November 2007 Archives

Arquitectonica's Recent Wing for the Bronx Museum of the Arts

Architectural criticism's big guns---Paul Goldberger (the New Yorker), Nicolai Ouroussoff (the NY Times) and James Russell (Bloomberg)---have already weighed in on the architectural strengths (the first two writers) and weaknesses (the last) of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANNA's design for the new New Museum.

I think I can bring a slightly different perspective: I believe it's relevant to compare the effect of the SANAA building's exterior with that of another recent addition to New York museumdom that performs similar functions, in another gritty neighborhood, in a different borough---the Bronx Museum of the Arts (above).

As a born-and-bred Bronx-ite, I think I have a gut sense about apt interventions in modest neighborhoods (as opposed to the showy corporate and cultural centers of the city). And I think the two museum buildings by different architectural firms (Arquitectonica in the Bronx) both admirably understood the notion of elevating the surroundings while seeming to fit in (and doing so on a relatively modest budget). The architecture appears to respect and key off of the built environment of the neighborhood, rather than taking a posture that is condescendingly and discordantly aloof. And in both cases, I experienced this as a pleasant surprise.

On the Grand Concourse, where I grew up, that meant relating to a line-up of modestly vertical apartment buildings. On the Bowery, the context consists of squat, boxy structures. Arquitectonica took the verticality and sliced and streamlined it. SANAA took the boxes and sliced and scrambled them. Both firms decided to clad their interventions in shiny silver, to set them apart as enticingly distinctive.

It's too bad that this current exhibition devoted to New Museum's architects, now at Seattle's Henry Art Gallery, could not be seen in New York...or maybe it still can.

UPDATE---Gentrification Alert: On WNYC's "Morning Edition" today, host Soterios Johnson interviewed New Museum director Lisa Phillips and director of special exhibitions Massimiliano Gioni, and got a prediction from Phillips that her institution's new neighborhood may soon become "another alternative arts district."

STILL TO COME: My photo essay on the New Museum's new building.

You thought maybe now that Andrew Lloyd Webber got a favorable court ruling against a Nazi-loot claim for his Picasso, he might put it up for auction, to provide funds for his foundation, as had been originally planned?

Think again.

According to the London Independent, Lloyd Webber will now ask the British High Court to rule on whether he has clear title to "Angel Fernández de Soto."

Ciar Byrne reports:

The charity [Lloyd Webber's art foundation] is seeking a "negative declaration" to prove its ownership. It is estimated the High Court case could take two years to reach a conclusion.

Two years? Who knows where the art market will be by then?

No word from Christie's (I've asked) on whether it intends to seek damages from the unsuccessful claimant in the NY Supreme Court case, Julius Schoeps, for the last-minute withdrawal of the painting (which had been estimated to bring $40-60 million) from the auction house's landmark record-shattering Impressionist/modern sale a year ago. Marc Porter, the auction house's president, had warned at that time: "We reserve the right" to do so.

(Note: My first post on the new New Museum is here.)

The first show in the new New Museum's three floors of gallery space, "Unmonumental," is only one-third installed. A motley assortment of three-dimensional objects now occupies the floors and ceilings, but on Jan. 16 the pictures go on the walls and on Feb. 13 sound art will resonate. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this sensory overload; the galleries seem quite intensely installed already.

As for the nature of the current show, "Unmonumental" translates for me as "unpretentious." I like how Time magazine critic Richard Lacayo described the show's focus yesterday in his Looking Around blog post---"flotsam assemblage." One of the primary forebears for the artists in this show, senior curator Laura Hoptman told me, is Robert Rauschenberg.

Some of these objects have a strange, mutant beauty...

Isa Genken, "Elefant," 2006, Collection of Mari and Peter Shaw

...but many are more than a little rough around the edges:

Gedi Sibony, "The Circumstance, The Illusion, and Light Absorbed as Light," 2007, Courtesy the Artist

I indicated in my previous post that the New Museum's scrappy display is a welcome corrective to the "market-obsessed, reputation-fixated artworld." I didn't mean to suggest, though, that these artists are artworld or art-market outsiders. Urs Fischer has been much in the public eye of late. And one of his works now at the New Museum has given Steve Cohen his New York museum quadrifecta. (Is that the next increment after "trifecta"?):

Urs Fischer, "Untitled," 2003, Steven A. Cohen Collection

It might be worth asking: Is there any New York art museum NOT currently showing a work owned by this voracious collector?

And this work, owned by Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer, can hardly be said to be operating under the market radar:

Matthew Monahan, "Fundamental Shadow," 2006, Collection of Mark Fletcher and Tobias Meyer

What's more, at least one artist is already trying to reap commercial advantage from the New Museum's exposure. I just received a press release, pegged to "Unmonumental," about Shinique Smith's upcoming show at Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, as well as her inclusion in various art fairs and museums. Here's an installation shot of her three "Unmonumental" clothing bundles:

Shinique Smith's Clothing Bundles

Still, most of the Unmonumentalists are uncatalogued by Sotheby's or Christie's. And the experimental nature of the show is further evidenced by the fact that only two works were borrowed from institutions (instead of artists, galleries or collectors). One of those is by Sam Durant, the oldest American in the show (born 1961):

Sam Durant, "...For People Who Refuse to Knuckle Down," 2004, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, gift of Blake Byrne

As the Durant piece suggests, "Unmonumental" is unafraid of political provocation. Another case in point---Lara Schnitger's ramshackle construction composed of polemical T-shirts:

Lara Schnitger, "Rabble Rouser," 2005, Courtesy the Artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Here's a detail from the same piece:

Perhaps because I've been writing so much about antiquities lately, some of my favorite pieces were the evocative, skeletal vessels containing old photos, by Kristen Morgin:

Kristen Morgin, "Untitled Urn," 2001, Courtesy the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

But the piece that made me laugh was this one by Rachel Harrison, not because of the photo of a hirsute Mel Gibson on the right...

Rachel Harrison, "Huffy Howler," 2004, Courtesy the Artist and Green Naftali, New York

...but because of the handbags filled with rocks and bricks, hanging off the back end of the bike:

For the complete list of artists in all three parts of "Unmonumental," including those not yet on display, go here.

COMING SOON: The New Museum's new building.

