March 2008 Archives

Gustav Klimt, "Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl," 1918 (unfinished)

In 2006, the Bloch-Bauer heirs famously received five Klimts (including the celebrated "Adele Bloch-Bauer I") that were restituted by Austria in response to their claim that they paintings were wrongfully expropriated during the Nazi era.

But the heirs were actually seeking six.

The same lawyer who improbably succeeded in winning back the other five, E. Randol Schoenberg, is still working doggedly on behalf of the heirs to reclaim "Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl" (above). He told CultureGrrl that he is expecting within days a decision by the Austrian Supreme Court on whether it will hear an appeal to set aside the unfavorable 2006 arbitration decision on returning Amalie, which was rendered by the same panel granting the return of the other five.

Schoenberg recounted:

It ["Amalie"] has a separate legal history, because it is not mentioned in Adele's will and it was not recovered after the war. The decision by the arbitrators in this case was a travesty. I think [?!?] they were upset that Maria [Altmann] and the other heirs decided to take the other paintings out of Austria. Also, the family of the the woman in the painting, Amalie Zuckerkandl, who was murdered by the Nazis, also sought recovery and that muddied the water and allowed the arbitrators to claim confusion. But the painting was owned in 1938 by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and must be returned to his heirs.

Nonetheless, Schoenberg is a realist:

I don't expect that we will win.

Randy, did you expect you would win the others?

In other Austrian restitution news: That country's culture minister, Claudia Schmied, announced last week that she intends to push for an independent examination, by two researchers paid by the Austrian government, of the Nazi-era history of the Rudolf Leopold Collection (of "Portrait of Wally" fame).

And the April issue of ARTnews magazine includes a detailed (unlinked) article by William Cohan, questioning whether the Leopold Collection's "Dead City III" by Schiele should have been sent back to Austria from New York. Like that artist's "Wally," which is still stuck in legal limbo here, it had initially been withheld from return to Austria after a 1997 show at the Museum of Modern Art, but was soon sent back, in light of a different set of historical circumstances.

Anthony Calnek, vice president for communications and marketing for the NY Public Library, responds to Kindred Gamers: NY Public Library as Video Parlor:

I won't comment on your parenting observations, but when it comes to your speculation about the use of "Kindred Spirits" funds ("Let's just hope this is not where the art-sale proceeds are going."), I think you could take your advice to Paul---"Go do your homework"---and apply it to yourself!

You don't have to go to the library, in this case, since the answer to the question of how "Kindred Spirits" proceeds have been used can be found by searching your own archive; in January 2007, you quoted me saying, "All proceeds have gone into an endowment strictly for acquisitions by the Research Libraries." Not a penny has, or will, go for anything other than research materials.

Your homework assignment must also include a look at our press release about Game On @ The Library, which makes clear that this is a branch library initiative; it even includes a funding credit: "The March 21 Game On! program at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library is generously funded through the Cultural After School Adventure Program by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and The City of New York." Speaker Quinn, a great champion of New York City's libraries, is the true kindred spirit who deserves credit here.

Jean Nouvel, 2008 Pritzker Winner

As occurred last year, the media-embargoed announcement of the winner of architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, was leaked a day early (here and here). Prescient (or well informed at an early date), Arthur Lubow has a long profile of Nouvel slated for NEXT Sunday's NY Times Magazine, already available online here. That piece includes the line: "Last week, Nouvel was named the winner of his profession's highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize." A seven-day advance posting is a VERY early leak of a Times Magazine piece!

In any event, the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 prize, really can't expect journalists to keep secret something that's already publicly posted. Should our readers be the last to know? (UPDATE: A fellow journalist today informed me that the Chicago-based Pritzker Prize "permitted online release yesterday, to coincide with release of info in Europe.")

The thumbnails of Nouvel's projects, also online, show some 42 designs designated as "in progress." One of those is New York's MoMA Monster, gallicized as the "Tour Verre" (glass tower).

As you know, Bloomberg architecture critic James Russell and I haven't been big fans of that megalith. In today's appraisal, however, Russell observed that "the best work of...Ateliers Jean Nouvel is magical, charming and utterly appropriate all at once." Of the excessive height of the proposed Eiffel of New York, he had previously fulminated: "Someday such abuse may become illegal."

I haven't seen the buildings for which Nouvel is most celebrated, such as his breakout Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, so my unfavorable impression is based on insufficient information. But like the Wall Street Journal's drama critic, Terry Teachout, I was not wild about the dark blue, silo-like Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis:



Terry wrote: "The low-ceilinged public areas are dark, oppressive and laid out with irksome illogic. Rarely can there have been a theater whose interior was less well suited to the purpose of making its occupants feel festive and expectant."

Its exterior reminded me of this:

It's too soon to "review" the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, because it's still a work-in-progress: Construction continues and few objects have been installed, except on the ground floor, where relatively minor but instructive archaeological finds unearthed during excavation for the museum are ingeniously and attractively arrayed in an educational gallery targeted to children.

Still, Bernard Tschumi's architecture is almost ready for its close-up, so a CultureGrrl photo essay is in order.

My impressions, like those of several commentators who made a previous press trip, were mostly favorable. But I was conducted on a quick, crowded tour, without much time to experience and contemplate the interiors, so these are first takes. A museum without its objects is just a shell. How the impressively monumental spaces will work as exhibition galleries is still an open question. How the bathrooms work as plumbing spaces is, however, already known. Let's just say: They'd better be a work-in-progress!

Speaking of the installation of objects---I received a cryptic note from someone intimately involved in creating the new museum, thanking me for my "thoughtful" criticism of the plan to install faithful copies of the missing Parthenon marbles alongside authentic slabs and suggesting that a change might still be possible: "We are working on it!"

What a relief! (Pun intended...of course.)

Here's what I saw:

Shelby White
They were not in the recently closed Nostoi exhibition of repatriated works, but the nine objects recently relinquished to Italy by American collector Shelby White will go on display at Rome's Palazzo Poli beginning this Saturday, according to Louis Godart, advisor on culture to Italy's President. Chatting with me at the recent "Return of Cultural Objects" conference in Athens, where we were both invited speakers, he said he would send me the list of those objects. (I have not yet received it.)

