February 2009 Archives

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, decked out for its new blockbuster

If you live within driving distance of Philadelphia, I've got just two words for you:

ROAD TRIP!

If the Philadelphia Museum is too far a drive, then hop a train, a boat or a plane, but DO NOT let May 17 pass by without devoting serious time to the masterful Cézanne and Beyond, crafted by that consummate exhibition-maker, Joseph Rishel. Those of you, like me, who had the good fortune to be levitated by Joe's definitive Cézanne retrospective of 1996 don't need any further prodding.

What's amazing about this show (aside from the striking, thought-provoking visual evidence of interrelationships between the master and such disparate admirers as Alberto Giacometti, Marsden Hartley, Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns, among many others) is Rishel's ability to pry loose tightly held masterpiece loans from very private lenders. Time and again, you're stopped in your tracks, marveling at works you've never seen before and are unlikely to see again after this show closes.


Cézanne, Compotier and Plate of Biscuits, c. 1877, private collection

When I asked Rishel why this must-see assemblage won't travel, his answer was what I had anticipated: Many lenders could not be induced to part with their closely held treasures for more than three months...only for Joe.

I was particularly fascinated by his strategy, related to me over lunch, for softening tough collectors: In a gambit he'd never tried before, he created "playing cards" that graphically demonstrated to a potential lender how his work would fit in with the others around it. He persuasively made the case that the coveted missing card was essential to the game.
















Left: Picasso, "Le Rêve," 1932, Collection of Steve and Elaine Wynn
Right: Cézanne, "Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair," c. 1877, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

There's one artist who got away, however: Rishel and Katherine Sachs, who collaborated on the show as adjunct curator, had this to say in their absorbing catalogue essay, "The Making of an Exhibition":

We were for some time keen to engage Richard Serra in our dance. Yet as kind as he was in sharing his opinions about the show, he finally withdrew from consideration, observing that he was more influenced by Matisse through Barnett Newman than directly by Cézanne.

During the press preview, the ebullient curator mentioned that this show was meant to be fun.


Joseph Rishel, right, and Katherine Sachs at the press preview

The most fun for me was trying to figure out what was going through his nimble mind when orchestrating these evocative juxtapositions. The correspondences go far beyond mere imitation of style or composition (though there's some of that too). And they go much deeper than what Rishel called "pat the bunny"---here's a ginger pot, there's a ginger pot.

What comes across forcefully is Cézanne's status as what Matisse termed "a benevolent god of painting." Each artist took away something unique and personal from encounters with the master's oeuvre; all came away with an enriched sense of individual artistic purpose.

Cézanne filtered through Ellsworth Kelly's sensibility, for example, comes out as pure Kelly:


Left: Cézanne, 'The Gulf of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque," c. 1878-79, Musée d'Orsay, Paris













Right: Kelly, "Lake II," 2002, Beyeler Collection, Basel



I couldn't help but contrast this sense of Cézanne's benign influence on his acolytes with the impression left by the Whitney Museum's "Picasso and American Art" of 2006, which I previously said could have been subtitled, "Picasso Eats His Young": His killer works devoured neighboring morsels by weaker American contenders, whom he held in thrall.

The Philadelphia exhibition, which merits a second visit, may have been the last great project of Anne d'Harnoncourt, the museum's late director and Rishel's wife, to whom the must-have catalogue is dedicated. The only time during our conversation when Joe's eyes briefly clouded was when he mentioned that he and Anne used to visit "Puppy Palace" to watch baby dogs at play. He said they'd always wanted a pup, but never got one.

The artworks in the galleries, he said, bouncing his hands up and down, were friskily playing with each other---just like puppies.

Jackie Chan, repatriation fighter

Calling the two 18th-century Qing Dynasty bronzes of a rat and rabbit, auctioned yesterday by Christie's, "Chinese bronzes" (as I did in yesterday's post) is a bit of a misnomer.

According to Christie's catalogue entry:

These superb and remarkably realistic heads were almost certainly designed by Giuseppe Castiglione [an Italian Jesuit missionary living in China]. Clear similarities can be seen, for example, between the style of the bronze head of the monkey from the clepsydra (sold by Christie's Hong Kong in April 2000) and that of the animal in the painting "A White Monkey" by Castiglione and now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Although the looting of the Summer Palace in Beijing, to which these sculptures belonged, was deplorable, I think it's legitimate to question why China has chosen to pick an international fight over these objects---not antiquities, not by a Chinese sculptor, pillaged almost 150 years ago. Even ardent repatriationists recognize that source countries' claims, for the most part, should be subject to a cutoff date. Most objects illegally removed from the source country before that date should be granted repose, or thousands of pieces would be flying around the world. The 1860 date of the pillage of the Summer Palace would seem to predate any reasonable cutoff.

Even Patty Gerstenblith, a American lawyer specializing in international cultural property issues, who has become journalists' go-to person for pithy quotes calling for repatriation of just about everything, said this to the NY Times about these bronzes:

My view is this was looted, but it would be difficult to get that legally back. But it's got great historical significance and ought to be returned.

Bronzes from the Zodiac Fountain of Beijing's Summer Palace, sold today by Christie's in Paris from the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé

With the final session of the Saint Laurent/Bergé dispersal still in progress, the two rare Chinese Qing Dynasty bronzes of a rat and a rabbit, looted by French and British troops in 1860 (during the Second Opium War) from the Chinese Emperor's Summer Palace in Beijing, have sold (with buyer's premium) for a whopping $20.12 million (€15.75 million) each. (Presale estimate, without buyer's premium: $10.22-12.78 million each)

Their return had been urgently sought by the Chinese government. No word yet on the identity of buyer(s), who were threatened, in advance of the sale, by the Chinese litigators.

Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, yesterday quoted this warning from one of China's lawyers, Li Xingfeng:

If they were sold, we would start legal proceedings against the buyer.

The Chinese lawyers' attempt to get French courts to prevent the sale was unsuccessful. China itself has been known to spend megabucks to purchase its own antiquities.

[Part One is here.]

It's an happy coincidence that this final post in my series about the death of a once admired example of Brutalist architecture, Pietro Belluschi's 1969 Alice Tully Hall and Juilliard School (reborn as Diller Scofidio + Renfro's new contemporary eye-catcher), appears on the same day as the indispensable Ada Louise Huxtable's Wall Street Journal appraisal of Yale University's respectful restoration of another Brutalist bruiser, Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture building.

In The Beauty in Brutalism, Restored and Updated, Ada Louise (who admired Tully Hall in her original NY Times review of Oct. 8, 1969) notes:

The name Brutalism---from the French béton brut, the raw concrete used by Le Corbusier and favored by modernists---is more commonly used today as a term of opprobrium by a public that profoundly dislikes the style's rough textures and powerful forms.

I hope that her next assignment is tackling Tully.

But for now, let's pick up from yesterday's curmudgeonly CultureGrrl concert cruise:

Finding your seat in Alice Tully Hall's orchestra section always involved descending a long flight of stairs on either side. In the new incarnation, that descent has been shrouded in gloomy, gray industrial-looking floor and wall covering. The lower depths, where most of the restrooms are located, can get confusing: There's a labyrinthine warren of passageways and doors on the right side, and even the color-coordinated worker I encountered during the press preview conceded that he found navigation confusing:

[Part Two is here. My previous posts on the transformation of Lincoln Center's intimate, multipurpose theater, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, are here, here and here.]

Some critics think that the old Alice Tully Hall was the pits. But I thought that its new entrance pit was the pits.

One of the strangest bits of misleading hype attached to this newly transformed performing arts venue is that it brings to the street a fortress that was previously aloof from pedestrians. In fact, Tully Hall was the only Lincoln Center facility with a main entrance at street level, albeit set back somewhat from the sidewalk. Although the architects are against the "acropolis" concept of making you ascend to performing arts facilities set on a "plinth" (as they call it), they apparently endorse scrapping a street-level entrance in favor of one that makes you descend into a sunken entrance plaza:


 
This courtyard features steep stone bleachers facing away from the street, that serve as a viewing stand for the architects' own creation:



Here's another shot of the whole ensemble, and how it relates (or doesn't) to the sidewalk:



There's an alternate entrance to the lobby, which gave me traumatic flashbacks to an alarming incident that I witnessed at the opening of the new facility for the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, designed by the same architects.

In my Wall Street Journal review of the Boston ICA, I wrote:

While I was seated in the café, a loud thud was heard as someone smacked full force into a glass wall beside the confusingly designed exit. While the victim iced his forehead outside, Mr. [Charles] Renfro assured me that this fault would be corrected by affixing stickers.

Sure enough, the box office entrance to Tully Hall features another glass door that's dangerously camouflaged within a solid glass wall, to which plastic snowflake stickers (on the right, below) have been affixed. (Do they swap these snowflakes for flowers in the spring?)



I asked a nearby guard about this decorative adornment, and was told that the flakes were added after a guard-colleague collided with the glass. Don't architects learn from past mistakes?

Let's proceed past Tully Hall's attractive café (which I already showed you in this post) and enter the inner lobby:


 
Lots of glass and hard corporate-looking surfaces; not much charm, let alone cushy comfort. But I welcomed the nostalgia evoked by those incongruous pillars on the right---about all that remains (other than Alice Tully's portrait) from the old hall. They had to stay for structural reasons and have been reinforced to bear the weight of new construction above (the patrons lounge and the Juilliard School).

The pillars are not only weight-bearing, but also name-bearing:

The original Alice Tully Hall, designed by Pietro Belluschi, 1969
Photo: Sandor Acs

I've already told you what I admire about the total transformation of Alice Tully Hall. In a subsequent post, I'm going to take you on a curmudgeonly tour, grumbling about some vexing missteps as I escort you, via photographs, from the entrance to your seats, with a break for intermission.

But first, let the critical spin-resistance begin:

I felt gratified (but also a bit scooped) this afternoon when, after my first mention of the hall's basic deficiencies, music critic Allan Kozinn on the NY Times ArtsBeat blog, jumped in with a few quibbles of his own (some of which I share). I heartily agree with his bemused observation that "the reopening is being treated as if it were the arrival of another millennium, and I think people are getting carried away." Like me and others who have happily attended concerts at Tully for most of our adult lives, Kozinn feels that the scorn being heaped upon the original Tully is undeserved.

