September 2008 Archives

Number One: MoMA's director, Glenn Lowry

Patrick Cole in today's Bloomberg, citing this article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (for which you'll need to purchase a day pass, if you don't subscribe), reports that the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry, was "the best-paid chief executive of a U.S. nonprofit art institution last year, with a total compensation package [including benefits and expense allowance] of $1.7 million in 2007."

I did searches on "art," "gallery" and "museum," regarding salaries (not counting any other perks), and found that these were the highest-paid art museum directors listed in the Chronicle's (incomplete) survey of data from 2007:

1) Glenn Lowry, MoMA
2) Peter Marzio, Houston Museum of Fine Arts
3) Philippe de Montebello, Metropolitan Museum
4) Malcolm Rogers, Boston Museum of Fine Arts
5) Michael Shapiro, High Museum
6) James Cuno, Art Institute of Chicago
7) (The late) Anne d'Harnoncourt, Philadelphia Museum
8) Marc Wilson, Nelson-Atkins Museum

In an interesting anomaly, Stephen Bertsler, chief investment officer of the Met, was higher salaried than de Montebello. Similarly, Patricia Woodworth (now at the J. Paul Getty Trust), who in 2007 was chief financial officer of the Art Institute of Chicago, made more than director James Cuno.

Where's the megabucks Getty Museum in all this? Director Michael Brand's compensation, as reported on the Getty Trust's website here, would certainly put him up there in the big leagues. There are a couple of other directors I can think of who also likely belong on the best-paid list, but somehow flew under the Chronicle's radar.

Brad Cloepfil, architect of the Museum of Arts and Design (alias MAD)

I've just learned a new tech trick. Click here to see my captioned slideshow of the Museum of Arts and Design.

As you will see, both the museum and my slideshow have some foibles. I don't know why the photos look blurrier than they would if I merely posted them on the blog, and I can't eliminate the ad that appears on the top. The slideshow is hosted free on a website (not ArtsJournal) that inserts its own advertising. When you access the slideshow, you have to scroll down a bit to find the arrow you must click to go to the next slide.

CultureGrrl's multimedia frills, like the new museum, are still a work in progress.

For more of my MAD commentary, go here, here and especially, here---my tirade against NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who (in this weekend's "Arts & Leisure" section) advocated the demolition of the just-opened museum facility.

Maybe he should give it at least a few months to grow on him, before calling in the wrecking crew.

Nicolai Ouroussoff

NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, in his review for tomorrow's NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section (online today), demonstrates astoundingly meanspirited wrongheadedness: He puts the brand new Museum of Arts and Design at the end of his top-seven list of New York City buildings that he believes ought to be "candidates for demolition."

It's time to demolish Ouroussoff.

A previous Nicolai review bordered on critical malpractice: In May, he presumptuously instructed Renzo Piano to clad his new Whitney Downtown building in a stone compound, rather than the "steel frame structure covered in welded steel plates" that the architect "said he was leaning toward." An architecture critic is supposed to evaluate and analyze buildings, not preemptively design them.

But Ouroussoff's published desire for the obliteration of the reclad and reconfigured museum facility on Columbus Circle unequivocally IS critical malpractice. No matter how strong his opinions, a critic must have the humility to acknowledge that time and reflection may prove him wrong, as has happened with so many great works of art and architecture initially derided by the critics. Such revisionism, in fact, occurred to some degree in relation to Edward Durell Stone's "Lollipop Building," radically altered by Brad Cloepfil, which Ouroussoff now seems to mourn. Disliking a building at first sight does not warrant blowing it up, even in print.

Granted, the new MAD (as the museum likes to call itself) is not going to make anyone's top-seven list of great architecture in New York. How can it, when the architect's imagination and options were constricted by the envelope and infrastructure of the preexisting building? In an worthy effort to preserve (through its shape and whiteness) the memory of the old building, beloved by some, Cloepfil made compromises that won't please everyone (certainly not Ouroussoff). But this is no hulking eyesore, as I would describe MAD's neighbor on Columbus Circle, the Time Warner Center, nothwithstanding Ouroussoff's claim (in his Friday MAD review) that its towers "look great in the skyline."

MAD does not even meet Ouroussoff's own stated criteria for the buildings chosen for inclusion on his tear-down list: He never demonstrates that the museum "exhibit[s] a total disregard for [its] surrounding context" (because it doesn't) and he certainly doesn't believe that it "destroy[s] a beloved vista," since it essentially occupies the same space as what was there for the last four decades.

Its chief sin seems to be that it is "overly polite" (which I would prefer to call "subtle and understated") and "poorly detailed," as he called it in his Friday review. Much later in that piece, we finally discover the one detail of detailing that most irks Ouroussoff:

At the point where the incision turns from the wall and cuts across the ceiling,... a section of drywall is left at the corner; the result reads as two separate slots of glass instead of a continuous cut through the building. Similarly, narrow strips of wood separate the glass channels that run across the gallery floors from the window frames, which makes the incisions feel decorative rather than like a clean surgical cut.

These are not minor details.

Oh yes they are. You be the judge. Here's one spot where window meets floor glass:

Alejandro Puente, "Everything Goes," 1968-70, New Acquisition

The Museum of Modern Art's latest installation of contemporary works from its collection, Here is Every, has fallen below the critical radar. But it's the best of the five deployments of its contemporary forces since the Taniguchi-designed museum expansion opened almost four years ago.

It's also the most visitor-friendly use of the cavernous second-floor gallery. All of this is largely due to the skills of the museum's overworked and estimable curator of drawings (and everything else), Connie Butler (who also curated Wack!, Pipe, Glass Bottle of Rum: The Art of Appropriation and the upcoming Marlene Dumas).

The show is well selected and installed---roughly chronological, but with affinity groupings that make sense without a curator's needing to tell you why. There's minimal labeling, except for new acquisitions (including the Puente, above), some of which are accorded more detailed descriptions. There's no wall text announcing: "This is minimalism." "This is conceptualism." But you sense the flow and the changes in visual and emotional vocabulary as you move through the subdivided space.

The judicious use of temporary walls are what make this show seem more intelligent and intelligible than others, where the floor's huge expanse was not broken down into digestible bits. Too big a space, presenting too many competing and divergent works, created a sense of visual and sensory overload in past installations.

MoMA is also getting the knack of taming its monumental atrium, most recently with Ann Temkin's rewarding hang of works by Philip Guston and, coming in November, a site-specific, 25-foot-high installation of moving images by Pipilotti Rist. There needs to be some unifying concept for an installation to hold its own in this art-dwarfing arena.

But onward to MoMA's NEXT expansion: Temkin, recently promoted as the museum's chief curator of painting and sculpture, told me that plans are due in the middle of next year for the museum's use of the approximately 50,000 square feet of new gallery space that will accrue to it if Jean Nouvel's soaring glass tower (contiguous with MoMA and built on land that it sold to the developer) ever gets off the ground. Unlike the Whitney, which, as expected, won easy approval for its downtown expansion from the City Council on Wednesday, MoMA (or more precisely, Hines, the developer for the tower) is coming up against some hostile neighbors.

Hines, through a spokesperson, refused to inform me of the status of its quest for the required government approvals. Community Board 5, in an advisory capacity, voted overwhelmingly against the transfer of air rights from St. Thomas Church (east of MoMA) and the University Club (to the northeast), needed to allow the megalith to rise 75 stories. MoMA owned the University Club's air rights, previously acquired by director Glenn Lowry as part of his real estate-buying spree.

Sid Bass, vice chairman of MoMA's board, recently told me that residents of Museum Tower, the apartment building that was built in conjunction with MoMA's previous Cesar Pelli-designed expansion, are up in arms about the expected obstruction of their views by Nouvel's tower. The West 54-55 Street Block Association is also on the case.

Community opposition didn't matter, however, in the first round of the official review process: Both buildings that are transferring air rights are landmarked, and the city's Landmark Preservation Commission voted unanimously on May 13 to allow the transfer. LPC spokesperson Elisabeth de Bourbon told me:

The Landmarks Commissioners found there is a "preservation purpose" to both applications to the Planning Commission...."Preservation purpose" refers to up-front restoration work of the landmarks or the establishment of an ongoing maintenance program for them. The Commission also determined that the Nouvel Tower would have no effect on either the club or the church.

Next up: the City Planning Department. But a spokesperson there, Rachaele Raynoff, told me on Monday, four months after the Landmarks Commission's go-ahead, "No application has been filed as yet."

Could it be that Hines is daunted by the challenging real estate climate and the difficulties affecting another New York Nouvel, overseen by a different developer---a condo project, merely 23 stories high, rising next to Frank Gehry's IAC Headquarters building? Alex Frangos of the Wall Street Journal wrote in August that the downtown project was "some $50 million over budget and nearly a year behind schedule."

If MoMA ever does continue its inexorable westward expansion, its new galleries will be used for the permanent collection, according to both Temkin and Kathy Halbreich, the museum's associate director. Plans call for mixing together works from different media---paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, etc. And the next installation in the existing second-floor contemporary galleries may juxtapose contemporary works with older works, Temkin said.

CORRECTION: In my original post, I said that MoMA owned the University Club. It owned (and transferred) only the club's air rights.

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones

Jonathan Jones, in his blog for the British Guardian newspaper, has a beef with the Queen.

