June 2009 Archives

Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer's culture writer

I was steamed when Robin Pogrebin's NY Times story broke the news embargo I'd agreed to (regarding the Brodsky Bill), and now Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer is steamed about a similar run-in with the same newspaper's Carol Vogel, regarding the announcement of Timothy Rub's appointment to the directorship of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Dobrin is SO steamed, in fact, that he sent me the following note, for quotation and attribution:

What happened was this: The Inquirer and Times agreed to the embargo. Later the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer was brought into it. We all agreed to 12:30 a.m. Monday publication. I had warned the museum's PR person that sometimes the Times rolls out news in a kind of stealth way---that is, it is not on the online layout, but you can find it if you search for it and, of course, if you have Google News Alert, the alert will link you to the item.

He [the museum's PR person] got an assurance from the Times this would not happen. So at about 7 p.m. the museum's PR person called to say the Times had published the story. We had our story up about 10 minutes later; the Plain Dealer, maybe a 45 minutes after that.

The story was not appearing on the Times layout at any point last night as far as I can tell. But what happened was exactly what the Times said would not---that Google News Alert linked to it, and anyone who looked for the story could find it.

I'd call that violating the embargo, and I think the Times would have a hard time arguing otherwise.

So what DOES the Times argue? Let's find out. Here's what cultural news editor Sam (Get-it-First) Sifton told me in an e-mail responding to my query:

We're a big organization, with multiple publishing systems for print and digital, and we need to work hard to make sure everyone on each side is talking to the right people on the other, particular in the case of "embargoed" information. You'll note the quote marks. I don't have anything in particular against embargoes except that I'd prefer not to have them.

When we do have them, I'd prefer that they not be tied to morning publication in the newspaper. Here's why: The newspaper is printed at night, and as the finished files for the newspaper are shipped to the printing plant they are also shipped to the digital newsroom, where they are published rather faster than they are at the plant. If someone misses a flag on the file and posts to the Web, I'm stuck explaining myself to the blogosphere. No fun.

I thank you for flagging it.

I wonder if the Times is a little more careful in instances where the Office of the President demands an embargo. In any event, I do agree with Sam about preferring not to have these encumbrances: In my experience, embargoes are almost always broken.

My solution? Give us the news we can use (right now) and let the "scoops" fall where they may. Speed of publication isn't everything, after all. Accuracy and substance are. (Just compare my two-part coverage with Robin's piece.)

No matter how speedy I am, though, I couldn't teleport myself to the Philadelphia press conference called yesterday to introduce the newly named director. In keeping with the bizarre and inopportunely timed nature of the roll-out of this important museum news (on the same weekend when Rub's current museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, was opening its new wing), the Philadelphia Museum's invitation for its 10:30 a.m. event hit my inbox yesterday at 1:59 a.m.

Even the blogger-who-never-sleeps sometimes gets caught napping in the wee hours!

UPDATES: Dobrin takes issue with my description of his mood: "It's a small point, but I wasn't 'steamed.' 'Slightly annoyed' is probably a better way of putting it. But it is hard to tell emotion in an e-mail!"

And Steve Litt, who wrote the article about Rub's imminent departure for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, takes issue with Dobrin's account of the relative timing of their pieces: "Philadelphia posted at 7:02 p.m. Sunday. We followed at 7:18."

Bernard Tschumi, architect of the New Acropolis Museum just opened in Athens, responds to my criticism of new installation of the Greek-owned Parthenon marbles, chock-a-bloc with replicas of the British-owned slabs from the same frieze:

One of the special aspects of the new Acropolis Museum is that it reconstitutes the original narrative continuity of the Parthenon frieze. For nearly a century and a half, no one has seen it "whole," until now. Divided between Athens and London, no one could follow the extraordinary story-telling achievement that was important to Phidias and to the people of Athens. The frieze is not a series of discrete "tableaux," but rather a kind of cinematic continuum.

So when the architects of the Acropolis Museum and its curators were confronted with dealing with the fact that it was unlikely that the British Museum would return the Marbles in time for the opening, we studied a number of alternatives. One included taking the very white, exact plaster molds given to Greece by the British Museum and putting a scrim in front of them, so as to give the absent segments a ghost-like presence.

While this worked somewhat when the viewer was standing, motionless, exactly perpendicular to the frieze, it created a dense and opaque mask as soon as the viewer saw these same segments at an angle. (The original frieze was conceived to be seen in motion, as viewers walked alongside the temple, inevitably looking at it at an angle.)

Additionally and not unimportantly, the scrim made these segments hard to read, occluding the narrative, and interposed an extra layer of material that violated the planar limit of the marble, which Phidias and his crew had worked hard and skillfully to respect.

Rather than having the long opaque patches resulting from the scrim, we felt that out of respect for the artist as well as the viewer, it was preferable to show the copy next to the original. The two cannot be mistaken. The original has the density of heavy, two-foot-deep stone, with 2500 years of yellowish and orange patina and darkened areas where fires raged over the temple. The reproduction of the Marbles currently in London is plaster-white, unmistakably a copy, but a highly respectful copy that gives the visitor a sense of the continuity of the extraordinary narrative that can be read only combined with the motion of the viewer's body in space. We think it was the correct decision.

I hope this clarifies our thinking, but most importantly, that you'll have a chance to go and see the completed installation in person.

My reaction to Tschumi's thoughtful explanation is this: To the extent that the current real-and-fake installation does succeed in giving the viewer a satisfying "sense of continuity," it fails in its attempt to underscore the imperative that all the authentic marbles be reunited. The Greeks are, in a sense, subverting their own argument. It's also worth noting that Tschumi himself previously advocated the idea of veiling the replica marbles behind a scrim, the installation strategy that I also favored.

That said, I'm violating my own rule of not reviewing something that I haven't set eyes on. I've seen the authentic marbles in both London and Athens, and I've seen the new Parthenon gallery in Athens (a year ago, before the marbles were installed), but I haven't seen the New Acropolis Museum since it opened this month.

Maybe one day. In the meantime, here's an article from today's Wall Street Journal by Athens-based Christine Pirovolakis, who DID recently visit the newly opened museum.

Okay, I'll start you off with with one name:

Everett Fahy, chairman of the department of European paintings, 22 years of service

CultureGrrl has just obtained the complete list of the 96 Metropolitan Museum staffers who accepted the museum's recession-driven offer of voluntary retirement. (It's not 95, as reported in the Met's press release of June 22.)

My list comes from an unimpeachable source---the museum's own Met Matters (above), its biweekly newsletter for its staff (not released to journalists). The Met's press office had declined to give me any of the names of those who would be leaving the building.

In their "Special Message" on the cover of the newsletter, Tom Campbell, the Met's director, and Emily Rafferty, president, invited "all staff to offer more personal good wishes and thanks by joining us at a coffee reception in their honor on Tuesday [tomorrow], June 30, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. in the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing."

