January 2010 Archives

A detail from a wall panel in Metropolitan Museum's past exhibition about the discovery of Michelangelo's first painting, "The Torment of Saint Anthony"

There seems to be a new vogue in museum exhibitions---the who-dunnit show. It's fun for the public to participate in the discovery of a (possibly) new work by a master and it's fun for curators to exercise their scholarly muscle in a crowd-pleasing way---by revealing the detective work that enabled them to find riches hiding in plain sight. For example, part of Metropolitan Museum curator Keith Christiansen's work in authenticating an early Michelangelo painting now owned by the Kimbell Art Museum involved the close comparisons of cross-hatching between the maybe-Michelangelo and known Michelangelos, as shown above.

One side-effect of museums' efforts to cut costs may be a proliferation of this subset of the "dossier exhibition"---the attribution exhibition. If museums must curtail sprawling (and expensive) blockbusters, they're going to need a hook to attract visitors to smaller shows. The romance of important scholarly ah-ha moments could be one such lure.

I've already written about three such shows---the Metropolitan Museum's two Michelangelo focus exhibitions (The Torment of Saint Anthony and The Young Archer) and the reattributed-to-Velázquez portrait from the Met's own collection.

Yesterday, both the Wall Street Journal and NPR weighed in on the reattribution boom. The WSJ's Eric Gibson compares unfavorably the documentation supporting the ambitious attribution in the Met's "Young Archer" show to that in the High Museum's Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius (to Feb. 21). One of the highlights of the latter is a silver relief by Verrocchio, "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist." The High's guest curator Gary Radke believes that two figures in the relief (far left and second-from-right, below) came from the hand of Leonardo, who had been in Verrocchio's workshop.


Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci?, "Beheading of St. John the Baptist," from the altar of the baptistery with scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist, 1477-1483, Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence.
Photo: Antonio Quattrone

In Are They or Aren't They?, Gibson writes:

The shows open a window onto an aspect of museums the public rarely sees--the world of fathoming authorship and making judgments....The [High] museum has gone to great lengths to make its case. It has produced a substantial scholarly catalog to accompany the show, and has installed extensive explanatory wall texts next to the relief that invite the viewer to participate in this voyage of discovery by looking closely at the sculpture and coming to their own conclusions. This is a model presentation.

The Met's "Young Archer" presentation, according to Gibson (and also according to me) "needs to do a better job of explaining its reasons" for assigning that unremarkable marble sculpture to Michelangelo's oeuvre.

In Drawing Distinctions Between Rembrandt, His Pupils, NPR's Susan Stamberg gives air time to Lee Hendrix, the Getty Museum's curator for its Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference (to Feb. 28). Lee tells Susan:

Over and over again, one of the telltale signs of the student is that they are more 'finished,' in conventional terms, than Rembrandt's drawings.

And in her introductory comments, Stamberg demonstrates the challenge of attracting the general public to low-key, scholarly shows:

I don't know about you, but I walk right past sketches when I'm at a museum. I head for the color: the oils, the big things.

If the Getty's Rembrandt drawings show didn't have its newsworthy hook, chances are that NPR would have walked right past it, focusing on "the big things."

CultureGrrl's very porous paywall

If newspapers want to make money online, they've got to beef up their online offerings---not just by adding more bells and whistles, but also by ramping up the types of serious content that only digital media can provide. For this, they're going to need journalists who think in terms of links and multimedia at the same time they're pounding out their copy.

For the NY Times and other publications that are urgently hoping to get readers to pay for online content, a reality check came yesterday when John Koblin, the NY Observer's media columnist reported that Newsday, Long Island's premier newspaper, had garnered a mere 35 online subscribers during the first three months since putting up an online paywall.

While highly respected, Newsday is not as much of a much-read as the NY Times. And there were extenuating circumstances: Some 75 percent of Long Islanders, Koblin reports, can get Newsday online for free, as subscribers to the hardcopy or to Optimum Cable (owned by Newsday's owner). Still, the three-month results are, as John describes them, "astoundingly low."

As a content consumer and blogger, I want to be able to click on news website links for free. As a content provider, I'm in Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s camp---desperately seeking some way to get paid for the valuable information and insights that I provide online. My plead-for-donations model is not a brilliant success. (Speaking of which, please join CultureGrrl Donor 110 from New York City, by clicking my yellow button, above.)

I still don't know what my blog's business plan should be. (Find another business?) But I do know that mainstream media publications in general, and the NY Times in particular, have got to think at least as much about providing substantial value-added features in their online editions as about devising the best way to design the meter.

In their full-page ad in the NY Times on Jan. 21 (the same day that the story announcing the paywall plans ran in the paper), Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, the Times' president and CEO, wrote:

Looking ahead, we are excited about enchancing the user experience for our readers and advertisers, to make NYTimes.com even more compelling, interactive and entertaining.

Here's how---my suggestions on how newspapers can make their digital editions more informative and essential (not just more flashy) than their dead-tree counterparts. The big guys can learn much from the little blogs---not about how to make money (for which we're miserable models), but about how to take advantage of the unique content-enhancing qualities of the web:

---Provide substantive links to all primary sources
This is CultureGrrl 101, but its importance seems to elude the web wizards at the NY Times and other publications, who seem more print-oriented than computer-focused: If you cite a source, link to the statement, report, document or article (even if from another newspaper) to which you are referring.

Take, for example, my CultureGrrl report and Robin Pogrebin's NY Times report on the recent "deaccession roundtable" in New York. Both of us were writing about the Brodsky Bill, which would regulate New York State museums' art sales. But only CultureGrrl linked (in my first sentence) to the actual text of the bill that was the subject of the meeting that we covered.

(Speaking of links to documents, here's the memo to staff from Sulzberger and Robinson about the NY Times' paywall plans, via Romenesko.)

---Ditch the irrelevant links
This is a corollary to the first imperative. In Pogrebin's above-linked article, she provides this quote from one of the participants in the meeting: "We would hope this bill would be clarified to, as Samuel Goldwyn said, 'Include me out.'" That "Samuel Goldwyn" link, if you click on it, takes you to the Times' website for its own movie coverage (not even to information about the movie mogul himself, as I had been expecting). Similarly, if you click on the National Archives link in this Times article about damage to Haiti's cultural riches, you're taken to information about the National Archives in the U.S., not Haiti.

Who is going to bother clicking on links if they connect you to information that is completely irrelevant to what you are reading? It's an exercise in frustration, not illumination. It happens all the time at many online sites of mainstream media publications.

---Use slideshows and video clips that directly relate to what is discussed in the accompanying article
When it comes to cultural coverage, newspapers tend to create slideshows by posting whatever digital images happen to be supplied by the cultural institution, whether or not those images illustrate what's actually discussed in the article. Captions for slideshows should excerpt related text in the article, but often don't.

My self-created images for CultureGrrl photo essays and videos (scroll down) are low in resolution and amateurish in quality. But at least they closely correspond to what I'm writing about. Big-budget mainstream media operations should assign photographers and videographers to tag along with art critics, or else give those scribes some good cameras and show them how to shoot. A little coaching on how to narrate videos with enthusiasm and personality would also help.

---In the hardcopy newspaper, always call conspicuous attention to related online content that supplements an article
Yesterday, I embedded on my blog a powerful Wall Street Journal video related to the cultural calamity in Haiti and linked to Pooja Bhatia's article that it illustrated. But the printed version of the article (buried at the bottom of p. A9) provided no clue that such powerful multimedia (also including a slideshow of Haitian works from the collection of the Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa) was there for the clicking at wsj.com. (The WSJ already has a paywall for much of its online content.)

For those who care about cashing in online, there's a star-studded conference about Discussing the Economics of Content, organized by paidContent.org, coming up in New York on Feb. 19.

It'll cost you, though: This content will set you back $895.

During the grim aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, saving endangered lives is the most urgent priority. But preserving heritage is important too. Above is a vivid video accompanying Pooja Bhatia's article, Art Trove Among Nation's Losses, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. In this clip, she surveys the severe damage to the privately established Galerie and Musée Nader in Port-au-Prince.

Bhatia writes:

It took 30 seconds to wipe out his [Georges Nader Sr.'s] collection, which Mr. Nader's son, Georges Nader Jr., estimates was worth $30 million to $100 million. Only about 50 pieces from his mansion survived, according to the family.

On the museum's website, the Naders state (scroll down):

Although the physical building of Museum Nader may not exist anymore, our love for Haitian art will never die. Haitian Art is a significant piece of our culture, and we will do whatever we can to save an important part of our history.

Other recent reports have documented the earthquake's cultural toll:

---Tracy Wilkinson of the LA Times describes damage to museums and galleries, focusing on the Centre d'Art, Port-au-Prince's museum, which "looked as if a cruel giant had taken bites out of the walls and ceiling of the cavernous exhibition hall."

Wilkinson reports:

"It is difficult to talk about saving art when we must save lives," said painter Maritou Chenet , whose oldest friends were killed in the disaster. But art is such an integral part of Haitian life that the works must be protected, she said, even as the buildings housing them are demolished.

---Lesley Clark of the Miami Herald spoke to Cammie Scully, executive director of the Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa, which has a large collection of Haitian art. It is establishing a relief fund and serving as a clearinghouse for information about the lost art and affected artists.

Scully told Clark:

With unemployment at 85 percent, art has been one of the ways people have been able to make money. A lot of people are taking care of extended families through the arts. It's an unbelievably creative culture.