Mary Cassatt, "Françoise in Green, Sewing"

The ghost of Adelyn Breeskin intervened in the St. Louis Art Museum's attempt to sell its only Cassatt, "Françoise in Green, Sewing." The painting, which Cassatt expert Breeskin had exhibited at the Baltimore Museum, failed to find a buyer today at the same Christie's auction where the Bellows' "Men of the Docks" and two other works from the Maier Museum of Randolph College would also have been put on the block, had opponents to those sales not gotten a court-ordered reprieve.

Even so, the auction house came away with its biggest total ever for a sale of American paintings, drawings and sculpture---$71.3 million. And the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University succeeded in jettisoning its Childe Hassam for $3.74 million, including buyer's premium.

Sotheby's American art sale the day before totaled $65.2 million. At both houses, about a quarter of the lots failed to sell.

Rendering (not actual photo) of the new New Museum

Before I get to yet another mischievous photo essay, let's cut to the chase: New York's new New Museum, despite its larger and more elegant Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANNA-designed digs (above), is still an uninstitutional institution, as envisioned by its late founder, Marcia Tucker. And that's all to the good: New York's market-obsessed, reputation-fixated artworld sorely needs a scrappy, edgy, bobbing-and-weaving outpost of the untidy cutting edge.

With this Bowery powerhouse's 30-hour free public opening on Saturday (no more timed tickets available, alas), we've now got what we need, along with a group of curator/scouts who know their way around this dangerous territory and aren't afraid to be REALLY provocative.

This true subversiveness contrasts with the so-called "Provocation" section in yet another lifeless installation of the Museum of Modern Art's contemporary collection, recently opened. MoMA's idea of provocation is "overturning standards of good taste and decorum," which seems somehow decorous, compared to what goes down at the Bowery. We can only hope that MoMA takes some notes on how to unleash contemporary energy. Its incoming associate director, Kathy Halbreich, must Walker-ize the place, immediately.

The New Museum's chief curator, Richard Flood, told me at the press preview today that part of his place's "new art, new ideas" credo involves being poised to "turn on a dime....We will move shows very quickly. Our pace is faster than our colleagues'."

Not quite fast enough, however, to get those labels up in time for the press preview:

Senior Curator Laura Hoptman, left, and Director of Special Exhibitions Massimiliano Gioni, right, work so fast to sort the object labels on the floor that they blur my photograph.

COMING SOON: More Images and Irreverence.

Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, and president-elect of the Association of Art Museum Directors, must have too much time on his hands working on only three books during his current stint as scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome.

Along with Gianfranco Varvesi of the Italian Ministry of National Heritage and Cultural Activities, Conforti organized a high-level conference, held yesterday at the Rome academy, on "ways to foster improved cooperation between the two countries that would lead to enhanced intellectual and cultural exchange."

According to the post-conference press release:

Italian Cultural Minister Francesco Rutelli spoke of the establishment of an office in the Cultural Ministry to coordinate loans of works of art and facilitate cooperation. The American Association of Art Museum Directors could play a similar role in the U.S.

Other initiatives discussed included online educational projects and web-based information sharing as well as convening professionals in the two countries to examine issues of restoration and conservation. Future archaeological excavations were touched on, with a desire for ongoing cooperation and emphasis on context and historical understanding.

The press release is silent, though, on whether the give-and-take about "reaching a higher level of cooperation on several issues" dealt with constructive approaches to deescalating the cultural property wars (which I have recently discussed here and here and will address in further detail---with a view to what source countries ought to do---in an upcoming post).

The 28 American and Italian museum and cultural officials at the conference (closed to the public) included: Anne-Imelda Radice, director of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services; James Wood, president of the Getty Trust; James Ballinger, director of the Phoenix Art Museum and immediate past president of AAMD; Cristina Acidini, special superintendent of Polo Museale Florence; Maria Vittoria Clarelli, superintendent of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome; Stefano De Caro, director general of Beni Archeologici; Claudio Strinati, special superintendent of Polo Museale Rome; and Salvatore Settis, director of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.

Geoff Edgers of the Exhibitionist blog dug up a few more American attendees, including Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Michael Brand, director of the Getty Museum; and Don Bacigalupi, director of the Toledo Museum of Art.

What, they didn't invite CultureGrrl?

A museum curator, who unfortunately would not allow me to quote his comments, sent me a well argued e-mail suggesting that my objections to museums' mounting single-collector exhibitions may make sense for large, prestigious museums, but are less persuasive for smaller museums that have a greater need for these shows and the possible art donations that can ensue.

Similarly, the Modern Kicks blog said this in a thoughtful post about the controversy over the sales at Christie's of the Hartman jades that had been exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:

I still think there's value in displaying privately owned work, but it's good to remember these cautionary tales: You hold your exhibition and you takes your chances.

A young docent at the Honolulu Academy of Arts responds here to my recent post about the $41-million Hartman sales, in which I asserted that "a museum should not mount a show devoted to a single-owner collection unless that collection is pledged to the museum."

Phyllis Nakasone writes:

How can museums avoid being used as prestigious showcases by profit-minded private collectors?

If the stuff is junk, the public isn't stupid. Let the museum take the punches. They'll learn. Besides, museums aren't all sacred places.

The Broadway strike is over! The NY Times has the story here.

Reading Richard Lacayo's Q & A in his Looking Around blog with Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello gave me a traumatic flashback to the unexpected curve I was thrown at the very beginning of my talk two weeks ago to Richard Leventhal's class at the University of Pennsylvania.

In answering Lacayo's question about whether the Met should "have gone about things differently when it made acquisitions in the past," de Montebello declared:

Everybody lives according to the norms, the ethics and the behavioral patterns of their own day. Retrospective judgments aren't very useful. There was a laissez-faire attitude then that there isn't today. Times change.

I had decided to make a similar point at the beginning of my talk, by holding up a copy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin from Spring 1992, which catalogued the works of ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Greek and Roman art given to the museum by Norbert Schimmel, a collector who was then widely respected for his connoisseurship and public spiritedness, despite the fact that his collecting philosophy (as described by me here) was not all that different from that of the controversial Shelby White, who knew Schimmel and regarded him as her role model.

I noted that many of the entries for objects in the Met's bulletin were written by Oscar White Muscarella, the museum's senior research fellow, who was close to Schimmel and went on to become a thorn in the side of the museum by unrelentingly criticizing its antiquities policies and practices.