Let's end the suspense. Here's a roster of 22 of the more prominent names who joined Fahy on the retiree list (which also includes people in such positions as assistant travel coordinator, housekeeper, senior store sales person and associate accounts receivable coordinator):

Colta Ives, curator, drawings and prints, 43 years
Christine Lilyquist, curator in Egyptology, 38 years
Susan Allen, associate research curator, Egyptian art, 16 years
Kevin Avery, associate curator, American painting and sculpture, 20 years
Lucy Belloli, conservator of paintings, 27 years
Takemitsu Oba, conservator of Asian Art, 31 years
Sondra Castile, conservator of Asian art, 31 years
Richard Stone, senior museum conservator of objects, 34 years
Rudolph Colban, conservator of objects, 40 years
Tina Kane, conservator, The Cloisters, 21 years
Margaret Lawson, associate conservator of paper, 33 years
Barbara Ford, research curator, Asian art, 28 years
Johanna Hecht, associate curator, European sculpture and decorative arts, 39 years
Elizabeth Milleker, associate curator, Greek and Roman art, 24 years
Virginia-Lee Webb, research curator, arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, 34 years
John O'Neill, publisher and editor-in-chief, 30 years
Mahrukh Tarapor, associate director for exhibitions and director for international affairs, director's office, 25 years (continuing through next May as "advisor to the director")
Doralynn Pines, associate director for administration, director's office, 31 years
Jeff Daly, senior design advisor to the director, facilities management, 29 years
Herbert Moskowitz, chief registrar, 38 years
Nick Cameron, vice president for construction, 30 years
Hilde Limondjian, general manager, concerts and lectures, 48 years

And then there's my personal favorite, Hilda Rodriguez, senior production coordinator in the communications office, who for 17 years was unfailingly friendly and helpful in satisfying all my requests for materials and catalogues (even anticipating what I might want before I had asked).

And finally, adieu to that perennial thorn in the Met's side on cultural property issues, Oscar White Muscarella, senior research fellow, ancient Near East art, 44 years.

What we still don't know, and may never know, is the names of those who got the unsolicited and unwanted pink slips.

Is this what it's felt like to work at the Met recently?

Timothy Rub in the entrance hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Having only this weekend opened its new East Wing designed by Rafael Viñoly, the Cleveland Museum dropped a bombshell in my inbox at 9:25 p.m. today (Sunday):

The Cleveland Museum of Art today announced the decision of its Director and Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Rub, to resign after three years of service to the institution. In September, Rub will take up the position of George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, succeeding the late Anne d'Harnoncourt.

"It has been a great privilege to serve as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as it is rightfully considered one of America's finest museums with a great collection, strong financial resources, a commitment to excellence and loyal support from the community it was founded to serve," said Rub. "With the remarkable transformation of its physical fabric now underway, the museum will, I am sure, continue to prosper in the future."

"I am deeply honored by having been chosen to lead the Philadelphia Museum of Art," said Rub. "This was a very personal decision because I have always felt a deep fondness for Philadelphia and its wonderful museum. It is the place where, as a young adult, I first looked at art in a meaningful way and considered a career in museums. At the same time, the decision was also a very difficult one to make as it means leaving a great museum and a community to which I have become deeply attached."

The news hit the Cleveland Plain Dealer a couple of hours earlier, in a piece by Steven Litt, who reported:

Rub's decision, coming after a productive but relatively short tenure..., caught trustees of the Cleveland museum off guard.

"It was a total surprise," said Alfred Rankin Jr., president of the Cleveland museum's board of trustees. "Surprise is probably an understatement."

Shock may be more like it, although Clevelanders had previously heard their man mentioned as a possible candidate for the Metropolitan Museum's directorship. At that time, I had asked:

Can he really get up and leave Cleveland before its renovated and expanded facility is functional?

I guess the answer is yes: The newly opened space is just the first of three new Viñoly-designed wings in the works.

Rub's announcement comes in the wake of the museum's May 4 announcement of budget cuts that included a "stepped reduction" in the director's salary. Will he now do better than the previously underpaid d'Harnoncourt? No one would say what his salary will be, "citing Rub's request to keep it confidential," according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Peter Dobrin.

Litt noted that "the sudden change adds a jolt of uncertainty" to Cleveland's capital projects:

Work on the Cleveland expansion and renovation will continue until late this year. Trustees will then vote on whether to build the next major phase, including the structures for a new West Wing, a new office area and a vast, skylighted atrium.

Trustees have said they are determined to finish the project by 2013, a slight delay from the original deadline of 2012.

While Cleveland is in shock, Philadelphia is jubilant. Gerry Lenfest, who plans to step down soon as the Philadelphia Museum's board chairman, told Dobrin:

I think he'll hit the ground running with his experience and background, and it's a real coup to get him.

But can they keep him?

This latest instance of museum-hopping gave me traumatic flashbacks to another move of a museum superstar from a community that had just come to know and love him---William Griswold's even speedier departure from Minneapolis to the Morgan. Bill has asserted that the New York post is his dream job and that no other position could ever tempt him. No such assurances have yet been heard from Timothy.

UPDATE: Was this story another NY Times embargo-breaker? The Inquirer's Dobrin, in his ArtsWatch blog, suggests yes. I myself couldn't find the Times story on its website, either on its arts page or on its front page (which posts breaking news). But Dobrin's piece links to Carol Vogel's. Could it be that, called on its jump-the-gun scoop, the Times took it down? (It WAS accessible, however, by searching for Rub's name on the Times' site.)

Last night I picked up the tangible evidence of my Front Page Award for "Best Blog" from the Newswomen's Club of New York.

Here's the award:

Harold Holzer, Metropolitan Museum's senior vice president for external affairs
Photo by Don Pollard

While I give NY State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky high marks for his efforts to craft legislation regulating museum deaccessioning, he loses some points for being more abrasive than diplomatic in his attitude towards museums that are understandably unenthusiastic about being subjected to increased government regulation and reporting requirements.

The museums that would be most significantly affected by the Brodsky Bill are the small minority that were chartered by the State Legislature, rather than the State Board of Regents---those that received their charters before 1890.

Those venerable institutions are not subject to the deaccession regulations promulgated by the Regents. That body just renewed, for a period expiring Sept. 14, its emergency amendment (scroll down to text of "PROPOSED AMENDMENT OF SECTION 3.27"), which lists the allowable reasons for deaccessioning and which bars use of the proceeds for to pay for operating expenses, capital expenses or debt.

New York's National Academy, censured for its secret deaccessions by the Association of Art Museum Directors, is one of the institutions chartered by the legislature and therefore not subject to Regents regulations. Another is the Hispanic Society of America, which strongly objects to the Brodsky bill for (among other things) instigating a jurisdictional "turf war" with the (usually laissez-faire) State Attorney General. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also among the legislatively chartered institutions. The Assemblyman feels that the Met, not happy about increased regulation, has been dismissive of his overtures to resolve any differences.

And Brodsky's steamed:

What we got from the Met and other institutions [including the Hispanic Society] was the back of their hand. Their position, as I understand it, is not an objection to a specific provision of the bill. Their objection is they don't want, in the end, to be accountable....

If the bill doesn't pass, there will be a two-tier system, where the privileged few [the older institutions] escape any public accountability, and everybody else will live under a regulatory system [created by the Board of Regents] which can't be as good as the bill. It's about the notion that collections are held in public trust. At a time when the bean-counters are gaining primacy at many institutions, there have got to be rules that preserve these collections for the public....

In the end, the Met's longstanding hostility to transparency and accountability is what has driven this dispute....When they said they had problems [with the bill], I asked them what they were, because we solved problems for the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Natural History. What it came down to in the end is that they [Met officials] don't want to be publicly accountable to the legislature or the Board of Regents.

One of the things I said to them was, "If you want to have a discussion, let's not wait till the fall; let's have it now. I'll call a meeting for June 5." The Met said, absolutely yes. And then all of a sudden, all of them were busy [as were invited representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum, according to notes the sent to Brodsky]. There clearly was a coordinated attempt to delay.

Here, in full, is a letter sent to Brodsky by the Met's director, Tom Campbell, dated June 3:

Thank you for your letter of June 2 [inviting museum officials to the June 5 meeting---short notice]. We greatly appreciate your interest in important museum issues. As you know, I would welcome the opportunity to further discuss your proposed legislation pertaining to deaccessioning.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my senior advisors on this matter are able to attend the meeting on June 5th. But I have asked Emily Rafferty, president, Harold Holzer, senior vice president for external affairs, Thomas Schuler, chief government affairs officer, and Sharon H. Cott, senior vice president, secretary and general counsel, to work with you on further exploration of this issue and the proposed legislation. Of course, I plan to keep myself closely informed on this matter and its ultimate resolution.