As I wrote previously, another Iowa museum with a large Haitian collection, the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, has been active in relief efforts.

The Milwaukee Art Museum, which has a strong Haitian collection, "is collecting money for Haitian relief efforts," spokesperson Vicki Scharfberg told me. "Our front-of-house staff is also encouraging guests to visit our [Haitian] collection.

Here, again, is CNN's list of agencies collecting donations for Haitian relief.

"Mona/Leo" by Lillian Schwartz: Fusion or delusion?

To the arsenal of Leonardo da Vinci researchers, we may now have to add not only medical science but also grave digging.

The Times of London, which earlier this month brought us Mona Lisa's cholesterol problem, now reports:

Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains [in France] of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait....Recreating Leonardo's face could test the theory of Lillian Schwartz, an American expert who drew on computer studies to highlight apparent similarities between the features of the Mona Lisa and those of a self-portrait by the artist.

Who is Lillian Schwartz, the creator of the fused physiognomy, above? Not an art historian. The biographical information on her website tells us:

Lillian Schwartz is best known for her pioneering work in the use of computers for what has since become known as computer-generated art and computer-aided art analysis, including graphics, film, video, animation, special effects, virtual reality and multimedia. Her work was recognized for its aesthetic success and was the first in this medium to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

Cross section. left, of Renzo Piano's planned addition to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, right, connected by glass walkway

Both the Boston Globe's Sebastian Smee (in a negative review) and the NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff (in a positive review) have serious misgivings about an important aspect of Renzo Piano's just unveiled plans for a 70,000-square-foot addition to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Smee writes:

The new building's modernist idiom of transparency and efficiency is the antithesis of Gardner's palace museum....Since the only public access point to the museum will be through the new building, it is bound to color the visitor's experience in ways I don't believe Gardner would have condoned.

Instead of walking from an opaque exterior straight into an enchanted realm (prompting that sudden "Ah!'' we all experience now), we will be forced to negotiate an open, glass-walled, sociable, and relentlessly modern space.

Similarly, Ouroussoff writes;

This [entering through Piano's addition] significantly lengthens the distance between entry and artworks, which I suspect is intentional....But it may also further reduce the impact of Gardner's original vision. The ability to move, in a few short steps, from the darkness of the brick vaulted lobby to the joyous explosion of light that fills the towering pink courtyard is not just a great architectural effect; it is a powerful metaphor for what art can do---and what it did for her.

The site plan shows you just what a trek it will be before you arrive at what you've come to see:



You will enter the copper-clad Piano building, left, from Evans Way (at the bottom of the site plan), turn right at the center and enter a narrow, glassed-in walkway (the white horizontal strip connecting the two buildings). At last, you will then enter Isabella's palazzo on the right...that is, if you haven't been distracted by the offerings in the new building's temporary exhibition space.

On the plus side, making visitors enter a quirky individual's antiquated art-filled lair through a sterile modern add-on shields the intense experience of the founder's space from the business buzz that's part of the present-day museum---ticketing, eating, shopping. What's more, as Smee noted, the new space addresses "the need to take pressure off" the main attraction, by spreading the crowds over a greater area.

Both these functions were envisioned for the entry pavilion designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien for the the Barnes Foundation's new Philadelphia facility. Here again, you'll be entering a modern facility that houses all the auxiliary amenities and a temporary exhibition space. In its current Merion location, you walk straight into a dazzling array of Cézannes, Renoirs and other masterpieces, and are directly confronted with the great Matisse mural, ''La Danse.'' The impact is immediate and visceral.

What's lost in modernizing musty places is what I referred to in my 2006 Art in America piece, The Atrium that Ate the Morgan, in which I expressed a then contrarian view of Piano's bravura addition to that beloved New York City cultural landmark:

Part of the mystique of any house museum is the spirit of the master of the house. But now J.P. Morgan's outsize ego has been supplanted by Piano's beautiful but discordantly sleek addition. New Yorkers, especially, will love the way this gorgeous space accessions the whole city into the Morgan's collection--a complex architectural collage viewed through glass walls.

But the insular old-world ambience of the robber baron's luxurious lair is upstaged by this upstart, with its modern glass-and-steel pizzazz. Yes, you can still ogle the old man's study and library....But these rooms now feel like a minor diversion from the main architectural event.

William Griswold has done a lot to re-Morganize the Morgan Library and Museum since taking over its directorship in 2008. Visitors can now enter and wander around in J.P.'s study, which you formerly gazed at from just inside the room's roped-off entrance. Bill has also made it his mission to bring out greater quantities of the founder's treasures in rotating exhibitions.

Still, architecture is king. Your main impression of the Morgan is now this:


Renzo Piano's atrium for the Morgan

...not this:

Rendering of the planned Philly Barnes: Permanent collection galleries are the rectangle in the foreground; behind and above, the light box over a connecting courtyard; behind and wrapping around the light box, the L-shaped entry pavilion with temporary exhibition space on the right
 
During my recent conversation with architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien after their successful presentation to the Philadelphia Arts Commission of their plans for the Barnes Foundation's new facility, I experienced one of those "did he really say that?" moments.

Williams told me:

We need the galleries to be in a way identical [to the originals in Merion], but we also need to lift them up. There are people---maybe you, even we [emphasis added]---who realize that there are issues with moving this collection. So when they move it, we want it to feel better and be better, and be everything we [not Dr. Barnes?] want it to be.

"Even we"?!?

I did my internal double-take but let it pass, because had I questioned further, I likely would have gotten one of those unwelcome, retroactive "off-the-record" requests. I later checked my tape to make sure I heard it right.

So how will the maybe-it-shouldn't-move Barnes Collection "be better"? For one thing, the layout will not be identical to that of the old Barnes, because each gallery floor will be interrupted by a classroom and an internal garden. Visitors will not move directly into the galleries, but through a large entry pavilion (behind the white light box shown in the photo above).

As for other differences, here are some excerpts from my conversation with the architects:

Williams: The lighting will be, I believe, dramatically better.

Tsien: The top floor will be naturally lit. We're bringing in natural light to the galleries. I think that will be very transformative and very subtle.

Williams: I think the main gallery flooring is very badly done. I think it was handed off to a hack. There are three different stones on the main gallery floor....There's a porphyry edge that runs up....

We're hoping that the eyes will better focus on the art. I find it's hard to see the paintings because of the lighting and because of stripes on the floor. To the extent that we can make it a more calming space, we think that you'll be better able to see.

Rosenbaum: In what ways will the lighting be changed?

Williams: We will have windows that will enable you to look out. They will allow only 15 percent of the exterior light to come in. But that will emotionally connect you to the landscape that we don't see in Merion. When I go into Merion, I'm looking at the paintings but I don't feel the arboretum that I'm in. We will make you feel more that you're in a lively, changing environment that, I guess, is the way he [Albert Barnes] had to intend it, since he put it in an arboretum and put windows in [now covered over].

Rosenbaum: Natural light makes it easier to see the art, but sometimes it can also harm the art.

Tsien: We'll have very good filtering, in terms of the technology. On the top floor, there are only two galleries with skylights now, but all of the top-floor galleries will be skylighted

Williams: Most visitors don't go up to the second level. They think the first level is it. So we want to make sure the second level feels atractive. Mostly the details we're working on are to calm your experience.

Less calming is the busy-looking exterior, which Williams called "a kind of syncopation. We're trying to make the exterior a kind of cloth---a tapestry of stone and hardware [the visible steel on which the limestone panels are hung]....

"While we had several other stones up there [on the construction site], they had no character from a distance and this has to be able to project itself. You have to be able to read it from the [Benjamin Franklin] Parkway....You'll see [on the facade] a stone that protrudes, which is our idea of a vertical bar, to give some exterior relief. And you'll also see a piece of bronze that's there as a way to catch light when the sunlight hits it."



As for the more fundamental criticism---that the gallery shouldn't be moved at all---dealer and former Barnes art advisory committee member Richard Feigen (rebutted here by the Barnes' new general counsel, Brett Miller) and LA Times art critic Christopher Knight have weighed in once again, spurred by the posting (click on "Transcript of Dr. Watson's speech) of the speech delivered by Barnes chairman Bernard Watson at the Nov. 13 groundbreaking ceremony.

Like Miller, I don't agree with characterizing the transfer to Philadelphia as a "theft." I think that the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia powers-that-be understandably wanted to lure that valuable cultural resource to the big city. The Barnes board, to my mind, wrongly capitulated to that pressure. It was derelict in its own duty when it let the political and philanthropic movers-and-shakers have their way.

If it truly wanted to save the Merion Barnes, the board should have been far more proactive in taking steps (such as those that I outlined in my NY Times Op-Ed) that could have made it financially viable in the location where Barnes intended it to remain in perpetuity.

As Feigen (who had testified on the day when I attended the court hearings on whether the Barnes should be permitted to move) recently wrote in the Art Newspaper:

A small part, perhaps $25 million, of the vague financing plans, which include $107 million earmarked [but not entirely allocated] from the state capital budget for the new building, could easily provide an endowment for the Barnes in its historic location. Insufficient effort has been made to tap private sources for the old Barnes. Insufficient effort has been made to sell the redundant real estate of Barnes's valuable farm, its 19th-century American pottery collection or unrestricted paintings in the offices, which have been appraised at more than $30 million.

In Knight's words:

In a nutshell he [Watson] says the board tried to keep the financially strapped Barnes intact and in place, which proved to be impossible. So, to save it they opted for the next best solution: moving.

