Follow-Ups: Guggenheim, Lascaux, Vuitton, Qatar, Shelby White, Acropolis Museum

Because I've been posting less, I've dropped the ball on a number of recent developments on stories that we've been following. Here's a quick catch-up rundown:

---Jacques Steinberg of the NY Times reports that "construction workers have begun dismantling the scaffolding that has encased the Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for nearly three years." I recently learned from a construction-company source that a ceremony related to this major makeover is scheduled for Sept. 22.

But that doesn't mean that the restoration is almost done. Eleanor Goldhar, the Guggenheim's deputy director for external affairs, acknowledged the Sept. 22 event, but told me: "No completion date is confirmed to me yet." And while part of the Guggenheim at the end of June looked like this (freshly painted, but with visible flaws, such as the chipped edge to the right of the street sign)...



...the bulk of it still looked like this (my shot of the not-so-grand entrance):



---UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, at its meeting earlier this month in Quebec, issued an ultimatum to the French administrators of Lascaux, the famed prehistoric site in Dordogne. WHC called on France to address expeditiously the serious condition problems afflicting the renowned cave paintings, or else risk seeing its iconic but publicly inaccessible site placed on next year's list of World Heritage in Danger.

According to a press release (not online) from the ad hoc International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux, the WHC has instructed Lascaux's administrators to:

• Make an impact study prior to any further interventions in the cave.
• Invite a WHC mission inside Lascaux to examine the current conditions of the cave.
• Submit to the WHC a conservation report by February 1, 2009 on the specific causes of the damage to the paintings with a view to considering, in the absence of substantial progress in finding out the cause of the damage to the art, the possible inscription of the cave on the 2009 List of World Heritage in Danger.

I could find no information about this development on the WHC's website; my e-mailed requests for WHC's report or comments has not yet been answered. But John Lichfield of the Independent has the story about the recent Lascaux lashing.

---Donn Zaretsky of the Art Law Blog comments on my post about the Vuitton-Murakami Morass and offers his legal analysis (with which reasonable lawyers and bloggers may disagree) of the litigation over the sale of limited-edition canvases at LA MOCA.

---James Reginato in W magazine discusses another of the Middle East's planned new museums---the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar. Reginato reports:

Qatar has been just as ambitious [as other Middle East venues] in its aspirations to become a cultural center, but by starting with a focus specifically on Islamic culture, the country has been doing it in a more homegrown way. Unlike Abu Dhabi, furthermore, Qatar is not renting art....

During the past decade, representatives of the Al-Thani family---most famously, an art- and antiquities-obsessed cousin of the Emir, Sheikh Saud---have purchased almost every significant piece of Islamic art that has come on the market. Meanwhile, planning for the country's other major institution, a Qatar National Museum designed by Jean Nouvel, is well under way.

---The Shelby White divestments continue: Maria Petrakis of Bloomberg reports that the American collector, who recently relinquished nine antiquities to Italy (with a 10th to be dispatched in 2010), has now "agreed to return two antiquities from her private collection to Greece. The section of a tomb stele, dating to the early 4th century B.C., and the bronze calyx wine bowl from 340 B.C. will be returned this month."

I particularly like the fact that the stele fragment will be reunited with its lower segment---a nice small-scale precedent for you-know-what.

Speaking of which, Marbles Reunited, the British group lobbying for reassembling the sundered Parthenon frieze, announces that it has named a new campaign director, Thomas Dowson.

---Lots of journalists have been reporting that the New Acropolis Museum in Athens will open in September. But my source at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture tells me the much delayed event won't happen until "late 2008 or early 2009" (unless they postpone again!).