September 2007 Archives

The art-or-porn controversy over Nan Goldin's photo, "Edda and Klara Belly Dancing," seized last week by police from an exhibition in England, has legs.

Here's what the Manchester Guardian had to say:

Denied to visitors to Baltic [Centre of Contemporary Art], not readily available online [except, I guess, on CultureGrrl], the Nan Goldin picture remains available to anyone with money to spend in an an art bookshop. Context is all. Klara and Eddy is a kind of family snap, of a type found in countless family albums. Its subjects are not knowingly sexual, nor do they appear either posed or exploited. The message is that art-lovers who can afford books would not find it pornographic, but visitors to an exhibition might, while who knows what might happen on the internet. Smuttiness is subjective.

I liked the thoughtful analysis posted Thursday by the anonymous blogger at Heresy Corner:

Make no mistake: The photograph is a provocation. In itself, it is innocent; but it is being shown, not as a family snap, but as a work of art. And the purpose of art is (among much else) to ask questions, to stimulate debate. I have no doubt that Nan Goldin knew precisely the reaction this photograph would produce: nor that she was right to provoke it. It's a mistake to categorise this as an "Is it art or is it porn?" debate....

As a character in Avenue Q put it so memorably, the Internet is for porn. Art galleries are for art. There's a difference.

Interestingly, the Heresy blogger appended a comment to the Guardian's opinion piece, saying that soon after he posted about Goldin, his "hitherto lonely and little-visited blog was attracting a considerable number of 'hits.' And whilst it would be nice to think that visitors were interested in my opinions, a more detailed break-down of the search-terms revealed that a substantial proportion were on a smut-hunt."

I know why this happened: It wasn't because he posted the photo, as I did (without any appreciable increase in hits). It was because he titled his post: "Elton's Porn Panic." I deliberately kept "Porn" out of the headline of my previous post, because I knew, from past experience, that it would draw the wrong kind of international "traffic."

Here's what two CultureGrrl readers had to say about the Goldin photo:

From composer William Osborne---

A criterion for determining whether or not something is pornography or art would be to judge whether it has artistic worth or value (even if such terms are notoriously vague.) I have trouble seeing much art in the top photo. Goldin is famous, but does that alone make every shot she takes art? If you want to defend the photo as art, how would you justify that claim? I would really like to know, because I wonder if I am missing something. I see a photo that is very provocative, but mostly just tacky and rather banal.

From artist Charles Hankin---

Neither image [the Goldin or the Richard Prince image of the young Brooke Shields, reproduced in my last post] is porn. There is little of sexual interest in these photographs. They are both depicting young girls that are nude or nearly nude. The mere fact that they have no cloths on does not in of itself provide the viewer a physical response. That being said, one could ask if they are art. Both images are boring in their composition....In the end I would say that they are both dull images of interest to the curious.

NOTE TO READERS: I have taken down the following two images from this site, because they are being accessed by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It's giving my blog lots of traffic, but it's not the kind of traffic I want. This is a haven for art lovers, not pedophiles.

Nan Goldin, "Edda and Klara Belly Dancing," 1998, c-print

"Spiritual America," 1983, Ektacolor photograph, edition of 10, Copyright Richard Prince, Courtesy Richard Prince and Gladstone Gallery

The Nan Goldin, top (before I removed it), is another print of the image owned by Elton John, which was seized by police this week as possible child pornography. It was on public display at a Goldin exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England. (The print reproduced above was sold at Sotheby's , New York, for $3,000 on Feb. 12, 2004, from the collection of one of the Museum of Modern Art's major art donors, Elaine Dannheisser.)

The second photograph is currently displayed in the Guggenheim Museum's justfiably praised but, I felt, too large Richard Prince retrospective (to Jan. 9). It is the title work in the show, "Spiritual America," but is hidden in an out-of-the-way spot, behind a bathroom and next to an emergency exit on the fifth floor. This image is called "incendiary" in the Guggenheim Guide, which describes its subject as "a naked, prepubescent Brooke Shields, posing in a brothel-like atmosphere, her face made up like a grown woman's." (It was appropriated by Prince from a photograph by Gary Gross, who had the full consent of Shields' mother, but was later sued by the actress for copyright ownership.)

It is hard to imagine that prosecutors in New York would consider bringing charges against the display of the Prince image. But the BBC today suggests that prosecution related to the Goldin display is being considered, and quotes a "leading criminal barrister" in England, John Cooper, describing considerations that should figure into a prosecutorial decision about whether to take action.

It's important to look at the circumstances surrounding the images. For instance: How old is the child? Have the photos been taken in vulnerable circumstances---in other words was there an element of exploitation involved?

...Another factor could be what kind of photographer took the pictures. If they are known to have a good reputation, then this will be relevant too.

The "reputation" test is easily met, as it was in this country's Mapplethorpe trial: Goldin and Prince are highly acclaimed and widely shown artists, not porn purveyors.

But CultureGrrl readers already know that. Sometimes law enforcement officials and politicians just need to be reminded.

David Smith's "Song of the Landscape" in front of Jackson Pollock's "Number 28, 1950" in the Met's Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman installation

Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman's benefaction to the Metropolitan Museum of 63 objects from her collection of Abstract Expressionist and other modern works (55 of which are now on display) is notable not only for its high quality but also for its admirable selflessness.

Roberta Smith, in her laudatory NY Times review of the collection last Friday, and the Met's own senior consultant, Nan Rosenthal, speaking to me at the Newman press preview, separately lamented the unfortunate fragmentation of the museum's encyclopedic holdings into fiefdoms carved out by individual collectors who insisted, as a condition of their gifts, that their treasures be allotted their own galleries, segregated from related works.

After the current display (to Feb. 3) in celebration of the gift, the Newman works will be integrated with the Met's existing 20th-century collection. This means, for example, that her Pollock drip painting, "Number 28, 1950," can be hung in proximity to the Met's great "Autumn Rhythm" of the same year.

Roberta mentioned "the desultory effects" of donor restrictions that have caused the Met's Renaissance paintings to be scattered "in three places: the Robert Lehman Wing, the Jack and Belle Linsky Galleries and European painting galleries."

She might also have mentioned such other Met fiefdoms as the Walter Annenberg Galleries of 19th- and 20th-century European paintings and the Benjamin Altman Galleries of old masters, as well as one closer in timeframe to the Newman collection---the galleries set aside, at the donors' insistence, for the School of Paris masterpieces bequeathed in 1998 by Jacques and Natasha Gelman. This has caused the unfortunate estrangement, for example, of their 1906 Picasso self-portrait, once owned by Gertrude Stein, from another of Stein's Picassos, his renowned portrait of her from the same year.

