June 2008 Archives

Edward Sozanski (above), art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has taken off the kid gloves and put on the boxing gloves, pummeling the proponents of moving the Barnes Foundation from Merion to Philadelphia. In doing so, he is battling his own newspaper's MegaBarnes-friendly news coverage, as well its editorial page's campaign in strong support of the Barnes move.

Desperate times call for desperate measures: The last legal impediments to the move appear to have been removed. Sozanski has been on the right side of this issue all along, but now he's giving full vent to the frustration that so many of us feel about this wrongheaded project.

Some roundhouses from Sock-It-To-'Em Sozanski:

---[Dr. Albert Barnes'] historical and aesthetic legacy is being threatened by a cabal of interests that appear not to appreciate its essential nature.

---The track [is] cleared for the most audacious art heist in American history.

---Unfortunately, in America, history isn't taken seriously unless it can turn a profit. As for aesthetics, it musters about as much force against a balance sheet as a ping-pong ball against a steamroller.

The Friends of the Barnes, standing in front of the steamroller, continue to express their objections to the move and to question the financial viability of the future facility.

I admire their fighting spirit. But I think they're going to be flattened by that steamroller.

Not only is the Art Newspaper's recent report (scroll down) of the contents of the contract between France and Abu Dhabi a rather stale "scoop," but Didier Rykner has just sent me his link to the entire 23-page, French-language text of the contract, which he had posted on his Paris-based La Tribune de l'Art blog back on Oct. 14. So get out your Larousse and peruse the Accord Between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates Regarding the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi.

Malcolm Rogers, director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, signing a 2006 accord to relinquish to Italy 13 antiquities from his museum's collection

(Part I, where I call on the Association of Art Museum Directors to establish guidelines for repatriating certain antiquities, is here.)

American museums cannot be expected to empty themselves of all antiquities with uncertain pasts. Even the most fervent source-country advocates would acknowledge that. For most objects already residing in permanent collections, I recommended (in my above-linked previous "Ceasefire" post) a "cutoff date" for repatriations that would grant repose to objects with documented histories of ownership going back to Apr. 12, 1983, the date when the U.S. passed the implementing legislation that made this country party to the UNESCO Convention. (David Gill of the Looting Matters blog favors 1970, the year when the UNESCO Convention was first promulgated.)

As I also stated, repatriation of works with known provenance going back before 1983 should also occasionally be considered, particularly when museum officials clearly had reason to believe at the time of acquisition that the objects may have left their country of origin illegally, or when there is compelling, specific evidence that the objects were looted and/or illegally exported from a particular country.

Drawing upon the best elements of the various recent antiquities repatriation accords between American institutions and source countries, here are some specific provisions that I believe should be incorporated in guidelines for future repatriation agreements:

---An online list of all the objects to be relinquished, including images and any known provenance.

---A chance to say good-bye. So that interested visitors can get one last look, American museums should announce when the objects will be leaving and should place them on public display.

---Detailed disclosure of why the museum has deemed it appropriate to relinquish the objects. These works had become part of our own public patrimony. We are owed an explanation as to why they are now being permanently sent away. In other words, what evidence indicates that they were illegally exported and/or wrongfully acquired?

---Plans for future cultural cooperation between American institutions and source countries, possibly including reciprocal loans, joint archaeological excavations, educational programs, exhibitions, conservation and research. This is the win-win part of many recent agreements.

---A chance for American institutions to retain possession of some contested objects. The ownership might need to change; the venue might not. Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri, at the recent UNESCO-sponsored cultural property conference in Athens where we were both invited speakers, told me that Italy already has an abundance of objects comparable to those that it insists, on moral and legal grounds, must be returned: "We don't need the objects we have repatriated." Exactly.

My final suggestion is the one that would be hardest to put in place, both logistically and philosophically: Just as they already post World War II-era ownership histories of works in their collections that may have been Nazi loot, museums should consider establishing online databases of antiquities in their collections with problematic post-1983 provenances, to allow legitimate claimants to come forward. The recently established AAMD Object Registry (which still contains no listings at this writing---click "Browse All") is only for NEW acquisitions of antiquities lacking complete provenance after November 1970 (not for works in the museums' EXISTING collections). The thorniest issue, which may not be easily addressed by simple guidelines, is what criteria should be used in determining which claims to grant and which to deny.

The resolution of these issues will be more easily accomplished if the sea-change in acquisitive attitudes represented by AAMD's new acquisition guidelines creates a new climate of international cooperation rather than confrontation. American concessions should be matched by a loosening of source countries' retentionist policies, which make it illegal for any antiquities found within their borders to be sold and which set strict limits on how long their ancient artifacts can be loaned.

A well regulated licit market in professionally excavated antiquities, along with liberalized loan policies, could go a long way towards rendering obsolete the illicit trade in looted booty.

Tadao Ando's first slide for Clark Art Institute lecture

I was in Williamstown, MA, last weekend for the Wall Street Journal, to cover the Clark Art Institute's new Stone Hill Center, designed by Tadao Ando. I attended his pre-opening lecture---an hour-long illustrated tour of his various projects around the world. His first slide (above) related to his commission in Abu Dhabi for a Maritime Museum---one of four starchitect-designed cultural facilities planned for Saadiyat Island.

I can't blog about Stone Hill until my WSJ piece appears. But I can tell you what Ando said about Abu Dhabi to an audience that included James Wood, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust (who, when he was director of the Art Institute of Chicago, had commissioned an Ando-designed Japanese art gallery); and Emily Rauh Pulitzer (whose Ando building for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, received much critical acclaim).

Here's what Ando had to say about Abu Dhabi:

For me it's really a new mystery, because these [the people in the slide] are my audience and I don't know how to relate to them....The date of the announcement [of the museum project] coincided with the day when the soccer team from Abu Dhabi was supposed to compete for the World Cup, which has become a big event. So our presentation became secondary. The leader [said that he] would like to move our presentation to another day and invited everyone to watch the soccer game.

Frank Gehry [architect for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi], ...because he doesn't like soccer, said, "I don't want to watch soccer. I want to present!" We all went to watch the soccer match....Luckily, they won, one to zero, so everybody was...in a jolly mood. And it was announced that the next day would be a public holiday.

So that's the kind of country Abu Dhabi is. With that kind of decision-making process, I'm not sure if it's going to happen or not, but we're moving on...When I was there last time, we tried to talk to the king and the leaders of the country to see if they would be able to build the four large buildings that they had commissioned.

And in other Abu Dhabi news:

---Anna Somers Cocks of the Art Newspaper acts like she's got a scoop in reporting today on the financial details of the contract signed by the governments of Abu Dhabi and France regarding creation of the Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Abu Dhabi (Revealed: Details of Contract between Abu Dhabi and France: The Art Newspaper Obtained a Copy). What am I missing? Cocks says that the agreement was "signed on 7 March 2008," but CultureGrrl (here and here), Le Monde and the Financial Times reported the signing and gave the contract's details a year earlier---in March 2007.

