. I will not be needing a schedule because of a meeting or an exhibition preparation later. I will have all the time in the world. And I will not know the route in advance; the element of improvisation will be an important part of it. I will become a pure flaneur, and, reflecting on what Valéry said about le vagabondage de l'oeil, my eye would become a vagabond in the galleries. A huge number of emotions will be awakened. I cry easily, so I might weep.

We might too.

Alice Walton at the Crystal Bridges Construction Site

I am not one of those who have criticized Alice Walton for buying important works from the collections of cultural institutions. When NY Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman blasted her for "raiding the New York Public Library in 2005 for a civic landmark, Asher B. Durand's 'Kindred Spirits," I wrote:

She didn't "raid" the library; the work was put on the market and she bought it. The library, not Walton, was to blame.

But now, Alice has exceeded the limits of my tolerance.

That's because in her letter to Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper, informing him of her desire to purchase a half-share of Fisk University's entire Stieglitz Collection, she tried to wrap herself in an ill-fitting cloak---that of a stalwart defender of donor intent:

As an art collector, and as founder of Crystal Bridges American Art Museum, I understand the importance of honoring a donor's intent....The "Radiator Building" and Hartley paintings are critical parts of the [Stieglitz] Collection and the Collection will cease to exist if these two paintings are separated [through sales] from the Collection. Such an event would be a tragedy of historical significance.

There was probably far more regrettable "historical significance" attached to the New York Public Library's sale of the Durand to Walton, and it was surely contrary to the donor's intent: The daughter of writer William Cullen Bryant, one of the two subjects (along with his friend, painter Thomas Cole) of "Kindred Spirits," specifically wrote, apropos her 1904 donation of the painting to the library, that she took particular pleasure in the appropriateness of the library's site---the eponymous Bryant Park, where, as she noted, it would "be more at home than anywhere else."

The donor of the Stieglitz Collection to Fisk---Georgia O'Keeffe---intended for it to remain at the university in Nashville, not to spend half the time in Bentonville, Arkansas, the site of Walton's planned museum. Alice's concept of "donor intent" is self-servingly selective.

Collecting desirable works that, appropriately or not, appear on the market is Walton's right. But the pose of crusader for donor intent ill becomes the acquisitive Wal-Mart heiress.

It would be so nice if Alice Walton, who is seeking to buy a "50% undivided interest" in Fisk University's Alfred Stieglitz Collection for $30 million, would learn the correct spelling of "Steiglitz."

In the four-page letter signed by Walton, informing Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper of her dramatic proposal, she (or, more likely, her lawyers) put Stieglitz's "e" before "i" a total of ieght---I mean "eight"---times. Her learning curve continues.

She's only willing to do the deal, on behalf of her new Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, if Fisk's $7.5 million, bargain-price settlement agreement with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum for that artist's "Radiator Building" falls through. It has to be approved by Davidson County Chancery Court, which hears the matter on Sept. 6.

Walton herself observes in her letter to Cooper that the proposed O'Keeffe price "is not more than one-third of its market value." It therefore seems fair to surmise that $30 million for a half-share in the 101-piece collection is a bargain price, too.

Here's the response to Walton's offer that I have just received from Ken West, Fisk's vice president of communications and public relations:

This was certainly an unexpected event. The fact remains that Fisk has a signed settlement agreement with the O'Keeffe Museum and we look forward to the hearing scheduled in the Chancery Court on Sept. 6.

And here's what my man Robert Cooper had to say, in his (correctly spelled) letter yesterday, responding to Walton's proposal:

I have repeatedly expressed the desire for a proposal to emerge that would allow the Stieglitz Collection to remain in Nashville on a full-time basis, and I am sure that you understand that I would support any such appropriate local arrangement.

J. Tucker Martin, please copy. I hear there's an opening for a higher-level Attorney General position. Super Coop, are you ready for a promotion?

If you're trying to take on the powers that be, you'd best present a united front.

But when attorney Mark Schwartz yesterday filed a 79-page petition in Montgomery County Orphans Court, asking Judge Stanley Ott to rescind his permission for the Barnes Foundation's board to move its collection from from Merion, PA, to Philadelphia, he did so on behalf of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation (a citizens' group), not on behalf of his former clients, the Montgomery County Commissioners, who had hired him more than two months ago.

The county and Schwartz recently parted ways because of disagreements about the wording of the petition and conflicts caused by Schwartz's divided loyalties in also representing the Friends group, which wanted language that the county government did not endorse.

"He wouldn't do what we wanted," said Montgomery County Deputy Solicitor Carolyn Carluccio, who added that she would soon file a separate petition on behalf of the county. She told CultureGrrl yesterday that she had not yet seen the final version of Schwartz's petition, but the draft she did see was, in her view, too lengthy and "contained a lot of gratuitous attacks on people that we thought were unnecessary. I was taking them out, and he was putting them back in." She said Schwartz had declared that the Friends group wanted that wording retained, and was paying him more than the county was.

Schwartz's draft petition, she added, criticized the Attorney General's handling of the Barnes court case and the Governor's attempt, through correspondence, to influence the judge in favor of the move. Both were roundly criticized by Judge Ott himself in his decision.

But despite the possible validity and relevance of this criticism, Carluccio said that, as a government entity, Montgomery County could not endorse language that impugned other government officials. She said that her petition will focus on the recent "significant changes in circumstances" that might persuade Judge Ott to reconsider whether the Barnes could survive and thrive in the location for which founder Albert Barnes had intended it.

Schwartz's petition, according to the Friends' press release, "further requests that Judge Ott remove the present Board of Directors and place the Foundation in receivership."

A copy of the petition itself is being sent to me by snail mail. But I suspect the Philadelphia Inquirer will beat me to the full petition and the full story. (I'll update with a link.) Andrew Stewart, press spokesman for the Barnes, told me that no architect for the planned Philly facility would be chosen from the foundation's shortlist "until some time after Labor Day."

Meanwhile, the powerful pro-Philadelphia forces are still stymied over where to move the juvenile detention center that now occupies the preferred site for the new Barnes facility. A story in last Wednesday's Inquirer about violence and abuses at the center will surely intensify the NIMBY forces already in evidence in the neighborhood being eyed for the new "Youth Study Center," as it is euphemistically called.

John Sullivan of the Inquirer notes:

The new youth center is slated to go up on a five-acre site between Market Street and Haverford Avenue in West Philadelphia, but the move has been blocked for three years by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. She has said residents there have concerns about traffic, parking, and the potential for young inmates to escape.

What's more, architecture critic James Russell of Bloomberg last week raised serious questions about whether the Philly Barnes could reasonably be achieved within its expected timeframe (completed in 2009) and at its projected cost ($100 million).

I have a simple solution: Engage Diller Scofidio + Refro to renovate and expand the Philadelphia detention center in situ, and keep the Barnes in Merion.

UPDATE: Coverage today from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Associated Press. Both contain quotes from yesterday's Friends press conference, but not from the petition itself.

UPDATE 2: Jim McCaffrey in The Bulletin of Philadelphia does quote from the Friends' petition [via], but I'll need to get my hands on the entire document (and, preferably, on the upcoming Montgomery County petition as well) before I can make some informed comments.

If I'm off-blog for most of today, it's because I'm on a mainstream media assignment.

Did you want to see the press grill officials of the Houston Museum of Natural Science about the controversial I Love Lucy show of the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton fossil, shipped here (very carefully) from Ethiopia? Now you can---in a live webcast tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10 a.m.

John F.L. Ross of the Associated Press reports that firefighters battling blazes that are ravaging Greece managed to contain the spread of the flames just in time to spare the museum and ancient ruins of Olympia: "Although the pristine forest around Ancient Olympia was burned, none of the ruins were damaged."