In his post today, Someone should rescue this royal loot (pegged to the upcoming Buckingham Palace exhibition, Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting), he declares:

The fact is, the exhibitions at the Queen's Gallery are just public relations. The whole place exists to justify a collection that makes no rational sense....How does it really add one iota to the prestige of the British monarchy to maintain an art collection that's big and rich enough to fill a national art museum?

Sure, keep the Landseers, ma'am, but do you really need the Rembrandts, the Vermeer, the Holbeins, the Tintoretto?...It's a bit of a joke that we make so much fuss about "saving" the odd Titian for the nation and allow these thieves to hold on to their stupendous sack of artistic loot.

The rhetoric's a bit strong, but the point---that this extraordinary collection, held in trust for the public, should be more publicly accessible---is well taken. At least some progress has been made since 2006, though, when Charlotte Higgins complained in the Guardian that "there is no publicly accessible inventory of the Royal Collection." Its website now features a voluminous, searchable A-to-Z e-gallery---everything from Fra Angelico to Federico Zuccaro.

G. Wayne Clough in his Georgia Tech days

A donor might want programming input---there is always going to be that element of nuance there. You have to understand the dangers and the possibilities.

So said G. Wayne Clough, the new secretary of the Smithsonian, in his recent interview with the NY Times' Robin Pogrebin.

The only "possibility" that can emerge from allowing patrons to influence museum programs is trouble, as the Smithsonian should well know by now after the many embarrassing controversies that ensued from allowing undue donor meddling. Perhaps it's Clough's background in engineering academia (former president, Georgia Tech), where so much of the scholarly focus is dictated by the needs of government and corporate funders of research grants, that makes the new secretary feel that an outside-influenced agenda may also sometimes be appropriate in the museum world.

It IS entirely appropriate for donors to say which museum programs and projects they would like their benefactions to support. But it's not appropriate for donors to try to dictate what those activities should be or how they should be realized.

Speaking of donors, what are we to make of this week's election of Patricia Stonesifer, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to the chairmanship of the Smithsonian's board, effective this January?

According to another Pogrebin article:

Part of Ms. Stonesifer's mission will be stepping up the Smithsonian's fund-raising....While Ms. Stonesifer has ample experience in giving away money at the Gates Foundation, which currently has a $35.9 billion endowment and more than 600 employees, she has little experience raising it. Nevertheless she said she felt confident about her ability to pull in more private support. "I've had to learn new things before," she said, "and this is one of them."

Could her relationship with the world's third richest person have anything to do with her confidence of success in an area in which she lacks substantial experience?

And WHEN is the Smithsonian going to appoint an art historian as new undersecretary for art, replacing Ned Rifkin, who left five months ago? (They do have---in an acting, not permanent, capacity---Richard Kurin, whose expertise is in cultural anthropology, appointed in April to the position of undersecretary for history, art and culture.)

Waiting to speak at yesterday's Guggenheim ribbon-cutting ceremoney, left to right: Tom Krens, Peter Lewis, Mayor Bloomberg, Jennifer Blei Stockman (Guggenheim board president)

Both parts of the above headline are akin to "Dog Bites Man": They are so expected as to be hardly news at all.

But for the record, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has just made the expected official announcement: Its board voted to appoint Richard Armstrong as its next director, effective Nov. 4. That means he'll be leaving his directorship of the Carnegie Museum of Art somewhat before the end of this year, as had been announced by the Pittsburgh museum in June. Armstrong is going to be charged with "creating a global strategic plan" which, from the press release, appears to have a lot to do with fundraising.

Speaking of "global strategic plans" (and before I relate to you the latest round in the Lewis-Krens dogfight), let me tell you something you DIDN'T know: While sipping champagne at the Guggenheim restoration's ribbon-cutting reception last night, I chatted with the official who has long been charged with overseeing possible expansions of the Global Guggenheim's reach---Juan Ignacio Vidarte, director of the Guggenheim Bilbao. I asked him if the proposed Guggenheim Hermitage in Vilnius, Lithuania, is actually going to happen.

He told me that the Guggenheim-conducted feasibility study had been concluded, but that it was highly unlikely the foundation would participate as a partner in any new cultural institution there. For one thing, Vidarte said, his own museum in Bilbao was supposed to have Guggenheim-branded exclusivity (other than the preexisting Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice) in Europe. [See CLARIFICATION, below.] One wonders, then, why the foundation would have encouraged the Lithuanians to commission (and pay for) a feasibility study for a Guggenheim-branded museum unlikely to be realized.

Let's avert our eyes from that and go to the podium at Monday night's restoration celebration, where the Guggenheim made the mistake of having Tom Krens, the foundation's outgoing director, introduce Peter Lewis, the lead donor for the $28-million restoration, who famously quit the museum's board over his disagreements with Krens' museum management.

Krens offered a gracious introduction of Lewis, describing their previously close relationship and adding:

Peter was my friend then. He is my friend now....He's somebody I admire a great deal. It's my pleasure to introduce to you tonight the greatest donor in the history of the Guggenheim.

Whereupon Lewis, a loose cannon with a low tolerance for B-S, ascended the podium. Rather than quote him, I'll let you click the left arrow below. He'll speak for himself:

Not a word about Krens, who had guided the restoration from the beginning. When he finished his brief comments, Lewis walked right past Krens to shake hands with Marc Steglitz, the Guggenheim's chief operating officer, who also assumed the role of acting director of the New York museum when Lisa Dennison decamped for Sotheby's.

Maybe Richard Armstrong will want to try to mend relations with the deep-pocketed, loose-tongued Lewis.

Maybe not.

UPDATE: The Carnegie Museum has already announced that its acting directors, effective Nov. 3, will be its chief curator, Louise Lippincott, and its deputy director, Maureen Rolla.

CLARIFICATION: In my original posting, I neglected to mention the Guggenheim's other European outpost, the Deutsche Guggenheim---a modest space on the ground floor of the Deutsche Bank building in Berlin, which is more a museum-affiliated corporate gallery than a full-fledged museum.

Here are my comments that were aired early this morning on New York Public Radio, which has more on its website, including a slideshow of objects. Click the arrow on the left. below, to listen now:



There's one small way in which I wish I could fix what I said: In describing Michael Rakowitz's piece, "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (Recovered, Missing, Stolen Series)," which I found particularly engrossing, I mentioned both the Middle Eastern food labels that were incorporated into the objects that are part of the ensemble, and the OBJECT labels that provide information about the ancient artifacts that are recreated (in shape) by each sculpture. I failed to use the word "object" for the second type of label, causing confusion to listeners (and maybe now to readers!).

In any event, here's one item from Rakowitz's array of recreated antiquities:

Jenny Holzer, "For the Guggenheim": one masterpiece meets another

Everything's happening at once this week in the New York art museum world:

---The opening of the striking new facility for the Museum of Arts and Design (about which I will post more later). The ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Bloomberg is at 11:30 a.m. today. The museum opens to the public Saturday.

---The expected easy approval at tomorrow's City Council meeting of the Whitney's downtown expansion project. That's the final step in the unusually opposition-free public review process for the Renzo Piano facility. This means that if they can sign the all contracts and come up with the cash, construction work (expected to begin this spring) is good to go. Maybe NOW they'll be willing to tell us how much they've raised towards the $680 million and to give us more details about what the building will look like and how it will be used.

---The announcement, expected to hit inboxes late this evening, that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's board, which is meeting later today, has officially chosen Richard Armstrong to be its next director, succeeding Tom Krens. Armstrong spent two hours yesterday chatting with board members, some of whom had not previously met him.

---Last night's ribbon-cutting (also attended by Mayor Bloomberg...and by me) for the completion of the three-year restoration of the Guggenheim Museum's iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building. It looks gorgeous, particularly when clothed in a Jenny Holzer site-specfic, scrolling projection (above), switched on yesterday and being shown every Friday evening through Dec. 31. Please, Richard, make it more than just once a week!

---The announcement that Brooklyn artist Tara Donovan (below) was one of this year's winners of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 "genius" fellowships. (The other artist-winner is South Carolina basket maker Mary Jackson.) In a case of unfortunate timing, the Metropolitan Museum closed its site-specific installation by Donovan just two days before the honor that should stimulate more public interest in her work. One of her sculptures, "Bluffs," composed of buttons, is included in the inaugural display at the Museum of Arts and Design (but the artist's dealer, PaceWildenstein, wouldn't allow the press to photograph it or other works by that gallery's artists). You can see images from the Met show here, but the photos don't even begin to give you a sense of this piece. You had to be there; now you can't.

Edward Durell Stone's 1964 Gallery of Modern Art, aka "The Lollipop Building"


In the same spot on Columbus Circle, Brad Cloepfil's Museum of Arts and Design, aka "The 'H' Building," with CNN's offices behind it and Norman Foster's Hearst Tower beside it

If all goes according to plan, you can hear my impressions of the new Museum of Arts and Design this morning at about 6:46 a.m. on New York Public Radio, WNYC, 93.9 FM. Or you can listen to me live on the web here, by clicking the red arrow in the lefthand column.

Architect Brad Cloepfil has completely reclad the exterior and reconfigured the interior of the white elephant on Columbus Circle that was famously called "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollypops [sic]" by architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable in her mostly favorable review of the new building in the NY Times on Feb. 25, 1964.

