May 2009 Archives

You can hear me now:



Can you believe that New York Public Radio has, at this writing, posted 34 written comments on this subject? Everyone wants to tell the Obamas what to hang on their walls.

For my own further comments about White House art on CultureGrrl, go here.

Ed Ruscha, "I Think I'll...," 1983, borrowed by the White House from the National Gallery, Washington

Of course I have more to say on the Obamas' art choices than made it onto New York Public Radio's just concluded Brian Lehrer radio segment. That's what blogs are for:

I'm impressed and a bit surprised (given Barack's barebones Senatorial office decor) that they have taken such a serious, intelligent approach to bringing the nation's art to the People's House, and they seem to be going about this in exactly the right way: They're consulting museum curators who are disinterested in terms of the marketplace, but highly knowledgeable in terms of what art and artists are worthy of White House exposure and consistent with the First Family's taste.

I particularly like that the Obamas are insisting that nothing be taken down off the lending museums' walls (as the recent Wall Street Journal article has stated): They're not depriving the museum-going public of something they would otherwise see at these institutions. Many museums own certain artists in depth, and can easily come up with worthy examples that have been in storage.

I'd like to see a relaxation of the general rule that an artist has to be dead and that a work has to be 25 years old before it can be accessioned into the White House's permanent collection. The art in the People's House should, at least in part, be reflective of who we are today. That said, the White House shouldn't be acquiring emerging artists; it should seek art around which some consensus and track record have developed.

There's nothing wrong, though, with temporarily borrowing and displaying works by less established, younger artists, who have attracted serious curatorial and critical attention. For museum advice on acquisitions, they should go beyond the Beltway and the mega-museums, seeking counsel from such places as the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Museo del Barrio, for more diverse perspectives.

As for the issue of art-market influence, I think that the Obamas do have to be careful about having the artworks sold off their walls, with prices enhanced by the White House imprimatur. For that reason, I think works taken on loan should be borrowed from museums, not from private collectors, dealers or even from artists.

Now that he's being so progressive about bringing art into the White House, I hope that President Obama will encourage the newly nominated chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, to push for a restoration of individual artists' fellowships---an important program that was a casualty of the 1990s Culture Wars.

It's time to put that period behind us, again encouraging artistic experimentation and creative ferment throughout the nation, not just on Pennsylvania Avenue. I'm encouraged by what Landesman has previously written (in a 2000 NY Times opinion piece) about the need for nonprofit theaters to be risk-taking and experimental, not commercially oriented. The job of the NEA should be to provide seed money and support for such creative experimentation.

I just got a call from the Brian Lehrer Show at New York Public Radio (WNYC), where I'm supposed to be speaking about art in the White House today, letting me know that the show may not be able to broadcast "due to technical difficulties."

You can see here that I really AM scheduled to be on shortly. Time and technology will tell.

UPDATE: So far they're presenting an old repeat show. But Lehrer is standing by live in case they exorcise the tech gremlins. And so am I.

Can we stand the suspense?

UPDATE 2: The show did go live. I was on! Podcast to be posted later on CultureGrrl (technology permitting).

Brian Lehrer

If all goes according to plan, I'll be on the Brian Lehrer Show tomorrow morning on New York Public Radio (WNYC), talking about how change has come to the White House---on its walls. Kelly Crow and Amy Chozick of the Wall Street Journal own this story, but I'll be there to provide a little critical and historical perspective.

You can hear me and, I believe, another guest (yet to be determined when I was invited) at 10:30 a.m. on 93.9 FM or 820 AM in the New York metropolitan area. Or you can listen live here (upper lefthand corner).

I'll post the podcast on CultureGrrl, when available.

Derrick Cartwright?

All that I know about Cartwrights can be found on one of my favorite childhood TV shows. I could swear that's Derrick, aka Little Joe, riding the range:



Thankfully, Jen Graves of Seattle's The Stranger knows a lot more than I do about the future director of the Seattle Art Museum, having interviewed him yesterday and found him to be "a very pleasant person---or at least as a person who bothers to know his audience and to adapt to it....Not a chameleon (he exudes more spine than that), but a listener."

He does looks quite pleasant:



Jen also reports that he admires Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which works for me. Derrick assumes his new post this fall. Director Mimi Gates retires on June 30.

But does he have a plan to overcome the WaMu Whammy? The Seattle Times tells us that the museum still hasn't found a tenant for the eight floors above the new Seattle Art Museum expansion, which had been leased by the failed bank. That situation makes the following an unfortunate choice of words by the search committee's head, SAM trustee Charles Wright:

Derrick was clearly the right leader to leverage [!?!] and build upon the remarkable foundation SAM has built under Mimi Gates' leadership.

The foundation is fine, but what about those upper floors?

Back at Derrick's current home, the San Diego Museum of Art, the financial situation isn't all that rosy either. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in February that the museum was to "lay off 23 employees from across all departments...It was reacting to a 30 percent reduction in its endowment, from $77.5 million to $53 million, since the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1, 2008." The SDMA's (reduced) budget this year was $9.12 million, according to the Union-Tribune, compared to about $25.1 million at SAM, according to the Seattle Times.

Fiscally and programmatically, it's a big step up. But at least most of the nation's art museum directors already know Cartwright: He's the education chair of the 19-member board of the Association of Art Museum Directors and was one of the hosts at AAMD's mid-winter meeting this January in San Diego.

Richard Armstrong (second from left) on his first Abu Dhabi sojourn as the Guggenheim's director

Having repeatedly been brushed off whenever I had asked Guggenheim Foundation spokespersons about Human Rights Watch's revelations regarding construction worker abuse in Abu Dhabi (where the museum intends to build a major outpost), I was astounded by the arrival in my inbox late yesterday of a detailed letter that the museum's director, Richard Armstrong, had just dispatched to HRW, responding seriously to its new 80-page report.

The Guggenheim sent the letter to me in response to my post yesterday about the continued HRW allegations that "thousands of South Asian migrant workers building a US$27 billion island development [where the new Guggenheim is to be located] in the United Arab Emirates face severe exploitation and abuse, in some cases amounting to forced labor."

