October 2008 Archives

Ganesha Stele, 11th century (Pala period), India, newly acquired by Portland Art Museum

Remember the Association of Art Museum Directors' objectless Objects Registry, created last June to disclose (to the public and potential claimants) new acquisitions by member institutions of "archaeological material and ancient art lacking complete provenance after November 1970"?

It has, at last, posted it's first object, courtesy of the Portland Art Museum---a stone relief stele from India (above), purchased Sept. 18 at Christie's. The only other provenance information listed is its prior sale at Sotheby's in 2000.

Jennifer Stockman, Guggenheim president and art-market player

Carol Vogel's detailed revelations (in her "Arts & Leisure" piece for this Sunday's NY Times) about the wheeling-and-dealing leading up to next month's big Impressionist/modern and contemporary auctions make for some riveting reading.

Her report is packed with juicy details, including information on the auction-house guarantees to consignors, a withdrawn guarantee at Christie's, and, at Sotheby's, an "irrevocable guarantee" made by a third party---a category that has now been allotted an unusual symbol in that auction house's catalogue: . Maybe it should have been--- :-(

What I found most troubling were the revelations about museum trustees' playing the art market. There's nothing inherently wrong with trustees' owning art, as long as they put their institutions' collecting interests above their own (and, eventually, consider donating or bequeathing some of their holdings). But when they profit by buying and selling the same types of art that their institutions covet, they're moving into dangerous conflict-of-interest (or at least appearance-of-conflict) territory.

The most striking "did she really say that?" quotes in the Times piece came from Jennifer Stockman, president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, who, according to Vogel, crowed about her consignment to Christie's of a painting by Peter Doig, which she had loaned earlier this year to a show of his works at the Tate in London.

Vogel writes:

"Talk about timing," Ms. Stockman said of the consignment. She said she secured a guarantee, so "it became almost impossible not to take advantage of the sale."

Ms. Stockman's guarantee from Christie's includes other works she is selling as well, including one of Richard Prince's nurse paintings, "Lake Resort Nurse," from 2003, which is expected to fetch $5 million to $7 million. Although it was not included in a recent retrospective of the artist's work at the Guggenheim Museum, prices for Mr. Prince's nurse paintings have skyrocketed recently...

...at least partly because of the Guggenheim showcase, one suspects.

Kathy Fuld, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (and wife of Richard, who presided over the demise of Lehman Brothers) "is parting with rare examples of drawings by Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Agnes Martin," Vogel writes. Among them: Gorky's Study for Agony I, described by Vogel as "a graphite, crayon and ink wash on paper executed in 1946-47, related to a painting from the same year that is in MoMA's collection. Mrs. Fuld bought her drawing at Christie's in 1996 for $370,000. It is now estimated to bring $2.2 million to $2.8 million."

It's quite possible that MoMA might have liked eventually to have received that one. It's not a stretch to imagine that a museum curator may even have advised Fuld on acquiring it, in the hopes of eventually filling a gap in its collection through donation or bequest.

MoMA's president, Marie-Josée Kravis, is also (with husband Henry) consigning this fall, hoping to make a killing at Sotheby's on Degas' "Dancer in Repose", estimated to bring "in excess of $40 million." In 1999, the Kravises paid $28 million for that pastel at the same auction house, Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg reports.

What's wrong with these pictures?

Let's dust off what's still the bible on the responsibilities of museum boards---"Museum Trusteeship" by Alan and Patricia Ullberg, published in 1981 by the American Association of Museums.

Some excerpts:

The trustee's own acquisitions must not compete with his museum's; he is obligated to put the collecting ambitions of his institution before his own. The collections management policy should itemize in detail the collecting interests of the museum so that trustees who collect are put on notice that certain activities related to their personal collecting must be circumscribed while they serve on the board....

The ethical standards that the board adopts for managing potential conflicts of interest for trustees are, in some museums, the same as those applied to the staff. The rules for staff with respect to collecting generally aim to prevent situations in which staff members compete with the museum or profit from their positions or official duties....

The trustee who collects could be liable to the museum for profits he makes as a provable consequence of actions taken by the museum if his participation was a major influence in the institution's decision to take those actions. Such a case might occur, for example, if he persuaded the museum to hold an exhibition of objects represented in his personal collection and then was able to sell those objects at a profit. Whether his objects were exhibited or not, there is a conflict of interest and potential liability to the museum in this situation.

Maybe AAM needs to reissue that helpful handbook.

New meaning for the Global Guggenheim? Frank Lloyd Wright's curves serve as backdrop in online trailer for a shoot-'em-up bank-conspiracy movie, coming to a theater near you.

Is this any way to treat an art museum?

Below are some moments from the online trailer (which you can view in full here) for "The International," a film opening in February, starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. They shot scenes in New York at the Guggenheim, but "also built a replica building just outside Berlin to shoot scenes that could not be shot here [because the actors were being shot]" according to Eleanor Goldhar, the museum's spokesperson.

The faux Guggenheim appeared to suffer significant damage during the climactic gunfight scene:


The Real Guggenheim...

For sale at $50 million: the purported Pollock of the film, "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?"

Who the "#$&%" needs Sotheby's or Christie's, when you've got Gallery Delisle?

The six-month-old Toronto gallery, more accustomed to offering works by Canadian artists who sell in the four-figure range, next month will be offering the purported Jackson Pollock that an American former truck driver, Teri Horton, had bought at a thrift shop for $5. Just multiply that figure by $10 million. 

Canadian Press reports:

[Gallery] owner Michelle Delisle says she reached out to Horton after seeing the documentary, "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?" in which the gravel-voiced Horton discovers she may have a masterwork on her hands, but comes up against an established art market that refuses to acknowledge evidence provided by a Montreal forensic expert.

Stephen Holden, in his NY Times review of the 2006 film, wondered "if the movie itself might be a public-relations maneuver preparatory to an auction." Not quite, but close.

Inquiring Delisle patrons will want to know: Does this purported Pollock come with expert authentication? Is it accompanied by a $50-million money-back guarantee? If not, does Canada have consumer protection laws?

And whatever happened to those controversial "Matter Pollocks", which occasioned serious artworld examination and debate after they were discovered in 2003?

Memo to the Presidential Candidates:
It's time to put the artists back into the National Endowment for the Arts.

Specifically, it's time we put the culture wars of the 1990s behind us. We need to resume providing grants to the people who matter most to the our national cultural life---those who create the art.

Like Christo's "The Gates" that finally got installed in Central Park in 2005 after years of opposition, the resumption of artists' fellowships requires a change in political mindsets that will only happen if the official at the top---New York's Mayor Bloomberg, in the case of "The Gates"; the new President in the case of artists' fellowships---throws his weight squarely behind it. (The same can be said for changing the tax law to restore fair-market-value deductions for artists' donations of their own work---something that Obama has already said he favors.)

In deference to delicate Congressional sensibilities, the NEA now offers grants to do-good projects that sound more like educational and social welfare programs than professional cultural activities. Some of the money for these government-funded projects is assumed to trickle down to participating artists. That's not the same thing as directly supporting artists of the high professional caliber for work of their own choosing.