I don't get to say much about the architecture of the building in my soundbite, so let me say that Cloepfil did not use the front view of the building, above, in the promotional materials that his architectural firm handed out to the press. I assume that's because he is still steaming about the big horizontal glass gash cut across the ninth floor, which forms the letter "H" that you see in the above photo. This window was added because the museum wanted diners at its new restaurant (opening in March) to enjoy sweeping views.

When I asked him about this window after the recent press preview, Cloepfil fumed through grit teeth:

It was against my intention and it is not my architecture.

But let's move on to the important stuff: What about those lollipops?

Cloepfil declared:

They're neutralized. I gessoed them out.

And so he has: They're mere ghosts of the formerly colorful lozenges that you can see in the top photo. Now they've been brought indoors and coated white, and they function more like borders for the distinctively shaped lobby windows than as the attention-getting architectural elements they once were.

Here they are, as seen from the lobby:

It's a wrap: NY Times enveloped in NBC-TV ads

NY Times subscribers awoke this morning to a strange hybrid on their doorsteps: Three of the five sections of the paper were encased in ads for NBC-TV's new season, which usurped both sides of each section's back page (as well as the page facing the inside back page) and flapped over to the front (above). In addition, the bottom of the front page of each section sported a large color-coordinated banner ad.

Only Page One of the first section and Metro section were (mercifully) spared. But wait! Who's brandishing an Emmy Award at the lower right corner of the front page?



Why it's Alec Baldwin, reveling in his Best Actor in a Comedy Series designation for NBC's "30 Rock." The copy accompanying the front-page photo, however, was notably unflattering to NBC, not to mention Alec Baldwin. In fact, it did NOT mention Alec Baldwin:

With cable channels overshadowing broadcast networks, Jeremy Piven, left, of HBO's "Entourage" was among the winners at the Emmy Awards.

For those Times editors who don't what Jeremy Piven looks like, he's right here, on the newspaper's own online Emmy slideshow.

I've just returned from a full-day audio-editing workshop at my alma mater---Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism---so I couldn't restrain myself from bringing you these soundbites excerpted (and spliced together) from Tom Campbell's press conference that occurred the day after he was named to become the next director of the Metropolitan Museum.

Here, he (sort of) addresses questions about two hot-button issues bedeviling the Met: the handling of antiquities controversies (my question) and the role of contemporary art at the museum (asked by a reporter for the London Times):

Now if only I had the equipment for better sound quality!

Sid Bass, amateur art critic and MoMA vice chairman, at the press preview

Do we really need another van Gogh show?

If the show in question is Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night, opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, the answer is probably no. Will it be a blockbuster? Probably yes.

Nothwithstanding the fact that Roberta Smith in her favorable take on this focus exhibition (for today's NY Times) calls it "an anti-blockbuster," her review is, at this writing, Number One on the paper's "most e-mailed" list for arts stories. One assumes readers are forwarding the link to their friends with the message, "Let's go see this!"

The show is indeed an anti-blockbuster, for the wrong reasons: It's a perfunctory curatorial exercise, with little rhyme or reason for bringing this particular group of disparate pictures together other than the fact that they're all by van Gogh and all have some connection, however tangential, to night (or dawn, or dusk, or well-lit interiors after dark...whatever).

Director Glenn Lowry, in his introductory remarks at the press preview, mentioned that this show is part of a series at the museum that takes one iconic painting (in this case, MoMA's "The Starry Night") and surrounds it with related works (as in the 2006 Manet show and the current Kirchner show). In this context, why did he neglect to mention MoMA's previous focus exhibition dedicated to van Gogh---organized in 2001 by the late Kirk Varnedoe around his crowning acquisition as the museum's chief curator of painting and sculpture---the portrait of the artist's friend, postman Joseph Roulin? Comparisons between that insightful exploration of similarities and differences and the current superficial agglomeration would have been to the disadvantage of the current effort.

Sid Bass, vice chairman of MoMA's board (above), whom I ran into at the press preview, said it best. After chatting a bit, we parted company, but then he viewed "Gauguin's Chair" (below) and felt moved to turn back to me, to observe:

I guess you know that it's night because the candle is lit.

Exactly. Organizers Joachim Pissarro, MoMA's adjunct curator, and Sjraar van Heugten, head of collections at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsteradam, never provide any compelling explanation of the special significance of "night-ness" in these works or for van Gogh's larger oeuvre, nor do they draw illuminating connections that make the exhibition's whole amount to more than its seemingly disconnected parts. An excerpt from the artist's own letter to his sister, Wil van Gogh (displayed in a case with other documents and partly translated on the exhibition label) sheds more light on his nocturnal motives and methods than anything the curators tell us:

I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night....It's quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can't make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it's the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.

Here's the painting that Sid was gazing upon in the photo above. (The candle he alluded to is in the upper left):


Van Gogh, "Gauguin's Chair," 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

New York's new commercial gallery has some major museums in the bag.

Memo to the Albright-Knox Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Smith College Museum, Blanton Museum, Rose Art Museum, Neuberger Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Nasher Collection and Berkeley Art Museum:

What are you thinking?

The above-listed American museums, not to mention the Tate in London, and the Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, have lent their prestigious imprimaturs, along with significant artworks, to the inaugural exhibition---Abstract Expressionism---A World Elsewhere---at the New York branch of the Haunch of Venison contemporary art gallery network, which is owned by Christie's International. (Other HOV branches are in London, Berlin, Zurich.)

In her NY Times review last week, Roberta Smith called HOV's maiden voyage in New York, "a sometimes beautiful but absurdly unnecessary exhibition." It opens big, with monumental works by such luminaries as Kline, de Kooning and David Smith, then peters out somewhat in the back rooms, with a few small-scale gems such as a Pollock enamel on parchment, "Number 19, 1949," from the Whitney's collection; and one of my new passions, an untitled Krasner "Little Image" painting of 1949, on loan from a private collector, courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery.

Robert Fitzpatrick, HOV's international managing director in charge of the New York gallery, told me when I visited on Tuesday that museums had agreed to participate in this gallery-promoting enterprise not only because it was a "drop-dead show," but also because of their respect for its curator, David Anfam, and for Fitzpatrick himself, who was formerly director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. Their comfort level, he said, was increased by the fact that this was "not a commercial show." All of its works, including those from private lenders and galleries, came in with loan agreements, not consignment-for-sale agreements.

But what if a visitor, on the understandable assumption that a commercial gallery might sell some of the art that it displays, actually does ask to buy something? HOV would then try to find another work for sale by that artist and would "handle that transaction," according to Fitzpatrick.

This is certainly not the first time that museums have put their works and reputations on the line for commercial galleries. Sometimes, as in Wildenstein's exhibition in New York of works from the collection of the hurricane-ravaged New Orleans Museum of Art, the gallery charges a fee to benefit a good cause.

The Metropolitan Museum previously lent its prestige and its art to Berry-Hill Galleries, which later had legal troubles of its own. The worst-case scenario is what happened at the formerly prestigious, now shuttered Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, where the Indianapolis Museum got drawn into a tawdry tale of a gallery gone wrong, with its loaned masterpiece temporarily locked in legal limbo. Nonprofit institutions should think more than twice before lending to for-profits.

But back to the HOV lane: Next up, I was told by the gallery's chief curator Michael Rooks (another former museum man who also has the Chicago MCA on his résumé) is an exhibition of sculpture by considerably less celebrated names, about a third of whom are represented by the gallery. The rest will come from other dealers, who will split the sale commissions. HOV will also be Christie's private-sale headquarters for contemporary and modern works, including those that fail to sell at auction.

Do museums really want to jumpstart this engine?

For more details on this dealer/auction-house hybrid, see Alexandra Peers' Christie's Morphs Into a Dealer, published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. It includes a slideshow of some of the works now on display.

The scene at Sotheby's, London

No matter what the NY Times and Bloomberg are telling you today, Damien Hirst's self-titled $200.75-million two-day auction, "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," did NOT achieve results that exceeded its presale estimate (notwithstanding what Sotheby's asserted in its postsale press release, dutifully echoed by many scribes). I've previously explained the results for Monday's evening sale, which fell within estimate but were reported otherwise.

The day sales at Sotheby's, London, which evinced hardly any signs of Hirst fatigue, achieved a total hammer price of £34.39 million, slightly BELOW the high end of its presale estimate---£25.21-36.26 million. To draw valid conclusions, presale estimates MUST be compared with hammer prices (as opposed to final prices that included the buyer's premium), because presale estimates do not include buyer's premiums.

Now that I've once again hammered home that point (to no avail, no doubt), let me concede my own Hirst fatigue by referring you to what is, by far, the most revelatory, detailed and insightful post-"Beautiful" report that I've come across: Colin Gleadell's Damien Hirst Skips the Middleman in today's Wall Street Journal. (I'm not sure where he got the "287 lots," though. It was 223. And the amount that Hirst pocketed may have been further reduced by a commission to his manager, as Bloomberg reported.)

According to Gleadell:

Amid all the back-slapping, whistling and cheering (mainly, it has to be said, from Sotheby's employees) there was little time to ponder that estimates had been set about 30% lower than retail according to the London trader and art-fund manager Micky Tiroche. While half the lots had sold above those estimates, just as many had not. For those who were checking against gallery prices, more than a handful of works had sold at relative bargain levels.

It must also be noted that more than a handful sold for multiples of their presale estimates, which are often set somewhat below what the market is expected to bear, as an enticement to bidders. Conservative estimates mean that the near-high estimate result may be a little less impressive than it seems.