When I had interviewed the Guggenheim's new director back in February, I had gotten the feeling that he was genuinely concerned about these issues, not just paying them lip service. At that time, Armstrong told me:

We have the [previous] report from the Human Rights Watch and we're keen on making certain that everyone is treated justly. We want to be vigilant in that direction.

And now he has shown that he means it.

Here is a reproduction of the entire letter to HRW, signed by Armstrong, in which he makes some of the same points contained in a statement that the Guggenheim had sent to me last week (which I quoted in yesterday's post). The letter to HRW adds that, under its agreement with Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), the company is required to hire a general contractor "of international standing," and to comply with existing United Arab Emirate laws that address issues of working conditions.

The Guggenheim's letter to HRW further states:

We share Human Rights Watch's concerns about enforcement of these laws but are encouraged by TDIC's formation of an in-house department of Employment Practices. We hope to meet with the department well in advance of the start of the museum's construction to urge them to develop and implement a proactive plan to monitor and address the conditions of workers who are involved in the construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. We believe that it is in the mutual interest of TDIC and the Guggenheim to address issues actively before construction begins [scheduled for later this year]....

While we may not be able to solve every issue, we can have a dramatic and lasting impact if we engage in a long-term dialogue about a broad range of critical matters, including the conditions of workers.

I was impressed by the letter, even more impressed that Armstrong also sent copies to two top officials of TDIC. It remains to be seen, though, whether the Guggenheim really does have the power to alter longstanding labor practices.

If it doesn't, is Armstrong prepared to pick up his Kandinskys and go home?

Rendering of Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Abu Dhabi
Copyright Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Just in time for French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit today to participate in a ceremony marking the start of construction of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Human Rights Watch has published a new 80-page report decrying the "exploitation of migrant workers on Saadiyat Island." A Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and other cultural facilities are also planned for that site, as well as a New York University liberal arts campus.

I first reported on HRW's statements about this issue two years ago, here. A press release summarizing last week's 80-page report is here.

According to HRW's latest allegations:

Thousands of South Asian migrant workers building a US$27 billion island development in the United Arab Emirates face severe exploitation and abuse, in some cases amounting to forced labor. Labor-supply agencies, construction companies, and repressive laws are responsible for the abuse....

The UAE government and the authorities responsible for developing Saadiyat Island have failed to tackle the root causes of worker abuse: unlawful recruiting fees, broken promises of wages, and a sponsorship system that gives an employer virtually complete power over his workers....

Research on Saadiyat Island did show that authorities have taken some positive steps. Although workers' accommodations were still under construction when Human Rights Watch visited the island, they appeared to be relatively hygienic and not overcrowded. TDIC, the government-owned company overseeing the island's development, has sought contractual guarantees from construction companies that they will not confiscate workers' passports, use forced labor, or commit other abuses.

Reuters News Agency sought the U.A.E.'s side of the story. Andrew Hammond reports:

The Tourism Development & Investment Company, which is in charge of the island's development, said construction had not yet begun and special care was being taken over workers' welfare. A statement said contractors were obliged not to seize passports and encouraged to pay workers promptly. It said it would implement a Human Rights Watch suggestion to provide copies of contracts in the language of the workers, not only Arabic and English.

And the Guggenheim last week sent me this response to HRW's latest report:

We are reviewing the report with care and will discuss the issues that HRW has raised with our partner in Abu Dhabi---the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC)....We remain committed to working with TDIC to protect the rights of workers, and to provide a safe and just working environment to the people who will build the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum....

As we have discussed with Human Rights Watch and as is acknowledged in the report, many of the issues are addressed by existing United Arab Emirates laws and statutes. The Guggenheim Foundation's agreement with TDIC requires both TDIC and the contractors it hires to comply with those laws.

In the report, HRW writes that "Of the institutions that discussed workers' rights with us, the Guggenheim and the French Museum Agency said that they felt hampered by pressure from TDIC to remain silent on the issue." It is absolutely incorrect to make this statement regarding the Guggenheim Foundation's discussions with HRW. No such statement was made, nor was this sentiment implied in any discussion with, or other form of communication from, the Guggenheim.

Protecting the rights of workers who will be working on the construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum is, and continues to be, a serious topic of conversation with TDIC.

A preview of the project, including works from the Louvre and other French national museums, and the first acquisitions for the Louvre Abu Dhabi's own collection, opened today at the Emirates Palace hotel. For more information about the preview and its artworks, go here.

My French blogging buddy, Didier Rykner of the Art Tribune, has published a list (scroll down) of the Louvre Abu Dhabi's recently appointed acquisition committee, which includes Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre.

I also commend to you Charles Bremner's report yesterday in the U.K.'s Times about French attitudes towards the Louvre Abu Dhabi and about Sarkozy's other business during his trip---"opening a naval and air force base in Abu Dhabi" and "desperately hoping to convince Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to buy the Rafale jet fighter. The very expensive new-generation aircraft...has so far failed to win a single export order."

Eakins' study for "The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand," 1879

Yesterday I reported that the Hirshhorn Museum had sold two of the three Eakinses that it had consigned to the American art auction on Wednesday at Christie's. Yesterday at Sotheby's the Hirshhorn unloaded more Eakins: four studies for his painting "The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand," which is in the Philadelphia Museum. The Hirshhorn's studies had been exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum's 1982 Eakins exhibition.

Hammer price for the four studies sold at Sotheby's was $97,500, bringing the Hirshhorn's grand Eakins total to $477,500 (from which an undisclosed seller's commission may have been deducted).

Floundering founder: William Merritt Chase, "Portrait of William B. Dickson," 1905

[Updated here, with subsequent Hirshhorn disposal of Eakinses at Sotheby's.]

At yesterday's American art sale at Christie's, the Montclair Art Museum attempted to sell some 28 works and the Hirshhorn Museum put three Eakinses on the block.

Montclair sold 23 works (five unsold), for a hammer total of $2.28 million. Before the sale, the museum withdrew from auction a 1905 William Merritt Chase portrait of William B. Dickson, after Dickson's descendants hotly objected. The sitter was a founder of the Montclair Museum,

Peggy McGlone of the Newark Star-Ledger reports:

Museum spokesman Michael Gillespie Thursday defended the decision to sell the work, saying the museum has another, higher quality painting by Chase in its collection. However, [Lora] Urbanelli [Montclair's director] told [William] Ware [Dickson's grandson] that officials looked closer at Dickson's role in the early history of the museum and decided it would not sell it next week.

