January 2008 Archives

Roger Sant, recently elected to the new position of chairman of the Smithsonian Institution's board, told a press briefing Monday that 10 candidates were being interviewed for the top spot there, held by acting secretary Cristián Samper, since the resignation of Lawrence Small. The board hopes to announce its choice in March.

The executive search firm employed by the Smithsonian is Isaacson, Miller of Boston.

Ellen Futter, do you want to leave the American Museum of Natural History? I think you have what John Isaacson of that search firm is looking for:

The Smithsonian requires a Secretary who has the intellectual vision to inspire the curatorial and scientific staff, fully embraces the public trust, has the leadership capacity to retool the existing economic and organizational models, and the reputation and magnetism to build confidence in and support for the Institution---on Capitol Hill and around the nation.

Meanwhile, a very solid choice, Martin Sullivan, director of the Heard Museum, Phoenix, from 1990-99, was named to succeed Marc Pachter as director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Notwithstanding the fact that Sullivan called NPG "this nation's Facebook," he has a serious track record, particularly in the areas of American Indian art and cultural-property issues. You can link to NPG's announcement here.

And in other Smithsonian news, Brett Zongker the Associated Press reports:

An internal review of travel expenditures by Smithsonian Institution museum directors found no other problems after a former leader [W. Richard West Jr. of the National Museum of the American Indian] came under fire last year for his use of luxury airfare, hotels and limousines, officials said Wednesday.

"We're getting questions, as you can imagine, from members of Congress," acting Smithsonian Secretary Cristián Samper told The Associated Press. "I wanted to make sure our people are out there traveling and using our resources wisely, and I think the answer is yes, they are."

What do Senators Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstein think?

Did you all catch that cheery curatorial class picture, in yesterday's NY Times, of the inaugural fellows of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, which was established last June to train art curators for museum directorships?

Let me provide what was missing from the NY Times article, by identifying those fine faces in the photo:

Back row, left to right:
Raymond Horton, Lautenberg Professor of Governance and Ethics, Columbia Business School, Colin Bailey, Gary Tinterow, Elizabeth Easton [co-founder of CCL], Liz Armstrong, Laurie Winters

Front row, left to right:
Richard Rand, Zoé Whitley, Paola Morsiani, Eleanor Harvey, Jordana Pomeroy, Silvia Cubiña

But wait, there's more. Get a load of the big names who are serving as mentors and residency supervisors for this merry band of aesthetes. There seems to be a pecking order revealed here: See who got assignments with Emily Rafferty and Henri Loyrette; William Griswold and Max Anderson; Reynold Levy (president of Lincoln Center) and Neil MacGregor; and...what, no Philippe de Montebello?

For Elizabeth Armstrong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Orange County Museum of Art---
Mentor: Jock Reynolds, Director, Yale University Art Gallery
Residency: James Cuno, Director, Art Institute of Chicago

For Colin B. Bailey, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, Frick Collection---
Mentor: Emily Rafferty, President, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Residency: Henri Loyrette, President and Director, Musée du Louvre

For Silvia Karman Cubiña, Director and Chief Curator, Moore Space, Miami---
Mentor: Thelma Golden, Director, Studio Museum in Harlem
Residency: Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, Guggenheim Museum

For Eleanor Jones Harvey, Chief Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum---
Mentor: Gail Andrews, Director, Birmingham Museum of Art
Residency: Mary Sue Sweeney Price, Director, Newark Museum

For Paola Morsiani, Curator of Contemporary Art, Cleveland Museum of Art---
Mentor: Susana Torruella Leval, Director Emeritus, El Museum del Barrio
Residency: Anne Philbin, Director, Hammer Museum

For Jordana Pomeroy, Senior Curator, National Museum of Women in the Arts---
Mentor: Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum at Duke University
Residency: Mimi Gardner Gates, Director, Seattle Art Museum

For Richard Rand, Senior Curator, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute---
Mentor: William Griswold, Director, The Morgan Library & Museum
Residency: Maxwell Anderson, Director, Indianapolis Museum of Art

For Gary Tinterow, Curator in Charge, Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art---
Mentor: Reynold Levy, President, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Residency: Neil MacGregor, Director, The British Museum

For Zoé Nicole Whitley, Curator, Contemporary Programmes, Victoria and Albert Museum, London---
Mentor: Axel Ruger, Director, Van Gogh Museum
Residency: Olga Viso, Director, Walker Art Center

For Laurie Winters, Curator of Earlier European Art, Milwaukee Art Museum---
Mentor: Brent Benjamin, Director, Saint Louis Art Museum
Residency: Michael Shapiro, Director, High Museum of Art

Is Eleanor Jones Harvey aiming for next female director of the Association of Art Museum Directors? Both of her role models have held that post.

Does Robert Olson, the alleged "smuggler" named in the search warrant affidavits for the recent federal raids on Southern California museums, have a press agent instead of a lawyer? His string of incautious and potentially damaging comments to journalists continues with dueling detailed profiles in today's LA Times and the NY Times.

The more prudent response came from Jonathan and Cari Markell, the LA dealers whose home and gallery were also raided in the investigation: "The couple," writes LA Times reporter Jason Felch, "would not comment."

Speaking of comment, San Diego Public Radio, KPBS, 89.5 FM, is scheduled to have a panel speaking today about the Southern California antiquities investigations on its "These Days" program, between 9 and 10 a.m., Pacific time. You can listen live here, or later, on the program's website, here. Felch told me he's on the panel. I was supposed to be, but was later told that they wanted "the local voice."

If Felch bumped me, I don't mind: He OWNS this story!

I'm really getting knocked lately. But I don't mind when it's a thoughtful, detailed, intelligent and passionate response.

Kwame Opoku takes issue with my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece on the Afrikanet.info website:

Many of the stolen cultural objects cannot simply be left where they are even if the owners agree finally to donate or, lend some of them....These are not just art objects, as Lee Rosenbaum may think. Many embody the unity and the spirit of the particular African people. These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically, so that our peoples see and feel that the long exile of their gods and kings has ended....

Besides, why should those who have been deprived of their cultural objects even think, at this stage, of making loans of the same objects to those who have been keeping them and still even today largely refuse to consider the issue of restitution?

I will only say in self-defense that I never meant to suggest that everything should stay where it is. What I said is that "source countries, possessing more high-quality artifacts from their ancient pasts than they can adequately display, don't need to get everything [emphasis added] back." I did not say, nor do I believe, that they should not get anything back.

I see a little patch of common ground in this quote from Opoku: "These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically." Some objects, certainly the ones that "embody the unity and the spirit" of a culture, should be physically returned. Others may be able to stay where they are on loan, with a clear acknowledgement by the exhibiting institution of the source country's ownership.

Can't we try to move from combativeness to mutually beneficial cooperation?

Having said that, I will acknowledge that museums are clearly aware of repatriation imperatives involving European countries. But as Opoku would surely argue, and as recent events in Southern California have illustrated, there's much more work to be done in addressing the cultural-property concerns of other areas of the world, including Africa and Southeast Asia.

Paul Werner, in the widely read Daily Kos, today takes me to task for having "never seen a scam she wasn't blind to" (so unfair!), because I questioned why the feds needed to stage a dramatic, highly publicized raid on museums to get the information they sought.

Werner goes on to assert that "the Feds were looking for records of a less official nature, like a couple of written wink-winks as to the real value of various donated objects....Here's the point: it's about the very real possibility the museums knew their own valuations were inflated, and inflated their valuations for gain."

The problem with your argument, Paul, is that museums don't provide the valuations of donated objects; donors' appraisers do. Museums are not legally responsible for assuring the accuracy of the appraised value; the donors and their appraisers are. Any tax fraud charges would likely be against donors or appraisers, not museum officials. What museum officials need to worry about is the issue of stolen property: Did they knowingly or negligently acquire works that ran afoul of the National Stolen Property Act?

If a museum official knew that appraisals were being inflated for the purpose of tax fraud, he should have not accepted the pieces. That's an ethical issue, not a legal issue. Museum officials generally keep arms-length from appraisals---a distance that's appropriate and consistent with the law. If a museum official actually provided the inflated appraisal used by the donor for tax purposes, THAT would be both a legal and ethical problem.

Wall text in the Brooklyn Museum's Egyptian gallery

At a time when officials at several Southern California museums have been sounding vague and clueless about current professional guidelines for antiquities acquisitions, how refreshing it is to see it all clearly laid out for visitors to read and understand, right near the entrance to the galleries devoted to the Brooklyn Museum's world-class Egyptian collection. This wall text has the added value of clearly delineating how museums' antiquities acquisition practices have evolved over the 20th and 21st centuries.

My amateur photography makes Brooklyn's policy seem murkier than it is, so let me decipher these hieroglyphics:

PROVENANCE
How Do Museums Obtain the Antiquities They Exhibit?

Official archaeological excavations were a major source of antiquities for the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the first four decades of the last century. In the early years of Brooklyn's fieldwork in Egypt (1906-8), the Museum retained most of what it found. In the 1920s, the Egyptian government began exercising its right to keep most excavated material. Some antiquities, however, came to Brooklyn during the 1920's and 1930's through "archaeological division" ["partage"], a process that allowed the excavating institution to retain objects not claimed by the Egyptians.

Before a museum buys an object or accepts it as a loan or gift, curators must check its history. Sometimes antiquities stolen from archaeological excavation or unearthed by tomb robbers appear on the art market. Purchasing stolen antiquities contributes to the destruction of archaeological sites and the loss of knowledge. The Brooklyn Museum of Art's Egyptian Department will not buy an object that left Egypt after 1983, when current antiquities law [the Cultural Property Implementation Act, by which the U.S. became a party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention] went into effect.

Now that's transparency! It is also, with the 1983 cutoff date, my preferred policy (as opposed to AAMD's 10-year rolling rule).

Southern California, do you copy?

UPDATE: The Iconoclasm blogger, Troels Myrup Kristensen, is clearly a better photographer than I am!

I've been focusing on a couple of major stories, but there are lots of others that deserve mention. Let's do a rapid rundown:

---The Felch-Feds story in the LA Times keeps getting worse (or better, from a journalistic standpoint). Today Jason Felch and Mike Boehm write about a big collector of Asian art caught in the investigators' net---Barry MacLean, a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago. A show of his collection has been traveling to small museums, but an AIC spokewoman told Felch that "MacLean had not donated, sold or lent any of the objects in his collection" to the Institute.

---Don't miss The Antiques Rogue Show in yesterday's Manchester Guardian, detailing the hows and whys of the amazing Greenhalgh forgery story.

But wait, there's more: The BBC reports that the Bolton Council is seeking permission to exhibit, as a fake, Shaun Greenhalgh's masterpiece, the "Amarna Princess," which the Bolton Museum had purchased as the real thing. Why not? It could be edifying. Maybe the Art Institute of Chicago could lend its "Gauguin."

---Nashville's planned Museum of African American Music, Art and Culture has proposed a partnership with Fisk University that could keep the Stieglitz Collection in the city, under Fisk's ownership. Given that the museum hasn't even been built yet, and its ability to provide big bucks to Fisk is questionable, this sounds like a longshot...not to mention the fact that the Stieglitz Collection does not consist of African-American art. Alice Walton still waits in the wings with her $30-million offer, accepted by Fisk, for a half-share in the collection. The matter returns to court next month.

---People often speculate that museum thefts are ordered by covetous collectors. Giving credence to such theories, a suspect in the theft of two paintings, including a Picasso, from a woefully low-security Brazilian museum is now claiming that the the works were to have been delivered to a Saudi collector.

---"You can't sue me; I'm going to sue first" is evidently becoming a new museum strategy to counter Nazi-loot claims. First the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim initiated a joint action; now the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is seeking court validation of its ownership of a claimed Kokoschka.