The best (and most rollicking) piece I've seen on what it all signifies and why it matters is Waldemar Januszczak's Does Damien Hirst's Auction at Sotheby's Mean the End of the Gallery?, published more than a week before the sale in the London Sunday Times. He quoted a "noticeably chipper" Hirst saying, "If you don't like the rules, change the rules." Januszczak correctly predicted the sale's success and foretold a troubled future for dealers in the wake of that success:

Hirst is far too canny a diplomat to admit publicly what all this could mean for the art world, so let me admit it for him. If this auction works, the dealers are stuffed. There is absolutely nothing to stop any artist anywhere selling their work direct through the auction houses. Bang goes the dealer's 50%.

It was Sotheby's who approached him about the sale, not the other way round. In fact, it is always on the phone asking for unsold pieces to be put up for auction. His answer has always been yes---if it takes new work. But that has been the sticking point. Because of the unwritten arrangement with the dealers, Sotheby's has never been prepared to sell new pieces by him. Until now.

CultureGrrl readers are generally not a very interactive bunch, but I'd be delighted to publish some BlogBacks from dealers about what this watershed auction means for the future of their business in general and of gallery-artist relations in particular. Succinct arguments for the continued importance of the gallery's role and how that role may have to evolve in the 21st century will be cheerfully accepted.

Just click the "Contact me" link in the middle column.

Oliver Barker wielding the Hirst hammer yesterday at Sotheby's

There are two widely held misconceptions about yesterday's Hirst auction:

I had predicted in my last post that reporters would misleadingly claim that the auction had exceeded its presale estimate, because they would make the apples-to-oranges comparison between the sale total INCLUDING the buyer's premium and the total presale estimate, which predicts hammer total, NOT including the premium.

What I hadn't foreseen is that Sotheby's itself, in its post-sale report, would promote the myth that the auction outstripped its expectations. Its press office yesterday asserted that the auction fetched a total "exceeding the high estimate." It's enough that the sale was astoundingly successful. Do we really need to exaggerate?

The hammer total was, in fact, just short of the high end of the presale estimate range, whether calculated in British pounds or U.S. dollars: £61.22 million (est. £43.2-62.3 million); or $110.43 million (est. $77.93-112.5 million).

The other misconception, found in several news accounts, is that the bypassing of dealers through direct-to-auction sales by artists is unprecedented. As Barbara Pollack reports in her comprehensive look at The Chinese Art Explosion in the current issue of ARTnews:

These auction houses [in China] run by their own rules, generating what sometimes seems like a "wild, wild East" atmosphere. It is, for example, fairly common for a house to get consignments directly from artists, who then use the sales to establish prices for their works on the primary market.

And now artists' consignments may become more common in the West as well, albeit for different reasons---the desire of artists to broaden the availability of their work to wider audiences and their wish to keep more of the money for themselves, rather than pay dealers' commissions that can amount to half the sale price.

Not all artists can pull off this gambit, especially not on the grand scale that Hirst managed to achieve. But the door has been opened. Will dealers start pushing back, by inserting restrictive clauses in contracts with artists, to enforce their right to control the primary market of the artists whom they represent?

Peace Offering? "After the Flood," the final lot in today's Hirst sale

Wild whoops, mad applause (including claps from auctioneer Oliver Barker directed towards the deep-pocketed attendees). What more can one say?

Sotheby's Hirst sale results are already online here, with the auction just concluded. The sale totaled $127.26 million (with buyer's premium); bidding on only nine of the 56 works fell below their presale estimates and only two of those failed to find a buyer. Apparently dead flies are an unpopular subject. Old cigarette butts are welcome, however.

The total hammer price (without premium) was $110.43 million, near the high end of the presale estimate of $77.93-112.5 million. (Other reporters will no doubt use the total WITH premium, misleadingly stating that it EXCEEDED the presale estimate, even though the estimate does NOT figure in the premium.)

As I reported in my previous post, the auction record for a Hirst work was broken: $18.66 million (with buyer's premium) for "The Golden Calf," a formidable formaldehyde.

This was a sale so strong in all respects that it might force Hirst to reconsider his determination to discontinue some of his "lines," such as spin paintings and butterflies. How can you stop minting money?

The sale concluded with a typical Hirst zinger---a work entitled "After the Flood" (above)---an allusion, no doubt, to the "flooding-the-market" fears, now mocked. The final lot's subject was a white dove, bearing an olive branch, signaling that the flood has subsided. (Actually, though, there will be two more Hirst sessions tomorrow.)

Peace and serenity now reign throughout art-market land...except perhaps among those dealers who are wondering about their redefined role in a brave new direct-to-auction world.

UPDATE: For Kelly Crow's more detailed report of the auction in the Wall Street Journal, go here.

Live-blogging the Sotheby's Hirst auction webcast. (I'm not taking the time now to convert to dollars.)

"Thank you SO-O-O-O much!" the auctioneer exclaimed at the £8.5 million bid on the newly hatched Hirst shark, "Kingdom," that had been estimated at £4-6 million.

The Black Sheep was less coveted, at £2.3 million (est. £2-3 million).

The highest-estimated work and likely top lot in the ongoing sale, The Golden Calf (Lot 13 of 56) was knocked down at £9.2 million, within its £8-12 million estimate. The auction record for Hirst going into this sale was £9.65 million. I'll let Sotheby's do the math to tell us if today's final price, with buyer's premium, bests "Lullaby Spring," a medicine-cabinet work.

It sure looks like Hirst fatigue has not set in yet. Maybe tomorrow...or maybe not!

UPDATE: Sotheby's has now done the math: Its publicity machine has already e-mailed, while the sale is still in progress, to inform me that "The Golden Calf," with buyer's premium, made £10.35 million ($18.66 million), a new auction record for Hirst.

More on the Hirst auctions here and here.

Quick! Get me rewrite!

That's what someone must have bellowed in the newsroom (or at Sotheby's) when they saw the headline on Carol Vogel's initial online version (on the International Herald Tribune's website) of her pre-Hirst auction piece, which I linked to a little after midnight today. By the time you read this, I would not be surprised if the IHT has taken down its original version---"Damien Hirst Goes for Broke at Sotheby's."

Now the headline is: Up for Auction: Damien Hirst's Big New Risk in the IHT; Damien Hirst's Next Sensation: Thinking Outside the Dealer for the same article in today's NY Times. It should be noted that journalists generally have nothing whatsoever to do with the headlines that get affixed by editors to their oeuvre.

In this case, the scrapped headline was provocative but, I think, correct. As I said in my late-night Hirstian musings, I don't regard the outcome of today's precedent-breaking auction as a reliable indicator of the general state of the contemporary art market. But it sure could have a make-it-or-break-it effect on Hirst's market. He's been upping the stakes with his provocative, dealer-baiting comments to the press. Larry Gagosian, who had been quoted in Sotheby's press release indicating that he would be at the sale, "paddle in hand," subsequently let it be know that he would be in Moscow instead, for the opening of his gallery's new exhibition there.

As for the performance of Sotheby's stock: At this writing, it isn't pretty. But then neither is the Dow (although it's rebounded somewhat from its precipitous opening). If, as has been reported, Sotheby's has not offered Hirst any guaranteed amount for this sale, it probably has little to lose financially, only reputationally. Hirst, one assumes, will never outlive his savings, no matter what may happen later today.

I, for one, get a big kick out of the artist's audacious, outrageous gambit and his playing it to the hilt. People with big stakes in a well-behaved art market may be considerably less admiring.

Lot 9: Hirst's "Black Sheep" to the slaughter?

Pass the formaldehyde and sacrifice your cows and sheep as propitiatory offerings to the capricious artworld gods. Today, apprehensive art-lings, is the day when Damien Hirst goes for broke and, some believe, may take the contemporary art market along with him.

You can watch Slaughter on New Bond Street from the comfort of your own computer via Sotheby's live webcast, here at 2 p.m., New York time. (It's a 7 p.m. sale in London.)

If I had linked to all the articles in the past several weeks that have fretted and obsessed over this three-catalogue, 223-lot, two-day sale, this blog would have been "all Hirst, all the time," instead of "all Campbell, all the time." I do have my priorities.

The first article that I've linked to in this post is Carol Vogel's "Damien Hirst Goes for Broke at Sotheby's," online yesterday on the International Herald Tribune's website and, I would assume, to be published in this morning's NY Times (some time after this post and CultureGrrl go to bed). The artist declared to Vogel that "even if the sale bombs, I'm opening a new door for artists everywhere" (bypassing dealers by consigning new work directly to auction). But what artists would want to chance it, if the strategy proves unsuccessful in this high-profile outing?

The second link above, from Bloomberg, proposes that the outcome of the Hirst marathon (which begins today and continues tomorrow) may be "crucial to the overall confidence of the contemporary art market." I don't buy it. I think this is an anomalous and unorthodox sale that says little about the overall picture. If we do have a Hirst Burst, it will not necessarily say anything meaningful about a general market bubble.

But the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and its possible domino effect? Now that's something that could well rock all markets. The effect this crisis of economic confidence could have on art prices is the least of it. Hirst's "recurring nightmare" which he described to Vogel, of a bidless sale is not likely to have included a general financial-industry meltdown in its surrealistic scenario.

One thing seems certain: This is a very dicey day on which to hold an already risky auction.