And here's what Holzer told me when I spoke to him on Monday:

We thought that the bill, as we first saw it, had some serious flaws....To tackle one problem, the bill would place the legislatively created, larger institutions of this state under the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents. That is a sea change in the governance of museums. Our position is that this requires very serious discussion.

At the same time, this museum follows the same ethical practices that the Board of Regents asks of the institutions that report to it, and that is AAMD rules on deaccessioning....The Met, Natural History, other big museums are already following best museum practices. There's such a thing as over-legislating and over-regulating.

The bill requires the creation, rather promptly, of a registry of works of art. The Met has two million works of art. In this moment in the economy, we don't have the millions and millions of dollars it would take to do this....To devote staff, limited staff at this point, to transferring from ink on index cards to a computer system is going to take a very long time....

This bill seeks to undo 139 years of reporting as it existed, and of a board running this institution impeccably, under best museum practices. I think it's going to take a serious and long and exhaustive discussion---not to delay the legislation, but to discuss this sea change in governance that is being proposed here.

It's not just the legislatively chartered institutions that have expressed reservations about Brodsky's bill. Here's a letter commenting on the bill by the New York City Bar Association's Committee on Art Law and here's a June 1 letter sent to Brodsky by 13 institutions (including the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney, Guggenheim, Jewish Museum and Studio Museum of Harlem), asking that the bill "be tabled at this time" to allow more time "for further comment and dialogue."

Perhaps the most extensive exchange of letters on this occurred between Brodsky and Richard Armstrong, director of the (Regents-chartered) Guggenheim, who objected to the bill's "legislating the particular criteria a museum must consider in determining whether to deaccession an item in its collection." This, he said, would "stifle academic freedom."

If that's the case, then the deaccession criteria of AAMD must also stifle academic freedom, because the bill's criteria closely track the museum association's professional guidelines. As far as I'm concerned, anything that might discourage Armstrong from selling off some of his museum's celebrated Kandinskys is a good thing. He expressed an interest [via] in culling the museum's 114 works by that artist, in a recent online conversation (at the 39-minute mark) with Max Anderson, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's director.

"The collection needs to be shaped. It's partly misshapen," Armstrong explained to a somewhat startled Anderson, who quickly recovered his poise, perceiving an opportunity for his own institution: "We're very interested in Kandinskys!" he exclaimed.

And I'm very interested that the University of Iowa Museum of Art finally got the initially resistant NY Times to print a needed correction (scroll to bottom) for Robin Pogrebin's Brodsky Bill article.

Albrecht Dürer, "Hare," 1502

This from today's Austrian Times:

Heavy rain also came close to causing a catastrophe at Vienna's Albertina Museum. Water leaking into its storage area threatened serious damage to a number of priceless works by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Michelangelo.

The museum issued a statement saying: "Appropriate measures have been taken to guarantee the security of the works of art. Nothing has happened. A total of 100 works of art have been moved to a secure site."

The Vienna fire department has covered the museum's roof with waterproof material to prevent more leakage.

And this from Reuters:

Vienna's Albertina Museum, home to landmark Impressionist works by Monet and Renoir, will start removing 950,000 artworks from its leaking underground depot following some of Austria's heaviest downpours in 50 years.

The gallery, which remains open, will start moving the works on Thursday, including pieces by Flemish painter Rubens and Italian master Michelangelo.

"There has not been any damage to the works so far," gallery spokeswoman Verena Dahlitz said on Wednesday.

One of the 200-year-old gallery's most important pieces, a delicate watercolour of a hare by Albrecht Dürer from 1502 [above], has already been saved.

View of the Acropolis and Parthenon (top, above the white building), from within the New Acropolis Museum

Michael Kimmelman, in his cautiously worded, evenhanded article in today's NY Times on the the Elgin Marbles controversy (pegged to the opening of the New Acropolis Museum), appears to rue the fact that the British and Greeks can't manage to find a way to put the Parthenon frieze back together again. He gives partisans on both sides their say and allows himself to observe that it's a "pity" that Greece's new culture minister, Antonis Samaras, won't accept a loan that is conditioned on Greece's recognition of British ownership.

For those of us who care more about the art than the politics of this, there's only one way to view this issue: The marbles must be reunited because they constitute a single, consummate sculptural masterpiece that was intended to be seen as a continuous procession. Whether British, Greek or American, art lovers want to see this thing whole, not piecemeal. Anything else is a violation of the art, which should be the first concern of the fractious custodians who care so deeply about these fragmented marbles.

My most detailed analysis of this issue appeared in my 2002 NY Times Op-Ed piece, Reassembling Sundered Antiquities, in which I suggested a solution that was also touched upon by Kimmelman. I then wrote:

Arrangements could...be made to continue long-term displays of the reunited marbles at each venue---the British Museum in London and the new museum in Athens.

More daunting than logistics of shuttling this monumental work back and forth is the issue of trust: The British Museum would need ironclad assurances that once the marbles were in Athens, they would be allowed to leave when the time came for their long-term London sojourn. I keep envisioning Elgin Marble Riots, with distraught Greeks hurling themselves in the path of transport trucks.

Here's one problem that can be more easily remedied: The images provided for the press (username and password required) on the New Acropolis Museum's website ought to include photos of the famous frieze as it has now been installed (with the real marbles chock-a-block with replicas of the British-owned contingent). You already know what I think of this confusing conjoining of the real with the fake: It's not enough to say that the distinction is clear because the white fakes don't look like the yellowed antiquities. The genuine British contingent, kept indoors and inappropriately scrubbed many years ago at the British Museum, also look much whiter than their Athens counterparts.

I never got to see the live feed of the new museum's opening ceremonies (did anyone?), but the museum's website promises that a video of these ceremonies is "coming soon"...hopefully faster than the time it took for them to open the famously delayed museum, which I visited last year, while it was still a work-in-progress.

Maxwell Anderson, director of Indianapolis Museum of Art

"What does the current version of NY State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky's deaccession bill actually SAY?" readers of Robin Pogrebin's embargo-busting article are asking themselves plaintively.

CultureGrrl is here to tell you. First, you should know that it's no longer the same bill that we encountered back in March.

When I recently wrote (in connection with the Orange County Museum disposals) that the Brodsky Bill was a good model for urgently needed state legislation regulating deaccessioning, little did I know that text of the current bill before the NY State Legislature is in some ways stronger and in another, weaker than the original that I had admired.

The most laudable change in new version essentially codifies, for institutions throughout New York, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's prototypical deaccession database, which I previously touted as "the gold standard for deaccession transparency." Brodsky specifically alluded to the Indianapolis model in a June 11 letter in which he explained the changes to potentially affected museums.

Under this new provision, museums and other collecting institutions would be required to publish their own registers of items in their collections, as well as "a register of newly accessioned or deaccessioned items." The accession/deaccession registry would have to be launched immediately. The complete collection register would be required within three years (with possible extensions for "good cause"). Several museums have criticized this requirement as too burdensome and costly. The original bill required each institution to "publish a register of the contents of its collection," but there was no separate registry devoted exclusively to accessions and deaccessions.

What's more, under the revised bill, institutions will be asked to "list an item for actual or potential deaccessioning" on a new, statewide, online registry created by the Board of Regents and publicly accessible.