The most extreme example of Tully sullying was Justin Davidson's appraisal of the old house in his recent NY Magazine review of the new architecture:

To enter, you slunk beneath a forbidding slab, inched past a tiny box-office anteroom, and descended a short flight of stairs into a long and loveless lobby, where daylight trickled in through grudging slits. Another level down, in the buried auditorium, noise from an ancient ventilation system masked the sound of passing subway trains, and deadened the music.

Even Anthony Tommasini, who gave a restrained rave for the new digs, had kind words in his NY Times review for the old place:

I, for one, never thought the acoustics of Tully Hall were really poor. The sound was clear and honest, just a little dull and distant.

I don't agree with the assessment by architect Liz Diller at the press preview that the original design of Lincoln Center in general and Alice Tully in particular was "elitist" or insufficiently "democratic," shutting out the larger city from "this privileged preserve of the arts." Its distinctive presence, to a culturally smitten Bronx kid (me in the '60s), always set it apart as something special and inviting, but not at all exclusionary.

Climbing up a few stairs to the Lincoln Center "acropolis" (as Diller termed it) was nothing like the monumental hike up the stairway to the Metropolitan Museum. But these uplifting approaches just made the occasion all the more glamorous and grand (the exact words that Diller used to describe her architectural firm's, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's, own entrance to the new Tully). Elevating cultural enlightenment above pedestrian life doesn't seem all that unseemly to me.

But if you're going to spend some $159 million for an old-hall overhaul, the party line has to be that the place was woefully inadequate and even politically incorrect. The last facility to be built at Lincoln Center (opening in 1969), Tully Hall is the only one to be radically reimagined.

On his blog, The Rest is Noise, the New Yorker's music critic, Alex Ross, mysteriously titled a straightfoward report about the hall's opening two-week schedule, "The Revenge of Miss Tully." Although there's nothing in that post remotely related to its headline, the spirit of the donor may be perceived to have vented its vengeance at the opening concert.

The program took a double hit when one of its key players, David Finckel (who is both the co-artistic director of a major Tully presenter, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the cellist for the world-renowned Emerson String Quartet) was felled by a back injury. One piece was preserved on the program, with a substitute cellist, Maya Beiser, but the Emerson's and Bartok's loss was the Brentano's and Beethoven's gain.

As for the Grand Dame herself---Alice's portrait has been moved from its conspicuous perch in the lobby to an unobtrusive alcove by an elevator and staircase:


Thomas Buechner, "Alice Tully on the Occasion of her 85th Birthday"

Those of you who aren't empty-nesters like me are just coming back to work from your winter-break, ski-or-swim vacations, so I just want to direct your attention to last week's innovation on the CultureGrrl website---the "Donate" button, administered through PayPal, on the right.

For further explanation of the fiscal urgency of this blogger bailout, go here. I was gratified by the initial response; discouraged by a recent falling-off.

It's going to be blogging-as-usual this week, in gratitude to those of you who have stepped up to the plate. But there are still many hundreds, if not thousands, of regular readers who seem to want me to keep doing this intensive work as a labor of love.

That's not gonna happen. But I also won't keep begging you like this, which I (and probably you) find distasteful. I hate giving this up: I just had my first "CultureGrrl Recognition" moment, where a stranger came up to me in a museum and said, "Are you CultureGrrl? I read you all the time!" I was at least as excited as she was.

Fair warning: If advertising (scroll down and click the box for "CultureGrrl") and contributions don't start making this endeavor more cost-effective, I'll have to cut back on my cutting commentary...which some people will undoubtedly regard as a GOOD thing!

The new Alice Tully Hall

[Part Two is here.]

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's transformation of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall is an enticing architectural eyeful to passersby on the outside and a bit of a letdown to concertgoers on the inside. Its deficiencies are basic---comfort, safety, and to my ears, acoustics (although the ears that count most, those of NY Times' chief music critic Anthony Tommasini, thus far were pleased).

To me, the sound was too often brittle, not resonant. It's easiest to gauge the quality of a performance and its sound on very familiar pieces. The two warhorses on yesterday's inaugural program were Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," for which the sound seemed dry; and Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite," which lacked the requisite sparkle. They were played, respectively, by the Brentano String Quartet and the Juilliard Orchestra with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, conducted by David Robertson (with whom I spoke later).

Having purchased my ticket quite late, I laid claim to what could well have been the worst seat in the house---last row orchestra, under an overhang, with a bright light shining directly down upon me at all times. This made note-taking and program-reading very easy, but absorption in the music more challenging. The overhang and my distance from the musicians could well have made my aural experience significantly less satisfying than Tommasini's.

I did admire the suave cafe...



...loved the lustrous, warm moabi wood that encases the shapely concert hall...



...and was wowed by the ingenious special lighting effect that, at times, imparts a flamelike glow to the walls. This aura emanates from LED lights behind a very thin wood veneer at certain portions of the hall, and heightens the anticipatory excitement when the house lights dim (except for those persistent bulbs above Row Z):



So what didn't I like about the new Tully? I've got a little list...COMING SOON.

I attended yesterday's press preview of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's completely transformed Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and I expect to attend the inaugural concert on Sunday. After that, I'll have much more to contribute, including an irreverent photo essay (but only if someone feels moved to click my dormant "Donate" button, on the right, sadly untouched all day yesterday).

But what's astonished me in the run-up to the concert hall's reopening week is the rush of a handful of newspaper and magazine critics to review what was essentially a construction site. What's this compulsion to get a "scoop" on a building that's going to be around a very long time?

I would never review an art exhibition before it's been totally installed or a painting before its last brushstroke has been applied. It likewise makes little sense to review a building (here and here) and its acoustics (here) before the place is ready.

There's been a bizarre architecture critics' arms race occurring for this and other recent projects, with key tastemakers getting private tours much earlier thanf the journalistic masses. This privileged treatment seems to have the desired effect---favorable reviews that essentially mimic the spin spoonfed by the architects and their clients. These premature assessments by leading writers set the tone for pieces that follow in other publications.

Who would go up against the Fastest Pen in the East, the New Yorker's Paul Goldberger? He not only published a Tully rave while the place was still swarming with hardhats, but also posted this unintentionally comic online video that shows just how unready for prime time the place (other than its front lobby) really was:

Instead showing you this notation from the book of remembrance stationed just outside of the Andrew Wyeth gallery at the Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, PA, I wish I could have shown you an image of the artist's last painting, "Goodbye," which astonished me when I made my pilgrimage almost two weeks ago to the gallery-turned-shrine in Wyeth's hometown:


For one weekend, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, the Museum of Modern Art's iconic "Christina's World" was on view at the Brandywine, as part of its Wyeth tribute.

But the luminous, ethereal "Goodbye's" nine-day display at the entrance to the gallery slipped under the artworld radar. I had no idea, when I arrived, that I would be fortunate enough stand transfixed before this virtually unknown work, which has been unseen by the public, save for this fleeting exposure.

I was deeply moved by the painting and awed by the painter.

"Goodbye," executed last summer, is set on the shore of a private island off the Maine coast, where Wyeth owned two islands. The mottled white sky is vaguely ominous; the loosely painted water is breeze-rippled. In the upper right, atop a small hill, sits a simple, stark white house, described to me by a representative from the Andrew Wyeth Office as a "sail loft, where sails would have been stored."

But what moves some viewers to tears is what you see in the far left, just barely within the confines of the canvas---a sailboat leaning in the wind, with a tiny ghost of a figure facing the viewer, about to slip out of the picture. What's most haunting is how the house and the vessel dematerialize in the shimmering water.

No photography was allowed in the gallery. I tried to get permission to reproduce Wyeth's final masterpiece, but the artist's widow, Betsy, declined through a representative. I lack the status of distinguished American art scholar John Wilmerding, a friend of the Wyeth family, who was recently permitted to reproduce another powerfully elegaic, little known painting, "Snow Hill" (which is what I had come to Chadds Ford to see). The image of that 1989 work accompanied Wilmerding's Jan. 26 tribute to the late artist in the Wall Street Journal. (My own CultureGrrl tribute is here.)

"Snow Hill," also on view when I was at the Brandywine, is a clever in-joke for Wyeth aficionados, but didn't come close to matching the mesmerizing effect of "Goodbye." That painting was taken off view the day after I saw it, and was returned to Wyeth's widow Betsy, who, at this writing, has no plans for future display. It will eventually provide a brilliant coda to the catalogue raisonné that she is overseeing.

When I asked how its title was arrived at, Karen Baumgartner, the permissions and database coordinator for the Andrew Wyeth Office in Chadds Ford, replied somewhat cryptically:

The artist's wife Betsy is usually the one to title the works. Mr. Wyeth of course had some input as well, though I think it's fair to say that his passing was a big factor in settling on "Goodbye."

If Betsy has the last word on titles, it's possible that the painting's name may be revised. In the museum visitors' book of remembrance is Betsy Wyeth's own signed notation (which is what you see in the top photo):

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm only sorry Andy of course never saw "Goodbye, My Love" hanging.

While we're on the subject of nasty-looking demolition projects that are prelude to the construction of snazzy new museum facilities, guess which one this is:

Demolition-in-Progress: Site of the new Barnes Foundation building in Philadelphia, formerly home to a juvenile detention center

In what is perhaps a harbinger of their future relationship as neighbors on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation are collaborating on a high-powered lecture series, Cézanne, Still Going (scroll down), in conjunction with the museum's soon-to-open Cézanne and Beyond exhibition.

The most renowned lecturers in the series will be speaking at the Barnes, not the Philadelphia Museum: John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, Museum of Modern Art; John House, professor at the Courtauld Institute, London; and the show's organizer, Philadelphia Museum senior curator Joseph Rishel (whose topic will be, "Déjà vu All Over Again: Cézanne, Barnes, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Show").

Rishel had already had close connections to the Barnes, as chairman of its curatorial advisory committee guiding the foundation's collections-assessment initiative---a project begun when there was still hope that the foundation could survive in its original location. Cementing the relationship, the Philadelphia Museum is offering 11 private tours of the Barnes' galleries in Merion, PA, during the next three months.

See it there (where its founder, Albert Barnes, intended it to be), before you can't.

Speaking of which, here's an update that I recently received from Andrew Stewart, the Barnes' press spokesperson (who took the photo you see above) on the status of its building project:

The design process is ongoing and as far as I know we are on schedule for a public release of the design in the late spring. As the design is still being tweaked, there is nothing I can say publicly about the current design other than to restate that the new building on the Parkway will house the art collection in galleries that replicate the scale and configuration of the original Merion galleries, as well as the way the collections are currently presented. Construction is scheduled to begin toward the end of this year.

Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

"I have this private fantasy that the museum casts itself northwards," Richard Armstrong told me during our recent hour-long conversation in the director's office on the 8th floor of the Guggenheim Museum, which he has occupied for the last three months.

Northwards? I immediately began seeing visions of the Guggenheim Saskatchewan.

But he actually had something very unKrensian in mind:

There's a big constituency north of here that may not have a neighborhood museum. Why couldn't we become more of that for them, up in Harlem? [Well, they DO have some museums uptown already, but more is more.]

Now that tourism is going to shrink back somewhat, one of the challenges is that we've got to make certain that people in New York feel that this is a place they want to come to over and over again. You want people to say, "I'll go because I know when I go there that I'll be treated well, I'll be stimulated and I'll be comforted.

How would he accomplish this, I wondered. The first part of the answer was a bit of a letdown, but then things got more interesting:

The public aspects of the place will be changed somewhat. We'll have a different coffee service [??!], for example. The restaurant is going to have a different character.

For our Frank Lloyd Wright show, the interior of the institution is going to go back to the way it was in 1959, which incorporated indoor/outdoor. The garden aspects of the museum are going to be restored: There are places where there were meant to be plants.

There are meant to be plants behind the fountain pool, at the top of the first ramp. We're going to put it back for the show in May and see how it functions into the future. It will soften the interior and make the place seem a little more hospitable. It's kind of a hard-surface place right now. I'm also hoping we can get better and more comfortable seating.

As for exhibitions:

I'm interested that our shows into the future have historical scope and focus at the same time. We need to put our intellectual imprimatur onto ideas and eras.

The one thing I can say to you that's concrete is that I'm very keen on seeing a show that uses the Panza Collection as its ballast but considers the whole Minimalist impulse. I'd like to make that a full-immersion exhibition, so that it's not just confined to this building but seen elsewhere---in the city and maybe in the region.

I think one of the powers the city could have is by linking up intellectually. By coincidence, when we have our Kandinsky show, the Modern will have its Bauhaus exhibition and the Sabarsky collection will be presented at the Neue Galerie. So we've begun chatting about how we say to inquisitive people, "Be certain to see all the aspects of this impulse and go around and take advantage of the big sampler of New York"....

I'm struck with how collegial the whole [art museum] directorial level [in New York] is right now. We just had lunch again at the Frick to celebrate Tom Campbell [the new director at the Metropolitan Museum]. This is the second time I've been to lunch with these guys and ladies in just two or three months. My impression is that these people are closely linked.

I've long believed that New York museums were counterproductively competitive and needed to cooperate more. But there's a new generation of leadership afoot, and these are challenging times in which peaceful coexistence, instead of an arts arms race, seems all the more appealing. If Armstrong can help foster a collaborative atmosphere, the cultural life of the city will be greatly enhanced.

The new director of the Guggenheim, true to his Whitney roots, feels strongly that a contemporary art museum's "first constituency is always living artists." And he's not much concerned about perceived conflicts-of-interest involving trustees (and here), sponsors and donors who have personal stakes in the shows that they support:

As long as you've got capitalism, you've got capitalists. And as long as they're not doing anything illegal, to me it seems inevitable and proper that people who feel strongly about "blue" are going to support "blue" projects....I think if people are partisan towards certain artists or some sort of aesthetic movement, it's unrealistic to say you're forbidden to underwrite that project. It just doesn't make sense to me.

As for coming up with more specific ideas about programs and projects, Armstrong took a raincheck:

I have to take advice from people who are here and get to know each one of them. So I need a little more time.

Abu Dhabi Boys (lead singer, Frankie Gehry)

Left to Right: Lee Tabler, CEO of Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company; Richard Armstrong, director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; architect Frank Gehry; Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Guggenheim's chief officer for global strategies and director, Guggenheim Bilbao; Frederick Henry, Guggenheim trustee

I've had occasion in the last few weeks to interview a few recently anointed museum directors, and I've been struck by the differences in how they approach their new assignments. In future posts, I'll be discussing someone who hit the ground running as soon as he walked in the door, and someone else who is brimming with new ideas, even before setting foot in his new office.

Then there's Richard Armstrong, the new director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim foundation, who recently invited me to his office for a chat. The far-flung enterprise over which he presides is much more complex than the operations overseen by my other two aforementioned interviewees, which may explain why Richard still seems to be in his listen-and-learn phase, three months after his arrival on Fifth Avenue from his long-time post as director of the lower-profile Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

One of his first missions involved trekking to Bilbao, Venice and Berlin, where the Guggenheim has satellite museums, and Abu Dhabi, where it eventually will. (When we spoke, he had been everywhere but Berlin, where he was about to travel.)

Since the word "global" goes with "Guggenheim" like bread with butter, let's start with Armstrong's take on Abu Dhabi. The following are excerpts from his remarks:

His impressions during his January visit:

You see great ambition and there's a hunger---an intellectual hunger---not just there but in the whole region. They want EVERYTHING, which is kind of interesting.

[I mentioned that this cultural interest, thus far, has largely been confined to the region's leaders, rather than the broader population.]

I was talking to someone about this after I came back and he said: "You have to liken it to William Randolph Hearst and America in the 1880s." The leaders and the eccentrics always push forward the culture at large, and then people like you and me grow up thinking it's a given. It's a march of progress.

The design and construction process:

Emily Jacir takes aim, misses the mark

Emily Jacir's work has always moved me with its understated, poetically symbolic approach to empathetically documenting the plight of Palestinians. In my Wall Street Journal review of the 2004 Whitney Biennial (which displayed Where We Come From), I included her among three artists whom I particularly admired. And in my CultureGrrl review of the Brooklyn Museum's "Global Feminisms" show, I again singled out Jacir's work, Crossing Surda, for praise and gave this account of my personal encounter with the artist herself:

Because Jacir's works are so powerfully subtle in limning the difficult conditions endured by Palestinians in Israel, I was taken aback by an uncharacteristically contentious quote on the wall text accompanying her piece: She asserted that "all people, including the disabled, the elderly and children, must walk distances as far as two kilometers, depending on decisions of the Israeli army," who "shoot live ammunition" when they "decide that there should be no movement on the road."

As it happened, I encountered the artist by chance at the press preview, and learned that she had not wanted that quote to appear. She told me that her comments hadn't come "from a place of anger." The intention of the piece, created with a hidden camera, was not originally to produce art, but to record her experience, she said. (She later e-mailed to let me know that the offending quote had been expunged.)

So I was surprised and even incensed when, before I had myself seen the Guggenheim's installation of "Material for a Film (performance)" and "Material for a Film (2004- )," I read Ken Johnson's unfavorable review in the NY Times of the current Jacir show at the Guggenheim, which ended by saying that "the problem [with the exhibition] is with her unexceptional artistry, not her politics."

I don't think that "unexceptional artistry" is the problem, but this is definitely a problematic show---not because of its politics (artists are entitled to their views), but because of Jacir's unsatifying realization of a project quite different in character, tone and political ambition from the works I had previously admired. I left feeling manipulated, not illuminated. Jacir's approach here has morphed from poetic to polemic. She has moved from documenting what she knows to engaging the broader geopolitical realm. She's not yet up to that task.

Jacir tries to elevate Wael Zuaiter, a culturally sophisticated political activist living in Rome, to the status of holy Palestinian martyr, allegedly gunned down in October 1972 by vengeful Israelis in retaliation for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The first image encountered at the entrance to the show is the (uncredited) UPI news photo of Zuaiter in a pool of blood.



Through photos, personal artifacts and quotes from those who knew him, the exhibition portrays Zuaiter as a lovable, peace-loving aficionado of Mahler and Dante, who moved in cultural circles that included Italian writer Alberto Moravia. It even shows a fleeting "Pink Panther" movie clip of him in a bit part as a waiter at an event attended by the character played by David Niven.

But an Oct. 18, 1972 NY Times account of his murder said that the Beirut press agency of Al Fatah, the Palestinian guerilla organization, had identified Zuaiter as "its representative for Italy." A Times article the following day reported that Rome police had described Zuaiter as a "Libyan Embassy clerk said to have been the top agent in Italy of Al Fatah."

This exhibition resulted from Jacir's having won the Guggenheim's biennial Hugo Boss Prize, and the catalogue for all the shortlisted artists tells us that Zuaiter was "mistakenly caught in the blowback" from the Munich massacre. The exhibition's introductory wall text hedges a bit, saying that he was "never conclusively linked" to the Palestinian militant group Black September that was associated with the killings.

Whoever he was and whatever he did or did not do as a political operative, the Zuaiter of the exhibition remains an enigma, despite Jacir's earnest, exhaustive efforts to sanctify him. I, like the artist, was moved by the fact that one of the fusillade of bullets fired at the victim pierced his copy of "One Thousand and One Nights," which he had hoped to translate from Arabic to Italian.


One of Jacir's photos of the bullet-riven pages from Zuaiter's copy of "One Thousand and One Nights"

I was also moved by her sublimation of grief and rage---firing a bullet into each of 1000 blank books, arrayed in "a memorial to untold stories":



Had the show consisted of her wall of photos of Zuaiter's bullet-pierced pages and the roomful of bullet-pocked blank books, as well as her photos that document her dead hero's former haunts, the edited exhibition would have provided a more powerful, less problematic testament.

As it is, it's unconvincing, except, perhaps to those who enter the gallery with strong anti-Israel emotions. Viewers are particularly shortchanged by the show's failure to provide a translation for a key document, displayed just outside the entrance to the blank-book memorial. This may have been the truest testament of the Palestinian advocate who was said to have suspected before his death that he was a marked man:


This is a long article, posthumously published by the Italian weekly, L'Expresso, that Zuaiter had written two or three weeks before his murder.

Its title: "Testament of a Militant Palestinian."

Before I decide to bail out, here's a chance to bail me out:

Bloggers were omitted from the federal economic stimulus package. And my CultureGrrl Ad Drive has, thus far, not been a roaring success. But some dedicated readers who have nothing to advertise have assured me that they'd gladly support the blog.