---Abu Dhabi also figured in the long piece by Robin Pogrebin in last Sunday's NY Times---I'm the Designer. My Client's the Autocrat. Pogrebin mentioned the concerns that have been raised about human rights abuses of migrant construction workers in the United Arab Emirates (which include Abu Dhabi). Then she quoted Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, saying this about the Abu Dhabi starchitects (who also include Zaha Hadid):

We're urging them to take steps to make sure they or their contractors are complying with best practices. Typically their response is, "We comply with national laws," and our response to that is, national laws don't cut the mustard.

Cult Statue of a Goddess, 425-400 B.C., to be returned to Italy in 2010 by J. Paul Getty Museum

Earlier this month, the Association of Art Museum Directors took an important first step towards deescalating the protracted antiquities wars that have roiled the Getty Museum, Metropolitan Museum and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, among others. The association at long last promulgated rigorous standards for acquiring ancient objects.

Institutions adopting these rules will, under most circumstances, acquire only objects known to have been legally exported from their countries of origin, or objects with known ownership histories that extend at least back to Nov. 17, 1970---the date of the UNESCO Convention designed to curb illicit import and export of cultural property.

That was the easy part.

Now AAMD needs to tackle the hard part: What should its member museums do about all those objects they already own that wouldn't have entered their collections had the new standard been applied at the time of their acquisition?

This is the issue that has sparked the most acrimonious battles in the culture wars between American institutions and source countries. In recent years, our country's leading museums and universities had, for the most part, already become much more careful about not acquiring antiquities with dicey ownership histories that suggested they might have been looted and/or illegally exported.

But giving up already acquired objects is a far more complicated matter. The Getty, Metropolitan, Boston MFA, Princeton University Art Museum and Yale University have, in the last two and a half years, developed separate agreements to relinquish objects that source countries claimed had improperly left their borders. For the most part, the American institutions were initially resistant to crediting these claims, but eventually yielded to persuasion, pressure and the weight of evidence.

Like decisions on future acquisitions, repatriations from existing collections should be governed by coherent, consistent policies, designed to protect the interests of American museums and their public, as well as to respond to legitimate and reasonable claims by source countries. However, AAMD's members, hoping that the first wave of repatriations may be the last, have shown no inclination to work on developing detailed guidelines for future givebacks.

I think it's only a matter of time before other source countries follow Italy's lead in asking for returns. And, as last week's announcement by Italian Culture Minister Sandro Bondi indicates, Italy is also likely to keep up the pressure. AAMD's members would do well to grapple with these issues proactively, through a unified approach, rather than reactively, on a case-by-case basis.

So what might repatriation guidelines look like?

For starters, I believe that the ownership-history "cutoff date" for relinquishing works already in permanent collections should be more lenient than the 1970 line that's been drawn for future acquisitions. The relevant date for repatriations should be Apr. 12, 1983, when the U.S. passed the implementing legislation that made this country party to the UNESCO Convention.

That's not to say that our museums should purge themselves of all works lacking complete post-1983 provenance. Far from it. But an agreed-upon dividing line is needed to define which works should be potentially subject to compelling source-country claims and which should be granted repose.

That said, repatriation of a work with known provenance going back before 1983 should also occasionally be considered, particularly when the museum clearly had reason to believe at the time of acquisition that the object may have left its country of origin illegally. Good faith counts. So does convincing evidence that an object was likely looted and/or stolen, such as the photographs from the warehouse of Italian antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici of dirt-encrusted objects that eventually found their way into American museums.

COMING SOON: More Guidelines for Repatriation Agreements

Marcia Vetrocq, new editor of Art in America

This just in---a press release from Art in America (not online at this writing), announcing the changes in leadership. Betsy Baker, who has resigned her long-time position as editor, will be editor-at-large "in charge of special projects, which will include book publishing and website development." Website development? Betsy? If there is one aspect of AiA that probably needs some fresh, tech-savvy blood, I'd say it's website development.

As I previously reported, Marcia Vetrocq is the new editor, having begun contributing to the magazine in the early 1980s. She became senior editor in 1998. It's somewhat reassuring that they've promoted from within.

The press release additionally reveals:

Managing editor Richard Vine is assuming the new position, senior editor, Asia, in a further sign of the magazine's commitment to expanding world art-market coverage. Associate managing editor David Ebony will assume full managing editor responsibilities.

No wonder David avoided answering me when I ran into him recently and asked whether there were any changes afoot at the magazine related to the ownership and management shifts at Brant Publications. Fabien Baron and Glenn O'Brien, who were named editorial directors for Brant, will oversee its three publications (which also include Interview and The Magazine Antiques). Vetrocq will report to them.

And here's the bio of Betsy that I wished I had yesterday, when I first reported her resignation:

Trained in art history at Bryn Mawr and Harvard, Baker taught art history at Boston University and Wheaton College. She was managing editor at Art News [under Tom Hess] during much of the 1960s. She received the [College Art Association's Frank Jewett] Mather Award...for art criticism in 1973.

A redesign of AiA will debut with the November 2008 issue.

But the big question is: What's going to happen editorially? I'm disconcerted by the description of Vine's new position as a "sign of the magazine's commitment to expanding world art-market coverage." Art-market coverage? How about just plain art coverage? 

What I do think AiA needs to do is to welcome a wider group of writers and to become more topical and timely, without sacrificing seriousness and scholarship. A significantly beefed-up web presence? Absolutely. Right now, the magazine's website is comatose. Of course, they should also run a blog!

Philadelphia Museum senior curator Joseph Rishel meets the press in NYC

Yesterday's Philadelphia Museum press lunch in New York was notable both for who wasn't there---Gail Harrity, interim CEO and Alice Beamesderfer, interim head of curatorial affairs (whose appointments were announced Friday by the museum here) and also for who was---Joe Rishel, husband of the museum's late director Anne d'Harnoncourt, and the museum's senior curator of European painting before 1900.

Joe presented a lively account of his upcoming Cézanne and Beyond blockbuster (which goes way beyond Rishel's pre-1900 purview to encompass Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden and Jeff Wall). It is, he said, "one of the most ambitious shows I've ever been involved in...not hierarchical, not chronological," but demonstrating dialogues among artists for whom Cézanne was "the big rock in the pond, reverberating."

In his presentation and in conversation with me before the formal program, Joe was in his usual ebullient form---witty, erudite and pumping me for ideas about which shows he might enjoy in New York before the retirement party later that day for the Museum of Modern Art's curator John Elderfield.

He responded enthusiastically to my suggestions of the Jewish Museum's Action/Abstraction show and the Metropolitan Museum's sublime (in the usual sense and the Wordsworthian sense) Turner retrospective. The Met show had occasioned a mad press dash 15 blocks down Fifth Avenue, because its media preview overlapped with the Philly lunch. Rishel had already seen the Turner (which features a major Philadelphia loan, "The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons") at Washington's National Gallery, but said that he loves comparing how the same show is installed in different venues. (Turner opens to the public a week from today.)

When I previously suggested on CultureGrrl that the Philadelphia Museum appoint Rishel as its interim director, signaling continuity, a distinguished colleague of his from another museum e-mailed me to say that "Joe is working feverishly on a wonderful exhibition about Cézanne's influence in the 20th century and beyond....I bet he will be just as happy to see somebody else take on the mantle of acting director!"

