May 2010 Archives

Rick Mather, architect for the latest VMFA expansion

An under-the-radar museum gets an under-the-radar expansion by an under-the-radar architect.

Considering the size, scope and importance of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' collection, it generally receives surprisingly little attention from the media outside of Virginia.

And considering the architectural importance of its recent expansion---the first major project in this country by American-born, London-based architect Rick Mather---the May 1 opening of the McGlothlin Wing garnered surprisingly scant mainstream media coverage (with one notable exception besides me, which I'll link to tomorrow).

On the "Leisure & Arts" page of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal (if all goes according to plan), I'll shine a deserved spotlight on the VMFA's and Mather's achievements in a far-ranging project that's still very much a work-in-progress. I'll link to my review tonight once it's up on the Web.

For now, here's a teaser---an irreverent CultureGrrl Video of a museum not quite ready for its close-up. Its public opening occurred the day after I shot this hardhat-adorned video:

Agnes Gund, Museum of Modern Art's president emerita, as seen among the posted mug shots of Marina Abramović's visitors
Photograph: Marco Anelli

If, unlike me, you want to endure a long wait in line in the Museum of Modern Art's atrium for the chance to sit opposite Marina Abramović, you'll have to do it today. The performance priestess' self-imposed penance, which began on Mar. 14, is mercifully drawing to an end. Visitors for this final day will be limited to a 15-minute stare. Previously, departure time was left up to the visitor's discretion (or lack thereof).

Although I didn't partake in the main event, I did peruse the sixth-floor show, finding the most riveting moments in the videos of Marina with her most celebrated and sympathetic performance partner, Ulay. Especially powerful was that watershed (and for Marina, tearful) meeting when, after converging from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, they agreed to part company, rather than marry, as had originally been planned. In a piece for today's NY Times, Holland Cotter dismisses much of the sixth floor, particularly the various reenactments sans Marina.

I did personally pay some performance dues by sliding sideways between the nude man and woman (originally embodied by Marina and Ulay) who flanked a narrow entrance. I resolved to face the male when I made my passage, but chickened out at the last moment, turning towards the female instead. I also realized just in time that I was carrying an extremely fat handbag, which I needed to send through the narrow space ahead of me, if I was going to fit between the sentinels.

This exercise in split-second problem-solving and adaptation made me feel very foolish. And I felt very queasy when I saw a child who must have been about seven years old perusing this definitely not-for-children display of not just nudity but bizarre and potentially very disturbing behavior. Sometimes "parental discretion" just isn't enough.

The Guggenheim's Tino Seghal show (now closed) on the other hand, began by making me feel somewhat exasperated by the cluelessness of my three sequential guides (roughly 10, 19 and 35 years old) at the bottom three-quarters of the Wright spiral, but ultimately satisfied by my fourth and final encounter with an arts aficionado of my own generation. I ended my Dante-esque journey bathed in the heavenly glow of the Guggenheim's uncovered skylight, feeling more receptive to communing with random strangers than I ever thought possible.

I immediately struck up an amusing conversation with a visitor who, like me, was staring down from the upper ramps at the performance of the Seghal-choreographed lovers on the floor of the lobby. When I got down to their level, I watched two little giggly girls gleefully rolling around on the floor in imitation of the couple. After I left the museum, I was uncharacteristically kind to foreign tourists needing my assistance in finding a bus: Instead of acting the brusque New Yorker, I not only smiled and pointed them in the right direction, but then doubled back (feeling I hadn't done enough) and advised them to ask the driver if that particular bus was going to their specific destination.

For me, the best art-experience is one that makes me see the world in a different light.

But back to Marina: It seems that the photographer for the NY Times saw the sixth-floor show somewhat differently than I did: Someone must have discreetly rearranged the skeleton in Nude with Skeleton for the slideshow that accompanies Cotter's piece. When I visited, both the nude and his penis were looking me right in the eye.

If you want to look Marina right in the eye, but don't want to or can't visit her in person, you can always click on her live web feed, which will shut down for the last time on the last day of May at 5 p.m.

UPDATE: At this writing (12:50 p.m.), it appears that the live feed isn't working. Too many hits?

Actor Dennis Hopper, best known for his 1969 "Easy Rider" film role, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 74. His less known visual arts work is the subject of the first show to be brought to LA MOCA by dealer Jeffrey Deitch, the museum's incoming director: Dennis Hopper Double Standard, July 11-Sept. 26.

Coincidentally, today is the last day of the last show, Shepard Fairey: May Day, at Deitch Projects, which is closing shop as its owner decamps for his MOCA directorship, effective Tuesday.

Cover of catalogue for Rose Art Museum's "permanent" collection

In a detailed, thoroughly reported story for today's Boston Globe, Geoff Edgers' dropped this pre-holiday weekend bombshell: Brandeis to Loan Art to Boost Budget. In his account, Edgers repeatedly uses the "loan" euphemism, but what's really contemplated is renting the Rose Art Museum's collection for big bucks:

Brandeis University, which stirred controversy last year by proposing to close its Rose Art Museum, now plans to hire Sotheby's auction house as a broker to raise money by loaning out artworks, the school confirmed yesterday.

Is this better than selling the collection, as had been initially contemplated? Yes. At least the art would not be irretrievably lost to Brandeis and, quite possibly, the public.

But the fact that this is the lesser of two evils doesn't make it good. (More about my negative take on rental shows, whereby art-rich institutions exploit art-poor sister institutions, rather than cooperating collegially, is here.) A fundraising dispersal of the Rose trove to big-money borrowers would remove the art from the academic community that should be able to use it as a cultural and educational resource, as was intended by the donors.

Particularly problematic is the role of Sotheby's in brokering this deal, as reported by Edgers and confirmed by me by spokespersons for both Brandeis and Sotheby's:

Sotheby's approached the university [emphasis added] about a year ago suggesting the new plan. The university will sign a contract with the auction house sometime next month and hopes to begin fielding specific proposals as soon as this fall.

When asked whether the Brandeis trustees might consider reversing their early vote to consider selling works, [Brandeis President Jehuda] Reinharz reiterated that the board voted twice to keep the option open.

The first Johns "Flag," 1954-55, collection of the Museum of Modern Art
© 2010 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

When we last discussed the Michael Crichton sale at Christie's, we had the NY Times' Carol Vogel fingering Bryn Mawr dealer Richard Rossello as the buyer of the record-breaking $28.6-million Jasper Johns "Flag" (not the one shown above) and everybody else saying it was New York private dealer Michael Altman. Both putative buyers were better known for buying and selling traditional American art, not later classics from the Pop era.