Here's what Rosenthal had to say about this fragmentation of installations, when I spoke to her recently at the Newman press preview:

It would be nice if the Gelman collection were integrated with the collection. Other donors of works of the period...did not demand a separate space the way the Gelmans did. But the museum felt the work was of a quality that it would accede to that demand.

I think the Met had a lot of catch-up to do at the time when the Gelman Collection was to be given. Between the catch-up and the quality, I would go along with it. But it would be ideal if the museum had a policy of not doing such a thing, it seems to me.

It seems to me, too.

Richard Leventhal (above), anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and curator of its Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, recently informed me that he assigns CultureGrrl to students in his course on Museums and Cultural Heritage. I've also been read by Steven Miller's students in the graduate school program in museum professions at Seton Hall University, and Harry Martin III's art-law students at Harvard Law School. Maybe I should compile the CultureGrrl textbook.

Leventhal adds:

Although I do not agree with all of your comments, I think that your blog is one of the most interesting focused on museums within the new world.

He stepped down last year from the directorship of Penn's museum to launch its Cultural Heritage Center. Leventhal is a strong proponent of source countries' claims for the return of cultural property. I'm more of a moderate on this issue.

No wonder he sometimes disagrees with me! (At least we agree on CultureGrrl.)

In interviews, André Emmerich, who died Monday at the age of 82, spoke with the erudite articulateness and elegant articulation of a scholar, not a salesman. Along with Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis, he was one of the deans of New York City's contemporary art dealers, during an earlier era when the scene was much less diffuse and diverse than it is today.

But Emmerich was also deeply involved in the sale of archeological material, especially pre-Columbian art, and he was a thoughtful and persuasive spokesperson for the "other side" of the cultural-property debate: He argued that by imparting financial value to such objects, the art market stimulated the discovery of important pieces and insured their proper care, study and conservation. Were these objects not coveted by collectors and museums, far fewer would be unearthed and available for the public's enjoyment and edification, he maintained.

But recognizing that the tide had turned against him, and that the image of dealers in this field had changed from respected to suspect, he reluctantly abandoned the pre-Columbian trade and focused on contemporary, where his stable most famously included Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney and the estate of Hans Hofmann, among many others.

In 2003, he published an article in the Wall Street Journal, Let the Market Preserve Art, expressing his provocative philosophy:

The tragedy is that by bandying about such terms as "stolen art," "smuggled," and "looted," the retentionists claim the moral high ground. In fact higher morality, as so often, is best served by the free market.

His memoirs, My Life with Art (above), were due out this month, but some rewrites had not been completed at the time of his death, according to a spokesperson for Ruder Finn Press. No word on whether anyone will finish the job.

Photo by Augusto Salinas

Xiomara Laugart Sánchez (above) says : "I don't sing like Celia."

Don't you believe it.

From the moment she opened her mouth in the uneven preview that I saw of Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz at New World Stages, more than two weeks before last night's official opening, I was blown away by her channeling of the Queen of Salsa's hard-driving vocals in her signature songs.

Both the script and the acting were often stilted, but some of that may have been due to the fact that I attended the English-language version, probably not as freespirited as the Spanish performances, which predominate on the schedule. (All of the songs, of course, are in Spanish.) Some of the kinks may have been worked out in the remaining previews.

There are two "Celias" in this show, Joselin Reyes, who does most of the talking, and Sánchez, who is often offstage to accomplish numerous gown-and-wig changes. This awkward role-sharing device doesn't quite work, especially since the two actresses are so unlike in appearance and deportment.

No matter. It's all about the music: The show's onstage band, one of its dancers (Rogelio Douglas Jr.) and, especially, its diva (who was formerly lead singer of the Latin/world fusion band Yerba Buena) give a performance that can only be described as incendiary. I'm no salsa fan: I came to all this through the accident of apartment ownership. But I'm a new convert to Celia and to this sonorous, sensuous theatrical impersonator, whose bravura performance includes a touch of self-mockery, as if she were somewhat bemused by her own charismatic spell.

The ghost in my apartment is very pleased. Do you think I should lend to the production my authentic Celia wig and translucent amber cane that the previous owners of our apartment left behind? That ugly metal cane used by Celia near the end of the show just isn't right:

The surmise (scroll down) of Bloomberg's Linda Yablonsky was correct: Kathy Halbreich, who is set to leave the directorship of the Walker Art Center on Nov. 1, will become associate director of the Museum of Modern Art [via]. She will be joined in New York by her current closely cooperative colleague on the Twin Cities art scene, William Griswold, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, who comes to the Morgan Library & Museum on Jan. 1.

Has MoMA put out a press release? Of course not. Its official spokesperson is Carol Vogel, whose piece for tomorrow's paper is already up tonight on the NY Times' website.

The Walker Art Center apparently doesn't observe New York's Vogel embargo, and has already posted this announcement on its own blog. Mary Abbe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has the story here.

Buried in Carol's piece is a shocker: The indispensible John Elderfield, MoMA's chief curator for paintings and sculpture, will soon face retirement, "because the institution sets a mandatory retirement age of 65 for its top decision-makers." If that foolish rule had existed at the Metropolitan Museum, Philippe de Montebello would have been out of his director's job a long time ago. Vogel's piece makes a big point of emphasizing that director Glenn Lowry is staying on. So should Elderfield, if he so desires.

Now the Met should follow suit, not on the age-ist policy, but on the pursuit of a new contemporary art expert who, as I previously discussed here, possesses "a good eye, good instincts and strong contacts with artists, collectors and galleries, who will invigorate the contemporary art program."

In other words, they need someone who has the acumen of collector Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, who, as described in the Met's catalogue for her impressive, donated collection (now on display), had an uncanny ability to "grasp the importance of a radical new development in the visual arts and act on that understanding immediately and with almost pitch-perfect accuracy."

If our country's premier museum had that kind of person on staff, maybe it wouldn't be so resistant to buying the art of our own time.

MAJOR CORRECTION: This is a whopper---I originally and erroneously wrote below that the contested Klimt belonged to Ronald Lauder. I have now corrected this entry. It's Leonard Lauder, Ronald's brother, who owns the work in question. It was an egregious error, which I deeply regret. I need a refresher course in reading comprehension.

---Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times has a detailed story today about a Holocaust victim heir's claim for a Klimt owned by Leonard Lauder. But don't look for it on the Arts pages; it's in N.Y./Region.