Indeed, the one time when Joe's eyes clouded slightly during our chat was when he said this to me about his work on that show:

It's been a lifesaver.

Philippe Vergne
Photo: Cameron Wittig

French-born Philippe Vergne, deputy director and chief curator at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, will become director of the Dia Art Foundation, effective Sept. 15. He succeeds Jeffrey Weiss, who left the Dia in March, after only nine months, having become disenchanted with the administrative side of the job.

Vergne is best know to New York museumgoers for co-curating the 2006 Whitney Biennial and organizing the recent "Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love," which also appeared at the Whitney after premiering at the Walker.

The Dia's press release (not online at this writing) describes the foundation as a "complex organization" with a museum in Beacon, NY, long-term installations in New York City, the western U.S. and Long Island, and "a dynamic contemporary art program in New York City, for which it is searching for a home."

It's good to know that the Dia's effort to reestablish itself in its native city continues. But it's hard to understand why it's taking so long. Might there be any extra room in that big new museum facility planned for the Meatpacking District?

This is truly the end of an era. Betsy Baker, editor of Art in America magazine since 1974, has resigned. Marcia Vetrocq, one of five senior editors, has become the new editor. According to my source at AiA, where I am a contributing editor, Betsy will continue working on projects for the magazine and will remain on the masthead (possibly as editor-at-large). There is no official announcement at this writing.

Working at Art in America, shortly after Betsy arrived as editor, was my first art-related gig in the mainstream media. Critics Roberta Smith and Peter Schjeldahl were among my officemates, as was the artist Scott Burton.

I learned more about good journalism and good writing from Betsy than I ever did at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was a notoriously exacting (if exasperating) editor: I could never get away with any shortcuts, omissions or sloppy verbiage when she wielded the pencil. So I was compelled to be as meticulous in my research and writing as she was in her editing.

Betsy is intellectually brilliant, with a passion for contemporary culture. But she never sought the spotlight for herself, keeping a low public profile while devoting long hours to the excellence of her magazine.

When I recently saw AiA's publisher Peter Brant appearing on the Charlie Rose Show with his wife, model Stephanie Seymour, and Louis Vuitton's Marc Jacobs (where they talked about changes in another of Brant's publications, Interview), I could only wonder what might soon happen at AiA. I don't know if the recent change in regime at Brant Publications was a factor in Betsy's resignation, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Perhaps it's fitting that the theme for the current issue of the magazine (above) is "Art & Politics."

UPDATE: More here.

Sandro Bondi

Just when you thought the remaining antiquities in your museum's permanent collection might be safe, along comes this announcement from the Italian Ministry of Culture. (The date on the ministry's website, June 19, 2007, is a misprint; Bondi was named culture minister only last month.)

Here's the translated announcement:

The minister of culture, Sandro Bondi [above], announces that he has reconstituted the "Committee for the Restitution of Cultural Property," which has the task of examining all the questions relating to the recovery of the Italian works of art that are found in other countries, within the overall political context of cooperation and cultural exchange.

He is reconstituting the committee "to confirm the desire to give new and stronger impetus to the activities of recovering art works to protect the Italian cultural patrimony," according to the announcement. Is he dusting off Rutelli's little list?

All of this points to a new CultureGrrl cultural-property post:

COMING SOON---Towards a Ceasefire in the Antiquities Wars: The Next Step

Here's the account in today's Philadelphia Inquirer of yesterday's Anne d'Harnoncourt tribute. And here's the newspaper's online photo slideshow of the event.

The reattributed, renamed self-portrait, "Rembrandt Laughing"

Okay, so I'm not a Rembrandt expert. Last October, I looked at the photo of the above painting and imprudently wrote:

My gut reaction, from a lifetime of gazing at Rembrandts, is "not" [as in, "not a Rembrandt"] but I'm certainly no specialist. There's always that time-honored category for new "discoveries"---Great Artist on a Bad Day.

Now the Associated Press reports that some true experts have given this painting a thumbs-up, not to mention a new title. It's now called, "Rembrandt Laughing"---a more appealing appellation than "The Young Rembrandt as Democrates the Laughing Philosopher." That's how it was catalogued, attributed to "follower of Rembrandt," when it was snapped up eight months ago by an anonymous buyer for £2.2 million. The auctioneer then was Moore, Allen & Innocent of Norcote, England, a firm that counts "agricultural and rural services" among its diverse departments. "Innocent" indeed.

Now the mirthful master has attracted the eye of at least one big-time auctioneer: Jan Six, old masters expert for Sotheby's, Amsterdam. He informed the AP's Anrica Deb that whereas Rembrandt's paintings appear on the market infrequently, a self-portrait by him is "absolutely unique---not in my lifetime." Six declined to give Deb a figure for the reattributed painting's value, but William Noortman, whose Noortman Master Paintings was acquired by Sotheby's in 2006, showed no such reticence. His guess: $30-40 million.

The Rembrandt Research Project was involved in reevaluating the painting's authorship. It announced in its press release:

It was subjected to an exhaustive examination by the Rembrandt Research Project in association with a British laboratory [Nicholas Eastaugh, London]. It has now been established on a range of technical and stylistic grounds that this is an authentic early work by Rembrandt dating from around 1628.

The RRP's head, Ernst van de Wetering, who published a 23-page analysis of the painting, was quoted by AP extolling it:

It has an incredible presence. The light has the most natural quality of light you can think of...and I love the naturalness of the laughing.

So is the bargain purchaser now going to cash in on his good fortune by dispatching his find to Sotheby's, Noortman, or some other agent?

I have a question pending with Sotheby's and I'll update if there's any news.

In the meantime, the work is on loan at the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, where it is being displayed until June 29 or July 20, depending on which date on its website you believe. (Go here, click on "Exhibitions" and then "What's On.")

Do I sense a Martin Bijl restoration in its future (shades of St. James the Greater, sold by Sotheby's, January 2007)?

Today at 6 p.m. is the special program on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum in tribute to its late, great director, Anne d'Harnoncourt. If her widower, Joe Rishel, who is listed on the program, does decide to speak (as stated in this Philadelphia Inquirer item), there had better be lots of tissues on hand.

I'd be there, if I didn't have to leave here early tomorrow morning for a mainstream-media assignment, located a nearly four-hour drive in the opposite direction.

You go for me.

Damien Hirst with "The Golden Calf"
© Damien Hirst. Photo: Prudence Cumming

Less powerful, less high-profile artists might not get away with it, but Damien Hirst has just dealt a body blow to the gallery system. What's more, his New York and London galleries (Gagosian, White Cube) are going along with it, even to the extent of supplying supportive comments for Sotheby's press release.

The artist-provocateur is consigning directly to Sotheby's, London, an as yet undisclosed number of new works (created within the last two years), for a two-day auction, Sept. 15-16, that's been given its own Hirstian title: "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever."

This bit of performance art will "document the full breadth of the artist's creative output," according to the press release, but the only lot announced thus far is "The Golden Calf" (above), a formaldehyde-sotted bull crowned with a solid gold disc, estimated to bring £8-12 million. Why not just call it, "Hedge Funder's Trophy"? (Don't get me wrong: I greatly admire Hirst's work, unlike that of another megabucks artist who logically could be next in line to create his own auction line---the Buyer's Premium Series?)