Museum officials said they tried to contact members of Dickson's family but were unable to locate them. The Chase portrait of Dickson was expected to sell for $25,000-$35,000.

In fact, the the museum's officials were already well aware of Dickson's role in the institution's history, even before the auction catalogue had gone to press. Christie's entry for the Chase (Lot 70) states:

William B. Dickson was a founder of the Montclair Art Museum and a civil (sic) leader in Montclair, New Jersey during the late 19th and early 20th century.

I gather that the furious grandson wasn't as "civil" as his civic-minded forebear.

At Christie's contemporary sales on May 13 and 14, Monclair's Pollock was knocked down for $420,000; a total hammer price of $211,000 was fetched for Montclair consignments by Motherwell, Stamos and Reinhardt. (The museum's take may be reduced by an undisclosed seller's commission.)

Grand total so far (not counting costumes sold by Montclair through Augusta Auctions): $2.9 million (hammer price). More Montclair disposals are planned (scroll down) next month at Christie's.

And in other deaccessions developments: The Washington Post today published this report on the Hirshhorn's attempted disposal of three Eakinses, one of which failed to sell at the yesterday's Christie's sale.

The Post's headline is another unfortunate example of inflation-by-buyers premium. It erroneously states:

Hirshhorn Gets $461,000 in Auction of Eakins Works

But that amount includes the fee paid by buyers to the auction house and doesn't take into account possible seller's commissions. The hammer prices for the Hirshhorn's two sold Eakinses totaled $380,000.

Dressing the First Lady is the best revenge.

Fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa, who went public with his displeasure over being omitted from the Metropolitan Museum's "The Model as Muse" exhibition, blaming it on the influence of Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue, got even when America's new arbiter of taste, Michelle Obama, wore one of his creations to the opening night gala of American Ballet Theatre. Her designer choice and the presence of Wintour at the gala were both reported by Michael Saul, the press pool journalist assigned to the event. (He is political correspondent for the NY Daily News, when he isn't chronicling fashion statements and observing that "those famous arms were on display.")

This was not the first time that Mrs. Obama wore Alaïa to a high-profile event. (Her Monday Met garb, for you fashion followers, was by Isaac Mizrahi.)

Wintour, whose March cover girl was the First Lady, was (as reported by the NY Times) accorded a front row seat (below, right) at Monday afternoon's ribbon cutting for the reopened American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum, where Mrs. Obama somewhat ploddingly read a speech on the arts and cultural policy. But where was Morrison Heckscher, the Met's curator who is chairman of the American Wing? Somewhere in the room, we trust, but not onstage for the ribbon cutting.

Yesterday you read the text of the First Lady's Met remarks on CultureGrrl. Now you can view the video. The museum's director, Tom Campbell, (what's he wearing?) is standing behind the big "M," below. Met board chairman James Houghton is to Campbell's left:

National Arts Club: Cocktails, anyone?

Who needs the Pulitzer anyway?

CultureGrrl has just been awarded the "Best Blog" designation from the Newswomen's Club of New York, whose distinguished 2009 winners also include Kelly Crow, my Wall Street Journal colleague.

I got the blog nod for "Stealth Deaccessions by the National Academy"---this post and the subsequent follow-ups. Kelly was honored for cultural reporting in the newspaper category, on the strength of her Aug. 22, 2008 piece, From the Art World to the Underworld.

Our illustrious co-celebrants at the June 25 awards ceremony at the National Arts Club (above) on Gramercy Park include journalists from the New Yorker, New York magazine, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Salon and (as listed on the club's website) "Bllomberg News." Kelly's publication is listed as "Wall Streete Journal." Where are the copy editors when we really need them? (They may have belatedly arrived by the time you read this.)

I hope you'll perhaps consider honoring my honor by visiting my donation page. (The Front Page Award is flash, not cash.) Speaking of which---many thanks to CultureGrrl Donor 41, who clicked my yellow button while I was vamping as the Virago in Chicago.

Catch you next month over cocktails, Kelly!

Michelle Obama's official portrait

If, like me, you would have liked to have been present at today's ribbon cutting by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Metropolitan Museum's renovated and reimagined American Wing, now you can! (I abandoned my own request to be included, when I learned on Saturday that I would have a more pressing commitment---my aunt's funeral.)

I've posted in full, below, the text of the First Lady's remarks, as dispatched to me by the White House. I think she hits the target.

A number of commentators have been poo-pooing Mrs. Obama's ceremonial appearance, but I'm hoping it's a first step in the right direction---recognition, not only through pomp but also through policy, of the importance of high culture in our national life. A civilization-enhancing federal program wasn't built in a day. This, one hopes, is just the prologue.

Here's what the First Lady said. The first part was, evidently, a response to Met president Emily Rafferty's allusion to the Obamas' first date, which began auspiciously at the Art Institute of Chicago (which itself had to settle for Presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for the ribbon cutting inaugurating its new Modern Wing, which opened to the public on Saturday):

THE WHITE HOUSE

 Office of the First Lady

________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release                             May 18, 2009

REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY

AT THE RIBBON CUTTING CEREMONY

FOR THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART AMERICAN WING

 Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York, New York

3:16 P.M. EDT

      MRS. OBAMA:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Please, rest.  (Laughter.)  Good afternoon and thank you, Emily, for that introduction, and thank you for reminding me.  You know, after 20-some-odd years of knowing a guy, you forget that your first date was at a museum.  (Laughter.)   But it was, and it was obviously wonderful; it worked. 

      So I am delighted to be here with you to celebrate American history through the arts.  From the beginning of our nation, the inspired works of our artists and artisans have reflected the ingenuity, creativity, independence and beauty of this nation.  It is the painter, the potter, the weaver, the silversmith, the architect, the designer whose work continues to create an identity for America that is respected and recognized around the world as distinctive and new. 

