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.

Don Thompson

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