Although Sotheby's clinched this coup, Christie's certainly isn't averse to being an artists' best friend. When I did my Tricks of the Auction Trade piece a year ago for the Wall Street Journal, I quoted Marc Porter, Christie's president, expressing receptivity to the notion of artists' direct consignments: "It wouldn't surprise me at all if artists demanded numerous channels of distribution for their own work," he then told me.

Whatever happens, this Hirst First (different in both scope and character from his 2004 Pharmacy auction at Sotheby's) could well mark a sea change from the hegemony of the paternalistic gallery system to an artists-doing-it-for-themselves alternative. Hirst said it best:

It's a very democratic way to sell art and it feels like a natural evolution for contemporary art. Although there is risk involved, I embrace the challenge of selling my work in this way. I never want to stop working with my galleries. This is different. The world's changing. Ultimately, I need to see where this road leads.

Gagosian, the New York gallery, gave this bull-inspired statement to Sotheby's for journalistic consumption:

As Damien's long-term gallery, we've come to expect the unexpected. He can certainly count on us to be in the room with paddle in hand.

But Larry, will that hand be in your lap or in the air?

Okay, all you newshounds who are clicking on CultureGrrl today because of this post on mediabistro's blog, UnBeige. I didn't (as suggested by Steve Delahoyde) "predict" that Maxwell Anderson, Michael Conforti or Timothy Potts WILL become the next director of the Metropolitan Museum. What I did say in Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met? is that they are MY OWN picks of who would be best for the job. (Don't you just love it when journalists get a taste of their own misquote medicine?)

If anything, I'd predict that the first two are unlikely to get the Met. They are my "dark horses," as previously described. I was just throwing my considered suggestions into the mix, in case any Met trustees actually view my blog, which tends towards the scarlet (rather than "unbeige") part of the spectrum.

Maybe mediabistro should stick to what it knows best: Who should replace Tim Russert? They even have a readers' poll. Hey, now THAT'S an idea!

On second thought, Met Museumologists, let's not even go there.

Arshile Gorky, "The Artist and His Mother," 1926-36, Whitney Museum

It's a generous but highly unusual gesture---a masterpiece-for-a-day loan to the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), on the occasion of the 40th-anniversary celebration of St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral, New York.

Tomorrow, the Whitney Museum's iconic Arshile Gorky painting, "The Artist and His Mother" (above) will be temporarily inserted into a larger exhibition, Art @ the Cathedral: Giving Form to Faith, which runs at the cathedral, 630 Second Ave., to June 24.

According to the church's announcement:

It is especially fitting that "The Artist and His Mother" will be exhibited at the Eastern Diocese as this year is the 60th anniversary of Gorky's death, making the Whitney Museum's loan particularly significant to the Armenian-American community....

"It is a great honor for the artists who undoubtedly have been influenced by Gorky to be exhibited side by side with this iconic painting," ... [Vicky] Hovanessian [curator of the exhibition] added. "The Armenian-American community holds this painting as a poignant symbol of Armenian cultural heritage, and the Whitney Museum has enabled us to display this masterpiece in an Armenian institution."

I'm really on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand about this: Dispatching one-day loans raises security and conservation issues, as well as questions about the seriousness of purpose for which they are deployed. On the other hand, it imparts a new, living context to the art and an expanded sense of its meaning and power.

Assuming that all due care is taken, I think I lean towards the latter view in this instance.

Roman Sarcophagus representing a Dionysiac village festival, 290-300 A.D.
J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu

As I previously mentioned here, the Getty Museum's recent announcement that it had acquired a 3rd century A.D. Roman sarcophagus (above) reminded me of the shock I felt last February in perusing the two-year old reinstallation of the renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. According to the museum's recent press release:

The sarcophagus will form the centerpiece of an installation focusing on wine and wine-making in antiquity, featuring objects in the collection that were used for storing and drinking wine.

Thus, alcoholic beverages will join such hot-button topics as "Men in Antiquity," "Animals in Antiquity" and that old favorite, "Gods and Goddesses," as the superficial themes demeaning the Getty's serious holdings. Almost the entire collection is arrayed in this manner.

Of all the bad-news legacies left to the Getty by its former antiquities curator, Marion True, the simplistic, mindless reinstallation of the museum's important antiquities collection strikes me as the most inexcusable.

Judge for yourself. Here's one of the groupings from the "Gods and Goddesses" gallery, jumbling together everything from a Greek oil jar with Paris and Helen, 420-400 B.C., on the left, to a miniature Roman head of Venus, 100 A.D., on the lower right. In the center, the two large rectangular objects are a pair of altars with Aphrodite and Adonis, Greek, made in Taras, South Italy, 400-375 B.C. It doesn't matter whether or how they relate to each other; only that they fit the overriding theme and can be attractively arranged in a display case:



And here's the entire text of the wall label introducing the "Gods and Goddesses" mishmash. You decide whether this satisfies your desire for intellectual and aesthetic insight:

Ancient life revolved around religion and the worship of gods and goddesses, who inspired some of the greatest works of art. The Greeks and Romans believed that the gods lived on Mount Olympus and that they looked and behaved like humans. Although distinguished by their immortality and great powers, the Olympian deities developed friendships, fell in love, committed adultery, felt anger and jealousy and suffered losses. Many holy days were set aside for religious festivals and activities. Honors were paid and gifts were given to the gods to thank them for blessings received and to ensure future good fortune.

Except for the adultery part, it all seems keyed to 4th graders. And so it goes throughout the Getty Villa, except for one well conceived orientation room that attempts to give visitors some of the historical and art-historical background so lacking among the objects themselves.

Janet Grossman, associate curator of antiquities, told me during my visit that Marion True was the "guiding force" behind the move from a chronological installation to a thematic one, because it was deemed "very popular with the public" when a simllar approach was tried for the 1994 show of the Fleischman Collection, before those objects (some of which have now been relinquished to Italy) were acquired by the museum.

Grossman added:

Basically, if you're a curator and you have your ear tuned to your visitors, you know that most of them do not have a background in ancient Greece or Rome. Could they really care less if something is from the Archaic Period or the Iron Age or the Geometric Age?

Maybe. Maybe not. But this "give 'em what they want" philosophy, which refrains from burdening visitors with too much scholarly nuance, is an abdication of museums' proper role---to educate and elevate, not to pander. Museums need to decide whether they are primarily cultural centers or tourist attractions. And the Getty needs to revisit yet another unwise decision of its former antiquities curator.

In my June 4 post announcing the new antiquities acquisition rules promulgated by the Association of Art Museum Directors, I noted that it would be interesting to see whether the Metropolitan Museum changed its policies to conform with the new guidelines. Its director, Philippe de Montebello, had been an outspoken advocate of AAMD's previous "10-year rolling rule," which said that museums should be free to acquire objects that had clear and acceptable provenance going back 10 years. Now, in most circumstances, the provenance must date back at least to Nov. 17, 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention.

Harold Holzer, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, has now informed me that the Met will indeed adhere to AAMD's new, stricter standard.