Everyone stood his story: No one ran a correction.

It turns out there's a good reason for that, as I learned in a recent interview with Rossello, whom I reached by phone at his Avery Galleries. At the end of the interview, he discusses why he was surprised that the price didn't soar beyond his reach. I close this post by suggesting one reason why that might have been.

Here's what Rossello told me. (I'm the "Q." He's the "A."):

Q: Different journalists reported that you or that Michael Altman was the buyer of the Johns "Flag." Who really bought it?

A: It's very simple. Michael and I collaborate occasionally with different clients. I was the buyer of record. We were there together and I let Michael do the bidding.

Q: You both deal in non-contemporary American art for the most part, right?

A: For the most part. I do some Postwar but rarely do I venture into Pop.

Q: My guess is that your client is someone who normally buys the kind of art that you two specialize in, but in this instance decided to stretch for something more contemporary---an iconic American flag image that perhaps is something that someone interested in earlier American art can also relate to. Can you tell me if there's any truth to that?

A: I can't really. We have a couple of different clients at a very high level. One of them is almost exclusively Postwar. I can't comment on who's doing what, but this picture is going to be a very good fit in the collection that it's going to. The collection is broadly based and representative of a lot of different pictures.

Q: Does it include Pop Art and contemporary art?

A: At the moment we're not doing things like Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. We're not doing truly contemporary. But I don't consider paintings from the '50s to '70s to be contemporary.

Q: Will the Johns have a public life as well as being displayed in a private collection?

A: I certainly hope that it does and anticipate that we might be able to get it into a public forum in the not too distant future. Most of the collectors we work with have been very generous with their willingness to lend work and sometimes it amazes me because sometimes these works travel all over the world and they're gone for a year. And these are works that the people who buy them love. It's been rare for us to turn down a reasonable request with reasonable notice.

Q: And has there already been a request?

A: I can tell you that we have had requests.

Q: From museums?

A: Yes.

Q: When it's loaned, will the collector be identified?

A: I don't know.

Q: You said on your Twitter page [scroll to May 12] that you were surprised you got it. Did you think it would go for more?

A: I really did, and it's not because the price was unfairly low. I think the price was fair. But I actually thought that because of the image, someone would be willing spend more money than I would be able to justify. I was surprised that sanity prevailed. I would not have been surprised to see the picture go for $40 million to $50 million. I really thought it could go there---that was the gossip on the street---but it's easier to say numbers like that than to write checks for them.

Q: Why do you think it didn't go that high?

A: I think that in general, if you look at the market and the way the sales were conducted, the craziness and frothiness of the market a couple of years ago has been replaced with a much more orderly, much more thoughtful buying crowd and buying taste, and the pictures that sold [recently] at very high numbers were worth it. They sold at prices that were high, but not crazy. It's a more orderly market, and I think that's great. There was a rational market and a rational sale. And I think that this is emblematic of what else is going on in the market. The crazy, frothy money-doesn't-matter, any-price-is-fine attitude is passé. It's gone. It's been replaced by savvy, smart people, making good decisions. And that's welcome.

Maybe one of the reasons the Johns didn't go for more had to do with its not being quite as "seminal" as Carol Vogel had described it in the first sentence of her report on the auction. The Museum of Modern Art recently made a subtle point about seminal-ity by tweeting (scroll to May 15) a "Happy 80th Birthday" to Johns, and linking from that to a chronological slideshow of some 233 of its holdings by the octogenarian, leading off with with the very first "Flag," from 1954-55.

The MoMA version, 42 1/4 x 60 5/8" (compared to the 17 1/2 x 26 3/4" Christie's lot) was given to the museum by Philip Johnson in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. It truly WAS seminal, unlike the ex-Crichton iteration, executed in 1960-66.

Cross-section of Downtown Whitney, as presented in July 2008 to New York's City Planning Commission

In a press release that just hit my inbox but is not up on the Whitney Museum's website at this writing [UPDATE: now it is], the museum announced that its board today agreed to break ground next May for the Renzo Piano-designed Downtown Whitney.

The press release also detailed the current state of fundraising for the project:

The fundraising campaign for downtown, currently in its leadership phase, has already reached $372 million [$1 million more than the NY Times announced more than a month ago], which represents 63% of the $590 million goal. The total project budget is $680 million, which includes $230 million for the endowment, as well as construction and land costs.

Wait a minute! Why is the goal for the $680-million project only $590 million? The press release doesn't say, but one assumes the difference is expected to be made up by the planned sale of the townhouses and the annex that the Whitney owns near its uptown flagship.

Once projected to open in 2012, the 195,000-square-foot new facility (previously described as 185,000 square feet) is now expected to open in 2015.

Buried in the press release is confirmation that the Met and Whitney are engaged in talks (scroll down) about the future of the Whitney's current Breuer-designed uptown flagship:

The Board...agreed that the Whitney will continue discussions with The Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding the potential use of the Whitney's uptown building on Madison Avenue. The boards of both institutions have authorized the discussions to determine the scope and timing of this potential collaboration.

In her NY Times story, which hit the web shortly before the press release hit my inbox (why am I not surprised?), Carol Vogel provided more details about what the Met-Whitney collaboration might consist of, complete with quotes from her interview with the Met's director, Thomas Campbell. (When I asked the Met on Friday whether it was in talks to lease or buy the Breuer building, as reported on Thursday by Art+Auction, the response was a terse "We cannot comment.")

Vogel also quoted the Whitney's chairman emeritus Leonard Lauder, expressing his unequivocal endorsement of the project, about which he had reportedly had serious reservations.

Apparently, the Met is thinking of using the Breuer space for the temporary display of its modern and contemporary collection, while it renovates the galleries in its own building.

With all the talk of future paywalls to view online articles from newspapers, bloggers are worried that many of the free links they provide to readers may be doomed to extinction.

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital, part of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, writes:

Will the paywall the New York Times is building scare away the paper's natural allies---bloggers who like to link to the site?

Wait a minute! Do bloggers function as "natural allies" of the mainstream media, or are we their harshest critics? Leaving that aside for the moment, bloggers will be heartened by this e-mail that NY Times spokeswoman Stacy Green sent to Kafka in response to his query:

Once the pay model is implemented next year, the majority of our readers will be unaffected when using the site and will continue to have the same experience they have always had. Readers will only be prompted to pay after reaching a certain reading limit.

