May 2008 Archives

Roger Ebert

Critics face this problem all the time: We all carry around with us certain likes, dislikes, prejudices and personal baggage. That means we may not always be well suited to review everything that comes our way. Yet we do it anyway, usually without revealing our conflicts-of-disinterest. One wonders, for example, how critic Roger Kimball, a champion of "classical realism," will be able to credibly review the work of certain major art movements after categorically dismissing, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "pop, op, minimalism, and neo-Dada performance art that have infested the art world like a gigantic flea market."

Full disclosure from me: I rarely watch television and I have never had the patience to view an episode of "Sex and the City" from beginning to end (even though I was a great Baryshnikov fan in his heyday). But I have close (single) friends who are passionate fans and would never accept a phone call from me at the show's appointed hour.

The conqueror of French archaeologists
Photo: French Ministry of Culture

Has Julius Caesar been dredged up from a French riverbed? CBC News reports:

A bust found at the bottom of a river in Arles, France, may be the truest representation of Julius Caesar ever found. The marble sculpture of a man in his 50s, with facial wrinkles and a receding hairline, may have been carved from life. Archeologists say the bust dates from 49 to 46 B.C. when Caesar reigned and the town of Arles was founded. It also resembles official portraits of Julius Caesar from coins struck in his lifetime.

Agence France-Presse reports that the marble sculpture "was found with other artifacts" during excavations directed by French archaeologist Luc Long. And the French Ministry of Culture quickly put its imprimatur on the purported identity of the bust's illustrious sitter. The French news agency quotes a ministry statement that this is "the oldest representation yet known of Caesar" and "typical of a series of realistic portraits from the period of the [Roman] republic."

Mary Beard, Cambridge classics professor and A Don's Life blogger, is not convinced:

This sculpture is, I should say, a very nice piece of work---and looks remarkably good for something that has been at the bottom of the Rhone for a couple of thousand years. There is, I suppose, a remote possibility that it does represent Julius Caesar, but no particular reason at all to think that it does---still less to think that it was done from life....I'm afraid it's "start again" time on the explanations for this one.

Mary's wit and wisdom have attracted her usual coterie of erudite commentators: Some 78 classicists and would-be classicists. have weighed in so far. One wag said of the homely mug:

If I had a face like that, would I want it immortalised in stone for all time?

I came, I saw, I guffawed.

Excerpt from Elliott Carter's first opera, "What Next?"

I didn't make it to last Thursday's well received Metropolitan Opera Orchestra performance of Elliott Carter's 1955 "Variations for Orchestra." But I did see, the night before, both its conductor, James Levine, and the high-spirited, keen-minded 99-year-old Carter himself at the Museum of Modern Art, where they conversed onstage after a world premiere of a filmed live performance, conducted by Levine, of Carter's mysterious, whimsical, "What Next?"---a one-act opera composed when Carter was 94. (That's the age they gave last week, but MoMA's press materials say it was composed in 1997, which would have meant the composer was a mere octogenarian.)

Why had Carter waited so long to compose his first opera?

I was always interested in opera. I just didn't know why they sang!

He finally found inspiration in a scene from a 1971 Jacques Tati film, "Traffic": Six victims (or possibly, in the filmed Carter version, their disembodied souls) emerge from the wreckage of a serious car accident.

Levine, who is music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, noted that he had always wanted to mount experimental, contemporary opera: "Once I got into a situation where I had more control over it, I made up for lost time." He added that he hoped Carter would compose more such work.

So during the question and answer period, I asked my favorite American composer if he'd take Levine up on the operatic challenge. He replied that he couldn't say, because he'd first have to come up with another idea that, to his mind, called for song. Levine immediately observed how great it would be to be able to present a Carter double-bill. ("What Next?" is about 40 minutes long.)

In case anyone had any doubts about the venerable composer's current state of musical health, he answered a question about whether he had ever thought of creating a work for percussion ensemble by remarking how timely that query was: He had that very afternoon been perusing his printed proofs for such a piece.

Levine and the Tanglewood Music Center (where "What Next?" was filmed) are planning to celebrate "Carter's Century," July 20-24, billing the series of concerts as "the first time a major composer will be present at has own centennial celebration."

We can only hope. Based on the evidence last week---when this difficult, cerebral composer basked in the audience's admiration---it looks like an excellent bet:

It was estimated at $2-3 million. The Latin American sale at Christie's is still in progress, but the "Trovador"'s long song at Randolph College's Maier Museum is, sadly, finished.

MoMA director Glenn Lowry (left) interviews a very outspoken Chuck Close at a recent conference in New York

This just in---a changing-of-the-guard press release  from the Whitney Museum:

In elections held yesterday by the Board of Trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art, current Chairman Leonard A. Lauder was named Chairman Emeritus, while continuing to be a voting member of the Board....In addition, Fred Wilson was elected Artist Trustee, replacing Chuck Close.

More than most heads of art museum boards, Lauder wielded influence over the Whitney's operations that seemed at least equal to, if not greater than, that of the succession of directors who came and went from the museum during his 14-year chairmanship. The announcement comes a little more than two months after Lauder pledged to give the museum the largest gift in its history---some $131 million---on the unusual condition that it not sell its original Marcel Breuer building when it expands to downtown Manhattan's Meatpacking district. Soon after that announcement, CultureGrrl guest blogger Martin Filler opined that Lauder's strings-attached benefaction may have been "one of his most valuable gifts to the Whitney."

It's going to take two co-chairmen to fill the 75-year-old Lauder's shoes: Robert Hurst, formerly board president, and Brooke Garber Neidich, formerly vice chairman. Neil Bluhm, formerly vice chairman, is the new president.

As for Chuck Close---he was named to the board in 2000 under the prior directorship of Max Anderson. Today's press release hailed him as "the first artist to serve on a board of a major New York art museum." His was originally supposed to have been a one-year rotating artist's spot on the board, but the initial appointment stuck.

Close recently let it be known, however, that he felt disaffected from recent developments at the museum: In public comments during a Q&A with the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry (both above), at the "American Icons" conference that I recently attended at the New-York Historical Society, Close said, disapprovingly, that the museum was dropping the "American Art" part of its full name.

Close further observed:

A lot of the [Whitney's] trustees and a lot of the curators chafed under the idea that it has to be the 'Whitney Museum of American Art.' They wished they could have Kiefer....I think it's an incredible slap in the face of American artists, if we were to suggest that the only museum in the United States solely devoted to the work of American artists can't find enough interesting American art and artists to show. What an insult! It's also our branding; it's our specialness; it's what makes us unique.

My initial surprise at this incautious candor is tempered by the knowledge I now have that he was on his way out. There's no current indication however, on either the Whitney's website or its press releases, that it will be dropping the last three words from its traditional title. In any event, Close is wrong in his assertion that the Whitney is the only U.S. museum solely devoted to the art of this country.

