July 2009 Archives

Send a micro-donation of $1.50 my way today (via my "Donate" button, in middle column), and I'll shoot you these links:

De Montebello's talk in Maine
Contrarian Melikian says art market is booming
Flaw in the Rose overseers' case
Art Capital Group Inc. v. [Annie] Leibovitz
Art and Science of Getty's Conservators
Criticizing the British National Portrait Gallery's copyright stance

Many thanks to CultureGrrl Macro-Donors 54 and 55, from Atlanta, GA, and Valatie, NY.

Joseph Medicine Crow

President Obama has just send a tellingly symbolic message about the difference in priorities [please see UPDATE, below] of his administration from those of the Bush Administration---his just-announced list of 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

On Jan. 13, in the waning days of his administration, President Bush bestowed the medal upon three past or present heads of state: Tony Blair, Great Britain; John Howard, Australia; Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Colombia.

You have only to read Obama's roster of demographically diverse leaders from an eclectic assortment of fields to get a sense of the new President's inclusive sensibility. The honorees, who will receive their medals on Aug. 12, include one cultural leader---Joseph Medicine Crow, the 95-year-old former war chief of the Crow tribe.

According to the citation:

Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief, is the author of seminal works in Native American history and culture....His contributions to the preservation of the culture and history of the First Americans are matched only by his importance as a role model to young Native Americans across the country.

Other medalists range from pioneering San Francisco gay rights activist Harvey Milk (posthumously honored) to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid activist.

Here's the common denominator, as described by the President:

These outstanding men and women represent an incredible diversity of backgrounds....They share one overarching trait: Each has been an agent of change. Each saw an imperfect world and set about improving it, often overcoming great obstacles along the way. "Their relentless devotion to breaking down barriers and lifting up their fellow citizens sets a standard to which we all should strive.

Community organizers, on a grand scale.

UPDATE: In preparing this post, I looked only at President Bush's last round of medalists. Having now examined prior years, I must acknowledge that he did reach out to diverse worthies. Here's a NY Times report on Bush's 2006 honorees.

"These are great. Thanks!" wrote one of those who yesterday took me up on my offer to send readers links to the material that I don't have time (at least not right away) to blog about.

Send $1.50 my way today, via my "Donate" button (in middle column), and see what Jonathan of White Plains, NY, was so enthusiastic about. I'll give you my tips for your tips.

Today, I'll shoot you these links: Making Money in the Art Market; Wildenstein Donates Paintings; Vacationers Flock to Artists' Sites; Journalists Still Matter (online); arts benefactor Peggy Cooper Cafritz's Washington home (and collection) burns down; CAA vs. censorship.

Abram Sachar, founding president, Brandeis University, who agreed to the Roses' stipulations regarding art-sale proceeds

Buried in the 142 pages of exhibits appended to the complaint just filed by three overseers of Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum is a one-page letter from 1968 that could prove just as crucial to this court case as a 1949 letter from artist Georgia O'Keeffe proved in the ongoing Fisk University court battle over the fate of the Stieglitz Collection.

In her June 8, 1949 letter to Fisk, O'Keeffe, donor of the Stieglitz Collection, said it was her understanding that Fisk "will not at any time sell or exchange any of the objects" in the collection. The university's then president pledged to honor that understanding.

A similarly pivotal document in the Brandeis case could be the Aug. 13, 1968 letter to university (second document in Exhibit B of the plaintiffs' brief), by Edward Rose, the eponymous museum's founder and lead donor. In that signed missive, he set forth his stipulations regarding the use of his acquisitions endowment for the museum. He directed that income from the endowment "only...be used to acquire additions to the collection for the Bertha C. and Edward Rose Museum."

Then comes the kicker:

Net proceeds of sale of items from the Museum collection shall be treated in the same way [used only for acquisitions] as income from said Endowment [the acquisitions endowment Rose established].

Finally, the clincher:

The foregoing is agreed to:
Brandeis University
By [signed] Abram L. Sachar
President

A key contention of the three Rose Museum overseers who brought suit against Brandeis is that any art sale proceeds must be use to replenish the museum's collection, not to address the university's general financial needs. The plaintiffs' chief objective is to keep the Rose's facility fully functioning as a museum.

The university's lawyers may well try to argue that this signed contract only governs sales of art acquired from the relatively meager acquisition funds donated by the founders. But the language of the mutually accepted letter appears to restrict sales from the museum's entire collection. The litigants will need to thrash that out.

For now, Brandeis has declined to comment on the lawsuit, beyond a prepared statement issued by former the Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, Brandeis' outside counsel. His harsh response rode roughshod not only over the Rose Museum but also over the sensibilities of any Brandeis donor who might have assumed he could designate money for specific purposes, rather than for the general benefit of the university.

Reilly declared:

We believe that this lawsuit is frivolous and without merit. Like every other major University in the country, Brandeis has taken aggressive steps to protect its core educational mission, which means providing its students with a first class education and ensuring that Brandeis continues to provide financial assistance to needy students.

The debate here does highlight a difference between Brandeis and these three Rose overseers. That is, that the University has a responsibility to provide the very best education and faculty to fulfill its higher educational agenda. Apparently, these three overseers are oblivious to the Brandeis mission.

The Rose Art Museum is a part of Brandeis University and represents four tenths of one percent of the University budget. Their endowment is part of the Brandeis endowment, its presence is on the Brandeis campus, and its major fundraising over the past dozen years has been done by the Brandeis President. We look forward to aggressively defending our position in court.

But as indicated by this statement [via], recently issued by seven leading organizations concerned with art museums (including AAMD, AAMC, AAM, ACUMG, CAA), museums are (or should be) regarded as integral parts of universities' missions, fully consistent with the goal of providing what Brandeis calls "the very best education" and fulfillling a "higher educational agenda." It appears that Reilly, not the Rose overseers, is "oblivious to the Brandeis mission."

Meanwhile, over at the deaccession-friendly Art Law Blog, Donn Zaretsky questions whether the overseers have legal standing to bring this case to court.

This is an experiment in micro-donations.

Every day, I come across several articles, books and other reading material from a wide variety of sources that interest me and that I think would interest you. But I don't have the time or the strong desire to comment about them on CultureGrrl. I want this blog to be primarily about those things on which I have a special perspective, or about new developments that have not yet been widely reported elsewhere.

If you're a regular CultureGrrl reader, you share my interests. So the links that engage me would probably also engage you.

Here's the deal: I'm going to do a trial run of a semi-regular feature, Today's Reading List, consisting of my selected links. I'll send the day's list to you by e-mail for $1.50 (from which PayPal gets a cut), via my "Donate" button in the middle column. If you have a PayPal account, the process is streamlined; if not, you can pay online by credit card, again through PayPal.

I'll let you know on the blog whenever a new batch of links is available.