The dispute pits Lauder's lawyers against E. Randol Schoenberg, the attorney who, in a sense, owes his biggest pay day to Leonard's brother Ronald Lauder, thanks to the huge price he paid for the recovered Klimt, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," partly owned by Schoenberg's client, Maria Altmann. That famous purchase in turn set the stage for Christie's extraordinary auction of the rest of the recovered Bloch-Bauer paintings. Schoenberg got a generous cut of those proceeds.

---How refreshing to take a break from the installation wars and get back to the good old decency wars: Is Nan Goldin porn? Is this story newsworthy largely because the seized photograph is owned by Elton John?

---I'm no genius. But artists Joan Snyder and Whitfield Lovell are---certified brilliant by the MacArthur Foundation.

---Why does Philadelphia covet the Barnes? Maybe because of findings like this---the latest economic study spreading the news that the "non-profit cultural sector is a tremendous asset to the local economy." I guess every town needs to have one of these mathematical "proofs" that the arts are important.

She's the new director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, succeeding William Griswold, but previously I'd never heard of her. The MIA has a history of prominent professionals in its top post (Evan Maurer, Samuel Sachs II), so her relative obscurity took me by surprise.

We can all learn about her together here, where Mary Abbe of the Star Tribune notes that when she arrives from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, she will be one of five female museum directors in the Twin Cities (including the better known Olga Viso, soon to leave the Hirshhorn for the directorship of the Walker Art Center).

Minneapolis is a great place, but isn't it a bit harsh to bring someone from Memphis to start work during the harsh Minnesota winter? She starts Jan. 1.

NOTE: I've updated my previous post, on the good news from Italian prosecutors for Marion True.

Oh my prophetic soul!

Not only has the Getty's signing of the the 40-object repatriation agreement with Italy brought a withdrawal of civil charges against the Getty Museum's former antiquities curator, Marion True, but Jason Felch and Livia Borghese report in the LA Times that the Italians have now indicated that nothing much is going to happen to her in the criminal case. According to prosecutor Paolo Ferri, that trial should now be wrapped up more expeditiously, thanks to the agreement with the Getty. (But I do miss the old familiar investigative team of Felcholino..."Felchese" just doesn't have the same ring.)

Ferri told the LA Times:

True is an American citizen and will be able to evade my penal sanctions by going to the U.S....For me, the trial has been won.

Can the newspaper now search its files for a more appealing photo of Marion True? That grim 2005 Italian perp-walk shot is getting to be a even more tired than the last time I complained about it.

UPDATE: Today's detailed NY Times story supports the sense that True will soon get off the hook. I love the quote from that suddenly sympathetic soul, Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri.

Elisabetta Povoledo writes:

Mr. Ferri...said the state's intention was not to put Ms. True behind bars but to make a point about illicit artifacts, something he said he felt had been achieved. "Getting a one-year or 100-year sentence is not important to me," he said in a telephone interview. "What is important is that the antiquities market understands that the behavior of the past has criminal implications."

Ms. True, he said, "shouldn't have to pay for everyone."

NOW he tells us! I think that's what True was saying all along.

This just in from MASS MoCA:

MASS MoCA announced today that it has begun removing materials gathered for "Training Ground for Democracy" and will not permit the public to enter the planned installation which was cancelled on May 21, 2007....

After giving careful deliberation to the interests of many constituents, including the artist's own views, and factoring in the limited time window available given our normal exhibition cycle---together with other considerations both logistical and philosophical---we have decided to begin removing the materials immediately without placing them on public display. We are eager to return to our core mission to serve as a experimental platform for art-making, and we look forward to commencing work immediately on the previously announced installation by Jenny Holzer, "Projections," which will open Nov. 17, 2007.

The museum announced today that in conjunction with the Clark Art Institute, it would co-host a symposium devoted to the issues raised by this case. The symposium will be held later this fall.

Will Christoph Büchel attend?

UPDATE: Here's MASS MoCA's complete statment.

She did it (maybe):

Fisk University and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art have reached an agreement for the Bentonville, Arkansas, museum to buy a 50 percent undivided interest in Fisk's Alfred Stieglitz Collection for $30 million. This would give Crystal Bridges the "right to publicly display the collection on an equal basis."

The deal still has to be approved by Davidson County Chancery Court, which on Sept. 10 nixed Fisk's agreement with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, for the $7.5-million sale of O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building."

Super Coop has still not been heard from, but Fisk's board chairman, Reynaldo Glover, commented that Fisk has been "in regular contact with Attorney General Robert Cooper. We appreciate his role to date and his ongoing willingness to listen and work toward a responsible solution of this matter."

Just yesterday morning, Cooper had informed me in an e-mail:

My answer on the Crystal Bridges proposal has not changed from what is stated in my letter to Alice Walton---need details of the proposal before support or oppose.

Fisk's official announcement is here

UPDATE: Here's today's word from the AG, Robert Cooper:

We are reviewing their agreement to determine whether this Office can support it and whether changes would be needed to protect the interests of the citizens of Tennessee. As we have told both institutions, a significant factor in our evaluation will be whether a reasonable alternative emerges that would allow the Stieglitz Collection to remain here on a full-time basis.

The Getty will today formalize its agreement with Italy for the return of 40 objects, Stephen West of Bloomberg reports.

Nothing about this yet on the Getty's or Italian Culture Ministry's websites. Why not?

Will Marion True be returned in exchange?

I don't favor such things, but if there were ever a case for export restrictions in this country, this is it:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sotheby's in New York will present for sale The Magna Carta, the royal document revered as the birth certificate of freedom. This iconic manuscript, dated 1297, is the original charter that enshrined the rights of man into English law, and inspired the passion for liberty that flowered in America in the 18th century and continues around the world today. It is the most famous single document in existence....This is one of only two copies of the Magna Carta outside of England (the other belonging to the people of Australia). The document is estimated to sell for $20/30 million with the proceeds benefiting the charitable activities of The [Ross] Perot Foundation.

The sale is set for Dec. 11. Sotheby's says that Perot's parchment is "one of fewer than 20 examples of the Magna Carta, and the only one ever likely to be sold."

I would urge Sotheby's and Perot to be Magna-nimous and at least give American institutions a chance to match the auction price, if it is knocked down to a private or foreign buyer. This may be a British document, but it was of central importance to the birth of our own democracy.

One institution that would undoubtedly want it (but probably can't, by itself, afford it) is the National Archives, where it has been on display (other than an eight-month showing in Philadelphia in celebration of the Constitution's bicentennial) since 1985. Perot bought it in 1984 for $1.5 million.