Thomas Campbell, with Philippe de Montebello (center) and Harold Holzer, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, at his back

Ed Winkleman in a blog post yesterday astutely pointed out what may lie behind Tom Campbell's excess of discretion at Wednesday's press conference introducing the Metropolitan Museum's next director to art scribes.

Winkleman opined:

She [me] might have missed the more probable reason Campbell's responses were short on details about his personal vision for the museum...he was sitting right next to the outgoing legend, and anything that he stated that might be interpreted as a criticism would be pounced upon by the press and thrown up as disrespect...how dare this relative unknown suggest he knows better than Philippe? Indeed, I sense a hint of unrequited lust for just such an opportunity throughout Lee's post.

I agree with this blogger/dealer (except for the "lust" part): Campbell might well have considered it bad form to talk in detail about changes that may occur in what board chairman James Houghton called, "The Thomas Campbell Era," when the Philippe de Montebello Era still has a few more months to run. Discretion is a directorial virtue and a "listening tour" among constituents is a politically and managerially smart thing to do.

Still, in case you doubt my previous observation that substance was lacking throughout the press conference (not just in response to the two questions and answers that I quoted in my above-linked post), I refer you to Carol Vogel's report in today's NY Times based on her interview with the director-elect, which is heavy on biographical and personal details, light on museological insight, knowledge or plans.

In talking to me briefly after the press conference, Campbell did discuss with me (as he did with Carol) his interest in using technology to transmit different types of information to different audiences. To me, he specifically mentioned the promise of handheld devices, causing traumatic flashbacks to the clumsy gadgets that visitors lugged around for the Whitney Museum's "The American Century" show on technophile Max Anderson's directorial watch. There we could gaze at a digital image of a waving American flag while standing in front of the Jasper Johns version. I worry about anything that causes us repeatedly to look down at a screen instead of up at the art. Then again, we don't yet really know what Tom has in mind.

My only "lust," Ed, was for the kind of articulate musings on museums in general and the Met in particular that informed my first interview with Philippe de Montebello (for a detailed ARTnews profile), soon after he started the job. I knew right then and there that the doubters (of whom there were VERY many) were wrong: This guy had the goods.

Then again, Philippe was already firmly ensconced in the director's office at the time of our talk. I must curb my impatience and hope that the new appointee will be willing to speak with me again when he's done sufficient listening and is truly ready to start talking

UPDATE: I just came upon Jed Perl's expansive paean to de Montebello for next month's Atlantic (online now): The Man Who Remade the Met, written before Campbell's appointment but including much praise for his tapestry shows. Perl extols the new appointment in a column posted online Wednesday for the New Republic.

But Jed, you may be singing his praises, but you never wrote Philippe a song!

Gary Tinterow, right, with his curatorial cohorts at the Met's Turner press preview

This tribute is not much of a consolation prize for being one of three runners-up in the Metropolitan Museum's directorship race. But for all that I've criticized Gary Tinterow on matters of museum policy (and I'm NOT going to link to those posts on this occasion), the museum's de facto curatorial leader is second to none in what he does best---organizing superb shows of 19th-century European painting.

In the past year, he has outdone himself, with back-to-back bravura outings devoted to Courbet and Turner (organized, in both cases, in concert with colleagues from two other museums). These were were brilliantly elucidated, beautifully installed revelations of the depth and breadth of these major artists' oeuvre---so perfectly conceived and executed that I felt privileged to experience them.

When I stopped in at the Met the day before yesterday, it was to revisit the Turner show before it leaves on Sept. 21. The rap against that comprehensive retrospective was that it was too big. But unlike many of the Guggenheim's shows that seem to be bloated by a misguided curatorial imperative to fill the entire length of its ramp (i.e., Bourgeois, Prince, Hadid), Gary's extravaganzas focus on figures or topics of such interest and complexity that the length is amply justified by the strength.

When I think of the shows at the Met that have most strongly engaged me, Tinterow's, time and again, rise to the top.

It's ironic that at yesterday's press conference at the Met, Philippe de Montebello, touting the importance of appointing museum directors from the curatorial ranks, gave an extended plug to Elizabeth Easton's Center for Curatorial Leadership, which, he approvingly noted, "aims to train curators in aspects of management...[to] give comfort to trustees when they continue to appoint scholars as directors." Tinterow was a member of CCL's inaugural class, and one assumes that he may continue to harbor directorial ambitions.

If he goes, the loss to the Met will be great.

[In another New York museum-director development: I was told at today's Guggenheim press event that the trustees will not decide on the appointment of that institution's new director until their Sept. 23 meeting.]

I'm off the Guggenheim for a press lunch previewing the new season.

Will we also get to preview the expected new director? I doubt it. Carol Vogel didn't have the announcement in today's NY Times...or is there a new, fairer news release method afoot among New York museums? The way that the Met rolled out its Tom Campbell announcement, and the fact that at a recent press reception a large group of scribes were informed by director Glenn Lowry about the Museum of Modern Art's new Braque acquisition the evening before it appeared in the NY Times (not much advance notice, but still...) gives me cause for cautious optimism.

I'll have more commentary eventually about MoMA, which got preempted by the big news from the Met.

Defensive Postures: Philippe de Montebello (left) and Tom Campbell at today's press conference

Let's get this over with quickly, if not painlessly:

If you're going to hold a press conference, you've got to be willing to say something substantive to the assembled writers.

I'm not going to bother listing all the questions that Thomas Campbell, chosen to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director of the Metropolitan Museum, deflected today at his first press conference since being picked from about "60 people proposed" (according to the Met's board chairman James Houghton). I'll give you just two examples. In both, I was the questioner:

Rosenbaum: Philippe [in his opening remarks] just spoke about the importance of "renewal" and James Houghton spoke about the importance of your "vision for the future." Can you tell us what your ideas are for renewal and for the future?

Campbell: This a great institution doing many things right and I don't believe in change for the sake of change. But of course I have been here for some time, I understand how things work here, and I do have ideas. But I think the next three and a half months are going to be a period for me of intense listening. This is the time for me to measure my ideas against all the realities on the ground and it would be premature to speak too directly about new developments. I think that's the kind of question to ask me in January of next year.

Rosenbaum: To what extent can you explain to us your background in administration, managerial [matters] and fundraising? Can you give us a level of confidence that you have that side of the job covered?

Campbell: I've never been a director. Look, I think that the museum that Philippe will be leaving is a supremely well run, well established institution. We're fiscally sound. We're incredibly dynamic in terms of our programs. We have 17 curatorial departments, five conservation departments, and almost as many various administrative departments, and by and large they're all extremely well managed.

What the museum didn't need is another wonkish manager. What the museum needs is someone who can come in, as Philippe has done, and draw on the strengths of the staff and help encourage and bring forth the ideas and the creativity and the interaction that we need to maintain the dynamic acquisition program and exhibition program, to enrich the visitor experience in our permanent galleries. It's a question of vision and human chemistry. You'll have to judge me by my performance in four or five years' time.

And so it went throughout Tom's meet-the-press missed opportunity: vague generalities and appeals for more time to come up with meaningful answers. It was, he told us, "way too early for me to comment on broad policy."

Likeable but nervous, Campbell caught fire only when a writer from the London Times had the good sense to ask him a question related to tapestries---the curatorial specialty with which he is completely confortable and speaks with great knowledge and enthusiasm;

Q: Is there anything that you've learned from tapestries that can explain your success?

Campbell: There is, actually: Tapestries were a key component of the propaganda of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque and into the 18th century. They were a way for the rulers to project the ideas that they wanted to be associated with. And one of the constant themes that we find in rulers today, time and again, is the issue that good leadership depends on good advice. Even Henry VIII was kind of projecting himself as someone who listened to his advisers...before he cut off their heads. [Laughter.] Forget the cutting-off-heads bit!

Met staffers beware!

I may, through this exasperated post, have already managed to blow the goodwill of an important artworld luminary with whom I'll surely want to talk in the future. Campbell did demonstrate his diplomatic skills after the press conference, when everyone was flocking around him, by walking over to me, extending his hand, and stating, "I'm a great admirer of your blog." Not any more, I fear.

To be fair, he did repeatedly say that he'll have much more to reveal about his ideas and plans after he takes over. I trust we will then begin to perceive all the impressive qualities that caused the trustees to select him and prompted de Montebello to list him, before the search had even started, as one of those whom he thought could do a good job running the place, if he himself were suddenly unable to. Philippe didn't tell me directly that Tom had been one of his picks. But when I asked him if Campbell was on the little list of possible replacements that he had supplied to Houghton, he significantly, if obliquely, replied:

I said that I was delighted [with Campbell's choice], not that I was surprised.

To most outsiders, however, it WAS a surprise. Let's hope that it ultimately turns out to be a pleasant one.

Oh, wait a minute! Don't go away yet! What about those multi-language audio tours?

"I'm not a linguist like Philippe," he told me. He can read "most European languages," but is verbally fluent only in French...

...which means that he speaks Philippe's native language.

[Other CultureGrrl Campbell coverage: here, here and here.]

I'm back from the press conference at the Metropolitan Museum (more later), where, as soon as I arrived, I first had to do a live phone interview on New York Public Radio, along with the NY Times' indispensable art critic, Roberta Smith. We were, of course, assessing the Met's Tom Campbell appointment, which I had already spoken about (solo) earlier today with WNYC's Richard Hake.