---Claimants of art in a major loan exhibition from Russian museums now at London's Royal Academy have hit on a novel restitution strategy: Don't give me the objects; just give me proceeds earned from exhibiting them.

Given the Smithsonian Institution's admission, contained in yesterday's 70-page task force report on its revenue-generating activities, that the details of its 2006 deal with Showtime Networks should have been fully disclosed from the start to avoid controversy, the nine cultural institutions that have just signed on with Ovation TV should take care to spell out the parameters of their new deal.

The new arrangement involves "a series of collaborations between cultural institutions and the cable arts network to create programming intended to raise the profiles of both partners." But the press release is silent on certain contractual issues:

---Is there any exclusivity involved in this arrangement?

---Are these institutions free to do whatever they want with competing networks?

There's also the problem of access: Showtime is available only to premium subscribers; Ovation is not even on my channel line-up, and I'm in the greater New York metropolitan area (looking directly at Manhattan from my window).

The cultural institutions that have signed on with Ovation are: Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, P.S. Arts (Los Angeles), Museum of Modern Art, Harlem School of the Arts (New York), the New Orleans Center for Creative Artists/Riverfront, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

Robin Pogrebin's NY Times story today leaves the mistaken impression that the Smithsonian has repudiated its Showtime deal. She writes:

The report...says that, had better lines of communication been in place, the controversial Showtime deal might have been avoided.

The report in no way suggests that the deal should have been avoided. What it says, on page 20, is that the deal was good; the communications were bad:

Had this agreement been better explained and justified to the internal and external stakeholders prior to and just after its announcement, the ensuing months of conflict and overstated concerns may not have transpired. In recent months, it appears that internal and external fears about access to collections have dissipated, and development and implementation of the processes noted below have addressed operational concerns.

You can read the entire Smithsonian report here.

My invitation to a Metropolitan Museum's press preview

Do you think that NYC museums just might be courting the hedge fund mogul and mega-collector, Steve Cohen?

His shark-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum will soon be joined by another Cohen Loan, to which the Met gave pride-of-place on the invitation (above) that I recently received to the imminent press preview for Jasper Johns: Gray. Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, where the show recently closed, the monochromes include Cohen's version of "The Critic Sees," an iconic Johns image, among more than 120 works to be displayed. (The 6½-inch-wide sculpture is four inches larger on the invitation than it is in reality.)

What this critic sees a full-court press by the players at New York museums for Cohen loans and, more importantly, Cohen benefactions.

"Don" Mary Beard

It's not just because she said such nice things about CultureGrrl for the BBC, or even because her blog's title includes my husband's first name.

Anyone who can write such a learned, lively post about the recent exhibition, Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity at Harvard's Sackler Museum, and then attract no less than 48 incredibly erudite readers' comments gets my enthusiastic thumbs-up. Those profs sure are interactive!

Mary Beard, the eponymous blogging "don"---a Cambridge professor of classics and the classics editor of the London Times Literary Supplement---writes this of the Sackler's show of colorized copies (organized by the Stiftung Archäologie and the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich):

It's a great, garish multi-colour spectacular. My question is quite how far you believe the details. Does the colouring of ancient statuary really mean this kind of bright, in-your-face, dazzle? Or, to put it another way: If you are not entirely convinced by the gaudy blues and yellows, are you simply guilty of a romantic view of ancient sculpture that wants it all white?

...I may be an old romantic, but I am still a bit suspicious.

I'd very much like to plagiarize Beard's self-description---"a wickedly subversive commentator."

After almost two years of influential but unremunerative blogging, CultureGrrl is going commercial.

Beginning within the next two weeks, you can run your ads on the site that has become required daily reading for the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, art scholars, art critics and journalists, and just plain art lovers throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Europe and Asia.

I've gone in a relatively short time from a new blogger to one whom virtually everyone I encounter in the artworld knows about and finds at least useful and, at best, influential. Last year, CultureGrrl logged 382,000 hits. This month alone (with three days still to go), I conservatively expect more than 38,000 hits, projecting from the actual 35,800 hits in January thus far.

But much more important than the quantity is the quality of this audience and their respect for this site. You know who you are. And you know who I am (or, if not, see my profile and my linked mainstream pieces, in the righthand column).

I'm hoping that my blog's new third column, coming soon, will be your place to advertise exhibitions, educational programs, art books and publications (both online sites and mainstream media) and, of course, fine jewelry, luxury cars and other coveted objects of conspicuous consumption!?!

One important word about conflict-of-interest: There is an inevitable perception of such conflict when the writer and the beneficiary of ad proceeds are one and the same. I am uneasy with this, but I am more uncomfortable about spending so much of my workday blogging as a hobby, not a source of income. The benefit of the ArtsJournal network is that all advertising arrangements will be handled by the managers of the network, not by me.

I will be hands-off when it comes to my third column, and I pledge to continue my gadfly role as an equal-opportunity cultural curmudgeon, regardless of whether my targets are advertisers. You'll have to trust me on this (or not). I'm aware that one of my chief values to my readers is fierce fearlessness in taking on the foibles and follies of the artworld, wherever I find them---even among future advertisers. You can buy "CultureGrrl," but you can't buy CultureGrrl.

Considering the elite and very targeted audience that you will soon be reaching, the introductory ad rates are very reasonable. For more details, or to express interest in being among CultureGrrl's inaugural advertisers, you can go right now here

There are possible changes brewing at Art in America magazine (where I am contributing editor), now that Peter Brant, who last spring had announced his intention to sell his half-share in Brant Publications, has done an about-face and decided to buy out the half-share of his ex-wife, Sandra Brant.

In an emotional meeting with staffers on Thursday, Sandy indicated to longtime AiA editor Betsy Baker (not the source for this story) that the operative words were still "business as usual," but only until the sale is finalized. After that, a staffer told me, anything is possible.

As I wrote last May, Peter Brant had been a "silent partner" with "no operational role" in the magazines. Now it appears that he's going to be hands-on.

He has already named new editors---Glenn O'Brien and Fabien Baron--for Interview magazine, replacing longtime editor Ingrid Sischy. "I just thought they could really use some direction, going forward, of a younger generation of people," he told the NY Times. The top editor's spot at Brant Publications' other property, The Magazine Antiques, has been empty since the untimely death from cancer on Jan. 8 of Allison Ledes.

Brant also indicated an interest in a richer web presence, which, for the content-poor AiA website, is long overdue.

As for the current mood at AiA: "It's been pretty unnerving," the staffer told me.

In news about my other publication-in-flux: Buyer Rupert Murdoch is reportedly planning to move the Wall Street Journal (for which I write frequently on the "Leisure & Arts" page) from its offices in New York's financial district (which were vacated and completely redone after 9/11) to the midtown headquarters of Murdoch's News Corp.

More here and here.

Given the indications in public affidavits, revealed last week in the LA Times, that the feds are probably building a case for criminal indictments and charges of tax fraud related to last week's four-museum early morning raid by federal agents, recent comments made to reporters by the Bowers Museum's director, Peter Keller, and by alleged artifacts smuggler Robert Olson seem ill advised at best, damaging at worst.

I'm all for museum transparency and for responsiveness to journalists' inquiries. I think that officials of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (here) and the unraided Berkeley Art Museum (here) did well by pledging complete cooperation with the investigation and, in LACMA's case, indicating a willingness to relinquish objects if "ownership claims are substantiated."

But what was Peter Keller thinking when he voluntarily publicized his Santa Ana museum's lax acquisition practices in comments to Laura Bleiberg of the Orange County Register, published Thursday, and in similar comments, published Saturday, to Edward Wyatt of the NY Times?

Wyatt wrote:

The museum has never required proof that artifacts it accepts have been obtained legally, Mr. Keller said. Donors are required to sign a statement saying that they are the rightful owners of an artifact and that it is in the United States legally, he said, but they are not asked to provide documentation.

Mr. Keller said it was a "very difficult thing to prove" where an artifact has come from or how long it has been in the United States. "I don't know how you prove it," he said.

Perhaps he can find some guidance in the Association of Art Museum Directors' detailed 2004 guidelines on "acquisitions of archaeological materials and ancient art," which "complement and elaborate on AAMD's 2001 'Professional Practices in Art Museums.'" (AAMD's website does not list the Bowers' director as a member of that organization.)

Since Keller told Wyatt that "his researchers had been unable to find evidence of the Thai antiquity law forbidding their [artifacts'] export, passed in 1961," let me help by referring him and his researchers to pages 143-144 of Bonnie Burnham's "The Protection of Cultural Property: Handbook of National Legislations" (1974), published by the International Council of Museums, which also mentions Thailand's 1972 act to prevent illicit excavation in several protected sites, including Ban Chiang---the source of many of the objects now under investigation. (Bonnie, it's time to do a new edition!)

Notwithstanding its Thai travails, the Bowers has a major Asian loan show to look forward to: The popular exhibition of Terra Cotta Warriors from China, now at the British Museum, is scheduled to open in Santa Ana on May 18. And on view right now is a show of the British Museum's Egyptian mummies and funerary objects.

The Orange County Register also published a revelatory interview conducted by Doug Irving with Robert Olson, described as "the smuggler" in the search warrant affidavits.

Olson told Irving:

I bought from people who, evidently, were breaking the law....If it wasn't for people illegally digging up stuff, there wouldn't be museums.

What can I say?

And this report, by Jeanette Steele of the San Diego Union-Tribune, quoting Rob Sidner, director of the Mingei International Museum, raises major due-diligence questions about that institution:

Sidner...denies that he and his staff knew anything was amiss with objects they have been collecting since 1998, although he acknowledges that they probably should have.

Assuming that the individuals interviewed for these articles said anything resembling their published quotes, I think they've made the task of defending their actions a good deal harder. There's a reason why lawyers advise clients not to discuss publicly the details of ongoing investigations.

If you want to do your own due diligence, you can read the entire texts of these affidavits...and weep:

---The LA Times has posted online the full search warrant affidavits for LACMA, Bowers, and the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena.

---The NY Times has posted the affidavits for the Silk Roads Gallery, Los Angeles (run by Jonathan Markell) and the Mingei.

---The Orange County Register has the Olson affidavit.

Imagine my surprise to find CultureGrrl touted on BBC Radio 4's website yesterday, in a podcast by Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge, who has long had me on the blogroll of her own blog for the London Times Literary Supplement, A Don's Life.

In her BBC comments, she singled out CultureGrrl and two other blogs for special praise. I could quote what she said, but I'd rather let you hear it in her own plummy accent, which gives it that special stamp of professorial authority. I've edited to include only her introduction and her CultureGrrl remarks (but you can hear the whole thing at the above BBC link).

Click below, and Beard will be heard:

Thanks, Mary!

Jason Felch of the LA Times today has published an updated report of his shocking revelations yesterday about the long-term federal sting operation and the sudden four-museum early morning raid by federal agents. They were seeking evidence in connection with their five-year investigation of transactions and possible tax fraud involving allegedly looted objects.

Before I get to the meat of Felch's detailed article, I'd like to add two comments:

First, the dramatic raid, photographed by the LA Times, was out of proportion to what it was attempting to achieve, unless its goal was sensational publicity for the federal enforcement team and against the targeted museums. I doubt that any of the institutions under investigation would have denied requests by the government agents for records, nor would they likely have destroyed documents had they not been taken by surprise. This dragnet seems to have been staged for maximum shock value.

Second, my comment in my previous post---that it's too soon to say whether this will turn out to be another MUSEUM scandal---has been miscontrued by at least two commentators. Here's what I said: "This may well turn out to be an ART-MARKET scandal, but the degree of intentional complicity by MUSEUMS in this mess is not yet known" (emphasis added).

Here's what Felch himself has to say:

No arrests were made, but legal experts say the surprise search warrants suggest prosecutors are collecting the final elements to seek criminal indictments against [dealer Jonathan] Markell and [alleged smuggler Robert] Olson....