      The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art captures this spirit in presenting a variety of American art forms and providing a link to history for us to learn from, appreciate and be inspired by.

      Our future as an innovative country depends on ensuring that everyone has access to the arts and to cultural opportunity.  Nearly 6 million people make their living in the non-profit arts industry, and arts and cultural activities contribute more than $160 billion to our economy every year.  And trust me, I tried to do my part to add to that number.  

      The President included an additional $50 million in funding to the NEA in the stimulus package to preserve jobs in state arts agencies and regional arts organizations in order to keep them up and running during the economic downturn.  (Applause.) 

      But the intersection of creativity and commerce is about more than economic stimulus, it's also about who we are as people.  The President and I want to ensure that all children have access to great works of art at museums like the one here.  We want them to have access to great poets and musicians in theaters around the country, to arts education in their schools and community workshops. 

      We want all children who believe in their talent to see a way to create a future for themselves in the arts community, be it as a hobby or as a profession. 

      The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it.  Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation. 

      The President recently nominated renowned theater producer Rocco Landesman to chair the National Endowment for the Arts.  Rocco's entrepreneurial spirit and his commitment to being a bridge between the philanthropic, non-profit and commercial arts community will ensure that all types of art and creative expression are provided fertile ground to live and to grow.

      And that's what we hope to do at the White House, that's what we've been trying to do at the White House.  We've been trying to break down barriers that too often exist between major cultural establishments and the people in their immediate communities; to invite kids who are living inches away from the power and prestige and fortune and fame, we want to let those kids know that they belong here, too. 

      I want to applaud the Metropolitan Museum of Art for all the outreach that you do, for having kids like these here today to be involved in this and to experience this and to share this with us, because this is your place, too.  So we're very proud of the Met for the work that they've done. 

      So we are excited.  Thank you for including me.  And now we can get to the -- we're going to cut the ribbon now.

Where is that Rose Museum arrow (above) pointing?

Geoff Edgers reports in today's Boston Globe:

Yesterday marked the closing of the Rose's temporary exhibitions on 20th-century abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and a second show, "Saints & Sinners." The day had special significance because on July 22, when the museum's doors reopen, the Rose will probably not have a proper director or curator.

That's the result of the university's still-developing plans to change the Rose's mission and sell some of its art.

...or at least the Rose as HE has known it is finished. My hope that a new director, arriving in Watham without the baggage of an acrimonious relationship with the administration, will find a way to preserve the Rose's collection and its status as a full-functioning museum, while making a more effective effort to communicate its necessity and importance to Brandeis officials, the broader university community and the general public.

The key to this will be making sure that these constituents appreciate the museum's important role as an integral part of the university's core mission---a case that can best be made not by words but by finding ways to better integrate the Rose's riches into the fabric of student, faculty and community life---through significant new programs and more vigorous outreach. That will take time and a lot of persuasive diplomacy...not to mention a willingness by the university to appoint someone capable of accomplishing that task.

One can only hope that Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and his supporters have come to recognize that the potential costs to the university's reputation among donors and the broader educational and cultural communities are not worth the financial benefits that might accrue from selling off valuable educational assets.

At the press preview for the Metropolitan Museum's "The Model as Muse" show, an E! television reporter had asked the museum's curator, Harold Koda, whether Michelle Obama would be attending the Costume Institute's gala that night. He deftly sidestepped, saying that he hoped that the President's wife would at some point visit the museum, to demonstrate her support for the arts.

Next week, she will---visiting not only the Met but also American Ballet Theatre.

This just in from the White House Media Affairs Office:

Monday, May 18^th:   Mrs. Obama will continue to demonstrate her interest in and support for the arts by attending the ribbon cutting for the Metropolitan Museum of Art American Wing, which will be pooled press, followed by a private meeting with arts and entertainment leaders, which will be closed press.  These activities are an extension of the First Lady's efforts started in Washington DC that have included trips to the Kennedy Center and Ford's Theater, as well as an evening celebrating the arts throughout the DC community hosted at the Shakespeare Theater....

Monday night, the First Lady will attend the American Ballet Opening Spring Gala at the Metropolitan Opera House.  American Ballet Theatre's 2009 Spring Gala, which celebrates the opening of ABT's annual eight week season at the Met, will feature ABT's acclaimed Principal Dancers in highlights from the 2009 Spring season.

As far as I know (but I'll soon find out), Chicagoan Michelle will not be at the civic ceremony opening the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing on Saturday. Meanwhile, thanks to a Met podcast, below, you can get in ahead of Michelle to preview the Met's reconfigured Engelhard Court and balcony galleries. They will open to the public next Tuesday, along with the reordered and renovated  early American period rooms, now strung together in a continuous, chronological circuit and explicated with computer touchscreens, instead of traditional signage.

This also provides you with a rare Tom Campbell sighting:



We can only wonder whether Rocco Landesman, newly nominated by President Obama to become the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will be at the Met's ribbon cutting and the private conclave afterwards.
 
And you can only wonder, art-lings, what I think of that NEA news (not to mention the astonishing story about how a painting thought to be by the very young Michelangelo was snapped up by the Kimbell Museum's enterprising new director, Eric Lee, after the Met decided it would not acquire the work (even though its curator, Keith Christiansen, supports the attribution). Christiansen, who had orchestrated the famously expensive Duccio purchase, told Carol Vogel of the NY Times that, for the Michelangelo, "the timing wasn't right. We had other acquisitions on the dock."

They'd better be good ones!

(Why does all this news break when I'm away on assignment and have very little time to post?)

I WILL!

If all goes according to plan, my plane will be taking off at noon tomorrow to transport me to the (very) Windy (and thunderstorm-y) City, to cover (for the Wall Street Journal) the opening of the Art Institute of Chicago's Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing. The last time I was in Chicago, I was researching a WSJ story about the difficulties then confronting the now defunct Terra Museum of American Art. Some of the Terra Foundation's collection is now shown at the Art Institute.

I've never even seen The Bean! (I hope they've been able to repair a recent act of vandalism.)