Another conference participant, Malcolm Bell, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Virginia, told me that the White objects had flown to Italy on the same plane that had transported his institution's two sixth-century B.C. marble sculptures, also repatriated, which had been donated to the university by the late Maurice Tempelsman.

I could not find anything about the imminent exhibition of Shelby White's former holdings on the website of the Italian Culture Ministry (nor on other websites I consulted), but I did find a long rundown by Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli of 20 Months of Culture in Italy (in Italian), which included this portentous sentence:

I expect that over the next few years hundreds of other works stolen from our national patrimony and taken abroad will return to Italy: the agreement that I have made with the British Minister of Culture to shed light on the [Robin] Symes collection housed in London has opened new, considerable opportunities.

Did we know about this agreement? What does it entail? It now sounds like far from abating, the Italian quest for foreign-held objects may be just beginning.

"Floodgates," anyone?

Rendering of the planned new museums on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi:
Gehry's Gargantuan Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (left) dwarfs the rest.

People tend to be more controversially candid in interviews published abroad than in those that they do for domestic consumption. This was true of Philippe de Montebello in Le Monde, blasting the Louvre Abu Dhabi (and, by implication, the Guggenheim's deal there).

Now along comes this astonishing interview by Tom Krens with Der Spiegel, in which he describes the planned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi as "pharaonic" (calling to mind another immodest cultural figure who two years ago declared, "I am Pharaoh!"). And his fevered imagination hasn't stopped envisioning new schemes, including unspecified "plans" in Asia and Russia, as well as yet another in his series of attempts at a new museum facility in New York: This one would be a "department store concept" with "inexpensive construction, a lot of space, and not just for the Guggenheim's art, but also for private collections. Now a lot of people are urging me to make it happen."

Those people probably do not include members of the Guggenheim's board of trustees. Of them, Krens had this to say:

KRENS: The Guggenheim is not going through an easy time at the moment. Years ago, we chose a strategy geared toward achieving a worldwide presence---in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. There is a document to this effect, which everyone enthusiastically agreed to at one point. The Guggenheim consists of our museums in New York, Venice, perhaps Bilbao and two smaller museums in Las Vegas and Berlin...

SPIEGEL:...and that's enough for many within the museum?

KRENS: For some, perhaps. But I believe that we must further strengthen our presence and that Abu Dhabi, in particular, is tremendously important for the Guggenheim.

Addressing the question about how "strict Islamic culture" would jibe with contemporary art, he said:

Why should we challenge a local culture? Perhaps to provoke political confrontation? That's unnecessary. And if an increasingly small portion of our collection is in fact not exhibited, this does not diminish the entire presentation.

He noted that the desert Guggenheim would have a $781 million budget to acquire contemporary work. And in true Krensian fashion, he appeared to take some credit for the concept behind the popular Tate Modern in London:

After Bilbao, everyone recognized that we need museums that are architecturally unique---but that also offer content that appeals to people. London, for example, followed suit with the Tate Modern Museum.

"Followed suit"? By repurposing an old power station rather than commissioning something "architecturally unique"?

James Russell of Bloomberg had more on Krens' vision for a new Manhattan facility a couple of weeks ago, where Krens indicated interest in participating in the development of the West Side railyards. But now that sprawling piece of real estate has just been awarded to a development team led by Tishman Speyer. No word about any cultural facility in Nicolai Ouroussoff's NY Times article critiquing the developers' plans yesterday.

And since Jerry Speyer is chairman of both the developers and of the Museum of Modern Art, what are the chances that the Guggenheim's Krens will get his shot?

Peter Schjeldahl lecturing last night in New York

With too much art to see at the Armory Show of contemporary art that opens today at Pier 94 in New York, how can you hone your must-see list to something manageable?

One way could be cross-referencing the list of the art fair's exhibiting artists with those with work in the current Whitney Biennial.

When I last I covered the Biennial for the mainstream media, in 2004 for the Wall Street Journal, I observed, tongue-in-cheek, that because the museum show had opened "concurrently with the Armory Show for the first time, this became the inaugural Whitney Buy-ennial: Art lovers could pick their favorites at the museum, then hop a free shuttle bus to the fair, where works by 64 of the 108 Biennial artists were up for sale."

In its publicity material this year, the Armory Show made it easy for collectors to draw such connections between the museum and the market. It helpfully listed exhibitors who were displaying artists anointed by the Whitney:

David Kordansky Gallery is devoting their entire booth to William E. Jones, CANADA is featuring a solo exhibition by Joe Bradley; and Susanne Vielmetter is featuring five 2008 Biennial artists: Edgar Arceneaux, Jed Caesar, Alice Koenitz, Rodney McMillian and Ruben Ochoa. Other galleries featuring Biennial artists include Ratio 3 with Mitzi Pederson; Galerie Dennis Kimmerich with Carol Bove; Zach Feuer Gallery with Phoebe Washburn; Arndt & Partner with William Cordova; Cherry and Martin with Amanda Ross-Ho; Wallspace with Walead Beshty; Stella Lohaus Gallery with Corey McCorkle; Praz-Delavallade with Edgar Arceneaux; Harris Lieberman with Michael Queenland; and Tracy Williams, Ltd. with Matt Mullican.

They might also have mentioned that Whitney pick Mary Heilmann was one of two artists (along with John Waters) who were tapped for special Armory Show commissions.

In case you need another Biennial cross-referenced list, Columbia University has trumpeted the names of its alumni who made the Biennial cut: Matthew Brannon, Coco Fusco, Olivier Mosset, Mika Rottenberg, Heather Rowe, Gretchen Skogerson, Mika Tajima.

No matter how much people like to second-guess the choices of the Whitney curators, it seems that everyone wants to ride the Biennial coattails. More validation came during a somewhat rambling lecture last night in New York for the American Federation of Arts' "ArtTalks" series, in which New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl seemed to come down more squarely in favor of the show than in his recently published review.

Last night, Peter answered an audience member's question about the Biennial this way:

I liked it. It was mild. It didn't seem strange. It seemed kind of sad and lost in a way that was touching and true to the moment. There's a new generation coming that I'm hopeful about.

Ingrid Sischy and Sandra Brant---uprooted by the ownership change at Brant Publications, where Sandy was publisher for 23 years and Ingrid was longtime editor at Interview magazine---are job-changing together, to become international editors of the European editions of Vanity Fair magazine.