In the case of the Bowers [Museum, Santa Ana] and the Pacific Asia Museum [Pasadena], the warrants clearly suggest that officials were aware that the objects were looted and overvalued but accepted them anyway....LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], the Mingei [International Museum, San Diego] and the UC Berkeley Art Museum all received similar donations from Markell or Olson over several years, the warrants say, but the documents are unclear about the extent to which museum officials knew of alleged theft or tax evasion.

Today's NY Times report informs us that LACMA "had about 60 objects related to the investigation that had been donated...over the last decade." It also provided these details, from the search warrant affidavits, about the allegedly inflated appraisals for donations to the museums now under investigation:

The Markells would acquire an object from Mr. Olson and then offer it for sale to the undercover agent for about $1,500. They would provide an appraisal valuing the object at close to $4,990, an amount calculated to get around tax regulations requiring more documentation for bigger donations.

This strategem would have allowed donors to avoid the requirement that objects valued at over $5,000 be accompanied by IRS Form 8283, containing a "qualified appraisal" by a "qualified [independent] appraiser," as defined by the tax code. The donor is required to give the donee a copy of the appraisal and the receiving organization (such as a museum), as well as the appraiser, must sign Form 8283. The museum's signature acknowledges receipt of the property but does not constitute any opinion on the amount of the appraisal.

These requirements do not apply for under-$5,000 donations, but tax deductions still must not exceed the objects' properly appraised fair market value.

I would say one thing to counterbalance yesterday's top story---Jason Felch's report in the LA Times about the massive, coordinated raid by federal agents on four art museums, a dealer and an alleged smuggler: Felch's article, as he states, is based on the contents of the publicly filed search warrant affidavit that allowed the federal agents to seek records and other evidence of transactions and donations involving possibly looted objects and possible tax fraud based on inflated appraisals.

But there have, as yet, been no arrests or indictments, let alone convictions. This may turn out to be another museum antiquities scandal, as suggested by Felch in his article. The title of the radio segment in which he spoke last night on Los Angeles station KCRW also included the "S"-word: LA's Art World Faces Another Scandal.

It's too soon to jump to that conclusion. This may well turn out to be an art-market scandal, but the degree of intentional complicity by museums in this mess is not yet known. From initial reports, though, it does sound as if appropriate due diligence may not have been followed by the institutions accepting these objects.

That said, it also appears that the pieces involved were relatively minor.

Felch reports:

Many of the objects donated were valued at just under $5,000, the value at which the IRS required additional documentation.

In other words, we're not talking about another Getty "Aphrodite" or Euphronios krater here. As the case develops, we'll know more about what we really ARE talking about.

Meanwhile, in related looting news, Judy Keen of USA Today reports:

Looting of fossils and archaeological artifacts from national parks---such as Native American pottery and Civil War relics---is increasing as demand for such items rises on the Internet and the world market, U.S. National Park Service officials say. Over the past decade, an average of 340 "significant" looting incidents have been reported annually at the 391 national parks, monuments, historic sites and battlefields---probably less than 25% of the actual number of thefts, says park service staff ranger Greg Lawler. "The trends are up," he says.

The agent whose undercover work led to yesterday's LA raids was, in fact, from the National Park Service, because some of the objects involved in the investigation were allegedly looted from Native American sites on federal land. Others were said to have come from Thailand, China and Myanmar.

I imagine that Felch will have a follow-up later today: He mentioned on last night's radio program that Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, had held a press conference yesterday about the raid on that museum---the most prominent of those targeted.

The response of the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, is here. Click the link below for LACMA's full published statement on this situation.

James Cuno, right, shows donors a model of the Art Institute of Chicago's planned new Modern Wing

James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, hosted a press lunch in New York yesterday to whet our appetites for his museum's new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, which is still more than a year away from opening.

But although I was interested to hear about the greatly expanded opportunities to exhibit modern and contemporary art, as well as the plans to do a sweeping reinstallation of the AIC's entire collection, I couldn't resist the opportunity to ask Cuno, who is on some journalists' shortlists for the next director of the Metropolitan Museum, whether that's a position he covets.

His reply? "The Met is a great museum." I took that as an oblique "yes." But he hastened to add that his AIC is a great civic museum and that he finds the intense local involvement very appealing.

Reasonably convinced that Jim would leave Chicago's chill winds for New York's thick smog if summoned, I did the job interview and asked where he thinks the Met should go from here. Expanding its modern and contemporary collection was his first priority, because those collecting opportunities are more abundant than in other fields.

Then he mentioned the need for more space. I asked if that meant a satellite museum, since the Met's on-site possibilities are nearly maxed out. He replied that the Met has already turned down opportunities to create satellites (in the manner of the Guggenheim and the Louvre) and that if current director Philippe de Montebello doesn't think that's a good idea, then "it must not be a good idea." I asked if there should perhaps be other facilities built within New York, following the model of the Met's own medieval art outpost to the north, the Cloisters. His reply: "I don't know."

I did agree with him on one thing: He mentioned that Philippe's retirement will likely free him to speak out more forcefully on important museum matters. And that's probably the one area in which Cuno would outdo his predecessor, if he did ascend to this country's top art museum spot---serving as an outspoken advocate on hot-button issues.

What he might lack, though, is Philippe's tactful discretion. At the end of the press lunch, Jim made a remark that sounded like an implied putdown of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, about to open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (which is directed by another name on some people's Met shortlists, Michael Govan.)

It [Chicago's new building] is called the Modern Wing because the principle donors who gave more than $50 million to the project did so on the condition that their names not be attached to this building. That's in keeping with the character of the city of Chicago.

Does this mean that Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice should now be deemed insufficiently public-spirited, because they attached their names to the building that was added to the Chicago museum in 1988?

Naming opportunities are a fact of museum life. As I've said previously, the mildest sin in the nine circles of hell that are nonprofit fundraising is allowing benefactors to attach their names to new construction.

I'm passing on this link to you for what it's worth, which may be nothing:

The German news magazine Der Spiegel, in an article by Matthias Schulz (posted online today), False Gods: 'Ancient' Forgeries Fool Art Markets, had this to say about "Artemis and the Stag" (or is it "Deer"?), sold by the Albright-Knox Gallery and now on loan to the Metropolitan Museum:

In a report Spiegel has obtained, Stefan Lehmann, an archaeologist from the eastern German city of Halle, raises doubts about the piece. He is troubled by the "unexpressive face and seemingly perfect condition" of the sculpture. At first glance, writes Lehmann, the sculpture reminds him of a "classical work from the period around 1800."

Could comments like these spell the beginning of a major scandal in the art world?

Or could they just mean that some journalists and scholars like to stir up controversy?

Anish Kapoor, "As Yet Untitled," 2007

While I was at the Metropolitan Museum last week, viewing the new ancient art additions to its galleries, on loan from Italy, I also had to seek out the museum's new purchases of just-made art.

One of the fun things about the shark's new roommate is that it allows you to steal a photograph of the otherwise unphotographable predator. That's Hirst's Shark 2.0, a Steve Cohen loan, visible in the upper-right quadrant of the Met's new purchase, above.

Kapoor's work, an evolution of his Sky Mirror into a reflection-fracturing surface of hexagonal tiles, provides the added allure of reflecting CultureGrrl's many facets:

I'm a little worried, though, about the replacement version of the shark. The top surface of the water is now covered with white blobs that the guard told me were fat emanating from the beast. Are we disintegrating again?

Tommy Cordero may be the most visitor-friendly museum guard I've ever encountered. He told people in the nicest way that they couldn't shoot the shark with their cameras, and he introduced me to the concave Kapoor's eerie echo effect, heard if you cry out while standing near its center. This may earn you some strange looks from fellow Met visitors, but who cares what they think? Tommy also made a public service announcement to all in earshot that if they liked the shark, they could see other works by the artist displayed at Lever House.

And if you liked the shark, you could walk over to the Met's handy modern/contemporary gift shop and acquire the pop-up shark book:

What, no stuffed shark toys?

If you liked the artist, you could buy the book on "The Making of the Diamond Skull," published by White Cube Gallery, London in connection with its recent "Beyond Belief" Hirst show. Actually, you probably can't buy it. The copies, save for a damaged one, were sold out.

Here's that last copy, with its centerfold diamond head somewhat torn:

Should the Met be hawking a commercial gallery's catalogue, which has now morphed into a quasi-prospectus for an investment syndicate?

The Met's other recent exception to its 50-year-rule for purchases of "contemporary" work is not in the museum's contemporary/modern wing, but in its African galleries:

El Anatsui, "Between Earth and Heaven," 2006

Like the Kapoor, it's a glitzy, gorgeous object. But why does the label say that it's made of aluminum and copper wire and that it "translate[s] and transpose[s] the aesthetic of finely woven silk into the medium of base metal"? Why not just call the material what it is---bottle caps (below)? Wouldn't viewers, particularly kids, appreciate this fun fact?

"Between Heaven and Earth," detail

It's not that I give a hoot about who's on top---Sotheby's or Christie's.

But what activates the needle of my sensitive journalistic spin-monitor are Christie's representations about its sales leadership and superior profitability---claims that are, respectively, exaggerated and unsubstantiated.

In its Jan. 18 press release summarizing 2007 sale results, Christie's included this gloat-quote from its CEO:

"In 2007 Christie's once again led the art market in terms of sales, profitability and quality of works offered," said Edward Dolman, Chief Executive Officer of Christie's International.

Its sales leadership (including public auction sales and unreported private transactions) was statistically insignificant: 2007 totals, according to the Christie's and Sotheby's statements, were $6.3 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively. Christie's reported a 36% increase in sales by dollar amount over the previous year; Sotheby's, a 51% increase. Auction totals in 2007 were $5.8 million at Christie's; $5.4 billion at Sotheby's.

As for profitability, the operative word for Christie's report is "murky," not "transparent." Sotheby's, a publicly traded company, will release its audited 2007 results in late February, which will include its profits.

But privately traded Christie's never discloses the amount of its profit, so we have to take on faith its claim to a larger haul. One wonders how Christie's can make this comparison, when Sotheby's results are not yet out.

By one indication, at least, Sotheby's profits might turn out to be higher: It has adopted a policy of reducing the number of works it sells and focusing on high-priced lots: In its press release summarizing 2007 results, it reported that it sold "42% fewer lots than its competitor." This might seem like a strange boast, except that by selling fewer lots for virtually the same dollar amount, the profit margin is enhanced.

Why couldn't Christie's just trumpet its impressive 2007 sale results and leave it at that? Otherwise, it should disclose actual profit figures, rather than make unsupported claims.

My LA Times Op-Ed piece yesterday about cultural property issues elicited some thoughtful responses:

---A prominent curator at a major museum (not the Metropolitan or the Getty) brought the elephant into the room:

What would happen if Greece were to move to claim the Euphronios Krater from Italy, on the potentially logical basis that it was made in Greece and emotionally and morally belongs in Greece???

Let's even not go there. I doubt that Greece wants to mess with Italy. The source countries want to fight the common enemy---the antiquities-importing countries.

---David Gill, in his Looting Matters blog, says this in reaction to my Op-Ed:

Returns [of antiquities] from North America have not been about objects derived from scientific excavations. They are objects that have surfaced on the antiquities market without a documented history. "Universal museums" have a place, but not at the expense of destroying unrecorded archaeological sites. And that is what lies at the heart of the issue about the recent returns to Italy. Wherever the Sarpedon krater resides, we will never known its precise last resting place and the complete archaeological assemblage.

So these returns are symbolic of unethical curatorial behaviour that was indifferent to the material and intellectual consequences.

I think "symbolism" is, indeed, a big factor in these transfers. I hope we can eventually move beyond the symbolic to the synergistic.