I don't believe it. I believe that boosting cultural tourism in Philadelphia was always the goal, and the Barnes' fabled art collection was the key. (Watson also chaired the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, a local tourism agency, and he once told the Inquirer the Barnes "belongs" downtown.)

With the cultural tourism goal set, moving all those paintings by Picasso, Matisse, van Gogh and the rest into the city from suburban Merion, where they couldn't be profitably maximized, was the only answer.

In other words, the Barnes was too big not to fail in Merion. It had to be characterized as not saveable on Latch's Lane, so that it could be transported to the Parkway. It wasn't theft; it was surrender without a struggle. It was the path of least resistance for a board that has now aligned itself with the financial and political elite---the kind of people that Albert Barnes always said he had no use for.

Materials of the Philly Barnes (presented at Philadelphia Arts Commission meeting)

[Part 1 is here. The video of my visit to the Barnes Foundation's Philadelphia construction site, showing a prototype fragment of the new facility, is here.]

I've been intending to follow up on my first post (linked above) about the Philadelphia Arts Commission's approval of the Barnes plans, and to report on the comments that the architects made in an interview with me after the vote was taken. But I got sidetracked by the more immediately pressing stories that broke last week.

Sean O'Harrow of the Figge Art Museum, during my visit last April

The Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA, which owns a large Haitian art collection, has announced that it will donate to the Red Cross, for Haitian earthquake relief, all of its admissions revenue for this week (through Sunday).

"We would like to publicly challenge other art institutions to contribute to the Haiti effort," Sean O'Harrow, the Figge's director, told me.

In the museum's official announcement, O'Harrow stated:

We use art from other cultures, such as Haiti, to educate our community about the world. If our Haitian collection helps raise awareness and support, we are doing our job. Now is the time to give something back.

We realize it will takes years for Haiti to recover. We hope to use the art collection and other initiatives to remind people that support requires an ongoing effort.

After next week, museum programs will continue to support relief efforts in Haiti. We will exhibit a number of works from the Haitian collection, offer related programming, and continue to take donations for the Red Cross.

I have not yet heard of any coordinated efforts by visual-arts professionals to assist in the recovery, although J. Patrice Marandel, chief curator of European art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has asked fellow members of the Association of Art Museum Curators for suggestions about how the organization might help.

Professionals in the performing arts seem to be more organized, as Philip Boroff of Bloomberg reports. My ArtsJournal blogging colleague, Howard Mandel, has a round-up of the jazz community's response.

If CultureGrrl readers want to step up to the plate, here's CNN's list of organizations to which you can send donations for Haitian relief.

Wish you could have taken as seat at the Association of Art Museum Directors' mid-winter meeting in Saratoga (oops, I meant Sarasota, but Florida's been so cold)?

Thanks to the iPhone and TwitPic page of Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, now you can! (If only Max had brought a video camera.)

Some of the attendees at last week's joint meeting of AAMD's Government Affairs and Art Issues committees, left to right: John Murdoch, The Huntington, Pasadena; Frank Robinson, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; Charles Eldredge, emeritus (formerly director of what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum); unidentified (help me out with this!); Timothy Rub, Cleveland Museum of Art; Jim Ballinger, Phoenix Art Museum; Brian Ferriso, Portland Art Museum; Earl (Rusty) Powell, National Gallery of Art; John Bullard, New Orleans Museum of Art.

Other committee members (including WOMEN!) were seated to the left, out of the picture.

Women out of the picture? I'll refrain from the obvious quip.

Judith Dobrzynski

The Association of Art Museum Directors has now joined the American Association of Museums in reasserting the core principle that museums' art-sale proceeds should be used to enhance the collection, not to defray operating expenses or debts.

These restatements came on the heels of Judith Dobrzynski's recent NY Times Op-Ed piece, in which she argued that, subject to certain limitations and possible oversight by professsional organizations like AAM and AAMD, museums should be allowed to use deaccession proceeds to help resolve their financial crises. My own NY Times Op-Ed of four years ago had argued the opposite and also asserted:

Legislators and government regulators should hold museums to the often ignored standards for disposal spelled out in the published guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

That's a goal that the Brodsky Bill, pending before the NY State Legislature, would help to effectuate.

A few days after the publication of Judy's piece, AAM weighed in on the question, in response to my inquiry:

When it comes to deaccessioning, the ethics of the field are not broken---and we therefore would not support efforts to "fix" them.

AAMD indicated to me that it might have something to say after its mid-winter meeting in Sarasota, where its Deaccessions Task Force would be working on possible revisions to the guidelines on art sales. That meeting has now concluded.

This press release just in from AAMD:

AAMD's Deaccessioning Task Force, chaired by Dan Monroe (Peabody Essex Museum) and William Eiland (Georgia Museum of Art), met to continue its review of the association's policies on this issue. The discussion reaffirmed that art museums exist for the care and interpretation of art collections---collections that are the cornerstone of research, exhibition, and public programming.

The task force, therefore, reaffirmed the principle that works cannot be deaccessioned to provide funds for operating or capital purposes [emphasis added] and such funds may only be used for the refinement and expansion of the collection. The Task Force anticipates completing its work in summer 2010 and issuing an updated policy.

"AAMD's deaccessioning policy is a core principle for the art museum field," said William Eiland, co-chair of the task force and director of the Georgia Museum of Art. "We believe that the actions we have taken over the last year to uphold this principle have had a positive impact on museum collecting and deaccessioning practices."

As Max Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, succinctly put it on his Twitter site:

Directors retain tough stance on funds realized from deaccessioning.

Front row, left to right: Assemblymen Steve Englebright, Richard Brodsky and Matthew Titone

The usual arguments about government regulation of museum deaccessioning, pro and con, were rehashed at a meeting in Manhattan called yesterday by the NY State Assembly's Committee on Tourism, Parks, Art and Sports to discuss the Brodsky Bill (A6959), which would regulate art sales by museums, libraries and historic houses in the state.

Most of this, for me, was "heard this, done that," but there was one shocker, which I've never come across before: Brodsky mentioned several times that if the bill passes, museums would not be able to give buyers good title if they sold art in violation of the law's provisions (i.e., if they don't observe the listed criteria for determining which objects may be deaccessioned and/or if they use the proceeds to pay bills or debts). If that doesn't discourage dubious deaccessioning, nothing will. But I wonder what other lawyers would say about this purported effect on title of the proposed law.

Those who expressed concerns about the bill focused mostly on what they perceived as the possibly onerous and costly requirement for institutions to "publish a register of items in its collection." Brodsky repeatedly assured the gathering that the legislation will not make them do any more work or spend any more money than they already have done in cataloguing collections. He promised that the bill would be tweaked to make this completely clear.

The most moving moment (for me) came when Carol Ghiorsi Hart, executive director of the financially beleaguered Vanderbilt Museum, Centerport, Long Island, recounted how Suffolk County legislators had urged her to sell objects to balance the budget.

I said, "No. We can't do that."

Codifying the professional standards in this legal way would be very helpful in this kind of situation.

Brodsky termed his bill a "firewall," intended to shield collections like the Vanderbilt's from pressure to liquidate their holdings in hard times.

But now, let me give you a seat at the meeting, with three CultureGrrl Videos. The first contains the introductions to the roundtable, first by the bill's chief sponsor, Assemblymen Richard Brodsky, and second by the committee's chairman, Assemblyman Steve Englebright.

In the next clip, Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, who represents the district that includes Manhattan's Museum Mile of Fifth Avenue, expresses his constituents' reservations about this bill (with which, of course, I disagree, but which inspired a "Here! Here!" and a smattering of applause from the audience).

Finally, Michael Botwinick, former director of the Brooklyn Museum and current director of the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, makes the case in favor of the deaccession bill from a veteran museum professional's perspective:







As you can tell from Bing's opening comments, the critics who had voiced objections to the bill in previous communications with the Assembly were largely silent at this meeting, which drove him to speak on his museum-constituents' behalf. Among those in listen-only mode was Rebecca Gideon, assistant counsel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had been among the bill's sharpest critics.


Rebecca Gideon, attorney for the Met

In general, the institutions that would be most affected by this legislation are those (including the Met) that were founded before 1890. Because these were chartered by the State Legislature, not the Board of Regents, they are not governed by the Regents' stringent rules on deaccessioning. The Regents again extended their temporary rules in December and are awaiting the legislature's action before enacting permanent strictures.

Speaking of "heard this, done that," this was definitely not "the first discussion of deaccessioning among state policymakers and museum professionals in a public setting," which (according to Robin Pogrebin's NY Times report) this meeting had been "billed as."

Who could forget the 1973 hearings held by then NY State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, prompted by the controversy over art sales orchestrated by then Metropolitan Museum director Tom Hoving? Well, I couldn't forget, because I was there (and found it a lot more interesting, because major museum figures spoke).

Michael, a Los Angeles artists (who identified himself to me but did not want me to disclose his last name) responds to The Getty's Revolving Door: Harmful Brew of Instability and Secrecy:

Michael Brand was flatly the most competent and charismatic leader the Getty has thus far had. From the moment James Wood arrived, he has been diminishing the director's position. I think he couldn't stand not being the star.

Obviously, Dr. Brand pulled the institution out of a nose dive and restored them to some modicum of leadership in the art world. Look at the astonishing levels of cooperation he was able to negotiate in the Rembrandt show (31 lenders!). Any other major institution would have signed him up for life. Dr. Brand obviously loved his position and was incredibly engaged with both the city and with some very forward looking programs (Mexico, India, etc).