At that point, Leventhal interrupted my introduction to inform me of the identity of one of the students (below), who was gazing at me from the back of the room:

Grace Freed Muscarella

I gulped twice, exchanged pleasantries and moved on to discussing today's burning cultural-property conflicts and possible resolutions. Grace later informed me that her husband had, in fact, implored Schimmel to stop collecting, and that he had complied for a time but ultimately couldn't kick the habit.

The problem with justifying past collecting on the grounds that "the ethics and the behavioral patterns" were previously different is that many old-time collectors, like Schimmel, knew full well that their activities were ethically dicey.

It's just that, in the bad old days, they could mostly get away with it.

Although we've yet to learn what position Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. will take when the deal between Fisk University and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum comes up for court approval (or disapproval) on Feb. 19, the Governor himself, Phil Bredesen, has now weighed in.

Erik Schelzig of the Associated Press reports [via]:

Bredesen...said estimates from art experts and insurers indicate the collection "could easily be worth $150 million. And $30 million for half of it [the agreement signed by Fisk and Crystal Bridges] is not a very good deal."...As a former Nashville mayor, Bredesen said he also would like to see the collection stay in the city....

"If you're going to sell it, I'd rather they go out and sell it properly and take the money and put it in the bank and secure Fisk's long-term future," he said.

Now that's a REALLY dicey idea. The works should remain in the public domain, preferably at or near the institution where donor Georgia O'Keeffe deposited them. Can the trustees and administration think of no other fiscal solution than selling off the university's educational and cultural assets?

More from the Tennessean on the university's dire financial situation, which is behind all this controversy, here and here. NPR weighs in here.

Coinciding with the Getty Museum's publication of the above book comes another "Great Moment in Greek Archaeology"---the dismissal in Greek court of the Getty-related charges against the museum's former antiquities curator, Marion True. Now that the Getty has returned the objects that Greece has sought, the judges have discovered that the statute of limitations has run. Did this expiration just happen?

There are still non-Getty related Greek charges outstanding against True. The Associated Press reports:

True still faces charges of illegally possessing at least a dozen antiquities found during a police raid on her holiday home on the Aegean island of Paros in April last year. No trial date has been set in that case.

It remains to be seen whether Italian prosecutors will now also lay off of True, as they indicated they would, two months ago, after the signing of an antiquities agreement between Italy and the Getty.

Perhaps they're still waiting for resolution of that little dispute over the Getty Bronze.

Cylindrical Brushpot, Qianlong period (1736-1795)
$7 million at Christie's (presale estimate: $1.3-1.9 million)

Notwithstanding Malcolm Rogers' comments to the Boston Globe, it should be no great surprise that Alan and Simone Hartman turned around and put on the market the Chinese jades (top lot, above) that they displayed three years ago at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where Rogers is director. Christie's second auction of Hartman jades today in Hong Kong brought $25.7 million (presale estimate: over $10 million). The auction house sold the first group from the collection a year ago for $15 million.

In his article Saturday about today's Hartman sale, the Globe's Geoff Edgers quoted Rogers expressing disappointment that works from the collection had not been donated to the museum, as had been hoped. Edgers also quoted various commentators on the dicey aspects of granting private owners a prestigious showcase for entire collections that they may turn around and sell.

But the Hartmans' commercial proclivities were no secret. Unmentioned in the museum's description of the exhibition on its website is the fact that the Hartmans aren't just collectors. As Christie's notes in its press release, Alan has long been "an influential and respected dealer...His father opened his first gallery in 1927 specializing in Oriental Art in New York and it was only natural for Alan Hartman to follow in his father's footsteps."

Perhaps it was also only natural that he would think of selling at Christie's. In 2001, that auction house got a Hartman consignment of 48 pieces of Tang polychrome pottery.

As the auction house last year noted:

The entire personal collection of Alan and Simone Hartman was published in 1996 in a catalogue by Robert Kleiner [now a London dealer of Chinese art]....The collection was then exhibited at Christie's New York in 2001, and subsequently at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 2003 to 2004.

Some have suggested that private owners should be required to promise that they will not precipitously send to market collections that they display at museums. But collectors are entitled to do what they want with unencumbered private property, so I believe a more stringent guideline is needed:

Museums should continue to borrow and display individual works from private collections, unless such works are known to be on the market (or are about to be). But a museum should not mount a show devoted to a single-owner collection unless that collection is pledged to the museum. The Museum of Modern Art has long followed this policy (although it loosened its standards for the recent show of works from the UBS corporate collection, only some of which had been given or promised to MoMA).

Those of us with long memories can recall the flap over the 1973 disposal at Sotheby's by Allen Funt (host of the "Candid Camera" TV show) of his 35 Alma-Tademas, embarrassing the Metropolitan Museum, which had displayed Funt's collection earlier the same year. (If you have Times Select, you can access the NY Times article about this contretemps here.) The Met learned its lesson the hard way. I don't recall its ever putting itself in such a position again.

The Broadway theater strike must be settled before this Sunday. That's when I have tickets to see Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll."

Meanwhile, have New York's theater critics, with only the reopened "Grinch" to review on Broadway these days, managed to discover Off Broadway's "Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz," about which I wrote favorably two months ago?

The NY Post has been there. The Daily News has done that.

And the NY Times???

I guess this play, with only a couple of performances a week in English, is largely aimed at Latinos, who were the late monolingual Cuban diva's target audience. Perhaps they're not the Times' target audience. My Spanish (like Celia's English) is "not very good looking," and my taste runs more to Stoppard than salsa. But I still was swept up in the propulsive performance of the Queen of Salsa's infectious music, persuasively recreated by the show's musicians and, especially, by Xiomara Laugart Sánchez in the title role.

I guess word-of-mouth has been good enough: New World Stages announced last month that it was extending the run till Jan. 27.

Even then, it might not be over if the Gray Lady finally sings.

Nicholas Penny

From London"s National Gallery, to Washington's National Gallery, to London's National Gallery:

Nicholas Penny, one of those whom I identified in October as the two leading candidates to become next director of the National Gallery in London, has apparently won the prized assignment.

Louise Jury of the London Evening Standard reports:

National Gallery staff have not yet been told of the appointment which is awaiting ratification by the Prime Minister via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which is considered to be a formality.

That's a lot of "whiches," but it looks like a done deal. I've got an (unanswered) call in to the press office of the National Gallery, London. But Deborah Ziska, chief press officer of Washington's National Gallery, today informed me:

Neither he [Penny] nor we can comment on the NG appointment until it becomes official. In the meantime, I have not heard anyone denying the press reports.