So for those of you who would like to help keep CultureGrrl thumping the keyboard, now you can:

As you may have noticed, I have now added a "Donate" button to the blog's middle column. Payment can be either through your own PayPal account or by credit card. (For the latter, click the "continue" link in the lower left corner of the donation page.) It's a secure (non-tax deductible) transaction, handled completely by PayPal, not by me.

I'd like to call this a "voluntary subscription," but my webmaster tells me that's not how things work on the Internet. I'm not a waiter, so I don't want to call it a "Tip Jar." (Tips of the news variety are, of course, always welcome!) Call it what you will. Just be sure to vote early and often!

For those of you who may have been considering placing an ad, please take note that my righthand column is again dispiritingly bare. You might be interested to know that January was my highest-traffic month ever---70,600 hits.

UPDATE: I've just received my first (and I hope not last) donation---a generous one. I hope there may be more such votes of confidence. Many thanks!

Brandeis University's proposal to close or repurpose its Rose Art Museum, selling works from the collection, has occasioned much comment from artworld luminaries who are Brandeis alums, as well as from many CultureGrrl readers. Here are some notes that I've received:

Donald Knaub, former director of both the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, writes:

I hope that universities and their museums would take the opportunity this financial crisis presents to explore the useful place an art museum could have in an academic setting. Unfortunately, except for a few teaching art collections, most academic administrators see their museums as elegant parlors in which to entertain guests.

I actually had a university president describe my position as a butler in charge of the university's living room. In tough times why not sell off the decorations, which is what too many university presidents consider their collections.

David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum and of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (and recent guest on the Colbert Report), writes:

The tragic conditions and situations that may lead museums (like the Rose) to consider selling their collections, will only increase as we get further into this new economy. But it is analogous to situations in which families decide (or are forced) to put children into foster care because they can no longer afford to properly care for them. That is a terrible thing, and we all understand the psycho-social implications upon families torn apart this way.

But families do not sell the children they can no longer afford to care for---at least, not in this country and not in this century. The somewhat strained analogy here is that when museums can no longer care for their collections, they too should be put into foster care, not sold.

If the Rose has to be shut down (a short-sighted decision, but one that can be made by the university), then its collection should be transferred to another institution---the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard, even the Institute of Contemporary Art---until that time when Brandeis feels capable of supporting it with appropriate professional care. Our sadness would be tempered by the knowledge that the "children" would be loved and well cared for.

Karen Wesler, an artist and Brandeis alum, writes:

I am reading about the closing of the Rose and weeping. The Rose was a hugely important part of my education. I remember being able to touch the gorgeous Motherwell etchings which accompanied the poems of Rafael Alberti. I learned etching at Brandeis, and those prints blew my mind, as did the unbelievable Frankenthaler show.

I feel horrible about the economic situation, of course, but this kind of move tears my heart out. What does it say about the state of education? That the arts are negligible. I'm distressed that such a bastion of liberal education as Brandeis would choose to make such a terrible move. I hope they don't get approval to sell the works.

Tama Hochbaum, an artist and Brandeis alum, writes:

I was at Brandeis when Carl Belz was the director [of the Rose Art Museum]. I lived in Boston for many years after and became friends with both Carl and Susan Stoops, his brilliant assistant. My husband, Allen Anderson, taught in the Music Department at Brandeis as well and we met in the Early Music Group in 1974.

All this to say: I have deep connections there and am appalled that this is happening. To "save" the university, the first place they cut is the arts. It goes against everything that I was taught there. It's a crying shame.

Robert Lynch, President of Americans for the Arts

Culture Power!

A huge effort by arts advocates, including more than 80,000 e-mails (not counting faxes and phone calls) to members of Congress generated by the Arts Action Center of Americans for the Arts, has paid off:

Although my source (not Robert Lynch, above) did not want to be identified (because nothing is final until the House votes between 1-2 p.m. this afternoon and the Senate at 7 p.m. this evening), the final conferee version of the economic stimulus bill, I'm told, DOES contain $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. This was previously in doubt, because it was in the House's bill but not the Senate's.

What's more, Sascha Freudenheim, a spokesperson for the Association of Art Museum Directors (who was not the source for the NEA update), informs me that the infamous Coburn amendment has been edited to delete the ban on funds for museums, art centers and theaters.

The language in the conferee bill, he said, now reads:

None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool.

Those sharks and pandas really need to get organized. On this, Freudenheim wrote:

Regarding the continued ban on zoo and aquarium funding---because the House had also accepted the zoo ban to begin with and the Senate vote on Coburn was so overwhelming, I'm told it is less surprising that this piece stayed in while museums and other items were removed.

All arts advocacy groups deserve credit for a job well done.

UPDATE: Smithsonian Institution spokesperson Becky Haberacker tells me that the final conferee bill contains a mere $25 million for Smithsonian facilities improvement, down from $150 million in the House's bill and $75 million in the Senate's.

UPDATE 2: The PDF document containing the culture-related portion of the conferee bill is here. The Smithsonian passage is on p. 48; NEA on p. 49. (I can't find the slight to zoos and aquariums.)

UPDATE 3: NEA's press release on its good fortune is here. NEA states:

The agency is working to finalize guidelines and procedures based on current grant-making practices and will make awards that result in job retention.

I'll admit it was a low-percentage play.

When I told you I was applying for an award that I wasn't going to get, I wasn't kidding:

It was the Pulitzer Prize.

I decided to take a flyer because, for the first time in its history, the Pulitzer opened its doors this year to mere bloggers. That's right, fellow pajama journalists, you too might have won the gold (above), had you applied by Feb. 1. Better luck next year.

Be forewarned, though, that there are a few sticky technicalities before you get inside that open door. The New Eligibility Rules state:

Eligibility was expanded to encompass online sites that regularly engage in original reporting---using such techniques as interviewing, going out to observe things, reviewing public records, taking photos and videos---and publish the journalistic results of those efforts. Sites and publications are not eligible if their content consists primarily of commentary on news events that have been covered by another organization, of if they simply aggregate news coverage done by others.

Gee, I thought, ArtsJournal Blogs meet these criteria! AJ aggregates on the left side, but original reporting and commentary by distinguished cultural journalists and critics happen all day (and in my and Terry Teachout's cases, all night) on the right side of the homepage.

Wrong.

In an e-mail today from Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzers, I was informed:

We do not find the requirements to have been met. The ArtsJournal site is largely devoted to aggregating news produced by other entities and to commentary and reviews in various forms.

I'm not sure what's wrong with commentary and reviews, since the Pulitzers have categories for Explanatory Reporting, Criticism and Commentary. As for "aggregating," do they plan to exclude the Huffington Post because it, too, provides abundant links to mainstream news sources, along with original content? They're trying to get with the new-media 21st century, but I'm not sure they're there yet.

No matter. Although I never really expected to win, I lost them at "hello." Bigwig Sig sympathetically confided that "other online entries are also being rejected, usually because the sites lack primary devotion to original reporting." It was not just me. Now I feel much better.

If misery loves company, I'll huddle with another sore loser, Colbert (and I think there are a few CultureGrrl readers who believe I should definitely have entered the Westminster Dog Show):

Congressman George Miller, D-CA

At least someone is stepping up to the plate:

Thanks to Richard Kessler's Dewey 21C blog, I learned today that Rep. George Miller, D-CA, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, plans to hold hearings this spring "to examine how the arts benefit the nation's economy and schools---and what can be done to improve support for the arts and music fields." according to the Congressman's announcement.

The wording of Miller's statement, dated Feb. 5, seems specifically targeted to those who have argued that the arts are not a sufficient economic catalyst to merit federal stimulus support:

In states and communities around the country, like my home state of California, these industries are vital engines for local economies---making up a large share of revenue and providing employment for a wide array of jobs, from construction to musicians to art teachers to sound editors.

It may be too late to get much help from the stimulus bill nearing final adoption, but perhaps this consciousness-raising will ultimately stimulate funding for the arts.

I still have not been able to get a definitive answer on how the arts in general and museums in particular have fared in the House-Senate compromise bill, soon to be sent to President Obama. But rumor has it that museums may no longer be barred from getting stimulus money, as they would have been if Sen. Tom Coburn's amendment, as passed by the Senate, survived intact after the House-Senate negotiations.

When I know more, you'll know more.

Two readers have weighed in with critical responses to Federal Arts Leadership: Vacuum At the Top. While it's not my habit to rebut BlogBacks (so as not to discourage disagreement), I do need to briefly answer the second one.

First, Victoria Hutter, acting director of communications for the National Endowment for the Arts, writes:

I found your posting uniformed and misleading in places. I offer the following information to fill in the gaps:

To suggest that the arts are getting "short shrift" because there is currently no chairman leading the NEA reflects a lack of understanding about the political process. There are many factors at play in how the arts are positioned politically (including political exigencies on Capitol Hill) that have nothing to do with leadership of the agency.

Historically, appointment of an NEA chairman has taken anywhere from three to nine months. The fact that none has been named yet, does not reflect poorly on the Obama administration nor in any way indicate its level of arts support. In fact, if you review your interview with Bill Ivey, he notes "I know that there is serious consideration being given to placing an arts-and-culture portfolio within the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement in the Domestic Policy Council." That, in and of itself, is unprecedented.

Patrice Walker Powell has served in leadership roles with NEA for over a decade. She is more than capable of leading the NEA through these challenging times and has been deeply involved in the agency's work around its potential role in the stimulus bill. In addition to Chairman Powell, there are over 150 experienced, savvy career staff who are sharing and gathering information and moving the work of the NEA forward effectively.

As for the appointment of Anita Decker, that is also common practice, that a new administration places a person in an agency early on to handle government affairs. In fact, it is critical to ensuring good communication between the NEA and the administration and the NEA and the Congress. Failure to have qualified people in these positions, such as Anita Decker, hampers our efforts to do our work.

Next, Wyona Lynch-McWhite, deputy director of the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, writes:

I wanted to share my concern that you created a negative impression in today's post that speaks to something I'm always advocating for---diversity in the arts. I am specifically talking about the posting of the two black women who are the interim chairs at NEA and NEH and then saying in the headline that there was a leadership void at the top.

As a black women executive in the arts, I deal with "perception" in this field and while I understand your position that the Obama administration needs to get these chairpersons in place, my first reaction to the picture and headline was that you were implying that these women were not able to advocate as interims, or perhaps that they were not able to do the interim jobs.

Maybe I am alone in this, but I was hoping that you would consider my message and perhaps speak to the issue if anyone else contacts you. Your voice would be a wonderful addition to the dialog about diversity in the arts especially as we look at the impending generational shift.