When I return, I'll be restricted by the WSJ Gag Rule: I can't blog (or even post an irreverent photo essay!) about the Art Institute until my story is published. They're paying me, art-lings; you're not (with a few very notable and much appreciated exceptions).

Speaking of which: Many thanks to CultureGrrl Donors 38 and 39, from Belmont, MA, and Miami, as well as to my first REPEAT donor, from Boston. The latter took to heart my exhortation to "vote early and often"! (Isn't that a Chicago thing?)

Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Met's Costume Institute, at the entrance to its new extravaganza, "The Model as Muse"

There are elephants in the room at the Metropolitan Museum's absorbing, highly entertaining (but also highly problematic) The Model as Muse show (to Aug. 9). And those conspicuous pachyderms are not the huge cutouts looming at the entrance to the Costume Institute's show, meant to evoke this iconic Richard Avedon image of "Dovima with the Elephants":


Evening dress by Dior, photo published in "Harper's Bazaar," September 1955

The "elephants" I'm referring to are the unseen but weighty sponsors for this show---designer Marc Jacobs and Condé Nast Publications, whose Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, co-chaired the Met's Costume Institute Gala Benefit.

Marc Jacobs and Anna Wintour, facing the cameras at the Met's press preview last week

The connections between the sponsors' professional interests and the contents of this deftly installed, intelligently explicated extravaganza seem too close for curatorial comfort. The result is a confection that's delicious but leaves an objectionable aftertaste.

As I departed, I realized that the clothes themselves---usually the main attraction at Costume Institute exhibitions---had been upstaged by the photos, magazine covers, sensuous fashion spreads, lively filmed backdrops and cleverly chosen music representing each decade. These bells and whistles conspired to overwhelm the static cloth creations---objects from public and private collections that should have been the main attraction.

It's hard to know whether the sponsors' influence on what we see was actively hands-on or subtly indirect. Either way, it's hard to miss. When I asked Wintour about the show, having encountered her by chance in the galleries, she told me:

I love the show....I think it's much more animated than some of the Costume Institute exhibitions....I'm very proud of it.

Then I asked her to what extent she had been involved in the design of the show and the selections for it. She replied that her involvement was confined to the dinner for the benefit gala. "That's all."

But we all learned at the press preview that her role was not confined to the gala: The large group of assembled journalists and photographers were told that on Wintour's tour of the exhibition, just three days prior, she had declared that the gallery devoted to 1990s grunge (with musical accompaniment by Kurt Cobain's Nirvana) was insufficiently grungy. Julien d'Ys, who had created the heads and wigs for the show's mannequins, was quickly summoned for emergency grungification:

Julien d'Ys' rapidly executed wall treatment (detail)

Here's a grunge-wear installation shot:

The show comes across more as a display devoted to Vogue than as an exhibition focussing on garments from the Met's own collection and lenders. Arrayed in front of costumed mannequins is the much more eye-catching sight of gorgeous models posing on the covers and in the fashion spreads of magazines that made the women and clothes famous. The overwhelming preponderance of this printed material comes from (you guessed it) Vogue:

Photo by Herb Ritts on the cover of "British Vogue," December 1988

The portrait above depicts Stephanie Seymour, celebrated in the Met's accompanying label for having "gained cross-market fame by appearing in then-boyfriend Axel Rose's music videos ("Don't Cry," "November Rain") and 1991 and 1994 Playboy spreads." (Nowadays she's in the news for another reason---divorce proceedings against the major contemporary art collector and Art in America magazine publisher, Peter Brant.)

In case you missed the synergy between the funder and what's funded, Condé Nast's "Sponsor Statement" for "The Model as Muse" connects the dots:

Vogue has always featured the women whose very beauty and individualism made fashion as compelling and as exciting as any of the clothes they wore. And for the first time, their importance [not to mention the importance of Wintour's own publication] will be acknowledged in this exhibition.

I'm not the only one who sensed that this powerful editor, thanks to her company's sponsorship, her longstanding Met connections and perhaps even her direct influence, received excessive deference here. Cathy Horyn (with Eric Wilson) of the NY Times wrote this about complaints expressed by fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa about the exclusion of his designs:

He blamed the omission not on the Met's chief costume curator Harold Koda, but rather on Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, who organizes the party. "She has too much power over this museum," he said. (Alaïa has had very little presence in Vogue in the last 15 years.) He also conveyed his displeasure to Marc Jacobs, whose company is sponsoring the event, in a telephone call on Saturday.

Reached this morning, Koda said that Wintour has no involvement in Costume Institute shows. He said Alaïa had not been asked to loan garments for this particular exhibit, despite his history with models, because the curators didn't believe the designer would agree to participate in a group show. [Did they ask him?] Koda added that he hopes to someday have a one-man exhibition of Alaïa's fashion---provided the Met changes its policy about monographic shows of living designers.

I had been under the impression that the policy had essentially already been changed---at the Met's 2005 exhibition that was ostensibly devoted to French fashion icon Coco Chanel, but had also featured a superabundance of designs by her successor, Karl Lagerfeld. In my critical appraisal for the NY Times' Op-Ed page, I quoted Koda's comment to me that he then regarded "Chanel" as ''a test'' of whether the Met could, in the future, mount one-person shows of designers who were still active.

Speaking of living designers, the current show, which (according to the Met's own press release) "examines a timeline of fashion from 1947 to 1997," nevertheless gives the last fashion statement to the show's lead sponsor, Marc Jacobs, whose creations displayed by Koda in the show's "coda" (as the Met calls it) are of much more recent vintage---just last spring. They are, as the label tells us, "the Richard Prince and Marc Jacobs collaboration of masked, anonymous nurses (Stephanie Seymour and Natalia Vodianova) in Louis Vuitton." These "nurses" sport Jacobs' ever-popular Richard Prince joke bags. (I'm joking about the "popular" part.):

Marc Jacobs, white techno silk lab coat; multicolored silk tie-dyed dress

One joke that I just don't get is how the catalogue, below the Met's usual level of seriousness, got through the standards censors. The commentary for the full-page magazine photos in this glossy, oversized compendium is provided by the always insightful and interesting Koda. I assume that the Met's curator in charge of the Costume Institute is also the intelligence behind the wall texts in each gallery, which astutely analyze the creative symbiosis of models and designers.