I think closer scrutiny will reveal that Wood acted to terminate him. It's a great loss for Los Angeles.

Peter Linett, a partner in Slover Linett Strategies, a Chicago-based audience research firm for cultural and educational organizations (including work for the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum, Walters Art Museum), responds to Dealer-to-Director: Why Jeffrey Deitch is Wrong for LA MOCA:

Your running riff on [Jeffrey] Deitch has been (characteristically) fresh air. To your reservations I would add this: By considering Tobias Meyer from Sotheby's and then hiring a dealer in Deitch, the [MOCA] trustees signaled their vision of the museum as more interested in the profession of art than the audience for art. It's a wholesale rather than a retail appointment.

What's missing on his résumé isn't just management experience at a large nonprofit; it's any responsibility at all for helping non-experts---people who aren't collectors, curators, fellow dealers, etc.---"get" and fall in love with contemporary art. The vast majority of visitors who walk through MOCA's doors are (for lack of a better word) general cultural consumers, people who also visit science and history museums, go to theater and occasionally the LA Phil---the curious, not the connoisseurs. What about them?

What kind of priority will Deitch put on interpretation? Education? What about 21st-century audience expectations for participatory experiences? Let's add these to the not-yet-answered questions.

And on a lighter note, readers have also responded to my first 2010 shout-out [scroll down] for support. My warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Donor 105 from Austin, Repeat CultureGrrl Donors 106 and 107, from Westminster, CA, and Norman, OK, respectively, and CultureGrrl Donors 108 and 109 from Woodstock and Long Island City, NY. That's a nice geographic spread!

Have the rest of you noticed that I've been blogging very assiduously of late? (Too much, in fact: I've got an important article to finish!)

"Victorious Youth," Greek, 300 - 100 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum

Did the J. Paul Getty Museum act in good faith when it acquired the Getty Bronze? Back in December 2006, in this post, I concluded no.

What I wrote back then, and, more importantly, what the late Thomas Hoving, the Metropolitan Museum's former director, wrote to me in a published CultureGrrl BlogBack, becomes freshly relevant in light of Jason Felch's article in today's LA Times, reporting that Friday's closing arguments in an Italian trial will refer to a 1976 letter that demonstrates (in Felch's words) "that the billionaire oilman [J. Paul Getty] and another potential buyer were troubled by the questionable legal status of the statue." This letter will be discussed, Felch reported, in Friday's closing arguments for a trial in Pesaro, Italy.

Stephen Clark, the Getty's attorney, may well be correct that "Italy has no legal foundation for a claim." But the question of whether the bronze was purchased in good faith is another matter.

Here's what I wrote three years ago:

Even at the time of the Getty's 1977 purchase of the bronze, there were suspicions that something was fishy about the masterpiece fished from the waters. Tom Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum, made this clear in his CultureGrrl BlogBack last month, and again two days ago in discussions with the Getty's lawyers, who belatedly sought his recollections from that period.

Hoving, who had been involved in an effort, later abandoned, to jointly acquire the bronze with collector J. Paul Getty, has asserted that Getty, concerned about the bronze's ownership history, had refused to acquire it without written authorization from Italy. The J. Paul Getty Museum, without such written authorization, went ahead with the purchase after Getty's death.

Hoving also told me that he had urged the Getty Museum to search its own files for the documented evidence of what he had told them.

And here's the BlogBack from Hoving that I published on Nov. 30, 2006:

The old man, J. Paul, insisted before he purchased the bronze (to share with the Met in exchange for the Met's lending the Boscotrecase frescoes the the Getty indefinitely) that the Italian government grant permission in writing [for the two U.S. museums] to acquire and exhibit it.

My negotiations with Artemis and Heinz Herzer [who eventually sold the bronze to the Getty alone] collapsed when Herzer insisted on $4.2 million. Getty wanted to pay $3.9 million. [The Getty Museum paid $3.95 million for the bronze in 1977, after J. Paul Getty's death.]

I had already informed Artemis and Herzer that the Getty and the Met would not complete the transaction until the full papers were in hand from the proper Italian authorities. All this is in the Getty files.

Jiri Frel [the Getty's then antiquities curator] pushed for the purchase after Getty's death, even though he knew of the old man's demands.

The return of this illicit work of art has nothing to do with legal issues or with how many inches within international waters the bronze was situated in when it was snagged in the nets of the boat, the "Feruccio Ferri." It has to do with the wishes of the man whose largesse paid for everything at the Getty---including [director Michael] Brand's salary, the expenses for the Trust officers and the fees for their platoons of lawyers.

Why can't the Getty simply respect the donor's [J. Paul Getty's] wishes and hand it back to Italy?

Incidentally, Felch, who has tirelessly chronicled the Getty controversies for the LA Times, now informs me that his book on the Getty, co-authored with ex-LA Timeser Ralph Frammolino, is due out in 2011.

Derek Gillman, the Barnes Foundation's executive director, at Philadelphia Arts Commission meeting this month

If you think I was angry about having my interview with Jeffrey Deitch cancelled, you should have heard the opponents of the Barnes Foundation's planned move from Merion to Philly, when they learned from my blog that revised plans for the site were presented and favorably voted upon by the Philadelphia Arts Commission on Jan. 6.

Several e-mailed me to demand how I had gotten advance word and they objected to the lack of general notification, saying they would have attended the meeting, had they only known about it.

I received notification the old-fashioned way: I had been told after the previous meeting that it wasn't the final one, and I asked the public agency to notify me when it came up again on the agenda.

But fret not, Merion and Philadelphia art-lings: CultureGrrl will take you there!

Below is a video that I shot at the beginning of the meeting, showing architect Tod Williams walking the commission through various changes that were made at the commissioners' request. I think the Philadelphia Inquirer may need to view this video too, because it didn't report on any of the changes made, other than the one that I had blogged about---the decrease in the size of the vehicular drop-off. (The newspaper misstated the street on which that drop-off is located. It's on 20th Street, not 21st.)

To view my video showing the prototype of a fragment of the building, located on the active construction site, go here.

Block that Pollock! Left to right, LA MOCA co-chairs David Johnson and Maria Bell, director-designate Jeffrey Deitch, Councilwoman Jan Perry, founding chairman Eli Broad

I had a tentative appointment for a phone interview with LA MOCA's director-designate Jeffrey Deitch scheduled for today at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time.

It's been canceled.

Three hours before my scheduled 20 minutes of fame (that was to be all) with Jeffrey, Lyn Winter, LA MOCA's director of communications, called to inform me that the gallerist felt he had already done enough interviews and had nothing more to say.

I assured Lyn (who noted apologetically that retraction of an interview slot was not her customary practice) that I had questions that had not previously been addressed in what has thus far been reported.

Especially since my views on this appointment are already known, Jeffrey might not have been eager to entertain those questions.

Nor is the museum willing to share with me its "employee ethics policy" that was invoked by its co-chairman, David Johnson, in this interview (posted online yesterday) with the LA Times' Mike Boehm.

"It's a private document," Winter told me.

"Why?" I asked.

"It's a private document," was her reply.

I'd contrast this with how Timothy Rub, now director of the Philadelphia Museum, responded at length and with candor to my questions about the Cleveland Museum's decision (made during his directorship there) to deviate from donor intent---a course of which I had been sharply critical. Answering unpleasant but legitimate questions from responsible journalists is what a museum professional does. Rub earned my respect and gratitude by so doing.

In a way Deitch is right, though. I do have enough information now, from what he and the museum's officials have already said, to form an even stronger opinion about LA MOCA's unorthodox course.

I'm strapped for time, with two other pending projects. My next post must be composed with thought and care (and with time given for Jeffrey to reconsider).

For now, I'll just say that Deitch should stop complaining about how hard it is to live on a museum director's salary plus housing allowance (plus, undoubtedly, expenses), while repeatedly describing his lifestyle as spartan.

Why should he need to sell art during his directorship to make ends meet?

Speaking of making ends meet, my warmest thanks go to serial recidivist Repeat CultureGrrl Donor 104 from Boston. My "Donate" button has been sadly dormant, though, since that New Year's Eve benefaction.

Isn't supporting CultureGrrl one of your 2010 resolutions?

While we wait for someone to get to the bottom of what's going on at the Getty Museum, I can report to you the reception that soon-to-be ex-director Michael Brand has been getting from his colleagues:

He received, I am told, a standing ovation from the assembled Getty Museum staff last Thursday when he announced to them his impending departure. Upon his arrival for a strategic planning meeting at the Association of Art Museum Directors' mid-winter gathering in Sarasota this week, he got another round of applause.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, paintings conservator David Bomford, Brand's successor as the museum's interim head while the director's search is in progress, has also recently received some validation: He was named (a few days before the unexpected Getty news broke) as recipient of the College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. Bomford is being "celebrated for more than 40 years of scholarship, practical application, and leadership in the field of paintings conservation."

Getty Trust president James Wood, whose differences with Brand reportedly may have contributed to the latter's leaving, recently scored a letter to the editor in the NY Times, responding to Judith Dobrzynski's recent Op-Ed piece on deaccessioning, Jim says he disagrees with Judy's opinion that "selling works of art to deal with a museum's financial crisis is [sometimes] justified for two reasons. First, it would not work, and second, it would probably have unintended consequences."

But the most important seal of approval is this, just in, from CultureDaughter:

Michael Brand's music pick [scroll down], "My Girls" by Animal Collective, is a very good song!  Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Now I guess I'll have to.