The Boston Tea Party Museum wasn't as lucky.

The public will get its first look at the Matter "Pollocks" beginning Saturday at the McMullen Museum of Boston College, reports Geoff (the Blogmobiler) Edgers, in an in-depth Boston Globe story. But the much-doubted works "will not be credited to any artist in the McMullen show." The catalogue will explore the relationship between Pollock and photographer Herbert Matter, whose son Alex discovered the paintings in a storage locker that had been rented by his father.

Egon Schiele, "Krumau - Crescent of Houses (The Small City V)," 1915
© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

From the "better late than never" files: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, announced that it has finally launched an online catalogue of art and Judaica in its possession that may have been looted during World War II.

The new posting is titled World War II Provenance Research Online. But, in fact, it lacks any provenance information for the works, other than the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, which was created after World War II to distribute to Jewish institutions worldwide art and artifacts discovered after the war that either had no record of prior ownership history or came from institutions that did not survive the war. The approximately 1,200 objects, including works by major artists, were deposited by JRSO at the Israel Museum in 1965, when the museum was founded. One of the highlights is a Schiele citiscape, above, "thought to be worth more than $20 million," as reported a few months ago by Matti Friedman of the Associated Press.

Avraham Roet, a Holocaust survivor who heads a new restitution group, the Company for Locating and Retrieving Assets of People Who Were Killed in the Holocaust, a few months ago called for the museum to hand over the JRSO works to his group. Last year, Israel's parliament passed a law requiring anyone in Israel holding property that had belonged to Holocaust victims to turn it over to the new company, which was given the legal mandate to seek rightful owners and, and if none were found, to sell the property and distribute the money to needy survivors.

The Israel Museum had opposed efforts to change its role as custodian of the JRSO works, with which it had been entrusted by the nation. It has stated:

A small number of works of art historical importance are regularly on view in the Museum's galleries, including works which have been exhibited and published worldwide, always identified prominently as works received from JRSO. Many works are of lesser art historical importance, and many arrived in poor condition....

From time to time, individuals have come forward to make claims, beginning as early as 1950, and the Museum has released works in response to these claims. The most recent such claim was honored at the end of 2006.

Roet has now professed satisfaction with the posting of an online catalogue. The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that he "praised the museum on Sunday for fully acceding to the request to list the information, after initially balking at the move." Roet called this "a major moral accomplishment for the state of Israel."

On the catalogue's home page, the Israel Museum states:

We hope that this site will assist in the Museum's continuing efforts to restore objects from these holdings to their legal owners.

A must-read for Columbia University's expansionists (and anyone else interested in how neighborhood opposition can scotch starchitect projects) is Joan Wickersham's article, What Gets Built at Harvard, What Doesn't, and Why, in the Sept.-Oct. issue of Harvard Magazine.

The article reaffirms that the Renzo Piano-designed renovation and expansion of Harvard's Fogg Museum will not begin construction "until at least a year from now." And it tells the stories behind the demise of a more ambitious Piano plan for a new Fogg building on a different site, as well as the successful political opposition to a Hans Hollein building for the Harvard libraries.

Wickersham writes:

Among architects, no one is waxing nostalgic over the good old days of arrogant, autocratic development. But they do worry about the impact all this public process has on the quality of architecture. Says one designer: "There's now so much community review that it's hard to build a building that hasn't been pushed and massaged and changed."

For previous CultureGrrl posts on attempts to remedy the substandard physical state of Harvard's art museums, go here, here and here.

Another new entry in the art blogroll from the mainstream media: Figure Painting, started earlier this month by Portfolio, the new Condé Nast "business intelligence" magazine. It's by Callen Bair (above), whose prior journalistic credentials, according to her profile, appears to be limited to student work at the Daily Princetonian, "where she covered a variety of subjects and co-edited the arts, style, and entertainment section." Her art credentials: a stint working at Matthew Marks Gallery.

Here's a recurring feature that you can judge for yourself:

As the November auctions approach, we'll be regularly updating a feature we call "Pop." Aggregating hedge fund activity, the health of global markets, and fluctuations in the exchange rate, we'll assign the [art] market a low risk of tanking (BLUE), a medium risk (YELLOW), a high risk (ORANGE), or an almost certain risk (RED).

Her current informed assessment?

We still have no idea where the subprime crisis is going, which leaves us feeling a little shaky about the health of the art market. So today we're setting the bubble burst threat level at: YELLOW.

Most of her posts contains this sort of conventional wisdom, rather than fresh information or insights. But Callen's just gearing up (and she has linked to CultureGrrl), so we'll rate her blog: YELLOW (cautious optimism).

Maier Museum, Randolph College

My moles tell me that the Washington Post is working on a story about the possible Randolph College art sales and the irony of their being contemplated during its Maier Museum's 100th anniversary year.

The Post writer will surely want to peruse the unambiguous terms of the bequest of Louise Jordan Smith regarding the exclusive use of her funds for the purchase of art for the college. The college has just asked the Circuit Court of the City of Lynchburg, VA, to consider allowing it to "share" or sell some of the art bought with Smith funds, in order to beef up its endowment.

We all know (don't we?) what the guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors say regarding deaccessions by university and college museums:

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

Randolph estimates the total value of the "more than 35 works" bought with Smith's money at "more than $40 million," but we all suspect, from the Fisk O'Keeffe experience, that the actual value of the collection, which includes a number of blue-chip American paintings that have been ogled by Alice Walton, is much higher.

Here's what Smith stipulated in her will:

I devise and bequeath [funds from her trust] to Randolph-Macon Woman's College of Lynchburg, Virginia, to be used from time to time for the Art Department of said College to form a permanent collection of art.

No other use of her funds is discussed.

The college's attorneys are now trying to argue that "Ms. Smith's general or primary purpose was to benefit the College," although there is no evidence of this in her very specific art-targeted instructions.

Speaking of overturning the terms of a trust, I feel a sudden urge coming on to update the Barnes story.

A CultureGrrl reader who is a curator at a major museum but felt he could not allow me to use his name without permission from his institution's communications department (which should tell you which museum it is---see third item in above-linked post) chided me for not mentioning, in my recent Peabody Essex report, what he called "the best Joseph Cornell book."

It's the 2003 Joseph Cornell Shadowplay...Eterniday, above, by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan (curator of the Peabody Essex show), Walter Hopps, Richard Vine and Robert Lehrman. My anonymous correspondent seemed even more enthusiastic about the book's companion multimedia tour de force, The Magical Worlds of Joseph Cornell.

He called the latter "one of the greatest interactive DVDs on an artist." It allows users to "turn hundreds of boxes around, zoom in on them, watch clips of their interactive features being demonstrated (sand being poured, balls rolling around), browse through his boxes of ephemera and materials, listen to interviews and watch excerpts from his films. It is like being able to handle everything he ever made. It is also exquisitely designed."

Indeed, as I was scrutinizing the boxes, I was acutely aware that I was missing the crucial dimensions of manipulation and movement that were amply described in the labels but could not be experienced in devices that were, of necessity, immobilized in museum cases.

Now will someone please allow the Met's curators to be interactive?

To attract consignors who might be leery of selling in a climate of economic uncertainty, Sotheby's has boldly (if not rashly) upped the ante on its bet that art prices will stay firm this fall:

Just two weeks ago, Sotheby's had filed a 10-Q financial report with the SEC stating that as of Aug. 7, it had outstanding guarantees totaling $274.9 million. (Guarantees are the amounts promised by the auction house to consignors, whether or not the bidding actually achieves those amounts.)