The Archives' website describes the document as "on display through September 20, 2007....This is the only Magna Carta permanently residing in the United States."

Or maybe not.

This just in: Not wasting any time, artist Christoph Büchel has just filed a "Notice of Appeal" to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in his dispute with MASS MoCA. Meanwhile, MASS MoCA is still scheduled to announce tomorrow whether it intends to display (as now permitted by U.S. District Court) the materials from Büchel's aborted commission.

For the most complete eyewitness account yet of what transpired on Friday in Judge Ponsor's courtroom, go to Martha Lufkin's piece for The Art Newspaper, here.

Please tell me that this sorry spectacle will not eventually make its way to the Supreme Court!

Peter Dobrin

It takes a music critic to solve the Barnes problem.

Bucking his own newspaper's MegaBarnes-friendly news coverage, as well its editorial writers' campaign in strong support of the Barnes Foundation's planned move from Merion to Philadelphia, Peter Dobrin, the Philadelphia Inquirer's music critic, solved the whole Barnes mess in two paragraphs in the most recent post on his ArtsWatch blog:

Keep the Barnes where it is, build a Barnes interpretive center on the Parkway downtown with the compulsory gift shop and bookstore and a theater preparing visitors for the Barnes experience with a 20- or 30-minute documentary. Then bus visitors from the interpretive center out to Merion to see the Barnes.

Is $150 million really raised toward this project? If so, take $50 million to build the interpretive center, and put the other $100 million in endowment to save the Barnes from its ongoing financial troubles.

That's fine, except that the $100 million was allocated (but only partially appropriated) by the state to support the Barnes' move to Philly. So let them use part of that stash for the Philly-based satellite facility. The Barnes gets to have the $50 million from bonds proposed to be issued by its home county, Montgomery, as well as the revenues from increased visitation now allowed by Merion. If the Philly-centric state government decides to kick in some money for Merion, so much the better. The Barnes doesn't need $100 million for financial stability, anyway---just $50 million, according to its officials' testimony at the hearings before the judge who granted permission for the move.

Dobrin believes "there's a change in the air surrounding the Barnes Foundation's proposed move to Center City," partly because Stanley Ott, the Montgomery County Orphan's Court judge who allowed the move in 2004, has now agreed to hear arguments on new petitions opposing it, and partly because Inquirer art critic Edward Sozanski and other prominent opponents of the Philly Barnes have now been joined by respected NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.

On Saturday, Ouroussoff wrote this about "the beloved old Barnes in suburban Merion":

Dismantling it is a crime.

It's criminal? Maybe it's in the wrong court!

Judge Michael Ponsor of U.S. District Court in Springfield, MA, apparently agreed with my layman's surmise that the Visual Artists Rights Act does not apply to the Christoph Büchel mess at MASS MoCA. What's more, the North Adams, MA, institution is free to display the material assembled for the abandoned project.

As reported by John Dyer in the Boston Globe, Judge Ponsor ruled on Friday that "an unfinished work [such as Büchel's] didn't qualify for protection under the [VARA] law. The judge said MASS MoCA must post a disclaimer explaining that the installation isn't complete. The judge gave Büchel until Monday at 5 p.m. to provide any remarks to include in the disclaimer. The work cannot be shown until then, according to the ruling." The judge also denied the request of the artist's attorneys for an injunction to stop MASS MoCA from displaying the aborted project to the public.

To read the post mortem from one of the artist's lawyers, Donn Zaretsky, in his Art Law Blog, go here.

It appears that MASS MoCA will soon move on from this sorry episode: In announcing the judge's ruling on his institution's website, director Joe Thompson provided details about the next mega-project for Building 5, the site of the Büchel debacle:

I'm pleased to announce a new installation for Building 5 by Jenny Holzer to be opened later this fall....Holzer will use MASS MOCA's massive Building 5 as the site of her first interior light projections in the United States. She will also exhibit a new series of paintings shown, in part, at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

It remains to be seen whether Büchel will also put this episode behind him, or continue to sue for damage to his reputation by appealing the ruling. But Judge Ponser apparently disagreed with Büchel's contention that exhibiting the aborted project could hurt his reputation. Paradoxically, that might be because, doing his due diligence prior to the court hearing, the judge journeyed to North Adams to view the evidence, was "extremely moved" and found it all "very powerful."

The judge's ecstatic art review is quoted on Martin Bromirski's Anaba blog, which is the next best thing to having been in the courtroom. You can read Martin's two-part firsthand reportage here and here.

Your Honor, there's an open art critic's spot at the Boston Globe that I think might interest you!

Here's what I think should happen next: MASS MoCA should exhibit the evidence of Debacle Büchel for one week, merely to give the morbidly curious (and those intrigued by Judge Ponser's rave review) a chance to witness the subject of what will go down in history, along with Serrano and Ofili, as another Infamous Art Controversy that greatly increased public awareness of an artist's work. The label must, of course, conform to the language dictated by Judge Ponser. It should not characterize the material as the work of Büchel, who repudiates it and has the right to do so, under VARA.

Then MASS MoCA should get that stuff outta there. Ask the artist's attorneys what he wants done with it and try to comply with those wishes, to the extent that it seems reasonable. I'd like to see MASS MoCA recover the cost of materials, but the public-relations loss might outweigh the institution's considerable financial loss in taking on this project.

Apropos the disposition of the material, here's what director Joe Thompson wrote to me at the conclusion of a long, letter that he sent to me by e-mail on Friday, just three hours before the court session was to begin:

Should the court decide that the museum may continue to use its curatorial discretion in dealing with the materials that we purchased, and which have been sitting in our midst for 10 months, we will take into account the interests of our local community, our supporters, the many people who donated materials and sweat equity to this effort, art critics and historians, legal scholars, the comments of the court, the opinions of our friends and colleagues, the logistics of our own exhibition calendar, the ebb and flow of visitors and residents in the Berkshires, and many other factors both practical and philosophical. We will also take into account our longstanding mission of revealing in a truthful and transparent way the full reality of art-making today....

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all arising from this case...would be if MASS MoCA (and other institutions like it) had to radically alter the direct, experimental, organic way we work with artists. That is a chilling possibility for both artists and the institutions who strive to make their wildest ideas possible.

Mary Cassatt, "Françoise in Green, Sewing"---Good enough for Adelyn Breeskin

It's still the same old story:

A museum decides it needs to sell works to raises big bucks for one or more major acquisitions. It puts out the story that the works to be deaccessioned are seldom or never exhibited, and/or redundant and inferior to other comparable works in the collection.