What seems clear, though, is that Close perceives what he considers to be a regrettable impending change in the Whitney's time-honored mission. Time (and the reconstituted board, under director Adam Weinberg's leadership) will tell.

Kathleen Foster, senior curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum, speaking about Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" at the "American Icons" conference

Critics of the source countries' stance in the cultural-property wars (such as Edward Rothstein in yesterday's NY Times) frequently call into question the assertion by Greeks, Italians, Egyptians and others that context is crucial. Having admired antiquities in both encyclopedic museums and source-country museums, I appreciate the advantages of each and wouldn't want to do without either. But part of the joy of travel is experiencing the special resonance that large concentrations of superlative pieces have when encountered near their original surroundings.

Nevertheless, when I was asked to speak last March at the Athens International Conference on the Return of Cultural Objects to their Countries of Origin, one of the questions that I received in advance from the chairman of my panel---Elena Korka, the head of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture's Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities---did give me pause:

In what way does the return of a cultural object to its country of origin and its restoration to its natural and historical context contribute to its better study and research?

She never got around to asking that loaded question during our public discussion, but I had prepared this equivocating response:

To the extent that you have a better concentration of experts and objects in the country of origin, you are probably in a better position to interpret and present these objects in a comprehensive, sophisticated way. But that's not to say that we'd be better off if everything went to its country of origin. I don't believe that's true and I'm not sure that the source countries believe that's true. I don't hear the Italian government say that the Getty Bronze should go back to Greece because it's a Greek sculpture.

I was thinking about the Greeks' insistence on the importance of an object's cultural and historical context while listening on May 16 to an analysis of the Eakins "rescue" by Kathleen Foster (above), the Philadelphia Museum's senior curator of American art, at a conference on "American Icons" held at the New-York Historical Society. She listed the 10 reasons why it was essential that Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" remain in Philadelphia, its city of origin.

Reason #9:

Context adds meaning and importance to a work of art.

In other words, she essentially espoused the source-country argument. Foster noted that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which is now co-owner of the Eakins with the Philadelphia Museum, "is the most fabulous period frame we could build---an artifact of the same period, with archives and study materials about Eakins as a teacher." And when it returns to the Philadelphia Museum in July from its stint at PAFA, it will "drop into the middle of a hundred other works by Thomas Eakins"---given to the museum by the artist's widow.

Foster added:

The audience brings to an artwork their own experience and emotions. In Philadelphia, that's just a richer chemical reaction....To save "The Gross Clinic" is to defend the excellence of Philadelphia."

True, today's Philadelphians are closer in time to "The Gross Clinic" than today's Athenians are to the artifacts of ancient Athens. But the Greeks' "chemical reaction" is, if anything, more intense. Philadelphians had largely ignored the masterpiece in their midst until preempting its $68-million joint purchase by the National Gallery and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum became a highly expensive matter of local pride.

Meanwhile, in an Associated Press interview last week, James Cuno reasserted the argument of his new book that cultural property should know no geographical boundaries:

We know that culture has always been fluid, hybrid and mongrel, and has never accepted political borders, and it has linked more people together than it has separated. These cultural property laws...put walls up between peoples.

His obtuseness when it comes to understanding the concerns of source countries, which are motivated not only by politics but also by genuine concern for cultural heritage, is best illustrated by this excerpt from Cuno's AP remarks, in which he responds to an interviewer's observation that encyclopedic museums (which Cuno champions) are "concentrated in the West":

I recognize it's a legacy of the Enlightenment and that encyclopedic museums tend to be only where that legacy reached. It tends to be only Anglo-Saxon areas or where the French Enlightenment took place---France and Russia. That isn't an argument against the principle of the encyclopedic museum. It's an argument for encouraging the development of encyclopedic museums everywhere.

Wow, what a GREAT idea: Why don't we ALL start encyclopedic museums! Even Abu Dhabi, which has the funds for such a feat, knows that it must resort to rent-a-Louvre to get the goods at this late date.

But back to Foster: She concluded her talk with a call for vigilance against what I described (in this Wall Street Journal piece) as "culture vulture[s], poised to swoop down and seize tasty masterpieces from weak hands." Foster commented:

I worry about other icons being movable, as people of great wealth come to pluck them from other institutions looking for money to repair the roof....This is going to be happening again and again. We need to be ready to save our icons.

Speaking of which: Is a Christie's bidder, untroubled by such concerns, going to pluck Rufino Tamayo's Trovador from Randolph College's Maier Museum tonight?

Laden with Leighton? Sarah Jessica Parker at the premiere
Photo from sexandthecitymovieblog.com

It must be because I've proven myself such a fashionista that I've somehow gotten onto the publicity e-mail list for Fred Leighton, the jewelry firm owned by the American Folk Art Museum's financially embattled benefactor, Ralph Esmerian.

Fred Leighton keeps sending me photos of various glamorous celebrities who have borrowed the company's baubles for special events. It was so excited about the coup it scored for tonight's "Sex and the City" movie premiere that it couldn't even wait till the event actually took place before dispatching this prescient report to my in-box at 6:21 p.m. today:

The fabulous foursome of "Sex and the City: The Movie" created a sensation on the red carpet of New York's Radio City Music Hall. In stunning fashions and all wearing unique jewels from Fred Leighton, these ladies delighted their fans with their sensational style.

Sarah Jessica Parker, glamorous in a Nina Ricci gown, chose Fred Leighton's jewels for her special night---at her neck she wore three antique necklaces, a 19th-century diamond riviere necklace, a 19th-century diamond and pearl fringe necklace and a 19th-century gold diamond snake necklace, also a 9 carat diamond solitaire ring and diamond pendant stud earrings (6.76 carats and 8.66 carats each).

Kristin Davis shimmered in 19th-century diamond pendant earrings, a 19th-century diamond bracelet, and a 24.0 carat Alexandrite and diamond ring. Cynthia Nixon chose diamond pendant earrings 6.00 carats (each), a 16.00-carat ruby and diamond ring and a diamond bracelet to complement her Narciso Rodriguez white dress. Kim Cattrall, in a richly beaded Vivienne Westwood cocktail dress, wore old mine diamond pendant earrings and a Tahitian pearl and diamond ring.

Esmerian himself is a notorious borrower: It was a loan he got from Merrill Lynch to help finance his 2006 purchase of Fred Leighton that led to an on-again, off-again Christie's sale, which was to have liquidated some important Esmerian jewelry. According to a NY Times story by Allen Salkin, the jewels had been used "as part of his collateral for $187 million in loans from Merrill Lynch."

Last Thursday at Sotheby's American art auction, Esmerian did manage to cash in on Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity," which he had once promised to the American Folk Art Museum. It had been offered privately earlier this year through Sotheby's, but failed to find a buyer willing to meet Esmerian's price. It fetched $9.67 million at Thursday's public auction.