According to Condé Nast's press release:

In her new position, [Sischy] will continue writing for Vanity Fair in the U.S., where she is a contributing editor....European editions of Vanity Fair are editorially independent of the American magazine, each having its own content.

One of my contacts at Art in America magazine (above), which is owned by Brant Publications, recently informed me that life remains status quo, at least for now, at A.i.A.

Alas, part of what's unchanged is the magazine's archaic, almost linkless website, which I thought might get an overdue overhaul thanks to Peter Brant's stated interest in providing a richer online presence.

Maybe eventually.

Rembrandt, "Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet," 1657, Penrhyn Castle, Bangor, Wales

More than a year ago, the Rijksmuseum revealed that it hoped to buy one of the finest Rembrandt portraits in private hands, "Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet" (above), then on loan to the museum from Penrhyn Castle, North Wales. According to Martin Bailey's story last year in The Art Newspaper, the price was expected to be about £40 million.

Now, according to today's story in Expatica Netherlands, the museum has only managed to raise almost £26.4 million (about EUR 34 million or $52.3 million) and the sale is off:

A spokesperson for the museum in Amsterdam reported this Wednesday [that] after more than six months of negotiations, the museum has decided against the purchase because "the expectations of the selling party continue to be too high, according to the experts."

The Rijksmuseum had already secured financial support from the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science, several funds, companies and private individuals to purchase the Rembrandt.

I found nothing about this development on the museum's website, but I did learn about two imminent changes in admininstration there: Taco Dibbits becomes the Rijksmuseum's director of collections on May 31, succeeding Peter Sigmond; Wim Pijbes becomes its director general on July 1, succeeding Ronald de Leeuw.

In the meantime...anyone wanna buy a great Rembrandt? Of course, you'll probably have to deal with that pesky British export permit delay, which will give U.K. institutions the chance to match your price.

Leaving Athens for Africa, for the moment---nothing I heard at the two-day "Return of Cultural Objects" conference last week in Athens articulated as comprehensively, intelligently and passionately the arguments for return of objects to their countries of origin as the long article by Kwame Opoku appearing in Monday's Modern Ghana.

Opoku details and decries the various ways in which objects historically made their way from Africa to international museums, and he debunks in detail the arguments for leaving those objects where they are now. I don't believe that everything should go back, as he appears to argue. (He previously took issue with my own views, as expressed in my LA Times Op-Ed on cultural-property issues.) But I do believe that source countries' attachment to and passion for their heritage should be treated not dismissively (i.e., there are no Etruscans in modern Italy; more people can see more objects in Universal Museums than in the source countries), but with the utmost respect and seriousness.

A few excerpts from Opoku:

---The fact that the 1970 [UNESCO] convention does not apply retroactively does not mean that the convention approves of all acquisitions made before 1970. Before the convention, there were rules of law in every legal system which prohibited illegal handling of the property of others....But it should also be added that the African States have not, to put it mildly, been active enough to make use of the possibilities offered by the Conventions. Many African countries have not even bothered to ratify or accede to these instruments.

---The functions of the museums directors are primarily to preserve evidence of history in the form of objects or documents. Here we have these scholars telling the people of Benin (and by implication all Africans) to forget history. They should forget the past and accept the present situation whereby their most precious cultural objects, taken by violence or stealth, are kept by western museums and private persons in the West. This is surely another confirmation of my theory that when it comes to discussing Africa, some western intellectuals and their governments often request us to suspend our common sense and our ability to think.

---What this argument [on behalf of the Universal Museum] states is that, no matter the initial mode of acquisition, because of the stay of these stolen objects in Europe, they have become better known and have gained universal reputation as work of art. They have also acquired another value in that they are not only a manifestation of a religious and political power of a civilization but are now admired for their own aesthetic value and craftsmanship. What an insulting argument. On this line of reasoning, one could also argue that how ever bad slavery may have been, it has enabled the rich variety and wealth of African culture to be known all over the world.

---The argument...that Africans are unable to look after their cultural objects...always comes up when the question of restitution is raised....Would any court accept the argument of a thief that the owner of the property cannot look after it properly and therefore he is not going to return it?

---It has been argued in all seriousness that in view of the possibilities of digitalization, there is no longer any real need for physical repatriation....What is meant by "virtual and visual return which is offered as alternative to physical repatriation"? That we can see these objects via internet and also in the form of photos? What about the cultural objects we require for religious and ritual practices? Is the British Museum seriously suggesting that we introduce internet into our cultural and religious practices, including our dances and masquerades, instead of the physical objects?...Can someone tell me how we can dance with a digitally repatriated mask?

There's a lot more provocative commentary where that came from. To view it, go to the article of origin (linked above).

Edward Hicks, "The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity"
Photo: Sotheby's

I was surprised to get today's press release that Sotheby's will sell Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity" at its May 22 American paintings sale. As I reported here (scroll down to last item in the linked post), the auction house had intended to sell that painting privately for its owner, Ralph Esmerian, the American Folk Art Museum's financially embattled benefactor,

Sotheby's press spokesperson Courtney King confirmed that the consignor to the upcoming sale, unidentified in the press release, is Esmerian. She also revealed that Sotheby's had indeed held a private auction for the painting, but "offers didn't meet the minimum bid" (an amount she would not disclose). The estimate for the work, which had been promised but not yet given to the New York museum (where it was on loan), is now $6-8 million.

The provenance and quality should help the price. The distress-sale aura won't.

Asher B. Durand, "Kindred Spirits," Crystal Bridges Museum, sold by NY Public Library

We all remember when the NY Public Library justified its 2005 sales of important paintings, including Asher B. Durand's iconic "Kindred Spirits" (above), on the grounds that exhibiting art was not part of its core mission as a library.

Now it has discovered a pursuit more closely tied to its mission---being a video-game parlor.

In a NY Times article on Saturday, we learned that the grand lobby of the library's venerable main headquarters on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street was given over on Friday afternoon to "three big screens and throngs of exuberant players." Local library branches are also hosting video game events, and the NYPL has been acquiring these games for its collections. Let's just hope this is not where the art-sale proceeds are going.