I've got the first group ready to send you right now: National Archives, LA MOCA, Lehman Brothers, Louvre, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Go ahead: Click my "Donate" button and give it a spin! And, of course, macro-donations to support the continuation of CutureGrrl are always greatly appreciated. Donors of $50 or more receive advance notice of many upcoming posts. Donors of $5 or more get an e-mailed link to new posts as soon as they're on the blog.

Any and all amounts receive my warmest thanks!

Esther Grether, mega-collector

It's a lot more select than the ARTnews 200.

Forbes Magazine has come up with a story and slide show devoted to the world's Top Billionaire Art Collectors. It's mostly the usual cast of characters, with one surprising wild card.

Keren Blankfeld, Cristina von Zeppelin and Susan Adams report:

During our quest to pin down these extraordinary collections, we discovered a new fortune belonging to Esther Grether, a little-known Swiss cosmetics heiress whose 7.5% stake in Swatch and art collection of more than 600 pieces, including ones by Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí and Francis Bacon, make her not only a billionaire but also the only woman in our list of top art collectors.

Actually, there would be more women if Forbes did what ARTnews does in its 200-collector list (which includes Grether)---list wives who are partners with their husbands in forming the family collection. ARTnews publishes a Top Ten drawn from its 200, but those, according to Milton Esterow, the magazine's editor and publisher, are the year's "most active" collectors, not necessarily the ones with the highest-valued collections. Six collectors appear on both lists.

How Forbes managed to pinpoint the values of these large, far-ranging collections in today's careening market is anyone's guess. But for what it's worth (or not), here's the Forbes Fourteen, with the magazine's rough estimate of each collection's worth:

Philip Niarchos, $2 billion
François Pinault, $1.4 billion
Eli Broad, $1 billion
David Geffen, $1 billion
Ronald Lauder, $1 billion
Nasser David Khalili, $900 million
Leonard Lauder, $800 million
Paul Allen, $750 million
Leon Black, $750 million
Steven Cohen, $750 million
Henry Kravis, $700 million
S.I. Newhouse Jr., $700 million
Esther Grether, $700 million
Leslie Wexner, $700 million

All of them get close-ups in the slide show, which includes photos of the collectors and more details on their backgrounds and holdings. But the press-friendly Eli Broad has pride of place: He also gets to star in his own video, where he boasts of paying peanuts for works by emerging artists who went on to become today's megabucks art stars.

Alfred Jensen, "Opposites are Complementary: Per I," 1978, as installed in the current show at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum

The threat has now become reality.

Three trustees of the Rose Art Museum---Jonathan Lee, the board's chairman; Meryl Rose of the eponymous Rose family, and Lois Foster, for whom a wing of the museum is named---yesterday filed suit against Brandeis University in Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.

Here's what the plaintiffs want the judge to do:

---Issue a preliminary injunction preventing Brandeis University from closing the Rose, selling any artwork in its possession, or using any of the Rose's endowment funds, without further order of the Court.
---Enter an order declaring that Brandeis may not close the Rose Art Museum.
---Enter an order declaring that Brandeis may not sell any artwork of the Rose Art Museum except...for the purpose of purchasing new artwork.
---Enter an order that the artwork, endowment and other funds donated for use...of the Rose Art Museum...may not be claimed, taken or used by Brandeis for any purpose other than the continued benefit of the Rose Art Museum.
---In the alternative..., order Brandeis to turn over the artwork and endowment funds to the Rose Preservation Fund, Inc. [a nonprofit corporation created by the plaintiffs], or another appropriate organization, in order to further, as nearly as possible, the intent of Edward and Bertha Rose and of those many donors who followed their lead.

Foster also seeks the return of funds with which she endowed the museum's directorship (there no longer is a director), and she wishes to rescind her pledge of $1.8 million that was intended to further endow that position. The plaintiffs say that cash-strapped Brandeis "is seeking to enforce" Foster's pledge.

Also named as a defendant in the suit is Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, "solely in her official capacity....The Attorney General's understanding of the issues and willingness to hear out both sides are greatly appreciated, but efforts to settle the dispute failed."

The plaintiffs contend:

In late June 2009, Brandeis' real plan became obvious, namely, to change the make-up of the overseers [museum's trustees], packing it with new members friendly to Brandeis' administration, to convince those members of the overseers with whom the [university's] president [Jehuda Reinharz] had strong personal relationships to give up their opposition, to threaten to sell off some donors' artwork while protecting the donations of others, and to arm-twist in order to try to remove any oppposition to Brandeis' plan to sell off valuable artwork.

Despite all this turmoil, the museum on Wednesday opened an exhibition devoted to Alfred Jensen and related artists (to Sept. 20), curated by Roy Dawes, director of museum operations. Brandeis eliminated the position of the museum's director, Michael Rush, effective June 30.

You can find the entire brief filed by the plaintiffs (12 pages, plus voluminous exhibits) here.

Maya Ahluwalia, marketing and public relations manager for Gurhan, responds to my criticism (in Golden "Afghanistan" Now at the Met) of the high-priced Gurhan-designed jewelry sold at the Metropolitan Museum's shop in connection with Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul:

I thought that a little background on Gurhan [Orhan], his collaboration with the Met, and the purpose of the collection would help provide a different angle on the topic.

The artifacts in the exhibition, like Gurhan's designs, pull from a wide array of cultural influences. The region that modern Afghanistan currently occupies was originally part of the cultural crossroads known as the Silk Road. The convergence of cultures on the well-known trade route created art and artifacts with a mixture of Greek, Indian, Chinese, Anatolian and Turkish influences, not strictly Afghan.

Gurhan was chosen by the Met specifically for the fact that his major contribution to the world of jewelry has been to reincarnate the techniques of ancient goldsmiths who first worked in pure 24 karat gold. These goldsmiths emanated from all the various cultures that created the museum treasures, not just Turkey or Afghanistan. Their techniques were abandoned for a long period time following the trend to alloy gold with lesser metals such as silver and copper, and indeed, it became commonly regarded as impossible and undesirable to make jewelry using 24 karat gold due to its softness, weight and expense.

Gurhan's pioneering revival of the use of pure gold in modern jewelry challenged these long-held assumptions and it is thanks to him that this metal is now available for today's woman to wear.

I think that it is also worth mentioning that although Gurhan is Turkish by birth, he views himself as a citizen of the world. The exposure to different areas of the world and cultures influence Gurhan's designs, creating a look that is not inherently Turkish, but that has global appeal.

A related BlogBack, from a spokesperson for the company that supplied the less pricey jewelry that was sold at other venues of the "Afghanistan" show, is here.

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, for whom a planned museum in Abu Dhabi is to be named

There's not going to be a British Museum Abu Dhabi, but Neil MacGregor is joining his directorial colleagues from the Louvre and the Guggenheim in contributing his institution's expertise and lending its objects to another new museum in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District.