Today it has filed an 8-K (click on Aug. 23) stating that its guarantees now total $378.1 million on property whose mid-range presale estimates total $400.2 million. What's more, the auction house has made additional offers of guarantees to potential consignors that, if contractually finalized, would up its guarantees to a total of about $475 miillion---just $25 million shy of its "outstanding auction guarantee limit" of $500 million, which was set by its board earlier this month. In the first half of this year, the largest amount of total guarantees outstanding at any one time was $326 million.

The report further states:

The current limit was established after assessing the performance of the Company's auction guarantees in the first six months of 2007 and further reviewing the last 14 years of auction guarantee experience. In each year during that 14-year period, as well as the first six months of 2007, the Company has realized a profit on its auction guarantee portfolio. For the year ended 2006 and for the six months ended June 30, 2007, approximately 16% of Net Auction Sales have consisted of property subject to auction guarantees.

But past performance is no guarantee of future results in these economically dicey times and (as I reported in my above-linked post about the 10-Q) Sotheby's return from guarantees declined $9.2 million in the first half of 2007, compared to the first half of 2006. (The house pockets a big chunk of any excess above the guaranteed amount.) The auction house has thus far advanced $53.7 million to consignors who took the guarantee bait for upcoming sales.

In less surprising news, Sotheby's has just followed Christie's lead in increasing to 25% (from 20%) the commission charged to buyers on hammer prices up to $20,000.

Privately held Christie's does not report the amount of its guarantees to consignors, but on July 3, before the credit crisis hit, Bloomberg quoted an assertion by CEO Edward Dolman that "we have never had as much consigned by this time of year before. Everybody realizes the market is very strong and they want to sell into it''...

...or cash out of it?

CORRECTION: I previously (and erroneously) reported that Bloomberg had reported Sotheby's buyers premium hike but not its gargantuan guarantees. I stand corrected (and chastened).

Brooklyn's Mummy Movers

Speaking of Lucy's fragile bones, what's up with the recent flurry of CT scans for museum mummies (here, here and here)? Has this become a hot new medical specialty? Do mummies leave the hospital none the worse for the ride and the radiation?

In other words, as we urgently inquire about any elective medical procedure, do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Speaking of risks, the Brooklyn Museum's ancient patient, "Demetrios," will soon be traveling to 11 U.S. museums in the exhibition, To Live Forever, Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum. His recent trip to the scanner at North Shore University Hospital, Long Island, was seen as a "trial run," to assess whether he's fit for the three-year journey.

I guess the thinking goes: If a 2,000-year-old man can survive the Long Island Expressway, he can withstand just about anything.

Click link below for comment from Sally Williams, Brooklyn Museum's public information officer.

The Blogmobile

In his Exhibitionist arts blog yesterday, Boston Globe reporter Geoff Edgers published four photos (including the above) that demonstrate why obsessive bloggers should never post and drive simultaneously. Geoff, didn't I tell you to keep two hands on the laptop at all times?

The crumpled evidence notwithstanding, it appears that Geoff is okay, because he got right back online and posted twice (including an allusion to CultureGrrl) since he fashioned his Mustang into a John Chamberlain wannabe.

I would entertain you with photos of my own metal sculpture after it got rear-ended at high speed by a dazed and confused whiplasher in Fort Lee, but my brown Nissan Maxima just isn't as cool as Geoff's erstwhile conveyance.

Edward Hopper, "Mrs. Scott's House," 1932,
26" by 50½" Maier Museum, Louise Jordan Smith Fund

Ginger Worden, outgoing interim president of financially strapped Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College), Lynchburg, VA, announced yesterday in her final letter to faculty, staff, alumnae and trustees that the institution was filing a "request for a court opinion now" to permit it to sell works from its Maier Museum, or, preferably, to "share ownership of a select number of our top paintings as partners with another institution, preferably in Virginia." She noted that "by many valuations, the art collection is more valuable than the College's endowment."

The college's request was filed in State Circuit Court yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Worden further stated:

We are actively working toward a sharing agreement involving some of our art that would include internships and educational enhancements for all involved. As is true in most negotiations, there are days of optimism and others where the goal seems extremely elusive.

I can think of one very wealthy non-Virginia institution that might be interested.

No word on this from the college's new president, John Klein, but one must assume that this letter could not have gone out without his approval. We already know that we probably can't rely on Virginia's attorney general to protect the terms of the bequest of Louise Jordan Smith, whose instructions to use her funds to purchase art for a "permanent" collection (including the Hopper, above) would be circumvented through a favorable court response to the college's request.

The "About Randolph" page on the college's website tells us a little something about its priorities:

At Randolph, we play lots of sports (Go WildCats!), sign up for way too many cool clubs, and love exploring the funky hangouts of our hometown.

Maybe the Maier just needs to get more funky.

The coverage of this new development by Christa Desrets of the Lynchburg News & Advance is here.

Click the link below to read in full the passages from Worden's letter that relate to the fate of the college's art.

Met Store at JFK Terminal 8, New York

The market for the art of India may be weakening, according to Delhi dealers quoted recently in the Hindustan Times.

But the market for faux art offered at the Metropolitan Museum's new store in Delhi is apparently booming. The Indo-Asian News Service reports:

The stream of visitors has come as a pleasant surprise to the museum authorities, who had initially been hesitant to begin their Indian venture.

Is this some kind of weird variant on Gresham's Law---reproductions drive out the real? And are you ready Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Agra and Jaipur (additional Indian cities said to be under consideration for the Met merchandising monsoon)?

You can now acquire Met stuff at 23 of its boutiques in the U.S. and 16 international locations. Who needs satellite museums when you can financially exploit your institution's "brand" at satellite shops around the world?

John Merryman, Stanford Law Professor Emeritus

For all you antiquities-collecting controversialists, a conference on The Future of the Past: Ethical Implications of Collecting Antiquities in the 21st Century, organized by Southern Methodist University, Dallas, should keep you agonizing for two days (Oct. 18-19) over thorny questions of due diligence, ambiguous provenance, responsible cultural stewardship and other hot-button issues [via].

The list of speakers is impressively diverse, but it appears that no cultural officials from such antiquities-rich nations as Italy, Greece or Egypt are attending this patrimony party. The closest we come is keynote speaker Donny George Youkhanna, former director general of the Iraqi museums, who fled his war-torn country and is now visiting professor at Stony Brook University, New York. And the U.S. museums that have been most famously vexed by antiquities claims---the Getty, Metropolitan, Boston, Cleveland and St. Louis---are not listed as partaking in the panels.

We can only wonder if Timothy Potts, identified by his soon-to-be-former post, director of Fort Worth's Kimbell Museum, is going to fly in from Cambridge to honor his speaking commitment. And will they correctly spell art-law expert "John Merriman's" (sic) name on the final program?

Maybe I should go to Dallas. I'm tempted to write this typically CultureGrrl-style headline:

Merry with Merryman.

From all of the fascinating, voluminous documentation of Joseph Cornell's multi-faceted oeuvre at the engrossing retrospective of his work that I caught on its final day, Sunday, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, one crucial piece of documentation was conspicuously missing:

The show's catalogue.

In addition (or should I say, subtraction), the well received 1997 biography of Cornell by Deborah Solomon was absent from the museum's bookstore, whose clerk told me that it had sold out. That too was strange, because the paperback edition of "Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell" was published in 2004 by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, just a short distance away. BMFA offers it for sale on its own website.

But the Cornell show's 392-page catalogue (above), with text by curator Lynda Roscoe Hartigan of the Peabody Essex, never even made it into the bookstore. That's because it still hasn't been published, even though this was the show's second venue (after the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which co-organized it).