Remember when I brought you Tom Campbell's music? Here's Michael Brand's. (You're right, Joyce!)

There was a bit of a disconnect between the slideshow and the text of my Wall Street Journal article today on the new American Indian galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Only one of the objects that I mentioned in the piece, the Arikara shield, was in the slideshow.

So here's a photo essay with views of the galleries and more of the objects I mentioned (as well as a couple I didn't).

First, though, here's the star of the show who acquired for the museum about half the works on display---curator Gaylord Torrence, who, at the end of this post, will also have a star turn in a CultureGrrl Video from the Nov. 5 press preview:


Gaylord Torrence, Nelson-Atkins Museum's senior curator of American Indian Art

Here's the entrance to the galleries, with the Ojibwa buffalo-skin coat, on the left, that I discussed (and which Torrence analogized to the museum's celebrated Caravaggio). The cases, conceived by Rebecca Young, the museum's in-house design specialist, were fabricated by Laboratorio Museotecnico Goppion, the same Milan company responsible for encasing the "Mona Lisa." The galleries are actually more dimly lit (with dramatic lighting of the objects) than they appear here. I had to lighten the photo to make it legible:



Here's the late 18th-century Ojibwa coat---a cross-cultural object, patterned after an English officer's coat. Of the 18 known examples, it's the only one in an American public institution:



And here's a close-up of the intricate detailing on the shoulder. Women would have worked on the embellishments. Men would have fashioned the hide:



Here's the 70-inch-tall Northern Cheyenne feather headdress, c.1875, adorned with glass beads, ermine skin, silk ribbon and horsehair:



Next is the wooden Kwakiutl "Wild Woman" mask, ca. 1870. Fear of the mythical creature's presence in the woods, evoked by the mask's fierce features, was intended to keep small children close to home:



I referred to the important American Indian holdings of Ralph Coe, the former director of the Nelson-Atkins, as the "collection that got away." (He promised some 200 choice objects to the Metropolitan Museum, although he may have others left to give.) But here's one Coe piece that did go to the Nelson-Atkins and that was included in the new installation---an ingeniously designed painted wooden effigy chair, Heiltsuk, British Columbia, ca. 1865. A beaver's carved body adorns the seat; its tail rises behind to create a back support.



This is a work-in-progress collection with great strengths---Navajo textiles, Pueblo pottery, for example---but other areas that are barely or not at all represented. There's only one katsina doll at present---Hopi, ca. 1885:



But now let's turn it over to Gaylord, telling us about a Chilkat robe (dancing blanket), Tlingit, Southeast Alaska, ca. 1880-1900, by Mary Ebbetts Hunt:

Jeffrey Deitch's new project: LA MOCA's Geffen Contemporary

The membrane between the commercial and nonprofit artworlds has become considerably more permeable in recent years. As recently as 10 years ago (in connection with the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" exhibition, for example), it was considered inappropriate for museums to receive financial backing from dealers for shows of artists in their stables.

Now it's routine, as is the support of mega-collectors for museum shows of artists in whom they have a personal financial stake. Financially pressed museums can't help but be tempted to mount shows for which they know they can get funding from these self-interested, big-money players. One hand washes the other.

But in choosing dealer Jeffrey Deitch as its new director (effective June 1), LA MOCA has taken the museum-market nexus to a disturbing new level. There's a good reason why this has rarely happened before (notable exception: Walter Hopps) and it's shocking to me that major museum directors who arrived at their positions the old-fashioned way---Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, Michael Govan of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Brand of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Jeremy Strick, LA MOCA's former director---have so precipitously jumped on the MOCA bandwagon.

You can read Lowry's and Govan's comments in the museum's press release announcing the appointment. Here's what Brand (who will soon be leaving his Getty post and is now attending the Association of Art Museum Directors meeting in Sarasota) wrote this to me, in response to my e-mailed query:
 

I'm happy to say I've had the pleasure of knowing Jeffrey for a long time and have always thought he had both a serious sense of curiosity for contemporary art in all its forms coupled with a great sense of spectacle. He will add yet another very positive element to the creative mix in Los Angeles.

Jeremy Strick, who landed safely at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, after jumping ship from the foundering LA museum that he had led for almost a decade, wrote this to me:

Excellent appointment. Jeffrey possesses the talents and experience to accomplish great things for the institution.

I have no doubts about Jeffrey's knowledge of contemporary art and, particularly, his "sense of spectacle," as Brand called it. And I'm confident that his connections with megabucks collectors, as discussed in his interview with LA Times reporter Mike Boehm, are impressive:

Deitch said one of the best cards he holds is his long-standing relationships with art collectors around the world. Having sold them art, he'll try to sell them on giving large sums of money to MOCA.

So what's my problem?

For starters, Deitch owes his personal financial well-being to his collector/clients (including MOCA kingpin Eli Broad and New Museum trustee Dakis Joannou, among many others), as well as to the artists whose works he sells. It's fine, as a dealer, to privilege his inner circle and their interests. It's not fine to do so as a nonprofit museum director who must impartially cast a much wider net.

Deitch was chosen for his relationships, but it's precisely those private commercial connections, and their ramifications for a public nonprofit institution that worry me. Will artists attached to rival dealers be welcomed as warmly at MOCA as those from Deitch's chosen group? Will collectors who aren't associated with Deitch-the-Dealer be loath to associate with Deitch-the-Director? Will those collectors who always expected something from Deitch for their money still expect a quid pro quo---that the works and artists in their collections will be first among equals?

The thing that makes me the most uneasy (and that would, to my mind, be the deal-killer) is the possibility that Deitch will maintain some degree of financial interest in his gallery and its art. What we have read so far along these lines is not entirely reassuring. [See UPDATE at bottom of this post.]

He talked to Boehm of the LA Times about "possibly...transferring parts of the business to some of his current employees"---a vague pronouncement about something that should have been thoroughly worked out and vetted by MOCA's board. If and when he leaves MOCA, will those "parts of the business" taken over by current employees be "transferred" back to him? Will he retain any financial interest in the gallery and its art while he directs MOCA?

All of this must be thoroughly and publicly disclosed. And if he's still got a present or future financial stake in the gallery, he shouldn't be directing the museum.

Even more problematic is this from Candace Jackson's interview of Deitch for the Wall Street Journal:

Asked about possible conflicts of interest with artists he's represented, Mr. Deitch, who has been in the art business since the mid-1970s said, "there are too many long term relationships to be completely restrictive. We will do what is appropriate."

Just what is "appropriate"? The public needs to know.

It seems to me that the minimum requirement for jumping over the dealer/director divide is complete, irrevocable divestment of any commercial artworld interests. It's not enough for him to stop dealing. He needs sever ties with the art business that he created.

Similarly, Christopher Knight, the LA Times' art critic, says this:

Presumably MOCA's new director will be required to divest himself of all commercial or competing nonprofit arrangements, including two galleries in Lower Manhattan and one in Long Island City, across the East River from the United Nations....Since Deitch is reportedly a significant contemporary art collector in his own right, he should also be required to liquidate, or at the very least articulate the precise contents of his art holdings.

But the main reason why hiring Deitch to direct LA MOCA seems like a bad idea is that it's another wild fling for a museum that urgently needed to sober up. LA MOCA got into trouble and almost went under because of its deviation from time-honored museum management practices. It's now hitched its star for someone known for throwing financial caution to the winds when an attractive project beckons. Good for him. Not good for MOCA.

The recommended text for Deitch's substantial risk tolerance (and for anything else pertaining to Deitch) is his Nov. 12, 2007 profile in the New Yorker. Calvin Tomkins writes:

In the early nineties, Koons embarked on his most ambitious art project to date, a series, titled "Celebration," of very large sculptures and paintings based on toys, party foods, and other images of early childhood....Convinced that "Celebration" would be one of the most ambitious bodies of work in a decade, Deitch formed a syndicate with two other dealers, and together they took over the project....In the next ten years, the costs of fabricating the "Celebration" series to Koons's obsessively exacting specifications nearly brought Deitch to financial ruin.

Similarly, the belief of MOCA's previous director, Jeremy Strick, that ambitious programming would somehow attract commensurate financial support almost brought the museum to financial ruin.

MOCA can't afford to take another flyer. It needed a serious, seasoned museum professional, without commercial baggage and with a proven track record of keeping the proper balance between exciting programming and a balanced budget. The risks to its operations and reputation from its eccentric choice are too high.

UPDATE: Carol Vogel and Randy Kennedy of the NY Times, who briefly interviewed Deitch, report:

By the time he formally takes over the museum on June 1, he said, he will have ceased all of his commercial activities and will have closed his gallery.

I presume that at today's press conference, all this will be clearly and thoroughly delineated. If it's true, it should have been in writing, in the initial press release.

You can read tomorrow's Wall Street Journal piece today: Elevating American Indian Art. And don't miss the slideshow, particularly the eighth image---the Arikara shield of a buffalo bull that curator Gaylord Torrence called, "probably the most important object that I will acquire."

Here's my own inadequate photo:

Candace Jackson of the Wall Street Journal gets an early shot at talking to Jeffrey Deitch in his new capacity as director-designate of LA MOCA.

Here's the part I'm interested in:

Asked about possible conflicts, Mr. Deitch, who has been in the art business since the mid 1970s said, "there are too many long term relationships to be completely restrictive. We will do what is appropriate."