But the longer essays in the catalogue are more closely related to breathless fashion magazine hype and celebrity hagiography than to serious scholarship. These contributions come from the show's guest co-curator, Kohle Yohannan---"an art historian and fashion writer and curator," in the words of the catalogue's press release. He also has a Vogue connection, as author of "John Rawlings: 30 Years in Vogue."

Here's one sample of his writing from the Met's catalogue:

Future devotees of the cult of beauty will undoubtedly recognize the meeting of the titans of beauty and commerce made human in the Spring 2009 [that would be now] Versace campaign, which features Gisele Bündchen and Kate Moss perched on a glass-slab patio overlooking an ocean-backed horizon, their names blazoned across the page above the designer's logo-type.

We also learn from Yohannan about the "media blitz of reporters and paparazzi attendant on their [supermodels'] every move" and also about "what industry insiders refer to as the 'Grand Slam'---landing sequential or simultaneous covers of American, British, French and Italian Vogue."

What we don't find in the catalogue are images of the actual costumes displayed in the exhibition---usually the chief focus of Costume Institute publications. Those garments are relegated to a small-print checklist (with no images) at the back of the book.

The lapses in "The Model as Muse" argue for a new model for future Costume Institute exhibitions: No major sponsorship should be solicited or accepted from a business or individual having a substantial professional and financial interest in the specific contents of the show. If the current show hasn't actually been compromised by conflicts of interest, it gives that impression. Such conflicts, real or perceived, undermine the soundness of the enterprise.

Ned Rifkin

A year after his resignation from the top art spot at the Smithsonian Institution, Ned Rifkin has been named director of the Blanton Museum of the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to his departure from his federal post as undersecretary of art, he oversaw a major report by a panel of distinguished art museum officials. The report's findings were particularly (and to my mind, unfairly) critical of the direction of the Smithsonian American Art Museum under Elizabeth Broun's leadership. She survived that challenge and still occupies her post.

Rifkin, a former director of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the High Museum in Atlanta, began his career in Texas as an assistant professor in the University of Texas at Arlington and later returned to Texas as director of the Menil Collection, Houston. The Blanton holds several distinguished collections, including the Suida-Manning Collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, acquired in 1998, and an encyclopedic assemblage of 3,200 prints that were donated by art historian Leo Steinberg in 2002. Rifkin is best know for his involvement with contemporary art.

He succeeds Jessie Otto Hite (who retired from the Blanton's directorship more than a year ago) and will also be a professor of art an art history at the university.

You can read the university's announcement of Rifkin's appointment here.

Monet, "Sailboat on the Little Branch of the Seine, Argenteuil," 1872 ($3.5 million at Sotheby's)

Two of the three Havemeyer paintings that sold well above their presale estimates at Sotheby's on Tuesday had a connection to the Metropolitan Museum going far beyond their 1993 appearance in the museum's exhibition of the Havemeyer Collection.

As disclosed in Sotheby's auction catalogue, the Monet (above) and one of the Pissarros remained at the Met, on loan, until some time this year. What's more, Gary Tinterow, the museum's curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art, recently informed me that those two paintings "were often on view in our galleries" during the period from 1994-2009.

The Met's connections to these paintings go even deeper: Tinterow's co-organizer of the Havemeyer show, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen (the Met's curator of American decorative arts), is married to George L.K. Frelinghuysen. He's the son of the late Marian Kingsland Frelinghuysen, from whose estate (according to a NY Times report by Carol Vogel) the three Havemeyer pictures were sold this week.

This history suggests that the Met should have gotten those paintings for its own collection, augmenting its already extensive Havemeyer holdings. Instead, it enhanced their value with its imprimatur, only to see them eventually removed from the museum to be sent to market. On Tuesday, I asked a Met communications spokesperson whether Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen would financially benefit from the sale of the works. I have not yet received a reply. Marian Kingsland Frelinghuysen died on June 26; her obit lists Alice as one of the survivors.

Tinterow recently informed me:

When the lender of the Pissarro and the Monet [whose identity he did not disclose to me] died last year, we had the opportunity to purchase the works from the estate. Given the strength of our collection in this area, established by the Havemeyer bequest of 1929, we passed.

Given the exhibition history of two of the works, I doubt that the Met would have passed had they been offered as gifts.

This is certainly not the first time that the Met has displayed a work on long-term loan from a private collection that subsequently achieved an very strong auction price. Who can forget Siegfried Kramarsky's van Gogh---the $82.5-million "Dr. Gachet"?

The difference here is the curatorial connection. Since this is a matter of inheritance, not private collecting, this does NOT strike me as a grave violation of curatorial ethics. Offering them first to the Met was the right thing to do. But if the curator financially benefitted from the sale of works that had been long hanging at her institution, she's reaped a gain at the expense of her own museum.

Picasso, "Musketeer with Pipe," 1968, sold for $14.64 million

I didn't stand watch at Christie's tonight with the rest of the art-scribe tribe, but it seems clear from the results of this evening's Impressionist/Modern sale that gloating must have occurred at the post-sale press conference: Some 38 of the 48 lots offered found buyers---about the same sold-lot percentage as at the 36-work sale conducted at Sotheby's the night before.

But unlike Sotheby's, where some of the highest-estimated lots were left stranded on the block (resulting in a dismal sold percentage, by dollar amount, of only 58.8%), Christie's hit its marks where it counted, most notably with its top-lot Picasso, above, hammered down at $13 million, against a very broad presale estimate range of $12-18 million. The Picasso's final price was $14.64 million with buyer's premium (which is not included in the estimate).

Although both auction houses, stung by the recession, are now largely refraining from offering guarantees to consignors, Christie's disclosed that it had "a direct financial interest" in the Picasso. The entry for that lot stated:

On occasion, Christie's has a direct financial interest in lots consigned for sale which may include guaranteeing a minimum price or making an advance to the consignor that is secured solely by consigned property. This is such a lot. This indicates both in cases where Christie's holds the financial interest on its own, and in cases where Christie's has financed all or a part of such interest through a third party. Such third parties generally benefit financially if a guaranteed lot is sold successfully and may incur a loss if the sale is not successful.