According to a press release that hit my inbox Saturday morning, the British Museum will serve as a "consulting partner" for the Zayed National Museum, scheduled to open in 2012 or 2013. That 130,000-square-foot facility, to be designed by British architect Norman Foster (who also designed the British Museum's Great Court, completed in 2000), "will recall the life and values of His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004), the late Founder and President of the United Arab Emirates," according to the press release.

That dispatch, issued by Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the developer of Saadiyat Island's Cultural District, reads as an extended paean to the Arab leader, who is extolled for his concerns for environment, heritage, unity, education and humanitarianism---the new museum's five areas of concentration.

The British Museum, according to the announcement, "will advise on a full range of issues, from design, construction and museography to educational and curatorial programming as well as training." But the press release give no clue as to whether the British Museum will loan objects or receive a hefty fee for its services. Nor does it tell us the duration of the agreement.

For that, we must rely on the U.K.'s Sunday Times, where arts editor Richard Brooks reports:

The British Museum has struck a multi-million-pound deal [with TDIC]....As part of a 10-year contract, the British Museum will lend some of its treasures to the venue and help it set up and curate exhibitions....Its undisclosed annual fee could help fund a £135m extension in London as government spending for the arts faces cuts. [Links added.]

Then again, that extension was recently dealt a setback when it was nixed by the Council of the London borough of Camden.

Brooks further reports:

Artifacts may be borrowed from the British Museum's Middle East department, which has the largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the world outside Baghdad, consisting of 130,000 texts and fragments.

Temporary exhibitions, such as last year's British Museum blockbuster on the Roman emperor Hadrian, could also be transferred to Abu Dhabi.

Cuneiform is one of the subjects of the museum's planned "Education" section. Loaned objects will also presumably be part of the "Unity" section of the museum, where "displays will use objects from across the region to explore political and cultural unity from the Sumerians to modern times."

This project is part of MacGregor's strategy of entering into reciprocal relationships with cultural entities in other countries. But it differs in its ambition to help create an entirely new foreign museum. It also likely differs in its the amount of remuneration accruing to the British Museum from the relationship.

[Speaking of munificent remuneration, many warm thanks go to recent CultureGrrl Donors 51, 52 and 53, from Middleburg, VA; Long Island City, NY; Brooklyn, NY.]

At this writing, as far as I can see, the press release is not online on the websites of the British Museum, Ruder Finn (the publicity firm that sent the release to me), or TDIC, which issued the announcement.

So I'm providing you the text of the release, at the link below.

Installing Christoph Büchel's "Training Ground for Democracy" at MASS MoCA (before it was dismantled, unfinished)

Just when we thought MASS MoCA had moved on from its Büchel Debacle, we've learned from Martin Bromirski's Anaba blog that artist Christoph Büchel has pursued the appeal of his case against the North Adams, MA, museum to the U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, Boston. According to the website for the court's documents, arguments were heard on June 2. (You can listen to audio from that legal wrangle here, courtesy of Anaba.) No decision has come down yet.

Bromirski has also posted these links: Büchel's brief, MASS MoCA's brief.

The contemporary art museum won the first round in 2007, when Judge Michael Ponsor of U.S. District Court, Springfield, MA, ruled that "an unfinished work [such as Büchel's] didn't qualify for protection under the [Visual Artists Rights Act] law." I previously described the contretemps over Büchel's aborted "Training Ground for Democracy" and explained (in advance of the court ruling) why I didn't think VARA applied, here and here.

Donn Zaretsky, the Art Law blogger, who was one of Büchel's attorneys the first time around, is no longer on the case. While the wheels of justice grind slowly, life goes on at MASS MoCA.

Readers respond to Serota and MacGregor: Why They Don't Want to Direct U.S. Museums.

Alan Wallach, professor of art and art history and of American studies at the College of William and Mary, writes:

England has a social-democratic political culture ("socialist," according to the current U.S. right-wing political lexicon) and the English public takes certain prerogatives as rights (e.g., health care, free access to cultural institutions, an effective and relatively inexpensive national system of public transportation, etc.)---prerogatives that are almost unimaginable in the U.S.

Serota and MacGregor have a point when they talk about the English public's deep involvement in museum culture. In the U.S., the public is more accustomed to a culture of competitive individualism, in which financial might usually makes right. Consequently, public service is often not high on the list of museum board priorities, especially since the press, which could promote the public interest in museums, tends to pay little attention to board decisions save for the choice of a new director or, these days, budget cuts. (Museum scandals in the U.S. typically involve the director, almost never the board.)

Meanwhile, hyper-affluent board members, while paying lip service to the needs of the museum-going public, often concentrate on advancing their own social and collecting interests. John Wilson is right to observe that "there is a powerful board in America, very often fueled by money."

Consequently, the U.S. public has far less influence on programming and museum policy generally than its English counterpart.

Aaron Betsky, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, writes:

Without getting into the theoretical issues about European vs. American museums (having directed both), I would just modestly point out that, in our case at least, all of our exhibitions, now including our special exhibitions, are completely free. This goes beyond what the British [who charge for special exhibitions] have done, and allowed us to show the Israel Museum's collection of surrealist art to our public for free this spring. This fall we will present an amazing collection of Chinese paintings with animal subjects that we are assembling from major art museums around the world. For free.

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum

It was one of those astonishing "did he really say that?" moments.

The speaker was Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, near the end of his riff on why the Elgin Marbles should remain at the British Museum (which he directs). His comments were part of this conversation with Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate. John Wilson was the moderator.

It started out innocently enough:

Wilson: The Greek's argument has been considerably strengthened in the last couple of weeks with the opening of the Acropolis Museum. Do you feel that your case is now fatally weakened?

MacGregor: I don't think the existence ot the new museum changes the basic argument at all, because that's never been what the argument's about. The argument is entirely about the value of having a collection where the world can look at the whole world. I think there's never been a moment when that's been more important than now. It's also about the question of whether you believe in shared human culture---one culture that is everyone's inheritance, or whether you want to define that in particular national terms....Whatever else has happened in the world, we no longer live in a world of simple national identities and that is the key civic question that the whole world has to address.

Wilson: So that's a very elegant way of saying, "They're not going back to Greece."

MacGregor: Yes, if that's how you want to put it. But I want to focus on the fact that this is a totally normal European phenomenon---for one great museum to have great objects from other European countries....All these questions of what should be seen together are solved by loans---short-term loans. We have been disappointed that we have never had that conversation with the Greek government....The trustees [of the British Museum] have made it clear many times that that's a conversation they would like to have.

Wilson: Is there any time when you walk into the Parthenon galleries and have a quiet, niggling feeling that maybe you shouldn't have them?