The pay model will be designed so readers that are referred from third party sites such as blogs will be able to access that content without hitting their limit [emphasis added], enabling NYTimes.com to continue being a part of the open[?!?] web. We have not yet set the reading limit and we will communicate that once we have made the decision.

What's not clear from this is whether the bloggers themselves will hit the paywall after accessing a (still unannounced) number of articles per month, with the intention of passing the links on to readers. CultureGrrl, as a subscriber to the dead-tree version of the Gray Lady, will, I believe, continue to have free online access. (Or maybe they'll erect a special paywall just for me!)

In other good news: My new eye, installed yesterday, went on exhibition today. Thanks to the miracle of a Toric lens implant, my "bad eye" now sees 20-30 without (external) glasses, instead of 20-400! Upon leaving the office of my beloved ophthalmologist, I immediately celebrated by viewing the paintings at Gagosian that Monet created when he had cataracts:

The Critic Sees
(Image from Mayo Clinic website)

Can CultureGrrl be sweet?

In gratitude and relief that my cataract surgery went well (or so I think---bandage comes off tomorrow), I'm dropping my usually truculent persona to applaud a few recent developments.

I'm still recovering from the disconcerting experience of being completely conscious for the entire procedure, hearing words like "surprise" and "short eye" and "I need to close this up," while seeing and feeling nothing. I was told it went perfectly. (Then again, would they tell me right after the operation if it hadn't?) We'll soon see. (Pun intended).

I should mention that my sight, pre-operation, was fine, except for my night-driving vision, which was compromised by glare. (I'll admit, thought, that Jasper Johns "Flag" did look awfully blurry!)

Maybe this is a good time to revisit the late Monet. Gagosian Gallery describes its show as "attesting to the modernity of Monet's expanded vision." But is also attests to his cataract vision, as I learned when I saw the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' 1998 Monet in the 20th Century show, organized by the same curator in charge of the current Gagosian show, Paul Hayes Tucker.

Although CultureGrrl rarely takes things nice and easy, I'm disposed to be kindly disposed today. So here are some things deserving of praise:

---The Blue Star Museums initiative, spearheaded by Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, whereby some 600 museums will offer free admission to all active duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day. This is a program where NEA gets to do good without spending money. It would be interesting to know how many people tale advantage of the program.

---The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's new Panza Collection initiative to comprehensively evaluate and conserve the Conceptual, Minimalist, Post-Minimalist and environmental works, by such artists as Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner. Jeffrey Weiss, most recently (but not very long) at the Dia Foundation has been named as the first curator of the Guggenheim's Panza Collection, overseeing a project that has received a three-year, $1.23-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. If only they had a generous space dedicated to rotating displays from the collection.

Wait a minute! Rumors are circulating (in an unsigned Art+Auction post) that the Whitney is in talks to lease its original uptown Breuer building to the Metropolitan Museum, if the Downtown Whitney actually comes to fruition. When I asked the Met about this, I got the expected "We cannot comment." When I asked the Whitney (in an e-mail to its press office), I got no reply whatsoever.

Wouldn't that be a great place for the Guggenheim's Panza trove? Then again, should the Whitney really be giving up its signature building?

---Tutmania has again gripped New York, not only at the commercially organized Discovery Center show from Egypt, but at the city's nonprofit museums. The synergy that I'd like to see among the cultural institutions in New York is coalescing around Tut, although not so much in the spirit of cooperation as in an effort to capitalize on the buzz from Zahi Hawass' extravaganza. (Or it could just be a happy coincidence.)

The Mummy Chamber at the Brooklyn Museum is a long-term installation, not just Tut coattails. The Met, however, has explicitly tied its current show, Tutankamun's Funeral, to the Discovery Center's exhibition:

"This installation complements a major exhibition of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun on view Apr. 23, 2010-Jan. 2, 2011, at Discovery Times Square Exposition," according to the Met's online description.

I'll get to Times Square Tut eventually, but I'm not in any great hurry to visit the latest stop on the never-ending tour. I already caught (and criticized) the show in its Philadelphia incarnation,

I think I've failed in my mission: Even when I'm trying to be nice, I'm not THAT nice. Maybe I need more practice (and also removal of the pirate's patch on my right eye)!

Honoree Philippe de Montebello, speaking last night at the National Arts Club

I was on hand yesterday for the dinner honoring Philippe de Montebello at the National Arts Club in New York, where two of the originally announced speakers---Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas, and Neil Shapiro, president of WNET/Thirteen (New York Public Television, where Philippe has a regular gig), never took the podium, but the unannounced Dr. Ruth did, bringing down the house with one quip.

I was juggling knives and forks when she said it, so the following is a Westheimer paraphrase, not a direct quote:

Whenever I was at the Met, Philippe was the most reliable of men: When he talked in your ear and said he would meet you in the next room, he was always there!

I didn't video the good doctor, but I did capture Philippe, below, musing on why he had decided his days as director of the Met should come to an end. (The French-born de Montebello was being honored by the National Arts Club for "excellence in presenting French culture.")

But first, a few tidbits that are not on the video clip: In a brief conversation before dinner, Philippe invited me to audit (for a fee) his next NYU course on "The Multiple Lives of Works of Art." (Does that mean I have the "permission of the instructor"?) He wouldn't explain what that enigmatic title meant, so I had to search for the course description on the Institute of Fine Arts' website (scroll down). The colloquium does not zero in on the various meanings of and roles played by specific artworks, as I had wrongly anticipated from the title:

The course focuses on the main functions of museums as they relate to their stated mission. The purposes, processes, and ethics of such fundamental processes as acquisitions, installations, exhibitions and interpretation are examined in detail. The role of museums in our age of globalization are also discussed.

How do I sign up?

News to me last night was that among the many hats that Professor Philippe now wears is that of special advisor (scroll down) to the Leon Levy Foundation headed by antiquities collector Shelby White, a major patron of the Met.

You can see him in the photo below, at a meeting convened by the Levy Foundation on "how best to make available the trove of unpublished information from important ancient world sites excavated under "partage" agreements." Timothy Potts, erstwhile of the Kimbell, now director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is in the top row, second from the left. Philippe, bottom row at the left; White, bottom row, third from left:



Philippe confided during his speech that one of the joys of post-museum life is being unfettered by constraints previously imposed by the Met's own PR department: If he has an opinion he wants to express, he now feels free to "write an Op-Ed for the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, or somewhere else, without the head of public relations at the Met saying, 'You can't publish this!' So there's a certain freedom that comes with the academic world."

I am still looking forward for the emergence of "Philippe Unchained," as I previously called it.