Meanwhile, it turns out that a lot of fans at tonight's overbooked "Sex and the City" event were far from "delighted," notwithstanding Fred Leighton's pre-premiere hype. And the four leading ladies don't look all that glamorous in this photo from the hot-off-the-internet report by the NY Daily News, headlined: "'Sex in the City' premier turns ugly."

Couldn't the headline writers get the second word in the show's title right?

Edward Rothstein, in a long think piece in today's NY Times, takes James Cuno's side in the cultural property wars. (I'll have more on that later.) As CultureGrrl readers know, I have a nuanced view on these issues, and don't fit neatly into either camp. Too often, each side in the cultural-property divide exaggerates its position to make its polemical point, rendering reasonable compromise---the only way these issues will be resolved---more difficult.

Here's the response of one CultureGrrl reader, Christian Kleinbub, assistant professor, of art history, Ohio State University, to Cuno Conundrum: Whose Law Is It, Anyway?, my post criticizing Cuno's new book:

I found your reactions to be much more animatedly negative than my own---to a degree that I would say is unfair. First, you criticize Cuno for saying that laws about looting simply don't work, citing the Italian example as evidence that they do. But this seems to me to be a merely academic point on your part. Do you really believe that most countries could have any effect like Italy's? Perhaps Italy is an exception that may be said to prove the rule.

Secondly, I would point out that Cuno himself addresses the fact that some people consider "partage" to be something akin to "pillage." Perhaps it is time for people to reconsider the issue. I sometimes think your sympathies get stretched a bit far, to the point of a certain ultra-orthodoxy. Emotions in these debates are often manipulated by governments and special interests: Is it either honest or intellectually correct to give them a free pass on all occasions?

Finally, I would add that Cuno is hardly the first person to point out that nationalist retentionist policies claiming direct descent from particular peoples sometimes strain intellectual credulity. Just because someone claims a certain heritage doesn't make it so. If we want to make sophisticated arguments about national patrimony, we need to make more objective evaluations of what is at stake. I suspect that this will involve evaluating the emotional nationalist claims of other countries instead of treating them as universally valid.

Wanna be the Metropolitan Museum's next director? For what it's worth, here's the complete official job description (hard to read here, but I'll translate below):



A list of possible candidates was recently submitted to the trustees' search committee by the Met's headhunters, Phillips Oppenheim. (Don't bother looking for the job description on that site; it doesn't even mention the Met as a client.) I was told by two different sources that the candidates' list skews young. Kate Taylor, who has a story in the NY Sun about New York's succession obsession, was apparently told the same thing, and we were both also told that Timothy Rub, director of the Cleveland Museum (who, at 56, is not all THAT young) is on the list. Can he really get up and leave Cleveland before its renovated and expanded facility is functional? Ay, there's the Rub. (How many times has he had to put up with THAT Shakespearean allusion?) The European and American paintings galleries are supposed to reopen later this year, so that's a start.

Formerly director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Rub was a somewhat surprising choice when he was named to the much more prestigious Cleveland post in January 2006. Cleveland was then already closed for its major Rafael Viñoly-designed overhaul. I've spoken to Rub once and my first impression was favorable. I do know that his views on cultural-property issues differ, at least in one respect, from Philippe de Montebello's (not necessarily a bad thing). Cleveland, of course, has its own cultural-property issues with both Italy and Greece (here and here).

To see a video of Rub describing Cleveland's construction project, holding his jacket casually slung over his right shoulder, Frank Sinatra-style, and expressively waving his hardhat in his left hand, go here. He ends his well-spoken tour with a jaunty, "Pretty cool, huh?" And he does look younger than his advanced years!

With its preference for youth, the search committee apparently disagrees with my recent comment on WNYC's Soundcheck Smackdown that a well seasoned professional, rather than a come-lately, might be the best choice to assume the deanship of American art museums. I guess they're keen on discovering someone who may vie with Philippe for number of years in office.

If you don't think you're quite ready for the Met's top job, the requirements for the next director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum can be found at the above-linked Phillips Oppenheim website. Just click on "Current Searches" and scroll down to "Solomon..." You will discover that "having lived in another country [is] a plus." Will Abu Dhabi become the new main office?

But back to the Met. Here, in full, are the above-pictured document's two paragraphs on "Requirements":

The Director's qualifications should include: a commitment to the Museum's mission and the primacy of the collection; ability to embody its standards of scholarship and curatorial excellence and to articulate and uphold the values of the institution; passionate connoisseurship with a broad, informed appreciation of art or the facility to acquire it beyond an area of specialization; respect for and strong support of curatorial talent; able to represent effectively the institution to its constituents and play a leadership role in the international art world; capacity to lead a large institution and to develop and articulate its strategic course; ability to engage a sophisticated board of trustees; enthusiasm for and effectiveness at cultivating donors, collectors and other supporters; excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to motivate, direct and hold accountable a highly skilled staff in a notably collegial environment; effective abilities delegating and communicating expectations; experience setting rigorous standards and inspiring others to achieve them; record of recruiting and mentoring exceptional professional talent; a practiced, effective and confident decision maker who inspires trust; a doctorate is desirable but not required [as it wasn't of Philippe].

The individual will be: a person of unassailable integrity, diplomatic and tactful; a strong leader who is decisive, fair and a confident and wise delegator; a broad-minded humanist who inspires institutional pride; highly intelligent; a good communicator and an even better listener; flexible and in possession of a sense of humor.

In other words, trustee emerita Jayne Wrightsman was right (but was not my source for the above document) when I asked her about the status of the search, during a chance encounter at the press preview for the Met's new show, Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Smiling at me as enigmatically as the Vermeer that she famously donated to the Met, its long-time patron declared:

We're not letting Philippe go. We are going to clone him!

Then she went back to admiring the objects:

Ron Hartwig, the J. Paul Getty Trust's vice president for communications, responds to Getty Operating Deficit Soars: Wood Cuts Jobs, Goats Cut Underbrush:

Sorry, but your attempt to link the Getty's "operating deficit" to our recent strategic move---to reduce and streamline operating costs, both at the Trust and within our four programs, together with programmatic reprioritization, to increase by 25% the amount of funds available to strengthen the focus our Programs put on art---is just plain wrong! There is no link. 

The planning and budgetary issues we just dealt with have to do with the long-term and have nothing to do with our "operating deficit." The Getty is financially healthy now, and with careful mangement of our endowment and the steps we've taken, will be in the future.

 

I'm sorry you found the announcement about using goats to clear the brush on the hillsides surrounding the Getty Center frivolous. Brush clearance to avoid fires is a major issue in Los Angeles and using goats to make the clearance process environmentally sound is applauded locally.

New Hire at the Getty?