Mission-driven library officials feel obligated to try to justify the "Game On" initiative on more grounds than merely luring kids into the building. According to the NYPL's press release:

In the game world, players make their own discoveries and apply what they learn to new contexts.

Games are a mode of active engagement. They encourage experimentation and risk-taking, and they view the process of solving a problem as important as finding the answer.

Maybe so. But my experiece as the mother of an earlier-generation video-game enthusiast, who cut his teeth on "Super Mario" and graduated to "Doom," is that these addictive entertainments suck time from pursuits that libraries formerly regarded as their raisons d''être---scholarship and intellectual growth.

Or, to put it more simply---Paul, enough "Doom." Go do your homework!

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl" may lure boys into the library (no girls graced the NY Times photo of last Friday's event), but as the gamers' comments to the Times' Seth Schiesel indicate, it's unlikely to promote a love of the values and pursuits that the institution has traditionally stood for. To pander is not to edify. Using populist programming to draw new audiences to a library (or to a museum, for that matter) does not mean that those visitors will sample the greater riches that the institution has to offer.

I've got nothing against these diversions as a way to blow off steam. Come to think of it, the library could be performing a useful service: Parents could try to limit their kids' gaming to the library, designating the home as a book-filled, video game-free zone.

Good luck with that.

Rendering of proposed Guggenheim Guadalajara, designed by Enrique Norten

I had somehow assumed that the Guggenheim Guadalajara, designed by Enrique Norten/TEN Arquitectos, was one of those figments of Tom Krens' imagination that had been permanently installed in his Museum of the Unbuilt. But a story in today's Guadalajara Reporter indicates that in the Mexicans' minds, this project may be moribund but is not yet dead.

Alex Gesheva reports:

Guadalajara's Guggenheim hopes may be stymied by the February 27 resignation of one of the project's greatest supporters, Thomas Krens, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation....

The beleaguered Guadalajara Guggenheim project has moved in costly fits and starts over the last six years, with two million dollars spent on feasibility studies alone. When Krens originally rained praise on the chosen location in Guadalajara, he said the museum would be inaugurated in 2007.

Just last year, Guadalajara City Hall approved the donation of 2.8 hectares of the Mirador Independencia public park on the rim of the Huentitan Canyon and officials optimistically announced that the project could be completed by the 2011 Pan-American Games....

Mexico's government expended a great deal of energy courting Krens, even somewhat obsequiously awarding him the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 2006. The country's highest honor for a foreign national is generally granted for outstanding service to the nation and its people....

The director of the private consortium managing the project in Guadalajara, Fernando Fernandez, has remained optimistic but recognizes that a meeting between the Guadalajara Capital Cultural group and New York foundation management must be scheduled within the next few months.

Some observers have commented that a simple lack of funds is more of a problem for a Guggenheim Guadalajara than Krens' resignation. The museum itself is expected to cost around 170 million dollars, but total investment, including ancillary infrastructure, could soar to 300 million dollars. At this time last year, private donations in the fund totaled around four million dollars.

Hope springs eternal, it seems, in locales seeking to become the next Bilbao.

Oh no! I may have started something. Here's an excerpt from the latest entry from the Walker Art Center's "Off Center" blog:

A quick answer to Rosenbaum's query [about whether a boutique selling Richard Prince's Vuitton handbags might open at the Walker] comes with a stroll to the Walker shop, where a table of products timed to the Prince exhibition is stocked with dozens of posters, postcards, DVDs of films Prince selected as personally inspiring, and stacks of handsome, shrink-wrapped exhibition catalogues. Alas, no handbags. [ALAS?!?]

"It's a very high-end line and a very specific distribution. It's not something (Vuitton) would just sell to anyone, anywhere," says Nancy Gross, director of merchandising and facility rental at the Walker. "Will I look into it? Maybe."

Please don't! I will feel personally responsible. What have I wrought?

They have even posted my photo of the Prince display at my nearby Vuitton store in Hackensack. I've really got to stop taking these mall photos.

As expected, Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court did not rule from the bench today on whether the Friends of the Barnes and/or Montgomery County would be granted standing to seek a reconsideration of the judge's decision that gave permission for the Barnes Foundation to move to Philadelphia.

This just in from Carolyn Carluccio, the attorney for the county who argued for reconsideration at today's hearing:

I thought it went extremely well for the County. We were able to present our arguments without being silenced by the [Barnes] Trustees on standing grounds. Our arguments were strong and well received. The Judge was contemplative and attentive during the argument. He appeared to have taken in every word. He promised that he will render a written decision in an expeditious manner.

So he listened. Let's hope he heard.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has posted a short report on the hearing. Derrick Nunnally quotes Ralph Wellington, an attorney for the Barnes:

These offers [by the county, to help keep the Barnes in Merion] may make good press, and they may make good politics, but granting either of their petitions would make very bad law.

Catalogue for the © MURAKAMI exhibition

When I contacted the always helpful Sally Williams of the Brooklyn Museum's press office about a month ago, she informed me that no decision had yet been made as to whether Brooklyn's version of the Murakami show (organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, opening Apr. 5 in Brooklyn) would include a boutique for products designed by the artist in collaboration with Louis Vuitton.

Today, this press release hit my inbox:

The Brooklyn Museum announced today the exhibition of a fully operational Louis Vuitton store within and as part of © MURAKAMI....Takashi Murakami states, "The shop project is not a part of the exhibition; rather it is the heart of the exhibition itself. It holds at once the aspects that fuse, reunite, and then recombine the concept of the readymade. The Louis Vuitton project brings to life a wonderful new world."

Is he putting us on? I wouldn't be surprised if Brooklyn has another Saatchi problem on its hands---the problematic involvement, in too many aspects of the show, of a financially self-interested source of objects (Vuitton). The product-hyping language of today's press release is already disturbing, taking the synergy of art and commerce too far:

Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman comments, "We are delighted that Louis Vuitton will participate in the exhibition. The groundbreaking inclusion of its store within the context of the retrospective has created a new paradigm [calling Eli Broad?] in its exemplification of Takashi Murakami's artistic process that includes low-cost unlimited-edition consumer products, as well as luxury goods designed for Louis Vuitton."

....Takashi Murakami gave color and mischief to the Louis Vuitton Monogram by re-creating it in 33 colors on a black or white background. The collaboration between the two creative talents also spawned the Monogram Cherry Blossom line later that year, and the Monogram Cerise pattern in 2005.