That sounds like a backhanded confirmation to me.

Penny is currently senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery, Washington, where he arrived five years ago from London's National Gallery. In London, where he had been curator of Renaissance painting since 1990, he lost out in a bid five years ago for the directorship that he has now won. (It then went, instead, to Charles Saumarez Smith, who left, under controversial circumstances, to become secretary of the Royal Academy.)

Penny is expected to assume his new post this spring. As I noted in October: Sometimes you've just got to leave a museum for it to fully appreciate you.

Is the artworld getting increasingly litigious? While I've been focused on the saleroom, there's been so much going on in the courtroom that I need to do an international round-up of artworld legal developments:

---First and foremost, let's remember good causes during this holiday season and consider the desperate fundraising campaign of the embattled opponents to the Maier Museum's art sales. They need to raise a cool million by Dec. 3 to secure the court injunction that they won Nov. 16 against the disposals. According to Preserve Educational Choice (the organization leading the effort to keep the four paintings---including an important Bellows---at Randolph College), "Grassroots efforts are already underway in Lynchburg and within the larger national arts community to help meet this fundraising challenge." For information about how to contribute, go here. There is a pledge form here. (Use pull-down menu to get to "Art Defense Fund.")

---Marion True, the Getty Museum's beleaguered former antiquities curator, continues her midlife career as defendant in foreign courts: Greece still, at least for now, is still continuing its legal vendetta against her, despite the fact that the Getty has turned over the goods, as promised in an agreement signed last February. True's lawyer submitted a motion in Greek court for dismissal of charges against her.

---Meanwhile, an Italian judge ruled against a legal claim for the Getty Bronze made by prosecutors in Pesaro, Italy. The ruling, which may be appealed, was "a blow to Italy's battle to claim the work," according to a report by ANSA, the Italian news agency. ANSA also says that 39 of the antiquities that the Getty has agreed to relinquish to Italy are being flown there "in batches and should be in Rome by Christmas." The so-called Aphrodite takes flight in 2010.

---Andrew Lloyd Webber wins one in NY Supreme Court, where Judge Rolando Acosta decided, on technical grounds, against a Nazi-loot claim for the composer's Picasso, "Angel Fernández de Soto." No word yet on whether the painting, which was to have been sold at Christie's a year ago, will be put back on the block.

---William Cohan reports in the December ARTnews (no link yet) that U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska (who took over the never-ending "Portrait of Wally" Nazi-loot case from newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey) "may decide sometime next year how much longer the Schiele painting must remain under house arrest in a "secure, undislosed location." According to ARTnews, Judge Preska set the end of this month as "the deadline for the filing of each side's summary judgment motions" and Mar. 28 as "the deadline for responses and replies....She will then rule on the motions and decide whether to try the case at all."

We won't hold our breath.

---Last, and probably least, actor Robert De Niro has joined the list of boldface names with a beef against embattled dealer Lawrence Salander, whose gallery showed works by the actor's late father, Robert De Niro Sr.

I'm a lover (and closet singer) of old standards---the songs that were popular back in my parents' day. So when Matthew Price, a BCC-TV journalist who had just arrived here from Jerusalem, began the auction report, in which he gave me my two minutes of fame, with the words, "Autumn in New York," my thoughts of course strayed to that Vernon Duke classic.

Being CultureGrrl, I immediately considered the possibility of recasting "Autumn in New York" as "Auctions in New York." I have a weakness for writing spoof songs, and with the big fall auction season concluded, I could restrain myself no longer.

So, with apologies to Billie Holiday, whose classy arrangement (with, I believe, Oscar Peterson on piano) I've appropriated, and with additional apologies to Vernon Duke, whose composition I've mangled, I invite you to click below, if you dare, to hear CultureGrrl's first (and probably last) singing podcast:

"Auctions in New York"

(Should I mention that I'm available for weddings and corporate events? Maybe not.)

I'm sure that many of you interrupted your Thanksgiving revels yesterday to see that the NY Times actually did run a correction to Carol Vogel's article that had misidentified purchasers of works at Sotheby's contemporary sale. But I just got back into the CultureGrrl newsroom this afternoon, and discovered that this correction (scroll down) had slipped into the paper while I was otherwise engaged:

Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about the outcome of the big fall art auctions in Manhattan misidentified the buyer of "Hanging Heart," a sculpture by the artist Jeff Koons that was sold at Sotheby's on Nov. 14. Although speculation about the buyer's identity centered last week on the Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, Mr. Broad says he did not purchase the work.

Apparently "speculation about the buyer's identity" had also centered on Steve Cohen as supposed purchaser of the Bacon "Bullfight" and Laurence Graff as suspected acquirer of the Koons "Diamond (Blue)." But those misapprehensions, also given currency in Vogel's article, remain uncorrected.

As I've already noted, an informed source close to Steve Cohen told me unequivocally on Wednesday that the hedge fund mogul did not bring home the Bacon.

And this just in from Penny Weatherall, personal assistant to jewelry magnate Laurence Graff:

I can tell you that Mr. Graff was not the buyer of the Jeff Koons "Diamond (Blue)."

But will the Times ever correct the incorrect impression befuddling its readers about Cohen's and Graff's purported purchases? Probably not. Unlike Broad, who, in Carol Vogel's report, "took home" Koons's "Hanging Heart" (language that the correction ascribes to an "editing error"), the other two collectors were only "thought to have" or "said to have" bought their respective non-acquisitions.

This contretemps inevitably brings to mind another purported purchase---Mexican financier David Martinez's Vogel-reported outlay of $140 million for Pollock's ''No. 5, 1948," sold by David Geffen. Vogel stubbornly stood by her story, despite explicit denials by Martinez. At that time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt that her unnamed source was, in my words, probably "reliable and...in a position to know the truth about the transaction."

Before passing on any more information to us from anonymous sources, Vogel should reread her newspaper's own policy, which I also quoted in my post a year ago on the Martinez fracas.

The Times' Confidential News Sources Policy states:

Whenever anonymity is granted, it should be the subject of energetic negotiation to arrive at phrasing that will tell the reader as much as possible about the placement and motivation of the source---in particular, whether the source has firsthand knowledge of the facts.

Perhaps Vogel's source(s) for the auction story should have been described as someone who "declined to be identified because he was providing misinformation."