Then I ask for the registrar's records of the "inferior" works' exhibition histories. (Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes apparently did so too, and deserves credit for twice---here and here---beating me to the keyboard, but not the information. I've been diverted by an unrelated WSJ assignment.)

As always seems to happen, my queries to the St. Louis Art Museum revealed that the exhibition histories of some of the works to be sold at Christie's this fall to bankroll its Degas purchase are at variance with the story they were putting out. This turns out to be yet another case of what I call "off-the-wall deaccessions": sales of museum-quality works that institutions had previously deemed worthy of public display.

This has happened so many times (including, in the last few years, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art) that when St. Louis' director, Brent Benjamin, told me that his institution was selling inferior, seldom exhibited works, I immediately asked him if he was sure, because I always seem to find, when I dig further, that the real story is different. It is, after all, difficult to raise multimillions by selling only clunkers.

The real story IS somewhat different, as the museum's media relations officer, Kendra Gramlich, acknowledged when she sent me the full exhibition histories of the St. Louis Ten. She volunteered that the exhibition record "might not quite agree" with what Benjamin had told me, because he was "speaking off the top of his head." If true, that in itself is an troubling admission, because when a museum takes the weighty and irrevocable step of selling works from its collection, the director ought to have complete, top-of-the-head familiarity with the importance and histories of those works.

Benjamin is in good company: Back in 1990, when I did the same investigative digging for ARTnews magazine into the exhibition histories of works being sold by the Museum of Modern art to bankroll its $45-million van Gogh "Portrait of Joseph Roulin," Kirk Varnedoe, then MoMA's director of painting and sculpture, ultimately acknowledged to me that one of the seven works deemed expendable, a Kandinsky landscape, had "hung consistently [in MoMA's permanent collection galleries] from 1984 to 1989, more than memory tells me."

Similarly, although Benjamin had told me that the works up for sale were not customarily shown in the permanent collection galleries, the Jean Metzinger "Landscape," ca. 1916-17, had been consistently on public display there from Sept. 2002 to Sept. 2006 and had been included in a prior three-museum retrospective of the artist's work.

This and some other works being sold by St. Louis clearly don't conform with Benjamin's own stated criteria for deaccession, as reported today by David Bonetti in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Benjamin told Bonetti:

It is the policy of the museum to deaccession only those works that are inappropriate for display or research. In general, there are four reasons why we might choose to sell a work. One, that it be of inferior quality, relative to the museum collection. Two, that it be of compromised physical condition. Three, that it be a secondary 'school' of work or a copy. Four, that it be a duplicate.

MAN reported yesterday (and this I DIDN'T previously know) that far from being "of inferior quality, relative to the museum collection," the Cassatt consigned to auction, "Françoise in Green, Sewing," ca. 1908, is the museum's ONLY Cassatt. I can add that it was deemed worthy of display by Adelyn Breeskin, then the premier expert in that artist, in her Cassatt show of more than 150 prints, pastels, and paintings at the Baltimore Museum in 1941-2. It was also part of the National Gallery's 1970 exhibition of more than 90 Cassatt paintings and pastels, organized to celebrate the publication of Breeskin's catalogue raisonné of the artist.

In order to acquire its only Degas painting, it is selling its only Cassatt.

The soon-to-be-sold Renoir, "Young Woman Embroidering at the Window," 1900, which is St. Louis' highest-estimated ($2.5 - $3.5 million) work in Christie's Nov. 6 evening Impressionist/modern sale, has an interesting history: It was purchased in 1916 by legendary collector Albert Barnes from the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris.

St. Louis will also be disposing of six works in Christie's Oct. 4 old master paintings sale. These are all estimated below $100,000, so this can probably be legitimately deemed a housecleaning. The museum also tried to clean house with four of its American paintings in Christie's American paintings sale last week. None sold at the auction; one was sold privately afterwards.

Some will argue that sacrificing the Cassatt and the Metzinger for the Degas is a smart trade. I would argue that if a work belongs in the public domain, it should stay there. Permanent collections aren't trading chips. Benjamin's stated criteria for deaccessioning are exactly right. He needs to start adhering to them.

The space where Christoph Büchel's "Training Ground for Democracy" was to have been installed

Although it doesn't mention NY Times art critic Roberta Smith by name, the Sept. 18 entry on MASS MoCA's blog, FAQ re: Training Ground, was clearly intended as a rebuttal to her Sept. 16 diatribe against that institution for its handling of the aborted Christoph Büchel installation.

Here are a couple of MASS MoCA excerpts:

To encourage Mr. Büchel to finish the work, MASS MoCA extended the installation time from six weeks to more than three months, provided nearly twice the budgeted funds (over $300,000), and then offered an additional $100,000 to finish the work. Despite this, the artist refused to complete the piece. MASS MoCA offered him the opportunity to remove the materials, reimbursing the museum for their actual cost, which he also refused....

The only relief we have sought [in the lawsuit going to trial today] was a clear declaration of the parties' rights, and a decision from the court that would allow MASS MoCA to move forward. Mr. Büchel...has asserted a number of counterclaims against MASS MoCA seeking to compel the museum to pay him monetary damages....Mr. Büchel has also made and sold or attempted to sell certain art works incorporating court filings from this dispute.

Buchel's list of demands and his full account of the dispute were published on Geoff Edgers' Exhibitionist blog, here, here and here.

The artist's lawyer is the Art Law Blog's author, Donn Zaretsky. He posted a copy of a letter that he sent to MASS MoCA here.

They protagonists are set to slug it out in Springfield, MA, federal court today at 2 p.m. I'd like to avert my eyes from this painful spectacle.

Benvenuto Cellini, Saltcellar, called the "Saliera," Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Wilfried Seipel, well known in international museum circles as the longtime director of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, will be out of that job by the end of next year.

The Associated Press reports:

The Austrian Culture Ministry will not renew a contract for the embattled director of Vienna's prestigious Art History Museum, where a Renaissance figurine valued at $69.3 million was brazenly stolen in 2003. Culture Minister Claudia Schmied said in a statement that Wilfried Seipel's contract would not be extended when it expires on Dec. 31, 2008....Seipel...has been fiercely criticized for lax security that authorities say the thief easily exploited.

The figurine, a rare gold-plated saltcellar (above) by Benvenuto Cellini, was recovered last year.