Ms. [Maria] Bell, the board co-chair who was involved in the search committee process, said the terms of Mr. Deitch's contract dictate that he has until June to cease commercial activity in his galleries....

Mr. Deitch says he'll be spending part of the next few months ensuring that the staff and artists he works with---some of whom receive stipends and free housing---would have "a good transition."

I think we need this fleshed out out a whole lot more. Interestingly, the most high-profile example I can think of in which a dealer became a museum director was in the Los Angeles area: Walter Hopps was a founder of LA's legendary Ferus Gallery before his directorship stints at three different museums---the Pasadena Art Museum; the Menil Collection, Houston; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington. (He was also a curator at what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a adjunct senior curator at the Guggenheim.)

Nevertheless, it's common for museums to have a policy against including dealers and auctioneers on their boards, let alone in their director's chairs.

There are some compelling reasons for that. (More later.)

Jay Benzel, editor of the NY Times' ArtsBeat blog, responds to Department of No News: LA MOCA Appointment Still Stalled:

In your post about Carol Vogel's item Monday in the "Arts, Briefly" column, you say that the item was "pulled" from ArtsBeat. That is not the case. It ran online, as nearly all Sunday-for-Monday "Arts, Briefly" items do, only in the "Arts, Briefly" column, which you link to. "ArtsBeat" is staffed Monday through Friday. There are occasional posts as needed over the weekend, but the Sunday-for-Monday "Arts, Briefly" items are not posted throughout the day as the items are on weekdays.

The rumor is now reality. LA MOCA has just issued a press release announcing the appointment of dealer Jeffrey Deitch as the museum's new director, replacing Charles Young, the interim CEO. Deitch even gets the Glenn Lowry and Michael Govan seals of approval, as if to head off criticism that appointing a commercial dealer to lead a nonprofit art museum is unseemly or even ethically dicey.

Speaking of which, there's no word in the press release as to what will happen to Deitch's gallery and his personal stake in it. Details on that had better be provided, with full disclosure and transparency, at the press conference, now rescheduled for 10:30 a.m., Pacific time, tomorrow.

Will I have more to say on this soon? You know it.

The attendees at the Association of Art Museum Directors' midwinter meeting, now in progress in chilly Sarasota, FL, have so much to talk about!

Dewey Beats Truman? The returns aren't in yet.

No word yet on when, if or who, regarding LA MOCA's announcement of its new director, which was to have occurred at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time today. But at least, thanks to Mike Boehm of the LA Times, we now know the subject matter of the mayoral press conference that supposedly conflicted with the planned announcement:

The reason given for the postponement is that MOCA's announcement, which was set on Friday, has come into conflict with an unexpected late-morning news conference hastily called by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Sunday night to announce the appointment of a new deputy mayor who will take charge of the city's desperate finances.

Why this precludes a simultaneous announcement of a new cultural leader beats me. The mayor wasn't even listed among those participating in the LA MOCA roll-out, although two members of the LA Council were. Maybe philanthropist Eli Broad just needs to be everywhere.

It's worth noting that the LA Times seems to be pulling back from its Deitch prediction. Boehm is now saying:

Among the names circulating for  the MOCA job are Jeffrey Deitch, a New York art dealer; Lisa Phillips director of the New Museum in New York, and Lars Nittve, former director of London's Tate Modern, now with the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Even more interesting is the online AWOL status of Carol Vogel's New Chief to Be Named for Los Angeles Museum (pictured above). It's accompanied by Deitch's photo, supporting the premature presumption that he is, indeed, the anointed one. Her item, which reports the rumors, is the lead piece in the Arts, Briefly column of the hardcopy of today's NY Times. But it's nowhere to be found on the online Arts page or on the ArtsBeat blog where it would ordinarily appear. (I unearthed it online it by doing a search on "Jeffrey Deitch.")

Did they pull it from it's accustomed online spot because it was not news, only conjecture?

As for me, I'm still rooting for the "Dewey Beats Truman" scenario!

This just in from the press office of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art:

Due to a scheduling conflict with a Mayoral press conference, this event [the announcement of the museum's new director] scheduled for Monday, January 11, 2010, at 10:30am has been postponed. New information will be forthcoming.

You know what I always tell you: When I know more, you'll know more.

Good thing I didn't fly in for the occasion!

Jerry Saltz

[UPDATE: My own critical analysis of of Deitch's now confirmed appointment is here.]

A good way to influence opinion is to be first. An early comment, especially from a respected source, catches the attention of other pundits, who may feel qualms about striking out in the opposite direction.

Lacking my caution about opinionating on a development that hasn't even happened yet, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz this afternoon dispatched an e-mail titled, "Jerry Saltz on Jeffrey Deitch Appointed Director of LA MOCA."

"APPOINTED"? Do we know that he's been appointed?

Turns out that the early bird didn't have more than the rest of us wormless ones, except for this:

Reached via e-mail, Deitch admitted he was in "discussion" with MOCA.

[Now RESCHEDULED.]

Now hitting art journalists' e-mail boxes around the country:





















It's a mystery! Who could it be? Mike Boehm of the LA Times reports tonight that three names are in the air, none of whom strikes me as the right choice (for different reasons): dealer Jeffrey Deitch (too commercial), New Museum director Lisa Phillips (too new at the new New), Lars Nittve (not a rousing success as founding director of the Tate Modern).

Maybe they'll surprise us. I won't even begin to speculate, having been notably clueless in picking Philippe de Montebello's successor at the Metropolitan Museum.

Then again, I do hear Michael Brand is suddenly available!

UPDATE: Mike Boehm has updated his article to suggest that Deitch is likely the one. Here's the kicker:

Deitch did not respond to a request for comment. An assistant at Deitch's gallery said he was in Los Angeles to attend meetings.

To which we all say, "Hmmmm..." I would also say a few other things, but let's wait till the news actually hits.

The sun sets at Michael Brand's Getty Museum.

The LA Times' art critic, Christopher Knight, who has just posted his first take on the Getty management turmoil, ponders the deleterious effect on art museums of "revolving door" directorships.

Knight writes:

In the museum world, it takes at least two or three years [as director] just to begin to see a glimmer of the fruits of one's labors....

[Michael] Brand has not been in place long enough to leave a major stamp on the Getty Museum in terms of collection, exhibition history or staff. That's a shame. His successor's job thus becomes even more important.

At an art museum with the power to shape cultural perceptions on the international stage, continuity matters. Getty President James Wood knows that. He was director of the Art Institute of Chicago for 24 years.

Across the continent in New York, we too have experienced our share of revolving-door directorships (not to mention revolving-door architects)---at the Whitney Museum. In our case, though, there's always been a plausible (if not necessarily complete) explanation for the dislocations.

Given its past history of scandal, the Getty's refusal to give us even the slightest clue about what's going on there can only give rise to rampant speculation, as well as a buzzing swarm of reporters trying to gather unattributed comments from secondary sources. If, as has been suggested by various writers (including me), there has been a professional disagreement between Michael Brand and James Wood, there should be a way for the Getty's principals and/or spokespersons to discuss this tactfully and thoughtfully, without denigrating either side.

Reasonable people can (and sometimes do) disagree. Better to be forthcoming and forthright than to stonewall, stoking a media feeding frenzy. This is a public institution and at least a modicum of public accountability is called for---especially in light of the planned expenditure of significant institutional resources on the severance package of someone who has chosen to leave, at a time when many other employees were involuntarily terminated because of the Getty's financial shorfalls.

J. Paul Getty Museum's Los Angeles campus

The terms of Getty Museum director Michael Brand's severance package are hiding in plain sight in the Compensation Disclosure section of the Getty Trust's website, as was helpfully pointed out to me this evening by the Getty Trust's vice president for communications, Ron Hartwig.

Scroll down to p. 5, "Senior Management Compensation," which was updated just three weeks ago. What's interesting is that those terms are more generous than those posted on the Getty's website the previous year. (Was that done in anticipation of his departure?)

Here are the current terms:

Dr. Brand's employment agreement provides severance benefits (unless Dr. Brand is terminated for "cause") that include a lump sum cash payment equal to twelve months salary, as well as health care coverage for him and his family for up to twelve months, both reduced by amounts earned by Dr. Brand from any successor employer within twelve months after his employment with the Trust ends.

He may continue to use the [Getty Trust-owned] Residence for an additional 10 months, or if he elects to vacate earlier, he receives a monthly amount equal to rent, maintenance and utilities for comparable housing for the remaining period not to exceed 10 months total. He also receives relocation expenses in an amount comparable to those paid by the Trust in connection with his relocation to Los Angeles.

His severance benefits under the prior year's terms (again, p. 5) did not include anything contained in the second paragraph (housing and/or rent, maintenance and utilities, relocation expenses to move elsewhere).

As reported on p. 3 of the above-linked "Compensation Disclosure" document, Brand's 2009 base pay, effective last July 1, is $513,079; his "housing allowance & imputed value" is $279,539. According to Hartwig, he will also get "a lump sum pension payment, less than $100,000."

In a written response to my written questions, Hartwig stated that no other benefits or cash payments outside of the published severance benefits will be received by Brand in connection with his departure, and there is no agreement that binds the parties to remain silent about the reasons for his leaving.

I also asked if the severance agreement applies in a case such as this, where the employee has elected, of his own accord, to leave. Hartwig replied:

Michael is entitled to the severance pursuant to his agreement with the Trust.

Hartwig also reconfirmed that it was Brand's decision to leave. He wasn't terminated.