"Our collaboration has produced a lot of works, and has been a huge influence and inspiration to many It has been and continues to be a monumental marriage of art & commerce. The ultimate cross-over, one for both the fashion and art history books" comments Marc Jacobs, Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton.

In addition to the operation of the Louis Vuitton store within the exhibition, Louis Vuitton will also generously host the Brooklyn Ball on April 3, 2008. Special creations by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton will be auctioned during the gala dinner.

Proceeds from that Vuitton auction will benefit the Brooklyn Museum. However, revenues from the on site boutique will not benefit the museum. (Likewise, LA MOCA did not benefit from shop sales.)

As it happens, I just went on yet another fact-finding (not shopping) mission last weekend to the land of outlandishly priced plasticized canvas in my nearby mall. Here's what I discovered this time:

Mock-up of copies (left) of the Parthenon Marbles in the New Acropolis Museum

The planners of the New Acropolis Museum had a brilliant idea for display of the Parthenon Marbles. Then they improved upon it. Now they've ruined it.

What still remains of the original plan is the installation of the sculptural slabs around the outside of a rectangular structure of the same dimensions as the Parthenon, to simulate their original display on the monument. This is truer to their ancient installation than displaying them inside the walls of a traditional museum gallery, as their British-owned counterparts are now arrayed at the British Museum. In the first version of this idea, admonitory voids were to have been left in all the spaces where the British-owned slabs belonged---a startlingly stark demonstration of the disruption that their removal caused to the continuous procession depicted in the fabled frieze.

By last July, when I attended a press lunch in New York about the museum's plans and progress, this concept had evolved into something even more interesting: Dimitris Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, told us that copies of the British-owned marbles would be installed in their proper places, but veiled over with scrims, to insure that there would be no confusion between the originals and the copies. Each veiled slab would appear as "a ghost," as he put it.

As of last October, when some journalists were invited to tour the museum-in-progress, that was still the plan (as described by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the NY Times, here, and Richard Lacayo in his Looking Around blog, here). This would have been a powerful visual polemic for the marbles' return, made all the more forceful by the dramatic view of the Parthenon itself through the gallery's glass wall.

But attendees at last week's "Return of Cultural Objects" conference (where I was an invited speaker), held in the auditorium of the impressively monumental Bernard Tschumi-designed New Acropolis Museum, were shown something very different and, to my mind, most disturbing.

The original Acropolis objects are now on the premises but still, for the most part, not yet unpacked. However, copies of all the marbles now residing in London and Athens have been installed in their correct sequence in the expansive top-floor Parthenon gallery (above). Before the museum opens, according to Pandermalis, they will be replaced by the original Athens marbles and by casts of the British-owned marbles that were given to Greece by Great Britain in the 19th century. There will be no voids (except for marbles that have been irretrievably lost) and no scrims.

By installing the real and the fake on equal footing, the Greek have dropped not only the reproachful veils but also the moral force of their installation.

Pandermalis gave me several reasons for the change, during two visits to the gallery on successive days. The first time, he said the advantage of the more homogeneous installation would be to "give the impression of the rhythm of the frieze." He also observed that some of the original slabs now exist only as fragments, which, he said, would look odd behind scrims.

On the second visit, he told me that the contrast between the flatness of the scrim and the sculptural quality of the authentic marbles would create a disjointed experience for the viewer.

So unless the Greeks change their minds again (as I hope they will), the visitor will see the celebrated icons of world civilization chockablock with plaster blocks. Pandermalis avers that visitors will be able to distinguish between the real and the fake, because the recreations will be whiter and have a different texture. (In the above photo, the whiter marbles in the foreground represent London-owned slabs; the browner ones, further down the wall, represent those retained in Athens.)

I'm not so sure that the average tourist will make these crucial distinctions. What's more, the authentic British marbles are themselves whiter than those in Athens and have a different texture, because the Greek contingent was darkened by overexposure to Athens pollution and the British counterparts were whitened by an infamously harsh scrubbing in the late 1930's.

Even if visitors understand the difference between the real and the fake in the Parthenon gallery, this compromised display subverts the mission of museums as uncompromising champions of the authentic. Forcing the true marbles to fraternize as equals with the false insults their integrity and their majesty.

At the New York press lunch last July, architect Tschumi told us that the goal of the (now abandoned) plan to substitute veiled copies for the missing marbles was to "create a public understanding of the necessity of completing the narrative." To the extent that visitors to the new museum may be satisfied by the display now in play, the Greeks' case that they need the to replace the fake with the real will be seriously undermined.

That is surely not the result they intended.

Germano Celant: Fashion phobic?

Tomorrow's NY Times Magazine is The Art Issue.

Yeah, right.

Except for one serious piece by the estimable Arthur Lubow about Latin American art in U.S. museums (focusing chiefly on curator Mari Carmen Ramirez of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts), it's all about art-and-catering ("Affairs of the Art World," complete with recipes) and art-and-fashion (including not one but two spreads foisting designer clothes on non-major artworld figures, the second of which seems to suggest that artsy women have a thing about black lipstick).

I particularly had to laugh at one line from Michael Kimmelman's piece on Miuccia Prada's artworld peregrinations. Writing about how the director of the Prada Foundation, Italian curator Germano Celant, first got involved with that art-commissioning and art-presenting entity, the Times' expatriate art critic quotes Celant saying:

They were suspicious of me, and I was suspicious of fashion.

Come again? Wasn't Celant the co-curator of the Guggenheim's infamous Armani show? I guess he must have been suspicious about that one too.

A class at the Barnes

On Monday morning, Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court will hear arguments from lawyers for two opponents to the Barnes Foundations' planned move to Philadelphia---Montgomery County and the Friends of the Barnes (an ad hoc citizens' group). These two entities want Judge Ott to grant them standing to argue in court for a reconsideration of his decision allowing the move. Their argument for a new round of arguments is based on recent developments that the petitioners say would make it economically feasible for the foundation to remain in Merion, PA, where collector Albert Barnes stipulated it should remain.

I wish them luck. I think they'll need it.