The J. Paul Getty Trust, which recently posted its fiscal 2007 annual report online, last year incurred a staggering operating deficit of $49.36 million on a budget of $307.7 million. The previous year, the deficit was $18.29 million on a $293.57-million budget.

This growing shortfall is likely one of the reasons for the recently announced elimination of 114 jobs, including 40 layoffs. Anne-Marie O'Connor of the LA Times recently quoted this explanation for the cuts by trust president James Wood:

The whole goal here is to focus the Getty on the core mission of the visual arts. This is to ensure that we have flexible funds to devote to both building our collections in the museum, the research institute and the library and undertake targeted strategic initiatives where we feel we can really make a difference...

...and maybe also to insure something resembling a balanced budget. The main contributing factor to the spike in the deficit from the previous year was the decline in contributions from $36.2 million in fiscal 2006 to only $2.2 million in fiscal 2007. Because of its already fabulous wealth, the Getty has a hard time soliciting donations.

The endowment, as of the June 30th end of the fiscal year, was a hefty $6.4 billion, compared to $5.6 billion in fiscal 2006, so times are not that tough. Unlike most museums, the Getty reports the total value of its collections on its financial statement---$1.8 billion. Capitalizing collections in this manner is something most museums resist, because they do not regard collections as assets than can be tapped for operations. Getty spokesperson Ron Hartwig acknowledged to me that "most other museums do not list their works of art on their balance sheet. We are taking a look at this."

Despite its vast wealth, the Getty feels compelled to cut back its window-washing to "once a year instead of three times," as revealed by Wood to the LA Times. And I've never encountered a museum press release like the recent Getty Goat announcement: It has hired about 60 of these beasts as landscapers, "to nibble away the flammable brush around its 110-acre hillside campus in Brentwood."

Some of the fired Getty employees may be disgruntled, but at least the new hires are happy. According to Lynne Tjomsland, manager of grounds and gardens, quoted in the Getty's press release:

The goats love their work.

UPDATE: Patricia Woodworth, the Getty Trust's chief financial officer, has informed me that the "large contribution of the Stark Sculpture Collection" in fiscal 2006 is what accounted for the unusually high figure for contributions that year. She added that the Getty's operating results are significantly impacted by the depreciation charge, which in fiscal 2007 amounted to $47.8 million, compared to $45 million the previous year.

Readers respond to Tamayo, the First Maier Museum Deaccession, Offered Next Week:

Erik Neil, executive director of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY, writes:

This is a sad expedient for a college with such a distinguished legacy in the arts. A quick fix now and then in a couple years there will be reports about new financial and management problems. This sale will not solve the ongoing failure of leadership. The current and future students at Randolph College are being short changed.

Roy (Bud) Johns, a collector and plaintiff in the charitable trust suit pending in Virginia Supreme Court, which challenges recent changes at Randolph College, writes:

Bravo for your Maier Museum/Tamayo column and your continuing opposition to such sales. The college's president and board of trustees continue to be inaccurate in their statements. One of the two suits on which the Virginia Supreme Court will rule soon (the breach of contract suit) is strictly about the coeducational issue and not the art. The other, however, the charitable trust suit, definitely involves the art (among other things) and the issues of donor intent.

I never knew Stephen Clark [the famed collector who donated the Tamayo to the Randolph College] but I've read much about him and his brother and I seriously question whether he intended for his gift of this great painting to the impressive permanent collection of a small women's college to end up on the block at Christie's.

I've been shirking my obligation to give you my opinion of James Cuno's new book (above), Who Owns Antiquity?, because I wasn't relishing the prospect of slamming it.

But on Monday, an e-mail hit my inbox from the book's Princeton University Press publicist, sending me links to other articles mentioning the book (including a Wall Street Journal review that found it "excellent" but marred by "surprising factual errors"). The imprudently eager publicist wrote me:

A while back you expressed some interest in Jim and his book and I'd be happy to set up an interview or provide any additional material you may need for the blog.

Okay, Jessica, you asked for it. Let me shred this book by focusing on a few key passages. Cuno keeps hammering at these same points over and over and over again:

All of the [source countries'] cultural property laws in force over the past four decades have not stopped---cannot stop---this [looting and destruction of archaeological sites]. They are a failed regime.

---Tell that to the Italians, who recently issued a report (which I can no longer find online) detailing the degree to which looting has been reduced. This is undoubtedly due to stepped up enforcement efforts within their own borders, but the overriding legal framework regarding cultural property also plays an important part in the overall climate of better protection. In the strictest sense, Cuno is correct: Looting (like any other crime) can never be "stopped." But a move in the right direction is a good start.

The best way to preserve the archaeological record...is to encourage scientific excavation...[and] broaden access to their finds through the restoration of partage.

---Cuno argues repeatedly for partage---the old system whereby American museums were allowed to remove and take ownership of some important objects from foreign excavations in which they participated. Those days are gone. In the view of source countries today, "partage" is a polite word for "pillage." Some archaeologists say that certain objects formerly taken under the cover of "partage" had never been authorized to leave the country. The best sharing that American museums can hope for today is a system allowing objects to leave their countries on long-term loan. Given the heightened cultural consciousness of source countries, outright ownership of co-excavated objects is no longer an option.

Here's Cuno's most outrageously inflammatory statement, which he saves for the epilogue:

I question the premise of nationalist retentionist cultural property laws: that it is the right of sovereign nations to legislate the protection of and access to whatever they consider to be their cultural property, that which they claim to be important to their national identities and self-esteem....Antiquities are ancient artifacts of times and cultures long preceding the history of the modern nation-state. And in all but a very few cases, they have no obvious relation to that state other than the accident of geography: they happen to have been found within its modern borders.

---What gives Cuno the right to dictate to foreign governments what laws they have a "right" to enact about objects within their own borders? Like Cuno, I'd prefer that those laws be modified. And further, I oppose our own country's criminalization of people who import objects that are only considered "stolen" because they violate another country's retentionist laws, which are inconsistent with our definition of stolen property in this country. I think that civil proceedings, not jailings, are more appropriate in such cases.

Other countries' cultural-property protection laws certainly have a political (maybe even an anti-American) agenda. But to dismiss the very real concern and serious commitment of citizens of other nations regarding their cultural heritage, and to insist that their treasures belong to the world despite their countries' laws to the contrary, expresses a degree of insulting condescension and insensitivity that has no place in the director's office of an encyclopedic American museum.
 
Cuno, who is now director of the Art Institute of Chicago, is getting some publicity mileage from his intemperate screed. But I feel it can do neither his own museum career nor the cause of "encyclopedic museums" any good. (Mercifully, he refrains from calling them "universal museums," a vainglorious coinage that lately seems to have gone out of circulation.)

By taking an extremist stance that belittles the deeply felt and legitimate concerns of archaeologists and source countries to preserve archaeological sites and national heritage, he undermines efforts by reasonable people on both sides of the cultural-property divide to arrive at mutually beneficial compromises. And he self-destructively undermines any role he might personally have played in working cooperatively with foreign governments to forge mutually beneficial sharing arrangements.