Seipel was part of a formal cooperative partnership forged in 2001 with Tom Krens of the Guggenheim Foundation and Mikhail Piotrovski of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Rembrandt, "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer"---A Rare Met Purchase

Many have remarked, sometimes with irritation, on the eccentric organizing principle behind the just-opened The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (to Jan. 6). Indeed, my fondest hope, after I learned the show's title and before I learned that the museum's 228 Dutch paintings were to be installed chronologically by acquisition date, was that we'd finally get to see the museum's great Rembrandts installed together, as they briefly were a few years ago, when their usual galleries were undergoing renovation. We usually have to run around to see the Altman Rembrandts in the Altman galleries, the Lehman Rembrandt in the Lehman wing, and the rest of the Rembrandts in the Dutch galleries. A similarly disjointed display always exists for the Vermeers, for the same donor-driven reason.

But in the current show, where the donor is king, the display is more disjointed than ever. It can feel like an exasperating treasure hunt, as you try to sort out the gems from the trinkets. It might have expedited this task if the labels had designated which paintings came from the permanent collection galleries and which from storage.

It seems that even the curator, Walter Liedtke, couldn't quite stay with the program. Not only did he banish some of the lesser works to another part of the museum, but he installed one still life out if its proper place in the acquisitions chronology. I couldn't understand why it was there, until I turned to my right and saw another much larger still life, by a better known artist, with striking similarities in subject matter and composition. (I'll let you treasure hunters find these for yourself.)

If you want to see all the Rembrandts all together, you can---in the enormous, expensive and erudite two-volume catalogue, organized alphabetically by artist. (I didn't make the A-list for scarce press copies, so your faithful blogger and WNYC radio commentator ended up buying one, too.)

What seemed clear at the press preview was that the exhibition's raison d'être is, in part, to honor past benefactors and encourage future ones---an urgent need at a time when the masterpiece market has so decisively outstripped museums' relatively meager acquisitions funds.

In his brief remarks, the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, emphasized the point that the vast preponderance of works in the show, with the exception of those from the founding purchase of 174 paintings in 1871 (of which only 64 remain), came to the museum by way of donation. That includes all five Vermeers, all 11 Hals and all but one of the 20 Rembrandts.

The one Rembrandt purchase was, famously, "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (above). In the catalogue, curator Liedtke recalls that Met staffers "consumed a fair amount of tea" in the library of Mrs. Alfred Erickson, the owner of that work, hoping that she might see fit to donate it. But they ultimately had to pay $2.3 million for it in 1961---then a record for any work at auction. Those were the days.

A few other fun facts, from the wall labels:

---"Fate smiled on the Metropolitan" when Henry Marquand paid a mere $800 to a Paris dealer for the museum's most beloved Vermeer, "Young Woman with a Water Pitcher."

---Jules Bache paid Wildenstein Galleries $135,000 for what turned out to be a modern Vermeer forgery---"more than twice what Rembrandt's 'Standard Bearer' had cost him."

---Locomotive manufacturerJacob Rogers of Paterson, NJ---not a collector but just an occasional visitor to the museum---must have been impressed when the Met's then director, Luigi di Palma Cesnola, "would thank him in person for his annual dues of $10." Rogers rewarded this courtesy in 1901 with an astonishing bequest of $5 million for acquisitions.

Would it help if Philippe exchanged pleasantries with visitors at the $20 admissions desk?

Revisiting the the Neue Galerie's website today, I discovered that you CAN arduously arrive at the sketchy provenance information that used to be provided, but only after going through the seven-step procedure and then entering an individual artist's name in the search box. As I noted in my previous post today, you cannot, at this writing, get there through the "Browse by Artist" provenance-search option, where you encounter broken links on the list of 73 artists.

This is not what I call transparency.

This and this seem to be the start of a new trend of conspicuous nonconsumption by the culturally conscious superrich.

It goes like this: Pay outlandish prices to preempt the sale of works scheduled to be offered by the auction houses. Then return them to their country of origin. You can buy this kind of publicity!

Could this be a way out of the antiquities wars? (Just kidding.)

Ronald Lauder, standing left, Maria Altmann, seated right, and You-Know-Who, center

From the serious to the ridiculous:

---You may remember when I reported on the Neue Galerie's much delayed, technologically exasperating and frustratingly fragmentary posting of the provenance for its collection on its website.

Now, if you persevere through the seven-step, provenance-finding procedure that I previously outlined, to get to a list of artists in the collection, you will discover that clicking on the "links" for those artists' names brings you to a dead end. I tried it with two different web browsers.

On Firefox I got:

The requested URL /browse/results/body.html was not found on this server.

On Internet Explorer, I never got past the screen that says "Loading."

In other words, what little provenance information was there is no longer there.

Considering that the Neue Galerie's founder, collector Ronald Lauder, conspicuously styles himself as an advocate for freeing "the last prisoners of World War II"---artworks misappropriated by the Nazis---this is a particularly disturbing result.

---On a lighter note (a VERY lite note), ArtsBeat, the NY Times feeble attempt at a culture blog, has become totally inane. In fact, it's not a blog at all---just a fatuous attempt at interactivity without substance.

The last substantive post bearing a culture writer's byline was Ben Brantley's Aug. 7 "London Theater Journal." Since then, there have been only five entries, all unsigned and structured along these lines:

Do you agree with Howard P. Chudacoff, who suggests in his new book, "Children at Play: An American History," that organized activities, overscheduling and excessive amounts of homework are crowding out free time and constricting children's imaginations and social skills? Share your thoughts.

Here's my thought: The Times should do its homework and learn what a blog is.

---Jacqueline Trescott of the Washington Post reports on protests by eight of the 25 board members of the National Museum of the American Indian over the appointment of Kevin Gover to be the museum's next director. Gover is a lawyer with no museum experience, but with an avowed "deep interest in and knowledge of Indian history and culture." The dissidents argue that all the board members, not just three, should have been consulted prior to the appointment. The Smithsonian says that the selection of the director is the responsibility of its acting secretary, Cristián Samper, and that the main functions of the board are fundraising and counseling the director.

Here's what the the Smithsonian's own Guidelines for Advisory Boards (scroll to P. 7) say:

A board should be given an appropriate role in the selection and evaluation of the director. The Secretary has ultimate authority to select the director.

---Bijan Khezri, CEO and president of the Artist Pension Trust in London, uses economic analysis to predict in today's Wall Street Journal that the contemporary art-market bubble won't burst. Before joining APT a year ago, Khezri was immersed in equity capital markets, merchant banking and the acquisition of "distressed, dormant and high risk assets through the application of advanced geophysical technology." Geophysical technology? That could be a useful tool in evaluating the Hirst skull!