Today's federal arts support is largely targeted to meet poltical priorities of geographical distribution, access and outreach. One of NEA's chief visual arts programs, Access to Artistic Excellence, funds a number of residencies, outreach initiatives and community-based exhibitions, including grantees like these:

Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless, Inc., Albuquerque, NM, $15,000---To support ArtStreet. Designed to give homeless artists access to art-making opportunities and mentorship, the project is a partnership with Tamarind Institute and the Harwood Art Center.

ArtsChange, Richmond, CA, $15,000---To support a series of curated exhibitions installed in the waiting room of Richmond's main public health facility. The project will promote the value of the arts in the healing process and provide access to art for users of the facility.

The NEA used to give financial grants directly to emerging and mid-career artists at a moment in their creative lives when that money and national recognition made a big difference. Now. through its Lifetime Honors program, it provides grants to "master artists" and hosts ceremonies celebrating the lives of established cultural figures who have achieved celebrity status in their fields.

A concert in Washington tomorrow, according to the agency's announcement, will "recognize the recipients of...the NEA Opera Honors." The honorees include internationally acclaimed Metropolitan Opera conductor and music director James Levine and soprano Leontyne Price, both of whom have no need of further validation by the federal grant agency.
   
The literary arts are uniquely advantaged when it comes to current NEA support for artists: There are awards for production of outstanding new American plays, literature translation fellowships and even a large number of $25,000 creative writing fellowships. Why is it acceptable to give awards to individual writers but not to individual painters?

Picasso, "Arlequin," 1909, precipitously withdrawn from Sotheby's Impressionist/modern sale in New York

At least the Dow went up 889 points yesterday.

That may have softened the blow of yet another art-market confidence-killer, as chronicled in yesterday's NY Times by Carol Vogel: An important Cubist Picasso painting of a harlequin (above), which for 50 years had been owned by the Surrealist artist Enrico Donati, was suddenly withdrawn by Donati's estate from Sotheby's major Impressionist/modern sale, which is scheduled for next Monday evening in New York. Estimated to bring over $30 million, it had toured earlier this month to London and Moscow as one of the stars of the auction.

According to Vogel:

It had been rumored for weeks that the work would be taken off the market because of fears that art prices were heading the way of the world financial markets.

When I asked if the rumor was true, Sotheby's would only say:

The owner has decided to withdraw the painting for private reasons.

Lot 41 is nonetheless enshrined in the sale catalogue that has already been distributed. But all traces of the painting have been expunged from Sotheby's website. It's even been edited out from the middle of the auction house's promotional Private View video, where David Norman, co-chairman for Impressionist and modern art, haplessly called it "a work of tremendous art-historical importance and it's an incredible moment in the art market"...

...for all the wrong reasons, as it happens.

The only good news for Sotheby's in this misfortune is that Vogel's scoop didn't make it into the arts pages but instead got buried at the bottom of Page 26 in the local news section, below a larger story about "Tough Choices During Time of Transition for M.T.A. Director." This misplacement presumably happened because Carol missed the earlier deadline for the Arts section. Harder to understand is why her piece was also hidden in a small-type list of stories on the newspaper's online arts site. It was way down on that web page and not, as one would have expected, within its Art & Design section.

With the entire world, including emerging markets, now experiencing economic angst, it would seem that auction houses can no longer convincingly claim that art prices are insulated from economic shocks by the influx of new buyers from far-flung centers of wealth---Russia, China, the Middle East. Judging from Matthew Brown's story in Monday's Bloomberg, Christie's hasn't quite gotten that message yet.

If this month's major contemporary sales in London are any indicator, the forecast for autumn in New York is gloomy. (For more on London's fog, see Kelly Crow's Not a Pretty Picture at Auctions in the Wall Street Journal. For a somewhat more upbeat take, see Souren Melikian's Cool-Headed Buyers Are Now Running the Show in the International Herald Tribune, which followed his own less positive piece of the week before.)

Farnworth House after the September 14 flood

The Farnsworth House Blog reports (here and here) that the Mies van der Rohe masterpiece in Plano, IL, flooded by severe rainstorms on Sept. 14, reopened for tours earlier this month. Original post-flood plans had called for it to be closed for the remainder of the 2008 season. Tours will now run on select days through Nov. 26. General admission tours are $20; weekend docent-led tours, $50; director-guided tours by Whitney French, benefitting the restoration, $100.

In 2003 Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation saved the 1951 house from a possible move by buying it from British art patron and architecture aficionado Lord Palumbo for $7.5 million at a Sotheby's auction. Given its problematic site on the flood plain of the Fox River, moving it (or somehow raising it higher above the ground than the five-foot columns on which it is perched) might no longer seem quite as unthinkable as it did back then, although the original site is certainly part of its architectural identity.

The Farnsworth's latest blog posting [via Ed Lifson, who has been following the story] includes six photos showing the "breathtaking view of the interior of the house" that was opened up by removing a flood-damaged teak wardrobe.

Sometimes adversity can yield benefits:

 

Philippe de Montebello, addressing the press at his eponymous exhibition.

There's no point quarreling with the organizing principle behind the Metropolitan Museum's The Philippe de Montebello Years, the tribute exhibition honoring its long-time director.

Arranging by order of acquisition some 300 objects acquired on Philippe's watch by the museum's 17 curatorial departments may leave some careening visitors with a sense of art-historical whiplash. But for staffers and Met Museumologists like me, who have lived through this history, it's a nostalgic trip, with memories triggered as much by the names of illustrious donors---Linsky, Wrightsman, Annenberg, to name a few---as by the array of many familiar (and sometimes unfamiliar) objects.

What was missing, for me, was a more rounded sense of de Montebello's major accomplishments and lasting contributions, including the vast expansion of gallery space and the unerring focus on quality and scholarship, in exhibitions as well as acquisitions.

Taking the show on its own terms, I would have liked it to have provided a greater sense of the interaction between the director and curators in vetting potential acquisitions. There's a hint of that on a few of the object labels (particularly the one for an American quilt in the show---not an easy "yes" for Philippe). But there's a lot more personal flavor on the audio tour, which features director-curator conversations. Particularly interesting are Philippe's earnest struggles to be fair towards some types of art that he instinctively finds off-putting, if not repellent.

We learn, for example, that he generally dislikes Tibetan painting ("rigid pictures with very set iconographic programs") and some German Expressionist art ("very gross" and "almost caricatural" depictions of prostitution), but he did endorse acquisitions of somewhat atypical works in each field: a very early (12th or 13th century) Tibetan painting, which Philippe felt showed more delicacy than later works (which, to his mind, are the "repetitive last exhalations of a dying style"); and a German Expressionist portrait that curator Sabine Rewald called, "one of the more benign pictures of Otto Dix":


Otto Dix, "The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden," 1922

As for the aforementioned American quilt, Philippe told American decorative arts curator Amelia Peck:

I haven't changed that much of my mind on quilts, but you are persuasive and I recognize as a professional that it is very important, if you have under your charge a huge museum in which 5,000 years of art from all continents are represented, that not everything can appeal to one's own taste.

