Artworld Luminaries' 2008 Resolutions UPDATED

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.