---Christian Viveros-Fauné writes an admiring but unflinchingly candid profile in the Village Voice of Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker (and formerly for the Village Voice). Who says you need a college degree to be a great art critic?

---La Tribune de l'Art, the online French art journal that led the futile charge against the Louvre Abu Dhabi, had launched an English-language version. The Art Tribune will be not be merely an English translation of the original, but will also have distinct content.

Edgar Degas, "The Milliners," c.1898, 29 5/8 x 32 1/4 inches, St. Louis Art Museum

The St. Louis Art Museum's recently announced purchase of Degas' "The Milliners" for about $10 million is the latest example of the sell-to-buy syndrome discussed in my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece about the difficult collecting environment for museums.

When I spoke to him yesterday morning about what the museum calls its "financial package" for this purchase, St. Louis' director, Brent Benjamin, revealed to me that the museum had consigned 10 Impressionist and modern paintings to this fall's auctions at Christie's to help bankroll the purchase. He said he felt he had to check first with the auction house to see whether he could release to me the identities of those works and their presale estimates, which I received in the late afternoon. (Click link below for the full list.)

During our conversation, Benjamin conceded that this sale would go "a step beyond" his museum's usual policy of deaccessioning only works that had been deemed "inappropriate" for the collection. Three of the works, he said, had been exhibited in the museum's galleries---two only briefly, one "more frequently." (I am seeking information about the full exhibition histories for the 10 works.) He said that the consigned paintings had been on the museum's "notional list of works for sale when an extraordinary opportunity came up."

Benjamin would not say how much money he hoped to apply to the Degas from the deaccession proceeds, which, he said, depended on the results of the sales. Three of the works---the Matisse, Renoir and Metzinger (see linked list, below) will be in Christie's Nov. 6 evening sale of Impressionist/modern works. Others will be in the Nov. 7 Impressionist/modern day sale, the Nov. 29 American paintings sale (Cassatt) and the Oct. 29 19th-century European paintings sale (Harpignies).

Judging from the presale estimates, the deaccessioning could in fact yield enough cash to bankroll the whole thing. But the museum has stated that funds from endowment and earned income would also be part of the package. The official credit line on the work reads, "Director's Discretionary Fund and Museum Purchase by exchange." "Exchange" is museumspeak for "sale."

"The Milliners" is the first painting by Degas to enter St. Louis' collection. Another somewhat smaller (23 5/8 x 29 1/2 inches) Degas painting of milliners was acquired by the Getty Museum in 2005. Carol Vogel then reported (scroll down) in the NY Times:

The Getty bought the Degas from Aquavella Galleries in Manhattan; it declined to say what it had paid. Experts in the field believe the asking price was $6 million but say the Getty paid around $3.5 million.

The Getty's curator involved in that purchase, Charlotte Eyerman, is now the St. Louis curator of modern and contemporary art who negotiated the latest purchase.

Click the link below for the works being sold to pay for St. Louis' Degas.

Oh happy day!

As of this very moment---midnight---the NY Times has removed its "TimesSelect" paid subscription requirement for online access to articles by its columnists and, more importantly, to much of the newspaper's archives---from 1851 and 1922 and from 1987 to the present. But, for some reason---unexplained in either the corporate announcement or the article in today's paper---"archives for the years 1923-1986 are available to be purchased in single or 10-article packages." Is this like Medigap?

This change, of course, is advertiser-driven. Online advertisers favor free access, and the Times is betting that the money to be gained by increased advertising on its website will more than offset any loss in TimesSelect subscription revenue.

Richard Pérez-Peña reported in yesterday's Times:

What changed...was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

In other words, the increased web traffic from open access is expected to increase the attractiveness of the site to advertisers.

I hope this means that other newspapers that are now charging for online access will soon follow suit, so that the links that I provide to you on my blog don't become locked behind the tollgates after their brief life of unobstructed public access. Predictably, there is already much rejoicing in the blogosphere over the fall of the TimesSelect regime.

This is what I call a free press!

It took the NY Times 11 days to do it, but yesterday it finally published two letters criticizing Stephanie Strom's astonishing Sept. 6 front-page hatchet job on tax deductions for charitable contributions.

One of those letters came from Mark Rosenthal, who has worked for more than 30 years as a curator for art institutions including the National Gallery, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection.

Rosenthal wrote:

I fear that your article will simply inspire useless and destructive debate in Congress, where art makes for a wonderfully diversionary political football. In the meantime, the many causes in need of help, along with art, will potentially be damaged by yet new misguided tax changes.

The other letter writer was Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University, who argued out that "private contributions...finance initiatives, like human embryonic stem cell research, that the government does not support."

It seems that, despite Strom's demurrals in a comment to the Chonicle of Philanthropy, I'm not the only one who sensed that she was down on tax deductible benefactions for cultural institutions, hospitals and stem cell research.

Now if only Clark Hoyt, the Times' public editor, would examine whether Strom's article meets NY Times standards for fairness and balance.

You can now link here (on WNYC's website) or simply click below to hear the audio of my commentary on the Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" show today on New York Public Radio. You can also go here for my own irreverent photo essay on this grand hodgepodge of a show.

Speaking of photo essays, the NY Times should correct the caption that accompanies the second image in its slideshow for Holland Cotter's review today. That dour-looking "Enchantress" is no Rembrandt. She's a Paulus Bor!

Those of you who surf here from WNYC's website this morning will have already seen the Metropolitan Museum's authorized images of great masterpieces from its "Age of Rembrandt" show. But the majority of the 228 works---an array of all the museum's Dutch old master holdings---are usually (and often for good reason) hidden away in storage. This motley assemblage cries out for a mischievous photo essay.

So here it is.

Fool's Gold from The Golden Age: The Met's Blooper Outtakes:

Imitator of Johannes Vermeer, "A Young Woman Reading," Jules Bache Collection

"The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art" includes the good, the bad and even the fake: This would-be Vermeer was acquired by Jules Bache as authentic but was actually painted in the 20th century. The Met has five authentic Vermeers, all in the exhibition.

Style of Frans Hals, "Malle Babbe," 1871 Purchase

A continuing theme running through the exhibition is the large number of works that were treasured as masterpieces when acquired and then downgraded, sometimes not long after their acquisition. The loosely painted, grotesque portrait of a retarded woman, above, was considered "one of the proudest trophies" of the 1871 purchase that formed the core of the Met's inaugural collection, but only 12 years later its attribution to Frans Hals was already in doubt.

