Shrink These Links: MASS MoCA Woes, Global Hermitage Shrinks, Russians Fear Legal Claims on Art Loans

---Want the FULL story of the MASS MoCA mess? Geoff Edgers of the Boston Globe is you man. His 3,500 words on the subject, plus narrated slide show of the installation- and de-installation-in-progress, are here. The thing that bothers me most about Debacle Büchel is the financial and reputational damage to an institution that has been such a positive, creative and supportive force for the artworld and for artists since it opened in 1999.

---Maybe the concept of the Global Museum---intended to share the art, build "the brand" and exploit the collection as cash cow---is not all it's cracked up to be. John Varoli of Bloomberg reports:

The State Hermitage Museum...said it is closing its branch in London because of funding problems and rising exhibition costs. The five Hermitage Rooms opened in November 2000 in the 18th- century Somerset House next to the Thames, sharing space with the Courtauld Institute of Art. (At this writing, I could find no evidence of this planned closure on the websites of the Hermitage or the Courtauld Institute.)

The Hermitage hasn't been much of a presence lately at another of its outposts, the Guggenheim Hermitage in Las Vegas. The last Hermitage show left the building in September 2006. The current show in the Las Vegas facility, Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection, opened at the end of July and holds the fort until the end of April.

---In other London-Russian news, the Hermitage, Pushkin, Tretyakov, and State Russian museums are concerned that works to be loaned to an upcoming Royal Academy exhibition could be seized by claimants. Charlotte Higgins of the Manchester Guardian reports:

The British government has been asked by the RA to send a letter to the Russian authorities assuring them that the works loaned to the UK will be protected from seizure by companies with a financial claim against the Russian state....Legislation is in progress, and should come into effect early next year, according to a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), though it will probably not have received royal consent by the time the exhibition opens in January.