Laura Baptiste, public relations head at SAAM, had this to say about the delay:

The Cornell catalogue is being produced by PEM in Salem. (We divided the co-organization so SAAM handled the exhibition and PEM handled the book). I don't know what has caused the delays. I certainly was disappointed not to have had the book last fall.

My e-mail to Donna Desrochers, public relations manager at PEM, has thus far gone unanswered. Baptiste had also forwarded my SAAM e-mail to Desrochers, so she's been pestered twice. (UPDATE: She has now replied. See below.)

When I love a show as much as I did this one, I need to bring it home with me in a publication. So I settled for the bookstore's one slim offering. "Imagine Joseph Cornell," published specifically for PEM's installation, offers some images, two brief Hartigan essays, a bibliography and an exhibition checklist.

The full-blown catalogue, Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, is now due to be published on Oct. 15, shortly after the show opens at its third and final stop, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. SFMOMA's website optimistically announces that the catalogue is "available...in the MuseumStore." You can order it there online now, on a page that provides no warning of its unavailability for two more months.

In case you haven't figured it out, the other closing show that I reluctantly had to forego while I was in the Boston area was devoted to that other illustrious Nyack native, Edward Hopper. I've seen a lot of Hopper, and I've been often to the BMFA, so I chose to ride my broom to Salem.

UPDATE: Click link below for Donna Desrochers' reply.

Don't worry. I'm not going to bore you with an account of my hapless golf game (to which I alluded at the end of my last post).

But I will tell you that the golf resort that my family and I just returned from put me in easy driving distance to two major museum shows, each of which closed Sunday. The two 20th-century artists who were the subjects of these two exhibitions were both born in Nyack, NY. What's more, both artists had ties to Massachusetts and they died in New York City within a few years of each other.

One show was at a museum that I've visited many times before; the other at a museum I'd never set foot in. Since I was traveling as Mom, not CultureGrrl, I only had the time to chose one art excursion. More on all this later.

Lucy's Bones on a Slab

Is this 3.2 million-year-old woman fit to travel? The fossilized remains of Lucy, the oldest and most complete (40% intact) human ancestor fully retrieved from African soil, makes her first appearance outside of Ethiopia in an exhibition opening Aug. 31 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, prompting outcries from famed paleontologist Richard Leakey. He predicted to Khaled Kazziha of the Associated Press that moving Lucy from her home at the National Museum in Addis Ababa (where she is not normally on display) would damage the fragile fossil and he lambasted the exhibition as "a form of prostitution" and a "gross exploitation of the ancestors of humanity." Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution's National Natural History Museum have also objected. As you might suspect, this is yet another rental show, intended to raise big bucks for Ethiopian museums. They're seeking additional U.S. venues.

Eric Gibson in today's Wall Street Journal takes a jaundiced view of Lisa Dennison's move from museum director to auction-house rainmaker.

Old-time collectors just can't believe that the bull market in art can last much longer. Eventually, they'll be right. Eli Broad, in today's Bloomberg, is the latest bubble-will-burst prognosticator. Is he looking to move markets and pick up some bargains? I do believe, though, that not even the ever ebullient auction-house experts would argue that the art market could be immune to a prolonged global economic slump that might result from the current credit crisis.

Did I hear myself say this week on WNYC that today's super-rich don't want the Ferrari; they want the Warhol? Apparently they do want the Ferrari. Steve McQueen's just sold at Christie's for $2.31 million, well above its $800,000-1.2 million estimate.

Great photo essay of Richard Prince's fire-ravaged Second House, published yesterday by Martin Bromirski in his Anaba blog.

Now that I've left you some links, I'm leaving you to tackle some other links: I'm embarking on a brief golf vacation with the rest of my family foursome. And I'm the weakest link.

Donald Fisher

Donald Fisher, founder of the Gap and now its chairman emeritus, got the public-relations jump with his announcement last week of plans to build his own 100,000-square-foot facility for his vast contemporary art collection on the national park land of San Francisco's Presidio, a former military post, which was immediately embraced with enthusiasm by the San Francisco Chronicle's distinguished art critic, Kenneth Baker.

Watching this video of the tour that Fisher gave Baker of the collection, it's easy to see why: The assemblage is extraordinary in depth, breadth and quality. (Don't miss Fisher's jibe at the Whitney for selling a Calder that now hangs behind his desk.)

But local reaction has not been uniformly enthusiastic and yesterday the Chronicle looked the gift horse in the mouth with an editorial noting that the new museum building (to be designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects) will need to defer architecturally "to the 19th-century military buildings that surround it" and that the Presidio Trust, which has yet to approve the project, "could surely consider ways to draw in a wide economic range of clients and visitors."

What's most problematic to me about this project is the way in which it seems to ride roughshod over the appropriate approval process. Despite all the publicity and fanfare, it's not a done deal because the Presidio Trust is obliged first to issue a Request for Proposals for other potential uses of the site. According to the Trust's website:

The Trust is required to undertake reasonable competition for opportunities in the Presidio. When a proposal of merit is submitted, the Trust offers an RFP for the proposed use or site so that others may compete for it and so that the public understands what is being proposed and what actions the Presidio Trust may take. Proposals received by November 9, 2007 will receive first consideration.

But it's obvious that, procedural niceties aside, Fisher, who was a founding member of the Presidio's board, has the inside track. Other potential applicants might well conclude it's not worth the trouble, given this premature endorsement by David Grubb, chairman of the Presidio Trust board of directors, charged with considering all proposals:

The Fisher proposal is very exciting. It would be great for the Presidio and great for the City.

And Craig Middleton, executive director of the Presidio Trust, chimed in with a statement that "this exciting museum proposal will generate momentum and energy for the creation of a dynamic public place in the Presidio."

Some mechanism is needed to insure that this unconventional use of national park land is vetted impartially and that other applicants have confidence that all proposals will get a fair hearing.

The big loser here is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which has shown works on loan from Fisher, who is secretary/treasurer of the museum's board of trustees and co-chair of its collector's committee. But, as Fisher says on the Baker video:

We talked. But I have such a big collection. For them to show it all the time and for me to have any kind of control over it was not what they wanted....You give it away and people leave it in the basement.

"The Informed Reader: Insights and Items of Interest from Other Sources" today disseminates my thoughts to Wall Street Journal readers on the how "Big Money in the Art Market Costs Museums Their Edge," as their headline reads. You saw it first here as "Art-Market Fever: The Marginalization of Museums." Today's synopsis is in the WSJ online here and in today's paper on Page B9.

What's puzzling is that the three-paragraph paraphrase of my analysis twice alludes to "the money flowing into the art market from hedge funds." I never once mentioned hedge funds in my CultureGrrl post.

I DID comment yesterday on WNYC's Morning Edition about art purchases by "hedge fund managers and people in the financial industry." But I was talking about individuals who made their money in that field, such as Steve Cohen and Kenneth Griffin, who have famously made big-money art purchases for their own private collections.

It's early days for hedge funds devoted to purchasing art, but for a preview of what may lie ahead, go here to Kate Taylor's report in Monday's NY Sun. For a reminder of disasters past, go here.

While we're on the topic, I'd like to add one more thought that got edited from the WNYC interview tape:

Auction-house officials are forever saying that this art-market boom is different from all others because it is global: They argue that there is strong buying interest not only from the U.S. and Europe, but also from China, Russia and the Middle East, so that even if some nationalities suffer economic setbacks, others will still raise their salesroom paddles and support the market.

But what we've seen in the latest credit crisis is that an old adage still applies: If the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. For better or worse, economies, not just the art market, are global.

You can now link here (on WNYC's website) or simply click below to hear the audio of my art-market commentary today on New York Public Radio. (It is not on their "Arts" page, as I had told you yesterday; it's in "Newsroom.") You can also go here for my more expansive take today on the art market. My prior posts on Sotheby's half-year financial report and how its results compare with Christie's are here and here.