Having reported yesterday on the big-money auction buyers identified in articles in the NY Times and London Telegraph, I've now been getting e-mails suggesting that some of those deep-pocketed collectors did not actually purchase the objects connected to them in those reports.

Carol Vogel had announced that Laurence Graff "is thought to have bought Jeff Koons's 'Diamond (Blue),'" and Steve Cohen "is said to have bought several artworks, among them Francis Bacon's 1969 "Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1," for $45.9 million." She also said, "The Los Angeles financier Eli Broad took home Mr. Koons's 'Hanging Heart' for $23.5 million."

I have now been unequivocally informed, by a source who is absolutely in a position to know, that Steve Cohen did NOT buy the Bacon "Bullfight." I'm trying to check further about the other supposed buyers, but the day before Thanksgiving is not a great time to get hold of people. I'll update this if any more news comes my way. (SEE BELOW)

I had assumed, the Times being the Times, that these tips came from highly reliable sources. I also assume that if that has proven not to be the case, corrections will ensue.

Now, before I get myself into any more journalistic trouble, I think I'll get myself into a culinary morass and go stuff my turkey.

UPDATE: While I was elbow-deep in stuffing, I got a call from Karen Denne, chief communications officer for the Broad Foundation, who told me firsthand what I've been hearing secondhand all day: Neither Eli Broad nor his foundation purchased "Hanging Heart."

It is theoretically possible that Cohen and Broad bought the works in question, but want to keep quiet about it. But these are both collectors who have in the past been forthright about disclosing their art holdings. I have every reason to believe the knowledge and veracity of my well-placed sources on this.

If I'm right, the interesting question, on this Thanksgiving Eve, is: Who has been stuffing Carol Vogel full of misinformation, and why did she have enough confidence in these "tips" to serve them up hot to a gossip-hungry readership?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The Guggenheim...Unpainted

Traditionalists rejoice: The restored exterior of the Guggenheim Museum will not be buffed with Powell Buff after all.

So decreed the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission today in a 7-2 vote. Sewell Chan reported this afternoon on the NY Times' City Room blog that the commission's public meeting today included a presentation by Tom Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation, who stated that the off-white color "commonly associated with the building...seems to work well" with the surrounding buildings and with the 1992 museum addition.

Powell Buff, more yellow than the off-white we now associate with the Guggenheim's famous exterior, was said to be the hue favored by Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum's architect.

Whether you side with some archaeologists and scholars who believe that the U.S. State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee is admirably safeguarding the cultural heritage of foreign countries, or you agree with some dealers, collectors and museums who feel that CPAC inappropriately rubber stamps source countries' excessively retentionist requests, you ought to buy into the argument set forth in a lawsuit just filed in U.S. District Court by a group of numismatists---that CPAC's deliberations and decisions should, under federal Sunshine and Freedom of Information laws, be publicly disclosed.

The group of 11 representatives from the scholarly, commercial and museum communities meets and votes in secret. The State Department then decides how to act on its recommendations. But as Jeremy Kahn previously reported in the NY Times, "it has never failed to grant an initial request for import controls."

The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, International Association of Professional Numismatists and Professional Numismatists Guild, roiled by import restrictions on ancient coins from Cyprus that took effect July 16, have brought suit against the U.S. State Department for its failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests that were "designed to bring some transparency to the opaque process by which the State Department processes requests for import restrictions," in the words of a letter dated Nov. 15 by Peter Tompa, president of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild. "Some of these requests date as far back as 2004."

Meanwhile, rumors continue to fly that CPAC has approved China's controversially broad request for the State Department to impose import restrictions on pre-1911 cultural material from that country. In his Nov. 15 letter, ACCG's Tompa noted:

Concerns about transparency of process have been previously raised by others as well, but with no discernable effect. Such concerns will no doubt be raised yet again if the State Department, as is rumored, announces broad import restrictions on Chinese cultural artifacts before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Last Wednesday, I noted that dealers had been the top bidders on a number of key lots in Christie's contemporary evening sale, which caused me to observe:

[This] raises the question of how much of the results of this sale, which everyone had been eyeing warily as a barometer of the art market, were bolstered by dealers who have a big stake in its price levels....It is also entirely possible that the dealer-bidders yesterday were acting on behalf of their clients, not themselves.

After that, a couple of mainstream media reporters took the first of these two hypotheses one step further, by indicating that dealers were, in fact, bidding to support their artists' prices. It wasn't clear from what they wrote whether they had any hard information to go on.

Now Carol Vogel in the NY Times (here) and Colin Gleadell in the London Telegraph (here) have set us straight with detailed accounts of who bought what. It turns out that my second hypothesis was probably more correct: On the top lots, dealers were bidding for deep-pocketed clients, such as Laurence Graff, Eli Broad and Steve Cohen. Damien Hirst bought one of the two Bacons, the somewhat skull-like self-portrait, by phone.

Despite the strong results of the contemporary sales, both Vogel and Gleadell ended their pieces with pessimism about the market's future.

Gleadell warned:

The bubble has not burst. But clouds are still gathering ominously.

We journalists always tend to look on the dark side.

Though my musings about possible dealer machinations last week my have been wrong, what I stated in my post about legendary contemporary dealer Leo Castelli's placing bids at auction to bolster the price levels of his artists was not speculation but fact. He said so himself---in a Nov. 9,1975 letter to the editor of the NY Times, and in comments he made to journalist/critic Grace Glueck for a Jan. 20, 1976 NY Times article. (If you have Times Select, you can find those two texts through an "advanced search" on Castelli's name and the dates.)

With prices levels for top works now in the eight figures, I suppose it's much less likely today for dealers to casually throw in a few inflationary bids.

Bruno LeMieux-Ruibal, a New York correspondent for the Spanish-language Lápiz International Art Magazine, comments on Alice Walton, MoMA's planned skyscraper and Hirst's shark at the Met. On the shark, I want to clear up one misunderstanding (which other readers shared, because I wrote unclearly in my original post): I don't object to the photography ban. What irked me was the obtrusive freestanding sign that, when I visited, was positioned right next to the artwork, demanding attention and detracting from the experience of the piece.

Here's what LeMieux-Ruibal wrote:

It saddens me that your thoughts and ideas are so conservative and traditional. Because Alice Walton has money and is building a fine museum in Arkansas, you call her a "vulture" and beyond in that unhinged WSJ article. (She's lending art to the nation, giving loads of money to institutions, funding scholarships and creating a first-rate cultural attraction in Arkansas, but all of this is nothing compared to her "vultureness.")