But the conversation I particularly appreciated involved Joan Aruz, head of the ancient Near East department. She said:

I was confronted with an extraordinary opportunity last year, and that was the shocking decision [emphasis added] made by the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo to divest itself of the art of the ancient world. And among the treasures in that collection was one piece that I had had my eye on for quite some time. And I wondered how could I convince the director that this would be a work that we should purchase?

Philippe's rejoinder:

It took a little bit of convincing because, after all, it's really not an endearing object....So I went to the auction house and I stood in front of the object. And must say that its hardly suppressed energy was such that I felt it was going to break itself out of the vitrine. I knew that [given] its rarity and the uniqueness, the ability to acquire it would simply not recur in an age in which the purchase of antiquities is [because of heightened sensitivity about provenance issues] something that is almost relegated to the past.

My photo, below, of the installation of that vitrine-buster, "Striding Horned Demon," Mesopotamia or Iran, ca. 3000 B.C., gives a good sense of the eclecticism of this installation. Behind it is an Egyptian ritual figure, 4th century B.C. Further back, on the right, is the famed Duccio "Madonna and Child," ca. 1295-1300:
 


The irony of this acquisitions-centric tribute is that the ability of museums to acquire major masterpieces has, in fact, greatly diminished during the Philippe de Montebello years. He had publicly acknowledged that fact some time ago, when the museum's annual acquisitions bulletin significantly changed its title from "Notable Acquisitions" to "Recent Acquisitions."

But even this year, some major pieces have enriched the collection, including Domenichino's "The Lamentation," whose arrival went unheralded by the NY Times, but was reported in May by James Gardner in the late, lamented NY Sun. Unlike most of the museum's stellar acquisitions, this old master was acquired by purchase. Money from some 18 different acquisition funds had to be pooled to snare this:


Domenichino, "The Lamentation," 1603, acquired this year

Speaking of which, the website for the Philippe Show not only includes an online catalogue (there will be no hardcopy) of all the objects, but also a chance to help jumpstart the Tom Campbell Years, by making a gift to the Philippe de Montebello Acquisitions Fund.

In these financially troubled times, no fundraising opportunity can be left unexplored.

Steve Wynn's "Le Rêve," right, on the original catalogue cover from MoMA's landmark 2003 show

Holland Cotter, whose art criticism I generally esteem, owns the front page of today's "Fine Arts" section in the NY Times, with reviews of both Acquavella's Picasso show (which I discussed here) and the Metropolitan Museum's "The Philippe de Montebello Years," which opens today (and which I viewed at the press preview Monday).

Aspects of both appraisals seemed uncharacteristically clueless.

First off, in the Picasso review, he incorrectly identifies as "La Rêve" the star attraction of the show. (A correction and a French refresher course are called for: It's "Le Rêve.")

More shockingly, he consigns that sublime picture to "the kitsch category." As I previously noted, the Museum of Modern Art, which surely knows a great Picasso when it sees one, had reproduced Wynn's painting on the original catalogue cover (on the right, above, in my advance press copy) for its landmark "Matisse Picasso" show. (MoMA was later forced to reprint the cover before the opening, when the casino mogul withdrew it at the last minute over insurance concerns.)

Even more surprisingly, in today's Cotter review of the Met's tribute show for its director, Philippe de Montebello, he never mentions the organizing principle behind the installation: It is arranged in roughly chronological order, according to each object's date of acquisition by the Met. This eccentric concept (reminiscent of the museum's recent The Age of Rembrandt) was dreamed up by someone not previously known for organizing Met exhibitions---Jeff Daly, the museum's senior design advisor for capital and special projects.

The Met's curators, led by the exhibition's coordinator, Helen Evans, curator of Byzantine art, had been considering traditional installation approaches---by department, or according to the chronology of the objects' creation. But Philippe let it be known that he wanted an unconventional concept and he responded with enthusiasm when Daly suggested an "and then I collected..." approach.

The intention, as described by de Montebello in his opening remarks at the press preview, is to give visitors a sense of what curators experience at acquisition meetings, where a variety of disparate objects are submitted by various departments for general consideration. This inside-baseball conceit is suggested at the outset by a photo montage, below, which gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the director and curators engaged in such a conclave:



I'll have more to say about this show next week.

Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the four Eliasson waterfalls at dusk

The New York City government's number crunchers are at it again, trying to quantify the "economic impact" of a public art project whose chief value was not monetary but aesthetic and experiential---Olafur Eliasson's "Waterfalls."

In announcing that "Waterfalls" had "an estimated economic impact of $69 million, exceeding the initial estimate of $55 million," the wonks at the city's Economic Development Corporation again employed the same dubious methodology that they used three and a half years ago to quantify the supposed financial benefit of Christo's and Jeanne Claude's "The Gates." That 16-day project was said to have generated an economic impact of more than $80 million. "Waterfalls" lasted slightly less than four months, but had more limited viewing hours.

I adored both these projects. "The Gates's" transformation of Central Park and the heightening of one's perception of its topography, induced by the parade of billowing saffron sentinels, was unforgettably uplifting. And this summer, dining on a restaurant terrace overlooking the harbor both before and after sunset (when I could see the cascades illuminated), I was enchanted by the wacky incongruity of the torrents that seemed to be emanating from such improbable sources---otherwise unexceptional buildings and, most memorably, the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge.

But for some, enchantment is just not enough: Using the controversial "multiplier effect," which takes into account how money generated by the project trickles down to other businesses, the city reported that "Waterfalls" involved "$15.5 million in direct spending on the exhibition's total presentation (including building materials, construction, operation, disassembly, and promotional and educational materials); an estimated $26.3 million in incremental visitor spending; and an estimated $26.8 million in indirect spending from these expenditures." (For example, waiters tipped by Waterfalls tourists would, in turn, spend that money at local stores, causing a ripple effect.)

I called into question that method of analysis in my 2005 Wall Street Journal report on "The Gates," by relying on what was then a new study by the RAND Corp. The study's authors asserted that economic arguments for the arts falter "if other activities are better at achieving the same effects." In other words, new sports stadiums might create "more bang for the buck" than new concert halls.

As for the "multiplier effect," the RAND study stated that the fallacy in counting such "spillover benefits" is that they may not be "a net addition to a local economy," but merely "a substitute for other types of spending."

If you're REALLY want to immerse yourself in "Waterfalls" wonkery, you can read the entire 28-page economic impact report. What, we wonder, was the economic impact of compiling this lavishly illustrated, pie-charted document?

I think we need to get back to basics: This is about the art, not the money. The RAND study suggested that what really matters is how these projects "add value to people's lives." One "obvious example" they said, is "sheer joy."

That works for me.

Robert Irwin's garden at the Getty Center last winter

The very real dangers of fire and earthquake have always made the Getty Center a risky venue for masterpieces.

