Quick Takes: Dia Departure, Büchel Debacle, Un-Gifted Folk Art Museum

In haste, some important links:

---Jeffrey Weiss calls it a day at Dia, discovering that he's a curator, not an administrator. Carol Vogel of the NY Times has the story. The board chairwoman, astonishingly, tells Vogel that they're in no hurry to find a replacement.

This boat seems to be drifting further out to sea. The "win-win" scenario that I posited here seems ever more desirable. Could a relationship with the Dia become the Guggenheim's version of the MoMA-P.S. 1 nexus? I must emphasize, however, that this is pure CultureGrrl speculation: I just like the idea of that synergy.

---He's ba-a-a-ack! Relive the Büchel debacle all over again in Randy Kennedy's piece for tomorrow's NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section (online today).

And here's a Jan. 29 letter from Büchel's dealer, Michele Maccarone, published by The Exhibitionist blog, in which she urged the artworld to shun LA25, an aid program for emerging Southern California artists. The program was sponsored by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the law firm that successfully represented MASS MoCA in its legal dispute with Büchel.

It appears that Kennedy interviewed Joe Thompson, MASS MoCA's director, via e-mail, but sat down with Büchel at Maccarone's gallery for a "four-hour, off-the-record discussion" in December. Off the record? In the next paragraph he describes the substance of that discussion, which doubtless informed the rest of the piece as well. Donn Zaretsky, the Art Law blogger and Büchel's attorney, gets a mention in the piece, but there's no reference to any of this on Donn's blog, at this writing.

Whatever happened to Büchel's plans to appeal the court decision ruling that MASS MoCA had the right to to display the material assembled for the abandoned "Training Ground for Democracy" project? It opted not to display, but to dismantle. But it the piece is partly displayed now---in the slide show accompanying Kennedy's piece.

---This is so hot I can barely touch it, only link to it: Major Folk Art Pledged as Collateral; Hicks Peaceable Kingdom Up for Private Auction in the Maine Antique Digest. I'll give you a couple of excerpts:

Ralph Esmerian, the Paris-born king of the American colored gemstone market, jeweler extraordinaire, and American folk art collector, who almost single-handedly provided the impetus for the American Folk Art Museum as it exists today with his gifts and promised gifts, is facing two lawsuits regarding loans....

In early February, Esmerian gave notice that his <strong>Edward Hicks</strong> masterpiece, "The Peaceable Kingdom" (shown on pages 88 and 89 of American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum) was to be removed from the museum and offered at Sotheby's in a private auction (see article below).

That fact shocked folk art aficionados, and in a follow-up, Maine Antique Digest discovered that a minimum of 30, and possibly more, Esmerian-given or -promised folk art objects at the museum were named as collateral for loans from Christie's. All are shown in American Radiance, the 2001 collaborative work by the museum and Esmerian.

I contacted Christie's, which would not comment. Sotheby's, through spokesperson Lauren Gioia, told me:

Mr. Esmerian engaged us to offer "The Peaceable Kingdom" privately. As it is a private sale, all details are confidential. We expect to be providing information about the painting within the next couple of weeks and will let you know at that time.

My e-mail yesterday to the museum has thus far gone unanswered.