Whoever the "third party" (if there was one) may have been, it's clear that a certain dealer now hosting a major, acclaimed show (to June 6) of Picasso's "Mosqueteros", can only benefit from this solid auction showing. In his forward to the voluminous catalogue for that show, its curator, Picasso biographer John Richardson, revealed that Gagosian's exhibition "consists largely of works belonging to members of the artist's family." The allure of whatever works are available for purchase from that show can only be enhanced by today's swashbuckling musketeer exploit.

Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff of Bloomberg report that the buyer of "Musketeer" was Guillaume Vedovi, "a Belgian dealer, on behalf of a client he declined to name."

An auction record for Tamara de Lempicka was set when Portrait of Madame M. sold for $6.3 million. Another highly touted work in Christie's catalogue, a Max Ernst (which was to have been the second highest-estimated lot at $7-9 million) was withdrawn before the sale.

The total hammer price tonight was $89.48 million, within the presale estimate of $87.6-125.2 million. (The sold total was $102.77 million with premium). Sotheby's sale yesterday fell far short of its $81.5-118.8 million estimate range, fetching only $52.95 million ($61.37 million with premium).

I'm going to be traveling and probably not posting at the time of next week's evening contemporary sales, so I'll be reading Bloomberg's Pollock/Boroff, the NY Times' Carol Vogel and the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow, along with the rest of you.

Sotheby's unsold Picasso, the auction's cover lot

I'm not going to exhaustively cover the evening sales this season. It's probably better to avert our eyes from the shrunken catalogues with their shrunken estimates.

So let's get this over with quickly: Sotheby's Impressionist/Modern sale tonight fetched a hammer total of $52.95 million, against its presale estimate of $81.5-118.8 million (which does not include buyer's premium). The sold total including the buyer's premium: $61.37 million.

The two most highly touted works failed to sell: Picasso's "The Artist's Daughter at Two-and-a-Half, with a Boat," 1938 (above), estimated at $16-24 million; Giacometti's "The Cat," 1951, also estimated at $16-24 million. Some 29 of the 36 lots found buyers, but the sale was a dismal 58.8% sold by dollar amount.

A museum-related track record seemed to help prices: The top lot was Mondrian's "Composition in Black and White, with Double Lines," 1934, which had been on loan at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts from 1967-2009. It was knocked down at $8.2 million ($9.27 million with buyer's premium), trouncing its presale estimate of $3-5 million. A Monet and two Pissarros that had been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum's 1993 Havemeyer Collection show all handily exceeded their presale estimates. The Monet and one of the Pissarros had remained on loan at the Met, often on view in its galleries, until earlier this year.

Ron Hartwig, the J. Paul Getty Trust's vice president for communications, responds to my comments about the Getty's label for its so-called "Aphrodite," which I discussed in the last part of Iowa's Pollock at the Figge: The Masterpiece and the Myth:

To answer your question about why gallery labels sometimes disagree with scholarship, and with regard to our particular case, I'd like to provide some background as to why the label for the Cult Statue of a Goddess (which is actually labeled "perhaps Aphrodite," not "probably Aphrodite" [or maybe not---see below]) continues to remain on display.

According to Karol Wight, the Getty Museum's senior curator of antiquities, while a "lively " debate between Clemente Marconi and Malcolm Bell, both recognized scholars in the area of Sicilian archaeology and art, did take place at the workshop held in May 2007 at the Getty Villa over the identity of the statue (should she be identified as Hera, Demeter, Persephone, or Aphrodite?), the outcome of the discussion was sufficiently in question so as not to change the label.

During the debate it was clear that Mac Bell favored Hera, while Clemente Marconi favored Demeter or Persephone. Both of these opinions are published in the papers they presented at the workshop. Your readers can find these papers published on our website. But the third opinion in the room was the curatorial one, which continued to stand behind an identity of Aphrodite in the absence of a fully persuasive argument for a new identity.

Based on the outcome of the debate, Karol made the decision to leave the Cult Statue's label as it is for now because neither Mac Bell's nor Clemente Marconi's argument was fully developed at the time. Clemente Marconi will shortly be publishing a lengthier article on the statue for "Antike Plastik," and until we see what further arguments Professor Marconi makes, we don't plan to change the label. This is a case of ongoing scholarship.

So until the ongoing scholarship is complete, the label will remain as is.

As it was---on Feb. 6, 2008, when I visited and took photos at the Getty Villa (nine months after the experts' report), here's what the label said:

Pollock, "Mural," 1943, University of Iowa Museum of Art, as installed at the Figge Art Museum

"I'm just totally awed and amazed by it," I lamely told an Iowa television interviewer, who popped the "what-do-you-think?" question, only a few moments after I had set eyes on "Mural." That monumental 1943 Pollock, owned by the flood-ravaged University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, is now on loan to the Figge Art Museum, Davenport.

Lame as it sounds, "awed and amazed" was my immediate, unguarded reaction, before I had time to absorb the complex rhythms of black verticals and swirls, with accents of turquoise and pink brushstrokes, splotches of yellow, and touches of red, blue and green. This is Pollock-the-colorist at his best, with all the seemingly spontaneous gestures and color applications coalescing into a unified composition.

I've seen lots of Pollocks---even this one, which was in the 1998 Museum of Modern Art retrospective (where it was upstaged by the classic drips of later years). But I wasn't prepared for the knockout punch that this---the largest canvas ever painted by Pollock, allotted its own perfectly proportioned room---would pack in an off-the-beaten-track Iowa art venue.

Part of it had to do with the installation's visual build-up---the experience of other important works in the preceding galleries, preparing the eyes for this masterpiece. The experience of this journey feels like a pilgrimage with a glorious final destination. The impact is heightened by the powerful simplicity of the installation, intensifying the focus on this ground-breaking precursor to the celebrated drip paintings.

As you approach the small room from the more spacious gallery containing other UIMA masterworks, you see the Pollock in isolated splendor, perfectly framed by the opening to the gallery (as you see in the photo above, taken from just outside the Pollock's space, where the white verticals flanking the painting are the walls on either side of the opening through which you enter).