---Derek Fincham in his Illicit Cultural Property blog says this of my Op-Ed:

It's a well written piece, but it strikes me as a compilation of a lot of other scholarship. I suppose it's a journalist's prerogative to take the work of scholars and researchers and reconfigure it in a more digestible (i.e. better written) form, but it does strike me as a bit unfair that she gets to take credit for some ideas which have been persuasively and compellingly articulated elsewhere.

He goes on to cite the arguments set forth by John Merryman and Kwame Anthony Appiah, among others. I think this is a case of "great minds think (somewhat) alike, although I have differences with both of these thinkers.

Fincham likes the notion of "citizen-archaeologists" and has himself written favorably here about that partial remedy to illicit digs.

We need more of this---creative thinking, not contentious grandstanding.

Michael Brand

It seems that once a museum director gets a source country off his back by reluctantly relinquishing claimed objects, he feels compelled to backpedal furiously, reminding everyone, in public pronouncements, that givebacks are not necessarily a good thing.

Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum, having acceded to Italy's demands for objects, has recently waged an international speaking campaign, defending the values and prerogatives of the "universal museum."

Now Michael Brand of the Getty Museum is getting into the act, with recent candid comments at the 32nd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, held last week in Melbourne, Australia.

in an article in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, forwarded to CultureGrrl by the Getty, the mild-mannered Brand becomes a firebrand, defending museums' rights to retain some antiquities in their collections.

Gabriella Coslovich reports:

Michael Brand...proposed the metaphor of art objects as "de facto migrants." He argued that while it was crucial that museums guard against the illegal trafficking of art objects, it was just as important for "source" countries such as Greece and Italy to think carefully about requesting the restitution of art objects.

"At the same time, the simplistic argument that all works of art should be returned home is no better than one seeking to stop human migration in the name of preserving supposedly pure ethnic borders."

I think Brand might consider defusing those charged metaphors in future pronouncements.

But lets get to the newsy part of the Getty director's remarks. Regarding the Getty Bronze (and notwithstanding recent assertions to the contrary by Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli), Brand unequivocally stated:

Fortunately for us, the so-called Getty Bronze will be staying at the Getty....Ironically, it was most likely on its way to Italy from Greece as Roman loot when it was lost at sea. As a local aside, the National Gallery in Canberra had actually been poised to purchase this bronze in 1976, just after it purchased [Jackson Pollock's] 'Blue Poles.' However, this was stopped by the then prime minister and minister for culture, Malcolm Fraser.

What the Getty says in Brand's native Australia is apparently very different from what it says in Italy. The museum's press spokesperson, John Giurini, provided us with one of those priceless "did he really say that?" moments, in comments reported Friday by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Paolo Conte, describing Giurini's reaction to the exhibition of his museum's former holdings in Italy's presidential palace reports:

How do the Getty's officials feel, seeing again at the Quirinale [Rome's presidential palace] the works that recently left Los Angeles and were exhibited for years in their museum? John Giurini...answered for everyone: "The emotion is undeniable. But...to see them again in Rome is to understand immediately that this is their place. And it is right that they stay where they are."

This was published under the following subhead in the "Corriere" article:

The Getty Speaks Italian.

Those of you who rose earlier than I did on this holiday Monday probably beat me to this link. But here's my cultural property Op-Ed piece in today's LA Times---Make Art Loans, Not War.

It is, as you will see, the missing Part III of my series of posts last November, presenting "My Ceasefire Proposals for the Cultural-Property Wars"---here and here.

Those of you coming to this blog for the first time today from the LA Times might want to catch up with the CultureGrrl faithful by perusing those previous commentaries.

At the end of the second post, I promised: COMING SOON: The case for a licit market and "citizen archaelogists." I hope you interpreted "soon" loosely.

At some point, I realized that this topic was ripe for an Op-Ed and that the departure of the Met's Euphronios vase would provide a news angle. That's why I delayed getting back to you on the most provocative of my proposals.

But wait! It seems that Michael Brand of the Getty Museum has also been doing some thinking about cultural-property issues. (This is news?) COMING SOON (and I do mean soon).

Once you finish watching the Giants-Packers game (about to go into overtime), you can get in the mood for my LA Times piece tomorrow, with National Geographic's nine Treasure Wars Videos, covering such hot-button topics as the Parthenon Marbles, Rosetta Stone, and objects from the Machu Picchu excavations, recently returned by Yale to Peru.

I particularly liked the Bactrian Hoard clip.

Now, back to football, art-lings.

GO GIANTS!

If all goes according to plan (and I think it will), I'll have an Op-Ed piece in tomorrow's LA Times about the future course that I believe source countries should take in the cultural-property wars. As usual, I will include something to annoy (and to gratify) each side in these disputes.

A museum director recently told me that what makes me interesting is that you never know where I'll come down on the issues.

Is this a good thing?

I will, as is my custom, link to my piece tomorrow.

Today's NY Times antiquities scoop on Shelby White's agreement to relinquish to Italy 10 objects (nine already in transit, one departing in 2010) adds the "Why Me" corollary to the Times Change justification for past antiquities trangressions. Both defensive arguments will win no converts.

Reporter Elisabetta Povoledo, who overcame a confidentiality agreement between the Italian Culture Ministry and antiquities collector Shelby White, quotes an unnamed official, who was privy to the negotiations, on the stance that was taken by the embattled museum benefactor:

"She had an attitude of 'Why me? There are other collectors out there,'" said one official who asked not to be identified for fear of offending Ms. White by describing the talks. "The truth is, because she's lent so many of her pieces, she was very visible.

The "Why Me?" plea for sympathy may have some factual basis but carries no moral or legal force. It's true that many have bought antiquities that likely were looted and that few have been targeted by the antiquities police. It's also true that many shoplift and few get arrested. That's no argument against vigilance.

What's also true that White has become another Marion True: Sacrificial collector, meet the sacrificial curator. At least White wasn't put on trial. But the example of both women is meant by Italy to inspire fear and conciliation in the ranks of their colleagues.

The agreement may also have further implications for White's remaining collection. Not only has Italy reserved the right to go after objects that were not part of the Metropolitan Museum's controversial 1990 show of her holdings, but, as archaeologist David Gill (cited by today's Times for co-authoring a 1999 study exposing the lack of provenance for most of those objects) points out in his blog, Looting Matters:

Italy was only a source for some of the antiquities. Pieces from Turkey and the UK have also passed through the collection. Will she [White] be making arrangements with other countries?

I have contacted Shelby White's representatives and the Italian Culture Ministry, seeking further information. No list of the objects has yet been released, although today's article from ANSA, the Italian news agency, provides an image of one, and the Times identifies two that had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum---"a red-figured vessel depicting Herakles slaying Kyknos, signed by the celebrated fifth-century B.C. painter Euphronios, and a pot with scenes of Zeus and Herakles attributed to the fifth-century B.C. painter Eucharides." (UPDATE: As David Gill correctly points out in another post today, the unidentified photo illustrating ANSA's article is, in fact one of the objects being relinquished to Italy by Princeton. It has nothing to do with the White givebacks announced today.)

White's spokesman, Fraser Seitel, told me that today's published report about the agreement "was a surprise---out of the box. It wasn't according to plan." A press release had been prepared but not yet distributed.

Seitel also stated that there had been a strict confidentiality agreement about the specific terms of the deal. That presumably would have barred revealing the to the Times details about which White objects could or could not be sought by Italy in the future.

He added that the Italian government, as the new owner of the objects, is free to release a list of them and to exhibit them. I suspect (but have not yet confirmed) that they will join the Nostoi exhibition of repatriated objects at the presidential palace in Rome, where the Met's celebrated Euphronios krater has today gone on display.

Click the link below for the complete statement that had been prepared by the Italian Culture Ministry and Shelby White.

Philip Conisbee, 62, senior curator of European paintings at the National Gallery, Washington, died Wednesday night from lung cancer complications. With a long list of scholarly and curatorial achievements, the British-born French paintings expert may be best remembered for two glorious exhibitions: Georges de La Tour and His World, 1996, the first American exhibition devoted to that artist; and the recent blockbuster Cézanne in Provence, 2006.

In a public television special based on the latter exhibition, he demonstrated his skills not only as a scholar but also as a compelling communicator, radiating quiet authority as he used the artist's biography and Provence's arcadian surroundings to illuminate the art.

I can't bring you a video clip from that documentary, but for those of you who understand French (made all the more understandable to some, thanks to his strong English accent), here's an interview he did with Télévision Provence:

With Nicholas Penny leaving his post as senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts to become director of London's National Gallery, Washington's premier art museum now has two major spots to fill.

"Victorious Youth," Greek, 300 - 100 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum

Despite a November Italian court decision that rejected a legal claim for the Getty Bronze (above) by prosecutors in Pesaro, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said today that he will continue his campaign to get the Getty Museum to relinquish its celebrated ancient Greek statue of a victorious athlete.

ANSA, the Italian news agency reports:

The minister acknowledged that the court's rejection of a seizure petition was ''not positive'' but insisted that there was still scope to press Italy's demands. ''It will be a question of a few months. Then we'll see,'' Rutelli said....

Prosecutors and Italian heritage bodies have appealed...the sentence at Italy's highest court of appeal, the Cassation Court.

I will have more to say on cultural property issues in a mainstream media piece, about to be published. More details soon.

"Equivalent beauty and importance"?

That's what the Met's agreement with Italy calls for, but I'm not sure that's what it got in exchange for its masterpiece by Euphronios.

I posted photos of two of the three loans that just arrived from Italy here.

Below is third one---a bell-krater from the Paestum region of southern Italy, 3rd quarter of the 4th century B.C., attributed to the painter Python---which I inexpertly photographed when I visited the galleries yesterday, the first day that the Italian loans were displayed:

The specialists may say I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the beauty, monumentality and grave profundity of Euphronios' depiction of the death of Sarpedon on the obverse and of Athenian youths arming on the reverse far outweigh the cheerful pieces that we got in return.

The Oltos kylix, the object closest in kind to the Euphronios, sports a label that tries to hearten us with the news that that we got a trifecta:

Kylikes tended to depict some combination of Dionysos, the god of wine; a scene from the daily life of an Athenian citizen, such as going to war; and a mythological subject. This exceptionally large and elaborate work shows all three.

The warrior inhabits the cup's interior, which you will not see unless you are very thin and can squeeze behind the case:

My camera could easily slip behind there, however, so here he is:

Whatever this cup may lack in gravity, it makes up for in depravity:

The Met has made much of the fact that Italy only had to send us one piece, but graciously threw in two more. I think they may have been trying to compensate us in quantity for what we gave up in quality.

In the case-of-honor, on the spot where the Euphronios previously held court, is the mug-on-a-jug that I reproduced in the prior post. But the Met already owns a jug with TWO smiling mugs:

The Met has dispersed these three loans in three different galleries and has made no big deal about their arrival. I suppose that's because it made this deal reluctantly and feels there's not much to celebrate.

In any event, at least we now know what the "accessories" are for the "fleecy suit" of the satyr on the bell-krater (top): He wears a fawn skin, boots and a headband.

Sounds like me, leaving to play indoor tennis in January!

I spent an enjoyable afternoon last week wandering around the Brooklyn Museum with CultureDaughter and her visiting boyfriend, Lee, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate and part-time artist, who specifically asked to see what Brooklyn had to offer.

Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the museum's expansive Beaux-Arts Court, which should be lined with European paintings, and came upon this:

What, no art?

Turns out that the walls had just been stripped bare (except for some residual labels and picture hooks) for a major renovation of the court's 100-year-old floor.

The already outdated January press release tells us:

The floor of the Court will be replaced with new terrazzo and structural glass that will provide visual access to the original glass block, which also serves as the ceiling of the Hall of the Americas on the floor below. The block allows radiant light from the Hall to suffuse the floor of the Beaux-Arts Court, while at the same time permitting light from the Court to filter through to the first floor....