And so on. I don't know if your opposition to advancement, collection-building, personal wealth, good architecture, progress and change are a way of life, but to me the creation of a new museum (Crystal Bridges), philanthropy (Walton), culture-enhancing development (Nouvel) and artwork protection (the shark) are positive things or, in any case, just a sign of our times.

(Part I is here.)

The most important next step in achieving a ceasefire in the cultural-property wars is to move beyond the current case-by-case chaos to a more reasoned, consistent handling of these issues. The most obvious need is for some sort of consensus about a cutoff date for future acquisitions: Should museums not acquire any objects that don't have a known provenance going back for at least 10 years (the policy of the Met and the Association of Art Museum Directors)? Should the known provenance have to go back to before the 1970 date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property? Or should the date be in 1983, the year when the U.S. officially became a party to the UNESCO Convention?

My feeling is that the AAMD/Met 10-year rolling rule improperly institutionalizes the time-honored practice of thieves who let hot merchandise cool off for a decent interval before marketing it. I favor moving the cutoff to 1983, the year when all museums were on unequivocal notice that this country adheres to the UNESCO Convention. Works with no clear provenance before that year could still be acquired if they were legally exported from the source countries, or if the source countries were contacted in advance for their consent.

I particularly like the language of the Getty's acquisition policy, which indicates that it's not enough that an object merely has a known provenance predating the cutoff year. The Getty's policy states:

For the acquisition of any ancient work of art or archaeological material, the revised policy requires:

* Documentation or substantial evidence that an item was in the United States by November 17, 1970 and that there is no reason to suspect it was illegally exported from its country of origin [emphasis added] OR
* Documentation or substantial evidence that the item was out of its country of origin before November 17, 1970 and that it has been or will be legally imported into the United States, OR
* Documentation or substantial evidence that the item was legally exported from its country of origin after November 17, 1970 and that it has been or will be legally imported into the United States.

As the first provision indicates, good faith counts. And it seems to me that this is the best argument for returning the Getty Bronze: There was plenty of "reason to suspect it was illegally exported from its country of origin," and plenty of people DID suspect it, at the time of the acquisition.

Near the end of my talks last week at the University of Pennsylvania, I tentatively proffered two controversial ideas that I think should at least be considered in thinking about a long-term resolution of the problems of looting and smuggling. At Penn, I was embedded deep in the archaeologists' camp, so I knew I was recklessly preaching to the unconverted.

COMING SOON: The case for a licit market and "citizen archaeologists."

The topic that I chose to address in my two talks at the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday was Towards a Ceasefire in the Cultural Property Wars, in which I discussed the recent repatriation agreements between American museums and source countries, and made some proposals about where things should go from here. I think it's safe to say that my ideas are not squarely in either camp---the source countries and archaeological community on the one side; museum officials, dealers and collectors on the other.

The bringing of criminal charges by Italy against the Getty Museum's Marion True got the attention of every American museum with an antiquities collection. The result has been a sea change U.S. institutions' handling of this issue, as evidenced by a growing list of repatriation agreements: three between Italy and the Metropolitan Museum, the Getty Museum and the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as those between Greece and the Getty (here and here), and Peru and Yale University.

These accords have certain common features, using as prototype the February 2006 deal between the Met and Italy. But they also differ somewhat in their terms and especially in the amount of public disclosure about the details of the agreement and the objects involved. Based on the developing case history, I suggested to my Penn listeners what provisions such pacts should contain.

I am particularly concerned that there be full disclosure, to the extent possible, of how the objects to be repatriated got into the American museum's collection in the first place (i.e., through which dealers or collectors) and why the museum has now decided to relinquish pieces that it once acquired and held in trust for its public (i.e., some description of the evidence that led to the conclusion that the works had to go). The Boston Museum of Fine Arts did a particularly good job of posting every piece on its website, with images and complete provenance. I believe that the public has a right to know why objects that were formerly part of this country's cultural patrimony are now leaving.

There also needs to be full disclosure of museums' current antiquities acquisition policies, many of which have recently been revised. Some museums already do disclose their policies; some don't.

COMING NEXT: Part II---Moving Beyond Case-By-Case Chaos

Jori Finkel's excellent NY Times "Arts & Leisure" article today, Museums Solicit Dealers' Largess, brings to mind how much the Brooklyn Museum's director, Arnold Lehman, was criticized for asking dealers to become patrons of the benefit gala for the highly controversial "Sensation" show, drawn from the Young British Artists collection of Charles Saatchi. What to many seemed unseemly eight years ago is now far outstripped by current practices that, pre-Finkel, received little scrutiny.

To put in perspective dealer support for the Takashi Murakami show at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Richard Prince show at the Guggenheim Museum, it's worth going back to what I wrote in Art in America magazine about the controversy over dealer support for Brooklyn's "Sensation" show in a January 2000 article, Brooklyn Hangs Tough:

Perhaps the most damning criticism of Brooklyn has been the suggestion that it was too dependent on funds from those who stood to profit from "Sensation," thereby sacrificing its public mission to commercial interests....Of the 38 dealers contacted by Lehman to be patrons of the "Sensation" gala, several purchased blocks of tickets for the benefit dinner, including Larry Gagosian, who paid $10,000 for a table. "It was a no-brainer," explained Gagosian, who represents Damien Hirst and Jenny Saville, two artists in the show.

Lehman said that other dealers who supported the gala included Luhring Augustine (representing Rachel Whiteread), Lehmann Maupin (representing Tracey Emin) and Sperone Westwater (no artists in "Sensation"). "Not one dealer did anything but buy tickets" to the gala, according to Lehman. "I had asked if some dealers would help [in other ways] and they didn't."

Dealers' kicking in cash to support museum catalogues for shows devoted to gallery artists has been a longstanding practice. But direct support for exhibitions from self-interested salesmen is far over the line that should separate the nonprofit museum world from the commercial world. It's a situation rife with unacceptable conflict of interest, whatever museum officials may say about how the money doesn't actually influence their decisions.

This is not just a blurring of the lines; it's an erasure. Maybe Arnold Lehman, in soliciting dealer support, was merely a few years ahead of his time.

The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday handed a major victory to the opponents of the sale of four works from the Maier Museum of Randolph College. At the very least, the auctions of the works planned for this month at Christie's, where they were to have been star lots, will be postponed.