In response to museums' delayed criticism of the bill, Brodsky has in one way significantly weakened it: Gone is the provision (which I had favored but predicted would prove controversial) requiring museums to "make a good faith effort to sell or transfer such [deaccessioned] item to another museum in New York State. If such sale or transfer cannot be accomplished, a museum must make a good faith effort to sell or transfer such item to another public museum."

Brodsky mentioned to me in an interview yesterday that institutions interested in acquiring works targeted for deaccession by other institutions will be able to get wind of those offerings through the new online registry, and, if desired, try to acquire them. But that's not nearly as protective of the public patrimony as the previous requirement for a proactive "good faith effort" on the part of deaccessioners to seek out institutional acquirers.

I still believe that the public's interest in preserving the public patrimony should outweigh an institution's desire to exploit its collections for maximum financial return. If a work belongs in a museum, it should stay in a museum.

Seeking support for legislation is, if nothing else, an exercise in compromise. But has Brodsky actually succeeded in garnering support from the field?

COMING LATER: Museums push back against the Brodsky Bill.

Earlier today I made nice to NY Times art writer Robin Pogrebin.

That was so seven hours ago.

In a piece now posted on the Times' website, Pogrebin broke a firm embargo established by NY State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, whose recently rewritten bill to regulate deaccessioning is pending in the state legislature.

Brodsky dispatched some 80 pages of his correspondence with museums about his bill to a select group of reporters (including me) who had previously expressed interest. This was accompanied by a strict, clearly enunciated proviso that we were not to publish about this until tomorrow, Tuesday, giving everyone an equal shot at the story. Pogrebin alluded to those documents in her story and also quoted Brodsky's comments. (I spoke to him at length as well, but kept faith with the embargo.)

I alerted Brodsky to this breach tonight, and he assured me that he had not given the Times permission to jump the gun.

I'll post my own report, far more substantive than the Times', in the near future (probably tomorrow, after I lick my wounds). But for now, let's clear up the errors in Rushin' Robin's "scoop":

The legislation was prompted by a number of recent high-profile moves, including the National Academy Museum's sale in December of two Hudson River School paintings.

That sale actually occurred in November, not December. What happened in December is that I broke the story on CultureGrrl of secret sale.

Last year, the University of Iowa Museum of Art considered selling Jackson Pollock's 1943 "Mural" to defray the cost of damage from a flood but decided against it.

The museum did NOT consider selling the Pollock last year. The State Board of Regents briefly did. The museum, with the full support of the university's president, vigorously and successfully opposed the notion of monetizing its masterpiece.

I'm starting to hate embargos. I'm always the one who keeps her word and watches someone else get it fast and get it wrong.

UPDATE: This just in from Maggie Anderson, marketing and media manager for the University of Iowa Museum:

Thanks so much for your correct post [regarding Iowa's Pollock]. When I saw the story [Pogrebin's deaccession piece] online a couple of hours ago, I e-mailed Robin to get her to correct it. She refused.

As previewed by CultureGrrl last week, the Met has now issued its official statement on its recession-driven staff cuts, which have reduced its full- and part-time work force by 14% since Jan. 1.

You can read the Met's statement in full, here.

Voluntary retirements accounted for 95 positions and "the Museum has further reduced its work force by 74 union and non-union employees," according to the announcement. I assume that the latter are involuntary layoffs, but I am still awaiting confirmation (and will update here when I hear). UPDATE: The 74 employees were indeed laid off.

Prior cuts---some 127 positions---came from substantial reductions in retail operations. Some 61 positions were lost "primarily through attrition" (a hiring freeze, in place since Jan. 1).

In all, these actions will pare the Met's full-and part-time work force to about 2,200 in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The job cuts will create savings of "more than $10 million."

Robin Pogrebin, NY Times culture writer

UPDATE: Robin Pogrebin scoops me...by breaking an embargo.

I'll get to the subject of this headline in a moment, but first I wanted to call your attention to the announcement buried at end of my previous post, in which I introduced a new perk for CultureGrrl's Premier Donors. That select group received an advance heads-up about the topic of this post.

A contribution of of $25 or more will get you not only an e-mailed link to posts after they are published, but also (in most, but not all, cases) an early warning system about the topics to be covered in upcoming posts. (You can of course, opt out of these lists if your philanthropy is no-strings-attached.)

All exisiting donors will be automatically bumped up to premier status. New donors of $5-$24 will receive the post-publication e-mail links, but not the advance alerts.

Some posts will not be pre-announced, however, to prevent my being scooped by the likes of Robin Pogrebin. She recently did a terrific job (and I'm NOT kidding) in showing off her knowledge and analytical acumen in this discussion (more like a debate) with the risk-averse David Smith on the subject of President Obama's NEA and NEH appointments. They sparred on John Schaefer's "Soundcheck" program on New York Public Radio.

Robin opined that it would be nice if there were more risk-taking under NEA's new administration and she noted that Rocco Landesman (scroll down), the agency's Obama-nominated director designate, has been known as a "troublemaker" (in a good way). David has been disseminating his wishful-thinking predictions that the new federal heads for arts and humanities won't rock the boat by being excessively cutting-edge in supporting creative artistic efforts and creative thought.

Smith detailed his views in this recent piece in the Wall Street Journal. But didn't he get the memo from Bloomberg's Jeremy Gerard that Rocco is a game-changer, not someone who "ought to elicit a sigh of relief from conservatives," as Smith put it in his WSJ essay? To understand more about Landesman's non-conservative philosophy and lifestyle, you need to read David Owen's 1994 New Yorker profile. Pogrebin's piece on the appointment is here.

Smith seems to see NEA as a big federal civic lesson about the importance and value of the arts. But does the National Science Foundation only hype the civic value of science? No. Its primary function is funding basic research by those who are pushing the frontiers of scientific knowledge and discovery. It supports "'high-risk, high pay-off' ideas, novel collaborations and numerous projects that may seem like science fiction today, but which the public will take for granted tomorrow."

NEA and NEH should do the same for their respective fields. That means, among other things, restoring fellowships for artists---the artworld's equivalent of risk-taking "basic research."

Meanwhile, NEA spokesperson Victoria Hutter informed me that there's no word yet on whether Landesman will subjected to official confirmation hearings: "We don't know when confirmation will take place," Hutter said, "or whether or not there will be a hearing." Dana Gioia, the previous NEA head, assumed his post without a hearing, she noted.

So let's just get on with it! No NEA Four litmus test.

Rendering of Jean Nouvel's design for 53 W. 53rd Street, NYC

Unanimously approved last month's by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission (despite community opposition), Jean Nouvel's design for a soaring glass tower, contiguous with the Museum of Modern Art, hit a snag last week when Manhattan Community Board 5 voted against the project, 30 to 9 (with one abstaining and another "not entitled to vote"). The board's input, forwarded to New York's Department of City Planning, is purely advisory.

The 82-story, mixed-use building would contain nearly 52,000 square feet for another expansion of MoMA, increasing its gallery space by 39 percent. It would be built on land sold by the museum to the developer.

Wait a minute! Did the community board say this building was 82 STORIES? In the original announcement, back in November 2007, it was a mere 75 stories, which seemed monstrous enough for that location.

In its resolution addressed to City Planning chair Amanda Burden, the community board argued that, at 1,250 feet, the proposed tower would be "one of the tallest buildings in the city" and would be "simply too large for its site." The board also took a direct swipe at MoMA, alleging that "it has generally developed very bad relations with its residential neighbors and is not perceived to treat residential concerns seriously."

In any event, it seems doubtful that the developer, Hines, could be in any rush to break ground on the mega-project in this gloomy real estate climate.

I'm not saying that I don't want MoMA to expand any further---just not in this manner. There are many goals yet to be addressed that I had hoped would be fulfilled by the recent Taniguchi-designed mega-expansion, but weren't.