Keep asking the tough questions and I'll keep reading!

I completely endorse Wyona's advocacy of diversity in the arts, and I had feared that my use of those photos beneath that headline might evoke that reaction. I can only say that race had nothing to do with it. And for those of you who are still skeptical, I have this airtight defense: As you may remember, in my Dec. 4 post about the open chairmanships at NEA and NEH, I suggested:

A natural to lead the NEA, should she want that job [is] Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a past leader of government arts agencies in New York City and State. She was also formerly director of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

I'm now very glad that I wrote that! As long as we're on the subject of Mary: NYU has just announced that she was "recently elected to the board of trustees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic, not-for-profit grantmaking institution based in New York City."

In case you missed the live webcast, some YouTube videos have been posted from Tuesday night's packed town hall meeting, held at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, where the community provided reactions and recommendations concerning the possible repurposing of the Rose and sale of its art. The Boston Globe's report of that meeting is here.

This video clip contains some of museum director Michael Rush's opening remarks:



Some later remarks are here:



The final audience member to speak was Rose family member Fred Hopengarten, who first learned about the meeting when I interviewed him for CultureGrrl the previous night. The sound on the live webcast was glitchy, but Fred sent me some photos from the event (below) and recreated for me his brief remarks:

I am Fred Hopengarten. My mother is Doris Rose. Our family has supported Brandeis with the naming gift to create the museum, with the 1981 Rose Purchase Fund, and with the Frederick Hersee Scholarship for the Government Department (honoring the husband of Anna Rose Hersee), and with unrestricted giving from the trust for which I was a trustee that was created for Jean Hersee, daughter of Anna Rose Hersee. No member of our family has ever attended Brandeis. Yet we have always supported the university. We hope that this museum will be seen as worthy.

Patrice Walker Powell, NEA's acting chairman, left (photo by Kevin Allen)
Carole Watson, NEH's acting chairman, right

Part of the reason why culture is getting short shrift during this economically and politically sensitive moment may be the continuing vacuum of leadership at the top of the federal arts and humanties hierarchy.

Notwithstanding the opinion of Obama arts transition leader Bill Ivey, as expressed to me in a recent interview, that the new President "will see a vibrant cultural scene as a public good," a truer indication of the place of the arts in presidential priorities may be that he has yet to appoint a chairman for either the National Endowment for the Arts or the National Endowment for the Humanities. These officials are the first-line advocates for cultural funding from Congress. Their absence is felt.

Just when we need strong inside-government advocates, to influence legislators' thinking on whether to provide arts institutions and organizations with economic-stimulus support, we've got two placeholders:

Just yesterday, NEH announced that Carole Watson, the agency's assistant chairman for partnership and national affairs, was appointed by Obama to serve as NEH's acting chairman, "until the presidential nomination and Senate confirmation of the agency's next chairman."

Similarly, NEA announced last week that Patrice Walker Powell, NEA's deputy chairman for states, regions, and local arts agencies, would serve as acting chairman. She's not related to Colin, but her father, Wyatt Tee Walker, was former chief of staff to Martin Luther King Jr., NEA's press office informed me.

In its Powell press release, NEA also announced that Anita Decker, a longtime Obama aide and a staffer in his presidential campaign, was appointed by the White House as the agency's director of government affairs. Shouldn't the new director, whoever that may eventually be, have a role in choosing the staff? This looks too much like a reward for a loyal foot soldier.

Also falling below the radar was the December appointment by President Bush of visual artist Barbara Ernst Prey to the the National Council on the Arts, NEA's advisory body, which reviews and makes recommendations to the chairman on grant applications. The art agency's then chairman, Dana Gioia, declared that Prey's appointment continued "our tradition of having prominent visual artists as members of the National Council on the Arts." If, like me, you're unfamiliar with her work, you can see it here. According to the description in NEA's announcement, her paintings have been much shown at U.S. embassies and consulates. This new assignment came fast upon Bush's appointment of country music singer Lee Greenwood to the National Council.

I'd like to think that Obama will treat arts and humanities appointments as seriously as appointments to other federal agencies. But initial indications are not encouraging.

Where's Michael Dorf when we really need him?

Bill Ivey, arts operative

Two weeks ago, I chatted during an NYU conference break with Bill Ivey, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who is President Obama's team leader for the three federal cultural agencies---NEA, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Ivey is currently director of Vanderbilt University's Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy.

With the House and Senate now poised to iron out the differences between their economic stimulus bills (which would pump $820 billion or $838 billion, respectively, into the economy), this is a good time share some excerpts from my conversation with the man whose tasks included "trying to make the arts a part of any economic stimulus or recovery package that was presented by the Obama administration to Congress." The success of that initiative now appears in doubt: Only the House, but not the Senate. has included $50 million for the NEA in its approved stimulus plan.

Ivey offered these comments before that recent legislative action:

On the Arts and Economic Stimulus:
I talked to people and wrote memos and ended up meeting with Peter Orszag, who is now White House budget director, to convey to him the great capacity that our three cultural grantmaking agencies---the NEA. the NEH and the IMLS---have in terms of moving money out quickly and responsibly through peer-review grantmaking processes, in ways that reach all over the country---communities large and small---immediately creating jobs. I don't know of any other example where the capacity of an arts agency was made part of an over-arching White House initiative from the very beginning....

The idea would be to move money quickly. It would result in things like this: A theater company is building sets; you hire five carpenters instead of two. A dance company is going to do a performance; you consider live music instead of recorded music. We could hire musicians. So what you do is use the network that's well established, that links the NEA to its many stakeholders, to spend money in communities and create new jobs....

If you look at them with a cold hard eye, they [the arts agencies] have one of the best processes for moving money responsibly, with great geographical reach. The dollars aren't large, but the impact is great and the process is very responsible and very effective. So I think any member of Congress who cares about economic stimulus being well executed doesn't have to look much further than NEA, NEH and IMLS.

On White House Oversight of Culture:
I worked hard to try to forge a link between the arts agencies and mainstream policy in the West Wing of the White House. I know that there is serious consideration being given to placing an arts-and-culture portfolio within the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement in the Domestic Policy Council. I worked hard to get that done and I think that will happen.

On a Cabinet-Level Secretary of Culture:
That's a goal. The question is, where do you start? I think it was very useful, in terms of making my case, to have the Quincy Jones petition circulating online. But if one really imagines what a cabinet-level "art czar" would do, I think the mind boggles rather quickly, because cabinet-level people usually have departments. They have lots of people working for them. They have office buildings. It's big money.

In the case of arts and culture, to do a department properly, you would have to roll up the grantmaking agencies, the FCC, the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress and portions of what the U.S. Trade Representative does, in order to make a robust entity dealing with culture. It would look like the Department of Homeland Security. I don't think the American people are ready for that yet.

On Restoring Artists Fellowships:
Individual artists grants were, with the exception of literature grants, taken out of the NEA portfolio because there was a perception that this was a source of the kind of grants that were problematic. To move individual artists grants back into the NEA will require a conversation with leading members of Congress, because they're going to have to feel comfortable with it.

When I asked Ivey whether he thought Congress COULD get comfortable with artists grants, he sidestepped:

I think that there is an opportunity for a new relationship between government and cultural vibrancy. I think there's a chance that the Obama White House will see a vibrant cultural scene as a public good in a way no administration really has before. A lot of things can flow from that.

The fact of the matter is---and this is like the 600-pound gorilla, sitting in the corner, that no one talks about---if our economy resets, we're going to have to think about defining a high quality of life in a way that doesn't have a new house, a new car, an expensive vacation at its core. And I think cultural vibrancy, a new connection to cultural heritage, a new connection with the sense of achievement that comes from creativity and artmaking---those can be a key to a high quality of life, even if our financial expectations have to be lowered. I think the Obama administration is well positioned to see arts and culture as an instrument of good public policy.

On Restoring Tax Deductions for Artists' Donations of Their Own Work:
I think it should be very easy in this environment, because we're looking not only at economic stimulus through spending, but at economic stimulus through tax relief, and that's a very easy, affordable form of tax relief that will pay big dividends to cultural nonprofits.

Summing Up:
There are some advantages for artists and arts organizations to position themselves as unique, especially entitled, especially important. But I think there are also advantages to seeing artists and art organizations as regular parts of the economy. Artists are important workers. Arts organizations are important small and medium-sized businesses. I think if we consider them that way, particularly in this environment, we may get more benefit than if we play the exceptionalism card.

I imagine that recent Senatorial slights may have undermined the confidence, expressed by Ivey two weeks ago, that art, artists and federal arts agencies would pass muster as "regular parts of the economy" in a stimulus plan. The final returns aren't in yet, but my guess is that if arts-friendly Sen. Charles Schumer could vote against releasing stimulus dollars for theaters and museums, the House-Senate conferees will have few qualms about axing NEA's $50 million to get this deal done.

I hope I'm wrong.

You can watch the live webcast of the Rose Art Museum's town hall meeting here.

[UPDATE: It's concluded. But you can view videos and photos from the event, here.]

Bertha and Edward Rose, founding donors of the Rose Art Museum

I have just obtained from a member of the Rose family an e-mailed message sent on Jan. 27 to Michael Rush, director of the Rose Art Museum, by Jane Moss, whose grandfather was a first cousin of Edward Rose. With his wife Bertha, Edward was a founding donor of the eponymous museum that opened at Brandeis University in 1961. They had no children.

Jane Moss, a professor of French at Colby College, wrote this to Rush:

As a member of the Rose family, I am dismayed to read about Brandeis' decision to close the museum and sell the collection without any prior notification to my family. Unfortunately, this shocking news comes right before we celebrate my mother's, Doris Rose Hopengarten's, 90th birthday. She is the last surviving member of her generation of the family and this news will not be well received.

I think Brandeis and the Rose could have handled this better.

[CLARIFICATION: Although the above is the text of the letter sent to Rush, the family now informs me that Doris is one of the THREE last surviving members of her generation.]

Whether or not the university ultimately goes through with its initially announced decision to "deaccession" the entire museum, its failure to give prior notification to the Rose family is in sharp contrast to the handling of a 2001 sale of porcelain and ceramics that the founding Roses had donated to the museum. Jane Moss' brother, Fred Hopengarten, an attorney, informed me that the museum had sought and obtained consent for the 2001 disposal from Rose family members "representing every branch of the family."