MacGregor: No. The key question, if you want to take that address, is: Was it proper for them to be removed from the Parthenon and from Athens? Well, there's no question it was legal because you can't move those things without the approval of the power of the day. It was clearly allowed, or it it wouldn't have happened.

Surely someone powerful must have "allowed" it, but it may not have been strictly "legal" if, as some contend, bribery was involved.

But that was nothing compared to what MacGregor said next:

The Greek government has simply continued Elgin's practice [!?!] and removed the rest [of the Parthenon Marbles] now from the building, because you can't see them on the building. When those sculptures came to London, for the first time they were at a height where people could see them and they were in a place where tens, hundreds of thousands of people could see these were great objects. That's part of the purpose of a great museum to enable huge numbers of people to examine closely things that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to examine closely.

By that logic, why not dismantle all the important decorations from major architectural monuments, so we can see them better? The Athens marbles were removed from the Parthenon, long before the new museum opened, because they were being seriously damaged by pollution. To state that the Greeks "simply continued Elgin's practice" is to affront them---an outcome not at all conducive to the amicable conversation about loans that MacGregor says he would like to have.

I'll soon be publishing readers' comments about MacGregor's and Serota's critique of American museums, which was part of the same conversation at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I'm still open to more comments. (Click the "Contact me" link in the middle column.)

Tom Campbell speaking at his first Met press conference last September as director-designate, while his predecessor listens

Rebecca Mead's July 27 New Yorker profile of the Metropolitan Museum's new director, Tom Campbell, is now online. While I learned more about his impressive expertise regarding tapestries, his personal qualities, not to mention his aspirations, vision and plans for the institution he has now directed for nearly seven months, are still very much a mystery. The piece tells us little about specific recent developments at the Met, let alone Campbell's role in influencing them.

But you be the judge. Here's the piece: Renaissance Man.

The full-page photo of our hero is not to his advantage: There he stands, stiff and grimly expressionless, dwarfed by enormous racks of mostly empty picture frames, wearing a poorly knotted, ridiculously shiny purple tie.

Let's bring back the familiar "red or yellow corduroy trousers" and open collar! It's time to loosen up, if not sartorially, at least directorially.

Don't just dispose of museum objects. Repurpose them!

That's the mischievously subversive concept behind Recycle LACMA, the parodic blog of Los Angeles-based artist Robert Fontenot. Here's the blog's description of his project:

On Jan. 14th, 2009 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced [link added] that it was deaccessioning more than 100 items from its costumes and textiles collection. Once carefully collected, catalogued, and cared for, these items have now been cast back out in to the world. What will happen to them? Like any other useless item, they will need to be recycled or disposed of.

At three separate auctions [Fontenot] purchased over 50 items deaccessioned by LACMA and is now trying to find new uses for these otherwise unwanted items.

The recycler proceeded to post images and descriptions of 16 LACMA cast-offs that he's taken apart ("the deconstruction process"), sliced, diced and stitched into more "useful" items. Each of his creations is embroidered with the accession number of the museum objects from which they were derived.

Here's one of my favorites---a paisley skirt...



...transformed into a playfully ironic LACMA banner with the title of the museum's current show of contemporary Korean art (letters cut from the skirt's pink tulle):



Bloggin' Robert also includes commentary about deaccessioning practices, careening from the serious to the tongue-in-cheek, in posts titled Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Here's my favorite Fontenot footnote:

It is important to mention that even those museums that do not deaccession, such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, can expect to lose a certain percentage of their collection to shrinkage. ["Shrinkage" link added.]

Please don't let my excerpts prevent you from savoring the whole thing. Gee, I wonder what he could have done with the Celia Cruz-owned window treatments that I deaccessioned when I moved into the Queen of Salsa's former apartment! I recycled them by giving them to a starstruck Cuban curtain hanger who arrived to install my own less elaborate decorating choices.

I only hope the celebrity drapes didn't get re-recycled on eBay!

Museum wonks (that's all of you, right?) will need to see this video [via], of a recent conversation at the London School of Economics and Political Science between Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, who mutually pondered, in wry and witty fashion, "The Museum of the 21st Century."

One of the many compatibilities of these sophisticated cosmopolitans involved a somewhat xenophobic lack of interest in leaving their high-powered jobs in Great Britain for comparable posts in the U.S.

Here's why (about 12 minutes into the video):

John Wilson (the moderator) to MacGregor: I wonder why you didn't take the job that you were reported to have been offered at the Met.

MacGregor: I don't think there's anywhere at the moment in the world where what is possible through public collections is as various and as rich as it is in London. There's an extraordinary opportunity in London, through the collections and through the publics in London, to address issues that I don't think are possible to address in any other city through the collections.

Serota: I think that's true. I also think that the museums sit within society in a very different place than the position they occupy in America. To work here has its challenges, but undoubtedly there are rewards arising from the fact that we work for so many different kinds of people. We're not working merely for the board of trustees. We're working for everyone in this room who owns the collections that we look after, and it's an extraordinary challenge.

Wilson: If you were offered a big job in America (and I'm sure it's probably happened), is one of the problems that you would face is that there is a powerful board in America, very often fueled by money?

Serota: Money is only part of it. They're fueled by a whole range of issues. But I think that the money aspect of it and the trustees are only a small part of the challenge in America. I think the museums are nothing like as connected to their publics as we are and I think that informs the way in which they work in all kinds of ways.

MacGregor: One of the reasons why I think we both still enjoy being where we are is that being a museum director in Britain is unlike any other in the world because it [the museum] is free. You're dealing with a totally different relationship with the public. What that long tradition of real civic ownership has done is transform the relationship between the public and the collections. And there's no other city in Europe or America where that's true. That does make it an infinitely more exciting job here than anywhere else.

My own reaction is to defend the richness of collections and the diversity of audiences in big-city museums in this country as second to none. As for a sense of "civic ownership" of their art institutions---some U.S. communities evince that more than others. Free admission, with the concomitant benefits of "civic ownership," is a lot easier to achieve in a country where museums are granted large government subsidies. Our government-supported Smithsonian institutions are free, as are a number of other museums around the country. Our museums' great diversity of income streams, rather than over-dependence on government handouts, brings not only challenges but also benefits.

I had mentioned in my recent post about Professor de Montebello's Meaning of Museums course that it would be useful for Philippe to compare the European and American models, as well as the northern and southern European models.

Maybe you can do that for me: I'd be interested in receiving (and publishing in CultureGrrl) responses from U.S. museum professionals to the Brits' somewhat dismissive take on our institutions. Click the "Contact Me" link in the middle column to send your comments. (And while you're at it, click my "Donate" button!)

Did MacGregor, in the course of this 80-minute discussion, argue once again for British retention of the Elgin Marbles? Of course he did...but in more provocative, inflammatory terms than I've yet heard from a man known for choosing words carefully. COMING SOON.