The project...will begin in January and conclude in the early fall of 2008.

Not really.

Sally Williams, head of Brooklyn's press office, informed me that opening in early fall is impossible, and even winter "is aspirational. We have to see how the floor project goes."

Still, there are no current plans to install a selection of European paintings anywhere else in the building. Brooklyn's collection of that material, unlike its Egyptian trove, is far from world class. But deleting all the old masters, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists leaves a big gap in art history. Do we really need to devote so much space on the fourth floor to the Sisterhood is Dispiriting installation? (That very uneven show, mercifully, will give way next month to a Ghada Amer show.)

There still is some "art" in the Beaux-Arts Court. But it's not very beau:

I think Brooklyn might do better to let its Egyptian collection speak for itself.

Conceptual rendering from Zaha Hadid Architects for MSU's Broad Art Museum

It's becoming a franchise, like the Guggenheim.

The next Eli Broad-branded museum, which I mentioned at the end of this post, will be designed by Zaha Hadid, it was announced yesterday. The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (not to be confused with Los Angeles' Broad Contemporary Art Museum) will be built at Michigan State University, East Lansing, whose wealthy alumnus also endowed the Eli Broad College of Business and the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at MSU. He is spreading his philanthropy Broad-ly. (Somebody please stop me before I pun again!)

According to the university's description, "collection growth and new acquisitions will focus on modern and contemporary works, post 1945." That is, after all, the passion of the patron, who gave $26 million for the project---$18.5 million for construction, $7.5 million for acquisitions and endowment for exhibitions and operations.

The museum's current holdings also include Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval and Renaissance illuminations, old master paintings and 19th-century American paintings.

---Remember when I told you that the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum, opening next month at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would have a gallery named for (then unannounced) collector/benefactors, who didn't mind that some other guy's name was on the building?

Now those names are out: LACMA trustee Jane Nathanson and her husband Marc have forked over $10 million for gallery naming rights. Now we need to see if collectors will go where Broad hasn't, donating to BCAM major groupings of contemporary art.

---Remember when I complained about the Metropolitan Museum's lame juxtaposition of Hirst's shark with shark-themed paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries?

Now Copley and Homer are out; Anish Kapoor is in. His "As Yet Untitled," 2007, a recent Met purchase, is in a stainless steely face-off with the fierce predator. I'll have to get over to the Met to see who wins.

Purchase? Did I just say PURCHASE? What ever happened to Philippe's 50-year rule? Honored in the breach, I'm happy to report.

And here's another Met purchase of newly created art: "Between Earth and Heaven," a 2006 sculpture by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, installed in the African art galleries.

I haven't gotten a copy myself yet, but it's rare to read a review of an art-market book that starts like this one. Richard Morrison, arts writer and chief music critic for the London Times writes:

If you read no other book about art in your life, read the one that's gripped me like a thriller for the past two days. Just published by Aurum Press, it's called "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark." And the first surprise is that its author, Don Thompson, is not an art specialist, but a Harvard economist.

Actually, I'm not surprised that he's not an art specialist, but Harvard might be surprised to learn that he's a Harvard economist: His curriculum vitae on his website at the School of Business at York University, Toronto, where he is professor emeritus of marketing, says that he was a senior visiting fellow in law and business administration at Harvard in 1970-71. He is not on Harvard's faculty.

This, as you may recall, is the tome (just published by Aurum Press, London) that alleges that Damien Hirst's share in the diamond skull, said to have been acquired for $100 million by an investment syndicate, was 24 percent.

Why is this such a must-read "book about art" (actually, more a book about money)?

Apparently what makes it so compelling is that it characterizes everyone in the contemporary artworld as jerks and shady operators. According to Morrison, Thompson "devastatingly exposes" the "brain dead, money-fixated world of modern art." He talks about art-market machinations that, in Morrison's words, "would make a dodgy Essex secondhand car-dealer gasp with admiration," and suggests that the art itself is "all a big con."

I guess we should all find something else to get involved in---perhaps "Heileman Dumping of Beer in British Columbia," the subject of one of his technical reports. Still, I'm sure we will find some interesting dirt uncovered in this exposé.

But Don, is that shark really "stuffed"? I had always thought it was pickled.

Planned East Entrance of New-York Historical Society

Can someone whose first loyalties are to one museum of American art serve without conflict on the board of another?

The New-York Historical Society apparently thinks so. Philip Boroff of Bloomberg reports that Alice Walton, founder and president of the planned Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR, has been named to the N-YHS's board. The Society's announcement is here.

The Society's vice president and museum director, Linda Ferber, was the organizer of the "Kindred Spirits" show of Asher B. Durand's landscapes, which she conceived while chairman of the American art department at the Brooklyn Museum, where the show opened last spring. After Ferber had decided to name that exhibition for the artist's iconic work, it controversially changed hands, for a reported $35 million, from the New York Public Library's collection to Alice Walton's.

Walton agreed to allow her new acquisition to tour with the show, as planned. The final stop is the San Diego Museum of Art, Feb. 2-Apr. 27. Will the painting, depicting painter Thomas Cole and his friend, writer William Cullen Bryant, next be loaned to Ferber's current institution? I've got a call in; I'll update when I have an answer. (SEE BELOW)

The Society has beefed up its board with four additional big-money members, as it gears up for a big capital project. As part of its 10-year strategic plan, the society is redoing its façade (above) and is planning to renovate its current building, expand its facilities and participate in construction of a residential tower adjoining its building.

And guess what? The neighbors don't like it.

UPDATE: This just in from the N-YHS press office: "At this point, there are no plans for 'Kindred Spirits' to come to the New-York Historical Society."

Enough posts about Philippe or taxes! (Or maybe we should write about Philippe's 2006 taxes.)

No, let's get back to serious art history:

We can now rest assured that the sitter for Leonardo's mysterious lady really is who we thought she was. Sylvia Westall of Reuters reports:

Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting....Now experts at the Heidelberg University library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world.

...or maybe not.

But wait, stop the presses! (What presses?) Reuters previously reported that "Japanese researchers say they've reconstructed the voice of the Mona Lisa." What's more, you can hear it now (and even see her lips move!). They will be booking her soon on Conan O'Brien. Its amazing what pseudo-scientists and journalists can come up with when they pool their prodigious talents on slow news days (like today). And don't get me started on hack novelists.

(If you play this Talking Mona Lisa video, you'll have to have the patience to endure the long Talking Advertisement that precedes it.)

Translation (for those of you who don't read Japanese): My name is Mona Lisa. My real identity is wrapped in mystery. Some people say I am Mary Magdalene, others Lady Gioconda, or Isabella D'Este, Da Vinci's mother or even some say I am Da Vinci himself. However the only thing I can say is that I am the most loved woman in the world and the woman with the most mysterious smile.

Don't get too excited.

The Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2007, signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 29, corrects (in Section 3) what was probably an unintended and absurd estate-tax burden for heirs of charitable fractional-gift donors, which was caused by sloppy drafting of the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

The new law doesn't address the PPA's two other charity-chilling changes in the fractional-gifts rules, both of urgent concern to museums---the inability to take fair-market-value deductions based on the appreciated value of the gifts at the time of each fractional donation, and the new 10-year rule for completion of such gifts.

These problems would be solved in the Promotion of Artistic Giving Act, H.R. 3881, introduced Oct. 17 and still pending in the House Ways and Means Committee.

As usual, the Art Law Blog is the go-to authority for untangling these complexities.

Terracotta kylix (drinking cup), Greek, Attic, red-figure, ca. 515-510 B.C., Signed by Euxitheos as potter and Oltos as painter, Interior, running warrior, Exterior, obverse, assembly of gods on Mount Olympus; reverse, Dionysos mounting chariot among satyrs and maenads, 20½ inches diameter, Lent by the Republic of Italy
Photo: Direzione Generale per i Beni Archaeologici, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali

Look familiar?

The above kylix, which I discuss here, is the object selected from the list of Italy-owned pieces "of equivalent beauty and artistic/historic significance" to fill the big hole left in the Met's collection by the departure to Italy of the celebrated Euphronios krater.

The consolation prize, on four-year loan, was created by the same potter, Euxitheos, who molded the Euphronios vase, but the painter in this case was Oltos. It's nearly as wide as the vessel it is replacing, with the added attraction of a warrior running around inside. The Met already owns a psykter (wine cooler) by Oltos.

According to the Met's press release (not yet online, as far as I can tell):

Because of its large scale, the cup would have been unwieldy for use in a symposium. It may have been created to be a magnificent offering.

To sweeten the pot, Italy threw in a couple of other vessels: First, a somewhat goofy-looking mug-on-a-jug. (The Met calls her "exquisite." What do I know?) The potter is Charinos, who is thought to have possibly belonged to Euphronios' workshop:

Terracotta vase in the form of a woman's head, Greek, Attic, red-figure, white ground, ca. 500-490 B.C., signed by Charinos as potter, attributed to the Charino class of head vases, 8¼ inches high, Lent by the Republic of Italy
Photo: Direzione Generale per i Beni Archaeologici, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali

The second bonus object is a bell-krater (for which the Met could not yet provide an image) from the Paestum region of southern Italy, 3rd quarter of the 4th century B.C., attributed to the painter Python.

This one comes with a complicated backstory:

The work is an important example of the so-called phlyax vases, named after a type of farce that parodied the weighty themes and traditional personages of mythology and drama, and shows one of the most serious and dramatic episodes in classical Greek drama: Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphinx. (The riddle is: what has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? The answer is: man, for he crawls on all fours as an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.)

The sphinx sits on her rock, with a snake at its base. A satyr in full comic garb with a fleecy suit and accessories appears to be interrogating the sphinx while he extends a bird towards her. Since snakes and birds were credited with oracular powers in antiquity, this interpretation overturns the established story.

What are those "accessories" that come with the "fleecy suit," we all wonder? We'll find out Wednesday, when the Greek objects from Italy make their New York debut.

For your hot-button art coverage in today's (Sunday's) NY Times, skip the "Arts & Leisure" section. You need to go to "Week in Review."

There you will find Rachel Donadio's What Awaits the Met, another Philippe-philic article that ends by taking some nasty and questionable swipes (via the intemperate Jed Perl) at both the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.

And on the Times editorial page, don't miss the newspaper's dubious take on A Collector's [Eli Broad's] New Plan.

Donadio's Met analysis lists a few of the obvious issues that the new director must address---contemporary art, fundraising, restitution, curatorial power. But she shortshrifts another highly important consideration, which she alludes to briefly, in passing---the often difficult dynamic between director and trustees. The Met's unchallenged power center has, under Philippe de Montebello, been Philippe.

At both the Guggenheim and the Whitney, on the other hand, we have seen unseemly, publicly aired power struggles between a director and powerful board members which, in the case of the Whitney, led to director Max Anderson's departure and, in the case of the Guggenheim, sent board chairman and chief funder Peter Lewis packing.

One of my questions about the Met's imminent succession is whether the Philippe-dominated board, replete with society's and finance's leading lights, has enough museological savvy to make the right choice without the leadership of Philippe, who has declared that he will play no role in choosing his successor (unlike Tom Hoving, who says that he anointed protégé Philippe).

The trustee's search committee is headed by socialite Annette de la Renta and former Morgan Stanley chairman S. Parker Gilbert (chair and vice chair, respectively). The other members: Daniel Brodsky, Russell Carson, Robert Joffe, Susana Torruella Leval, Cynthia Hazen Polsky, Frank Richardson, James Shipp, Lulu Wang, and the ever-controversial Shelby White. Board chairman James Houghton is also on the committee, ex-officio.

Meanwhile, moving to Los Angeles, the Times editorial wonks make the dubious assertion that "nothing will be lost" by Eli Broad's decision not to give away works from his collection to museums, so long as his foundation makes sure that these pieces "are stored and conserved properly,...scholars have ready access to them and...they're made available for lending to museums."