Here's Philippe on why he decided it was time to leave the Met. I toggled back and forth between the distant view from where I was seated and the close-ups afforded by the nearby video screens:



Speaking of titanium knees, I'll be getting a small outpatient repair of my own crumbling infrastructure on Monday. Posting next week is up in the air, depending on how that goes. The blog's "Donate" and "Buy Now" buttons are always functional, however, even if the Donee isn't!

Jeffrey Deitch onstage at the Guggenheim Museum

In March, I mentioned that I had attended a public talk at the Guggenheim Museum by Jeffrey Deitch, LA MOCA's director-designate, after which I chatted with him and learned of his plans to continue selling art from his gallery's inventory, even after he assumes the directorship of the museum on June 1.

What I haven't yet reported is what he had to say publicly that evening about his West Coast future, which he discussed at some length.

Here are some excerpts from those remarks:

On why Jeffrey Deitch wants to direct LA MOCA:

The way people experience art, the way art is judged, is very different because of the power of the art market. You all know that I've become part of the museum world. Part of the reason I'm interested in doing that is I'm interested in being part of this correction that I think is necessary. During the past decade the impact of the auction house and the price ranking of artists in the auctions and the excitement that people felt at the art fairs and the tremendous professionalism of the big New York galleries outshown any of the museums. The kind of leadership that the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art had in an earlier era was eclipsed by the power of the market.

I sense there is a lot of fatigue about that and people are hungry for a more reasoned sense of judgment---a more historically aware set of judgments. So I'm very excited about trying to put forward a case for artists and themes in art through curatorial excellence and excitement, rather than through promotion, ads in Artforum, parties, and making a big splash at an art fair, which I've done for the past 15 years.

On two shows he curated for Dakis Joannou's Deste Foundation---"Artificial Nature" and "Post Human":

To me, those two shows did actually predict a lot of what's going on in society. When I did "Post Human"---that was 1992---talking about gym culture and plastic surgery was something quite fresh and I was one of the first to discuss this in the dialogue of art. Now, of course, you have TV shows like "Nip/Tuck" and covers of People magazine that show people before and after plastic surgery. It's totally central to pop culture. So it's very interesting to see that one can, in the art sector, be ahead of what's going on in the popular culture, and even, in a subversive way, contribute to pop culture.

On how he might have influenced Lady Gaga:

The Museum of Contemporary Art, last November, famously built a performance around Lady Gaga [who has since performed at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute gala]. Lady Gaga fascinates me because she embodies so many of the stylistic innovations and attitudes that we were working with in our shows with Fischerspooner and Kembra Pfahler and others in our gallery. She [Gaga aka Stefani Germanotta] was a student at the Tisch School at NYU when we were presenting all these projects, and I wonder if she was in the audience, absorbing this all, and then understood brilliantly how to insert this into mainstream popular culture.

On why Los Angeles interests him:

Because of this unique situation we have now of unprecedented dialogue between progressive culture and mainstream culture---there's almost been a collapse between the two---a public museum is a very interesting place to be, and particularly in Los Angeles, because Los Angeles does not have the same professional art audience that New York does. They have a crossover audience---people who work in art direction, film, music---where they don't differentiate between innovations in the digital culture and music culture and film culture. So it's going to be a very interesting opportunity to present programming that addresses this larger audience that's interested in art as a participant in the wider culture. The challenge is to engage with this new audience in a wider culture, at the same time not diluting the obligation of the museum to interpret art history in a very serious way.

On his directing style:

I'm of the opinion that I should express my own personality and vision as director of the museum, to give the museum a more personal point of view, rather than just being neutral, open to everything. I'm going to try going for an more old-fashioned approach, when museums weren't so much large, complex public institutions and where public funding gave one director the opportunity to really shape a program. Of course we do have a very diverse audience to serve---the people of Los Angeles, who speak many different languages and come from different cultures. That's very exciting to address. But I do hope to assert a personal point of view over the program.

That he has already started to do.

At the end of my recent post on Third Party Guarantors and the "Tilted Playing Field", I misleadingly suggested that Christie's printed catalogues don't disclose the fact that third-party guarantors may bid on the works they guarantee and that they receive financing fees from Christie's, whether or not they are the winning bidders. (Sotheby's says [scroll down] that its third-party guarantors are not allowed to bid on the works they guarantee, making the situation simpler.)

In my post, I stated the following opinion:

These arrangements (that there is a third-party guarantor who may be bidding and will receive a financing fee whether or not he is the purchaser) need to be fully disclosed on the pages for the affected lots in the printed catalogue, not merely announced at the sale and/or published in the online catalogue but not the printed one [emphasis added].

As Christie's spokesperson Toby Usnik pointed out to me in an e-mail, the printed catalogues do contain language describing the details regarding its third-party guarantors (including the additional fact, which I neglected to mention in my last post, that guarantors may have knowledge of the otherwise confidential reserve). This elucidation, however, is NOT on the catalogue pages for the affected lots, as I argued ought to be the case for these unusual bidding conditions. The explanation is, instead, set forth in the fine print at the back of the catalogue.

If the auction houses want to be transparent, not obfuscatory, they should make these new, exotic variants on standard auction procedure easy to find and easy to read, as part of the entries for the affected works (as is, in fact, done in Christie's online catalogue).

Does anyone remember the good old days when life and art sales were simpler, and auction results were regarded as a reliable measure of "fair market value," defined as "a price arrived at between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts"?

At least CultureGrrl still has some willing donors who believe that I have reasonable knowledge of the facts: My warm thanks go out to Repeat Donors 132 and 133 from Solon, IA and Cleveland Heights, OH.

What I really need, though, is a third-party guarantor!

Kaywin Feldman, president-designate of AAMD

No, that headline is not a Jeopardy question. It's a reprise of a previous CultureGrrl headline, published in September 2007, when Kaywin Feldman was named to succeed the better known William Griswold (now director at the Morgan Library & Museum) as director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

At that time I wrote that I had previously not heard of Kaywin and added:

The MIA has a history of prominent professionals in its top post (Evan Maurer, Samuel Sachs II), so her relative obscurity took me by surprise.

Obscure no longer: Feldman has just been named to succeed Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute, as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, effective June 9. She is currently art issues chairman for AAMD. Chosen by the association's Nominating and Governance Committee, she is to be confirmed by the full membership at its meeting next month.

Her presidency will be for only one year. In a change from usual procedure, Conforti had been granted a two-year term.

Here's the bio that the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran about Feldman when she was named to her current museum post.