Except for calling attention to himself, it's a lose-lose book.

Particularly telling is this passage at the end of the indispensable Jori Finkel's NY Times Sunday profile of this self-appointed Cultural Defender of the Western World:

As for Mr. [Philippe] de Montebello's job [as director of the Metropolitan Museum], Mr. Cuno said nobody had contacted him about it. And if the Met were to call?

"It would be impossible not to have a conversation because of the importance of the museum and its role in the profession," he said. (In an e-mail message later that day, he put it somewhat differently: "I have not spoken with anyone at the Met nor do I intend to.")

Philippe's collegial book-jacket blurb notwithstanding, "Who Owns Antiquity?," to my mind, disqualifies Cuno for the premier American museum directorship, where deft diplomacy is a must-have skill.

Before the Fall: Tullio Lombardo, "Adam," ca. 1490-95, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Martin Bailey's report last week in the Art Newspaper about the damage to a 500-year-old panel painting by Domenico Beccafumi at London's National Gallery (which "slipped out of its temporary frame and dropped to the ground," breaking in half) brought to mind a major 2002 mishap at the Metropolitan Museum---the unfortunate fall of "Adam," a 15th-century sculpture by Venetian artist Tullio Lombardo, purchased by the Met in 1936.

According to an account by then NY Times reporter Celestine Bohlen, the marble nude "crashed to the ground in the Velez Blanco Patio..., scattering its arms, legs and an ornamental tree trunk into dozens of pieces." The museum said then that a side of the pedestal appeared to have buckled, causing the sculpture to topple over.

It was then said to be reparable, and Bohlen quoted director Philippe de Montebello's reassuring words:

The figure will stand again on a solid pedestal, and frankly only the cognoscenti will know.

So far, nobody knows: It hasn't been seen publicly since.

Here's what Met spokesperson Elyse Topalian told me when I inquired about the Lombardo guy:

It's still in conservation. The process is a long one and we don't have a date scheduled as yet for when it will be back on view. I'll keep you posted.

Apparently the fallen "Adam" previously suffered removal from display for a different reason. The Met's website entry for the statue confides:

Prudery led to its removal from display around 1810-19, when the monument was transferred to SS. Giovanni e Paolo.

Meanwhile, the sundered panels of "Marcia," the National Gallery's slippery Beccafumi damaged last January, are already together again and returned to the galleries.

I've become an expert on museum issues, on museum problems, on the history of museums, on the nature and purpose of museums. I expect what I'll be doing will be more museological than art historical. It would be closer to what I would call high art appreciation than art history.

---Philippe de Montebello at his January press conference, announcing his imminent departure from the Metropolitan Museum.

I had been really looking forward to marveling at Philippe Unchained.

He had indicated that he would feel less constrained about speaking out more forcefully on major museological issues once he left his Metropolitan Museum directorship and I was looking forward to the end of his self-censorship.

So I was delighted to read, at the beginning of Carol Vogel's article in today's NY Times about Philippe's next chapter---that he would be teaching "the history and culture of museums" at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts...a fine platform for his new bully pulpit.

But then I read the Abu Dhabi part and the consultancy part. Suddenly academic freedom didn't seem so free. As a consultant to "museums abroad that he declined to name," and as another ornament in Abu Dhabi's cultural crown, he'll have the perfect excuse to give free reign to his old habits of reticence and discretion.

We don't exactly know from the Times or from NYU's press release whether Philippe will advise on the megamillion Abu Dhabi museum project. But he'll be teaching there and, according to NYU's press release, he will be "structuring museum placement opportunities for students and graduates." Presumably this will mean a close working relationship with the nascent museums on Saadiyat Island.

Mariët Westermann, director of the IFA and vice chancellor for Abu NYU, alluded to the synergy between the new university outpost and the new cultural district, in her comments to Vogel:

Ms. Westermann said the visual arts curriculum at Abu Dhabi would be "very important," especially because of the ambitious program to build museums in the emirate. Both the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Louvre plan to open satellite institutions in a new cultural district there over the next few years.

In the university's press release, Philippe said:

My courses and seminars will be about ideas, not museum management or practice, but through them I hope to inspire new generations of gifted graduate students in art history to look favorably on opportunities in the museum world of the future."

...which probably means not casting aspersions on places like the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which he once candidly decried in Le Monde.

WNYC had website audio glitches for most of the day. It wasn't just my particular segment that was silenced...dispelling my paranoid fantasy that an ingenious auction minion, embedded at the radio station, had prevented my embeddng this market-analysis podcast on my blog.

Just kidding (I think). Here it is (I hope):

Rufino Tamayo, "Trovador," 1945

The evening Latin American sale on May 28 at Christie's includes one of the four lots from the collection of the Maier Museum, Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA, that were supposed to hit the block last November---Rufino Tamayo's Trovador (above), estimated at $2-3 million. The sales were stalled by a lawsuit filed by opponents, including alumnae. The opponents have now "unsuited" that legal challenge, but maintain that a broader lawsuit still pending in Virginia Supreme Court, which challenges the college's recent transformation from all-women to coed, could also protect the artworks.

Christie's and the administration of the college clearly believe otherwise. In a recent e-mail, Christie's spokesperson Toby Usnik told me:

It is our understanding that the college has clear right to sell the picture with Christie's and we are honored to help them do so.

In an Op-Ed piece last week in the Lynchburg News & Advance, John Klein and Lucy Hooper, the school's administrative president and board president, respectively, wrote:
.

Roman Abramovich

[UPDATE: You can now click on my podcast, at the end of this post. SECOND UPDATE: Oh what a glitchy morning! At this writing, nothing happens when you click the podcast, below. But I'm leaving it up because WNYC says it will fix the problem. We can only hope. THIRD UPDATE: There's now audio up, but it's the podcast for my WNYC auction report from last fall! Patience, Art-lings!]

If you listened this morning to my very rapid-fire analysis of the art market on WNYC, you heard me mention that Roman Abramovich---an orphan, a college dropout and now #15 on the Forbes billionaires list---is said to have bought the two big record-setters in the latest round of New York contemporary art auctions: Francis Bacon's "Triptych," which (at $86.28 million) set an auction record for a work for any contemporary artist; and Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," which (at $33.64 million) set an auction record for a living artist.

The Art Newspaper, which had this scoop on Saturday, reports:

He [Abramovich] has not previously been known to purchase works of art at this level. These purchases demonstrate how the balance of power in the art world is shifting away from the U.S.

Speaking of globalism, Art Newspaper had previously reported that the "Rockefeller Rothko," auctioned last May, had gone to a Qatar sheikh and the Koons "Hanging Heart," auctioned last November, had gone to a Ukrainian billionaire.