Meanwhile, I just checked the AAMD website to see if any objects have now been listed in the organization's new online registry for antiquities lacking complete post-1970 provenance.

The answer: Not yet.

Back row, left to right: Montgomery County Commissioners Joseph Hoeffel, James Matthews and Bruce Castor Jr.

Montgomery County will not appeal Judge Stanley Ott's recent reaffirmation of his previous permission for the Barnes Foundation to move from Merion, PA, the county's communications director, John Corcoran, just informed me. And a spokesperson for the Friends of the Barnes has told me that they would "probably not appeal." [UPDATE: The Friends, an ad hoc concerned-citizens group, have now officially announced that they will not appeal.] The commissioners had held discussions on the question last week. Today was the deadline for filing notice of appeal.

Here are the comments of the two commissioners who were against the appeal. (The third, Bruce Castor Jr., had previously expressed support for an appeal, but was in Ireland and not available for comment.)

---Chairman James R. Matthews:

We've exhausted any real chance of overturning Judge Ott's decision. I just can't see how antagonizing the Barnes Foundation with virtually hopeless litigation will help us negotiate an arrangement where Lower Merion and Philadelphia share the collection.

Commissioner Joseph Hoeffel:

We do not have a reasonable expectation of reversing the four-year-old court decision allowing the Barnes to build a gallery in Philadelphia. Any further appeal of the recent decision denying standing for the county could bring sanctions against the county taxpayers. We should now work with all parties to keep as much as possible of the Barnes operation in Montgomery County.

Good luck with that. I highly doubt that the Barnes is going to "share" the collection (as Matthews suggests) with Merion, except for the horticultural material. The key part of the plan is to move the celebrated art collection to Philadelphia intact, installing it exactly as it was in Merion. Breaking it up among two venues would occasion more howls of protest against doing violence to the donor's already mangled intention.

The county's press release was not online at this writing. But you can read all about the student, Aliyah Martinez (above with commissioners), who won the recent eagle-naming contest.

UPDATE: The press release has now been posted here.

Planned museum in Vilnius, Lithuania
Photo: Zaha Hadid Architects

Yesterday, in announcing that the planned Zaha Hadid-designed museum in Vilnius (above) had just gotten a green light from the Lithuanian government, many news organizations were reporting something similar to what the NY Times published, drawing upon a report from Agence France-Presse:

The museum will build its own collection and display art from the Hermitage and the Guggenheim.

The Times and AFP also said the new museum was a joint project of Lithuania, the Guggenheim and the State Hermitage Museum.

All of this surprised me, because I had thought that the imminent departure of Tom Krens from the directorship of the Guggenheim Foundation would mean, among other things, a scaling back of the Guggenheim's global ambitions (aside from Abu Dhabi) and a rededication to the core mission.

So I checked with Guggenheim's deputy director for external affairs, Eleanor Goldhar, who said:

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation will complete the Vilnius feasibility study this summer. Until the study is complete, there are no further details available about the extent of the Foundation's future involvement in the project. This story originated with Vilnius, not with us. We have no comment on any aspect of their story.

Goldhar also noted that the agreement for the Guggenheim to conduct the feasibility study for the project was signed on July 9 and the work was begun in September, considerably before the February 2008 announcement of Krens' planned departure. The study was commissioned by the recently established Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius (focusing on the art and films by Mekas and his friend and artistic collaborator, George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus art movement). The center would have 2,000 square meters of space in the new museum.

An article in this month's ARTnews, "Viva Vilnius" (not online at this writing), by the magazine's editor and publisher, Milton Esterow, got it right, by quoting Arturas Zuokas, former mayor of the city and the prime mover behind the project. Zuokas said:

We'd like to see it similar to the Guggenheim Bilbao, only a little different. The Hermitage would be the leading partner. WE HOPE [emphasis added] the Guggenheim will become the main manager of the project.

Zuokas added that the museum's 13,000-14,000 square meters of space would include: "2,000 square meters for the Hermitage collection and its contemporary art programs; 2,000 square meters for exhbitions, including what WE HOPE [emphasis added] will be Guggenheim exhibitions; and 300 to 400 square meters for a Litvak Center for Jewish Culture."

That's lots of wishful thinking.

As for the Litvaks, Agence France-Presse reported this, in its article on the museum project;

Lithuania was home to a thriving Jewish community of nearly 220,000 before World War II, 95 percent of whom perished during the Nazi occupation of the country.

As promised in its new antiquities acquisition guidelines, the Association of Art Museum Directors has now created on its website what it calls an Object Registry. You need to read the description below the title to find out that this page has something to do with antiquities:

The AAMD Object Registry provides access to all relevant information known about our members' acquisitions of archaeological material and ancient art lacking complete provenance after November 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import and Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property....For information on individual museums' acquisitions, follow the links to their web sites.

We can only hope that AAMD's member museums DO provide additional information about such objects on their websites. As of this writing, clicking on the AAMD registry's "Browse All" button elicits a statement that "there are no objects in the registry. Please check back again soon."

You know that I will! One object that won't be posted, because its provenance isn't problematic, is the Getty Museum's 3rd century A.D. Roman sarcophagus, an acquisition it announced on June 5, while the AAMD's annual meeting was in progress:

The provenance of the Sarcophagus can be traced back to the 19th century to the Villa Rondinini in Rome. In 1852, it was purchased by François de Corcelle, the French ambassador in Rome, and was in the possession of his descendents in France until 1994, when it was auctioned at Christie's in London. It had been in a private collection since then.

Nonetheless, the details in the press release gave me traumatic flashbacks to my visit to the Getty Villa last February---not because of acquisition issues, but because of installation issues. More on that later.
 
Interestingly, the Indianapolis Museum is credited with developing the database for the new AAMD registry. Max Anderson, Indianapolis' director, has always been the Mr. Technology of the museum world.

And in other AAMD news: Mimi Gaudieri, the organization's long-time executive director, will be stepping down, effective Dec. 31.

The Philadelphia Museum today announced that June 19 will be "A Day of Appreciation for Anne d'Harnoncourt," the museum's late director. The day will feature free museum admission, free Director's Delights audio tours (scroll down to the third on the list of "Art Tours"), and a 6 p.m. public gathering on the Museum's East Terrace for a tribute that will include a performance by the Philadelphia Boys Choir. At 11:30 a.m. the City Council will issue "a resolution honoring Anne d'Harnoncourt's extraordinary leadership and public service."

The official memorial service "to celebrate Anne d'Harnoncourt's life" will be on Sept. 7---what should have been Anne's 65th birthday.

Philippe will soon Exit. Who will hear the trustees say (above): "Welcome to the Met. Enter here"?

My next post on this subject will probably be "Who WILL Succeed Philippe at the Met."

But before that fateful choice is made, let me give the trustees my unsolicited and probably undesired opinion.

I've been procrastinating on this post too long, but Kate Taylor, in today's NY Sun forced my hand, by contacting and scrutinizing all the boldface names that I mentioned in my June 3 post, Succession Obsession: Scuttlebutt at the Met's Press Lunch. Let me hasten to assure you that I don't know for certain if those names are on the list that the Metropolitan Museum's trustees are working with; they are names that Met staffers and/or other knowledgeable sources believe may be in play. Taylor has given my list more credence than it, perhaps, deserves.