You can click the arrow on the left, below, to hear (about a minute and a half into the podcast) Roberta and me sing in harmony (don't worry, not literally) on the artworld's new hit tune. Great minds think alike. But Brian, how COULD you compare Tom Campbell to Sarah Palin? (He's no pit bull and he doesn't wear lipstick.)

You can hear me now. Click arrow on the left.

Some of you have already heard my radio analysis of the new appointment at the Metropolitan Museum. The rest of you will have a second chance at about 8:41 and/or 9:41 a.m., if all goes according to plan: You can hear me at 93.9 FM, 820 AM (if you're in the NYC metropolitan area), or live on the web here (click the red-boxed arrow on the left).

And for slug-a-beds, I'll be appending the audio to this post, once it's up on WNYC's website.

But the real fun comes later today, when I get to meet the the new leader of the American artworld in person and assess whether he projects that Philippian directorial aura.

Meanwhile, here's the online-only appraisal by Eric Gibson, editor of the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page.

[Other CultureGrrl Campbell coverage: here, here and here.]

The Metropolitan Museum earlier today: Always a work in progress.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be commenting on Thomas Campbell's appointment as the Metropolitan Museum's new director on WNYC's The Takeaway tomorrow at about 6:42 a.m. (But I wouldn't count on such precision!)

If you're in the NYC metropolitan area, you can hear me on 93.9 FM, and in Des Moines you can hear me live on the web here (click the red-boxed arrow on the left).

And stay tuned later to CultureGrrl for a report on how well Campbell handles the ornery New York scribes at his first press conference.

I was actually at the Met today, while the trustees were at their conclave. As you can see, above, it's sort of like the Parthenon---always under construction. This time, it's for repair and restoration of the main outdoor stairs, including installation of a snow-melt system.

The entrance is now rather confusing. Could the trustees find their way in?



I was happy to see that the Duccio was back in its case, none the worse for being manhandled by Philippe:



And one El Anatsui, I discovered, isn't enough for the Met. Now it's got a new acquisition by the Ghana-born artist, who seems to be on every museum's must-have list. The previously acquired one was displayed in the African art galleries. The enormous 2007 wall-hanging below, purchased this year (whatever happened to the Met's 50-year rule for contemporary purchases?), is displayed in the 20th-century design galleries:



Are these bottle-cap weaves included in Thomas Campbell's curatorial domain as the Met's tapestry expert?

If you can't wait for CultureGrrl tomorrow, Michael Kimmelman of the NY Times weighs in with his "News Analysis" tonight.

Tom Campbell, the Met's Director Designate

I love the fact that Tom Campbell, named today to be the Metropolitan Museum's ninth director, is a respected scholar who specialized an arcane field, tapestries, presented them in an erudite manner, and created exhibitions that became blockbusters for all the right reasons.

But I worry about his lack of managerial and financial creds. The only thing he's administered is the Met's Antonio Ratti Textile Center---not exactly the strongest preparation for running a dauntingly complex and expensive operation like the Met. And while the others in the Met's final four had relatively broad areas of art under their supervision, Campbell's bailiwick is relatively narrow.

He meets the press tomorrow, after which I'll undoubtedly have more to say.

[Other CultureGrrl Campbell coverage: here, here and here.]

Thomas Campbell

[NOTE: Subsequent CultureGrrl coverage of Campbell's appointment is here and here,]

The press release just hit my inbox, so read it along with me, won't you?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that Thomas P. Campbell - an accomplished curator with a specialty in European tapestry who has worked at the Museum since 1995 - has been elected its next Director and CEO, succeeding Philippe de Montebello, who announced in January his intention to retire from the Metropolitan Museum at the end of this year. Mr. Campbell, who organized the groundbreaking and widely acclaimed exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002) and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (2007), is currently Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts as well as Supervising Curator of the Museum's Antonio Ratti Textile Center. He was elected at today's meeting of the Board of Trustees and will assume the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum on January 1, 2009.

"As we move forward in this new millennium, and into a new era for this great institution, it is with the highest level of enthusiasm that I announce the election today by the Board of Trustees of Tom Campbell as the ninth Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art," said James R. Houghton, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. "He is a distinguished art historian and outstanding curator, who is an ardent advocate for scholarship, connoisseurship, and the highest museum standards, as well as a solid manager and diplomat accustomed to preparing all facets of major exhibitions, from securing loans internationally to writing major catalogues and participating in all of the related administrative aspects of these projects. Tom's leadership qualities will be apparent to all, as will his many other great attributes, perhaps the most evident of which is his great passion for art, the very raison d'être of the Museum. Respected universally in his field and by his colleagues at the Met, he is equally respectful and at ease with the global constituencies of this encyclopedic museum, its friends and supporters in New York, and its large, diverse, and talented staff. We are delighted that he will take over the reins of the directorship from Philippe de Montebello, who has led the institution brilliantly for the past 31 years and who leaves it as, quite simply, the greatest art museum in the world."

Annette de la Renta and S. Parker Gilbert, who served as chair and vice chair of the Trustee Search Committee, respectively, commented: "We are extremely grateful to our colleagues for their diligence and commitment to the challenging process which led us to a recommendation of which we are all so proud. The committee had many exceptionally strong candidates from which to choose. In the end, we believe it speaks volumes about the caliber of the Metropolitan Museum's brilliant professional staff that - after conducting a wide-ranging, exhaustive, truly global search for Philippe de Montebello's successor - we identified the ideal candidate within the ranks of the Met's own curators. We join our fellow Trustees in wishing Tom Campbell every success."

Philippe de Montebello said of the announcement: "I am delighted at the choice of my successor by the search committee and subsequently by election of the Board. Tom Campbell, in my view, is absolutely the right selection, as an outstanding art historian of proven experience and judgment who fits perfectly into the long tradition of Met leadership that emerges from within the curatorial ranks, which has been the case for all but two of his predecessors in more than a century. I am confident that he will thrive in his new role, and will bring a fresh vision to the joys and challenges of running this preeminent art museum in the 21st century. He will have all of the collective support and experience that this superb Board, President, and curatorial and administrative staff will enthusiastically provide, and all of the encouragement and good wishes I can offer as well."

Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Museum, added: "Tom has not only distinguished himself as a scholar and curator over his nearly 14 years at the Met - he has also been a wonderful colleague to those of us who support the mission of the Museum through our administrative responsibilities, one who is always responsive and creative in his recognition of the depth of the Museum's commitment to its diverse and international audiences. I look forward to working even more collaboratively with him in the years to come, and I think I speak for all of us within the Met in offering him our warmest congratulations."

In accepting the new position, Thomas P. Campbell commented: "I am deeply honored that the Trustees have selected me as the next Director of this extraordinary and multi-faceted Museum. I look forward to working closely with Philippe de Montebello during the coming transition period, as also with our President, Emily Rafferty. Since joining the museum in 1995, I have developed a profound respect and affection for this unique institution, its encyclopedic collections, and above all its talented staff. I pledge to them that I will do everything in my power to lead the Museum wisely and productively during the coming years. Together we will build on the Met's traditions of scholarship and openness, to ensure that our diverse audiences continue to be welcomed, challenged, and inspired in ways that are fresh and relevant for the age in which we live."

Thomas P. Campbell, 46, was born and raised in Cambridge, England. He received his B.A. in English language and literature from the University of Oxford in 1984, followed by a Diploma from Christie's Fine and Decorative Arts course, London, in 1985. While studying for his Master's degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art (1987), he discovered the extent to which mainstream art history had overlooked the major role that the tapestry medium played in European art and propaganda. During the following years, he worked to rectify this by creating the Franses Tapestry Archive in London (1987-94), which, with more than 120,000 images, is the largest and most up-to-date information resource on European tapestries and figurative textiles in the world. His early research culminated in several ground-breaking research articles and a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute (1999) on the art and culture of King Henry VIII's court.

Since 1995, he has worked in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, rising steadily through the curatorial ranks as Assistant Curator (1995-97), Associate Curator (1997-2003), and Curator (2003 to the present). During this time, he conceived and organized the major exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002) and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (New York, 2007; Palacio Real, Madrid, spring 2008), both of which incorporated drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as tapestries, and received widespread acclaim. The 2002 exhibition was named "Exhibition of the Year" by Apollo magazine and its catalogue won the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award (College Art Association) for distinguished exhibition catalogue in the history of art (2003). He was also responsible for enhancing the holdings of the Museum's European textiles (including the acquisition of extremely rare tapestries and woven silks); and selecting and overseeing the rotation of textiles in the galleries of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.

Since shortly after his arrival at the Museum, he has also been Supervising Curator of The Antonio Ratti Textile Center, which houses the Museum's encyclopedic collection of 36,000 textiles and is one of the preeminent centers of textile studies in the world. As such, he has been responsible for all administrative aspects of the center, including supervision and implementation of the new center; close collaboration with the 10 curatorial departments whose holdings include textiles; an advisory role in the development of the online collections management system, which now includes approximately 42,000 images and is the largest textile database available to the public in the world; the conception and development of an image database devoted to Western European tapestry, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and other sources; and hosting and mentoring international textile scholars within the Museum's fellowship program.