If past is prologue, we have every reason to believe that all those conditions will be met. But what WILL be lost is the chance to see the most important pieces from Broad's coveted collection in the context of other works of their times, as well as in the broader sweep of art history. That can only happen if, as Los Angeles County Museum director Michael Govan would like, they take their place in a major museum's permanent collection, where they can be expertly installed, researched and interpreted for a broad (not a Broad) public.

Broad asserts that he doesn't want his trove to end up in museum storage. But it's highly unlikely that his foundaton will be able to keep most of its 2,000 objects on public view at any given time, and museums with strong programs of lending and collection-sharing could be the best solution to the inaccessibility problem.

Michael Govan

Despite Eli Broad's recent bombshell, Michael Govan still hopes that key pieces from the collector's 2,000-work contemporary trove may eventually become the "backbone" of LACMA's permanent display.

In a wide-ranging discussion with me late Wednesday (which got bumped from the blog because of "all Philippe, all the time"), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's director indicated he wasn't blindsided by Broad's determination to lend his works, rather than donate them. Govan said that the understanding between the museum and Broad, 73, remains what it has always been: LACMA can, at any time, borrow up to 200 works from the Broad Art Foundation. Upon his death, the deal can be renegotiated by the foundation.

The only thing that caught Govan off guard was the bad timing of Broad's public airing (in a NY Times interview) of his private thinking---just a little more than a month before the opening of LACMA's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

Govan told me:

Nothing has changed....I wasn't planning to deal with the permanency issue until we were up and running and opened.

Over time, Govan said, he was hoping to convince Broad to allow a "strong group of work" to be on permanent display at LACMA, preferably as a gift, but possibly on longterm loan. "It's not logical to discuss this until he sees the works in the building. Until this came out in the paper, it wasn't an issue. It was, 'Let's borrow the works. We're going to show you an installation. Then we'll talk about how to think about the long term.' It seemed like a logical process."

About 80 percent of works in the inaugural exhibition will come from Broad. In the future, Govan said, "we have carte blanche to borrow from the Broad Collection, and it's under our control."

When LACMA (under a previous director) mounted a traveling exhibition of Broad's collection in 2001, he said in a Q&A, published in the show's catalogue:

Our current thoughts are to give the collection to one or more arts institutions---probably in the Los Angeles area, which has been our home.

Now, in a statement released in connection with the current kerfuffle, Broad says:

As our collections have grown dramatically, our thinking has evolved. We now feel that we can best serve museums by continuing to make accessible a common collection of contemporary art that is shared among many institutions. The foundation will pay for staffing, insurance, storage and conservation of the work.

We have developed a new paradigm by creating a common collection at The Broad Art Foundation. We would expect that other major collectors might choose a similar route, rather than creating their own museum or donating works to one or several museums.

There are lots of problems with Broad's trying to advance his personal solution as a new paradigm for collectors. But enough of Broad. Let's move on to the important stuff. An assistant professor of art history (not from California or New York) sent me the following e-mail on Wednesday:

What do you think are Govan's chances for the Met [director's] position, after some exceptionally bad timing which could conflate the Broad announcement with that of the Met's?

On second thought, let's not go there. Govan convincingly asserts that right now he's concentrating on LACMA.

What else would you expect him to say?

Study it while you can: The Euphronios krater, this week at the Met

It's down to the wire for the Metropolitan Museum's (actually, now Italy's) Euphronios krater. Sunday is the last day it will be on view in New York before it departs on its one-way flight to Italy.

But fear not, all you students assigned to fill out worksheets (above) on Greek objects. This just in from the Met:

The Ministero per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali of the Republic of Italy [Italian Culture Ministry to you] is lending the Metropolitan Museum three outstanding ancient Greek vases for a period of four years. Supplementing the Laconian drinking cup already on loan, the three additional pieces---a jug in the shape of a young woman's head (6th-5th century B.C.); a cup signed by the potter Euxitheos and the painter Oltos, depicting the assembly of gods on Mount Olympus (515-510 B.C.); and a vase of the 4th century B.C. showing Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphinx---will go on view in the Greek and Roman Galleries on Wednesday, Jan. 16, enriching the museum's strong collection of Greek art, particularly vases.

The Euxitheos/Oltos cup, a red-figured Attic kylix from Tarquinia's National Archaeological Museum, is one of 12 objects "of equivalent beauty and artistic/historic significance" listed on the Feb. 21, 2006 agreement between the Met and Italy as a possible substitutes for the Euphronios krater. According to the agreement, rotating loans are to be made for four-year periods. The term of the overall agreement is 40 years, renewable.

This is truly the end of an era.

Talk about being on the news!

This Jan. 9 press release just came in from the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA:

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, today announced his plans to retire before the end of the year. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is fortunate to host de Montebello who will present the lecture "Museums, Why Should We Care?" on Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 7 pm, as part of the Director's Perspective series.

I think Philippe-in-retirement should set up a museum think tank, to tackle the thorny issues of the day.

But wait! Will he be deejaying on satellite radio? Somehow I just don't believe that he's as into the Moody Blues as Brooklyn blogger Alan Horn asserts (in a post that Horn linked to a comment on Richard Lacayo's Looking Around blog). Can you just picture it: "The Count's Countdown." The Moodys' lyrics do seem appropriate, though:

Since you gotta go,
Oh, you'd better go now.

Actually, I truly believe PdM's declaration yesterday that he really doesn't know yet where he's going next.

Here's Eric Gibson on Philippe's waning reign, from today's Wall Street Journal (which, under the new Rupert regime, is rolling out more free online content than it formerly offered on its subscription website).

Before Jean Nouvel's Fab comes Kieran Timberlake Architects' Prefab (above)

I took a lot of flak from skyscraper lovers over this post about the MoMA Monster---the 75-story stalagmite to be deposited by Jean Nouvel in the now vacant lot next to Mega-MoMA. Nicolai Ouroussoff of the NY Times can't say enough good things about it. I'm a native New Yorker: I too love skyscrapers. But this is the wrong structure in the wrong place.

One online discussion board, to which I will not link, lit up with attacks on my taste, my intelligence and even (can you believe?) my beauty, because I dared to criticize Nouvel's creation. One of the more printable comments: "Its hard to believe these people can see sometimes. Oh my god a skyscraper in New York! Where do these people think they live?"

Now, along comes James Russell, Bloomberg's estimable architecture critic, to take some of the heat off me.

Yesterday, Russell wrote:

Architect Jean Nouvel has designed an implausibly thin obelisk that would rise in crooked facets almost as high as the Empire State Building.

Thank New York zoning laws for this chic behemoth, which could cast some of Midtown's most prized and densely built blocks into darkness. Someday such abuse may become illegal....It's meant to rise to more than twice the height of nearby Museum Tower, which MoMA built in the 1980s, and will define a whole new scale in the neighborhood....Its 1,200-foot (365-meter) height would cast MoMA's sculpture garden into almost perpetual shadow.

I don't know about you, James, but I prefer the temporary use to which MoMA plans to put this space: As part of its upcoming exhibition, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, July 20-Oct. 20, the museum has selected five architects or firms to create full-scale, prefabricated houses for the lot that may eventually support, among other things, a "seven-star hotel." (Is that a three-star hotel plus a four-star hotel?)

The prefab design designees are: Kieran Timberlake Architects (Philadelphia), Lawrence Sass (Cambridge), Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier (New York), Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf of Oskar Leo Kaufmann Architects (Dornbirn, Austria) and Richard Horden (London and Munich).

This show even comes with its own blog. According to the press release:

An exhibition Web site launching in mid-March will include weekly diary postings from each of the five architects and from the curators of the exhibition, recording the process of fabricating, delivering, and assembling the houses leading up to the July 20 opening. The site will underline the importance of prefabrication as a matter of process and product.

THAT'S what I call creative land use!

Photo by Don Pollard, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum

The following interchanges took place as part of yesterday's press conference, not in Philippe de Montebello's office, where I had conducted a far-ranging interview with him at the beginning of his tenure, for a magazine profile. In the course of the half-hour press briefing, I managed to elicit three very thoughtful answers to questions I posed.

Lee: What would you point to as your proudest accomplishments?

Philippe: After three decades, I don't wish to point to a single thing. The question is difficult to answer because, first, I suffer from a cultural reticence of self, and I find it very difficult to toot my own horn, so to speak. From my point of view, I would say it's the ability to initiate and do any number of programs based on fundamental philosophical principles that include an absolute dedication to excellence, faithfulness to integrity and the courage to maintain institutional authority, by which I do not mean authoritarianism. I think far too many institutions, in a misguided sense of democratic ideal, fail to exercise their authority and tend to do things in a muddle.

Lee: Throughout your career, you've been known as an articulator and defender of museum standards. Can you give a last appraisal of what standards you feel are most in need of defending today? Which ones are in jeopardy? On which ones will you be speaking out in the future?

Philippe: I certainly will be speaking out in the future. I hope and intend that, whatever career I embrace when I leave, it will have something to do with continuing to promulgate the principles that I've fought for in this institution. Standards, principles: I would say the first is the primacy of art. We are not a "museum art." We are an "art museum." Art is first. A great many institutions actually in many ways have reversed the terms and have embraced, as a primary part of their mission, the museum experience, in opposition to the experience of coming to look at a work of art.

Amenities are a very good thing but everything has to be in proportion. The major axis that is followed by the institition has to be its raison d'être, which is the work of art---its collection, its preservation and its presentation and the interpretation of it.

The museum has a very important and very delicate task and curators are people whose influence and importance far exceeds what they themselves believe, because what you select to put in the galleries is an extremely important statement. How what you select is presented and where, [how it is] lit, positioned---all this influences the response of a visitor. So we have a huge responsibility to the authenticity of the work of art, to the authenticity of its historical context---not to use and abuse art for ends that are foreign to it and that meet the needs for instant notoriety, rather than instruction and wonder.

Lee: Will you get back to art historical research and curatorship?

Philippe: No, I can't any more. The discipline of an art historian---research, the truly focused attention on any particular field---is something that's too far away. I've become a generalist. I've become an expert in something else: I've become an expert on museum issues, on museum problems, on the history of museums, on the nature and purpose of museums. I expect what I'll be doing will be more museological than art historical. It would be closer to what I would call high art appreciation than art history.

Answering another questioner, he ended by vowing never to compose his memoirs: "I will not write a book about my experiences at the Met. That I know...although a true one is necessary at this point!

Any takers to write his professional biography?

You can hear me now, by going here or clicking below:

The future site of the new Barnes "Art Education Center"

What's in a name?

---In a press release that hit my inbox today from the Barnes Foundation, I learned not only that Ballinger, a Philadelphia firm, has been named associate architect for the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (to be designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects), but that the new facility that will house Albert Barnes' celebrated collection at the site of a soon-to-be-demolished youth detention center (above) has a new name: "The Barnes Foundation's new Art Education Center."

And I had thought it was now officially a museum, not a school. I guess they want Judge Ott to know that they are complying with Dr. Barnes' educational edict.

---While I was at the Metropolitan Museum today, I stalked the hunting goddess and her pet, only to discover that they are no longer "Artemis and the Stag." In the wisdom of the Met's curators (or the new anonymous owner), they've now become "Artemis and the Deer." Whoever they are, they're front and center near the entrance of the museum's new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, where they are on six-month loan:

Photo: Lee Rosenbaum

When Director Philippe de Montebello speaks, Chairman James Houghton listens: Today's Metropolitan Museum press conference

I've just returned from the poignant press conference at the Metropolitan Museum and the taping of my thoughts about Philippe and his retirement at the studios of New York Public Radio. That should air, if all goes according to plan (which it rarely does) between 5 and 6 p.m. on 93.9 FM. Or you can listen live here. I will, as usual, post the podcast on CultureGrrl, when it's available.