Designer labels: Metropolitan Museum ancient Near Eastern art curators Elisabetta Valtz Fino (left) and Joan Aruz

Addressing the press at the Metropolitan Museum, the final U.S. venue for Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul (to Sept. 20), Fredrik Hiebert, curator for the National Geographic Society, the show's co-organizer, caused me to do a double-take when he unequivocally described the Met's staffers as "the best people we have worked with in the museum world."

"Ouch!" groaned professionals at Washington's National Gallery, which co-organized the show with National Geographic. Staffers at the two other U.S. venues---the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, may likewise have been licking their wounds.

When I began to peruse this spaciously installed, brilliantly elucidated "treasures" show, I soon caught on to what had likely impressed Hiebert---the Met's deep expertise, combined with a sure touch in crafting subtly perfect installations to showcase its offerings.

Although this was a packaged traveling show, I found it hard to believe that the pithy, deeply insightful, engagingly informative labels could have come from the mind of National Geographic's itinerant expert, whose description of the objects in his remarks to the press hailed from the "gee whiz" school of art history. While he went on about the "amazing," "iconic" and "great" objects, the Met's scholarly curators, lurking unobtrusively and quietly in our midst, were only fleetingly acknowledged.

As I moved through the show, not just my outer art critic but also my inner literary critic kicked in: I knew that those erudite-yet-accessible labels had "Met authorship" written all over them.

Take the one that describes these boot buckles:


Boot buckles depicting a chariot drawn by dragons
Gold, turquoise, carnelian
Tillya Tepe, Tomb IV, 1st century A.D.

Here's the label, which in four sentences gives you a wealth of insight into cross-cultural, archaeological and functional contexts:

The inlay of teardrop-shaped turquoise stones is typical of the work of local Bactrian goldsmiths, but the motif of chariots drawn by dragons is exotic. The pattern on the side of the chariot suggests a woven material, and the uprights supporting the canopy look like bamboo. Such lightweight, two-wheeled chariots are known from excavations in Mongolia and from Han Chinese burials of the first century B.C., suggesting Eastern origins for these motifs. The buckles show signs of wear and were probably used by the chieftain during his lifetime.

You can double-click the above image to enlarge these exquisite ornaments, which in reality measure only a little more than two inches across. You'll also need to enlarge them at the Met, to fully appreciate the craftsmanship of these and many other miniature masterpieces.

So let me offer you some useful advice that I've not seen in other reviews for this show---a magnifying glass. Don't leave home without one! (If only I hadn't.) The Met ought to make some available to visitors.

I did my due diligence at the press preview to confirm my hunch about authorship: When I asked Kathryn Keane, director of traveling exhibitions development for National Geographic, about the label text, she replied that the curators at the various venues "modified the labels somewhat, depending on the expertise of  the institution."

But the Met's experts didn't merely "modify." They rewrote.

"We did the labels," Joan Aruz, the curator in charge of the Met's department of ancient Near Eastern art, informed me. "We changed the wording to our standards."

High standards indeed---preeminent, in fact, among the world's museums.

But the curator who, by far, deserves most credit for this show is Omara Khan Massoudi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul, who secretly engineered the safekeeping of these objects. From 1988 to 2003, known to very few, they were hidden in safes under the presidential palace, thereby preventing their theft or destruction during his country's prolonged period of violent conflict.


Omara Khan Massoudi, in the film accompanying the "Hidden Treasures" exhibition

Afghanistan remains a strife-torn nation. We can only hope that once these objects return to their homeland, they will be safe and well cared for.

[More CultureGrrl commentary on the Afghanistan show is here and here.]

Philippe de Montebello in the waning days of his reign (last fall at the Metropolitan Museum)

Here it is, studious art-lings---the course description (scroll to P. 6) for the former Metropolitan Museum director's fall foray into academia at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts:

THE MEANING OF MUSEUMS
(Lecture) G43.2035.002
Philippe de Montebello
Tuesday 10:00am-Noon
The lectures survey selected issues in the prehistory of the museum, such as collecting in classical antiquity; the Ottonian Renaissance; church treasuries; the humanist studiolo and princely Kunstkammer; the birth of the "modern" museum in the Enlightenment; and the early history of the major European institutions, which emerged alongside the new scientific disciplines of archaeology and art history. The outstanding concerns of our times---among them patrimony, repatriation, context, interpretation, education and professionalization---are of particular interest, and today's museum serves as a constant against which the multiple agendas of collecting and display in the past can be assessed. As the course examines the museum as a Western European development, issues of special interest include the differences in approach between northern and southern European museums, and the relationship---historical and current---of Western museums to parts of the non-Euro-American world, in their earlier role as source-countries and more recently as players in our new age of globalization.

I thought one of the "outstanding concerns of our times" was finding the resources to do all that. And while comparing "differences in approach between northern and southern European museums," why not also explore the considerable differences between European museums and those right here in the U.S.?

As it happens, two preeminent British museum directors just recently had their say on the American-European dichotomy (not to America's advantage): COMING SOON.

Fisk University's exultant press release, summarizing yesterday's 19-page decision by the Tennessee Court of Appeals that keeps alive the university's hope to monetize its Stieglitz Collection, misleadingly suggests that the proposed collection-sharing arrangement with Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum is nearly a done deal:

Fisk University announced today that the Tennessee Court of Appeals had ruled in its favor and had reversed a decision of the Davidson County Chancery Court, which had prevented the sale of a one-half interest in its famous Stieglitz Art Collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, for $30 million. The Appellate Court found in Fisk's favor on all counts.

Maybe so. But while some obstacles to the deal are now removed (unless the decision is appealed by the O'Keeffe Museum), still unresolved (and being sent back to the lower court) is The Big Question:

Does Fisk have the legal right to sell a half-share in its collection to Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum?

The good news for Fisk is that Appeals Court Judge Frank Clement Jr. (reversing the decision of Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle) has ruled that the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, "lacks standing to participate" in the case and should get out of Fisk's way. That museum, characterizing itself as "successor in interest" to the artist (who had donated the 101-work Stieglitz Collection to Fisk), had argued that if financial circumstances had made it impossible for the university to comply with the conditions of O'Keeffe's donation, the artworks should be handed over to the museum. Georgia O'Keeffe had stipulated that the collection should be displayed intact and that nothing could be sold.

But the judge ruled that O'Keeffe had relinquished any rights to have the collection returned to her when she had donated it, and that any rights that she might have had to the 97 Fisk works from Alfred Stieglitz's bequest (four other works came from O'Keeffe herself) ended at the time of her death. That's because Stieglitz had specified that his property was being bequeathed to her "for the duration of her life" (a "life estate," in legal parlance). Therefore, the supposed "successor in interest," the O'Keeffe Museum, had no interest to defend.