"They checked with the Rose family about selling some china, but not about selling paintings bought with Rose money or about closing the museum that the Roses had funded," Hopengarten fumed. He said he could confidently speak for his relatives (who had recently assembled for his mother's 90th birthday) in expressing their dismay at not being consulted about the proposed dissolution or repurposing of the Rose.

Hopengarten told me in a phone interview:

Imagine what this has done to the academic art world. No one who is sentient will now consider gifts---certainly to Brandeis and maybe to the rest of the academic artworld---without exquisitely detailed bequest language that sets out conditions of reversion or other elements of an agreement, because the behavior was so outrageous.

I find it difficult intellectually to justify the claim that they [Brandeis' administrators] love their art history majors, they love their art majors, but they don't really think that the collection and the museum are essential support for those two majors. The comparable might be to say: "We love our physics majors, but we don't need a lab."

Hopengarten also informed me (in a written statement) that after working with then Brandeis President Abram Sacher to establish the museum, "Eddie [Rose] asked everyone who was a Rose to give to it. Though Eddie provided the seed money, his cousins also gave. Everyone in the family he could get hold of gave money to start the Rose....Additional recent contributions, from 1988 to 2001, to the Rose have come from the Estate of Anna Rose Hersee and from the Estate of Jean Hersee (Anna's daughter, who died in 1999)."

Late last night, after our phone conversation, Hopengarten wrote this in an e-mail to Rush:

This generation of the Rose family is pretty distressed. Can I be helpful to you in some way?

Of all the ways in which Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz "screwed up," none is more irresponsible than failing to inform, let alone consult, the founding philanthropists' family. All of the taken-by-surprise donors of art to the Rose have been likewise mistreated. Most museums consult donors or their families before selling works, even in cases where there are no explicit legal restrictions against doing so.

A public town hall meeting (of which the Rose family had not been informed) to discuss this situation will be held at the museum today. Click here at at 6:30 p.m. for the live webcast.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK: No stimulus funds for the arts or "zero-gravity chairs"

As the mega-billion economic stimulus package nears a vote in the Senate (with the final version to be determined by private House-Senate negotiation), it's beginning to look like the arts will be among many worthy supplicants sacrificed to placate Republican critics of wasteful spending.

Both bills still, at this writing, contain $150 million for capital projects to improve the Smithsonian Institution's facilities. But only the House bill includes $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. According to a report by Michael Kranish in the Boston Globe, Bill Ivey, leader of President Obama's arts transition team and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, had "asked the Obama administration during a meeting on Jan. 14 for several hundred million dollars in arts funding in the stimulus plan, but won backing only for the $50 million."

Now even that appears to be in jeopardy. What's more, a recent overwhelming vote (73 to 24) in the Senate on Friday passed an amendment against applying stimulus money to museums, theaters or art centers (among other unfundables).

All of this leads me to believe that the arts are not going to be much stimulated by the stimulus. Even New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a savvy political strategist (but a usually reliable arts supporter), voted yes on the pernicious Senate amendment.

When I saw the first iteration of the culture-cutting amendment, it was so silly that I didn't think anyone, let alone a seasoned legislator, could take it seriously. Concocted by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, it originally said:

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this [economic stimulus] Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas.

That sounded to me like going off the deep end of the unfunded swimming pool.

But I guess the "zero-gravity chair" and "rotating pastel lights" lobbyists were effective, because that and everything else after the words "beautification project" got deleted from the version of the amendment actually approved by the Senate.

To understand the thinking (or lack thereof) behind this bit of legislative legerdemain, let's go to the Congressional Record, which quotes the amendment's sponsor, Sen. Coburn:

I am not necessarily against those [museums, art centers, theaters, etc.], but if we are going to spend money, we ought to spend money on the highest priority things first, not the finer things that we can't afford.   

We cannot afford to spend a penny on a museum right now with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on a golf course with the trouble we are in. We cannot afford to spend a penny on theaters or art centers or highway beautification. Those are not a priority. Plus, most of those won't generate near the jobs as if we were spending it on something more substantive....We are not borrowing. No, we are stealing this money from our grandkids.

Why the Smithsonian's funding survived this grandchild-protection amendment is anyone's guess. The deteriorating facilities of the D.C. museums are just down the road from the Capitol, so the Senators may have some firsthand knowledge of its worth and pressing needs. The Smithsonian's museums, unlike others, are substantially funding by Congress. But there's no good reason why they should be uniquely privileged in the stimulus package. What's good for Washington would also be good for Los Angeles.

Maybe museums need to organize a full-court press on the legislators who represent them, with an eye to influencing the House-Senate conferees. But maybe it's already too late.

In light of this delicate political moment, the symposium planned for this Thursday and Friday by the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its great Mapplethorpe show, "The Perfect Moment," is  ill-timed. That's the exhibition that ignited a firestorm of damaging political controversy, which ultimately led to the imposition of "decency standards" on federal arts grants.

If we're going to try to put that behind us and seek increased NEA funding as well as a restoration of artists fellowships, this is a really "Imperfect Moment" to rub the past Culture Wars in legislators' faces. The symposium will be a reunion of many of the anti-censorship protagonists---both artists and museum administrators---from those tumultuous times.

Don't get me wrong: I think the ICA symposium is a worthy and engaging enterprise and I'm on the side of the particants. But this is no time to remind the cultural curmudgeons in Congress of all the reasons why they became uncomfortable two decades ago with appropriating federal funds for the arts.

For the texts of the House and Senate economic stimulus bills, go here, click on "HR1: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009," then click on "Text of Legislation," then click on "H.R.1.EH" for the bill passed in the House and on H.R.1.AS for the Senate version. You can do a search on "National Endowment for the Arts" in the House bill, and "Smithsonian" in both bills, to find the relevant provisions.

UPDATE: ArtsJournal blogger Richard Kessler, executive director of The Center for Arts Education, describes today, in his Dewey21C blog, the probable impact (or lack thereof) of the stimulus bill on education.

Andrew Taylor, Rocking Blogger

Are great ideas contagious?

Earlier this week, Kennedy Center announced its timely new initiative, Arts in Crisis, which will offer "free consulting from both Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser [aka The Turnaround King] and members of the Kennedy Center's executive staff" to "provide emergency planning assistance" to performing arts organizations in financial distress. The program also hopes to enlist the help of experts around the country who volunteer (here) to become mentors. Those in need of help can apply here, to ask "a few questions" or get "a more in-depth review."

There's no charge for the service, which has been funded by two individual donors.

Brett Zonger of the Associated Press spoke to Kaiser:

"I've never seen it as bad as this," Kaiser said. Some groups have done better with budgeting a cushion of cash reserves, but others need help, he said. "If too many get ill, it's bad for the entire arts world."

It took a while, but the NY Times today finally gives us a proper obit for Olga Raggio, the Metropolitan Museum's formidable chairwoman of European sculpture and decorative arts. And their photo is much better than the one I managed to find for the brief homage that I posted more than a week ago.

As noted by Times writer Margalit Fox, Raggio's exhibitions included some of the greatest international blockbusters of their time: "The Splendor of Dresden," 1978, "Treasures From the Kremlin," "The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art," 1983.

Jehuda Reinharz

Art-lings, you really are not paying me enough (or, for that matter, anything) for four major posts in one day. But this "mea culpa" missive from Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz just hit my inbox, and I simply must share.

You might also be interested to know that in a Boston Globe podcast, Reinharz said he is NOT closing the Rose Museum (just repurposing it), again flip-flopping from the university's unambiguous Jan. 26 statement that the "Board of Trustees today voted unanimously to close the Rose Art Museum." He now also suggests that just a few works may be sold. (Still not good enough: They would almost certainly sell the gems to raise the big bucks.)

Here's Reinharz's semi-contrite letter to "Members of the Brandeis Community":

The past ten days have been extremely difficult for all of us. I have heard from many of you and listened carefully to your criticisms and constructive suggestions. I have read every message on the faculty list serve, and the thoughtful letter sent to me by a group of faculty last night. I have also heard from students, staff, alumni, university presidents and complete strangers about my statements regarding the vote by the Board of Trustees concerning the Rose Art Museum.

In retrospect, I wish I had handled the initial statements I made in a far more direct way. Unfortunately, those statements did not accurately reflect the Board's decision authorizing the administration to conduct "an orderly sale or other disposition of works from the university's collection." The statements gave the misleading impression that we were selling the entire collection immediately, which is not true.

The University may have the option, subject to applicable legal requirements and procedures, to sell some artworks if necessary, but I assure you that other options will also be considered. The Museum will remain open, but in accordance with the Board's vote, it will be more fully integrated into the University's central educational mission. We will meet with all affected University constituencies to explore together how this can best be done.

I regret as well that I did not find a more inclusive and open way to engage the Brandeis community in the deliberations that led to the Board's decision. I take full responsibility for causing pain and embarrassment in both of these matters. To quote President Obama, "I screwed up."

Having learned from this experience, I will do my best, as will the entire administration, to work together with all of you in a collaborative manner. We must cooperate as we move forward to confront our financial crisis. But we also have to take bold steps. Obviously, we have many tasks ahead of us regarding the curriculum and the budget. In meetings with members of the faculty and with students in the past few days, I have been heartened by the enormous reservoir of good will, imagination and willingness to work hard to guarantee that Brandeis will continue to thrive as a first-rate institution of higher learning.

A little more backpedaling, and we may yet have the Rose (more or less) as we know it.

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

Yesterday there were rumors that Iowa state legislators were "quietly talking about ordering the sale" of the University of Iowa's Jackson Pollock to raise funds for education.

Today, it's not so quiet. Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register reports:

The [university's] famous "Mural" painting is insured for $150 million, but Sen. Matt McCoy believes it could fetch as much as $200 million to help students mired in the state's economic crisis....

McCoy said today that the state must do what it takes to aid students.

"If the college believes that owning up to a $200 million painting is more important than keeping tuition low they'll continue to retain it," McCoy said. "If they decide keeping tuition low and helping students find a job in the toughest economic downturn since the great Depression is more important, then sell it."

That sounds like he's leaving the decision up to the university, which still opposes a sale, according to its president, Sally Mason, as quoted in today's Register. (Jehuda Reinharz, do you copy?)

But the Unreal McCoy then adds this:

We're all making sacrifices. I think that the college really should take a good hard look at that, especially when they're up here asking the state for increases in money for salaries, maintenance, flood repairs.