Meanwhile, the Big Two auction houses have already laid plans for "Bacon and Freud, the Sequel." Bloomberg reports that Christie's is going to offer in London on June 30 Bacon's "Three Studies for a Self-Portrait,'' estimated at more than £10 million, and Freud's "Naked Portrait With Reflection,'' with a top estimate of £15 million. Bloomberg reports here that Sotheby's has snared Bacon's "Study for Head of George Dyer," for its July 1 London sale, where it is estimated to bring more than £8 million.

Here's the podcast of my three-minute mini-analysis:

Art is long; technology, glitchy.

Due to problems that WNYC had in establishing a phone line, I'm now scheduled to expound on the art market at 8:40 a.m. You'll note that when I inform you about my upcoming radio gigs, I always say, "if all goes according to plan"---because it frequently doesn't!

So tune in, if you dare, to 93.9 FM or 820 AM, or tune in to CultureGrrl later, when I link to the audio.

Can you sum up the current ambiguous state of the art market in a New York four minutes?

New York Public Radio's Soterios Johnson and I will try, if all goes according to plan, tomorrow during the 7 a.m. hour on WNYC's Morning Edition. (I'm not usually even awake at 7 a.m., so we'll see if I can manage to be coherent when caffeinated.)

Those of you who are early risers can hear me at 93.9 FM or 820 AM. Or you can listen live by clicking at the upper left corner of the station's website.

I'll post the audio later tomorrow on CultureGrrl, when the podcast is available.

My guess as to how Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court would rule on the question of whether to reopen the Barnes Foundation case has proven, unfortunately, to be correct.

A bit less expeditiously than he had promised at the Mar. 24 court hearing, Judge Ott yesterday issued his ruling: He stood by his Dec. 13, 2004 decision to allow the Barnes to move from Merion, PA, to Philadelphia, saying that neither the Friends of the Barnes nor Montgomery County had appropriate legal standing to bring a suit requesting that the case be reopened.

In a press release (not online at this writing), Derek Gillman, executive director and president of the Barnes, commented:

This very clear ruling ends the present distraction and we are forging ahead with plans for the new building.

Carolyn Carluccio, deputy solicitor for Montgomery County, said this to me yesterday afternoon in an e-mail:

We are certainly disappointed. I will be meeting with the Chair of the County Commissioners, Jim Mathews, to determine whether it is in the County's interest to pursue an appeal.

There is more than a little irony in this part of judge's ruling:

As the Attorney General and the trustees point out, the County's "special interests" in protecting historical resources and nurturing economic welfare are matters within the purview of the Attomey General's office. That Office...protects the general public, and there is no authority for a second sovereign [i.e., Montgomery County] to participate on behalf of a subset of the general public.

The attorney general's office (as I previously stated in the post linked at the top) did a shockingly inadequate job in protecting the interests of the general public in the Barnes case, as Judge Ott himself scathingly observed in an earlier written opinion. Montgomery County did not seek to discredit the performance of the attorney general's office when it requested reconsideration of the judge's decision, because it did not feel it could properly attack another government entity. I'd call this a "Catch 22."

The Philadelphia Inquirer's report, quoting reaction from Friends of the Barnes, is here. The text of Judge Ott's ruling is here. We can only find it amusing that the judge confides he decided to do a Google search on "The Barnes Foundation," discovering "about 2,590,000 hits." If only he had clicked on Result 37---the CultureGrrl post to which I linked to at the top of this one.

A. Alfred Taubman, Sotheby's former chairman, out of jail and back (as a client) at the auction house last night

Last night was a watershed for Sotheby's, not just because of its many records broken by its Contemporary sale, but also because it was the last day for redemption of the antitrust settlement coupons (issued to compensate clients who were hurt by illegal collusion between Sotheby's and Christie's in setting commission rates). If you still have those pieces of paper, shred them or frame them as souvenirs: As of today, they're worthless.

I don't know how Christie's carried those coupons on its balance sheet, but since Sotheby's is publicly traded, we do know, from its SEC filings, that as of Mar. 31, some $41.8 million of those coupons were unredeemed of the original $125 million, with each auction house then having potential liability for half of those amounts. Sotheby's reflected its $20.9 million share of those unredeemed certificates as a liability on its balance sheet. That means that it should be reporting a one-time windfall equal to the final unredeemed amount in the next quarter. A total of $125 million in coupons was originally issued as part of the antitrust settlement.

A. Alfred Taubman (above), Sotheby's former chairman, who was jailed for his involvement in the commission-fixing conspiracy, was back in good form this month at his old haunts, chatting up other attendees and buying two works at the Christie's Impressionist/modern sale, as he told me when I ran into him before Sotheby's Contemporary sale. He had no clue that this was a landmark day in the antitrust annals. "I wasn't even involved in the operations of the company when I was there," he assured me---the same stance that he (unsuccessfully) took at his criminal trial.

A few other interesting revelations, quoted from the latest Sotheby's Form 10Q:

As of March 31, 2008, the Company had outstanding auction guarantees totaling $301.4 million, the property relating to which had a mid-estimate sales price of $313.8 million. The Company's financial exposure under these auction guarantees is reduced by $41.9 million as a result of risk sharing arrangements with unaffiliated partners. The property related to such auction guarantees is being offered primarily at auctions in May and June 2008. As of March 31, 2008, $88.9 million of the guaranteed amount had been advanced by the Company....

As of May 8, 2008, the Company had outstanding auction guarantees totaling $232.5 million, the property relating to which had a mid-estimate sales price of $239.9 million. The Company's financial exposure under these auction guarantees is reduced by $42.6 million as a result of arrangements with unaffiliated third parties. The property related to such auction guarantees is being offered primarily at auctions in May and June 2008, with the remainder of the property to be offered at auctions in the second half of 2008. As of May 8, 2008, $84.4 million of the guaranteed amount had been advanced by the Company and will be recorded within notes receivable and consignor advances....

At March 31, 2008, consignor advances issued to the one borrower totaling $62.6 million comprised approximately 22% of the net Notes Receivable and Consignor Advances balance. Of this amount, $57.5 million is related to an auction guarantee.

Sotheby's would provide me with no further details about the megamillion loan to one borrower, nor would Bill Ruprecht, its president and CEO, disclose to me the final figure for the amount of the auction settlement coupons that were unredeemed as of today.
Sotheby's stock has perked up a bit since my report last Friday. It was trading at $28.58 as of 12:15 a.m., up 7.04% from yesterday's close.

Why is this artist smiling?

No, the above photo was not taken at the Brooklyn Museum. It's Takashi Murakami, posing in front of his $15.16-million "My Lonesome Cowboy," immediately after last night's Sotheby's Contemporary sale, which set auction records for him and 17 other artists.

