NY Times on the Met Succession and the Broad Recision

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.