Having read the briefs, including the one filed yesterday by lawyers for the Barnes Foundation, I very reluctantly find the foundation's "too little, too late" argument against reopening the case to be legally (but not ethically) persuasive. As for the dicey ethics---I believe that the trustees of the foundation did not take sufficiently vigorous steps to improve the Barnes' financial viability in Merion, because they were keen to move to Philadelphia. For example, after Judge Ott ruled that they could immediately expand the board to help bring some fresh funding to the table, they inexplicably failed to do so.

I also believe that the trustees, had they wanted to, could have raised the money needed for the foundation to remain viable in situ. I detailed how this might have been done in my Jan. 10, 2004 NY Times Op-Ed piece. I believe that Judge Ott made the wrong decision when he allowed the Barnes to move, and I believe that decision was inconsistent with his own previously stated opinion that to be approved, the move would have to be the least drastic modification to Barnes' trust indenture needed to insure the foundation's survival.

That said, I agree that the county's $50-million offer to the Barnes is (as the foundation's lawyers assert) more akin to a loan than a purchase, because it must eventually be repaid. The Barnes' lawyers, in their just-filed brief, punch holes in the county's argument that paying back the $50 million won't present problems, and they argue that it's too late now to advance proposals to save the Barnes that should have been made during the first rounds of the legal proceeding, not three years after the decision.

For me the strongest argument for throwing out the Philly-friendly decision is that the lawyer who was charged with being the watchdog for donor intent---Lawrence Barth from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office---was so clearly on the move-to-Philly bandwagon that he was strongly admonished for his mishandling of the case by Judge Ott himself. But despite this, Judge Ott ruled for the move.

We need a do-over. I doubt we'll get one. I hope I'm wrong.

A pile of uncollected garbage a couple of blocks from the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, due to a strike in progress while I was there, which widened yesterday.

There was already a garbage workers' strike, a brief museum workers' strike and a Metro shutdown while I was still in Athens. Luckily, my Continental flight took off at 11 a.m. yesterday, as scheduled, but other attendees at the Athens conference, who were booked on afternoon flights, had to scramble to reschedule (with the help of the ever resourceful Eleftheria Maggana, who took care of all our travel arrangements).

Yesterday, the strike became widespread, encompassing hotel workers, among many others, and causing power blackouts (including the traffic lights). There was some rioting---all occasioned by proposed pension changes, which the strikers say will hurt their benefits. Renee Maltezou of Reuters has the story

My stay was delightful and culture-filled, but I'm glad to have gotten back home in time to have missed the turmoil. My biggest complaint about Athens is the seeming lack of a full-time classical music station on the radio!

But did Glenn Lowry get out okay? It turns out that the Museum of Modern Art's director was in Greece at the same time I was (but not for the same conference). If I only knew, I could have caught his lecture on "Making the Modern: A Disruptive Theory of the Museum of Modern Art."

"Disruptive." How apt!

My panel on "Museums, Sites and Cultural Context," preparing to do battle.
Left to right: CultureGrrl; Ricardo Elia, chair, archaeology department, Boston University; Elena Korka, head of Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Hellenic Ministry of Culture; Μoira Simpson, senior lecturer in arts education, University of South Australia; Maurice Davies, deputy director of the Museums Association, U.K.

As an invited speaker at the recently concluded two-day "Return of Cultural Objects" conference, the first event held in the still unfinished New Acropolis Museum in Athens, I was a bit of a misfit and a Trojan Horse.

I was an anomaly because all the other speakers were cultural and/or government officials, archaeologists or cultural-property lawyers. Attending journalists were covering the event, not participating in it. And I was a Trojan Horse because I was welcomed inside the gates for my strong advocacy of reuniting the Parthenon marbles (although I have somewhat impractically suggested that they be ferried back and forth, for very long-term display, between the two venues where the sundered marbles now reside---Athens and London).

But I don't embrace the prevailing view of source countries that major American and British museums are the Evil Empire. What's worse, I eventually dared to say so.

My initial presentation was safe enough: I played to the audience by extending the CultureGrrl genre of irreverent photo essay to a different medium---PowerPoint. For this occasion, I lampooned (and occasionally praised) strategies used in labeling and installing antiquities by American museums, which often have scant information about the archaeological context of objects in their collections. I was struck by the contrast between American labels and those at Athens' National Archaeological Museum, where almost every object is accompanied by information on where it was found.

I ended by championing the view that I share in common with my hosts, singling out two examples from U.S. museums that fit the Parthenon marbles theme---ancient objects that had been fragmented and should be reassembled through the amicable cooperation of the different owners.

But then they opened it up to the audience for questions, and that's when I got myself in trouble.

I had gritted my teeth when my co-panelist, Ricardo Elia, had commented during his presentation on American museums' current attitude towards antiquities collecting: "I don't think it's a real change." About recent rapprochements between those museums and source countries, he asserted, "I'm skeptical it will lead to real change."

So when an audience member directed a question to the two of us about the "orphaned object" (lacking any known provenance), I outlined the complexity of the problem, threw in my recent Michael Brand quote, and then said that, contrary to Elia, I felt there had been substantial recent changes in American museums' antiquities-collecting policies, which had been implemented to varying degrees. This earned me a applause from one person, who, as I later learned, was Annie Caubet, honorary keeper of the ancient Near East art at the Louvre. (She was there to discuss with her counterpart at the Metropolitan Museum, Joan Aruz, the 1974 reunification of the head and torso of a Neo-Sumerian alabaster figure.)

[UPDATE: The diplomatic Derek Fincham, in his Illicit Cultural Property blog, considers Elia's and my comments and decides we're both partially right!]

The only other representative of a "universal museum" on the speakers list was Jonathan C. H. King, keeper of the British Museum's department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, invited to discuss his museum's long-term loan of a ceremonial mask of the Kwakwa'wakw First Nations to the U'mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay, British Columbia.

When I exited at the end of the conference, a man followed me out, cordially identified himself as an artist who admired Art in America (where I'm contributing editor), and then started berating me for my cluelessness in saying something positive about American museums. I suppose my lack of discretion probably WAS somewhat clueless.

In any event, I have to tip my hat to Elia for the quote of the conference. This was his take on the "orphaned object":

First they kill the parents and then they kidnap the child.