My own guess is that City Planning will insist on some modifications of the project and then approve it.

For the last word (in this post, anyway) on the Nouvel project, let's go to the doyenne of architecture criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable, who writes for the Wall Street Journal. She recently told the NY Times:

I am so weary of these stupid alliances between developers and cultural institutions in which the cultural institution is given a block of space and the developers overbuild the rest and make an enormous profit.

The Museum of Modern Art has become a real estate operation. I admit a certain amount of nostalgia: I remember a street that was once one of the best streets in New York, 53rd Street. Watching it change over the years, I can't help but view their new Nouvel tower as the last destructive nail.

NOTE TO CULTUREGRRL DONORS (and prospective donors): This post marks the inauguration of my Heads-Up Club: I'm giving advance notice to my financial supporters of the topics of upcoming posts. All of my existing donors, regardless of dollar amount, will be automatically bumped up to Premier Donor status and be grandfathered into these alerts. (All donors of $5 and up have already been receiving e-mailed links to my posts at the time of publication. Such links will also be sent to all future donors at that level.)

For future donors, the gift that gets you into my Heads-Up Club (for advance notification of most upcoming posts) is $25 or more. There will inevitably be some posts, however, for which I may give little or no advance notice, so as not to scoop myself or be scooped.

Jack Rasmussen, director, American University Museum

What do I know about visual arts journalism?

Someone thinks I know something, because tomorrow I'll be addressing the American and foreign journalists who were selected to be the inaugural fellows in the NEA International Arts Journalism Institute in Visual Arts, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. State Department. The director of the 17-day program is Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the American University Museum.

I'll be discussing (with the aid of an irreverent PowerPoint photo essay) the joys and pitfalls of being CultureGrrl.

The chief joys are having a ready outlet for a lifetime of knowledge, expertise and strong opinions, and discovering that arts professionals for whom I have great respect actually care about what I have to say.

The pitfalls? Blogger addiction, financial subtraction.

The panel on which I'm participating is titled: "Opportunities for Publication." I hope they also offer one on "Opportunities for Remuneration." If I figure out a viable business model for art blogging between now and tomorrow, I'll gladly let them know.

Speaking of which, many thanks to CultureGrrl Donors 45 and 46, from Arkansas and Massachusetts. I was particularly moved by the fact that one of them is a journalistic colleague whose work I have admired. As I will tell my listeners tomorrow, the irony of my appearing before them as a "mentor" is that any of them with a full-time (or even part-time) job is probably better paid for his or her journalistic endeavors than I am.

Image from the New Acropolis Museum

If, like mine, your invitation to the opening of the New Acropolis Museum tomorrow in Athens somehow got lost in the mail, you can view it live tomorrow, Saturday, on the museum's website, here. In the meantime, here's a view of the installation of the Parthenon marbles.

There's just one problem, though: The museum's website, only partly functional at this writing, does not tell us what time the much awaited opening will take place. So I can't tell you exactly when you should attend online.

If I get more information, I'll update here.

Meanwhile, do pay a visit to my blogging buddy, Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard of A Don's Life, who got an advance look at the museum yesterday.

As for me, I'm flying south instead of east today, to give a talk, rather than to gawk, on Saturday. More on that later.

Metropolitan Museum president Emily Rafferty at Monday's press preview for its "Afghanistan" exhibition

The Guggenheim announced it late yesterday. The Metropolitan Museum will announce it this week: Both museums are significantly reducing their staffs in light of recent financial pressures.

The Guggenheim is cutting 25 positions, across all departments. In response to my queries, the museum's deputy director for external affairs, Eleanor Goldhar, disclosed that only nine people were actually being laid off, none of them from the curatorial staff.

She explained that "some [of those whose positions were eliminated] are being offered jobs for which they are qualified, where a vacancy exists." The Guggenheim is saving $6 million through these staff cuts, but does not intend to cut exhibitions, education or public programs, Goldhar said. She declined to disclose what specific curatorial positions were being eliminated.

As for the Met, a highly placed source there told me yesterday that about 200 staffers had been offered early retirement, and about 100 had accepted, including at least two department heads. A number of the museum's most senior and experienced people were leaving the building, my source said. In addition, he said, other staff members were notified last week that they would be involuntarily terminated. A hiring freeze had previously been instituted.

Harold Holzer, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, would not discuss any numbers when I contacted him yesterday. (He was not my original source, nor was Met president Emily Rafferty, pictured above.) An official announcement would be made this week, Holzer told me. The job reductions, he said, were still "in process. I can't comment until it's all done." He said that early retirement had been offered to employees who were at least 55 years old, with at least 15 years of service.

On Mar. 12 the Met had announced a major cutback in its retail staff and operations, as well as "the additional need to reduce the rest of its full- and part-time work force by approximately 10% in all other areas of its operations, before the beginning of its next fiscal year, July 1."

That time has come.

UPDATE: The official tally of Met job cuts, announced a few days later than expected, is now here.

Granville Redmond, "Silver and Gold," sold in March by the Orange County Museum

Mike Boehm and Christopher Knight of the LA Times own this story, so there's no need for me to rehash all the details of the Orange County Museum's secret sale to an unidentified private collector of 18 of its 20 early 20th century California plein-air paintings for $963,000, which many have said is a bargain price.

What's a bit strange (and unremarked in the Times pieces) is that David Walker, the director of the Nevada Art Museum, where 10 paintings from the sold collection are now on display, told Boehm that the private collector had approached the museum about the show in February. The paintings, according to the Times report, were not sold until late March.

This latest deaccession controversy underscores the lessons that need to be learned from such secret sales (shades of the National Academy). As I have repeatedly argued (most recently, in my deaccession talk at the University of Iowa): If a museum finds that it has no use for museum-quality works in the public domain, it should keep them in the public domain by giving them to another museum that would gladly preserve and display them.

I believe that such works should be transferred, not sold, because they are already part of the public's patrimony and museums shouldn't have to pay to reacquire them for us. But if objects ARE sold, the public must be informed, preferably in advance, using the Indianapolis Museum of Art's online deaccession database as a model of transparency.

In the Orange County case, the museum didn't have to look far to find a willing and eager institutional recipient: As Boehm reports (at the first link, above), the Laguna Art Museum would still dearly love to get its hands on these works, preferably by donation from the new private owner; possibly through purchase.

The secrecy and possible fiduciary lapses related to this disposal are yet another reminder of the urgent need for legislation to regulate deaccessioning. The Brodsky bill, now pending in the New York State Legislature, provides a good (although not perfect) model for how to do it.

Speaking of good role models, many thanks to CultureGrrl Donor 44 from Phoenix!

Tut Staircase at the 2007 showing of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia

Who cares if the Metropolitan Museum turned down on principle the chance to take on Egypt's Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs show?

So what if the Field Museum, citing financial belt-tightening, decided not to take Ethopia's Lucy's Legacy show, which includes the 3.2 million-year-old "Lucy" fossil.

Edutainment entrepreneurs are rushing in with evocative atmospherics and glitzy extravaganzas, where conventional museums fear to tread.

Just when serious, scholarly institutions have been obliged to cut back on big blockbuster loan shows due to the recession, along comes Discovery Times Square Exposition, a 60,000-square-foot space in the former NY Times building, masterminded by two for-profit partners, the Discovery Channel and Running Subway Productions. They will bring Lucy and "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" to their newly renovated digs beginning June 24. They are hoping to bring Tut to New York next year.