Jeffrey Deitch

In the time leading up to assuming his new post at LA MOCA on June 1, New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch should have bent over backwards to dispel doubts about his fitness for the job, by sounding and acting like a museum director.

Instead it appears that you can take Deitch out of his gallery, but you can't take the dealer out of Deitch.

He recently allowed himself to be quoted as the chief dealers' spokesperson for this NY Times article by Randy Kennedy about a lawsuit regarding galleries' blacklists against certain buyers. Jumping into a fray that any museum director would have prudently stayed clear of, Deitch expressed his strong hostility towards certain collectors, who "humiliate us" by "manipulation." Directors are supposed to court collectors, not antagonize them. This is baggage that Deitch shouldn't bring to LA.

And at the recent Christie's evening contemporary art sale, where I saw him with a bidder's paddle, Judd Tully of ArtInfo saw him using it, buying a Gerhard Richter for $2.32 million. Deitch seems determined to play the dealer till the end (if not past the end) of his commercial run. It's possible (but unlikely) that he was bidding for LA MOCA on the Richter. But in that case, the acquisition would have probably been announced by now.

Not only has Deitch shown no inclination to shed his dealer's persona, but for the first show that he's bringing to Los Angeles, he has decided to bypass his own museum's (or any museum's) curators, relying instead on an artist, Julian Schnabel, and two dealers, Fred Hoffman of Santa Monica and Tony Shafrazi of New York, to curate and help organize "Dennis Hopper Double Standard," July 11-Sept. 26, "the first comprehensive survey exhibition of Dennis Hopper's artistic career to be mounted by a North American museum," as described in the press release that hit my inbox yesterday.

Better known for his film work, Hopper does have a fairly extensive exhibition history for his visual-arts oeuvre. His 1997 show at Hoffman's gallery got a lukewarm review in the LA Times. (His most recent LA show was at Ace Gallery in 2006.)

Hoffman is listed as "curatorial consultant" for the upcoming museum exhibition. He previously was an adjunct curator for LA MOCA's showing of a Basquiat retrospective organized by the Brooklyn Museum.

The press release ends with this unusual homage to the other dealer involved:

The museum thanks Tony Shafrazi and Tony Shafrazi Gallery for their dedicated collaboration in realizing the exhibition.

Shafrazi is selling through his gallery website a new $700 tome, Dennis Hopper Photographs: 1961-1967, edited by Shafrazi and "limited to 1,500 numbered copies, signed by Dennis Hopper."

There was also some old news in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Deitch's having engaged in conduct-unbecoming-a-director. This related to a viral video (which I first saw two weeks ago) that shows him going ballistic at someone who had accidently crashed into him during the opening of his swan song as a gallerist, the current Shepard Fairey show at Deitch Projects (which has engendered its own share of controversy).

I elected not to embed that video on CultureGrrl, partly because it was a cheap shot that would weaken my serious critique of Deitch's appointment. Also, truth be told, I sympathized: I had recently been knocked down hard in the pre-theater scrum by someone who wasn't looking where she was going, landing me flat on my back in the middle of the street (not the sidewalk) on 8th Avenue. (Fortunately, I passed this very good bone-density test.) If I had been able to say something at that moment to that miscreant (who just kept on going), I would likely have sounded very like Jeffrey (possibly without the f-word).

The WSJ embedded the vituperative video in another place on its website, but I'll let you search for it yourself.

On a more serious journalistic note, Jori Finkel of the LA Times has more on MOCA's Hopper show, here and here.

Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas

While I was at Christie's covering the Crichton auction, I took advantage of my encounter at the postsale press conference with Marc Porter, the chairman of Christie's Americas, to get his response to this post about what I regard as a tilted, rather than level, playing field among bidders for certain lots at Christie's auctions.

I had noted in my post that third-party guarantors at Christie's, who receive a financing fee from the auction house whether or not they are the successful bidder, have an advantage over other bidders because their net price, after deducting their fee, is less than the final price for non-guarantor bidders---in effect giving third-party guarantors a discount off the final price.

In addition to the record-breaking Picasso at Christie's Impressionist/modern evening auction, two works (a Lichtenstein and a Basquiat) offered the following week at Christie's evening sale of contemporary art had third-party guarantors who (as auctioneer Christopher Burge announced at the sale) had "fully financed" the guarantees on those works, might be bidding at the sale, and would receive a financing fee. That information was not disclosed, however, in the print catalogue.

Here's what Marc Porter said when I asked for his response to my criticism of the tilted playing field:

Porter: We are paying, in that kind of guarantee situation, for assuming a market risk several months in the future....Our position is that so long as the public is properly informed that there is a third-party guarantor, and that the person earns a fee for having taken the guarantee risk, that there is a full disclosure. It's a better practice, in fact, that a guarantor earns her fee both when she buys something and when she doesn't. Our view is that it's a better practice not to only compensate someone who is an underbidder, because one thing that the public would actually worry about is that the guarantor has an incentive not to buy the object but only to underbid the object.

Rosenbaum: But what about the idea of not allowing that person to bid at all?

Porter: I don't see why they should be precluded from bidding.

Rosenbaum: Because the bidding is not on a level playing field.

Porter: The bidding IS on a level playing field. The fee that they earn can be applied against any purchase at Christie's. So you could be a third-party guarantor on three, or four or five objects, and you ended up buying only one object. You could apply the fee that you earned on those five objects against that one. So in fact the direct relationship between the buyer's premium and a level playing field on the purchase is an artificial one, I think.

Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, responds to New AAM Standards Defend Collections-at-Risk in University Museums:

Many thanks for your piece about AAM's new guidelines for museums with parent organizations. I think it is an important step, given the turmoil we have seen in recent years.

However, I want to stress that I had very little to do with these new guidelines. The credit goes to the fine AAM Accreditation Commission, including Julie Hart (AAM's senior director of museum standards and excellence), and AAM's director of external relations, Eileen Goldpsiel, and to our dedicated colleagues in the museum and art worlds, who worked extraordinarily hard on our joint task force.

These include the Association of Art Museum Directors (executive director Janet Landay) and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (formerly ACUMG, whose president, David Alan Robertson, deserves enormous credit for getting this initiative under way); the College Art Association (executive director Linda Downs) and the American Association of Museum Curators (executive director Sally Block); University Museums and Collections---International Council of Museums; and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. In addition, Max Marmor of the Kress Foundation has been enormously helpful in moving this initiative forward.

This whole effort has been a model of unprecedented collaboration and joint leadership, which is the most important story here. AAM is thrilled to have been able to work with so many dedicated and generous colleagues.

Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums

When it comes to museum-governance issues of utmost importance, the American Association of Museums, under its proactive president, Ford Bell, doesn't merely issue suggested guidelines (the usual course taken by the more decorous Association of Art Museum Directors, with one notable exception).

AAM shows it means business by issuing forceful directives with real teeth.

The latest example is AAM's newly revised [via] Accreditation Commission Policy on Statements of Support from Parent Organizations. The policy takes aim at potential threats to the collections of museums that are governed by financially stressed larger institutions, such as the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University. (The Rose, however, is not on the list of AAM-accredited institutions; the "teeth" of AAM's new policy can only bite museums that wish to be accredited.)

To receive AAM accreditation, museums and their parent organizations will be required to comply with the revised policy. The new rules, however, will not apply to already accredited institutions until they undergo reaccreditation (every 10 years), according to Dewey Blanton, AAM's head of media relations, who will soon be issuing a press release on the policy revisions.

Here are the key provisions of the revised policy, with new language highlighted in bold italics:

The Accreditation Commission requires museums operating within a parent organization to submit evidence (issued/approved by the parent organization's governing body) documenting:

o the importance of the museum, and the collections in its care, to the parent organization

o the parent organization's commitment to use its resources to support the museum and its mission, and to protect the museum's tangible and intangible assets held in the public trust

o the nature of the parent organization's support and relationship with the museum

• This evidence must articulate that the parent:

o values the museum as an intellectual and educational resource

o sees the museum and its collections as essential components of what it does

o is committed to the museum's continued success in fulfilling its mission and meeting its public trust responsibilities, especially with regard to the collection (if one exists)

o is committed to following AAM and museum field standards, particularly with regard to the museum's collections, the use of deaccessioning proceeds, and collecting and gift-acceptance policies

One suggested form of evidence that a parent organization may submit to document its commitment to its museum is "a resolution stating the parent organization's commitment that it will not consider the museum's collections as disposable assets."

As CultureGrrl readers may remember, AAM also issued an extremely forceful statement more than a year ago, decrying the proposed closure of the Rose Museum and calling for Brandeis to find another nearby institution to care for the collection if the university could no longer do so.

Speaking of Brandeis, the Rose Preservation Fund, seeking to raise money "to prevent the sale of art from the Rose Art Museum and to protect it into the future," is holding a fundraiser tonight at the Pace Gallery in New York. The benefit committee (listed at the above link) includes a roster of distinguished artists, as well as two Rose board members who last July filed a lawsuit to keep the museum open and to preserve its collection. (Last October, a Suffolk Probate Court judge ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, but only on a limited basis.)

A fall exhibition (scroll down) of works by Eric Fischl, April Gornik and Bill Viola has been scheduled to follow the current show (closing June 20) of works from the museum's permanent collection.

In an update yesterday on the Rose situation, the Boston Globe's Geoff Edgars reported that the university still does not plan to hire a museum director or curator, according to Brandeis spokesman Andrew Gully. A collections manager, however, has been hired. Former director Michael Rush, who strongly opposed any art sales, left under duress last June.

Brandeis attorney Alan Rose (no relation, one assumes, to the museum's eponymous family) told Edgars:

The museum has not closed, is not closed, and will not close.

What he didn't say, however, is whether some of its art may eventually be sold to address the university's financial shortfalls.

Laurie Norton Moffatt, executive director, Norman Rockwell Museum

While nosing around the Association of Art Museum Directors' website yesterday, I came upon this under-the-radar testimony by AAMD and the American Association of Museums to Congress in opposition to the ballyhooed Our Town initiative of Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

During a Congressional subcommittee appropriations hearing for NEA and the National Endowments for the Humanities, Laurie Norton Moffatt, executive director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, testified on behalf of both AAMD and the American Association of Museums. Perhaps by relying on the Rockwell Museum for their spokesperson, the museum groups were attempting to put their best face forward in wooing Congressional conservatives.

I have nothing against the Rockwell Museum, having visited it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I do think that the designation of that very small, specialized institution to represent the entire museum community before Congress was telling. [UPDATE: Dewey Blanton, head of media relations for AAM tells me that Moffatt was chosen because she is on the board of both AAM and AAMD.]

Moffatt unsurprisingly asked Congress "to approve increases for both agencies." President Obama's proposed fiscal 2011 appropriation for NEA was only $161.315 million---the same amount he proposed for fiscal 2010, but a decrease from the $167.5 million that Congress ultimately allocated for fiscal 2010.

But then came the kicker:

Modest increases would allow both agencies to undertake new initiatives such as NEA's proposed Our Town. Absent a rise in overall funds, we would not support funding of new initiatives [emphasis added].

The President's proposed decrease from the fiscal 2010 budget meant that Rocco Landesman, NEA's chairman, had to find something to cut, in order to fund Our Town (scroll down), his new program to provide "$5 million in up to 35 communities to support planning and design projects, and arts engagement strategies." As I previously reported, Landesman decided to eliminate the $10-million American Masterpieces program and to reduce funding for The Big Read. (I agree with the latter cut; I'd prefer elimination or significant revision of the current classics-heavy list to focus instead on contemporary literature, as a way to support American writers.)

One new program that NEA recently did find money for is AAMD's initiative, which began last August, "to document the impact of community service programs at art museums." Janet Landay, AAMD's executive director, reports that her organization was just awarded an NEA grant of $50,000 for what is basically a promotional campaign to tout the community-service importance of museums to the American public---an effort that is, in part, aimed at those arts-unfriendly legislators who might regard cultural funding as an expendable frill.

With NEA's grant to AAMD, the government is funding a project conceived, in part, to influence government funders. I want federal arts money to fund arts projects, not public-relations campaigns. And I don't see why AAMD needs $50,000 in government funds to gather easily obtainable information from its own members about their public programs.

Speaking of dubious spending on promotion, whatever happened to the $25,000 commission, announced more than three months ago, for a redesign of the logo for "Art Works"---another Landesman initiative? As far as I can see, that logo hasn't changed. This could be a good thing: Perhaps they decided to do away with that bit of unnecessary spending. Or maybe that art needs more time to work.

Museum of Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses, Xi'an

I've been looking forward to traveling to China this October, but now I'm looking forward to it so much more!

China Daily reports on an exciting new archaeological find in Xi'an, which, thanks to the famous (and much toured) terracotta warriors discovered there in the 1970s, is a city on every tourist's itinerary (including mine).

Here's the news:

A company of Terracotta Warriors---most painted in rich colors---have been unearthed at the largest pit within the mausoleum complex of the emperor who first unified China.