The court denied the college's request that the temporary injunction imposed by Lynchburg, VA, Circuit Court on the sales be removed. Instead, it extended to Dec. 3 from Nov. 15 the deadline by which sales' opponents will be required to post a surety bond to secure a six-month injunction (which would run from Nov. 10 to the time when the case is decided on its merits) against the works' sale . What's more, the court slashed the amount of the bond from $10 million to $1 million.

With the temporary injunction now running until Dec. 3, the four Maier works will have to be withdrawn from Monday's Latin American art sale, where Tamayo's "Trovador," was to have been the highlight, and from the Nov. 29 American art sale, where Bellows' "Men of the Docks" was expected to have been top lot.

Anne Yastremski, executive director of Preserve Educational Choice, the group opposing the art sales, told the Lynchburg News & Advance yesterday that the reduced bond amount was "a lot more manageable," and added that she was not sure whether the entire $1 million would have to be raised, or whether a fraction of that could serve to guarantee full payment if the college ultimately prevailed in court.

75 stories? Did they say 75 STORIES???

Trust me, the neighbors and, hopefully, the City Planning Commission are not going to stand for a 75-story look-at-me skyscraper on this cross street. New York skyscrapers in this part of midtown are customarily consigned to the avenues; the cross streets are less dense and more lowrise in character. West 54th Street is partly residential. Does Hines, the developer, really have the air rights to do this? Is a big zoning variance slugfest on the drawing boards? Fire up Sandy Lindenbaum!

Speaking of zoning, Hines states that "Nouvels' design maximizes the site while considering the zoning envelope." The key word may be "considering."

This brings to mind the big fight a couple of decades ago over whether MoMA's mixed-use Museum Tower, designed by Cesar Pelli, should be allowed to rise beside it on 53rd Street. There was much talk about possible shadows to be cast on the sculpture garden and traffic nightmares on W.53rd and 54th streets But that 52-story building is dwarfed by Nouvel's overweening jagged "scream for freedom," as NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff approvingly called it in his breathlessly supportive preview of the plans.

Ouroussoff writes:

The melding of cultural and commercial worlds offers further proof, if any were needed, that Mr. Nouvel is a master at balancing conflicting urban forces.

Since when is mixed used a stroke of genius? Not for a few decades, at least.

From Hines' website, we learn that the project will include "a 50,000-square-foot expansion of MoMA's galleries (levels two to five); a 100-room, seven-star hotel and 120 highest-end residential condominiums on the upper floors....The Hines firm has collaborated with Nouvel on both 40 Mercer in New York's SoHo neighborhood and on the C1 Tower currently under development in Paris."

It has also collaborated on big transactions with Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm of MoMA's board chairman Jerry Speyer, from which Hines has recently purchased several properties (here and here).

I'm still in Philly and not able to manipulate photos for my blog, but you can go here, on Hines' website, to see a manipulative photo making it appear that the new tower will be less tall that one next to it. Don't believe it.

I've been uncharacteristically offline today because of my enjoyable foray into academia. But while you await my return from Philly, here are some cultural-property links that I've prepared for my captive University of Pennsylvania audience, which you might also find of interest:

Princeton Art Museum Agreement with Italy

Yale University Agreement with Peru

Getty Museum Agreement with Italy

Getty Museum Agreement with Greece:
---Joint Statement
---Return of two objects
---Return of additional two objects

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Agreement with Italy

Metropolitan Museum Agreement with Italy

Association of Art Museum Directors Acquisition Guidelines

Association of Art Museum Directors Guidelines On Loans Of Antiquities And Ancient Art

Getty Museum Acquisition Policy

U.S. State Department Actions:
---List of Emergency Actions & Bilateral Agreements for Protection of Cultural Property

---Recent and Pending Actions

Travel complications preclude me from giving you a complete rundown of Sotheby's strong contemporary art sale tonight, other than to say:

---The total of $315.9 million fell just shy of Christie's $325 million the night before.

---Sotheby's decisively won the battle of the mega-Koonses with a $23.56 million price for "Hanging Heart" (again, as at Christie's, from Koons' dealer, Larry Gagosian, according to Bloomberg). The two Bacons ($45.96 million for "Bullfight" and $33.08 million for the self-portrait) did well and the Chinese artists were strong (particularly Zhang Xiaogang, $4.97 million).

---Only six of the 71 lots failed to sell (all relatively minor by dollar value). Deep sighs of relief issued from art dealers and, particularly, from Sotheby's personnel, and several bursts of hearty saleroom applause were heard throughout the land.

"Give me your paddle number again," the usually undemonstrative auctioneer Tobias Meyer asked the winning bidder for the Bacon self-portrait. "I was too happy."

I could not find this anywhere on the Wall Street Journal's website, but on its "Letters to the Editor" page today it ran the following as a correction, concerning Alexandra Peers' article that had suggested that the major art auction houses sometimes reduce the buyer's premium for third-party guarantors who are successful bidders:

Christie's does not discount its buyer's premium. In return for assuming the risk involved in a third-party guarantee, the guarantor---who can be a dealer, collector or financial institution---receives a fee based on a percentage of the hammer price and the buyer's commission. "What the Auction Houses Are Doing to Try to Keep the Art Market Booming" (Leisure & Arts page, Nov. 6) reported that only dealers were third-party guarantors, and that they were directly rewarded with a reduced buyer's premium.

The Circuit Court of Lynchburg, VA, yesterday ruled against the opponents of the Maier Museum's art sales. It rejected their request that the court reduce or eliminate the $10-million bond they must post by tomorrow, to make permanent the court's temporary injunction against impending auctions of four paintings by Christie's later this month.

"Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the plaintiffs will be able to raise such a large sum of money in such a short time period," said Anne Yastremski, executive director of Preserve Educational Choice, the organization fighting the sales.

Anthony Troy, a former Virginia Attorney General who is representing the litigants, said that the matter would be "taken immediately to the Supreme Court of Virginia."

Troy added:

Injunction or no, if we prevail on the merits of the case next year---and it is shown that [Randolph] College holds the art for the benefit of the citizens of Lynchburg and students---then further litigation focusing on the return of the art will commence with those that purchase these paintings.

That's playing hardball---an attempt to discourage buyers with the threat of possible future litigation.

Christa Desrets of the Lynchburg News & Advance has more on the story here.