While we're on the subject of my hapless participation on panels, here's what Columbia Law School's press office published about the views expressed by members of the deaccessioning panel on which I recently appeared. I must alert you, though, that I never used the words "slush fund" to describe deaccession proceeds, nor would I, since that term is generally used to imply corruption. [UPDATE: They've taken out the offending phrase online.]

You were maybe hoping to hear more about the New Acropolis Museum? COMING SOON.

Finds from the Athens Metro dig

Attention Art-lings: She's ba-a-a-a-ck!

While in Athens, I made it over to the impressive National Archaeological Museum (which I'd previously seen) and the marvelous Museum of Cycladic Art (which I hadn't), not to mention the Acropolis and, of course, the New Acropolis Museum, where I was invited to speak at the the still unopened museum's inaugural event, the Athens International Conference for the Return of Cultural Objects to Their Countries of Origin.

Having written a Wall Street Journal article back in August 1996 about the artifacts being dug up during the excavation for the Athens Metro, I was also fascinated to admire the finds, now attractively arrayed in vitrines at several Metro stations (above). And I was delighted to discover, serendipitously, the Roman baths (below) exposed on a street near my hotel, where the engineers had expected to sink a ventilation shaft for the subway system, only to be archaeologically detoured to another spot down the block.


What Athens found when it tried to dig a ventilation shaft for its Metro system

As you probably already know, something similar happened during excavation for the New Acropolis Museum, and the ingenious solution resulted in enhancing architecture through archaeology. More on this later.

Before launching my Athens posts tomorrow, I must express my grateful admiration for guest blogger Martin Filler, who skillfully wielded the CultureGrrl rapier while I encountered my international fan base (who knew?), some of which I probably alienated by my politically incorrect comments in a forum where "universal museums" were regarded with almost universal scorn. More on that later, too.

Martin, you kept my blog hits up and my blogging compulsion down. Many thanks!

It's now after 4:00 a.m., Athens time, and that's my body's time. So I'm off to dream about the view of ancient ruins from my former hotel room.

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger:

One of the more eye-catching new books to come my way this season is Between Heaven and Earth: The Architecture of John Lautner (above), the publication for an eponymous retrospective that opens at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, on July 13. This book and forthcoming exhibition are latest evidence of a gathering campaign to elevate the posthumous reputation of Lautner (1911-1994), a curious figure in late 20th-century American architecture.

Marginal among his fellow modernists, he was best known for spaceship-like residential schemes set amidst dramatic, isolated Western landscapes. Commissioned by clients who included Bob Hope and Miles Davis, Lautner's freeform concrete structures---flamboyant, scaleless and inevitably cantilevered---evoke the sculptural extravagance of his celebrated older contemporary, the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (who turned 100 late last year), though Lautner never enjoyed the international following commanded by that more humanely attuned form-giver.

I've long suspected that many hip Lautner enthusiasts see him as a latter-day Morris Lapidus, the diamond-in-the-rough Miami Beach Modernist patronized by Postmodernists as a pet primitive, much as Picasso, Apollinaire, and company treated their mascot, the douanier Rousseau, with a sardonic (if not insincere) mixture of admiration and condescension for believing he exemplified their theories avant le lettre. The burgeoning Lautner league cannot mean us to take his bombastic expressionism with complete seriousness, can they?

Although Lautner studied for five years during the 1930s with Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship, the pupil's later approach to designing in concert with nature was quite different from that of the master. Granted, Wright's geriatric output often departed from the organic integration of manmade and natural that epitomized his best earlier work, from the Prairie Houses to Fallingwater. But the triumphalist engineering arrogance that became Lautner's hallmark was the very opposite of Wright's essential naturalist credo.

I will give due consideration to the new book's principal essay, by the eminent architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen, whose opinions I always respect. However, I'm likely to always regard Lautner with the same contempt that I reserve for that risibly tasteless magazine, Architectural Digest, which most often published his mondo bizarro houses, landmarks of an America I want nothing to do with.

Oscar Bluemner's Bronx Borough Courthouse

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger

The rediscovery of a major work by an esteemed artist is rare, but rarer still if in a medium not associated with the maker. In fact, when Timothy Williams of the NY Times wrote on Mar. 6 that the long-derelict Bronx Borough Courthouse---a 1906 Beaux-Arts gem in the gritty Morrisania section---will be restored and recycled for the Bronx Academy of Promise Charter School, its architect, Oscar Bluemner, wasn't identified as a pioneering American modernist painter.

Bluemner's vibrant Expressionist landscapes, heavily influenced by his German contemporaries and now coveted by cult collectors, were the subject of an underappreciated 2005 Whitney Museum retrospective. In the exhibition catalog, veteran Whitney curator Barbara Haskell retraced the scandalous saga of the Bronx Borough Courthouse, decisive in Bluemner's abandoning architecture---a profession he found (with good reason) irredeemably corrupt---for painting. The trouble was that although Bluemner was a far better artist than architect, self-destructive tendencies sabotaged his success in that new calling.

Bluemner (1867-1938) was born in Prussia and studied architecture in Berlin before immigrating to the US at the onset of an economic depression, typical of the bad luck that dogged him. Trained in the conventional Classical manner, he lacked the flair of America's preeminent turn-of-the-century architect, Stanford White, and turned out competent if forgettable designs, save one Meisterwerk, his Bronx Borough Courthouse. Triumphing over an ungrateful wedge-shaped site, Bluemner's suave but imposing scheme---clad in Tennessee marble and fronted by a pair of monumental columns flanking an allegorical statue of Justice---outdid the concurrent last-gasp Classicism of Washington, DC.

The big catch: Bluemner was forced to ghost for Michael Garvin, a hack architect backed by Tammany Hall, New York's corrupt Democratic machine. Garvin hogged credit for the courthouse, an incensed Bluemner sued, but after a protracted Pyrrhic victory he gave up architecture in disgust and turned to painting full time. Alas, his knack for alienating even avid proponents (especially his influential dealer, Alfred Stieglitz) sabotaged a blazing talent. Architects still need upfront patronage in a way artists haven't since the rise of the bourgeois art market four centuries ago. The sad tale of Bluemner (who committed suicide after a Job-like pile-up of personal and professional blows) reminds us that art in any medium is never easy.