What is Running Subway Productions? It's the local New York City promoter of Bodies...the Exhibition, the multi-venue corpse show produced and owned by Premier Exhibitions, Inc. Last year Premier agreed to a settlement with the NY State Attorney General, halting what the AG called the company's "practice of using bodies of undocumented origins....All prior visitors to the New York City Bodies exhibit are eligible for a refund of the price of their ticket....The grim reality is that Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China."

Here's how Running Subway Productions describes its "philosophy":

Running Subway re-imagines iconic entertainment properties with universal appeal, thus capitalizing on strong brand equity and built-in PR value.

I've written critically about previous incarnations of the misbegotten blockbuster-mill concept that refuses to die---briefly for Slate and at length for Art in America magazine.

When the Metropolitan Museum declined to be a venue for the currently circulating King Tut show, the museum's then director, Philippe de Montebello, declared:

This is an exhibition being circulated by a group of artifacts arrangers, a commercial for-profit group [Anschutz Entertainment Group]. It is an exhibition that is dominated by lucre and the need to make make colossal sums of money for the...circulators and for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

As a business plan, in terms of what it would have involved for the Metropolitan Museum to do the show, it would have involved making an exception for reasons that we did not think were cogent enough---a rule that we believe is right of not charging for special exhibitions. We also like to have a certain degree of control and curatorial oversight...and, all the way around, decided that this was not the right thing to do.

According the the Discovery Times Square Exposition's press release, the new 60,000-square-foot space in the former NY Times building will present objects "in dramatic immersive environments." Alluring artifacts and scholarship just aren't enough. Bring on the "interactive experience of learning through iconic subjects."

We can only hope that the exhibitions' labels and wall text, if any, make more sense than this statement in the press release by Tom Cosgrove, COO of Discovery Channel:

As the number one non-fiction media across the globe, Discovery Times Square Exposition provides a strong growth opportunity for us to extend our reach to the streets of New York City.

What does it mean, we wonder, to be "the number one non-fiction media across the globe"? I've always preferred to regard museum exhibitions as educational and cultural experiences, not "immersive environments" and corporate "growth opportunities."

I just hope the new venue's "exclusive retail shop" carries those must-have Tut Tissue Boxes!


Speaking of crass commercialism, would someone please click my "Donate" button? CultureGrrl has lately reverted to no-profit status. I may soon resort to creating the CultureGrrl Merchandise Line---the poison pen, the hot seat?

A 2008 mock-up of copies (left) of the Parthenon Marbles in the New Acropolis Museum

It's another skirmish in the Elgin Marble Wars, this coming almost a week before the June 20 opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.

On Wednesday, British Museum spokeswoman Hannah Boulton reiterated on Greek Skai Radio an offer previously made by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor.

Agence France Presse reports

The museum could consider loaning the Marbles to Greece for three months. But Greece would have to recognise the museum's ownership rights to the sculptures, she [Boulton] said.

The Greeks have previously expressed willingness to disregard the question of who owns what, so long as the British dispatched their portion for longterm display. Presumably a three-month loan doesn't qualify. It's also a ridiculously short stint, given the enormous cost and logistical challenges of such a monumental art-transport undertaking.

The new Greek culture minister, Antonis Samaras, appears to be taking a harder line than those who had said that the issue of legal ownership was less important than the marbles' presence in Athens. Samaras issued this statement in response to the latest British offer:

The government, as any other Greek government would have done in its place, is obliged to turn down the offer. This is because accepting it would legalise the snatching of the Marbles and the monument's carving-up 207 years ago.

Hard feelings aside, the British Museum has accepted an invitation to send a representative to the opening of the Bernard Tschumi-designed museum, where the top floor will display the Greek-owned Parthenon Marbles, leaving gaps where the London-based marbles belong in the frieze.

CultureGrrl will not be attending the opening. I did receive a save-the-date but no invitation followed. I posted a photo essay on the then-unfinished museum in March 2008, when I was an invited speaker at an international cultural property conference held there.

Here's what I then wrote about the installation plans for the marbles, which involved installing fake plaster replicas of the missing marbles in sequence with the authentic Athens-owned slabs:

The planners of the New Acropolis Museum had a brilliant idea for display of the Parthenon Marbles [leaving gaps for the missing marbles]. Then they improved upon it [installing replicas of the missing marbles, veiled with scrims]. Now they've ruined it.

I don't know if they've rethought this, nor do I know whether the New Acropolis Museum at last has a director. Last time I asked, less than three months ago, I was told that the news of the director would be published on the museum's website at the time of the appointment. The museum's news page has not, at this writing, been updated since February.

As I recounted in my recent Wall Street Journal article, the construction of the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing was impelled by Millennium Park, the wildly successful art-filled public space situated directly across Monroe Street. That busy thoroughfare also has a second name (for a celebrated Chicago artist), on the particular block were the museum is located:



The spirit and visual impact of the Art Institute's Renzo Piano-designed elite cultural retreat and the the park's populist public space are as different as the architecture of Piano and Frank Gehry, whose curvy band shell of seemingly windswept ribbons of steel is the dominant feature of this Windy City tourist magnet:



When it comes to eye-popping appeal, Gehry's music venue wins by a knockout over Piano's sedate art showcase:



Renzo's clean lines have one clear advantage, though: They lend themselves to replication by young visitors in the new wing's expansive Education Center:



Here's one of this classroom's creations:



The north-facing windows in Piano's galleries frame alluring views of Gehry's band shell:



That boxy little structure you see above in the foreground, almost at curbside, is one of Piano's four modest contributions to Millennium Park---the Exelon Pavilions. [CORRECTION: As the description that I linked to indicates, Piano was architect for only TWO of the four pavilions---the parking garage entrances at the south end of the park.] The one closest to the museum [which IS by Piano] is an entrance to an underground parking garage:



Gehry gets the better of the battle-of-the-bridges, with a wood-floored, silvery-walled, winding, wavy pathway that spans a highway between the east side of his band shell and a trail towards Lake Michigan.



Here's a view of some of its twists and turns:



And here's how you feel while traversing it:



Piano's tube-like bridge, with aluminum floors and ivory painted steel walls, efficiently ascends in a straight line over the park from the west side of Gehry's band shell, depositing pedestrians 620 feet south, on the third floor of the Modern Wing.

Here it is, seen from underneath at the point where it crosses Monroe Street:



Originally, the museum had asked for a much shorter bridge, merely to provide safe passage for pedestrians arriving from Millennium Park. Piano persuaded the museum to build a bridge that reached deep into the park to the Gehry band shell. But many (if not most) pedestrians will want to cross the street at the curb. A traffic light there is greatly desired by the museum (and very urgently needed).

Here's a view of museumgoers traversing Piano's bridge (on the left):



The floor of Gehry's bridge is constructed of foot-friendly wood planks...



Piano's floor is hard metal, with a disconcerting waviness over its surface:



As you approach the museum, Piano's bridge has a pronounced bounce. This oscillation caused Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, consternation, as well as traumatic flashbacks to the more pronounced swaying of Norman Foster's Millennium Bridge over the Thames to Tate Modern in London, which had to be remedied before the public was allowed back on.

As it happened, I encountered Piano himself, just as I stepped off the bridge at the museum's third-floor sculpture garden. So I queried him about the bounce. He assured me that he was aware of it and that it was not a problem.

We can only hope.

I don't tweet (though some say I should). But I do twit.

As promised, here's the illustrated, cheeky version of my serious Wall Street Journal article appraising (but not always praising) the new Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano for the Art Institute of Chicago.

I was tempted to write (as Time magazine's Richard Lacayo, in fact, did) that this is one of Piano's "strongest American projects ever, his best since the superb little Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas." I've seen all of Piano's American museum projects, except for his much praised Academy of Sciences facility in San Francisco, and this is the one that I admire most since the Nasher---for the beauty of the building-as-object, both inside and out.

