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.