He has lectured and taught extensively on European court patronage and the relation of tapestries to the other arts, both to scholars and the general public, at institutions and museums in the United States and abroad. He has also published extensively on the subject of historic European textiles and their relationship to other art forms of their periods. His most recent book publication is Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (Yale University Press, 2007), and his articles have appeared in leading scholarly journals such as Burlington Magazine, Apollo, Studies in the Decorative Arts, and Gazette des Beaux-Arts. He has been the recipient of awards and fellowships, including the Iris Foundation Award (Bard Graduate Center) for a scholar in mid-career deserving of recognition for outstanding contributions to the study of the decorative arts (2003). And he has also been actively involved in a wide range of advisory committees relating to the mission and administration of the Museum.

Mr. Campbell lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife and their two children.

Carol Vogel of the NY Times has more here.

Crystal Bridges Museum-in-Progress: The concrete is poured.

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper yesterday filed a brief in the appeals case brought by Fisk University in the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The school is still seeking legal permission to sell a half-share of its Stieglitz Collection to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum, now under construction (above) in Bentonville, Arkansas.

According to Super Cooper:

Fisk's aggressive claim seeking permission to sell half interest in the collection is...problematic.

What's more, the AG argued that even if the court agreed that "Fisk's financial condition rendered compliance with the [Stieglitz Collection] gift's restrictions impracticable or impossible, the court would still have great discretion over which conditions should be amended to address such findings. Such relief would not necessarily include, and WOULD LIKELY FALL SHORT OF [emphasis added] a sale of the Collection....It is entirely possible that a much less drastic...remedy than selling the collection would satisfy Fisk's needs, if Fisk is entitled to any...relief at all."

As I said in my recent post, A Brief that Strains Belief:

Fisk's attempt to have it both ways...fatally undermines the credibility of its argument for doing the Walton deal. If Fisk has now managed to raise the cash needed to maintain the collection over the short term, it should labor mightily to extend this fundraising success over the long term, rather than taking the quick but legally and ethically problematic way out by monetizing the collection.

Philippe's "private" delectation: Metropolitan Museum's full-page NY Times ad

I did two double takes while perusing yesterday's The New Season section of the NY Times:

One was caused by the full-page ad (above) taken out by the Metropolitan Museum to honor Philippe de Montebello and to trumpet the upcoming exhibition of works acquired under his watch.

Do we really want to plant the idea in the heads of museum visitors that works in the galleries can be taken down and held in one's hands for close perusal? We all know, if we think about it, that directorship has its prerogatives. But still...

The other "did I really see that?" moment came in this season round-up by Nicolai Ouroussoff, where he observed:

Renzo Piano seems to be building everywhere these days, and some argue that the steep rise in the number of commissions he accepts has coincided with a decline in the quality of his work.

"SOME ARGUE"? Nicolai, you're the eminent architecture critic of the NY Times. Inquiring readers want to know: What do YOU think about this?

Edward Hicks, "The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity," 1846-48, from Ralph Esmerian's collection
Photo: Sotheby's

The Wall Street Journal's new lifestyles magazine, WSJ, which debuted Saturday, had already gone to press when news broke that the record auction price for American folk art---$9.67 million for an 1846-48 version (above) of Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom"---was never actually paid by the successful bidder at Sotheby's May 22 auction. That price figured prominently in the new magazine's piece about the burgeoning American folk art market, The Lion's Share.

One day before the inaugural issue of the 100-page magazine hit the stands, Felicia Lee of the NY Times reported that Sotheby's was suing the bidder who had reneged, Halsey Minor, for $16.8 million. (Minor told Lee that he intended to countersue.) UPDATE: David Glovin of Bloomberg had the story two days before the Times. Both reports identified two other Sotheby's-auctioned paintings that Minor also failed to pay for and that are now part of the auction house's lawsuit---a Warhol and a Childe Hassam.

The Hicks already had a troubled market history going into this aborted sale: It was unsuccessfully offered privately by Sotheby's from the collection of the financially beleaguered benefactor of the American Folk Art Museum, Ralph Esmerian. When the undisclosed minimum bid was unmet, the painting was put up for public auction.

This, of course, reminds me of the infamous "auction record" set in 1989 (since broken) by de Kooning's ''Interchange,'' knocked down at Sotheby's, New York, for $20.7 million. The Tokyo dealers who made the winning bid failed to pay. Nonetheless, that artist's "record price" was cited for years to come.

Another iteration of "Peaceable Kingdom," this one from the collection of the late arts benefactor J. Irwin Miller and his wife, is being offered for an estimated $4-6 million on Sept. 25 at Christie's. It is anomalously inserted in the American furniture sale (where it is the highest-estimated lot), rather than the American paintings sale being held earlier the same day (where estimates top out at a mere $100,000).

In case you'd like to hear some of the outtakes from my brief remarks aired Thursday on WNYC about Ann Temkin's promotion at the Museum of Modern Art (and also my unaired comments about Richard Armstrong's expected appointment as next director of the Guggenheim), the radio station has posted two audio segments from my commentary on its culture blog, here.

Oops, he did it again.

In May I reported that Francesco Rutelli's penchant for repatriation through the press, rather than through quiet diplomacy, had survived his terminated tenure as Italy's culture minister: He had, at that time, told the credulous Associated Press that Italy had reached a verbal agreement with the Cleveland Museum for the return of objects, which the museum's spokesperson emphatically denied when I did my fact-checking.

Now, in a phone interview published yesterday in Il Messaggero, the Rome-based newspaper, Rutelli claims:

[Italy's] accord with Cleveland has been concluded. I have handed over the documents to my successor. They now need to be carried out.

So I contacted Cleveland for verification and its answer was much as it had been in response to Rutelli's previous jump-the-gun pronouncement:

Information that is currently appearing in Italian media sources is incorrect with respect to works in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art continues to hold discussions with Italian officials; however, no agreement has been reached to transfer any objects from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art to Italy and no timetable for conclusion of these discussions has been set.

A spirit of cooperation and confidentiality has informed the discussions between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Italian government to date, and we look forward to this continuing.

Aside from the controversies it stirred up---not only with the Cleveland Museum but also with Sandro Bondi, the man who, after the recent Italian elections, usurped the politically appointed post that Rutelli clearly relished---I enjoyed the Italian newspaper piece because it taught me that my soubriquet for Rutelli is "il Grande Rimpatriatore" in Italian. I also now know that Italian for "blogger" is "blogger" and that Rutelli knows how to work the press (as if I didn't know that already).

The spouse of a journalist, Rutelli first got his PR guy to alert me that the Great Repatriator was putting in an appearance at the Getty Museum. Then he made sure to inform Fabio Isman, the "Messaggero" interviewer, about my nickname for Rutelli, which I had included in my post about the planned visit. Isman led with my ironically intended soubriquet (which I suppose Rutelli likes, even though he's smart enough to get my satiric edge):

A New York blogger who for years has, with great persistence, followed "stolen art" [Isman's word for antiquities illegally removed from source countries] has called him "the Great Repatriator" and announced his visit with a "peace pipe" [Isman's term, not mine, even though he put it in quotes], intending to smoke it [!?!] with Michael Brand [the Getty's director], who was at the door waiting for him.

What I REALLY want to know is: Did they inhale? And what's Rutelli smoking?

And in related news: Arts funding in Italy, post-Rutelli, has apparently fallen on hard times, according to this piece by Elisabetta Povoledo in yesterday's NY Times.

Okay, enough with health care, the housing crisis, the economy and Iraq. Let's focus on what really matters:

I've already posted about Barack Obama's arts policy, and in the interests of equal time, I've been scouring the web, trying during this Republican National Convention week to find John McCain's cultural stance. On this, the celebrated POW appears to be MIA.

I couldn't bring myself to read the entire Republican Party Platform, so I performed a search on the word "arts" came up with "counterpARTS." Searching for "culture" brought up many more choices: "military culture," "culture of radical terror," "shared culture and values," "entrenched culture of official Washington," "entrepreneurial culture," and that old favorite, "agriCULTURE"...but nothing about the culture we all know and love.

Greg Allen in his greg.org blog observes:

John McCain's arts policy is apparently not to have one. His website doesn't mention the arts, arts education, or federal arts organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts at all.

And this from Jerome Weeks in Texas' Art and Seek blog:

In 1999, he [McCain] said, "I have opposed federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts because I believe it is not proper to use tax dollars for what many Americans feel are the obscene and inappropriate projects this organization has supported. I support providing federal block grants to the states for arts education and artistic endeavors pursued by state and local authorities, while assuring that federal tax dollars are not spent on obscene or offensive material."

Hopefully, he has by now gotten over the NEA Four.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution gives us a glimpse of the kind of art McCain likes, as photographed in his office: unidentified "Southwestern artwork" selected by wife Cindy (photo #3 at the link); black-and-white photos of Native Americans by the late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater" (photo #9).

The Atlanta newspaper also shows us Obama's office, which includes a painting of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall by Chaz Guest, on loan from the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago (photo #4); a seascape painted by Ted Kennedy (photo #7).

I was, of course, just kidding in the first paragraph. The fate of the world doesn't rest on the candidates' arts policies or lack thereof. Still, it's a matter of some interest.

Ann Temkin

Yesterday's chosen sound bite on WNYC focused on my mild misgivings about Ann Temkin's appointment at the Museum of Modern Art. So I feel it's worth reiterating what I posted on this blog, before I spoke on the radio: I think she's a solid choice, with a creditable track record of acquisitions and exhibitions. What's more, I think there's a good chance that she'll rise to the challenge of her new position as chief curator of painting and sculpture.