Two other names are also in the air: James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre. Loyrette rumors are particularly rampant in Paris, according to a source of mine there. On the other hand, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, has apparently convinced most people that he is REALLY not interested in moving to New York. Taylor adds one other name to the mix, previously unmentioned to me: Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Met's curator of American decorative arts.

I haven't added any new names to my own shortlist, first published in November 2006, more than a year before Philippe's retirement announcement. I've reluctantly removed my sole woman, Deborah Gribbon, former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, mostly because she hasn't been heard from since her 2004 resignation. MacGregor is off for the above-mentioned reason, as well as for making some irresponsibly insulting comments about the Greeks, in connection with the Acropolis marbles controversies.

The widely admired William Griswold is off my list because he looked me in the eye and swore to me over a recent lunch that, as a specialist in old master drawings, he has already landed his dream job as director of the Morgan Library & Museum, and intends to remain there for the rest of his professional life. I'm going to (sort of) take him at his word.

So I'm down to three: Two are dark horses, quite possibly not even on the Met's shortlist. The third now seems to be on everyone's list. As I mentioned in my last "Succession Obsession" post, my list is limited by my knowledge: There are some potential candidates whom I can't consider because I know too little about them. I must also add that I don't know if any of my choices actually want this job.

I can't list my picks in order of preference, because each has pros and cons that, for me, preclude a clear frontrunner. So here, in alphabetical order, are CultureGrrl's Best Bets for the Met:

---Maxwell Anderson: Some may say that after running afoul of some of the Whitney Museum's curators at the beginning of his directorship there, and running afoul of board president Leonard Lauder at the end, Max can't have lunch in his native town any more. This makes him the darker of my two dark horses.

In my view, he's fought his way back from the difficult times and made a success of his directorship at the Indianapolis Museum, while continuing to be a forceful national spokesperson for the field, unafraid to speak out on important but controversial issues.

Of my three picks, Max, because of his stint at the Whitney, is most closely associated with contemporary art---the Met's most glaring weakness. He also had a history at the Whitney of collegial collection sharing. In other words, his record proves that he's well equipped to make at least three of the five changes that I have previously stated should be undertaken by a new Met director seeing the institution with fresh eyes.

On the downside, his laudable ambitions sometimes have a way of outstripping practicality, as in the just-announced scaling back of Indianapolis' plans for a new Art & Nature Park.

---Michael Conforti: The director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, is a low-key titan in the field---collaborative, diplomatic, universally respected. He has recently stepped up to more national prominence, convening a high-level conference in Rome on ways to improve cooperation between Italy and the U.S. that would enhance intellectual and cultural exchange. If he gets the Met nod, the museum will have chosen this year's president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. He is about to open the Clark's new Tadao Ando-designed Stone Hill Center, with galleries and space for the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

There are only two "bad" things I can say about Michael: He's on the wrong side of 60, while the Met trustees are said to favor more youthful candidates. And whenever I run into him at the opening of a new museum facility that I'll be writing about, he tries to spin me about how good the new building is. For his colleagues, that's undoubtedly a plus; for me, it's just annoying! The glorious Berkshires are a hard place to leave; at this stage in his life, Michael may be content to stay put.

---Timothy Potts: Of my three candidates, he's the one I know the least and the one who is discussed the most as a worthy successor to Philippe. There's one big cloud over Potts, who is now director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge---his precipitous, unexplained resignation from the more prestigious and undoubtedly better paid directorship of the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth. A falling-out with the board is widely thought to have motivated this flight. Clearly, the Met's trustees will have to get the full story before reaching a decision.

An archaeologist by training, Potts is intellectually well equipped to deal with cultural-property conundrums, and he gets extra points for having not only a scholarly but also a business background. He recently spoke out on National Public Radio against rampant museum expansion, as part of NPR's exploration of current museological issues, pegged to Philippe's imminent departure. It's a myth, Potts told NPR, "that museums are hoarding in their basements these thousands of masterpieces that no one ever gets to see. It's a myth that they're all masterpieces. The core mission of the institution...is to collect, is to preserve, is to educate in less spectacular ways than the much-hyped exhibitions."

He expressed similar views in his October 2007 Washington Post opinion piece, Beware The Inexorable Drift Toward Populism. There he finessed the contradiction between his stated views and the Kimbell's planned Renzo Piano expansion by saying, "In our case, it's to solve a particular problem: For more than half the year, we have three-quarters or more of our wonderful permanent collection in storage, because the space has to be given to visiting exhibitions."

One thing's for sure: One of the first jobs for whoever gets the premier art museum post in this country should be to create a new "Director's Choices" compilation for the website. The Euphronios krater, famously returned in January to Italy, is still listed as being in the museum's galleries, "Lent by the Republic of Italy"!

Soutine catalogue raisonnée, co-authored by Klaus Perls

Klaus Perls, who died last week at the age of 96, was that rare art dealer whose knowledge of art and the art market was both scholarly and worldly. What's more, as I often had occasion to discover during my early days as an art-market reporter, he was generous, friendly and articulate in sharing all he knew.

A former president of the Art Dealers Association of America, Perls primarily dealt in modern (pre-contemporary) art. He was a specialist in Modigliani and Soutine but was also contemporary artist Alexander Calder's exclusive U.S. dealer from 1955 until the artist's death in 1976. The sidewalk in front of Perls' Madison Avenue gallery was famously adorned by a Calder-designed black and white terrazzo pattern, installed at the dealer's behest in 1970 and restored in 2002.

He also became a footnote in art-law history, as a protagonist in the much cited 1969 case, Menzel v. List---an early Nazi-loot lawsuit involving a Chagall that Perls had bought from a Paris dealer and sold in 1955 to collector Albert List. The court awarded the painting to the World War II-era owner, Erna Menzel. Perls had to pay List the $22,500 appreciated value of the painting, which List had purchased from him for only $4,000. The judges felt that a person in Perls' position should have been able to determine whether he was getting good title or should at least have warned his clients about any uncertainty.

Remembering with gratitude all the things that Perls explained to me when I was trying to understand the intricacies of the art market, I examined the index of my 1982 book, "The Complete Guide to Collecting Art," and saw I had cited him 12 times.

Here, from the book, are some pearls harvested from Perls:

The primary thing that collectors are asking about today is authenticity. They are running scared about forgeries and misattributions. They are terribly suspicious, and I encourage them to be suspicious.

Some books are published to reproduce forged things.

If you find an unsigned Soutine, you can be almost sure it's real [because most Soutines have mysteriously acquired forged signatures].

Enjoying art is a genetically programmed activity in human beings. Some people are born with a certain feeling for quality.

If I get the feeling that people really want to learn, I am perfectly happy to tell them everything I know. If they seem superficial, I clam up.

He might not have told "everything," but I suspect he was at least cordial and helpful to anyone who walked into 1014 Madison seeking knowledge.