A total of 114 Terracotta Warriors have been found at No 1 pit, one of three, where excavation started in June last year, said Xu Weihong, head of the excavation team....The clay warriors, ranging in height from 1.8 m to 2 m, had black hair; green, white or pink faces; and black or brown eyes, the archaeologist said.

Will these be viewable by the public by October? (If not, can I pull some journalistic strings?) Photos are expected to be published later this month, according to China Daily. But why wait? There's already a jaw-dropping photo at the above China Daily link and another one here.

Any words of hype that you can think of---"amazing," "spectacular," "awe-inspiring"---don't seem to do justice to these vibrant emissaries from another age. In the second photo, they appear to be exotic living beings, hanging out companionably in the pit with the drab archaeologists.

They were found in pieces and much conservation needs to be done, not to mention the urgent need to insure that the vivid pigments are preserved (as already noted by one knowledgeable comment appended to the article).

Do you think they'll let me do a CultureGrrl Video amidst the warriors? (How do you say "blog" in Chinese?)

Fright Night: Warhol's "Self Portrait," 1986, the top lot at Sotheby's

Sotheby's turned in a solid performance at tonight's contemporary auction (which I watched from home, via live feed), with only three of the 53 works failing to find buyers. Bidders on the much touted red Rothko (displayed directly behind auctioneer Tobias Meyer during the entire course of the sale) were apparently unruffled by the legal kerfuffle that had erupted over it a couple of days earlier. At a hammer price of $28 million, the painting outstripped its presale estimate of $18 million to $25 million. But its final price, $31.44 million (including the buyer's premium), was a far cry from the record-setting $72.84-million Rockefeller Rothko, auctioned at Sotheby's three years ago, when the market was booming.

In a sale where bidders often dragged their feet before coming up with the next increment, the most riveting buyers' battle was over the penultimate lot---the third Basquiat offered from the artist's estate. "Stardust," a jazz-themed 1983 portrait of a saxophonist, inspired a duet between determined players whose extended riff was finally drummed to a close at $6.4 million ($7.25 million with premium), straying far from the $1.8 million to $2.5 million presale estimate.

Top honors of the night did NOT go to the Rothko, as the auctioneers had anticipated, but to an eerie, violet-colored Andy Warhol self-portrait, 1986, knocked down at $29 million ($32.56 million with buyer's premium), trouncing its presale estimate of $10 million to $15 million. The seller was reportedly fashion designer Tom Ford.

The sale total with buyer's premium was $189.97 million. Hammer total: $166.32 million, exceeding the presale estimate of $113.85 million to $161.75 million. The auction was a very robust 94.3% sold by lot, 97.6% sold by value.

Taken together, the Christie's and Sotheby's contemporary evening sales were indicative of a recovering market for works prudently priced. And estimate-defying prices were achieved tonight for several artists: Richard Tuttle ($1.76 million, an auction record for his work), Ellsworth Kelly ($4 million, an auction record for his sculpture), Maurizio Cattelan ($6.92 million, an auction record for his work).

The complete list of results is here.

Rothko, "Untitled," 1961, scheduled for auction tonight at Sotheby's

Mark Rothko's 1961 untitled red abstraction, the highest-estimated lot in Sotheby's big contemporary sale tonight (at $18 million to $25 million), has suddenly become the subject of a lawsuit on the brink of the auction.

Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg reports:

Marguerite Hoffman, a prominent Dallas art collector, filed suit this week against Mexican financier David Martinez for failing to keep her 2007 sale of a star Mark Rothko painting a secret.

The amended complaint was filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Dallas. Also named as defendants are L & M Arts, the New York gallery; Sotheby's; Sotheby's auctioneer and head of contemporary art, Tobias Meyer; and Studio Capital, Inc., which the complainant says is controlled by Martinez. Hoffman alleges that the purchaser of her Rothko, through L & M, was Martinez and/or Studio Capital. Sotheby's will not identify tonight's consignor, who is widely believed to be Martinez.

Bloomberg quotes this reponse from Sotheby's spokesperson Diana Phillips:

The lawsuit neither challenges our consignor's title to the painting, nor its right to sell the painting, and the sale will go forward as planned. The lawsuit is entirely without merit.

But the relief sought by Hoffman, a past chair and present trustee of the Dallas Museum of Art, at the end of her 18-page amended complaint, includes "rescission" of "the Contract," which is defined in Paragraph 37 of the complaint as the "purchase agreement" for the Rothko that Hoffman then owned.

In response to my query, Jon Olsoff, Sotheby's North American general counsel, said this about the "rescission" provision:

Reading the petition as a whole it is clear that Mrs. Hoffman is not asserting title to the Painting or seeking to stop this evening's sale. Instead, each of her causes of action expressly seeks damages based on the price the painting achieves this evening.

While there is, as you note, a reference to "rescission" of the 2007 Contract in the last paragraph of the complaint, it is Sotheby's understanding that the rescission language refers only to an alternative and secondary remedy that Mrs. Hoffman may pursue if tonight's auction sale were not to take place for some reason unrelated to the filing of the lawsuit (see Paragraph 61).

It is clear from the petition that, if the painting is sold this evening, Mrs. Hoffman will not contest title and instead will pursue her damages claims against the defendants, in which she is seeking to obtain proceeds from the auction sale for her benefit. And, as previously stated, Sotheby's and the consignor fully warrant that the successful purchaser will obtain good title to the Painting.

In Paragragh 61 of the complaint, which Olsoff refers to, Hoffman states:

If the sale is cancelled, Plaintiff [Hoffman] has elected to rescind the Contract and return the money she received from Martinez in 2007. Once Martinez has returned the painting, plaintiff intends to commit it to the Dallas Museum.

That was the plan in the first place: Hoffman's Rothko had been displayed in the Dallas Museum's 2007 Fast Forward exhibition of promised gifts to the museum from three local families. The chronology set forth in Hoffman's complaint suggests that the sale was being negotiated while that exhibition was in progress.

Now you can!

Here's a CultureGrrl audio podcast from the scene of the rapid-fire bidding on Jasper Johns' record-breaking "Flag" last night at Christie's (followed by the segue into the next lot, a Gursky priced in the hundred-thousands, not millions).

Just click the left arrow:

"The Three Graces," Roman, Imperial period, 2nd century A.D., copy of Greek work from 2nd century B.C., displayed in the Metropolitan Museum's Greek and Roman sculpture court

The Metropolitan Museum months ago finalized a major antiquities acquisition, but you wouldn't know it from the museum's press announcements, nor from the marble sculpture's label in the galleries.