As for the reasons behind Brand's abrupt departure, both the NY Times and LA Times are now corroborating my surmise that tension between him and James Wood, the Getty Trust's president, may have been an important factor. The LA Times, in an update bolstered by the reporting of Jason Felch of the famous Felcholino team (whatever happened to their promised book on the Getty?), speculates about Brand's and Wood's possible "differences of opinion over the Getty's strategic vision." The NY Times said the two officials are thought to have "sharply different ideas about the direction the museum should take."

Both newspapers arrived at their conclusions after discussions with unnamed artworld sources. Both also pointed to the difficulties inherent in a governance structure that puts a CEO over a museum director on the organization chart.

The LA paper revealed that "current and former Getty officials pointed to a 'personality clash'" between the director and president.

In other words, we still don't know what's going on. So until I hear differently, I choose to believe that this purported clash is all about their different tastes in music. Just look at the eclectic list that Brand selected (and discussed) for the Nov. 18 edition of radio station KCRW's Guest DJ Project:

Bob Marley: Small Axe (Paul & Price Remix)
Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue: Where the Wild Roses Grow
Dengue Fever: Tiger Phone Card
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu: Gurrumul History (I Was Born Blind)
Animal Collective: My Girls

I strongly suspect these are not anywhere to be found among James Wood's favorites. In fact, I would speculate (without any knowledge) that Jim's playlist might lean more towards Philippe's picks.

While we await Wood's turn at the turntable (and Brand's announcement of his next gig), here's DJ Mike in November with KCRW host Jason Bentley:

In case it wasn't "interesting" already, this just in from David Ng of the LA Times (who couldn't get departing Getty director Michael Brand to comment about his reasons for leaving):

Brand, who turns 52 on Saturday, said he would continue to receive his salary until December, when his contract expires. 

He said he would also have access to the Getty-owned museum director's residence, where he lives rent-free.

Did he receive any other concessions from the Getty, in exchange for which he perhaps promised not to discuss what prompted him to leave a post that, from all appearances, he loved? Inquiring minds what to know.

In particular, we want to know why it is deemed a nonprofit institution's appropriate expense to pay a year's worth of salary and free housing to an official who has (if we are to believe the public statements) elected, of his own accord, to quit. Did he have cause? The "cause," if any, may have been as simple as another proposed salary cut, due to the Getty Trust's financial constraints, which he refused to accept. We just don't know.

My own feverishly imaginative mind has started having traumatic flashbacks to the departure from the same post of Deborah Gribbon, now interim director of the Cleveland Museum. Like Deborah, Michael has always struck me as a person of principle. I could be wrong. We just don't know.

What I do know is that someone needs to tell us more than "no comment" about what's going on at the Getty.

The Getty Museum

[My first post on Brand's resignation is here. The Getty's press release announcing his departure is now online.]

The Getty Museum's PR people have just forwarded to me the statement from director Michael Brand to his staff, in which he expresses his great appreciation for their work and never once acknowledges the Getty Trust's president and former director of the Art Institute of Chicago, James Wood. That coupled with Woods' chilly brush-off of Brand in the museum's press release ("I have every confidence that he will excel in whatever he chooses to do in the years ahead.") leads me to guess that there has been tension between them. Over what, we've yet to learn.

Here's Brand's adieu to the staff, in full:

Dear Getty Museum Staff:

For those of you unable to attend this morning's Museum all-staff meeting, I wanted to write to you to let you know that after four greatly rewarding years as Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, I am stepping down as of January 29.

I was brought to the Getty in 2005 to provide a strategic vision and strong leadership that would help the Museum solve a number of outstanding problems and re-establish its reputation as one of the world's greatest art museums. I am extremely proud of what I have been able to accomplish with you towards those goals over these past four years. The contribution of the Museum Senior Staff team that I was able to put together has been a key factor in this success.

The great professionalism of all of you who work for this Museum continues to astound me. We have been through a number of significant challenges together and, through them all, I have been constantly impressed by your total dedication to serving our public and making the Getty Museum the world leader it is today. None of what I have achieved could have been possible without you and so for that, I must say a heartfelt thank you.

With the successful re-opening of the Getty Villa in early 2006, I had the privilege of being the first director of the Getty Museum to oversee the full two-campus operation, and soon afterwards we opened the spectacular new Center for Photographs at the Getty Center. These two facilities will forever make their mark on both the Getty as a whole and the city of Los Angeles.

I am especially pleased that we were able to break through a deadlock and settle claims by Italy and Greece for certain objects in our antiquities collection, and that we now enjoy a renewed relationship with the governments of both those countries. The fruits of the partnership with Italy have included the extraordinary loans to the historic Bernini exhibition and the current loan of the phenomenal Chimaera of Arezzo, all of which have brought this institution much public and critical acclaim.

Brilliant new acquisitions over the past four years have made an indelible mark in all areas of the Museum's permanent collection, and we have looked in new geographic directions for exhibitions and to new technologies for the delivery of some of our inspiring educational programs. The list of books published, and the quality of design in all of our endeavors has been second to none.

Perhaps most of all, I am proud to have instilled a culture at the Getty Museum in which nurturing differing points of view and promoting robust debate are seen as an essential component of our creative process.

After a break in Los Angeles, I look forward to continuing the same interests that have inspired me here at the Getty.

I am grateful that my good friend and colleague, David Bomford, has agreed to serve as the Museum's interim director until my successor is hired. I will work with David to ensure a smooth transition through the end of January.

Thank you so much for an extraordinary four years at the Getty Museum. Tina and I, and our daughters Isabel and Claudia, will miss you all greatly. I hope our paths cross many times in the future.

Michael

Michael Brand

This is a shocker. The press release is not online at this writing. [UPDATE: It's now here.]

Here are the highlights:

GETTY MUSEUM DIRECTOR MICHAEL BRAND STEPS DOWN

LOS ANGELES - James N. Wood, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, announced today that Dr. Michael Brand has elected to step down as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum at the end of January. He will be available to serve as a consultant through the end of the summer. Brand joined the Getty in December 2005 with a five-year contract [which means he was intending to stay at least another year]. Wood said that David Bomford, associate director for collections at the Museum, will serve as interim director of the Museum until Brand's successor is named.

"I am very proud of what I have been able to achieve in my four years as director of the Getty Museum, especially the successful conclusion of negotiations with Italy and Greece, the establishment of new relationships with sister institutions in Mexico, and opening up the Museum's exhibition program to non-Western art and contemporary art, as well as an unprecedented level of collaboration with the Getty's three other programs. I look forward to further pursuing such interests after a break in Los Angeles," said Brand.

"I am very pleased at how the Getty Museum has continued to mature into a highly innovative and respected art institution since my appointment in 2005, and I want to pay tribute to the incredible professionals with whom I have been privileged to work at the Getty," he added.

"Dr. Brand not only led efforts to settle issues impacting the Museum's antiquities collection, he worked to frame a new acquisitions policy for the Getty that squarely addresses provenance issues, and he has been a leader within the profession in this regard. I have every confidence that he will excel in whatever he chooses to do in the years ahead," said Jim Wood.

Wood said that a search committee to identify Brand's successor will be formed shortly.

If and when I know more, you'll know more. Now we know what they'll all be talking about at the Association of Art Museum Directors' meeting next week in Sarasota.

UPDATE: More CultureGrrl commentary on this here.

Does this look like me? (my new Google persona)

The Internet does weird things.

If you now Google Lee Rosenbaum (without putting quotes around the name), you'll see five "Image Results for Lee Rosenbaum." They include three images of the real me, one of another who bears my name (and happens to be a veteran magazine publisher) and...Philippe de Montebello!

Image results for Lee Rosenbaum

Thank you for the feedback. Report another imagePlease report the offensive image. CancelDone

They found me out, art-lings. I'm really the Melliflous One in drag.

This happened because of this post from the Looting Matters blog, which used the above PdM photo in a brief, appreciative mention of my Philippe Baby tribute song. What happens if I compose an ode to Meryl Streep. Do I get a chance to be she?

While we're on the subject of mistaken identity, I am NOT the "leerosenbaum" on Twitter, to which you'll see a link if you Google me. My Twitter handle is "CultureGrrl."

Google includes a "Report Images" link, where you can "report offensive images." I'm amused, not offended. I'll leave the policing to Philippe!

UPDATE: It's now 20 days since I posted this. Alas, someone must have clicked the "Report images" link. I've got two new image-mates, but Philippe has disappeared.

Site of the Barnes Foundation's future foundation

After I attended the Philadelphia Art Commission's meeting where the plans for the new facility for the Barnes Foundation were approved, I headed over to the active construction site, just a few blocks away.

On the video at the end of this post, in which I'll show you the construction action, I comment:

It's not your mother's Barnes.

If Andrew Stewart, the foundation's kind spokesperson (who was nice enough to escort me inside the fence), hadn't been at my elbow, I might well have said:

It's not Albert Barnes' Barnes.

Actually, that goes without saying. Anything that puts the doctor's renowned and cherished collection anywhere else than the place where he stipulated it should always remain can never be "Albert Barnes' Barnes."