The judge also found that Stieglitz and/or O'Keeffe, in donating the collection, had a "general charitable intent" (to promote the study of art and make the collection available in Nashville and the South), not a "specific intent" limited to the arrangement with Fisk. A finding of general intent is a legal prerequisite for considering whether Fisk may be permitted to deviate from O'Keeffe's no-sale stipulation. For a deviation to be allowed, the lower court, to which the case now returns, must be convinced that strictly complying with O'Keeffe's conditions for her gift has (due to Fisk's serious financial difficulties) become impracticable or impossible.

I have not yet received a response to my question to O'Keeffe Museum about whether it intends to appeal. As for Robert Cooper Jr., Tennessee's Attorney General, he's ready for the next battle. Here's the AG's statement:

The Court of Appeals has ruled that this matter should proceed to a hearing in the trial court absent the participation of the O'Keeffe Museum. We agree with this conclusion. This Office will continue to be vigorously engaged in this litigation to protect the interests of the community in the Stieglitz Collection, which is an invaluable and irreplaceable artistic and historic heritage.

Cooper has previously stated that he regards as "problematic" the university's "aggressive claim seeking permission to sell a half-interest in the collection." In his brief to the Court of Appeals, he had argued:

Even if the court found that...Fisk's financial condition rendered compliance with the gift's restrictions impracticable or impossible, the court would still have great discretion of which conditions should be amended to address such findings. Such relief would not necessarily include, and would likely fall short of [emphasis added], a sale of the Collection....

Cooper had also stated, in a letter to Walton, that he "repeatedly expressed the desire for a proposal to emerge that would allow the Stieglitz Collection to remain in Nashville on a full-time basis."

But wait a minute! Remember Chancellor Lyle's order that the university's Van Vechten Gallery would have to be reopened by last October, removing the Stieglitz Collection from storage and putting it back on display? It was shown, for a while. But here's what I just discovered, on the gallery's webpage:

NOTICE: The Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery is closed for the final stages of previously scheduled renovations and enhancements. The Van Vechten Gallery will reopen August 1, 2009. Thank you for your continued [but discontinuous] patronage.

Picasso, "The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro," 1909, Museum of Modern Art, fractional and promised gift of David Rockefeller
© 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

At last, David Rockefeller's 1909 seminal Cubist Picasso, above, will return to view on Friday at the Museum of Modern Art, after an absence of more than four years. It will be part of the museum's very small, very brief exhibition, Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection, July 17-Aug. 31.

As I mentioned here and here, the presence at MoMA of David's picture was cited as justification for the museum's 2003 disposal of another 1909 Horta Picasso, bequeathed to MoMA in 1979 by David's brother, Nelson:


Picasso, "Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro," 1909, Museum Berggruen, Berlin (formerly bequeathed to MoMA by Nelson Rockefeller)

In my PowerPoint lectures on deaccessioning, I've characterized MoMA's sale of its very early Cubist Picasso (above), purchased by the late dealer/collector Heinz Berggruen, as "the most deplorable of the deaccessions that I have seen." The lame theory behind that disposal was that the museum really didn't need that seminal modern masterpiece because it had David's from the same year.

The problem was, the museum didn't actually own David's picture. He had promised his "Horta" to the museum in 1970 and gave the museum a 10% fractional interest in the painting in 1991. Presumably, it's been gracing the collector's home, rather than the museum's walls, ever since its four-month stint at the inaugural installation of the museum's new Taniguchi-designed facility.

I have e-mailed MoMA, asking whether the "Horta" will return to its owner after it briefly sees the light of day in this summer's nine-work Rockefeller show. (I'll update here, if and when I get MoMA's answer.)

This puzzlingly fleeting "intimate installation," as MoMA calls it, may have less to do with delighting the public than with satisfying the IRS's new fractional-gift requirements for periodic physical possession by the museum.

UPDATE: Kim Mitchell, MoMA's communications director, confirmed that David's "Horta" will leave the building and return to its (fractional) owner after the Aug. 31 close of the show. Where's that Nelson Picasso when they really need it? Oh right...it's here, where it's described as "one of the most significant" works acquired by the Museum Berggruen museum since its 1996 opening in Berlin.

WQXR is the soundtrack of my life.

After 65 years of ownership, the NY Times is ditching New York City's only all-classical music station to save its dying journalistic model---news printed daily on paper. As I said in last night's tweet, I'd rather give up the hardcopy newspaper (and read the Times online) than lose the station.

WQXR will be owned and operated by WNYC, New York Public Radio, as a listener-supported station. That means we'll have to put up with all those irritating fund drives, when we'd much rather be enjoying more Beethoven and Debussy.

The odd thing about the above logo, which appears on the radio station's website, is that WQXR some time ago ditched the broadcasters from the Times' own newsroom and now relies on Bloomberg for its regular news reports. Another recent economy move was eliminating all live announcers from midnight to 5:30 a.m. If you want to know what's playing in the wee hours, you have to consult the website listings.

If FCC approval is granted, according to the NY Times' report, "WQXR would move to a weaker signal near the high end of the FM band [105.9]" and WCAA, a Spanish-language station owned by Univision, would get the 96.3 spot on the dial.

"Weaker signal"? Will we New Jerseyans have to put up with spotty reception along with the periodic pledge drives? My preliminary foray to 105.9 was reassuring on that score. But I'm a mere George Washington Bridge ride from Manhattan and I can see the Empire State Building, where the transmitter is, from my window. What about Mahwah?

"Executives from the three companies say the transaction with preserve classical music on New York airways and better serve the area's Spanish-speaking community," according to WNYC's report on the transaction.

But how well will it serve the classical music community? It seems likely that WNYC's programming for WQXR will change it significantly, maybe even for the better. My guess is that it's going to skew younger and edgier.

Maybe conventional radios, like newspapers, are a dying model anyway. We may have to get not only our news, but also our music online. For technophobes of my parents' very elderly generation, that means getting left out and left behind.

Jay Raymond, a former student and teacher at the Barnes Foundation, and a founding member of Friends of the Barnes Foundation (the ad hoc group opposing its move to Philly), responds to Barnes Design (Non)Update:

The most damning news in your report is Andrew Stewart's [the Barnes' spokesperson's] statement that they have raised $156 million. In May 2006, the [Philadelphia] Inquirer reported on a news conference held by Pew [Charitable Trusts] and Barnes, at which it was announced that they had raised $150 million. One day later, they announced a campaign to raise $50 million more. Now, Stewart reports, they have raised only $6 million of that $50 million, in the more than three years since this campaign began.

CultureGrrl had previously noted that $150 million had been raised by May 2006, with $50 million still to go as of February 2007. When I interviewed him back then, the foundation's executive director and president, Derek Gillman (who assumed his post in October 2006), told me that coming up with the needed $50 million "will be my job."