This morning, for the first time that I can remember, the threat, temporarily, became frighteningly real: Andrew Blankstein, Ari Bloomekatz and Jia-Rui Chong of the LA Times report:

Firefighters have extinguished a 100-acre fire that ignited early this morning in the Sepulveda Pass near the Getty Center, prompting the temporary closure of the 405 Freeway. It took more than 400 firefighters seven hours and 45 minutes to extinguish all visible flames, and there were no injuries or structures burned, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department....

Firefighters put up defense lines around the Getty Center....The fire was about two miles from the Getty Center.

LA Fire Department Acting Chief Donald Frazeur told the LA Times that blowing embers could still reignite a fire.

And this just in from the Getty's press office:

The Getty Center has experienced no damage to grounds, buildings, or the collection due to the brush fire that broke out a few miles away early this morning and has now been contained. We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the crew of Battalion 5 (Getty Center Building Protection Group) who were on site at the Getty Center immediately after the fire began, and to the LA City and County firefighters who fought the fire.

The Getty Center will remain closed today to visitors and most staff to ease traffic congestion in the area, but will reopen tomorrow at 10 a.m. for business as usual.

The Associated Press photo of the raging flames is horrific. We can only hope that the Getty's brush-nibbling goats did a good job.

"Ancient Egyptian Dog Collar," $85 at the Tut Show in Philadelphia

He's baa-a-a-ack!

The controversial and sometimes downright tacky King Tut extravaganza is the zombie that refuses to die: The de Young museum, San Francisco, recently announced that the bells-and-whistles blockbuster will pack 'em in next year at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, from June 27, 2009 through Mar. 28, 2010. That is a LONG run.

It's now at Dallas till next May. Or is it going to be at Atlanta from November till next May? The official Tut website site has the show playing both venues at the same time, as does Ticketmaster. Does this mean that there are now TWO Tut traveling roadshows? I don't even want to think about it.

Tom Hoving, who, as director of the Metropolitan Museum, orchestrated the landmark, jaw-dropping first Tut show (which I visited twice), took the occasion to provide a detailed rebuttal in ArtNet Magazine to repeated claims by Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Organization of Antiquities, that Egypt got no cut of the proceeds from the 1979 show:

The revenues from the catalogue, posters, reproductions, scarves, stationery, and so forth in the museum shops at the six locations in the U.S., plus substantial profits from mail-order, was $7 million dollars, today worth maybe five times that amount....

According to [Daniel] Herrick [the Met's then chief financial officer], "At the conclusion of the U.S. tour I took a check of about $3 million representing the balance of whatever profits had not previously been remitted, bringing the total up to $7 million."

I myself had a conversation with Hoving back then, which I reported in Art in America magazine. At that time, Tom boasted to me that the then novel concept of providing a cut of merchandise proceeds to major lenders, as he had done for Egypt, was a new approach: "I invented it." The rest is history.

The link on the de Young's above-linked press release that's supposed to lead you to information about ticket pricing is broken. Maybe even the web server fainted at the high price ($32.50 at the Dallas Museum of Art), as will many museumgoers in these financially dicey times. Will the gift shop still proffer the $85 "Ancient [sic] Egyptian Dog Collar" (above)?

Maybe if the stock market recovers in time.

November ARTnews

How will the Global Guggenheim change under the directorship of Richard Armstrong, who replaces Tom Krens as director on Nov. 4?

According to executive editor Robin Cembalest's piece for the November issue of ARTnews (now online):

The vision now is of a kinder, gentler globalism, focused not so much on building multimillion-dollar megastructures by starchitects as on forging alliances.

But unlike Philippe de Montebello, who recently told me that he intended to keep hands off the Metropolitan Museum when he leaves its directorship at the end of this year, Tom Krens intends to stay very much in the picture: As a consultant to the Guggenheim Foundation, he'll be managing the development of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Board president Jennifer Blei Stockman told Robin that Krens "has created his own business as well. We are one of his company's clients."

Are there any other cases of a museum's becoming a "client" of its former director? Is the man who created a new model for fundraising through "feasibility studies" for Guggenheim-branded outposts (which mostly proved infeasible) now engineering a new model for raising funds for ex-museum directors?

Cembalest confirmed what CultureGrrl reported last month: The Guggenheim Vilnius is not going to happen any time soon, if at all, because "the agreement with the Guggenheim Bilbao stipulates that the foundation must consult with it before initiating new museum projects in Europe." Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Bilbao's director, last month indicated to me that he was not favorably disposed towards the proposed new European outpost. Presumably they knew all that BEFORE deciding to string along the eager Lithuanians with a feasibility study.

The new director may feel uncomfortable or even constrained by his predecessor's looking over his shoulder. And Krens' continued role could defeat the board's wish, as expressed to Cembalest by Stockman, for the deep-pocketed but disaffected Peter Lewis to return to the fold. We can only hope that Armstrong isn't strong-armed, but gets a clear shot at redefining and stabilizing an institution which, on Krens' watch, had a tumultuous, controversial ride.

The clearest expression of Armstrong's vision for change at the Guggenheim was his comment to Cembalest that he is "interested in serving artists as the first constituency. That's the challenge: ...to have artists partaking of what's shown in the Guggenheim, ingesting it, and having it inform their own work."

Does this mean that the former Whitney curator is hoping to Whitnefy the Guggenheim? Anything that shifts the focus from empire building to artistic ferment is a good thing.

Not available online is Ann Landi's "I Expect to Be Surprised Every Day," a profile of the Met's new director, Tom Campbell---also coming in the November ARTnews.

I'm not exactly sure how to deal with this:

Posted Sunday on a general-interest news and blog site was an excerpt from an about-to-be-published book ostensibly dealing with a serious subject that I frequently blog about. But the only subject that this long excerpt concerns itself with is the allegedly lurid side of personal lives (in the past, if not the present) at a major American art museum.

I don't want to give publicity to the book and I don't want to give publicity to the blog. But I do want to say that if this book (which you are sure to hear about, if you haven't already) does have any serious merit, it fatally sabotages itself with this tabloid sensationalism. I did like the one comment posted by a reader of the blog: "He shagged. She shagged. Yawn."

The enabler of this dirty journalism is Times Books, the publishing partnership between the NY Times and Henry Holt And Company. The publisher's website boasts that the Times is "the recipient of 95 Pulitzer Prizes."

Not for work of this quality.

Steve Wynn's restored Picasso, "Le Rêve, at Acquavella Galleries, New York, with Steve Cohen's Picasso, "Femme Nu Couchée," on right 

After I wrote harshly about museums' lending works to commercial gallery shows in general and to Acquavella's just-opened Picasso show in particular, the gallery's diplomatic director, Michael Findlay, graciously invited me to peruse the show with him as my guide.

Findlay added:

Sometimes, like a cigar, a worthwhile exhibition is just that, a worthwhile exhibition.