In my comments today on New York Public Radio's Morning Edition, I briefly touch on what most concerns me about the super-heated art market---the growing marginalization of museums.

There is much more to say:

The inability of art institutions to compete with big-money collectors in acquiring art is an old problem that has only gotten worse. I recently spoke to one major museum director whose institution had been prepared to acquire a work at one of last fall's evening sales: The museum's representative never even bothered to bid. It would have been pointless.

What IS new is that museums can no longer count on masterpieces' eventually making their way into the public domain by gifts or bequests. Old-style collectors used to rely heavily on curators for advice and access to dealers' best offerings. This debt would be duly paid through loans and eventual benefactions to the museums. But now major collectors receive counsel from their own private advisors and from the upper echelon of dealer/tastemakers. And recent changes in the tax laws regarding fractional gifts are making it far less financially attractive for big-money collectors to donate big-ticket works.

Mega-collectors simply don't need museums as much as they used to. Their art-market clout derives from their overwhelming purchasing power, not their curatorial connections. In its recent editorial decrying Steve Cohen's loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Damien Hirst's shark, the NY Times quaintly claimed: "It may appear as if Mr. Cohen is doing the Met a favor by lending this work. In fact," the Times pundits argue, "it is the other way around," because the Met display has the effect of "endorsing and validating the quality of the collector's eye."

What the Times editorial board hasn't caught onto yet is that today's ultimate validator of artistic worth is not the high regard of a museum curator but the high price paid through a dealer or an auction house. Never mind that there is no direct correlation between market value and artistic value. That doesn't seem to matter much any more: In today's pecking order, Klimt is King. Rothko trumps Rembrandt.

Not only don't collectors feel beholden to curators, but many are starting to feel the curatorial urge themselves. Cohen is reportedly thinking of establishing his own museum as the ultimate repository for his holdings, as several other collectors have recently done. The latest entrant into the museum-of-one's-own ranks is Donald Fisher, founder and now chairman emeritus of the Gap, who last week announced plans to set up his own art facility in San Francisco.

Not only are museums losing their clout, but they're losing their art: The stratospheric art market is tempting museums, more than ever, to sell museum-quality works from their so-called permanent collections, as the only means by which they can afford to buy other works.

We've yet to hear what the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo is buying with the proceeds from the more than $70 million worth of antiquities and other objects that it sold earlier this year in a series of auctions at Sotheby's. It has said that it will lavish its newfound wealth on acquisitions of contemporary art. Will the Albright-Knox replace its late Hellenistic bronze, Artemis and the Stag (now lost to the public domain) with a Joseph Beuys Stag? Is this a worthy tradeoff?

In case we needed any further confirmation that the balance of power has shifted to the auction world from the museum world, we've recently heard that the director of New York's Guggenheim Museum, Lisa Dennison, will be joining Sotheby's in September as "a senior client relationship director." One type of client whom she is particularly well suited to serve may be museums interested in cashing in some of their collection chips.

Dennison, a lifelong museum denizen, has made no secret of where she now thinks the power (not to mention the money) resides. She recently commented to Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg:

We are in an explosive art market, and I wanted to be able to hitch my wagon to their star.

As someone who places cultural value above monetary value, I worry about marketmania, where top-level collecting is becoming the ultimate assertion of financial clout, rather than the ultimate expression of artistic appreciation. Museums and art lovers may well be the losers.

The best I can tell you about what time I'll be on New York Public Radio tomorrow is that it should be either at 6:36 and 8:36 a.m. or else at 6:50 and 8:50 a.m., on WNYC, 93.9 FM and 820 AM.

In any event, I'll post the audio link when it's up on the station's website, and I'll also post, here on CultureGrrl tomorrow morning, an amplification of my thoughts about the super-heated art market, with special attention to how it has impacted the institutions that I hold dear.

COMING TOMORROW: The Marginalization of Museums

Soterios Johnson, WNYC Morning Edition Host

Oh no, not Lee again!

You can hear me (if all goes according to plan, unlike last time) trying to make sense of the art market tomorrow on WNYC's Morning Edition, 5:00-9:00 a.m. on 93.9 FM; 6:00-9:00 on 820 AM. I'll update if I am given a more precise time and, as usual, I'll post the audio on CultureGrrl tomorrow, when it's available on the WNYC arts website (where you can still hear me and see the slideshow from my recent, more frivolous, sculpture gardens peregrinations). My report tomorrow is pegged to the recent issuance of Sotheby's half-year financial report.

As usual in my Public Radio stints, you'll hear me desperately trying to conceal my uncultured Bronx accent. It's a losing battle: I can walk the walk, but I can't tawk the tawk.

No such problems for my mellifluous broadcast interlocutor, Soterios Johnson (above), who grew up in my current home state of New Jersey. Okay, I admit it: I'm deeply in love with the warm, welcoming Voice of Soterios Johnson. It just makes me want to vocalize with him on the radio. I also have to admit, though, that it was a bit of a letdown when I met him at the studio recently, only to discover that he sounds like an ordinary mortal when he's not "on."

People often wonder what announcers with gorgeous voices look like; one of the urban legends about Soterios is that he's black. So WNYC begins the profile (scroll down) of its Morning Edition host by dispelling the misconceptions about his name's derivation:

Before you ask... it's Greek. And, so is Johnson (via translation).

Next time I see him, I'll have to ask what the Greek translation for "Johnson" is!

A few tasty tidbits from the 10-Q financial report filed yesterday by publicly traded Sotheby's:

As of Aug. 7, Sotheby's had outstanding guarantees totaling $274.9 million. (Guarantees are the amounts promised by the auction house to consignors, whether or not the bidding actually achieves those amounts.) During a conference call Wednesday with securities analysts, William Ruprecht, Sotheby's CEO, noted that this year's figure is significantly higher than the amount of outstanding guarantees at the same time last year. (The figure in last summer's 10-Q was only $41.6 million.) These guarantees are essentially a bet, risking the company's money, that prices will stay firm this fall.

But the lastest 10-Q also revealed that Sotheby's return from guarantees declined $9.2 million in the first half of 2007, compared to the first half of 2006. This was because "prior period results were favorably impacted by the Company sharing in a significant portion of the hammer price on a guaranteed property sold at auction in the prior year." (Note that it says "A guaranteed property." Auction-ologists: Which work might that be?) Under the terms of guarantees, the auction house takes a large chunk of the portion of the final price that exceeds the amount of the guarantee.

Also of interest to those of you who read my Wall Street Journal article about the new redeemability of auction house antitrust settlement coupons for cash: The value of such coupons still outstanding at the two auction houses has decreased from about $92 million in May, to $56.8 million (twice the $28.4 million reported in the 10-Q by Sotheby's alone), as of June 30. This means that some of you have been following my helpful advice to rummage around your drawers for those pesky pieces of paper. You've got until May 14 of next year to cash in the rest. After that, they're trash.

Meanwhile, Sotheby's stock is falling today, along with the rest of the stock market. As of 12:36 p.m., it was trading at 43.77, down 3.61 (7.6%) from yesterday's close. With the current U.S. credit crisis now reverberating globally, what's going to happen at the major auctions this fall is anyone's guess.

And, finally, this just in from Christie's press office:

Our July 13th press release reported that Christie's International sold 358 lots for over $1 million. This figure was without [buyers] premium. This week, a [ahem] competitor reported selling 391 lots for over $1 million in the first half of the year. With premium, Christie's International sold 430 lots over $1 million in the first half of the year. We would like you to have this information for accurate comparison.