More than two years later, it still is.

Afghan silver and lapis tiered necklace from Artizan Sarai, $135

Mariam Atash Nawabi, co-founder of Artizan Sarai, an exporter of objects by artisans in economically disadvantaged areas of the world, including Afghanistan, India, Turkey, and Morocco, reponds to Golden Afghanistan Now at the Met: A Blockbuster for Love, Not Money:

I agree with you that the exhibition [the Metropolitan Museum's installation of the traveling show, Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul] was very well done. I also agree that the art merchandise at the Met missed the mark.

Although he is talented, inviting a Turkish jewelry designer [Gurhan Orhan] work on a piece that reflects Afghanistan's history and art is actually insensitive to the fact that there are many Afghan designers whose work could have been highlighted. I have worked on the arts/culture initiative, Artizan Sarai, which helps artisans in Afghanistan (as well as India and Turkey). We provided items for the National Gallery of Art and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [previous venues for the Afghanistan show], but the Met wanted to focus on "higher end" pieces.

We believe that was a mistake. Afghan artisans produce very good quality pieces that can be considered "high end"; it just depends on who is evaluating it. Artizan Sarai 's goal is to have the pieces recognized as art and not "craftsy" items that can be mass produced. Developing an appreciation for the workmanship and time/effort in creating a piece shows respect for the culture itself.

We believe that with the right marketing and education, people will see the artistic skills that people have. They will see that people even in the most impoverished areas can create fine masterpieces reflected in embroidery, jewelry and other products. It is through that acceptance by which appreciation for Afghanistan's art and culture can truly be shown.

Contacted by CultureGrrl, Deborah Ziska, the National Gallery's chief of press and public information, confirmed that Artizan Sarai "provided jewelry and other items for our shop for the exhibition, and our shop operation was pleased with what was supplied."

But let's flee the giftshop and return to the superb show---COMING SOON.

Derek Gillman, president and executive director, Barnes Foundation

The design plans of architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien for the the Barnes Foundation's new Philadelphia facility, which were to have been announced in late 2008 (according to this report by the Philadelphia Inquirer's architecture critic, Inga Saffron) and were subsequently expected to be released last spring, will now be delayed until the fall, according to this week's report from Barnes' president and executive director, Derek Gillman.

In the foundation's latest E-Newsletter, Gillman states:

We are making very good progress with designs for the new Barnes Foundation campus on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. We are on schedule [not really; see below] and on budget [maybe, maybe not] to begin the building foundation work in late fall, and complete construction by the end of 2011.

I am pleased to report that we are through the design development phase and are now beginning construction documentation. During the summer we shall be continuing with the City approvals process, and will release the design to you in the fall....

I also remind everyone that we intend to house our world-renowned art collection in galleries that will replicate the scale, proportion, and configuration of the existing gallery in Merion. The new building will also provide increased space for art education, which is at the heart of the Barnes mission, with classrooms and an auditorium for additional programs that can be taught alongside the traditional, analytic Barnes courses in the galleries.

In addition, the new building includes facilities for painting conservation, research and administration, as well as areas for special events and much improved visitor services. We will also have a special exhibition space near to the permanent galleries that will allow us to display works that are not part of our permanent collection.

I have seen no reports about what the designs look like, and I don't understand why plans that have been submitted for city approval are not easily accessible to journalists and the interested public. Aren't government records public documents, or is Philadelphia untouched by Sunshine Laws? (This calls for an Inga inquiry!)

As for the "on schedule" part, not only are they late in releasing information about the building's design, but in February 2007, Gillman had told me that the hoped-for completion date for construction was 2009---a goal that has now been pushed back by two years. I wouldn't be surprised if "on budget" (originally $100 million, with an additional $100 million to be raised for endowment) has been similarly rejiggered. Here's what Barnes spokesperson Andrew Stewart told me yesterday, in response to my query:

We will release the construction costs with the design in the fall when they are finalized. So far $156 million [for construction and endowment] has been raised.

Richard Koch, former deputy director and general counsel of the Museum of Modern Art

The tech gremlins delayed for a few days my receiving a photo from the family of Richard Koch (to whom I paid tribute here). But thanks to his family, here it is at last, along with additional biographical information:

While serving as general counsel, director of administration, and secretary of the Museum of Modern Art for 20 years, from 1959 to 1979, Koch recognized, in the late 70's, the latent value of the museum's undeveloped mid-Manhattan air rights, and devised a plan to use them to fund its Cesar Pelli-designed expansion. He was instrumental in the development of legislation establishing the Trust for Cultural Resources, a public benefit corporation that enabled MoMA to use its air rights to obtain substantial tax benefits and to subsidize the expansion of its facilities.

Subsequently, the Trust was called upon by a number of other major cultural institutions to support capital projects---WNET/Channel 13; Carnegie Hall; the American Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Center.

When Koch left MoMA in l979, a letter from David Rockefeller recalled that "the original conception and most of the early trail blazing for our expansion plan were your own." A board resolution then praised Koch's "creativity of mind, which brought into being the Museum's expansion plan."

After Koch left MoMA, Martin Segal, then president of Lincoln Center, and its chairman, Amyas Ames, engaged him to conduct a needs assessment for the Center and its constituents and to submit a plan of action. He performed a feasibility study of the land now occupied by the Rose Building and its potential as a combined-use building, which would include dormitories, rehearsal studios, offices, a garage for patrons and a film theater. The key to his plan was a residential apartment tower that could attract a significant capital investment and provide a permanent revenue stream. In December, 1980, Lincoln Center's board voted to proceed with the project.

Before coming to MoMA, Koch worked for five years as an associate at the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam. There he had handled legal issues in connection with the fire at MoMA in the late 1950's.

The National Endowment for the Arts yesterday announced some 631 grants, totaling $29,775,000, as part of the $50 million allotted to the agency from the federal economic stimulus package. These grants, established "to support the preservation of jobs that are threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn," are in addition to the grants, totaling $19,799,000, awarded in April to 63 state and regional arts agencies under the stimulus package.

Among the 63 museum grantees just announced are the  Baltimore Museum, Cleveland Museum, Dia Center, Menil  Foundation, Phillips Collection, San Francisco  Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem and Wadsworth Atheneum. Many smaller institutions are also on this list, including the Allentown Art Museum, Heckscher Museum and Montclair Art Museum.

The museum grants were in the amount of $50,000 or $25,000, totaling $2,925,000---not a whole lot of museum jobs saved there.

There were also 41 grantees in the "visual arts category," including Art in General, the College Art Association, Creative Time, the Highpoint Center for Printmaking and Socrates Sculpture Park. These were also in the amounts of $50,000 or $25,000, for a total of  $1,725,000.