So yesterday I DID visit the Marie-Thérèse Walter focus show, with Michael at my unrestored but very careful elbow, and it IS a worthwhile exhibition. Steve Wynn's Picasso, "Le Rêve" (above), DOES look almost pristine, notwithstanding its owner's accidental elbow-jab to Marie-Thérèse's left forearm. And if the NY Post is to be believed, Wynn actually hit the jackpot by slapping Picasso's hapless mistress: He reportedly got a big insurance settlement for the damage and still gets to keep (or to sell) the valuable painting.

But even though nothing in Acquavella's show is for sale and despite Findlay's assurances that Wynn no longer dreams of selling "The Dream," the whole enterprise still makes me queasy.

There, in the same room with Wynn's battered trophy, is the Guggenheim's iconic "Woman with Yellow Hair," at left below, on loan from the museum's Justin Thannhauser Collection. That masterpiece-laden benefaction had long been subject to conditions (relaxed in recent years) that its works were not to leave the Guggenheim's premises, even for museum exhibitions (let alone for commercial gallery displays):


Guggenheim/Thannhauser Picasso, "Woman with Yellow Hair," left, chockablock with "Nude on a Black Armchair," private collection, courtesy Richard Gray Gallery
 
Also in the room with Wynn's Picasso, which the casino mogul had intended (before the accident) to sell to hedge-fund mogul Steve Cohen, is "Femme Nu Couchée," which Cohen does own. In the next room, Cohen's "Le Repos" is installed face-to-face with the Museum of Modern Art's famous "La Baigneuse," of much higher quality than its garish, privately owned roommate. Upstairs is a whole room devoted to photographs of Picasso and/or Marie-Thérèse, including one (reproduced in the show's catalogue) in which the nattily dressed artist poses beside Cohen's "Repos."

What's wrong with this picture? It's true, as Findlay noted, that galleries perform many services for museums---lending them works, helping them with acquisitions and assisting them in locating art that can be borrowed from private collections for public exhibition. But that doesn't make it appropriate for museums to lend their masterworks and luster to a commercial gallery's walls, even if the works on display aren't up for sale. Findlay couldn't (or wouldn't) tell me what Acquavella's next show will be; this one closes on Nov. 29.

Michael, your show is a must-see and you did nothing wrong by borrowing important Picassos from willing lenders (which, in addition to the museums listed in my previous above-linked post, also include the Morgan, which contributed a drawing from its Thaw Collection.). The institutional lenders are the parties that should have exhibited discretion instead of their artworks.

Do we really need another Berry-Hill or Salander O'Reilly mess to convince museums of the inadvisability of dispatching works to business establishments that may ultimately turn out to be less solid than they seemed? I'm not in any way suggesting that there's anything amiss at Acquavella; it's the principle that counts---keeping the proper arm's-length distance between for-profits and non-profits.

(Speaking of which, Chanel's Hell-in-a-Handbag show has just opened in New York's Central Park, bagging an appropriately scathing review from the NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff. He accused it of "dismantling the boundary between the civic realm and corporate interests." Did I ever say anything negative about Nicolai?)

Come to think of it, with so many artworks not selling, it's probably a perfect time for Acquavella to have conjured up a non-selling show.

Celebrants at last week's Barnes-raising ceremony included: Bernard Watson, chairman of the Barnes Foundation's board, second from left; Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, fifth from left; Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, sixth from left; Barnes president and CEO Derek Gillman, third from right

Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell dropped two surprises into his comments at last week's ceremony celebrating the Barnes Foundation's assumption of control over the site on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia where it hopes to finish construction of a new facility by the end of 2011.

As reported by Inga Saffron, architecture critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Governor announced an increase in the state's contribution to the project to $30 million from $25 million. The Barnes still states that the construction cost will come in at about $100 million, which I previously termed a "wishful-thinking budget."

But more surprisingly, Rendell revealed:

I think it's been 14 or 15 years since Ray Perelman first came to me with this idea to move the Barnes.

That would strongly suggest that the initial impetus for the state's involvement came not from the Barnes itself, but from the long-time member (now chairman emeritus) of the Philadelphia Museum's board of trustees, who later donated the lion's share of money for that museum's eponymous new annex. This connection will surely provide fodder for those who argue that, despite its public hands-off posture towards the controversial plan to move the Barnes from its long-time home in Merion, the Philadelphia Museum may, in fact, have been a behind-the-scenes player from the start, promoting, if not spearheading, the move.

Christopher Knight, art critic of the LA Times, observed Friday (in that newspaper's Culture Monster blog) that Perelman's feelings about the project have long been known. What wasn't previously revealed so explicitly was his direct and early role in lobbying the Governor on behalf of the move.

According to the press release issued by the Barnes in conjunction with last week's ceremony, "remediation and site preparation" are now in progress, with demolition scheduled for this winter. "Design refinement" is scheduled for next spring and summer, with construction occurring between fall 2009 and winter 2011. After that, interior work and installation are scheduled. (The press release is not on the Barnes' website, at this writing.)

Meanwhile, the Barnes has festooned its planned new location---the former site of a juvenile detention center (which recently moved to a new temporary location)---with a 400-foot-long series of 10-foot-high banners, reproducing some of its to-be-relocated masterpieces. Not shown in the above publicity photo is the band of protesters from Friends of the Barnes, who shouted their disapproval during the dignitaries' speeches.

Still undisclosed are details about the architectural plans being drawn up by Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, who were named more than a year ago. According to Barnes spokesperson Andrew Stewart:

The design is still not finalized and will not be shown to the public until it is....There have been a lot of renderings in the process of the design, but those will not be made public---at least there are no plans to do that anytime soon.

Poor Inga, the architecture critic, still doesn't have very much to go on.

New book by the Metropolitan Museum's head of external affairs

Harold Holzer, who moonlights as a Lincoln scholar when he's not working as the Metropolitan Museum's senior vice president for external affairs (or is he moonlighting at the Met?), will publish later this month yet another of his many books on the 16th President: Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861. It's hard to keep up with all these literary museum PR people.

Unfortunately, the New Yorker didn't keep up with this late-breaking Abe news. Thomas Mallon's Oct. 13 books column, pegged to another new Lincoln-related tome, didn't even mention Holzer's.

Harold also has his own website (who knew?), where you can learn about his extensive tour to discuss the former President-elect. Does he really have time for these travels? I thought they needed him on Fifth Avenue to field all those media requests for interviews with the museum's new Director-elect. (JUST KIDDING! Harold always puts the Met first; Abe second.)

Speaking of which, the November issue of ARTnews will feature interviews with both Thomas Campbell and Richard Armstrong.

Withdrawn from Bonhams: Large early Apulian red-figure hydria, attributed to the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl, ca. 410-400 B.C. Estimate: £80,000-120,000

Bonhams is starting to seem like the auction house of choice for sellers who are concerned that their disposals might meet with disapproval if information about them were more widely disseminated, as would happen if the sales were at the bigger houses. This could be the case with the planned deaccessions in New York by the Museum of Arts and Design, which I reported about yesterday, as well as with the scheduled sale of 10 antiquities that were suddenly withdrawn from yesterday's auctions (here and here) in London.