But wait a minute! This was supposed to be an irreverent photo essay.

Form is one thing; function, another.

When empty, the delicate, suspended staircase in the entry court is stunning to behold:


The museum's capital campaign encompassed not only the new wing but also the other renovations and reinstallations in the old building, including vibrant, Piano-designed galleries for Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan and Islamic works, located in a passageway bridging commuter railroad tracks, where arms and armor were formerly installed:



As of the May 16 opening day, the Art Institute had succeeded in raising $410 million for its capital campaign, with $15 million still to go. The fortunately timed fundraising was largely accomplished before mega-donors like Griffin were buffeted by the current economic downturn. Ken also contributed major art loans---his Jasper Johns, "False Start" (famously purchased in 2006 for $80 million) and his Giacometti "Large Head of Diego," both now on view in the wing's inaugural installation.

Here's Griffin (on left) at the dedication ceremony with trustee John Nichols, for whom Piano's bridge (from Millennium Park to the third floor of the Modern Wing) was named:



As he and I walked with him through his eponymous entrance court after the ceremony, Griffin indicated that he might eventually give the museum more than mere money. "One day, our art collection will be in a museum. I'd like to think it will end up here," he told me.

One of the benefits of an attractive new art showcase is its pull on uncommitted collections.

David A. Smith

David Smith, author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy, responds to Required Reading: Jerome Weeks Responds to David Smith's Book on Federal Arts Support:

I appreciate you describing me as "cautious and ambivalent," which I am. I do tend to worry about the effects that controversy has on the Arts Endowment in the eyes of the public, for I believe that troubles of the sort that the agency ran into in the early 1990s serve to make people question the suitability of the government supporting the arts, and, worse, make them question, even doubt, the important role that art plays in civic life.

My ambivalence I think comes from my belief that publicly-funded art serves a different purpose than privately-funded art, and that the best role of the NEA is to make more people appreciate art, allowing them (I hope) to make it a bigger part of their lives. Finally, I come down on the side of the original designers of the NEA who believed that its beneficiary ought to be the public at large, rather than individual artists.

Sometimes I think I must be the only person around who doesn't have a problem with the NEA not giving individual grants but who also wants the Endowment's budget to be much larger.

Jerome Weeks, ArtsJournal's "Book Daddy"

This is too good (and too long) to be a mere blog post.

Inspired by David Smith's recent book, Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy, ArtsJournal blogger Jerome Weeks and has posted a detailed, two-part meditation on the past and future of federal arts support that should be required reading for Rocco Landesman (scroll down) and anyone else concerned about the future of federal support for the arts.

While crediting the importance of Smith's illuminating account of the successes, failures and controversies involving the National Endowment for the Arts, Weeks (a veteran book critic and the arts producer/reporter for KERA, Dallas-Fort Worth's public radio and television outlet) comes out more squarely on the side of the cutting edge in the debate over whether public funds should go towards work that is popularly pleasing and accessible or that which is challenging and experimental. CultureGrrl agrees with Weeks (scroll down). Smith, a senior lecturer in history at Baylor University, seems more cautious and ambivalent, as demonstrated by his recent Op-Ed piece for the Dallas Morning News.

Weeks has made the case for a reenergized NEA more eloquently and thoughtfully than any commentators I've recently read on the subject. To read his posts, go here and here (and then go here). This essay needs to be picked up by a large-circulation, mainstream media publication. It's essential that Weeks' views be widely heard and heeded.

From all accounts (including his own), Landesman, President Obama's nominee for NEA's chairmanship, seems to be in the camp of those who don't believe that nonprofit arts groups should play it safe. The big unanswered question is whether he has the diplomatic skills to navigate the political shoals that led to the the destructive Culture Wars of the 1990s.

The University of Iowa has just put my Apr. 15 lecture about desperation deaccessions  online. If you've got an hour or so to spare, you can click the arrow at the bottom of this post to hear and see my pointed commentary on past and recent perpetrators, from Hoving to Branagan, with an emphasis on college and university museums (Fisk University, Randolph College, Brandeis University).

With the strong support of its president, Sally Mason, the University of Iowa's dislocated museum has thus far managed to hang onto its valuable Pollock "Mural," despite major financial pressures caused by widespread damage from last June's Iowa River flood, and also despite a full-court press by officials from Sotheby's. The auction house had previously appraised the university's collection, at the museum's request. And a prior director of the museum, pre-flood, had sought a proposal from Sotheby's regarding possible sale of two star works, the Pollock and its Max Beckmann 1943 triptych, "Carneval."

I was told by a University of Iowa official, who was present at the meeting, that Sotheby's executives arrived on the scene soon after the disaster, offering various forms of help and specifically mentioning the services they had performed for Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery. My several requests for comment from Sotheby's on that meeting (including one live and in person to William Ruprecht, the auction house's president and CEO) were not answered. Ruprecht said that the details I had mentioned to him did not jibe with his recollection, but he referred me to his public relations department, which did not answer the questions I put to it both before and after my chat with Ruprecht. In response to my initial request, Diana Phillips, Sotheby's director of press and corporate affairs, had replied: "We won't be commenting but appreciate being asked."

But back to my Iowa lecture, which occurred in the city where President Obama's just announced nominee to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, former Republican Congressman Jim Leach, still maintains a home. Iowa City attorney David Bright, whom you see below, spoke directly after me, adding astute legal commentary. Pamela White, the museum's interim director, introduced us:

Tom Campbell's PowerPoint slide of a putative Michelangelo, "Young Archer," coming to the Met on 10-year loan

During the reception before the Metropolitan Museum's press lunch on Monday, I chatted with James Draper, the museum's curator of European sculpture and decorative arts (whose French bronze show I had recently admired). I asked him about his controversial 1996 endorsement of scholar Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt's attribution to Michelangelo of a marble statue of a youth that had long graced the rotunda of the French Cultural Services townhouse, located just a stone's throw from the Met on Fifth Avenue.

He informed me that there's been a growing consensus of support among Michelangelo experts, including Cambridge Professor Paul Joannides, for attributing the statue to the master. Joannides confirmed to me by e-mail today that he has long supported the attribution and "came across further evidence" for it, which he published in the August 2003 issue of Burlington Magazine ("Michelangelo's Manhattan Cupid: a correction," pp. 579-580).

What Draper didn't tell me was that Tom Campbell, the Met's director, was going to announce to the assembled journalists, as soon as we finished our coffee and cookies, that the museum would be displaying the lad beginning Nov. 3 on the first-floor Vélez Blanco Patio. He will remain there for 10 years, on loan from the French State.

The controversy over the sculpture began when then NY Times art critic John Russell gave Brandt's attribution a front-page endorsement on Jan. 23, 1996. She had hypothesized that this was a work by the teenaged Michelangelo (the same murky period to which the Kimbell's new acquisition, a painting of "The Torment of St. Anthony," is ascribed). Brandt suggested that the French-owned sculpture could be a "Cupid" fleetingly mentioned by Condivi and Vasari, Michelangelo's 16th-century biographers. The Met's press release calls him: "'Young Archer,' attributed to Michelangelo."

The gawky, fragmentary, water-damaged, 3-foot-high nude youth, with a vacuous expression and lacking the well-defined musculature characteristic of Michelangelo's later work, was originally to have been exhibited at the Met soon after it was attributed to Michelangelo by Brandt, Draper and several other scholars. But the exhibition of the French-owned work was to have been co-organized by the Louvre, whose then sculpture curator, Jean-René Gaborit, didn't support the Michelangelo attribution, as I reported (scroll down) for Artnet in March 1996. Gaborit was the "dissenting curator" of the Met's press release.