In other words, the arts stimulus money was spread pretty thin, but had the symbolic value of underscoring that arts jobs do have a role to play in the nation's economic recovery.

Now can they please confirm President Obama's nominee for NEA's chairman?

Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., at Metropolitan Museum's press preview for his country's antiquities

I recently wrote about the wrong kind of blockbuster---extravaganzas organized under commercial auspices that are big on evocative atmospherics, low on scholarly seriousness, and high on exploiting artifacts as cash cows.

Now let's salute the right kind of blockbuster---Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, which last week opened at the last of its four U.S. venues, the Metropolitan Museum (to Sept. 20).

Some critics, notably Lynne Munson, former deputy chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, had found fault with that show when it was being planned, two years ago. Munson alleged (in an interview with Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times) that the exhibition's organizers were not adequately compensating Afghanistan for the loan of its great treasures, including the breathtakingly beautiful, intricately worked Bactrian gold that glitters at the end of the Met's spacious installation. The profit-driven Tutankahamun show, still touring, was cited by critics of the Afghan arrangement as an appropriate financial role model.

At that time, I commented:

It was odd to see the megabucks deal struck by Egypt for the current Tutankhamun show being held up...as a gold standard for cultural diplomacy. Many observers, including Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum, found that arrangement to be, as de Montebello had disapprovingly described it, "dominated by lucre and the need to make make colossal sums of money for the...circulators and for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities."

At the recent press preview for the show's opening at the Met, Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., movingly explained why fundraising was not the impetus behind his country's cultural largesse:

[More on Koch, including his photo, here.}

Talking to me when I'm in full investigative-reporter mode is a bit like going to the dentist---lots of abrasive drilling. Not much fun for the person sitting in the interviewee's chair.

That's why I was so appreciative and admiring of Richard Koch, former deputy director of the Museum of Modern Art, who died last month. He was forever gracious, patient and forthcoming in guiding me through the very complex arrangements surrounding MoMA's 1984 expansion designed by Cesar Pelli, which he helped supervise and about which I wrote for both Art in America and ARTnews magazines.

Koch, an attorney, was a prime mover in drafting the legislation that established the Trust for Cultural Resources, a public benefit corporation that was initially defined in such a way that it could issue bonds to finance only this particular MoMA expansion. But its scope was subsequently expanded to cover a wide variety of major capital projects by New York cultural institutions. It has had a far-reaching impact on the city's cultural life.

Richard was a class act whose cheerful openness and transparency could still serve as a model for museum administration today

Unfortunately, MoMA was unable to supply me with a photo of Koch. If any reader is able to e-mail me a usable image, please let me know by clicking "Contact me" in CultureGrrl's middle column. I'll add it to the top of this post, if I do receive one.

UPDATE: A representative from MoMA's press office took exception to my saying that the museum couldn't supply me with a photo. She had, in fact, informed me that the museum could send me one image, but added that I would have to contact the photographer for permission before I could use it. She said she only had the photographer's "last known mailing address." This heroic detective work was a bit too cumbersome for a quick blog post, even though I'd still like to enhance this with Koch's distinguished mien. Can anyone facilitate that? (Shoutout to James Snyder, Donald Elliott, Richard Oldenburg, Cesar Pelli, Joanne Koch...)

Anthony Tommasini, NY Times' chief classical music critic, at the press conference for the new Alice Tully Hall

At the time of the reopening of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, when I was sharply critical of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's makeover, I felt like the lone dissident. As architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable said in her article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about Lincoln Center's campus-wide rebuilding program:

The renovation of Alice Tully Hall, now complete, is already considered a smashing success.

Ada Louise spoke admiringly of the hall's exterior, but never directly addressed the success, or lack thereof, of the interior of the reimagined concert hall.

Now along comes music critic Allan Kozinn, in a piece appearing in tomorrow's NY Times (but online today), making me feel, at last, a little less lonely. He dislikes the hall even more than I do. But his words echo mine.

Kozinn writes:

Pretty much everyone seems to love every aspect of the new Tully, designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

I hate the new Tully Hall. To me it is everything Lincoln Center and its enthusiasts insist it is not. I find it corporate, sterile, claustrophobic and as acoustically arid a hall as I've ever heard.

You've read similar gripes before---back in February, from me. In one post, I complained:

The sound was too often brittle, not resonant. It's easiest to gauge the quality of a performance and its sound on very familiar pieces. The two warhorses on yesterday's inaugural program were Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," for which the sound seemed dry; and Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite," which lacked the requisite sparkle.

In another post, I described:

Lots of glass and hard corporate-looking surfaces; not much charm, let alone cushy comfort.

And in this post:

After the concert, I...ran into architect Liz Diller, who said the hall sounded great to her from her perch in the balcony. When she asked what I thought, I tactlessly observed that, from where I sat in the rear orchestra, the sound seemed a little dry.

"Dry??? I know you have problems with our work, Lee."

Kozinn had given a brief early warning of his contrarian take in his Mar. 3 concert review:

The hall itself was shockingly impassive....If you've been dreaming that the dryness of the old Tully Hall has been banished, and that the new hall, with its rich hues, will yield a lush, vibrant tone, it's time to wake up.

By contrast, most of the reviewers during the opening weeks, including the Times' chief classical music critic, Anthony Tommasini, gave raves. It's nice to see that reasonable Times critics can strongly disagree (although at a four-month distance).

I will say this, though: The architects' and Lincoln Center's goal of attracting passersby has succeeded admirably. On pleasant days (of which there were remarkably few last month), both Tully Hall's outdoor bleachers and its indoor, glass-walled café are crowd magnets. It's an enhancement to the urban experience, if not as much as it should have been to the musical one.

Timothy Rub, posing in front of the new Rafael Viñoly-designed wing of the Cleveland Museum, which he's about to leave

Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn't teleport myself to the Philadelphia Museum in time for Monday morning's press conference introducing its new director (for which an invitation stealthily arrived in my inbox in the dead of night).

To hear Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer tell it, Rub's first meet-the-press moment in his new capacity as director-designate was no more revelatory than Tom Campbell's close-up at the Metropolitan Museum.

But CultureGrrl, while not there in body, was in Philadelphia in spirit. Rub DID answer the question I had posed here, regarding his peripatetic ways: "Can they keep him?"

Dobrin reports Rub's sacred vow:

I am here for as long as Philadelphia will have me and I can do wonderful things [like maybe roll back today's $2 admission increase?]. There is no other place I would like to be, no other place I can imagine myself. This is one of the great museums in the country. There is a lot of great work to be done here in terms of the [architect Frank] Gehry project. So much work in terms of strengthening the staff and resources. There is no better place for me to be.

Not even Washington, if the National Gallery directorship eventually opens up? Let's not even go there!