Before I embark on my glorious fall folliage trip down the scenic New Jersey Turnpike today (to hold forth tomorrow at U. Penn), here are a couple of art-auction thoughts as we await the big contemporary sale tonight at Sotheby's.

Carol Vogel, in today's NY Times, does her usual excellent job of tracking down the names of the "anonymous" buyers and sellers of key works last night at the contemporary sale at Christie's (which I have discussed here).

The record-priced Richard Prince , she said, was bought by London dealer Jay Jopling. Larry Gagosian made no secret of the fact that he was the buyer of the record Koons: He allowed Christie's to publish his name in the post-sale release.

And Bloomberg tells us that Warhol's (and Hugh Grant's) "Liz" "attracted lackluster bidding from just two contenders, including Alberto Mugrabi, a dealer heavily invested in the artist."

All of which raises the question of how much of the results of this sale, which everyone had been eyeing warily as a barometer of the art market, were bolstered by dealers who have a big stake in its price levels. If the dealers did provide some strategic support, that's nothing new: I can remember, when I first started covering auctions, watching with astonishment as the legendary contemporary dealer Leo Castelli repeatedly bid up prices of his artists. He usually, but not always, managed to drop out before the works were hammered down to someone else. But his participation had the effect of supporting his artists' price levels. It is also entirely possible that the dealer-bidders yesterday were acting on behalf of their clients, not themselves.

My other thought (and you've heard me belabor this before) is that art-market journalists are doing the auction houses, but not their readers, a service when they persist in comparing pre-sale estimates to prices that INCLUDE the buyer's premium. Estimates are based on hammer price only. Misleadingly comparing estimates to the premium-inflated results makes the auction house look good, by making the sale look more successful than it actually is. The apples-to-apples comparison is HAMMER PRICE to pre-sale estimate. But you have to hammer at the auction houses (as I do) for the hammer total; it's never in the press release.

Andy Warhol, "Muhammad Ali," 1978

It wasn't at the stratospheric levels of the $70 million-plus top lots at Christie's and Sotheby's last spring, but Christie's contemporary sale tonight did fine, with only five of the 67 lots unsold---none of them the big-money offerings. The sound of firm applause could be heard throughout the land (if, like me, you were watching the proceedings online).

The sale totaled $325 million with buyer's premium; the $287.93 million hammer total was within the presale estimate range of $271.25 million to $373.35 million. The auction was 93% sold by lot; 94% sold by dollar amount. Buyers were 51% American, 26% European, 7% Asian, 16% other. Solid all around.

The surprise was that Jeff Koons' overblown "Diamond (Blue)" did sell, given that bids only reached $10.5 million against the unpublished $20 million estimate. It seemed clear from the get-go that auctioneeer Christopher Burge wasn't expecting to get that high: He generally starts the bidding at about 50-60% of the low estimates, and he started the Koons at a mere $6.5 million. Nevertheless, the $11.8 million price (including buyer's premium) trounced the previous auction record for the artist. The record rates an asterisk, though, since it was paid by Koons' own dealer Larry Gagosian (who, according to the catalogue, had sold the big bauble to the consignor). At least we can now get that clunky chunk of ungainly glitz off the sidewalk in front of Christie's.

In all, 16 auction records were broken, the big one being Lucian Freud, despite the fact that the $17.25 million hammer price for his "Ib and Her Husband" fell short of the unpublished $20 million estimate. Similarly, the $10 million hammer for Richter's "Jet Fighter," consigned by well known Chicago collectors Susan and Lewis Manilow, broke the auction-record barrier but only equaled its low estimate.

The most spirited bidding battle was, appropriately, over a boxing picture---Warhol's "Muhammad Ali" (above), who fought his way to a $8.2 million hammer price, over an estimate of only $2 million to $3 million. The highest-priced of the five Warhols in the sale, "Liz," fell below her $25 million to $35 million estimate: Her hammer price was a "mere" $21 million, but that was good enough for the consignor, actor Hugh Grant, who had paid only $3.58 million six years ago.

Top price in the sale was $34.2 million (including buyer's premium) for a 1955 Rothko, greeted with applause at the fall of the hammer. The auction prices (with premium) are posted here. The lots are identified (with images) here.

Whatever happens tomorrow at Sotheby's, the market watchers can stop biting their nails. But Sotheby's, for its own sake, needs a good showing on this one.

Could it be that Christie's was enjoying the ripple effect of a good day on Wall Street? The Dow was up today 319.54, compared to its big plunge the day of Sotheby's lackluster Impressionist/modern sale. At a time when so many of the big art buyers are in the financial industry, does stock market psychology affect art market psychology?

We're only six lots into the Christie's contemporary sale, and I think I can safely say that the bubble has not burst. Five of the six lots set new auction records, with Richard Prince's "Piney Woods Nurse" just knocked down at $5.4 million (to applause), against a presale estimate of $1.8 million to $2.2 million.

True we haven't gotten to the "big" lots yet, but the money, up to this point, is just swirling around the room.

My recent revelation about the magazine-reading habits of the Metropolitan Opera's idle orchestra members has inspired a string of comments by clarinet players, answering this burning question on their Clarinet BBoard:

What Do You Do During Long Rests?

Dave, for example, reveals:

I have seen people reading, doing crosswords, knitting, and even minor instrument repair.

And I was just joking when I suggested that knitting might be next!

As previously mentioned, I'm going to drop the ball and NOT attend this week's major contemporary art sales, even though all other eyes will be anxiously upon them to assess the health of the market. I may try to weigh in with some quick art-market quips (or even analysis), but I need to keep my eye on another ball this week---my invitation, extended by Professor Richard Leventhal, to give two talks at the University of Pennsylvania (to an undergraduate class and to a workshop for graduate students and professors), both on cultural property issues.

Since I've prepared certain materials for my captive academic audience, I thought I'd also share them with my faithful readers.

So here's the series of links I was asked to prepare, to a selection of my own mainstream-media and blog writings about cultural property issues. I'll post later my other U. Penn handout---a list of links to recent repatriation agreements, museum antiquities acquisition policies, and U.S. State Department actions designed to help protect other nations' cultural heritage.

The CultureGrrl Reader on Cultural Property

Wall Street Journal:
Truth in Booty: Coming---and Staying---Clean
A Betrayal of Trust: At the New York Public Library, It's Sell Now, Raise Money Later
The Wal