Nick Squires of the London Telegraph reports:

Bonhams made the last minute decision not to auction the artefacts after being told by the Italian embassy in London that some of them were probably stolen and illegally exported from Italy. The 10 items, which were expected to fetch £200,000, were among 600 fresco fragments, busts and statues due to go under the hammer.

One of them, a 4th-century BC Greek vase, was once owned by Robin Symes, a British dealer who in 2005 was imprisoned for two years for bankruptcy but released after seven months. The auction house was furious that the Italian authorities gave just 24 hours' notice about the objects' suspect provenance.

Former Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, now a member of Italy's parliament, was in the forefront of efforts to stop the sale of the allegedly suspect pieces. As CultureGrrl readers may remember, Rutelli last March announced:

I expect that over the next few years hundreds of other works stolen from our national patrimony and taken abroad will return to Italy: the agreement that I have made with the British Minister of Culture to shed light on the [Robin] Symes collection housed in London has opened new, considerable opportunities.

Rutelli now feels that his successor as culture minister, Sandro Bondi, is "not taking sufficient action" to pursue those considerable opportunities, as the Telegraph reports.

David Gill of the Looting Matters blog, who has been following this antiquities story for several days, yesterday posted  Bonhams' somewhat irate press release (which I could not find on the auction house's website) announcing the withdrawals. The auction house criticized Italian authorities for "keep[ing] information [about the pieces] hidden, for whatever reason, until the very last minute."

Could the reason be to achieve maximum publicity value for a last-minute "rescue"?

Wharton Esherick cherrywood table, consigned by Museum of Arts and Design to be sold Dec. 10 at Bonhams
 
While the Museum of Arts and Design was loudly trumpeting the opening of its new facility on Columbus Circle, it was also quietly planning the sale of objects from its collection---not at Sotheby's or Christie's, but at the more under-the-radar, British-based Bonhams. My request for more details from Bonhams and MAD are still unanswered, but here's what appeared in the auction house's announcement of the Dec. 10 sale, to be held by its New York branch:

Property from the Museum of Arts and Design, the country's leading cultural institution dedicated to exploring the creative processes of contemporary artists and designers from around the world, presents an opportunity for collectors and other institutional curators to own works from their collection---property offered to benefit future acquisitions at the museum.

This superb selection includes furniture and decorative arts by many notable artists. Offered will be a fine Wharton Esherick cherrywood table (est. $20/30,000) and a handsome Wendell Castle Plaintain coffee table (est. $8/12,000). A selection of wood vessels by Ed Moulthrop, Bob Stocksdale, Mark Lindquist, and Ron Kent will also be presented. A rare Louise Bourgeois porcelain sculpture produced by Sevres and titled "Fallen Women" could bring as much as $5,000. The museum property is rounded out by an exciting collection of contemporary sculptures by Czechoslovakian glass artists Bretislav Novak, Rene Rubicek, Jaroslav Svoboda, and Dana Zamecnikova.

In response to my query for more details, Bonhams spokesperson Staci Smith wrote: "I just found that the department is actually still in the process of cataloguing, so unfortunately I'm unable to provide a full list of items and catalogue descriptions at the moment. I'll have a better idea of everything when they're in the final stages, which will be a few weeks from now."

I am still awaiting information from MAD on the list of lots and the rationale for putting them on the block, which I had requested from the museum on Friday. So far, they've just sent me this statement from the director, Holly Hotchner:

In anticipation of our move to our new location at Columbus Circle, we
have been able to significantly upgrade our collection both in breadth
and depth. The de-accessioning of certain works has allowed the Museum
to make a major advancement in terms of the quality of the collection.

Perhaps they'd prefer not to have publicity about their new acquisitions commingled with publicity about their new deaccessions.

Fisk University's Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery

I could find nothing to indicate this on Fisk University's website, which still says that the Carl Van Vechten Gallery is "currently closed to the public." But Blake Farmer of Nashville Public Radio reports [via]:

The famous Stieglitz collection at Fisk University is in the public eye for the first time in nearly three years. People are finally able to see what all the fuss has been about....The school had to meet a court deadline last week to put the art back on public display.

WPLN also states:

Fisk has been able to overcome some of its immediate financial challenges and spent half-a-million dollars improving security and air quality in the Van Vechten gallery on campus.

And just think how much more money they'd have if they'd stop paying lawyers in a foolish appeal of the court decision against selling a half-share of the collection to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges.

Catherine Opie, "Mitch," 1994, courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

At the end of her NY Times review of the Elizabeth Peyton show that just opened at the New Museum, Roberta Smith heralded the "girly art" movement, which she described as "a strand of painting that has historically been dismissed or marginalized, and for which respect tends to come late, if at all."

I've certainly noticed the concurrence of several important one-woman museum retrospectives in New York this fall, although calling them "girly" curls my feminist hair. I suppose the term connotes the interpersonal and/or pretty, with a preponderance of portraits---Peyton, the Museum of Modern Art's upcoming Marlene Dumas and the Guggenheim's current Catherine Opie, whose photographed subjects deliver a confrontational (not very girly) wallop. At the New Museum's upcoming Mary Heilman show, the paintings are abstract, but the titles hint at the personal subtext.

Is it any accident that these shows were all organized by female curators?

Silly question.

Pablo Picasso, "Le Rêve," 1932, Private Collection

The list of commercial dealers shows to which museums have imprudently lent both their art and their prestige is growing: Picasso's Marie-Thérèse, opening Tuesday at Acquavella Galleries, New York, includes examples from the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum and the Tate, in addition to collector Steve Wynn's infamously elbowed painting (above, now restored) and other works.

William Acquavella coyly commented to the NY Times' Carol Vogel:

Right now nothing is for sale. One or two could possibly be, but I doubt it....I'd like to have them all for sale. It would be fun.

The LA Times' art critic, Christopher Knight, yesterday speculated on the show's true raison d'être:

No cynicism is needed to assume that one goal of the exhibition is to publicly demonstrate that repairs to "Le Rêve" have not had serious effect on its market value. William Acquavella has brokered many of Wynn's art acquisitions over the years.

If Knight is right in his decidedly cynical but quite plausible supposition, then distinguished institutional lenders may have allowed themselves to be used as parties to the marketing maneuvers of a private collector and commercial gallery.

And even if this exhibition is intended merely to delight and enlighten the public, thereby burnishing the gallery's professional reputation, museums have no business participating in Acquavella's business.

This is, of course, the sequel to a previous CultureGrrl post, Desperately Seeking John McCain's Arts Policy.

With two debates down and one to go, neither Presidential candidate has had anything to say on national television about the arts. This would seem to indicate that the economy, health care and foreign policy are more important issues than funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and allowing artists' tax deductions for charitable donations of their work. Who knew?