Rendering of 200 Eleventh Avenue

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger

It was bound to happen sooner or later---the first bad dispute to arise from the celebrity architect-designed apartment buildings rising all over New York. The case in point is Annabelle Selldorf's 200 Eleventh Avenue in the city's hotter-than-hot Chelsea district, a 19-story tower with 16 condominiums costing from $6 million to $17.5 million.

Best known for her exquisite recycling of Fifth Avenue's old Vanderbilt mansion into the Neue Galerie, Selldorf isn't the starriest architect co-opted by status-savvy residential developers as a luxury marketing tool. She may not yet be a marquee name like others who have recently designed luxury residences in New York---Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Bernard Tschumi---but the tsuris she's been facing is big-time by any measure.

The NY Daily News recently reported that the New York City Buildings Department had suspended construction of the Selldorf project, because, as an agency spokeswoman said, "the pillars forming the exterior are misaligned. This could be characterized as a structural deficiency." If true, this could be a deal-breaker for the building's major selling point---huge elevator shafts that would allow residents to drive straight in and be lifted up to their apartments in their cars, which would be parked there in a personal garage. If the structure's verticals are out of whack, fuhggedaboudit.

Had the tower been by Peter Eisenman---who designed a small building in Japan with lines so deliberately off-kilter that it looked like it had been through an earthquake--no one would have thought anything amiss.

For its "The I-Team: Special Investigation" series, the Daily News dispatched an independent engineer to weigh in, and he declared the building structurally intact. It's possible, then, that the criticisms are unfair. On the other hand, when execution problems plague even top-of-the-line local schemes like Yoshio Taniguchi's Museum of Modern Art expansion---which before completion looked more expressionist than its rectilinear-minded architect could have intended---you're reminded that building on the square is a challenge for anyone who braves the ordeal of New York construction.

Covered silver tureen and platter designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, made by Henri-Guillaume Adnet and François Bonnestrenne
Photo: © Cleveland Museum of Art

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger

One symptom of getting older is an increase of the been-there-done-that syndrome, with its odious and sometimes unfair comparisons. Just as I've "retired" certain operas after definitive performances, some exhibitions inevitably prompt unsurpassable memories of earlier shows on the same subject.

I'm afraid that's the case with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's recently opened and typically haphazard stylistic survey, Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008, which remains on view through July 6. One of my all-time-favorite decorative arts shows was "The Rococo in England" 1986, at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, an impeccable overview all the more instructive because it focused on a country not usually associated with that strenuously frivolous Continental aesthetic.

As has been true of several Cooper-Hewitt efforts in recent years---big, unfocused catch-alls akin to the Guggenheim's under-curated, overstuffed blockbusters---this round-up of 370 objects contains more than enough wonderful things to justify a visit. But "Rococo's" ridiculously overreaching timeline, presumably intended to make an antiquarian taste "relevant," negates any notion of serious scholarship. By including so many works that have nothing to do with the subject (forgetting strict chronology, which I don't demand), the Cooper-Hewitt flouts scrupulous standards upheld down the street at the Metropolitan Museum.

"Rococo" is vaut le detour for one artifact alone: the drop-dead Meissioner silver tureen (above) that opens the show with such a bang that everything thereafter is a letdown. Swarming with life-size life-like crustaceans, this dizzying maelstrom is as sublime yet inherently architectural as the Bavarian pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen or Amalienburg pavilion.

But what does Alvar Aalto's 1931-32 bent plywood Paimio chair have to do with the capricious spirit of the Rococo, beyond an ingenious use of S-curves? Nor should the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau or today's blobby post-Bilbao biomorphism be presented to a credulous public as Rococo revivals, implicitly or not. This kind of superficial thinking has fed intellectual disrespect for the decorative arts, and it's sad to see a prominent museum perpetuating the problem.

G. Wayne Clough

The new secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, whose appointment was surprisingly announced on a Saturday (to downplay it?), has excellent civil engineering experience. Here are his cultural credentials, as set forth in the Smithsonian's press release:

While improving Georgia Tech's reputation for science, [G. Wayne] Clough has emphasized the importance of humanities education. He established two endowed chairs in poetry....He was the subject of a chapter in Thomas L. Friedman's book, "The World is Flat, A Brief History of the 21st Century," in which Friedman credits Clough as a visionary leader who had to rethink an entire university strategy, beginning with an admissions policy that focused too much on engineering and not enough on such creative activities as music, poetry and team sports.

And art is...where? Who cares if the man has neither art nor museum experience. If Friedman likes him, he's gotta be good.

Clough is known as a fine fundraiser. His business connections include: serving on the board of directors of  TSYS (Total System Services, Inc.), which "makes it possible for millions of people to make paperless payments safely and securely"; and serving on the board of advisors for Noro-Moseley Partners, one of the southeast's largest venture capital funds.

All I can say is: They'd better appoint an undersecretary for art, replacing the one who just left, really fast.

I know. I'm in Athens and I'm not supposed to be thinking about Nashville.

But I left you without letting you know the one bit of news that came out of the Columbia Law School deaccessioning panel on which I partcipated on Tuesday: C. Michael Norton, whose Nashville law firm has represented Fisk University in its attempt to get court approval to monetize its Stieglitz Collection, told the assembled law students that Fisk intends to appeal the decision by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle that had barred Fisk from selling a half-share of the collection for $30 million to Alice Walton's planned Crystal Bridges Museum.

So it now appears that the university's representations that new fundraising successes would now allow Fisk to maintain and display the collection was just a legal expedient to prevent the O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, from taking control of the works donated to Fisk by O'Keeffe. This would have been a true deaccession debacle: losing the collection that the university had hoped to monetize, without anything to show for it.

In her most recent decision, Chancellor Lyle had stated:

The court credits the testimony at trial of Fisk President Hazel O'Leary that with this turnaround in finances, Fisk intends to take care of and display the collection, and that Fisk no longer plans to sell a portion of the collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum.

Maybe that was giving Fisk too much credit: An appeal to sell to Crystal Bridges will soon be filed, Norton told me, in the Tennessee Court of Appeals. I suspect that the O'Keeffe Museum is now likely to reverse its announced intention to withdraw from the case. The supposed realization of its objective to insure that O'Keeffe's conditions for her gift were honored, with the collection on permanent display at Fisk, now seems again in doubt.

All rise. The court's back in ses