I felt so engulfed by the painting, that I didn't realize anything else was in the gallery until I turned around to leave. I then spotted, on the opposite wall, another much smaller Pollock, cohabiting with "Mural":


Pollock, "Portrait of H.M." [probably Herman Melville], 1945, University of Iowa Museum of Art, as installed at the Figge Art Museum

Like "Mural," this small abstraction was given to the university by pioneering collector and Pollock patron Peggy Guggenheim.

Also in the same room was a computer screen with a multmedia presentation about "Mural" that perpetuated the improbable tale (also told on the UIMA's website) that "according to all reports," this complex, enormous work "was painted in one frenetic burst of energy on New Year's Day." Gazing at it and trying to decipher its knotty pictorial puzzles, I found it difficult to believe that this tour de force could have been accomplished in such a frenzy. For all its manic energy, it seems carefully plotted by an organizing intelligence.

In fact, as Pam White, UIMA's interim director told me, the one-day miracle is most likely a myth. It seems clear, she said, that some brushstrokes had dried before others were applied.

This is not the first time that I've seen explanatory material in a gallery that fancifully contradicts what experts believe to be the less romantic reality. But I have yet to understand why this is allowed to happen. I encountered a striking example of this gallery/scholar disconnect when I visited the Getty Museum in Malibu a bit more than a year ago, where one of its most celebrated antiquities (scheduled to be relinquished to Italy in 2010) was labeled: "Goddess, Probably Aphrodite":


"Goddess, Probably Aphrodite," Greek, South Italy, 425 - 400 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum, courtesy of the Republic of Italy, region of Sicily

A group of experts convened by the Getty in 2007 to study this sculpture had reported that she is probably NOT Aphrodite. She might be Hera, she might be Persephone, but none of the experts seemed to favor Aphrodite. Why the Getty, in its own galleries, continued to call her "probably Aphrodite," after the experts whose advice it sought had spoken, may have more to do with the popular appeal of the voluptuous goddess of love than with the current state of scholarship.

Similarly, the masterpiece-in-a-day Pollock tale would be an engaging anecdote, if only it were true. As it is, it seems highly improbable to anyone who actually takes time to look closely at the painting.

For news on efforts to bring some of the University of Iowa's art back to campus later this year, see Regina Zilbermints' Some Artwork to Return to UI in the Daily Iowan.

On Tuesday evening, I sent an e-mail blast to those of you who have donated to the blog, to let you know that I will be sending you e-mail notifications of future postings, now that I'm slowing down the pace of my additions. If you donated and did not receive the message that I sent, please let me know by clicking the "Contact Me" link in the middle column. I think I got everyone, but just in case...

If you haven't donated, you can, of course, still do so now (or next week or next year...). Feel free to vote early and often. A donation of $5 or more will get you on my list for post alerts.

Rest assured that I'm not stopping the blog, just pulling back a bit as I devote more time to other projects. Please stay tuned!

Now for the upbeat part of the story of the flooding of the University of Iowa Museum of Art: It resulted in a terrific, beautifully installed exhibition---A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock's "Mural" and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art . That show is the most visible part of the new, win-win cooperative relationship between UIMA, Iowa City, and the Figge Art Museum, an hour's drive away in Davenport, IA:



This is the Figge's David Chipperfield building---115,000 square feet in need of a more distinguished collection (particularly weak in modern and contemporary) and a larger audience. The place was so empty when I visited that I asked if it was then open to the public. (It was.) The UIMA's modern and contemporary highlights show, with the monumental 1943 Pollock as its star and with many other great works in supporting roles, should raise both institutions' profiles and audience.

After having seen the perilous proximity of the university's museum to the Iowa River, I got nervous when I saw the mighty Mississippi only a few more stone's throws away from the Figge. So I queried its ebullient and affable director, Sean O'Harrow, to assure myself that his institution was not in a flood zone.

He cheerfully assured me that it was: "This building was designed to be flooded," he informed me. In fact, since the museum opened in 2003, the river had already risen to the height that he obligingly indicated for me here:



The black lower walls (which you can also see in the top photo of the entire building), are made of concrete that's been imprinted with wood grain (in the manner of Tadao Ando's Stone Hill Center for conservation at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA). They are meant to be impregnable to water. And if the Mississippi ventures further up the street, the parking garage is intended to contain the overflow. (I hope they don't get a chance to test this.):



I got to chat at length with Sean at the dinner that followed my deaccession lecture at the University of Iowa, and I was impressed by this knowledge and his ideas for energizing the Figge (pronounced "FIGgee"). I've got a feeling that his current position will not be his gig for life.

Happily, all the works from UIMA (including those now being moved into storage at the Figge) are on high floors. Here are the two long flights of stairs over which the UIMA's heavy and unwieldy Pollock was hand-carried when it arrived by truck from Chicago. The masterpiece had to be flipped over to make the U-turn:



And here is the space where truckloads of UIMA works, still coming from Chicago, are being unpacked:



We'd love to know what's under wraps. This box is merely labeled "African":



The first work you encounter upon entering the "Legacy for Iowa" exhibition is not the Pollock, but another "wow" canvas: a huge, dramatic Robert Motherwell, commissioned by UIMA's first director. Ulfert Wilke. The artist had envisioned his painting hanging opposite the Pollock, which had been given to the museum by the legendary collector and Pollock patron, Peggy Guggenheim.


Motherwell, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic, No. 126)," 1965-75

And you encounter many other great works en route to the Pollock. In front of one of them is the UIMA's interim director, Pamela White, talking to KCRG-TV a few days before the exhibition officially opened:



Here's a closer look at her backdrop:


Beckmann, "Carnival," 1943: the sixth of the artist's 10 extant triptychs, purchased from Beckmann in 1946 by dealer Curt Valentin, sold to the university that same year

Also striking was this Marsden Hartley, another UIMA purchase:


Hartley, "E," 1915

There are many other gems among the 22 works in the show. I had no idea that this Midwestern university, perhaps best know for its prestigious writing program, had an art collection this deep. But I'm saving the best for last.

COMING NEXT WEEK: Confronting the Pollocks (TWO of them!)