Although we've never seen a detailed rendering of what the new building's exterior will look like, there's now an on-site prototype of a wall with a window. Admittedly, it's unfair to judge a whole building from one fragment. But to me it looks likely to be the antithesis of the dignified, classically balanced façade of the Paul Cret-designed mansion in Merion, where Barnes had stipulated that his collection was always to remain:


The Barnes Foundation in Merion

Here's part of the prototype at the Philadelphia site. In reality, the stone is more beige, less pink, than it appears here:



One wouldn't expect a contemporary architect to slavishly recreate an 84-year-old building. But I was disconcerted by Tod Williams' and Billie Tsien's crazy-quilt arrangement ("syncopated," in the architects' words) of limestone panels that that will sprout not one but two types of fins---limestone (which you see just to the right of the window, above) and bronze, jutting out at the right side of the stainless steel channel.

Here's another view of the right side of the wall that you see above:


Here's the limestone fin in the foreground, with the bronze fin above and to the right:



Here's a closer look at the bronze fin, which, as you can see, has a speckled  texture:



And here's the oak-framed window, somewhat incongruously set in the limestone:



The Jerusalem limestone chosen for the project is a busy, mottled surface ("lively," the architects call it). The panel below is particularly lively. It contains fossils:



Now that I've given you the background, let's all don our hardhats and get our shoes nice and muddy!

I guess that the Palace of Versailles hasn't yet had its fill of controversy.

Having mounted a 2008 show of Jeff Koons' works in the royal preserve, it's tapped Takashi Murakami for a retrospective exhibition, Sept. 12-Dec. 12. The plan (but not the dates) was announced last September.

Agence France-Presse reports:

Since controversy provoked by the Jeff Koons exhibition, the palace, a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy, is being careful to avoid displaying works with pornographic or morbid connotations that might offend some visitors.

I guess that rules this one out:

An earlier rendering of the new Philadelphia facility for the Barnes Foundation, now slightly revised

[More on the Philly Barnes, including my photos and video of on-site prototype, here.]

The Art & Architecture Committee of the Philadelphia Art Commission met this morning and unanimously approved the plans submitted by the Barnes Foundation for its new Philadelphia facility. At the committee's request, the design of the site was slightly revised from plans that were conditionally approved last October. The drop-off area, which you see to the right of the building in the above photo, was made smaller and more park-like, and its canopy was redesigned.

"The work is marvelous and the attention to detail is superior," one of the committee members commented during the meeting.

I was at the presentation, which, unlike the last one, was sparsely attended. The Friends of the Barnes, who oppose the move from the foundation's current location in Merion, were notably absent: No audience members responded to the committee's invitation for public comment.

The architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (mostly the former), narrated a slide presentation of the project and spoke with me afterwards. I'll have more on this, including at least one CultureGrrl video, coming soon. But while I'm briefly in Philly, I must go to see the Bruce Nauman show at the Philadelphia Museum.

For now, here's something to occupy you---the 44-page submission that the Barnes provided to the Art Commission in advance of the meeting. (I hope the link works for your; it didn't for me on the little notebook computer I'm using at my hotel.)

UPDATE: Now that I'm home at my usual computer, the link does call up the full document, but it may take a while to load.......

Readers weigh in on whether museums' art sale proceeds should sometimes be used for purposes other than acquisitions. The question was analyzed in this CultureGrrl post, which took issue with Judith Dobrzynski's NY Times Op-Ed piece. Judy called for a slight relaxation of the strictures against selling art to pay bills or reduce debt.

Dewey Blanton, head of media relations for the American Association of Museums, issued this statement in response to my request for comment:

The current guidance on deaccessioning represents a field-wide consensus. It recognizes the important role deaccessioning plays in managing and improving collections, while strongly upholding the larger principle that collections are not ordinary assets, to be disposed of for operating needs, but rather represent a trust held for the future.

When it comes to deaccessioning, the ethics of the field are not broken---and we therefore would not support efforts to "fix" them.

David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum and of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, wrote:

Good solid argument. I remain with you on this [the principle that art-sale proceeds should be used to acquire art]..

You can only imagine how certain trustees will twist Judith's reasoning and begin to put pressure on directors to see the collection as a fungible asset.

Martha Richards, executive director of WomenArts, an organization promoting opportunities for female artists, wrote:

I am glad you are covering this issue, and I agree with you that museums should not be selling their art to pay their operating expenses. However, I don't believe [as I argued in CultureGrrl] that "smarter management, intensified fundraising, improved marketing, innovative earned-income strategies, and (truly the last resort) temporary cuts of expenses and staff are the right ways to meet financial crises."

Most of us in the non-profit arts world have been trying to be smarter, intensify our efforts, and cut costs for the past 10 to 20 years. I think many institutions are at the point where they have hit the limits of those strategies---the staff members are worn out and there is nothing left to cut.

If we are talking about legislative efforts, we need increased government support for the arts. It doesn't make sense to me for the government to tell museum directors they can't sell their works if they aren't going to offer any other kind of financial relief.

The Association of Art Museum Directors, whose Deaccessions Task Force is considering possible policy revisions, will take up the subject at its mid-winter meeting next week in  Sarasota. Its officials declined to comment for this post. Perhaps they'll have more to say after the meeting.

I also commend to you the comments appended to Dobrzynski's own blog post on this subject.

Developer Richard Tucker at a one of Fort Lee's public meetings where rival proposals for mixed-use construction projects were presented

My "think global, act local" campaign continues, as I seek the selection of architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia, partnering with Tucker Development Corp., to design a high-profile mixed-use project at the base of the George Washington Bridge in my town, Fort Lee.

In today's Record, our regional newspaper, is my opinion piece: Shaping a New Look for Fort Lee---an Op-Ed article that I adapted from the statement I made at the borough's Dec. 28 town hall meeting (for which I previously received a smattering of newspaper and television coverage).

Since then, our local newspaper, the Fort Lee Suburbanite, gave my comments more play on its website (and perhaps also in next Friday's hardcopy).

There's been a lot of talk on the part of our Fort Lee Film Commission about devoting part of the vacant site to some kind of museum, perhaps one devoted to Fort Lee's role in the early history of American movies. Actor John Barrymore once lived here and the early "cliffhangers" were filmed on our Palisades:

Where did our art go? (illustration by Sophia Martineck for my 2005 NY Times deaccession Op-Ed)

Back in November 2005, I published a NY Times Op-Ed piece, For Sale: Our Permanent Collection, which ended this way:

When museums cross too many lines [which I argued had already happened], the public's elected representatives must step in. Otherwise, it won't be long before pragmatic museum trustees sell a Degas "Toilette" to pay for the toilets.

Now, four years later, ArtsJournal blogger Judith Dobrzynski is arguing in the same forum that the time has come to sell the art to pay the plumber, so long as the disposal will not "irreparably damage the collection" and is deemed absolutely necessary to keep those toilets (and/or the rest of the museum) running.

In The Art of the Deal, Judy's Saturday NY Times Op-Ed piece, she incompletely summarizes the anti-deaccession argument of those of us who believe that the guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors should be scrupulously followed:

The strict constructionists believe that once selling art to cover operating costs is allowed, it will become the first resort in bad times, not the last.

Actually, we strict constructionists don't believe that such sales should be allowed at all, even as a last resort. The "slippery slope" argument is just the kicker. In truth, there's no such thing as a single "last resort." Smarter management, intensified fundraising, improved marketing, innovative earned-income strategies, and (truly the last resort) temporary cuts of expenses and staff are the right ways to meet financial crises. Selling the art is a seductively easy way to raise cash for operations and debt reduction. But it's the wrong way: Art is the raison d'être of museums and the "deaccession or die" argument is specious.

Judy had previously believed that museums should "use the proceeds [from deaccessions] according to AAMD rules." But she now believes that desperate times call for desperate measures: She notes that because "museums everywhere are having trouble making ends meet," deaccession rules now need to be loosened.

I had always thought that rules were meant to be followed not only when it's easy to do so, but especially when it's hard.

True, Dobrzynski doesn't want to make it easy for museums to break the time-honored prohibition against using art proceeds for operations and debt reduction. She recommends that the very organizations that established and vigorously defended that rule now relax it, assuming the role of enablers of desperation deaccessioning. She wants such groups as the AAMD, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries and the American Association of Museums to become de facto Deaccession Commissions, examining a foundering institution's finances and collections to judge whether it should be granted a special dispensation to sell its art to pay its bills.

Why Dobrzynski thinks that the above-mentioned professional organizations would want to (let alone be equipped to) take on this dicey regulatory role is anyone's guess. Where would they draw the line between museums that should be allowed to monetize collections and those that should redouble their efforts to improve the bottom line by other means? And why would she think that institutions (like the National Academy) that are intent on refilling their coffers through art sales would voluntarily submit to such "arbitration"?

Far better would be an expansion of what AAMD already does: At a session devoted to the economic crisis during its January 2009 mid-winter meeting, museum directors were encouraged to identify themselves as "individuals in need" and "individuals who can help," as Michael Conforti, AAMD's president, told me in an interview for his Wall Street Journal profile. Similarly, Michael Kaiser, president of Kennedy Center, last year established an Arts in Crisis mentorship programs for performing-arts institutions in trouble. AAMD's efforts would be better spent formalizing and extending its own mentorship initiative than dishing out deaccession exemptions, as Judy recommends.

Meanwhile, whatever happened to the Brodsky Bill, which would provide needed regulation of deaccessions by museums in New York State? Let's go to Daniel Grant's Portrait of a Challenging Year, which, in last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, detailed the good, the bad and the ugly in 2009 museum operations.

Grant writes:

New York State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky (working with the New York State Board of Regents and the Museum Association of New York) put forward a bill that would prohibit museums from using sale proceeds "for traditional and customary operating expenses."

No action on that legislation has been taken yet.