Still, John McCain finally saw fit to come out with a one-paragraph, arts-related statement, reproduced here on the website of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, a bipartisan advocacy organization. The statement was "quietly issued" last week, according to Julie Checkoway's article about the arts and the Presidential campaign, published on Friday in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Here is the McCain statement in its entirety:

John McCain believes that arts education can play a vital role fostering creativity and expression. He is a strong believer in empowering local school districts to establish priorities based on the needs of local schools and school districts. Schools receiving federal funds for education must be held accountable for providing a quality education in basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy. Where these local priorities allow, he believes investing in arts education can play a role in nurturing the creativity of expression so vital to the health of our cultural life and providing a means of creative expression for young people.

I'd call that an education policy, not an arts policy. Barack Obama had previously issued a more expansive "Platform in Support of the Arts," which I described and linked to here. There's more on Obama's position on the arts here.

On Friday the Americans for the Arts Action Fund also published on its website a report card on the arts positions and voting records of the two candidates. Assuming this is a fair and comprehensive rundown, it appears that support for the arts is more on Obama's radar screen than McCain's. In the great political scheme of things, that hardly matters, though. It's the economy, stupid...or the stupid economy.

Jackson Pollock, "Mural," 1943, University of Iowa Museum of Art

Let's dispel the rumors and misinformed speculation that have been percolating in the blogosphere:

First and most importantly: The University of Iowa will not be selling its Pollock "Mural." Let me repeat that (as Joe Biden would say): THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA IS NOT GOING TO SELL ITS POLLOCK "MURAL."

This was first signaled by a statement declaring that the matter was closed, which was issued by the Iowa Board of Regents' president, David Miles, on the same day, Oct. 3, when the Regents also released its nine-page Report on Questions Related to Sale of Jackson Pollock's 1943 Painting "Mural". The board's communications director, Sheila Doyle, confirmed to me today that the sale is definitely not going to happen and will not even be discussed at the Regents' upcoming meeting, because "it's a done deal" (perhaps better described as a done "no-deal").

Secondly, notwithstanding commentators' misreading of the above-linked report, Sotheby's NEVER initiated contacts with the University of Iowa about selling any works from its museum's collection. It was the other way around. There WAS a Sotheby's proposal, as the report states, but it was provided in response to a request by the former director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

For this and more information about the post-flood situation at the museum, here's my Q&A with its director, Pam White:

Rosenbaum: Who issued the report related to questions about selling the Pollock?

White: University President Sally Mason presented this report to the Iowa Board of Regents. It was prepared with help from the UI Museum of Art and the UI School of Art and Art History, among other University offices.

Rosenbaum: When was it issued?

White: President Mason gave the report to the regents on Sept. 30 and they made it public on Oct. 3.

Rosenbaum: Did Sotheby's initiate the contact about the Pollock and Max Beckmann's "Triptych," as has been charged, or was the contact initiated by the university?

White: The contact was initiated by the former director of the UI Museum of Art.

Rosenbaum: Is the possible sale of the Pollock (or any other art owned by the university) still under consideration?

White: My understanding...is that the board has decided the painting is too valuable to be sold....As far as other works being sold, that idea had not been broached by the Regents and I do not think it will be after the incredible public outcry against the idea of selling "Mural."

Rosenbaum: Is there anything else we should know about the how the university's flood recovery efforts will affect the museum, and what the future of the museum will be, going forward? What is the status of your efforts to move to a new facility and of temporary plans to show some of the collection elsewhere?

White: The University's recovery efforts will most certainly affect the Museum. We already know that we are not going back into our previous building. That space is already being repurposed and used for rehearsal space for large music ensembles who desperately needed the space as their own building will likely not be reopened for two years. The University now faces the challenge of reevaluating its interaction with the river over all the campus, and in particular the arts campus, which was one of the areas hardest hit by the flood.

The Museum of Art will certainly be a part of that big picture as the University moves forward. In the meantime, we are working with other campus units to find space to bring some of the Museum's collection back so it can be available for use for students in classes. Just last week we had some success in this effort: Nearly 250 works on paper, mostly prints, arrived on Wednesday from Chicago. The UI Libraries Special Collections was able to find room to store these works in their already secure, climate-controlled space in the UI Mail Library.

Already, on Thursday, the first class, "History of Prints," was able to come to the classroom in Special Collections and view the works for their class. It was quite a wonderful thing! Now, we're thinking ahead to finding a larger exhibition space for both traveling shows and permanent collection works. There is a good chance that we will end up in the Iowa Memorial Union, another building that was damaged by the flood but that is slated to reopen in the coming months. In the meantime, we have one exhibition opening this fall in another museum on campus, the Old Capitol Museum (of which I am also the director).

Rosenbaum: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

White: Just that we greatly appreciate all of the outspoken support we have received across locally and across the country to prevent the sale of the Pollock painting.

Click the image below for a video tour of the inaugural show, The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art, at the new Saatchi Gallery, set to open in London on Thursday. Given the weak results of Sotheby's Chinese contemporary art sales last week in Hong Kong, has collector Charles Saatchi lost his uncanny talent for market timing?

The London Telegraph's veteran art critic, Richard Dorment, provides the upbeat voice-over for this video. (But Adrian Searle, in today's Guardian, gives a mostly negative review of the new facility. The always entertaining Waldemar Januszczak of the London Times comes out somewhere in between.)

Here's the video (with more CultureGrrl comments below):



Just yesterday, Phillips de Pury & Company, which had entered into a corporate partnership with the Saatchi Gallery to underwrite free admission there, announced that Mercury Group, a Russian luxury goods company, had bought control of the London-based contemporary art auction house. Veteran auctioneer Simon de Pury will remain as the company's chairman and a major shareholder. John Varoli of Bloomberg has the story.

Will the new owners continue de Pury's arrangement with Saatchi?

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's two-volume catalogue of the Friede Collection

CultureGrrl applies one of two adjectives to the arts writers she most admires: "estimable" for the excellent, "indispensable" for the super-excellent.

Kate Taylor, ace art reporter of the now-defunct NY Sun, ascended to the latter category. Today I was delighted to see her name and reportage splashed across six columns at the top of the NY Times' Arts page, in yet another tale of art-collateralized debt impacting museums: A Collection of Tribal Art in Embroiled in a Modern Family Feud. The collection in question is the New Guinea tribal art trove promised in 2005 by Marcia and John Friede to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Here's some back story that didn't get into Taylor's piece:

CultureGrrl has a long memory, so I did a double-take in March 2005 when FAMSF announced that it was acquiring works amassed by the New York State collector who in 1978 got himself and the Brooklyn Museum investigated by then New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz. The AG's office recommended that the Brooklyn Museum, where Friede was vice chairman, adopt "a comprehensive code of ethics," after state investigators found that Friede had "failed adequately to disclose his ownership" of African and Oceanic art sold to the museum from his personal collection.

Grace Glueck of the NY Times then reported:

Under the state's Not-For-Profit Corporation Law, a transaction between an institution and an interested director who has not fully disclosed that interest can be voided at the election of the institution.

However, the acquisitions committee of the museum, of which Mr. Friede is a member, has re-examined the transactions---in his absence---and has ratified them, according to the Attorney General's office.

The AG found that the prices paid by the museum for the works were reasonable, the museum had "suffered no financial harm" and Friede could keep his position on the Brooklyn Museum's board.