Possibly Abraham van Dijck inspired by Nicolaes Maes, "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails," Bequest of Benjamin Altman

Only 20 of the 42 works that entered the Met 's collection as Rembrandts are still regarded as by that artist. As a youngster in New York, I gazed with awe and admiration at some of the now downgraded works. I felt bereft when I later discovered they weren't what I had thought they were. One of those was the much loved portrait above.

Willem Claesz Heda, "Still LIfe with Oysters, a Silver Tazza and Glassware," Bequest of Rita Markus

This is no blooper. It's the real deal, acquired just two years ago, as part of the Rita and Frits Markus Collection. As a monochrome banquet picture, it filled a gap in the museum's collection. But it was part of a package deal that also brought to the Met seven other pictures in the show, including the one below.

Style of Rembrandt, "Young Woman with a Red Necklace," Bequest of Rita Markus

This lackluster portrait, also from the Markus collection, may be a work by Samuel van Hoogstraten, according to Met curator Walter Liedtke.

Rembrandt, "Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol," Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness

This portrait is deemed by the Met to be an authentic (if lesser) Rembrandt. But it is doubted by some experts. Along with the above-mentioned "Vermeer," it's one of 83 works in Part Two of the show, most of which are deemed of secondary quality.

Despite the Met's determination to display works chronologically according to the date in which they entered the museum's collection, it appears as if the show's curator, Walter Liedtke, couldn't quite bear to diminish the overall masterpiece-quotient in the primary installation. You will have a long circuitous walk from the show's main section to get to the also-rans in Part Two---time that might be more rewardingly spent at the companion exhibition of the Met's Dutch prints and drawings, which opens today along with the paintings show.

My apologies for the mediocre quality of the photos that I took at the press preview. (There's a good reason why I'm a writer, not a photographer.)

I'll try to get more serious about this rich but somewhat frustrating show in a later post. Meanwhile, here's the appraisal by the ambivalent (and appropriately named) HOLLAND Cotter in today's NY Times.

For now, all I'll say is that, taking the show on its own terms, it's a fascinating look at the zigzag path towards forming a great museum collection---among the best holdings of such material outside Holland. Just don't go expecting (as the show's title implies) a greatest-hits blockbuster. They're all there, but you've got to find them amid the duds and the bloopers.

Is it possible to do justice to the monumental 228-work exhibition, The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a New York minute (or maybe four)? Hear me gamely try on tomorrow's "Morning Edition," 6-9 a.m. on NY Public Radio, WNYC, 93.9 FM and 820 AM. Or you can listen live on the station's website, or, later, on the podcast, which I'll post as usual here on CultureGrrl.

In case a few sound-bite minutes aren't quite enough, I may well have more to say about this grand hodgepodge of a show in subsequent posts. Stay tuned.

If the name Michael Mukasey (above), tapped today by President Bush to be the next U.S. Attorney General, rings a bell in art circles, it's because the former chief judge of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York presided over this never-ending case .

We can only hope that he'll resolve federal matters more expeditiously, should the Senate confirm his nomination.

---Jerry Saltz in New York magazine urges the Guggenheim's trustees to "take back the rotunda and get rid of [Tom] Krens." He appends a list of four women (Donna De Salvo, Ann Philbin, Kathy Halbreich and Thelma Golden) whom he thinks should be considered to succeed Lisa Dennison, the recently appointed Sotheby's rainmaker. Saltz asserts that the new director must "defang Krens," stripping him of virtually all power. Good luck with that. Dennison was merely director of the New York Guggenheim, not lord of the whole franchise. And Jerry, when you were describing all the negatives of the planned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, how did you miss the question of human rights abuses of construction workers?

---In an increasingly familiar pattern, Yale University gives up its resistance to returning Peruvian artifacts and makes an agreement involving cultural collaboration, hailing this as "a new model for resolving competing interests in cultural property." This might have been a "new model" when the Metropolitan Museum struck its deal with Italy, but it's getting a little old.

---When is an auction not an auction? When Sotheby's cancels the much hyped Rostropovich sale and opts to sell the whole consignment privately instead (to Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, according to an Interfax report cited by Bloomberg).

Sotheby's announced today:

The new owner intends to bring the collection to Russia.The collection was acquired for an undisclosed sum that was substantially higher than the highest [$40 million] presale expectations.

Isn't this breaking faith with the auction house's paddle-raising clientele? Why tak pains to prepare to purchase at auction, if someone else can buy the property out from under you?

---Bloomberg's Linda Yablonsky joins the "Who will succeed Philippe?" guessing game. But, in passing, she describes a scenario that strikes me as quite plausible:

A few days ago, Kathy Halbreich, 59, who will leave her position as director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis on Nov. 1, sparked a buzz when she started making regular appearances at MoMA, where, I hear, she may be set for a new post, deputy director.

I told you I sensed good chemistry between her and Glenn Lowry! Can she direct the Guggenheim and work for MoMA at the same time?

Joe Thompson

Unlike Roberta Smith, who excoriated MASS MoCA in the "Arts & Leisure" section of yesterday's NY Times, I still have some sympathy for the North Adams' cutting-edge contemporary art institution and for Joe Thompson (above), its now embattled, longtime director, who, until this unfortunate episode, has had an admirable track record of working creatively and constructively with a wide range of artists. (I've previously discussed this contretemps in greater detail here.)

True, the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990 gives artists the right to disclaim authorship and "to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation."

But the agglomeration of stuff assembled for Christoph Büchel's aborted installation was paid for by MASS MoCA, which presumably now owns those disparate elements and can do with them as it wishes, so long as they are not presented as a work by the artist. The components never rose to the level of an artwork, because the artist never finished it and never claimed authorship. Under such circumstances, it seems arguable as to whether the protections of VARA apply.

That said, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it was clearly a gross miscalculation for MASS MoCA to flaunt, through prominent display, the detritus of its failed commission. Its retaliatory under-the-covers exhibition has, with some justification, been interpreted as a petty attempt to discredit the artist---not an attractive or helpful posture for an institution that wants be known for its collaborative spirit. MASS MoCA would have done better to have learned the sad lessons from this debacle, tightened up its contractual procedures for future commissions, and moved on.

Instead, we have the unseemly spectacle of artist and art institution going head-to-head this week in Springfield, MA, federal court. Even if MASS MoCA wins, it loses.

Coinciding with the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the film adaptation of Lynn Nicholas' groundbreaking book about Nazi art loot,