Don't you just love it when the auction houses get angry?

---Dr. Johnson gets hammered at the National Portrait Gallery, London. NOW they've decided to check visitors' bags.

---The LA Museum of Contemporary Art decides to allow the SALE of bags---big-ticket designer handbags---by a commercial boutique setting up shop within the museum, in connection with its upcoming Takashi Murakami retrospective.

Diane Haithman of the LA Times reports:

MOCA Director Jeremy Strick said the idea of a boutique is in keeping with the 45-year-old Murakami's commitment to breaking down the boundaries between low and high art.

...not to mention art and commerce. What's next? Will the Met install a taxidermy shop beside the Damien Hirst shark tank? How about a Gagosian branch gallery?

LA MOCA is going to catch plenty of flak for this. Don't say Tyler didn't warn them last week. And he hammers them today here.

Question for Mr. Art Law Blog: Does ceding museum space to an outside commercial entity conform with a museum's nonprofit public purpose?

Question for LA MOCA: Is this boutique a new form of community outreach...to the over-privileged?

My Celia Cruz Shrine

This just in from Associated Press:

Playing the Queen of Salsa on stage is a dream come true for Xiomara Laugart, the star of the musical "Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz"....Through 30 songs once performed by the legendary singer, the musical covers Cruz's birth in Santo Suarez, Cuba, in 1925, to her death in 2003 in New Jersey.

...in what is now my New Jersey apartment, to be exact (and I've got one of her iconic wigs, above, which had fallen behind a built-in drawer in my bedroom, to prove it).

Guess I'll have to get a ticket when the musical opens next month Off-Broadway at New World Stages. Unlike LACMA's labels, the play will be done in both Spanish and English. Celia herself was not comfortably bilingual, however. Or, as she charmingly says on a recording of one of her concerts:

My English is not very good-looking!

Christie's has taken to touting itself as "the world's leading art business," but the results for the first half of 2007 indicate that its vaunted lead is miniscule: In its first-half financial results, issued today, publicly-traded Sotheby's reported record total sales (including auctions, privately negotiated sales and dealer transactions) of $3.24 billion. Christie's last month reported that its first-half total for public, private and dealer sales was $3.25 billion.

But first-half 2007 auction sales alone (excluding privately negotiated sales and sales through dealers) tell a somewhat different story: $2.87 billion at Sotheby's vs. $3.03 billion at Christie's.

Sotheby's also announced that, due to its strong results, it will increase its dividend for third-quarter 2007 to $0.15 a share from the previous $0.10. Sotheby's stock, as of 1:40 p.m. today, was (at 49.90) already up 3.02 from yesterday's close.

In addition, Sotheby's reported:

Income from continuing operations for the first half of 2007 was a record $131.7 million, a $63.2 million, or 92%, increase from the first half of 2006.

Christie's, which is privately held, does not publicize income figures.

For further details, go to Sotheby's first-half results press release, here; and Christie's first-half press release, here (scroll down to July 13).

---LA Weekly staff writer Dan Hernandez, in his blog, Intersections, criticizes the Los Angeles County Museum for using English-only labels in its highly acclaimed The Arts in Latin America: 1492-1820 [via]. LA Times critic Christopher Knight lauded the show as "easily the most important exhibition in Los Angeles this year." (It drew similar raves last year in Philadelphia.) Too bad it wasn't made more easily accessible to LA's large Latino population.

---The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany, shows Picasso, Munch, Kirchner, LeWitt, Serra and...Bob Dylan's paintings?

---The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, reports that its summer show, I WANT Candy: The Sweet Stuff in American Art, "has been made possible by a gift from"

Do you think philanthropy with a direct product tie-in is what Tocqueville meant by "self-interest rightly understood"?

Please lick (I mean, click) the link below for comments from LACMA and the Hudson River Museum.

In case you had any doubts about human-rights abuses of construction workers in the United Arab Emirates, where the Guggenheim and the Louvre plan to build major new facilities, read this front-page article from yesterday's NY Times.

Jonathan Marx reports in today's Tennessean [via] that Fisk University has agreed to hand over its O'Keeffe "Radiator Building" to the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe for the bargain price of $7.5 million. Fisk can borrow the painting for four months every four years, and stands to get half of the proceeds over $7.5 million if the O'Keeffe Museum sells the painting within 20 years. Read the readers' comments at the end of the story, which seem wiser that the actions of university's admininstration. Now it's up to Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle and my man, Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper, to nix this ditzy deal. Come on, Coop, don't let me down!

UPDATE: Thanks to the Art Law Blog for a link to the actual settlement agreement between Fisk and the O'Keeffe. (Also note correction, above: Fisk would be able to borrow "Radiator Building" every FOUR years, not every year. What a deal!)

Rudy Giuliani's war platform (or, rather, "War Requiem" podium). We knew this Republican Presidential candidate enjoyed classical vocal music, but we thought this tastes ran more towards Verdi than Benjamin Britten!

NY Times report on the Guggenheim Museum's appointment of Marc Steglitz as interim director....Oops, there is no article from the NY Times culture writers for that important artworld story, which CultureGrrl brought you yesterday. The only mainstream media report that I could find was this from the Associated Press, which just caught up with the week-old fact of Lisa Dennison's resignation, but also mentioned the latest news of the dicey Steglitz appointment.

Hello??? Anyone there on the NY Times culture desk? I expect they'll get back from the beach tomorrow.

UPDATE: At least The Chronicle of Philanthropy has now given wider exposure to my Guggenheim story.

Marc Steglitz, the Guggenheim Museum's Interim Director-Elect (right) with his wife, Ilene, and architect Richard Gluckman

This is a very bad sign:

In a just-issued press release that, at this writing, is not on the Guggenheim's website, Marc Steglitz, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's former deputy director for finance and operations (now its chief operating officer), was named interim director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, effective Sept. 1. He succeeds Lisa Dennison, who announced her sudden resignation (here and here) a week ago. She will join Sotheby's in September.

Today's very belated press release is the first formal announcement from the Guggenheim of Dennison's departure. Interestingly, it was e-mailed to me by high-powered PR firm Rubinstein Communications, not by the Guggenheim's own press office. Did someone decide that professional damage control just might be needed?

So control me:

Steglitz is a very capable number-cruncher, but he's no art professional. He was the one who sat down with me and painstakingly explained the Guggenheim's tangled finances back in 2002, when I was working on my February 2003 piece for Art in America magazine, The Guggenheim Regroups: The Story Behind the Cutbacks. He is smart and he is definitely a team player.

William Mack, chairman of the Guggenheim's board, commented:

Recruiting her [Dennison's] successor will be a priority for the board and we will begin that process immediately.

Immediately? Not soon enough.

W. 131st Street and Broadway, looking south, today

Brave New Columbia: W. 131st Street and Broadway, looking south

In case there were any doubts that Renzo Piano is no longer the darling of the critics, Paul Goldberger and James Russell have just cast cold eyes on two of his latest New York City projects.

In the Aug. 6 New Yorker, Goldberger, a former NY Timesman, expresses far more admiration for Cesar Pelli's two-year-old headquarters for Bloomberg than for Piano's just completed NY Times headquarters (although he ascribes most of the faults of the Times building to the Gensler firm that designed the interior).

Meanwhile, over at Bloomberg, Russell today trashes Piano's design for Columbia University's planned annexation of Manhattanville, to its north.

Russell asserts:

The plan now making its way through New York City's arduous approval process looks more like a dumbed-down real estate deal than a vision for the future.

For a discussion of the disappointing arts-related component of Columbia's $7-billion Manhattanville plans (from this Columbia Journalism School alum) go here.

I wonder how Piano's plans for the Whitney on the High Line are progressing. Russell was previously very dubious about those too.