The results are now in:

In its 8K-Report just filed with the SEC, Sotheby's reported that its operating income for the quarter ending June 30 with include "a non-recurring income statement benefit of approximately $18 million." That amount represents Sotheby's half-share of the value of unused antitrust settlement coupons (issued to compensate clients who were hurt by illegal collusion between Sotheby's and Christie's in setting commission rates).

A total of $125 million in coupons was originally issued as part of the antitrust settlement. Approximately $36 million in coupons (including Christie's share), which could have been turned in for cash during the year ending May 14, went unclaimed.

It's not like I didn't warn you, procrastinating art-lings!

Anne d'Harnoncourt, the last time I saw her---at the Philadelphia Museum's celebration, January 2007, for "The Gross Clinic" donors

Here's my piece that appeared in the Sunday "Currents" section of the Philadelphia Inquirer---Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love. I felt ambivalent about doing it, only because there are many people who knew her much better than I. But since they asked me, I could only say yes.

Many who knew her felt the need to write about their sense of loss, as you can see from the outpouring of comments in the Inquirer's online Guest Book, set up by the newspaper for readers to share their feelings and remembrances.

At the end of the Philadelphia Museum's own obituary for its late director is a link for donations in her memory. Clicking on that takes you to the museum's general page for online memorial gifts. The tone of this seems off key, making it appear that this cataclysmic event is being exploited as another fundraising gambit.

Something both more profound and more personal seems called for: Perhaps donations should be directed to a specific project chosen for its importance to her. In connection with this, the museum should also do what the Inquirer has done---provide a forum for the museum's community to mourn and fondly remember her. [CORRECTION: The museum already did have an online site for comments when I wrote this, here.]

Perhaps the Philadelphia Museum's new outdoor public space, to be created over the new underground parking garage now under construction behind the main building, should be named the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden, with memorial gifts going towards this art-driven amenity that she championed.

UPDATE: The handling of online donations in d'Harnoncourt's memory has now (hours after I wrote the above) been changed. The language for the link at the bottom of the obit page is now much more fitting:

Donations in her memory may be made to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. These gifts honor Anne's remarkable legacy--helping to sustain and nourish the Museum and ensure the fulfillment of its mission. The gifts have been placed in a restricted fund, and the Museum will work with Anne's husband, Joseph Rishel, to identify a specific, meaningful tribute.

Clicking the link in that paragraph now brings you to a page dedicated solely to gifts "in memory of Anne d'Harnoncourt."

Speaking of Joe, who has organized so many memorable shows as the museum's long-time senior curator of European painting before 1900...I have no idea if he is willing or able to take on this assignment, but designating him as acting director would signal continuity and rededication to all that his wife stood for, undertaken by the man who certainly knew her wishes and worked with her for years in close personal and professional partnership

Drawing of the proposed Downtown Whitney
Courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners

Is Jonathan Borofsky's "Hammering Man" (in orange, above) the perfect accessory for any museum entrance?


Entrance to Seattle Art Museum

By Guest Blogger Martin Filler

Renzo Piano breaks out of the box with his latest Whitney encore, but will it break the museum's bank account too?

There was the unmistakable air of catch-up ball at the press briefing-cum-buffet hosted in the Whitney Museum's boardroom by director Adam Weinberg on Thursday afternoon, more than a month after Nicolai Ouroussoff's NY Times review of Piano's plans for the museum's projected offshoot in Manhattan's Meatpacking District on the Lower West Side.

The lengthy advance access accorded by the Whitney to the country's most influential newspaper was perhaps understandable, but also a foolish mistake. It has caused considerable resentment among journalists offended by the unsavory favoritism of a "first exclusive" newsbreak more befitting the showbiz values of Vanity Fair than a public cultural institution. Given the repeated press beatings the Whitney has endured for decades, you'd think by now it'd be hipper to the predictable fallout from such gratuitous slights.

Apparently someone decided that sharing the Whitney's expansion plans with other writers wasn't such a bad idea after all. But the merciless pecking order of media relations in New York added another subtext to Thursday's event, which was attended by some 20 architectural press B-Listers, including myself. Predictably absent were the three most powerful critics--Ouroussoff, The Wall Street Journal's Ada Louise Huxtable, and the New Yorker's Paul Goldberger--who seldom descend among their lowlier colleagues because of the favored treatment they command. Too bad for them, as there are always nuggets of revealing information to be mined at these things, despite the canned info and gimlet-eyed competitors.

The good news is that Piano's latest scheme---his third, after proposals for the museum's Upper East Side site were shot down by self-serving community opponents---is not only a vast improvement over its wan precursors, but also among the architect's strongest outings of late. This six-story structure, for a full-block plot at West and Gansevoort Streets, marks a noteworthy departure from his customary museum formula of the enlongated box, a parti essentially unchanged since Piano and Richard Rogers' Pompidou Center opened more than 30 years ago.

The Downtown Whitney might be described as a cross between Frank Gehry's InterActiveCorp Building of 2007, a half-mile to the north, and Marcel Breuer's original Whitney of 1966. Combining the faceted, upward-tapering massing of the former with the monolithic hauteur and monumental trapezoidal windows of the latter, the overall effect is somewhat conservative, but that's Piano's appeal for many. (The cladding has yet to be determined, though the architect is leaning toward stone.)

Happily, Piano cannot overcome an incorrigible candor uncommon among architects, though he is likewise incapable of outright indiscretion, thanks to his ingrained Italian respect for la bella figura. At Weinberg's lunch, the architect disclaimed intentional references to Breuer's Whitney, but then let slip that the new structure's massive elevators were "one of many ideas we stole from this building." And a few minutes after his expected nod toward the High Line, which adjoins the expansion site, he more accurately termed this infrastructural fetish object "nothing special, but it's there." Piano's diffident charm and stealthy irony allow him to get away with comments that could derail a lesser career.

The quality of this design is unassailable. Doubtful is the client's ability to raise the $680 million (about two-thirds of which is building costs) needed to bring this ambitious vision to completion. Didn't the Whitney, which has launched more satellites than Cape Canaveral, swear off scatter-site expansion? When one journalist questioned the wisdom of dividing the museum's physical plant, Weinberg optimistically cited the success of London's multi-venue Tate. As Piano might add, "Magari!"---"It should only be so!"

The biggest obstacle will be the $435-million construction tab (certain to rise before the projected completion in early 2013)---a huge amount of money in a faltering economy for donors who (with few exceptions beyond outgoing Whitney board chairman Leonard Lauder) don't wield the financial clout of MoMA's trustees, themselves stretched to the limit by an equivalent capital campaign in better times.

After the lunch, I walked down one of the greatest staircases in all of modern architecture, and felt thankful for Lauder's crafty maneuver in making his recent $131-million gift to the museum conditional on the museum's retaining the Breuer landmark. If yet another Whitney aggrandizement bites the dust, he's guaranteed a pretty nice fallback position.

CultureGrrl adds: In other NYC Renzo Piano news---Yesterday, two stuntmen (one professional, one amateur) perilously but successfully climbed the horizontal rods adorning the exterior of the architect's New York Times building---a 52-story jungle gym that may now require vigilant monitoring.