I'll be posting more on the press conference, after the radio broadcast.

Walker Evans, "Three Director's Chairs," ink and gouache on paper © Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Is it pure coincidence that the above work is featured on the Metropolitan Museum's homepage today as "Today's Featured Work of Art from the Permanent Collection"?

For my posts on the Met director's retirement, go here and here.)

The time has finally come for Metropolitan Museum chairman James Houghton to take out his little list. Although the Met's soon-to-be-former director has said he does not want to pick his own successor, Philippe de Montebello has (as reported first in CultureGrrl and later in the NY Times) provided Houghton with a periodically updated list of people he believes are well qualified for the job.

I would characterize Philippe as both a traditionalist and a principled pragmatist---a strong but self-effacing leader who was willing to compromise when the times demanded it, but who still cherished and defended (within his institution and in public forums) the time-honored principles of scholarship and collection-building.

Nothing illustrates his balancing act between pragmatism and principle better than his current role in cultural property wars. He has been in the forefront of agreeing to givebacks of antiquities to Italy, while, at the same time, he has been tirelessly stumping on behalf of the "universal museum," delivering a series of speeches and interviews defending the right of major encyclopedic institutions to hold onto works that may have been improperly removed from countries of origin but that nevertheless help to tell the story of comparative world culture.

My own previous suggestions about "Who Should Succeed Philippe" are here, updated here.

As I've said before, I hope that the new director will take the museum in some new directions. But that by no means diminishes Philippe's achievements, not the least of which is the admiration, bordering on adoration, that he has inspired in his professional staff.

I'll be off this morning to the official retirement announcement at the Met, after which I may be heading downtown to the studios of New York Public Radio.

The Met's press release on Philippe's imminent retirement is here.

Philippe has decided it's almost time to take his last walk.

Carol Vogel of the NY Times reports:

Philippe de Montebello, who has led the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years and has virtually become synonymous with its monumental profile, announced on Tuesday that he planned to retire at the end of the year.

More on this tomorrow. For now, just this from me:

He was, justifiably, the most respected and influential museum director in America. He ably led our country's preeminent museum with a combination of wit, style, erudition and, especially, a supportive appreciation for the work of the curators who have made The De Montebello Metropolitan such a vibrant place.

He will be greatly missed...and a very tough act to follow.

The Unfortunate Image on LACMA's Homepage: Jeff Koons, "Cracked Egg (Red)," Broad Art Foundation © Jeff Koons

The Feb. 16 public opening of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum will now be almost as hollow and broken as the Koons egg, above, that serves as BCAM's homepage logo.

And while we're musing on the irony of images, we must also note that the NY Times chose to illustrate today's jaw-dropping piece by Edward Wyatt, announcing Eli Broad's decision not to give his collection to LACMA, with the same photo it had used on its Sept. 6 front page to illustrate Stephanie Strom's pernicious piece that disparaged charitable donations for cultural institutions.

According to Wyatt, Broad "has decided to retain permanent control of his works in an independent foundation that makes loans to museums rather than give any of the art away." That's essentially status quo for the Broad Art Foundation, which, according to its website description, makes art "available for loan to museums and university galleries through its 'lending library' program. Since its inception in 1984, artworks from the Foundation's collection have appeared in exhibitions at over 400 museums, universities, and other public venues, and have been viewed by approximately one million people per year."

In my spoof New Years's "resolutions" list for artworld luminaries, I had suggested that Broad needed to stop pontificating about the "art-market bubble" and make sure that the new BCAM would not be an empty bubble. I had been hoping (in fact, expecting) that at the inauguration of the 60,000-square-foot exhibition space designed by Renzo Piano, he would announce the donation of his collection to LACMA. He hasn't technically "reneged" on an explicit promise (as my headline might seem to suggest). But his evasive action meets my dictionary's second definition of that word: "To fail to follow suit, when able in a card game."

Like San Francisco's Donald Fisher, Broad didn't want to give his work to a public institution that wasn't "willing to commit to show it" full time and in bulk, as he made clear in his comments to Wyatt. It will be interesting to see if Broad eventually goes the same route as Fisher, endeavoring to establish a single-collector museum.

Now LACMA has a building named for a collector who gave it not only $50 million for the capital campaign, $10 million for acquisitions, and (on loan) the bulk of the objects in its inaugural show, but also a certain aura of defeat on the eve of what should have been an unqualified triumph.

Will other art owners now rush to fill the Broad vacuum, donating works to a facility named for a rival collector? As it happens, last month I had asked Barbara Pflaumer, LACMA's press chief, whether there were any signs that other potential art donors were put off by the Broad imprimatur.

Pflaumer wrote:

This isn't a problem....We haven't announced the naming yet, but there will be at least one collector of consequence who will have their [sic] name on one of the galleries in BCAM.

Meanwhile, Broad is already looking ahead to the next Broad Art Museum: On Jan. 15, he and his wife Edythe will host the press announcement of the winner among five well known architect-finalists for designing Michigan State University's new modern and contemporary art museum. The Broads have donated $26 million towards that eponymous project---the largest individual cash gift in the history of the university, where Eli is an alumnus. Groundbreaking is expected this fall.

Will MSU join LACMA as another "favored institution" for Broad Art Foundation loans?

With Senators Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstein pushing for investigations of the travel expenses of W. Richard West Jr., former director of the National Museum of the American Indian, the newly redesigned Form 990 tax return for nonprofits, released by the IRS on Dec. 20, seems more relevant than ever. It will require more details about finances, in general, and personnel compensation, in particular.

As one prominent commentator, nonprofits tax attorney and accountant Jack Siegel, has already observed (see below), this increased transparency and accountability will make nosey reporters like me happy. It should also make tax attorneys and accountants like Siegel happy, since any change in the reporting requirements is, by definition, a Tax Lawyers' Relief Bill.

According to the IRS's Background Paper on the new tax form for nonprofits:

The Form 990 has not been significantly revised since 1979 and it is universally regarded as needing major revision. It has failed to keep pace with changes in the law and with the increasing size, diversity, and complexity of the exempt sector. As a result, the current form fails to meet the Service's tax compliance.

The new disclosures required by the new form, to be filed in 2009 for the 2008 tax year (although there will be a graduated transition period for smaller organizations), were recently analyzed by tax lawyer Siegel on his Charity Governance Consulting LLC website:

We were struck by the required disclosures of first class travel, companion travel, personal assistants like chefs and butlers, discretionary spending funds, and the like. Every reporter who reviews a Form 990 will start by reviewing those disclosures. We suspect that these practices will soon all but disappear from the landscape....

The media are always interested in compensation, as well as conflicts of interest. The IRS has handed them that information on a silver platter....As in the past, we learn about compensation paid to officers, directors, key employees, independent contractors, and "highest compensated employees".... However, the information will be better organized and more detailed, particularly when it comes to fringe benefits, deferred, and other forms of compensation.

Siegel and Dan Moore, vice president for public affairs at GuideStar, the online database of nonprofits' tax filings, participated in an online discussion about the new 990 for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, here.

Of particular note are provisions in Schedule D, Supplemental Financial Statements and Schedule J, Compensation Information. There are new questions about:

---The various uses of collections (public display, scholarly research) and how collections further the institution's exempt purposes.

---Whether substantiation was required prior to incurring a reimbursed listed expense.

---Process and data used to establish compensation of the CEO/Executive Director (such as use of a compensation committee and a compensation study or survey.

The new version of the 990's "core form" (not including the various schedules that may, according to specific circumstances, have to be attached) is here. The schedules are here. The IRS says it will release instructions regarding the new 990 early this year.

Many happy returns. At least museum officials managed to prevail on one important issue: They will not be required to capitalize their collections.

I'm hoping that when the NY Times reports tomorrow that "Artemis and the Stag" is on view at the Metropolitan Museum (as I expect that it will), it will follow its own journalistic guidelines and say that the story "was first reported by art writer Lee Rosenbaum on her blog, CultureGrrl."

But I won't hold my breath. Already Buffalo News reporter Colin Dabkowski (whom I've credited by name in many of my Albright-Knox posts) sent me an e-mail thanking me for "the tip" (by which he meant my recent post) but published a piece, now on the newspaper's website, making no mention that his report was predicated on mine.

Maybe the credit will get into what he said will be a "slightly more fleshed-out" version, coming out tomorrow.

Maybe not.

George Bellows, "Men of the Docks," 1912, Maier Museum

Shades of "Portrait of Wally."

The four paintings from Randolph College's Maier Museum that are tied up in legal limbo, due to an ongoing lawsuit seeking to prevent their sale at auction, are now being sequestered in storage by the would-be auctioneer, Christie's, New York, according to the Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance.

In an update yesterday about the Maier Museum Four, the Christa Desrets reported [via] that opponents to the sale want the paintings back where they belong. But Randolph spokesperson Brenda Edson told Desrets:

We decided not to expose the paintings to the risk of unnecessary transport.

What about the need to expose the paintings, during this winter/spring 2008 semester, to the audience for which they were intended---the students, faculty and surrounding Lynchburg community?

Chances are that the chief risk that Randolph College is worried about is the campus outcry that would ensue if the paintings were returned and then uprooted once again.

Detail from Franz-Xaver Winterhalter's "Girl from the Sabiner Mountains"

A recent U.S. District Court decision ordering the return of a Winterhalter to the heirs of Jewish art dealer and collector Max Stern, who had owned it before fleeing Nazi Germany, "effectively expands the definition of 'looted art,'" asserts arts writer Marilyn Henry, who frequently explores art-restitution issues, in an opinion piece for the Jerusalem Post.

On Dec. 27, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lisi ordered Maria-Louise Bissonnette of Providence, RI, to return "Girl from the Sabiner Mountains" (detail, above) to the estate of Stern, who emigrated from Nazi Germany to London and then Montreal.

Although "looted art" is commonly understood as objects directly seized by the Nazis, Judge Lisi ruled that Stern's surrender of the painting for auction was "the equivalent of an official seizure or a theft," because the sale was ordered by Nazi authorities.

Claimants have often argued that forced sales should be reversed. Now a federal judge has explicitly validated that argument. But the area of ambiguity in certain cases is whether specific sales were voluntary or compelled.

The Providence Journal, providing one of the most detailed published accounts of the Stern case, said that a lawyer for the estate, prominent Nazi-loot litigator Thomas Kline, believes the recent decision will buttress future claims by families of Nazi victims who lost works through forced sales.

David Scharfenberg of the Journal reports:

"Girl from the Sabiner Mountains" surfaced in January 2005 when [Maria-Louise] Bissonnette attempted to auction it through Cranston [RI]-based Estates Unlimited. Bissonnette's stepfather Karl Wilharm, a physician and high-ranking member of the Nazi party, according to the Stern estate, had purchased the painting in the forced auction of 1937 [at Lempertz Auction House, Cologne].

And Bissonnette inherited the painting from her mother's estate in 1991, according to court documents. When she attempted to sell it, the Stern estate made a claim for restitution with the Holocaust Claims Processing Office, a wing of the State of New York's banking department.

The Journal also noted that Bissonnette has "shipped the painting to Germany and sued the Stern estate in the German courts in a bid to establish ownership." The German courts had not yet ruled when the U.S. decision was handed down.

According to a press release from Concordia University, one of the three university beneficiaries of Stern's estate (along with McGill University, Montreal, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem), the estate intends to "actively pursue more than four hundred other paintings" from Stern's collection.

For a list of missing Stern works, go here and click "Missing Works" at the top.

Now Showing at the Met: "Artemis and the Stag," Hellenistic/early Roman Imperial, formerly of the Albright-Knox Gallery

[UPDATE: The Met's press office has now confirmed that "Artemis and the Stag" is indeed ensconced in its galleries.]