When I wrote yesterday about having once seen Robert Rauschenberg at a major auction of his work, it occurred to me that you just don't see artists attending their sales any more. So imagine my surprise when I beheld Murakami (who, happily, has ditched his celebrity stylists and looked very much like an artist), sitting at the back of the saleroom where another example of the raunchiest work in his current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum sold for an astonishing hammer price of $13.5 million ($15.16 million, with buyers premium), trouncing its $3-4 million estimate. (It comes from an edition of three, plus two artist's proofs.) The price was more than five times his previous auction record. Murakami told me later that none of his works had ever sold for that much privately either.

The artist returned the favor to Sotheby's by himself purchasing the last lot in the sale, Yoshitomo Nara's "Light My Fire," for $1.16 million, setting an auction record for a sculpture by that artist. He looked excited and gleeful as it was hammered down to him.

You can see the similarity in these two Japanese manga-influenced artists' sensibilities. Here's Murakami's new acquisition:



The $362.04-million total made this the highest grossing auction in Sotheby's history. It also outdid Christie's $348.26-million Contemporary total of the night before. But Sotheby's offered 83 works, compared to only 57 at Christie's. After some exciting bidding wars during the first half of the sale, some of the fizz was lost and 10 works went unsold.

The big success was the $77-million hammer price for Francis Bacon's "Triptych," against an estimate of approximately about $70 million. Setting an auction record for any work of contemporary art at $86.28 million (with buyers premium), it sold to a private European collector. Sotheby's has not, at this writing, provided the customary geographic breakdown of buyers.

Also astonishing was the $21-million hammer price (against an estimate of $6-8 million) for a golden Yves Klein, "MG9." At $23.56 million with premium, purchaser Philippe Ségalot, the Paris/New York dealer, set an auction record for the artist. Sotheby's joy was tempered, though, by the failure of the lot with the night's second-highest estimate---a Mark Rothko that had been estimated to bring "in excess of $35 million." It went unsold at $33 million, and, what's worse, the catalogue disclosed that the auction house itself had a direct ownership interest in it.

The one poignant moment of the sale occurred when this lot came around the turntable:


Robert Rauschenberg, "Overdrive," 1963

I had to fight back tears, seeing the earthbound stop signs that, to me, signified the stopping of Rauschenberg's life, and the bird at the top, representing his soul flying free. In writing about another work with (according to the auction catalogue) "many of the same elements" as "Overdrive," Calvin Tomkins once quoted Rauschenberg as saying this:

Look at that. The birds have freed the stop signs.

It set a new auction record for the artist. So what. Read Barbara Rose's appreciation from yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and forget about the financial appreciation.

For the complete price list, go here. The sale was 88% sold by lot, 86.8% sold by dollar value. The hammer total was $320.64 million---within the presale estimate of $288.05-356.65 million. Unless you include the buyers premium (which you should not, since the estimates don't include it), the total did NOT exceed the presale estimate---no matter what Sotheby's, the NY Times or Bloomberg tell you.

Top Lot: Mark Rothko, "No. 15," 1952

You've probably already heard about the bravura performance of Christie's in pulling off a highly successful contemporary art auction last night:

---Second-highest contemporary art auction total ever: $348,263,600
---Record auction price for a living artist, set by Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping": $33,641,000
---Auction records set for seven more artists
---Top lot: Rothko's "No. 15," 1952 (above), $50.44 million, the second-highest auction price for that artist (behind the $72.84-million Rockefeller Rothko).

The sale was 95% sold by both dollar value and number of lots, which sounds like a boom, not a bursting bubble. That perennial bear, collector Eli Broad, was quoted at the end of Carol Vogel's NY Times report as saying:

The market is defying gravity. It was amazing.

But wait. I'm amazed too! Did I really see Vogel correctly compare presale estimates to HAMMER PRICES (as distinguished from final prices, including buyers premium), no fewer than FIVE TIMES? Could it be that my point about the need to compare apples to apples is, at last, being taken?

Now if she would just do the same for sale totals. Vogel wrote:

Only three of the auction's 57 lots failed to sell, bringing the evening's total to $348.2 million, well above its $282 million low estimate but below the $398.6 million high.

Actually, the hammer price total, which is the only one that should be compared to the presale estimates, was $309.01 million---still comfortably within the estimate range, but not, as Bloomberg has it, "closer to the top" of the range. That assessment only works if you misleadingly compare presale estimates (which DON'T include the buyers premium) to sale totals that DO include the buyers premium---the apples-to-oranges fallacy.

Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff, do you read me?

For Christie's complete results, go here.

On we go to Sotheby's tonight, home of the highest-estimated work in this spring's New York evening sales---Francis Bacon's "Triptych," which the auction house hopes will bring around $70 million. The entire sale is estimated at $291.05-360.65 million, making this a potentially close horse race with its archrival.

John Schaefer, referee for WNYC's "Soundcheck Smackdown"

The undefeated CultureGrrl and my debate opponent, arts consultant Barry Hessenius, floated like a butterfly but didn't sting like a bee as we danced around the unanswerable question posed at yesterday's half-hour New York Public Radio Soundcheck Smackdown (for which I borrowed the empowering Wonder Woman costume from the Metropolitan Museum's display case).

Host John Schaefer (above) asked us who should lead arts organizations---veterans or rookies? The answer, of course, is, "It depends"---on the merits of the candidates and the particular needs of the arts organization. Duh.

Speaking of which, what were all those chauffered limos doing yesterday blocking the entrance driveway of the Metropolitan Museum's uptown outpost, the Cloisters? A security staffer told CultureSpouse, who was taking CultureMom there for a visit, that the Met's trustees were cloistered inside---something that he said very rarely happened in Washington Heights (instead of Fifth Avenue). A Philippe-succession conclave, perhaps? Or just a pleasant change of scenery?

But back to WNYC's unglamorous studios in Lower Manhattan: In the course of playing rope-a-dope, I did make some comments about the Met succession, as well as general remarks praising the Clark Art Institute's director, Michael Conforti; maestros Riccardo Muti and Pierre Boulez; the Morgan Library & Museum's new director, William Griswold; and J. Paul Getty Trust president James Wood (who, unbeknownst to me, while my ears were stuffed between headphones, had just instituted some stringent cost-cutting measures).

What punches did I pull in this title bout? You'll just have to click below and listen:

Robert Rauschenberg at MASS MoCA during installation of "The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece," 1999

The above publicity image of the late Robert Rauschenberg is the only photo of anyone other than my own family that I display in my house. (It's taped to a wall in my office.) He inspired me with the breathtaking audacity of his improbable but irresistible inventions and his feisty, rebellious spirit. As a speaker, he was as impetuous and unpredictable as his art. And I happened to be a few feet away during the legendary moment at the conclusion of the 1973 Robert Scull auction at Sotheby Parke Bernet, when Rauschenberg confronted the collector and declared: "I've been working my ass off just for you to make that profit!"