Other major scholars---most notably Leo Steinberg, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania; the late James Beck, then professor at Columbia University, and Creighton Gilbert, professor emeritus at Yale University---were likewise unconvinced.
The Met intends to exhibit the sculpture along with "illustrated text panels outlining the "Young Archer's" history and indicating various scholarly schools of thought so that viewers can make up their minds accordingly." Campbell told us the the Met will also host a scholarly symposium "to contribute to the debate."

I wrote extensively about this controversy, with detailed quotes from the experts, for the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 29, 1996 and for Art in America (Michelangelo/not Michelangelo) in April 1996.

I can't give you a free link to the WSJ article, but I am able to publish my text in full, at the link below:

Architect Renzo Piano (waving) beside Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, after the dedication ceremony for Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing (Piano's wife, Milly, faces the camera.)

Because I'm barred from blogging about a subject for which I have a pending assignment from the Wall Street Journal, I've been unable until now to comment on what has, unfortunately for the Art Institute of Chicago, become a recurrent theme in media coverage of the opening of its new Modern Wing---the museum's hefty 50 percent admissions fee increase, from $12 to $18 for adult non-Chicagoans.

Now that my piece appraising the new wing has been published, it's gloves-off time.

The fee increase undermines the celebratory, public-spirit of the opening by alienating recession-hit culture lovers who need the aesthetic and spiritual sustenance that art museums can provide, but who also find that they must cut back on discretionary spending.

What's more, it is contrary to the previously published views of the museum's own director, James Cuno, who now argues that the big fee hike is defraying the cost of increasing the hours when admission is free.

In the museum's Admission Fee FAQs on its website, it gives a different reason for the increase:

The increase in the fee reflects the overall rise in operating costs for the museum. The increase is essential, if the Art Institute is to continue to uphold its mission and serve its community.

Cuno indicated to me during a phone interview after my Chicago sojourn that the increased cost of operating the new wing did not prompt the fee increase: Some $85 million from the capital campaign was used to beef up the endowment, making the expansion "cost-neutral," he stated. The design and construction costs for the expansion totaled $294 million. The capital campaign, which has thus far raised $410 million, is also funding the major reinstallations and renovations throughout the museum, for which some $15 million remains to be raised.

Ironically, before he arrived at the Art Institute (and at a time when the museum's then $10 entry fee was merely "recommended," not compulsory), Cuno himself had urged Chicago's then director, James Wood (now president of the J. Paul Getty Trust), to consider free admission, because fees "discourage short visits and long looking." In comments made in 2002 and subsequently published in the Cuno-edited book, Whose Muse?, he directly challenged his predecessor:

Why don't you make admission free for local residents?

Locals were granted a $2 admissions break (to $16) on the upped admission fee, but only after a Chicago alderman insisted that the museum do a better job of living up to its billing as "the nation's greatest civic museum," as Cuno calls it. Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, told me after the dedication ceremony for the Modern Wing that he was untroubled by the new pricing: "This museum has always given access to people, over many years, in our public schools system---many thousands of children and families," he said, before his public relations person shielded him from further queries.

Fending off criticism, Cuno has taken to suggesting that his museum might be able to offer free admission if it could raise another $250 million in endowment funds. "If there's a goal to do that, you can rally people to it," he told Time magazine's art critic, Richard Lacayo, who quoted Cuno in his Looking Around blog.

I'm guessing that after a $410 million capital campaign, the $250 million free-admission campaign will not be launched any time soon.

In the above-linked Admission Fee FAQs, the museum is at pains to call attention to the areas of its facility that ARE free to the public:

• The North and South gardens (accessible from Michigan Avenue)
• The [Renzo Piano-designed] Nichols Bridgeway from Millennium Park
• The new sculpture terrace on the third floor of the Modern Wing
• The new Ryan Education Center in the Modern Wing and all programs for families and children within the Center

There's just one problem: With the exception of the sculpture terrace, now home to Scott Burton's granite and limestone chairs, there's no art there. Here's the view from the terrace:


Two children, not wanting to sit, have found a better use for Burton's uncomfortable but ingenious chairs. To the right, through the windows, you can glimpse Piano's pedestrian walkway, leading to the terrace from the Frank Gehry bandshell, across Millennium Park from the Modern Wing.

Here's my piece---A Modern Wing Takes Flight---to be published on tomorrow's "Leisure & Arts" page of the Wall Street Journal,

It gives you some sense of the challenging visiting conditions on May 16, the extremely overcrowded public opening, which was the first of seven consecutive free-admission days before the 50% fee hike for non-Chicagoan adults kicked in.

Even the museum's director, James Cuno, conceded to me in an interview after my visit that "the free week's purpose was to allow our visitors to claim the building for themselves. It wasn't a weekend to look at art particularly."

Here are the hoards descending one of two successive escalators to the first-floor entry court from Renzo Piano's third-floor bridge :



And here they are again, after they've gotten down to the lobby (where visitors must now come up with the admission). Now those on the right are attempting to go back up the other side of the building, via the attractively delicate but too-narrow stairway leading to the galleries on the second and third floors:



Those stairs are the main circulation pathway. There's also an elevator, but it's hidden behind a wall, making it easy to miss as you enter:



The elevator is on the left, above. But what you're most likely to see as you walk in is this:



Two works got damaged (later successfully restored) in the opening-day scrum---one of Robert Ryman's white paintings, jostled when a visitor tripped, and a gigantic Robert Gober tissue box, from which someone actually tried to extract a tissue. (Apparently, this has happened before.)



Accustomed to touching art in Millennium Park across the street, visitors were also inadmissibly hands-on with Charles Ray's "Hinoki," a 38-foot-long wood reconstruction of a fallen oak tree.

COMING TOMORROW: I'll finally have my say on the concurrent deterrent that marred the Modern Wing's reception---the museum's controversial 50% admission fee hike. Another irreverent photo essay is also coming in the days ahead.

Opening Day at the Chicago Art Institute's Modern Wing: Ground floor lobby; second floor café

My review of the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago will be published on the "Leisure & Arts" page of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal. I'll post the link here on CultureGrrl when it's up, probably late tonight.

I had a somewhat different perspective from those journalists who attended only the rainy-day press preview: I stuck around for the brilliantly sunny (and very crowded) opening day, which gave me a more complete sense of how Renzo Piano's light sensors and his elaborate rooftop contraption for capturing, filtering and transmitting natural light work under different conditions.

Of course, there's lot more I wanted to say than I could possibly squeeze into my allotted 1,250 words. That's what blogs are for.

Do I sense an irreverent photo essay coming on?

It took a while, but the May 2009 issue of UNESCO's Museum International, containing proceedings from last year's Athens International Conference on Return of Cultural Objects, is now online. Individual articles, including mine, may be accessed by non-subscribers for a fee.

Here's the free abstract describing my contribution: Art History Meets Archaeology: Considering Cultural Context in American Museums. The piece discusses some of the best and worst practices of American museums in their public displays of "orphaned objects"---the many works in their antiquities collections for which the original archaeological context is unknown. And here's more information about the contents of the May issue.

Due to space restrictions, my published comments are considerably shorter than my Athens speech on this topic, which was (in the great tradition of CultureGrrl irreverent photo essays) amply illustrated with PowerPoint images. The editing has sacrificed some of the logic and flow of the full version.

Instead of paying a fee to access the truncated article online, why not just access me (also for a fee) to provide the full, illustrated (and updated) lecture in person? You can initiate this process by clicking the "Contact Me" link in CultureGrrl's middle column.

Speaking of fees, many (belated) thanks to CultureGrrl Donors 42 (my second REPEAT benefactor) from Louisiana and 43 from Illinois.