That sounds like a threat.

Pamela White, director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA), released this statement to CultureGrrl:

The Museum of Art has no reason to believe things have changed since the Board of Regents reviewed the Pollock "Mural" in September and closed any discussion of a sale. We are confident that the state legislature and the Board of Regents realize that deaccessioning works of art is a serious issue with serious ramifications, and we would expect them to again seek our expertise should there be serious discussion.

The UI Museum of Art and Jackson Pollock's "Mural" are an essential component of the University of Iowa's threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service. To sell this painting would be short-sighted, forsaking long-term gains for a short-term solution.

One of the university's board members, Michael Gartner, had previously suggested that selling the Pollock could help defray the cost of recovering from the damage caused by the major June flood.

On a happier note, the collection of the university's museum, now in storage in Chicago (except for 250 works back on the Iowa City campus), will be temporarily displayed and stored at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA.

According to the press release:

The UIMA staff is currently working to finalize plans to install a special exhibition of UIMA masterworks, including the museum's famous Jackson Pollock "Mural," for public viewing at the Figge in April. The UIMA anticipates this show will travel to the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) in fall 2009 and tour nationally beginning in 2010...

...hopefully with the Pollock as its main attraction.

Charles Deas, "The Long Jakes, Rocky Mountain Man," Denver Art Museum and Anschutz Collection

The Association of Art Museum Directors needs to revisit its entire policy on deaccessioning, as I recently recommended here.

This imperative seems all the more urgent in light of the statement released by AAMD today, implicitly criticizing what it described as "the Denver Art Museum's unprecedented fractional deaccession of Charles Deas' painting, 'Long Jakes,' to a Denver philanthropist, Mr. Philip Anschutz, and its joint acquisition with Mr. Anschutz of Thomas Eakins' painting, 'Cowboy Singing,' from the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

That Eakins was one of three of the artist's works (the other two were oil sketches) sold by Philadelphia to help fund its purchase of the artist's masterwork, "The Gross Clinic." Denver purchased the sketches independently of Anschutz.

Here's what AAMD said in today's statement:

After a detailed review of the general issues involved in fractional deaccessions of works of art from a museum to a private party, the Board of AAMD strongly encourages member museums not to employ fractional deaccessions as a method of collections development. The nature of such transactions involves very complex issues and considerations. AAMD's Professional Issues Committee, with suggestions from our members, is reviewing and will revise AAMD's policy regarding deaccessioning to address the issue of partial deaccessioning to private parties.

The statement did not directly criticize Denver, which it credited for having "engaged in this unusual transaction with the full support of its Board of Trustees, relevant curatorial staff, and Mr. Anschutz to benefit the public by strengthening the Museum's important collection of Western Art."

I'm no fan of the Anschutz transaction. When it was announced last April, I strongly criticized the deal for allowing the public's patrimony to go semi-private. Interestingly, the museum's online information about the Deas makes no mention of its co-owner.

But I cannot remember AAMD's ever taking a member to task for selling museum-quality works to raise money to buy other works: The association never made a peep, for example, about the highly controversial Albright-Knox disposals, which the museum had unpersuasively attempted to justify on the grounds of change-of-mission.

If AAMD deems it acceptable to sell an artwork to fund acquisitions, what's so wrong about raising money for an acquisition by selling a work fractionally, so that the museum can still have opportunities to display it? To be sure, there are complexities involving proper care of the object and possible future resale of the fraction owned by the private party, but these can be dealt with contractually.

Such inconsistencies in AAMD's thinking underscore the need for the association to revisit its deaccession guidelines, revising them to say that once a museum brings a work into the public domain, that work should not leave the public domain unless it truly doesn't belong there (for reasons of inferior quality, poor condition, inauthenticity, issues of proper title, etc.).

Without scrupulously strict standards, it's hard for the association to take the high ground against those critics who argue for the loosening of guidelines relating to art sales by museums.

One of these sponsors is not like the others.

The Guggenheim Museum's The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 was a great idea in search of a masterful curator. Inspired by the laudable ambition to present a sweeping overview of Asian influences on American art, this conglomeration of diverse works---some strongly influenced by Asian art, philosophy or spirituality; some only tenuously connected---doesn't coalesce into a compelling exhibition and is saddled with an encyclopedia's worth of long, tendentious labels, belaboring every possible connection that each artist may have had to an Asian text, practice or artistic technique (i.e., Jackson Pollock, calligrapher).

The superabundance of wall text may have had something to do with the predilections of the show's chief funder, the National Endowment for the Humanities, which bestowed a $1 million Chairman's Special Award because, as former NEH chairman Bruce Cole said at the press preview, "it had a very broad and very deep humanities content" and was aimed at "a broad public." But its word-heavy presentation and the variable quality of works assembled to hammer home the Big Idea may undermine "Third Mind's" popular appeal.

The show often comes across as a dry academic exercise illustrated with artworks, instead of a visually satisfying, intellectually nourishing art exhibition.

The deficiencies (which also included too many you-had-to-be-there moments in front of artifacts from legendary but ephemeral performances) may have been largely due to the limitations of the organizer, Alexandra Munroe---an Asian art scholar lacking (by her own admission) significant expertise in American art but nevertheless grappling with an all-American art show (which perhaps could have been enhanced with some Asian-art touchstones).

Munroe was hired in 2006 by former Guggenheim Foundation director Tom Krens and former Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison as the museum's first Asian art curator. She has the museum's Cai Guo-Qiang blockbuster to her credit. Vivien Greene, the Guggenheim's curator of 19th- and early 20th-century art, whose specialization is Italian art. curated the show's section devoted to 19th-century Asia-influenced American works.

We may never know whether a factor influencing the Guggenheim's decision to do this show with this curator may have been Munroe's ability to bring some of her own funding to the project. Curators are increasingly being asked to help find outside sponsors for their shows. In Munroe's case, she needed to look no further than the Rosenkranz Foundation, directed by her own husband, Robert Rosenkranz, who (with Alexandra) "lives in Manhattan in an apartment that reflects his interests in Asian art and modern design," according to the foundation's website. Munroe is listed as "senior advisor" to the foundation. She is also a board member of another of "The Third Mind's" funders, the United States-Japan Foundation.

The Guggenheim's press release for the exhibition gives each of its other major funders a one-paragraph description, but prudently omits any background on the Rosenkranz Foundation. As it happens, the foundation sponsored a New York debate Tuesday night on artworld ethics---The art market is less ethical than the stock market---featuring Richard Feigen, Michael Hue-Williams and Adam Lindemann (for the motion) and Amy Cappellazzo, Chuck Close and Jerry Saltz (against the motion). [The "for the motion" debaters won by an audience vote of 55% to 33%, with 12% undecided. An NPR podcast will eventually be available here.]

But back to the Guggenheim: I found the best explanation of why "The Third Mind" felt unsatisfying and unpersuasive on one of its own labels---a quote from video artist Nam June Paik:

When asked if he was a Buddhist, Paik replied: "No, I'm an artist....I'm not a follower of Zen but I react to Zen the same way I react to Johann Sebastian Bach."

By harping on just one of the multiple influences engaging the imaginations of these American artists, the show too often oversimplified them, rather than enriching our understanding of their complexity.

Remember my Don't Drop that Duccio! post, where I poked fun at the publicity image, below, of the Metropolitan Museum's then director, Philippe de Montebello, caressing the mega-million Duccio with his bare hands?



Well, now that the museum has initiated the "It's Time We Met" advertising campaign, it's time Philippe met Chris Canahui, who posted this photo on the museum's own Flickr page:

Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA, originator of the "Dutch Utopia" show

It's not nice to fool CultureGrrl.

When someone is stepping up to a higher position and seems smart, well-spoken but under-experienced, you search for things he's done that indicate he's ready for the Big Move.

That's what I did when I recently interviewed Eric Lee, who ascends in March from the directorship of the relatively modest Taft Museum in Cincinnati to the world-class Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. I'm sure the Kimbell trustees asked their own probing questions before deciding he had the goods.

His prior jobs didn't give him the munificent acquisitions budgets required to make the high caliber masterpiece acquisitions that the Kimbell is famous for. So all I could do on that subject was quote his comment that he closely follows the market and has "honed my eye."

But I did want to hear about some exciting (if modest-scale) exhibitions, and he came up with Leon Polk Smith at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma and Dutch Utopia, opening at the Taft in 2010. The latter, in particular, sounded interesting because it examined the significant but under-explored influence that sojourns in the Netherlands had on American artists of the 19th and early 20th century. And it had the added bonus of featuring a significant local (Cincinnati) angle.

I wanted to clarify a bit of information with regard to your interview with Eric Lee, outgoing director of the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. Mr. Lee mentioned the upcoming "Dutch Utopia" exhibition. That exhibition actually originated with my museum, the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, and will open here this October. Thereafter, we're sending the exhibit to the Taft, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Singer Laren Museum in The Netherlands.

So I put it to Eric. Here's what he said:

You are right about "Dutch Utopia" being organized by the Telfair. The Telfair is circulating the exhibition, and the Taft will host the show. In our conversation [when I] was going on about why the Taft was hosting the exhibition, it must have come across that we were organizing it.

It did indeed. Here's the relevant interchange, which occurred after Lee had gone on at some length about the strengths of the "Dutch Utopia" show:

Lee the interviewer: Was this your conception?

Lee the interviewee: It was my conception, along with our curators and we discussed this together. And we decided to move forward with it.

So now we're back to knowing that Eric can talk the talk, but wondering if he can walk the walk. In our interview, he got particularly animated when I impolitely mentioned that I had the same uncertainty about him that I had about the Metropolitan Museum's new director, Tom Campbell: Does he have the requisite experience?

I admired how Eric took me to task and leaped to his colleague's defense:

Tom Campbell, as reported on your blog, said [about his lackluster performance at his first press conference]: Give me some time to really listen and learn more about the museum and then he'll be more specfic in answering questions. That really is a very important thing to do and when one starts a new position like this. You do have to have some time to come up with more specific ideas.

In both cases, my attitude remains cautious optimism, with a dash of show-me skepticism.

No more postings until tomorrow...maybe. With my right column again empty, I'm disinclined to fill the left column. You can fix this.

But I must warmly thank one CultureGrrl reader who, having nothing himself to promote, responded to my CultureGrrl Ad Drive by purchasing an "ad" without posting one.