My last item, where you got to hear me as well as read me, was, fittingly, my 1,000th post since I began this dubious exercise of blogging. That somehow seems like a more important anniversary than how long I've been doing it.

For the many new CultureGrrl visitors who have flocked to my blog this sleepy Sunday morning from the WNYC link, here's an expanded photo essay from my sculpture-garden rambles:

FROM THE GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE, HAMILTON, NJ

Here's the photo that somehow didn't get reproduced in the WNYC slideshow today: This 3-D reimagined "Renoir"---called "Family Secret" by its sculptor, J. Seward Johnson Jr., scion of the Johnson & Johnson family and founder of Grounds for Sculpture---is a favorite visitors' photo op. You can take a seat with the mother and child. A little hokey, but fun.

You are permitted to run your fingers over these Magdalena Abakanowicz seated figures. You definitely couldn't do that at the Metropolitan Museum's rooftop sculpture garden a few summers ago, when they mounted a show of her work.

New Yorkers will immediately recognize this as a piece by the "George Washington Bridge sculptor": I've circled hundreds of times around another work in this style by Peter Lundberg, whenever I take the ramp from the Westside Highway to the GWB.

FROM THE DONALD M. KENDALL SCULPTURE GARDENS, PEPSICO HEADQUARTERS, PURCHASE, NY

These Giacometti "Large Standing Women" are a bit off the beaten sculpture track, close to the headquarters building, designed by Edward Durrell Stone. Don't miss them.

Likewise, the David Smith "Cube Totem."

Open free to the public, the Kendall Sculpture Gardens are an upscale community park where you'll see dog walkers...

...and maybe even an Ethiopian wedding party, on their way to a photo shoot!

Me and the George Segals. Okay, I'm a bit tacky.

FROM THE STORM KING ART CENTER, MOUNTAINVILLE, NY

I was sorry I didn't get to mention on the radio the fine temporary exhibition devoted to Louise Bourgeois, scattered among the rooms inside the house at Storm King and spilling over onto the grounds outside. Here's one of her recent Spiders.

Here's part of the Richard Serra that I referred to on WNYC. An earthwork by Maya Lin is now in progress, to be completed in two to three years.

Storm King is a great place to see a concentration of works by Mark di Suvero...

...and David Smith.

Now turn off that computer and go out to see these sights!

Below is the audio from my WNYC sculpture-garden romp, which DID air today and should be on again shortly, at 10:34 a.m. (set your timers) on WNYC-AM (820). Or you can visit with me on their website here, where you'll see four of the five photos that are meant to be in the slideshow (more technical difficulties). The photo from Grounds for Sculpture will probably appear there on Monday, I'm told.

You can listen now, here:

Is Bill Richardson using CultureGrrl in his bid for the Presidency?

Go here and scroll down to his response to the Blue Hampshire education straw poll, and you'll see that he links to this post in support of his assertion that he's "the only candidate proposing innovative ideas like emphasizing art education to unlock the minds of our young people at an early age and help them achieve their full potential."

And he's not even my favorite candidate...

UPDATE: More on art education today in the NY Times.

[Note: I regret having to post this housekeeping detail over my much more important Michael Brand Q & A. Please go here, if you haven't already seen it.]

For all five of you who got up early this morning just to hear me talk about sculpture gardens on WNYC, here's the explanation from the station's culture editor as to why you listened in vain: "I just got a call from the engineer on duty that there was a technical problem with the story and it will have to air tomorrow!"

"What time?" we all ask plaintively.

When I get the answer, I'll update this post. Also, audio won't be available on the WNYC website until Monday or Tuesday. Meanwhile, here's a link to my upcoming report, "Where Nature and Culture Meet," on the WNYC's website, complete with my own amateur photos.

Patience, art-lings!

UPDATE: My best guess is that my piece is going to air tomorrow (Sunday) on Morning Edition, which is 8:00-9:30 a.m. on WNYC-FM (93.9) and 8:00-10:30 on WNYC-AM (820). I'll post a link when the audio is on the website, probably Monday at the earliest.

Michael Brand, the Getty's director, responds by e-mail to CultureGrrl's questions about the antiquities agreement with Italy (here and here):

CultureGrrl: Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said that the accord was reached with the help of the U.S. administration. What was he referring to?

Brand: He could be referring to the fact that the U.S. Ambassador to Italy has been interested in this matter for some time, and asked us to keep him briefed on progress during the negotiations, but otherwise you would have to pose that question to Mr. Rutelli.

CultureGrrl: Why did you decide that giving back all 40 objects (instead of 26) was the right thing to do? What is the rationale for relinquishing those objects?

Brand: First of all, we are not returning "all" the objects, but rather 39 of the 52 claimed by Italy, with an additional object we identified during our own research. For each object, we studied the information provided by Italy alongside our own research before coming to a conclusion as a part of a fully consistent process. In the end, we agreed that the dividing line between "should be returned" and "should not be returned" fell after 39 objects (with the Bronze deferred).

CultureGrrl: Is it possible that the upcoming Italian findings on the Getty Bronze could change your mind about this, or are you committed to keeping the bronze?

Brand: We were pleased the Minister suggested that any further discussion about the Bronze should be deferred until the conclusion of legal proceedings in a Pesaro court, and we are not going to comment further right now.

CultureGrrl: Is there a chance that the California Attorney General's office may now take action against the Getty for wasting assets by acquiring the 40 objects in the first place (as discussed with me by AG spokesman Thomas Dresslar here)?

Brand: The Attorney General's office is aware of our agreement.

CultureGrrl: Is it possible that Italy may come after you for additional objects in the future?

Brand: Anything is possible, though clearly we believe our agreement with Italy has resolved issues between us. As part of the agreement, both sides are committed to resolving any future issues with the same spirit of honest collaboration that has inspired this agreement. That said, the Getty's position with regard to claims on antiquities could not be clearer: if evidence is presented that suggests an object in our collection should be returned, we will study it, thoroughly discuss findings with the country making the claim, and if it is determined an object should be returned, it will be.

CultureGrrl: Are there any details about what objects Italy will lend to the Getty, as part of this agreement, and for how long they will be lent?

Brand: We will soon be working out the details regarding loans to the Getty with our Italian colleagues, but from the beginning we decided not to include specific works of art as part of the agreement. With respect to the "Aphrodite", however, Italy has generously offered to find replacement loans of an especially important nature. At the moment, Italian law does not allow works of art to be lent internationally for more than a period of four years.

CultureGrrl: Is there anything else that you feel is important to say about this?

Brand: This is in many respects an historic agreement. While clearly no one at the Getty is happy that 40 objects from our antiquities collection will be leaving the museum, the prospect of having an ongoing rotation of long-term loans from Italy to supplement our magnificent permanent collection, as well as short-term loans as part of temporary exhibitions is very exciting, and will provide Getty Museum visitors a unique opportunity to enjoy aspects of Italian cultural heritage they might never have had the chance to witness without traveling to Italy. The Getty has always had a special affinity for Italy, and putting these difficulties behind us will permit both sides to realize its full potential.

I really should get out more in the summer. So what did I do? I went to three sculpture gardens within about an hour's drive of New York City. I'm reporting on these excursions tomorrow on New York Public Radio, WNYC (93.9 FM). If you're up that early, you can hear me at about 8:30 a.m. (or a repeat at about 10:30).

If you sleep in on Saturdays (like me), there will be a link to the audio later on WNYC's website (and, of course, on CultureGrrl). And there's also a "Listen Live" link on the website, if you're not in the WNYC listening area and need to hear the broadcast in real time.