I'm going out on a bit of a limb for this one, but a tipster has informed me that the Metropolitan Museum has quietly put on view, near the entrance of its new Leon and Shelby White Court, one of the most celebrated antiquities sold by the Albright-Knox Museum last year at Sotheby's---the $28.6-million "Artemis and the Stag" (above). My source, who five months ago reliably told me that Damien Hirst's shark would be placed on view at the Met (before this had been reported elsewhere), says that he saw the bronze in the galleries on Friday, and that Artemis' label describes it as from a "private collection."

The Met had previously purchased from the Albright-Knox auction a $3.18-million Elamite copper figure of a horned hero.

While you're saying hello to Artemis, please also say goodbye to Euphronios (below):

The museum's celebrated calyx-krater, ca. 515 B.C., has a one-way ticket to Rome later this month, as part of the Met's agreement to return a group of objects claimed by Italy. It will join the other restituted objects in the "Nostoi" exhibition at Rome's presidential palace. The Met is supposed to get long-term loans "of works of art of equivalent beauty and importance to the objects being returned."

But when I tried to find out when the Euphronios will go off view and what will come from Italy in its place, Elyse Topalian of the Met's press office informed me:

We still don't have an official set date for the last day that the Euphronios will be on view and can't confirm the reciprocal loans yet either, but will pass on the information when details are set.

I'll update if and when I get official word from the Met on these comings and goings. Galleries are closed Mondays, so I can't hunt down the stag myself.

---James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, had this to say about my post, Israel Museum Mounts Exhibitions Seeking Rightful Owners of Nazi Loot:

Our JRSO project [an upcoming exhibition of heirless works that came to the Jerusalem museum from the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization] has been in the works for a long time---unrelated to [the recent claims made by] the new Holocaust assets company, whose focus is primarily on real estate, bank assets, and insurance proceeds. The exhibition is the culmination of many years of proactive work. Our MNR project is also the result of many years of collaborative work with our French colleagues, after overcoming a number of well-reported hurdles, like passing immunity-from-seizure legislation in Israel [which occurred last February].

---An important American museum curator who requested anonymity mentioned the "fascinating and confusing and ultimately frustrating" task of sorting through the Musées Nationaux Récupération's (MNR's) online catalogue of some 2,000 works, held in custody by the French National Museums. (The catalogue is an important resource used by U.S. museums to research the provenance of works in their collections.)

Many MNR works, he indicated, have gaps in their ownership histories at the point before they were purchased by Germans or Austrians from Paris dealers during the Nazi occupation. The curator speculated that many of those sales were probably made "quasi-voluntarily" by non-Jewish collectors, because "money was scarce and the Monets were less important than being able to buy food."

He also observed that the reason why those works, although not looted, have landed in MNR custody is that France "invalidated the collaborationist sales," reclaimed the works from those who had acquired them from Nazi-occupied Paris, and received no inquiries about them from the prior French owners (or their heirs) who had sold them during the occupation.

The curator also expressed hope that the catalogue for the Israel Museum's upcoming MNR exhibition may help to illuminate these murky areas.

Not mentioned by the American curator is the fact that there are similar ambiguities surrounding works from the JRSO collection, now on deposit at the Israel Museum: As Snyder had previously explained to me, not all of those works had been owned by Jews persecuted or killed by the Nazis: They are works from institutions and communities that did not survive the war, or works with no record of ownership---"orphaned art," in the words of the upcoming exhibition's title.

Commissioned Portrait of W. Richard West Jr. by Burton Silverman, 2005

The Rick West story gets worse: It now has an iconic symbol of self-aggrandizing profligacy.

James Grimaldi reveals in today's Washington Post:

W. Richard West Jr., the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, spent $48,500 in museum funds to commission a portrait of himself. The portrait of West by New York artist Burton Silverman hangs in the patrons' lounge on the fourth floor of the...museum.

The online article doesn't show or describe the painting (above, from the artist's website), which portrays the suspendered director in a jaunty pose, in front of his new museum. (UPDATE: The Post has now posted the image.)

Grimaldi also reports that "pending a review of West's travel, the Smithsonian Board of Regents has removed West from the committee to select a new secretary of the Smithsonian to replace Lawrence M. Small, who resigned in March after questions were raised about his compensation and spending."

The Smithsonian is also "doing a 'quick review' of the travel spending of the top officials at the institution," now that Sen. Charles Grassley has written to the Smithsonian's inspector general, A. Sprightley Ryan, "asking her to look into the travel expenditures of West and those of the 17 other directors of Smithsonian museums." I shudder to think what revelations may ensue.

We can only hope that the search committee is on the verge of announcing a new Smithsonian secretary who can move quickly to clean house and restore to this troubled institution a sense of mission and integrity.

Calling Ellen Futter!

"The $12 Million Stuffed Shark" a book to be published this month by Aurum Press, reportedly asserts that Damien Hirst's share in the diamond skull, said to have been acquired for $100 million by an investment syndicate, was 24 percent.

Andrew Johnson of the London Independent reports:

Don Thompson, an economist, writes in his book...that Hirst retained a 24 per cent stake. Until now it had not been revealed how much of a stake Hirst had kept. It is widely believed that the other members of the consortium that bought the work, which gave Hirst the status of most expensive living artist, include his close associates....Damien Hirst's management company did not respond to requests [by the Independent] for a comment.

Here's the description of the forthcoming book on the publisher's website:

Don Thompson talks to auction houses, dealers, and collectors to find out the source of [British collector] Charles Saatchi's Midas touch, and how far a gallery like White Cube has contributed to Damien Hirst becoming the highest-earning artist in the world. He unravels the Byzantine sale procedures by which the top auction houses maintain both premium prices for what they sell and their own pre-eminence, but also shows us a market whose most spectacular excesses are driven just as often by far simpler human urges like lust and self-aggrandizement.

Speaking of which, the skull ("For the Love of God") is expected to leer at wealthy Russian collectors, Mar. 28 to May 18, when it is scheduled to glitter at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Having belatedly posted information last summer about the art and Judaica in its possession that was looted during World War II, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, will mount two Nazi-loot related exhibitions, Feb. 19 through June 3.

Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust in the Israel Museum will display more than 50 paintings, drawings, prints, and books, as well as selected Jewish ceremonial objects, drawn from the more than 1,200 heirless and unclaimed works deposited at the Israel Museum's predecessor, the Bezalel National Museum, by the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization. The show will be accompanied by a catalogue. The illustrated online catalogue of all of the JRSO works held by the Israel Museum is here.

The museum describes "Orphaned Art" as reflecting "the arduous task of relocating rightful owners and returning treasures to their owners or legitimate heirs." The implication is that this wider exposure may help to alert the families of some of these orphans.

The press release notes:

Beginning as early as 1950, individuals have come forward to claim JRSO works, with the most recent claims honored in 2006 and 2007.

The concurrent companion exhibition, Looking for Owners: Custody, Research, and Restitution of Art Stolen in France During World War II, performs a similar function for works looted by the Nazis in France---the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR) collection of some 2,000 works, held in custody by the French National Museums.

With more than 50 paintings, "Looking for Owners" includes works by such major artists as Delacroix, Ingres, Monet and Seurat. Organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Communication, it highlights "the progress over the last ten years in tracing rightful ownership," according to the press release.

The release also says you can access France's online MNR catalogue at the French Culture Ministry's website: http://www.culture.gouv.fr. But as of last night, both that link and another link that should bring up MNR's online catalogue (http://www.culture.fr/documentation/mnr/pres.htm) were broken. (UPDATE: The links now work. Use the second one, because navigation from the main Ministry page is convoluted.)

James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, noted that "there has been much misunderstanding about the history of works taken during World War II and the efforts relating to their recovery following the war."

One such "misunderstanding" may be why it's taken so many years for the Israel Museum and the French National Museums to mount these overdue, high-profile exhibitions of unclaimed art. The "Orphaned Art" show came only after pressure on the Israel Museum from a new Israel-based restitution group that wanted to sell works for which rightful owners could not be found, distributing proceeds to needy Holocaust survivors.

And as the Israel Museum notes in its press release:

The Mattéoli Commission, formed in 1997 by then-Prime Minister Alain Juppé to study the matter of Jewish property restitution in France, recommended an exhibition of MNR works at the Israel Museum at the appropriate time.

Was an "appropriate time" more than a decade after the commission made this recommendation?

If they want to prepare for their trip to North Korea by listening to a government-certified classic, the NY Philharmonic players could start here. Don't miss the rousing subtitles, extolling beloved Comrade Kim Jong-Il:

Who needs the "Star-Spangled Banner?" (I HOPE you know I'm just kidding!)

This continues my venerable tradition (begun last year) of disclosing artworld luminaries' resolutions for the New Year. As predicted, few fulfilled their 2007 Resolutions, but hope springs anew.

Philippe de Montebello: I will appoint that youngster, John Elderfield, as the Met's new head of modern and contemporary art, so that Gary Tinterow can focus on the 19th century.

Michael Conforti: When I become the new president of AAMD this June, I'll see to it that that they update their members' roster, so that the Fitzwilliam's Timothy Potts is no longer listed as director of the Kimbell and Sotheby's Lisa Dennison is no longer described as director of the Guggenheim.

Kathy Halbreich: Beginning next month, I will transform MoMA's contemporary art position from the rear guard to the vanguard, but first I will get AAMD to remove my name, which they've misspelled, from the directorship of the Walker. (UPDATED below.)

Ronald Lauder: Now that my Neue Galerie has fixed the broken links to the artists for whom we list Nazi-era provenance, we will make public the dates when the previous owners actually possessed those works, so the public can determine which parts of the ownership histories (or which gaps therein) coincide with the Nazi era. Then we will work on the difficult task of simplifying the formidable seven-step procedure for accessing that information on our current website, so that the well-hidden provenance details can actually be found.

Alice Walton: Since people are giving me so much flak about my American art collecting activities, I've decided to focus on antiquities instead. I plan to engage Marion True to replace John Wilmerding as my adviser, as soon as she clears up some remaining unfinished legal business in Italy.

William (Griddle) Griswold: Now that I've moved from the directorships of the Getty to the Minneapolis Institute to the Morgan, I promise never to job hop again, unless the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum or the chief chef's position at IHOP becomes available.

Eli Broad: I will stop moaning to the press every other week that the art-market bubble will burst and worry instead about whether the soon-to-open Broad Contemporary at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will become an empty bubble. I will therefore announce that my Michael Jackson and Bubbles and the multitude of other works on loan from my collection for the opening will be given to LACMA permanently.

Francesco Rutelli: I will generously let the Met keep the Euphronios krater, instead of relinquishing it this month to Italy, but only if Philippe stops propounding the inconvenient truth that the country (i.e., Italy) where an antiquity is unearthed is not necessarily the site of the culture (i.e., Greece) that created it. Italy is where these objects belong. Basta!

Derek Gillman: Having decided to reproduce the old Merion, PA, Barnes galleries in Philadelphia, I will launch a new feasibility study to relocate Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater from its remote location in Mill Run, PA., to Logan Circle, near the new Barnes, where it will be more accessible to a broader public.

The Boards of the Smithsonian, Kimbell and Guggenheim: Having discovered this past spring (Smithsonian and Kimbell) and summer (Guggenheim) that we needed to find new heads for our respective institutions, we will finally get around to hiring them before the year is out. After all, if the Getty Trust could finally, after a year's search, find someone to fill its previously embattled position of chief financial officer (new appointee Patricia Woodworth, previously of Getty president James Wood's former institution, the Art Institute of Chicago), anything is possible...

...or so we hope.

UPDATE: An alert CultureGrrl reader writes:

As long as you're making resoutions, AAMD should also update its roster to show that Willard Holmes is no longer director of the Wadsworth Atheneum. He left in April, and is now associate director at the MFA Houston.