My qualms have to do with the fact that, so far, I don't see her playing in the same league as her illustrious predecessors, John Elderfield, Kirk Varnedoe and William Rubin---all legendary artworld luminaries of formidable intellect who were deeply immersed in the modernist canon that was the foundation of MoMA's collections and exhibitions. Temkin has indeed organized some shows of earlier art (such as Brancusi and Duchamp, back when she was at the Philadelphia Museum), but she has more consistently focused on more recent contemporary art.

The shows that she's done at MoMA have, by and large, not been much of a curatorial stretch: the UBS corporate collection (only some of which was given to MoMA), the collection donated to MoMA by Edward Broida, and her recent Color Chart eye-popper---pleasing enough, but lightweight. Happily, Elderfield, in his new emeritus role at MoMA, has Matisse and de Kooning productions in the works. Anything he puts his mind to provides us with revelatory insights about artists we thought we knew. (But has he yet gotten Matisse's condition-compromised "Swimming Pool" ready for prime time?)

As for Richard Armstrong, Tom Krens' heir apparent at the Guggenheim, by all accounts he's done a fine job at the Carnegie Museum of Art. But he hasn't really played in the big leagues. He was a young curator at the controversy-prone Whitney Museum, who eventually became director of an admirable but comparatively modest institution in Pittsburgh. Is he ready for the Global Guggenheim, which will remain a high-profile, international institution, even if part of his mandate is to scale back and return to core values?

I'm cautiously optimistic that both seasoned professionals have what it takes to grow into their new assignments and do a fine job. We can only hope.

Some time after 4 p.m. today, you can hear my brief comments on on WNYC's "All Things Considered" about the news of Ann Temkin's and Richard Armstrong's appointments at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, respectively.

Before the taping, I contacted the Guggenheim for an update on the status of Armstrong's expected designation as director of both the international Guggenheim Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (There will be no separate director for the New York flagship facility, as there was during Lisa Dennison's brief tenure in that spot.)

I was told that Armstrong is the Guggenheim's "leading candidate" and "contract negotiations are in progress." Furthermore, Eleanor Goldhar, the museum's deputy director for external affairs, told me that she had spoken to Armstrong for the first time "12 hours ago....He's really nice. Everybody loves him!"

How long will that honeymoon last?

The Guggenheim's board is scheduled to meet Sept. 23 on the directorship and other matters, but is thinking of finalizing Armstrong's appointment earlier, now that the cat's out of the bag.

If all goes according to plan, my comments will be part of the in-rotation segment on the museum appointments, which you can hear in the New York metropolitan area on 93.9 FM and 820 AM, or live on the web here (click the red-boxed arrows on the left).

I'll update this post with a direct link to the audio podcast, if and when it's available.

UPDATE: On a day when everyone is preoccupied with presidential politics and hurricane aftermaths, the news report on museum musical chairs was limited to a New York minute---a brief announcement of the two appointments, with a two-sentence opinion bite from a certain "art critic and regular contributor to WNYC":

I haven't seen her [Temkin] do the kind of sweeping, intellectually brilliant, provocative, eye-opening shows that her predecessor John Elderfield did. He was truly one of the great legendary curators at MoMA, and she's got some very big shoes to fill."

There's a bit more from my commentary on WNYC's website, here.

COMING SOON---a few of my other quibbles, not heard today in drive-time.

The Krensmobile, parked outside the Guggenheim's staff entrance

What's the single laudatory word most often used to describe Tom Krens, whose successor as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is expected to be Richard Armstrong, the director of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art?

VISIONARY.

Wait a minute! That's the same word used to describe Armstrong in the first paragraph of this editorial, published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last June, when he announced he would be leaving his Carnegie post at the end of the year. (Did he already envision himself then at the Gugg?)

The Post-Gazette opined:

It goes without saying that, even before the arrival of Richard Armstrong, the Carnegie Museum of Art was a first-rate institution. What it needed was a visionary like him to prod it to the next level.

When Mr. Armstrong leaves his position at the end of the year, he will leave behind exceptionally big shoes to fill....

In addition to an unerring eye, Mr. Armstrong has a talent for managing, organizing and raising money -- an enviable quality in museum directors. Today, the Carnegie Museum of Art is in excellent fiscal health because of it.

And the newspaper's art critic, Mary Thomas, had nothing praise for his myriad accomplishments in her detailed appraisal of his 12-year tenure. I not sure he's ready for the hypercritical New York press.

Wait. What was I thinking? Have I forgotten that he was previously a curator at the Whitney Museum, under the directorship of another controversial Tom (who bore the same last name as young Richard)? Here's an excerpt from a Michael Brenson review in the NY Times of a 1988 David Park exhibition:

The catalogue is not worthy of a major museum. Richard Armstrong, the curator of the show, who has been responsible for two other Whitney exhibitions this year, on Richard Artschwager and Elizabeth Murray, provides plenty of useful information, but his essay is neither probing, nor passionate, nor exhaustive....

When the Whitney has to deal with an artist who falls outside the mainstream critical framework of the last 25 years, the museum's will seems to sag and its intellectual resources dry up.

But what I really want to know is: Will Krazy Krens still get to ride with the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club?

Richard Armstrong

Kate Taylor gets her scoops the old-fashioned way---by working her sources. In a story posted late today, she fingers Richard Armstrong, director of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, as the person whom the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is expected to name as its next director, succeeding Tom Krens.

Taylor reports:

Through a spokeswoman at the Carnegie Museum, Mr. Armstrong confirmed that he is in final negotiations with the Guggenheim....Mr. Armstrong, who is 59, has been the director of the Carnegie Museum since 1996. He announced his retirement in June.

Taylor then repeated the same information that I gave you five days ago (here and here) about the possible Final Four in the Metropolitan Museum's director search, attributing this list to "sources." Kate had directly credited CultureGrrl in previous articles (here and here). Is there now a no-blog-quoting policy at the paper?

Finally, Taylor buried the important new MoMA apppointment at the end of the article. Could it be that she shares my pique?

UPDATE: Carol Vogel of the NY Times catches up with Taylor, but graciously credits her with the scoop.

Get-It-First Vogel

That does it. I've really had it with selective disclosure of important breaking news by cultural institutions. (So has distinguished architecture critic Martin Filler, who previously vented his frustration on CultureGrrl, here.)

I've known major mainstream-media cultural journalists who have boycotted important stories that were spoonfed to the NY Times first and withheld from the peons until later. I also understand that bloggers are lower in the pecking order than major publications. I (very grudgingly) accept that.

But when Carol Vogel this afternoon broke the important announcement of the successor to John Elderfield as the Museum of Modern Art's chief curator of painting and sculpture, I called the press office and meekly requested the press release and a photo. I was told that the announcement was not going to be made until tomorrow.

"The announcement was already made TODAY in the New York Times. It's on their website!" I protested.

"A press release will be sent out at 6 a.m tomorrow," was the final reply.

Trust me, CultureGrrl will not be setting her alarm clock. What's more, she is going to pout, sulk, throw a tantrum and turn her computer monitor to the wall. Sour grapes? No, journalistic principle. I admire Ann. I think she's a solid choice. My beef is not with her but with this misguided attempt to restrict press coverage and play favorites.

End of story.

Francesco Rutelli

The Great Repatriator strides across our land once again. But fear not, art-lings: He comes in peace.

Having spent last week at the Democratic National Convention, deposed Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, now a member of Italy's Senate and Rome's City Council, tomorrow reengages with his old antagonist, the J. Paul Getty Museum, viewing both its Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture show (replete with Italian loans) and its permanent installations at the Getty Villa in Malibu (which I sharply criticized here).

According to his press spokesperson, Rutelli's visit will be personal, not official. Nevertheless, he will thank the Getty and its director, Michael Brand, for "the stance it took when it closed the deal with Italy," said the spokesperson.

Do you get the feeling Francesco would like his old job back?

Those of you who read the online version of my piece, Krasner at Her Unknown Best, published on the "Leisure & Arts" page of today's Wall Street Journal, must be scratching your heads at this garish cartoon image that accompanied the piece on the web:


Lee Krasner, "Shellflower," 1947, private collection, New York

Then again, if you saw the image in the hard copy, on Page D7, you're REALLY scratching you head. The painting is reproduced there in black-and-white, with a caption describing the "vibrantly colored 'Shellflower,'" which is "animated by thick, small dollops of brightly hued pigments." I refer you to the front page of the "Personal Journal" section, which does include a decent thumbnail image of the work in color.

CultureSpouse Rocks! (at I.M. Pei's Hall of Fame and Museum)

How I spent my Labor Day Weekend:

---Dancing the night away at the Cleveland wedding of my husband's cousin (having first visited three museums and viewed an air show).

---Fielding vibrate-only phone calls during that celebration from: my son Paul, who announced his engagement to the fabulous Lisa; my excited daughter Joyce; Lisa's thrilled mother.

---Checking the final edit of my upcoming Wall Street Journal review of the Lee Krasner "Little Image Paintings" show at the Pollock-Krasner House. (There was lots more to say than appeared in my CultureGrrl mini-review, here.)

[UPDATE: My WSJ piece, Krasner at Her Unknown Best, is now posted in the online Journal and will be published on tomorrow's (Tuesday's) "Leisure & Arts" page.]

I will mercifully refrain from posting the details of the betrothal. It took more than five years for the engagement, so I figure I'll need a mother-of-the-groom dress some time in 2012.