Phantom ads...now THAT'S a fan! I guess I'll have to write for him tomorrow.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

KPCC radio reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez yesterday revisited the Ban Chiang antiquities investigation, which came to the public's attention a little more than a year ago, with high-profile raids by federal investigators of four California museums.

You can listen to the KPCC report and read the transcript, here. He includes a brief comment from me on the broader significance of the raids and the aftermath.

What have the feds come up with, and why has there been no reported progress, let alone resolution, in these cases? The short answer: We don't know.

Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum told Guzman-Lopez: "These things take a long time to be resolved. The government is very meticulous"...or slow, or stymied, or...we can only wait and wonder.

The "scam" I referred to in the sentence of mine that made it on the air was the attempt to evade IRS detection of donated works' allegedly inflated appraisals, by valuing those objects at just under $5,000. That's the threshold triggering the requirement for donors to file IRS Form 8283, containing a "qualified appraisal" by a "qualified [independent] appraiser." The raid put museums on notice that due diligence is required for acquisition of works that might previously have been passed under-the-radar because of relatively insignificant market value.

The action of the museum directors' association that I referred to (which wasn't primarily motivated by the controversy over the Thai objects) was the Association of Art Museum Directors' revised guidelines, issued last June, for acquisition of archaeological materials and ancient art.

Left: Picasso, "Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-6, Museum of Modern Art

Below: Picasso, "Le Moulin de la Galette," 1900, Guggenheim Museum





Rather than go to trial over the fate of two of their most prized Picassos, Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation have just agreed to a settlement (terms undisclosed) with heirs of Paul and Elsa von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the Nazi-era owners of MoMA's "Boy Leading a Horse" and the Guggenheim's "Le Moulin de la Galette." Under the agreement, which reportedly involves payment to the heirs, the museums will retain ownership of these masterworks.

The case began more than a year ago, when the museums teamed up to try to preempt an expected lawsuit from the heirs (the same plaintiffs who were seeking Andrew Lloyd Webber's almost-auctioned Picasso, "Angel Fernández de Soto"). They asked the court to declare MoMA and the Guggenheim to be the paintings' rightful owners. At that time, the museums had asserted in a joint statement that "evidence from our extensive research makes clear the museums' ownership of these works and also makes clear that Mr. [Julius] Schoeps [one of the heirs] has no basis for his claim."

Judge Jed Rakoff (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York) thought otherwise. He said there was sufficient evidence for him to order a trial, and he turned the case around ("repositioned the parties"), making the museums the defendants and the heirs the plaintiffs.

Here is an excerpt from Judge Rakoff's Jan. 27 opinion:

While the record regarding the transfers of these Paintings is meager, it is informed by the historical circumstances of Nazi economic pressures brought to bear on "Jewish" persons and property, or so a jury might reasonably infer....Claimants have adduced competent evidence that Paul never intended to transfer any of his paintings and that he was forced to transfer them only because of threats and economic pressures by the Nazi government. Summary judgment [denying a trial] is therefore not appropriate.

Larry Neumeister of the Associated Press reports:

On Monday [today], the judge criticized that the settlement would keep secret the history of the paintings. "I find it extraordinarily unfortunate that the public will be left without knowing what the truth is," Rakoff said. He also said he would consider ordering some of the settlement information to be made public.

For you legal eagles, the case is: 07 Civ. 11074 (JSR).

Reporting on its midwinter meeting of more than 100 museum directors, the Association of Art Museum Directors has just posted a statement on its website expressing "strong objection to Brandeis University's proposed plan to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its collection." AAMD also "offered its support to the University in exploring alternatives to this drastic act."

As for the National Academy, the association reaffirmed its censure and sanctions and made clear that they cover not just loans of art TO the Academy but also art loans FROM the Academy. This strikes me as cutting off their noses to spite their own curators.

But for the first time, AAMD did offer the Academy a way out of purgatory:

The sanctions will remain in place indefinitely, but the AAMD board reserves the right to revisit its decision and encourages the National Academy to discuss with the AAMD actions the National Academy can take that would result in the suspension of sanctions. We hope that the National Academy will recognize AAMD's code of ethics and professional practices for art museums, and will not continue to deaccession works of art from its collection for general operating support.

We look forward to meeting with the National Academy's leaders to clarify their intentions for the future of the collection. We sincerely hope that the National Academy will in the future abide by the professional standards and ethics of art museums, and thereby reaffirm the importance above all of protecting its collections.

In the meantime, and until AAMD is satisfied with the National Academy's future course, the over 100 members of the AAMD present at the meeting voted unanimously to support and abide by these sanctions, as affirmed by this resolution.

Finally, the association "discussed the unprecedented partial deaccessioning by the Denver Art Museum of a work in its collection in order to jointly acquire another work of art, and agreed to revise its professional practice guidelines to discourage future transactions of this kind."

Why just "discourage"? Why not "prohibit"?

Roberta Smith

Kudos to the NY Times' indispensable art critic, Roberta Smith, for hitting the road and bringing us her on-location elucidation of why the endangered Rose Art Museum is important and deserves to live.

She got the 19-year-old-sophomore sound bite and even enlisted a photographer, Erik Jacobs, to shoot the protest signs papering the museum's entrance. There's no interview with Brandeis University's president or the museum's director, but then we've heard quite enough from them already.

Roberta writes:

It is hard to know how anyone could destroy this museum, but that's what Brandeis announced it would do last Monday. It's hard to think of a comparably destructive---and self-destructive---move in the art world today.

What I don't understand is why no NY Times pundit ever penned a similar opinion piece (as distinguished from three objective news reports) deploring the done-deal disposals that recently occured in their own backyard---the stealth deaccessions (first disclosed in CultureGrrl) by the National Academy Museum, New York.

The silence of the scribes almost made me long for the return from Europe of Michael Kimmelman.

Soon to be sold? Willem de Kooning, "Untitled," 1961, Rose Art Museum, loaned last fall to Haunch of Venison gallery

[CORRECTION: My original posting erroneously reported that Michael Rush's piece appeared in "the February Art Newsletter." It was The Art Newspaper. My apologies.]

Michael Rush, the director of the Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, must have been cringing at the thought that just days after Brandeis University's announcement of the planned sales of art from his museum's collection, the February Art Newspaper would be publishing his opinion piece (not online at this writing) in which he explained his decision to lend de Kooning's 1961 "Untitled" (above) to the inaugural show last fall of the New York branch of Haunch of Venison, the Christie's-connected commercial gallery. (If you have The Art Newspaper, Rush's piece is on p. 28, but its published de Kooning image, for reasons unknown to me, is NOT the above painting lent by the Rose, which I saw in person and in Haunch's catalogue.)

Writing before the furor over the Rose arose, Rush opined:

It is foolish and reactionary to think that there exists some "pure" separation between the principled museum and the unprincipled gallery or art fair or auction house. The synergy among these entities is deepening [truer than he knew!] and it is incumbent upon museum professionals to both embrace the good that comes from these combined forces and constantly cling to the boundaries that do indeed keep the encroachments of the marketplace at bay.

If only.

Now it looks like the Rose's de Kooning may well become fodder for the "encroaching" marketplace, and it got its first art-market exposure, with Rush's unwitting help, at the launch of Haunch. The bad idea (which I previously criticized here) of nonprofits' lending to for-profits now looks even worse.

What's more, Rush may have given momentum to the Brandeis administration's rush to auction by recklessly brandishing the collection's dollar value. Rush aided and abetted the monetization of the collection through his foolish idea, contrary to customary museum practice, of publicizing how much the art was worth.

According to an article published in the Spring '07 issue of Brandeis Magazine:

Rush is not convinced the community fully grasps the splendor and value of its holdings. With key members of the arts community, Rush reckoned by "eyeball," he says, that the works in hand are worth at least $300 million. Rather than operating on an educated guess, though, he has engaged Christie's Fine Art Auctioneers of New York to do a formal evaluation. [That's a convenient headstart, if Christie's eventually gets this ethically tainted consignment.]

He admits the move is less for insurance purposes than it is to demonstrate to Brandeis the value of its artworks...."I'm confident," he says, "that, after its real estate, art is the university's largest financial asset, and I want everyone to know it."

Great plan, Mike.

Rush may have also have stimulated the administrators' appetite for of art dollars by himself arranging the disposal in November 2007 of the Rose's important Childe Hassam at Christie's, where it fetched $3.74 million. The university has a history of controversial deaccessions.

In a letter last week to CultureGrrl, Rush took issue with my previous post that supported the call by Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, for Brandeis "to seek another steward" for the collection if it wants to disown it.

Rush wrote to me:

While I appreciate Ford Bell and the AAM's statement, I fear it misses the central point and central horror here. Brandeis isn't closing the Rose because it can't afford to keep exhibiting and caring for the collection. [Bell did, inaccurately, suggest that was Brandeis' motivation.] The Rose, a financially autonomous entity of the university, is fine. We are a healthy institution. The university gives us no direct funding. What they do provide, which is important, is "below the line" support with lights, heat, etc. but we raise our operating expenses, pay our own salaries, and benefit from several endowments given over the years by the enormously generous backers of the museum. The university is closing the Rose so it can sell the art.

In another letter to CultureGrrl, an important curator at a New England museum (who requested anonymity) said pretty much the same thing, adding that his museum, nevertheless, would "take it all on with pleasure," should Brandeis wish to give the art to another institution. Similarly, Steve Miller, director of the Morris Museum, Morristown, wrote to me tongue-in-cheek:

I love the idea of having the collection go to another museum. I will offer the Morris Museum! There is no museum in New Jersey devoted exclusively to post-WWII and contemporary art. We would be an ideal setting---close to major trade routes, easily accessible to appreciative audiences, plenty of gallery space,

But seriously...the key point, which I elucidated more fully here (fourth paragraph) is that if a museum wants to dispose of museum-quality objects, monetizing them is not an ethically acceptable option, ESPECIALLY if the proceeds are to be used for anything other than acquisitions. The only appropriate alternative to keeping the works at a nonprofit art museum would be transferring them to another such institution. This is the public's patrimony. It should not be sacrificed for quick cash.

Of course I understand full well that a free transfer to another museum would defeat the whole purpose of Brandeis' (almost)-everything-must-go museum clearance. The works, if they could not be sold, would most likely stay where they are---where their donors wanted them---and not be shipped off to Morristown.

That's just fine with me.