He was one of those artists who always came back into relevance, for good reason: His was a youthful, constantly questing spirit. Just a few months ago, at the press preview for the opening of the new New Museum, senior curator Laura Hoptman told me that Rauschenberg was one of of the main forebears for the artists in the new facility's very favorably received inaugural show, consisting of collages and assemblages by a new generation.

I can't agree with Michael Kimmelman, who seems to imply in his NY Times obit that the above piece, installed at MASS MoCA in 1999, "did not live up to his earlier achievements." I regarded it as an astonishing, ingenious tour de force.

Henri Loyrette, Director of the Louvre

How has director Henri Loyrette changed the Louvre since the Pierre Rosenberg days?

That's what a BusinessWeek magazine reporter based in Paris wanted to know when she called me yesterday for a phone interview. So I ranted about what I've called the "Louez le Louvre" phenomenon---the proliferating megabucks rental shows, whereby the French museum now raises millions of dollars for its endowment and capital improvements, at the expense of sister institutions around the world. Those borrowers accede to this monetization of museum collections in order to snare exhibitions that typically feature a few major masterpieces, a lot of B-listers and, most importantly, the Louvre's glittering (but now somewhat tarnished) aura.

The Paris palace isn't the only "universal museum" playing this game, nor was it the first: The financially pressed State Hermitage Museum has been using its collection as a cash cow far longer. But Loyrette has raised the stakes to new and disturbing heights, dispatching (or soon to dispatch) megabucks Louvre-branded displays to Atlanta, Indianapolis, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Denver, Quebec, Istanbul, Valencia, Verona and, let us not forget, the planned museum in Abu Dhabi, which is paying $520 million just for the right to use the illustrious museum's name. (I've probably unintentionally omitted a few other stops on the treasures-of-the-Louvre circuit.)

As I pondered all this, it suddenly occurred to me that there is a strange and troubling disconnect in the way the world's premier museums regard cultural property, depending on whether it belongs to them or it is owned by the archaeological source countries where important antiquities have been unearthed. The "universal museums" ardently argue that there should be a free international flow of cultural objects---that source countries should abandon their retentionist cultural-property policies because the objects found within their borders are part of world heritage and rightfully belong to all humanity.

But when it comes to the great works of international heritage in their own encyclopedic collections, some of these same museums are behaving not altruistically but avariciously. They want money---lots of it. And they seem to have few qualms about exacting big fees from sister institutions for works that they traditionally had lent collegially in years past. These masterpieces are also, arguably, a part of world heritage over which they happen to have stewardship. If they want the source countries of antiquities to share their cultural wealth, they should strive to be equally generous---not just with reciprocal loans to cultural property claimants, but with loan shows sent, at reasonable cost, to sister institutions around the world.

As Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello wrote last October in the French newspaper, Le Monde:

Loans must remain free. We understand that certain developing countries require money. But between developed countries, it's unacceptable....I have alliances with all museums. But no exclusivity. In matters of art, I'm a complete polygamist.

But even the Met and the British Museum have not been above using loan exhibitions as cash cows.

Another problem with charging megamillion rental fees is that the lender has to come up with some world-class masterpieces, or the borrowing institution is getting a bad bargain. But if the lender dispatches too many iconic objects to too many places, it is shortchanging its core audience---the visitors who come to the home facility expecting to see those works in the permanent collection galleries.

The typical compromise involves releasing a few superlative pieces to satisfy the renting institution, but also lots of second-tier material. The lending institution's home audience is still unhappy that their masterpieces are frequent fliers---as witness the petition that was signed against the Louvre Abu Dhabi by thousands who expressed their support of an opinion piece written for Le Monde by three prominent artworld professionals, decrying the use of "works of art as currency of exchange."

Knowledgeable people who visit these high-priced traveling shows are also dissatisfied, knowing full well that their renting institutions may be getting some great publicity value from the illustrious lender's imprimatur, but are not getting their money's worth in terms of overall quality (unless the lender is sending only A-list material, drawn exclusively from permanent collection galleries that are closed for renovation).

Rent-a-show may produce great gains for the lending institution's endowment and capital budget. But for the art-loving public, it's a lose-lose transaction. And works reserved for the highest bidders may be unavailable for more serious projects.

Financial exigencies should not trump scholarly imperatives.

Hey, I'm still on the right side of 60!

Nevertheless, I've been asked (partly on the strength of my Elderfield Too Elderly? post) to take the old folks' side in a debate tomorrow on WNYC, New York Public Radio, on the relative merits of youth vs. age in cultural organizations. I warned Soundcheck associate producer Brian Wise that although I oppose age-ism, I have a nuanced view on this subject: Over-65s who are still at the top of their game should not be put out to pasture, but new blood has some good points too!

That waffling apparently did not disqualify me. So (if all goes according to plan) you can hear me tomorrow live at 2 p.m. on Soundcheck. The youth-will-be-served side of this question will be taken by Barry Hessenius, a nonprofits consultant and speaker, who authored a 2007 book, Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits. Does he play hardball in debates too? Calling Chris Matthews (whose election-related topic on Friday happened to be "Age and race---new focus of 2008?).

Wait! Stop the broadcast! Hessenius' bio informs us that he "represented clients in the music and television industries from 1971 to 1983," after receiving his law degree. That would definitely make him (gasp) even more superannuated than CultureGrrl!

Listen tomorrow at 2 p.m. on 93.9 fm, or hear the live webcast here. I'm not sure yet if I will be able to embed the audio on my blog. If I can, you KNOW I will!

Francesco Rutelli (second from right) at a New York press conference last June where he announced the supposed signing of an accord with Princeton University

Apparently Francesco Rutelli's penchant for pressing for repatriation through the press, rather than through quiet, collegial diplomacy, survives his terminated tenure as Italy's culture minister.

On Friday, the Associated Press made the unexpected announcement that the Cleveland Museum had agreed to send objects back to Italy:

Italy has reached a verbal agreement with a U.S. museum in Cleveland for the return of artifacts Rome says have been looted or smuggled out of the country, a government lawyer said Friday.

Talks between Italy and the Cleveland Museum of Art are near their final stage, said lawyer Maurizio Fiorilli, who has helped negotiate the return of Italian antiquities from several other U.S. museums....

But Fiorilli stressed that that deal was still only a verbal one, although "we are at almost the final phase" of negotiations for a written accord. "There are no obstacles from our point of view," the lawyer said.

Dubious from past experience about Italy's unilaterally announced "agreements," I immediately e-mailed the museum, but received no reply until just moments ago (below).

Happily, the estimable Steven Litt of the Cleveland Plain Dealer did the fact-checking and reported Saturday that the accord was as much of a surprise to the museum as it was to me:

"No agreement has been reached, nor has the museum agreed to transfer any objects to Italy," the museum said in a state