I guess Christie's lawyers were right in opining that the auction of the Maier Museum's Tamayo would not be impeded by the then pending lawsuit by plaintiffs who opposed Randolph College's decision to admit men and to sell four important artworks from its museum's collection.

The Virginia Supreme Court today affirmed the previous decision by the Lynchburg, VA, Circuit Court, which dismissed the plaintiffs claim that Randolph had breached a contract with current students to remain an all-women's college. The plaintiffs had also contended that if they won their suit, it would protect the Maier Museum's art (a contention that the college's administration disputed).

The judges ruled:

The plaintiffs failed to plead the existence of a clear, definite, and explicit contract between the plaintiffs and the College that required the College to provide a four-year education for the plaintiffs in an academic environment predominantly for women.

One assumes that three more deplorable deaccessions will soon ensue.

Linda Wolk-Simon, curator of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum

At Metropolitan Museum press lunches, I always manage to find someone at my table who's interesting to talk to. That's because everyone who works at the Met is, by definition, interesting. On Monday, I had the good fortune to enjoy an animated conversation with a feisty provocateur whom I'd never previously met at the Met, although she's worked there for 22 years---Linda Wolk-Simon (above), curator of drawings and prints.

Hers was the salacious sensibility behind the most unMet-like section of a very unMet-like upcoming show: Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, Nov. 18-Feb. 16. The museum's press release (not yet online) calls Linda's contribution the "profane" part of the exhibition. The curator, who prefers "erotic" to "profane," proceeded to describe her project to me in unsparingly graphic (but always scholarly) detail.

I now eagerly anticipate a five-foot long rendering of a disembodied penis on a chariot, based on a drawing by Francesco Salviati (whose somewhat more decorous works I had admired at the recent Uffizi show at the Morgan Library and Museum), not to mention depictions of homoeroticism and a Pietro Bertelli "flap print" (below), which flips up to reveal what's underneath a woman's skirt. The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, flashed us that one during his press-lunch presentation, likening it to Marilyn Monroe's famous billowing-skirt moment in "The Seven Year Itch":



"This shows that Renaissance culture wasn't only about neoplatonism," Wolk-Simon told me. "They had sex and they laughed about it."

But the director, while assuring Wolk-Simon that he was "not a prude," had drawn the line, she said, at a work depicting a woman using a dildo by Marcantonio Raimondi, "one of the greatest printmakers in the history of Western art." Nevertheless, Raimondi's "I Modi" (described by the curator as depicting "people having sex in every pose"), engraved from drawings by Giulio Romano, will be gazed upon by Met visitors this fall. Raimondi was briefly jailed for perpetrating these works and the plates were confiscated and destroyed.

To prove he's REALLY not a prude, Philippe, along with actress Isabella Rossellini, will be reading Italian, French and English Renaissance poetry and dialogue at the Met on the evening of Dec. 9. "It will definitely be X-rated," he assured the squeamish scribes.

I assume that Wolk-Simon's "profane" display may be accompanied by a "Parental Discretion" sign, like that at Sabine Rewald's Glitter and Doom at the Met a year and a half ago. (It's notable that women are the ones going farthest out on a limb to break former Met taboos.) Linda already made the mistake of showing some of her selections to her 13- and 16-year-old, who were scandalized that mom was involved in such a project.

Some credit for the less up-tight Met must also go to curator Gary Tinterow's recent Courbet show, which helped set the stage for impropriety by displaying not only the highly explicit "The Origin of the World" (which I reproduced at the bottom of this post), but also the pornographic photo on which it was likely based. Linda declared that her show is "very much in that spirit."

Andrea Bayer, lead curator for the entire Renaissance show (which also includes sections on "Celebrating Betrothal," "Marriage" and (gulp) "Childbirth"), told me that the first three words of its working title had originally been "Love and Marriage," not "Art and Love." But a marketing survey of Met visitors pegged the Frank Sinatra song title as a turn-off. Who knew that they pretested exhibition titles? Maybe they should just abandon all parental discretion and really go for big box office---"Love, Sex and Porn in Renaissance Italy." THAT would get lots of Google hits and maybe even lure a new audience for the art of the Renaissance!

But enough of this dirty talk: For a more responsible rundown of upcoming Met exhibitions that were discussed at this week's press lunch, I commend you to Patrick Cole's account in Bloomberg.

"Restoration Rocks: Fragments of the Guggenheim"

Have you always wanted to wear a piece of the Guggenheim? Now you can!

Construction debris from the restoration of the New York flagship has been recycled into (among other things) a $395 necklace (above). The architectural artifacts are encased in "hand-crafted acrylic."

Hey, it worked for Fallingwater: Go to the very end of my Wall Street Journal article about that other Frank Lloyd Wright fixer-upper, which involved a couple of the same firms overseeing the Guggenheim's makeover. "As a fundraiser," Fallingwater's director, Lynda Waggoner, told me five years ago, the pricey junk jewelry was "an incredible success."

If you don't like your pebbles mounted on silver, how about a pair of Gugg gold cufflinks for $1,500?

Maybe desperate times call for desperate measures.

It was working just fine before, but now the two-day-old addition to the CultureGrrl Songbook---my "Philippe Baby" singing podcast---is causing the whole blog to crash (maybe my career too).

So I've had to take it down, until I figure out how to put it back up again (in the same place, June 2) without these dire repercussions. (If you're lucky, that will be never!) I guess the server has served me right.

I hope this unfortunate glitch hasn't prevented you from accessing today's important post on AAMD's new antiquities acquisitions policy.

UPDATE: Unlike the more discerning of you, David Gill, the Looting Matters blogger, will be delighted to know that my new Metropolitan Museum theme song is back up where it belongs---here.

Dan Monroe, executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum and chairman of AAMD's subcommittee on antiquities acquisition

The Association of Art Museum Directors has just taken a giant, astonishingly progressive step forward in the deescalation of the antiquities wars, with its just issued Report on the Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art. This is NOT the usual wishy-washy, weak-willed AAMD whitewash that typically made tentative suggestions but basically left members free to do as they pleased. There has been a dramatic seachange here.

The new report:
---significantly tightens the guidelines for acquiring antiquities
---gives AAMD a startlingly proactive role in insuring transparency of antiquities acquisitions
---strongly recommends that source countries do their part by permitting the legal sale and export of some archaeological material.

Here's the biggest change from previous AAMD policy:

Member museums normally should not acquire a work unless provenance research substantiates that the work was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970 or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970. The museum should promptly publish acquisitions of archaeological materials and ancient art, in print or electronic form, including in these publications an image of the work (or representative images in the case of groups of objects) and its provenance, thus making this information readily available to all interested parties....

The museum MUST [emphasis added] prominently post on the AAMD website, to be established, an image and the information about the work...and all facts relevant to the decision to acquire it, including its known provenance.

AAMD's former guidelines had recommended that works with "incomplete provenance" not be acquired unless they had been out of the country of origin for "a period of 10 years." But, in typical AAMD fashion, the organization stated that "each member museum should determine its own policy as to length of time and appropriate documentation."

As I had previously observed, this rolling 10-year rule improperly institutionalized the time-honored practice of thieves who let hot merchandise cool off for a decent interval before marketing it. Nevert