Ellen Agnew, associate director of the Maier Museum of Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College), leaves over differences with the school"s administration regarding possible deaccessions to raise money for the endowment.

Christa Desrets of the Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance, reports:

Randolph Interim President Ginger Worden said in a May interview that she hopes to raise the money without having to sell any pieces outright, such as by partnering with institutions that would "share" the collection. But if that doesn't work, she said, the school would consider the sale of select pieces of art.

She hoped for a decision on the matter by the end of the summer, she said in May.

Here's what Agnew says:

What it comes down to is: the sale of art is wrong.

Here, as promised, are a few links worth tasting during my wild, self-indulgent August:

Italian Culture Minister Franceso Rutelli on the significance of the Getty giveback, as reported in Bloomberg. He calls this agreement "an irreversible precedent for the restitution of works." Have the floodgates now opened? Civil charges against Marion True are dropped; criminal charges, not.

These links (on the Italian Culture Ministry's site) to Rutelli's Getty press conference yesterday keep crashing my computer. Maybe you'll have better luck. (If so, you'll need to understand Italian.)

Christopher Knight, art critic of the LA Times comments on the win-win aspects of the Getty/Italy rapprochement. But it could be a lose-lose if the California Attorney General, as previously threatened, considers going after the Getty for its the waste of assets in buying the 40 relinquished works in the first place.

Yesterday's Felcholino report on the Getty settlement. They put a less positive spin on it than their LA Times colleague (above).

Another LA Times-er, Christopher Hawthorne, on why critics flip-flopped in their assessments of architect Yoshio Taniguchi's Mega-MoMA. I have a different take: Here's what I wrote previously on why the critics were so favorable initially, only to turn against it later.

Will this be the next front in the art repatriation wars?

I just can't quit you.

Here is a link to the list of the 40 objects that the Getty will be returning to Italy, along with images.

I'm also going to be posting some other Getty-related links later.

And you'll be hearing a kinder, gentler CultureGrrl on WNYC, New York Public Radio, Saturday morning. Some can catch me on the radio; the rest of you on the web. More about that soon.

I delayed this announcement for a day. After all, I just had to report on the Getty/Italy hug and to instruct Philippe on how to run the Met during the next 10 years of his tenure!

But now I have distressing news for those of you who depend on CultureGrrl for your daily dose of dyspepsia: I'm going AWOL (more or less) from my blog for the month of August, to engage in the following necessary summer activities (in reverse order of importance):

---Plowing a steam shovel through the piles of books and papers in my office (above).

---Working on my supposed book proposal.

---Perfecting my so-called tennis game with my brand new, superpowered racquet (below).

But you and I both know that I won't be able to resist occasionally popping in on you, to weigh in on the next precipitous museum resignation or the latest deplorable deaccession. (I shall also work on expanding my vocabulary, endeavoring to learn some useful adjectives besides "precipitous," "deplorable," "dicey," and that old standby, "problematic.")

I'll probably also post occasional news links, with pithy comments, to keep you up to speed in my absence. And because I have a face for radio, I believe I'll be doing a couple of public-radio gigs this summer. I'll link to those on CultureGrrl, so you can hear me, if not read me. (The first of these may be this Saturday.)

But please take heart, art-lings: I'll come out swinging again after Labor Day!

Did I just say "swinging"? Come on, let's volley!

What does the Wall Street Journal reporter who covered Rupert Murdoch's successful campaign to purchase Dow Jones (including the WSJ) think about the deal?

Dennis Berman has just posted a video (below) on the WSJ website, in which he addresses the question of the paper's journalistic credibility by noting that e-mails are crowding his inbox from people saying that they plan cancel their subscriptions. Indeed, reader feedback now posted on the Journal's own website seems almost universally negative.

Berman observes that the question facing the Bancrofts, the family owners, was: "Is it about the legacy or about the money? As we see right now, the money won out."

What does all this mean for the WSJ's highbrow "Leisure & Arts" page, where I'm a contributor? Somehow I don't think that's uppermost in most people's minds at the moment. Your guess is as good as mine.

Straight from the WSJ newsroom, here's the commentary from the paper's own reporter:

The top story in the August issue of Aviso, the American Association of Museum's newsletter, rehashes the debate between between me and AAM over the new Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad (MCCA) program, funded and guided by the State Department in partnership with AAM.

What's new is that the deadline for proposals has been extended to Aug. 24. Could it be that museums are shying away from applying, because they agree with my view that "AAM has done a disservice to its members by signing up for this dubious government-curated enterprise"?

Yesterday morning, in response to my query, the Guggenheim press office informed me that it would "be issuing a press release shortly" on the sudden resignation of Lisa Dennison from the New York museum directorship. It's noon the next day; still no press release. (Believe me, I've asked.).

Could there be a little controversy over the wording?

Meanwhile, for some stunning insights into the mind of Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, go to this web exclusive on the Abu Dhabi museum project from Newsweek International.

Does Tom ever stop to realize that his only major triumph in establishing an international satellite was Bilbao, 10 years ago, and that this success owed a great deal to the political and administrative acumen of its Basque director, Juan Ignacio Vidarte?

UPDATE: The Getty has now confirmed the agreement, as described by AP and Corriere della Sera, below.

UPDATE 2: The LA Times weighs in here. The NY Times here.

The source for this story from Associated Press appears to be the Italian Culture Ministry. The negotiations about the so-called Getty Bronze have been postponed; "Aphrodite" stays at the Getty until 2010 and will be among 40 objects to be returned.

According to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the antiquities subject to the agreement, other than "Aphrodite," will be transferred in the next few months; the Getty and Italy will cooperate on "loans of significant artworks, joint exhibitions, and research and projects involving conservation and restoration."

No official announcement yet from the Getty.

Can Marion True go home now?

The Signature Now On the Met

Charles McGrath's Sunday NY Times article focused on Philippe de Montebello's formidable accomplishments as director of the Metropolitan Museum, as well as on people's fear of "le déluge" after he retires.

One thing that everyone, including de Montebello, surely knows is that there are likely to be many changes under a new leader. But that's not necessarily all bad. Here is my list of five positive changes that I hope may be considered by a new director seeing the institution with fresh eyes:

---A more vigorous and extensive program of collection sharing. The solution to too many works in the storerooms is not deaccessioning; it's lending those objects to the many institutions around the country that would be happy to show them.

---Cooperative ventures (including companion exhibitions) with other New York City museums. I've touched on this previously, here. Too often, our great institutions see each others as rivals. They should develop greater synergy for their mutual benefit.

---A posture of more friendly openness, instead of aloof guardedness, towards the public. There should be more opportunities for interaction between the curatorial staff and visitors. (The lecture series, Inside the Met, is a start.) The policy of not allowing anyone, not even curators, to talk to the press without going through the press office may be appropriate for a major corporation, but not for a scholarly institution that exists to edify the public.

---Appointment of a real specialist in contemporary art, with a good eye, good instincts and strong contacts with artists, collectors and galleries, who will invigorate the contemporary art program and ditch the shortsighted 50-year rule for acquisitions. The curatorial staff should be encouraged to judiciously acquire the art of our own time.

---A higher public profile for the director as forceful spokesperson on important issues affecting the profession. The reticent de Montebello used his bully pulpit only rarely and reluctantly, when his professional clout and personal prestige were the only things that could defend museums during crises that endangered their good names---most notably on the issues of Nazi-loot restitution and antiquities repatriation. The director of this country's premier art museum should be in the forefront of the national discussion on cultural issues, institutional practices and government policies affecting the arts.

That said, I must also state that you only have to visit other museums around the country and abroad to realize what a preeminent treasure we have in the Metropolitan Museum.

And we all know to whom, in large measure, we owe its supreme excellence.