According to the FAMSF's above-linked announcement, that museum's now endangered gift included works that Friede acquired from the collection of the late Douglas Newton, many of which Newton had collected in the field long before he became the Metropoltan Museum's curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Newton died in 2001; Friede, not the Met, acquired that collection in 2003.

I'll let you read Taylor for a complete account of the conflicting claims now aimed at Friede's New Guinea trove: The parties to this dispute (aside from Friede) are his brothers, Sotheby's auction house and the San Francisco museum, which is "determined to defend [it's] right to the collection," Taylor reports. Good luck with that. The 137 works gifted to the museum are probably its to keep. As to the rest of the 4,000-work collection: promises, as the American Folk Art Museum recently discovered, may not be binding.

Will we be seeing more of Taylor in the Times? She produced today's piece as a freelancer, not staff reporter, so time (and the editors' wisdom and hiring budget) will tell.

UPDATE (or, to be more accurate, CultureGrrl gets herself up-to-date): For earlier, detailed stories by John Coté of the San Francisco Chronicle exploring this contretemps, go here and here.

Thomas Cole, "Return from the Tournament," 1841, consigned by the Corcoran Gallery to Christie's

It has now been disclosed that the 10 American paintings selected for sale by the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, will be offered at the American paintings auction at Christie's, New York, on Dec. 4, with a total presale estimate of $4-6 million. Jacqueline Trescott of the Washington Post last Friday broke the news that a 10-work Corcoran disposal would take place, but details on the time and place of their sale were not yet available.

In response to my queries, the Corcoran provided a list of the works' exhibition histories and the rationales behind each disposal. But the Corcoran and Christie's said they could not yet provide me with images (other than the Cole's) or provenance (including whether the works were purchased or, if not, who had been the donors).

So here's what I've got:

None of the 10 paintings have been on exhibition in recent years, according to the information provided by the Corcoran. The most recently exhibited was Thomas Cole's "Return from the Tournament," 1841, above, which was on reciprocal loan in 1990 at the National Gallery, Washington (bespeaking its quality). The Corcoran justifies its disposal on the curious grounds of "Depth in the Collection": It is deemed less important than "The Return," a similar Cole also owned by the museum. I had always thought that having depth in the collection was a GOOD thing. Can a museum have too many excellent Coles?

"Depth in the Collection" is also the justification for the disposals of these works:

---George Inness, "Tenafly, Autumn," 1891 (I WANT this one! My family and I lived in Tenafly, NJ, for 22 years. Now I finally know why there's an Inness Road in town.) It was one of six Innesses at the Cocoran.
---Eastman Johnson, "Child Playing with Rabbit," 1878, one of six Johnsons.
---Gari Melchers, "The Smithy," 1910, one of six Melchers
---Gilbert Stuart, "John Ellery," 1810, one of seven Stuarts, including two George Washingtons. Maybe they should also ditch one of those redundancies. (Just kidding.)
---Edmund Tarbell, "Still Life," 1918, one of four Tarbells. "Still lifes were not a significant part of his career," the Corcoran says.

The disposals of two other paintings were justified on the dual grounds of "Quality and depth in the collection":

---Frederick Carl Frieseke, "Giverny Landscape," 1915-1916, one of three Friesekes.
---Alexander Wyant, "Late Afternoon," before 1883, one of three Wyants.

And two more are being sold strictly on the grounds of inferior quality:

---William Glackens, "Christmas Roses," ca. 1930. "The Corcoran has excellent examples of his best work."
---John Twachtman, "Spring Landscape," ca. 1890-1900. The Corcoran owns a better Twachtman and this one "has little visual or compositional impact." Nevertheless, it was put on "indefinite loan to the White House" in 1977.

Seattle Art Museum, shouldering the offices of WaMu

In his remarks at last year's press preview for the expanded Seattle Art Museum, John Walsh, former director of the Getty Museum and a long-time friend of SAM's director, Mimi Gates, declared that Washington Mutual Bank (which jointly developed the museum-owned land) was "certainly a more reliable partner" than the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, where the (now closed) Guggenheim Hermitage had been housed.

Not any more.

The good news is that SAM's finances, according to its spokesperson, Nicole Griffin, are not intricately entangled with those of the failed bank, which in 2001 had initiated discussions for the public-private partnership. At the time, WaMu urgently needed more office space, as I reported in my 2007 Wall Street Journal review of SAM's new addition, designed by MAD Brad Cloepfil.

Griffin said, in response to my specific queries, that SAM owns no WaMu stock or bonds and that there are no WaMu donation pledges or construction loans outstanding. I asked if JPMorgan Chase, the purchaser of WaMu, would be taking over the entire space that had been occupied by the failed bank and Griffin replied, "TBD" (which I take to mean, "to be determined"). That's a lot of potentially vacant office space that could loom over SAM.

In addition, there's the little matter of $4.6 million in annual gross income that SAM had been receiving from WaMu for the lease of eight floors directly above the four-floor museum expansion. SAM had the future right to occupy those eight floors; WaMu (which also occupied the new 42-story office tower behind SAM) was to retain the use of the top four floors of the 16-floor building. Griffin said that "there are Change-of-Control Provisions in the lease agreement." In other words, SAM is hoping that JPMorgan Chase will honor WaMu's rental obligations.

Shortly before WaMu's collapse, Griffin had told Regina Hackett of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Theoretically, if something were to happen to WaMu, if it's sold, then WaMu's financial obligations become the responsibility of the new owner." This could be TBD too.

In conclusion, Griffin told me that the past SAM-WaMu relationship is causing "no evident repercussions right now"...

...except, perhaps, second thoughts in the museum world about teaming up with commercial entities for future expansions.

For a description of the original museum-bank deal (which, according to this account, had included construction loans from WaMu), go to Jim Brunner's detailed 2007 article in the Seattle Times.

It's too late for me to append an update to my original post on 2007's highest salaried art museum directors, as (incompletely) identified by the Chronicle of Philanthropy's survey: Those of you who get to me from the ArtsJournal home page would miss the update, since two days (during which I celebrated the Jewish New Year) and a lot of other bloggers' posts have intervened.

Noelle Barton, one of the authors of the article that accompanied the survey, wrote to me to explain why some high-paid art museum directors fell under the Chronicle's radar (as I had observed on Monday):

Our survey only polls organizations that raised the most money from private sources in 2006, or are the largest foundations based on asset size, in 2007. For this reason, some smaller arts organizations who may pay high salaries may not be included.

I'm not sure this explains why the directors of the National Gallery or the Los Angeles County Museum, to name two, didn't make the list. As to why Michael Brand, the Getty Museum's director, is unmentioned, Barton said:

Our survey methodology has us include an organization's chief executive, and the person other than the chief executive who earned the highest pay. Because Michael Brand earned less than the Getty Trust's chief investment officer, James Williams, [as well as its president, James Wood], he was not included in our results.

And for an explanation of why my post on Monday listed the names of the well remunerated, but not the dollar amounts they received, go here.