Christopher Lightfoot, associate curator of Greek and Roman art, mentioned to me at the Metropolitan Museum's press gathering on Monday that "The Three Graces"---on loan to the museum since 1992 and a highlight of the Leon Levy and Shelby White Sculpture Court that opened three years ago---was purchased by the museum in December, thanks to a number of donors who made the acquisition possible. This information, he told me, is now disclosed on the "Graces" new label.

For months I had been keeping an eye on that label, because I knew that the purchase was in the works. So I scurried down to have a look after the press lunch, only to discover that the text hadn't changed: It was still, as of Monday, described as an "anonymous loan."

How important is the "Graces"? According to the label, the "carefully calculated, frieze-like composition...soon became the canonic formula for representing the Graces, who appeared in every medium and on every kind of object, from mirrors to sacrophagi."

Nice to know that the jaunty trio are not just loitering, but will now be staying.

UPDATE: This just in from Met spokesperson Elyse Topalian, in response to my query:

We are still finalizing the purchase, which we look forward to announcing at the right time.

Jasper Johns, "Flag," 1960-66, proudly hailed (and slightly blurry) at the postsale press conference at Christie's

"Great night at Christie's tonight. Can't say more, but it was a thrill," tweeted Richard Rossello, managing director of Avery Galleries, Bryn Mawr, PA, at about 10:30 p.m. last night.

The dealer, who does not include Jasper Johns in his inventory of pre-contemporary American modernists, was nevertheless identified by Carol Vogel as the purchaser at Christie's tonight of the $28.6-million Jasper Johns "Flag" from the collection of the late author, Michael Crichton. Then again, the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow and Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff identified the buyer as New York dealer Michael Altman. Is someone wrong or are they all right? I'm confused!

Whoever the buyer, the painting set a an auction record for the artist. Its hammer price, greeted with applause, was $25.5 million, greatly exceeding its presale estimate of $10 million-$15 million and handily beating the auction record of $17.4 million.

The entire 79-lot contemporary art auction (not just the 31 Crichton lots) sold incredibly well, with just five works (none from Crichton) failing to find buyers. The hammer total was $202.44 million ($231.91 million with buyer's premium), near the high end of its presale estimate of $142.94 million-$207.41 million. The auction was an extraordinary 94% sold by lot, 98% by value. The majority of Crichton works sold above their presale estimates, unlike the rest of the sale where bidding was, for the most part, in line with estimates.

The deft and ever-encouraging auctioneer, Christopher Burge, appeared to be on his way to pitching a perfect game until Lot 58, an Oldenburg, came up to the plate. It's final bid, at $800,000 (presale estimate: $900,000-$1.2 million), elicited an "awww" from the disappointed fastball ace, who resignedly sighed, "Passed" and moved on.

Throughout the long evening, Burge acted as if he were every bidder's best friend and enabler. No bidding increment was too small: "All right, why not? We've come all this way," he told a bid chiseler who tried to slow the pace on Warhol's "Silver Liz." It ultimately fetched a hammer price of $16.3 million (presale estimate: $10 million-$15 million), the second-highest price of the night ($18.39 million with buyer's premium).

Spirited bidding wars broke out all over the room for many of the offerings, but Amy Cappellazzo, Christie's co-head for contemporary art, said that compared to the pre-recession market, this sale was "more sober" and lacked "a little bit of the frothiness."

It all looked pretty frothy to me and also to some veteran market mavens, including dealer Richard Feigen and collector Peter Brant, each of whom I cornered after the sale. They opined that the mixed quality of the offerings didn't warrant the indiscriminate enthusiasm of the bidders. Feigen, usually a proponent of art investment as a means to preserving capital, called last night's bidding "profligate," adding that what it demonstrated about the inequitable distribution of wealth in this country (at a time when individuals and state and local governments are still experiencing economic distress) made him "fear for the political and economic consequences" of such unrestrained spending by the rich.

Half of the top 10 lots went to U.S. dealers (who may, in some cases, have been bidding for clients). Two of them were willing to be identified by the auction house---John Berggruen, purchaser of a $6.35-million Sam Francis (an auction record for the artist); Larry Gagosian, purchaser of a $6.35-million Rauschenberg. (Gagosian was recently was named to represent Rauschenberg's estate.)

I also came upon New York dealer and soon-to-be LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, right after he had handed in his bidding paddle. So I asked him if he had bought or sold anything. Unsurprisingly, he declined to talk to me.

The complete list of sale results is here for Crichton, here for the various-owners sale.

Speaking of high finance: As you may have guessed by the fact that I'm back to posting, the CultureGrrl Challenge has been admirably met: My warm thanks go out to Repeat CultureGrrl Donor 131 from New York City. That makes five who stepped up to my plate during the past day.

As Christopher Burge might wheedle, "Shall we try one more?"

Four devoted art-lings have now risen to the challenge. One particularly sympathetic patron has bestowed upon me the largest donation in CultureGrrl History! I'm starting to feel much less under-appreciated.

My warm thanks to out to Repeat CultureGrrl Donors 127, 128 and 129 from Boston, Los Angeles and NYC; and new CultureGrrl Donor 130 from San Jose, CA.

Who will be magic Number Five---the donor (or classified advertiser) who forces me to curtail my blogging vacation? Right now, I'm gathering my notebook, camera, digital recorder, notebook and pen (where do I put all these things?) to attend Crichton at Christie's. As auctioneer Christopher Burge might say, before lowering the hammer, "Are we all done?"

Surprise me, when I get home, with a Flag-sized bid. (Or anything, for that matter: There's no reserve and, alas, no third-party guarantor).

In connection with yesterday's rattling of the tin cup, I should mention that I've lately been told that there are a number of arts professionals in my core audience who would love to support the blog, but would want to do so anonymously, so as not to appear to be trying to buy favorable coverage by clicking my "Donate" button. It's conflict-of-interest in reverse.

You KNOW that CultureGrrl can't be bought! And "favorable coverage" (i.e., puff pieces) is not exactly what I'm known for: I was reminded of this when, at yesterday's press reception, I innocently asked a Metropolitan Museum PR official about the lights hanging from Big Bambú. He snapped back, "You don't like the lights either?" (I assured him I thought they were fine.)

In any event, unless you lack friends or relatives, there's an easy way to conceal your illustrious artworld identity while donating to curmudgeonly CultureGrrl: Launder the money through someone unknown to me, and have THEM click the "Donate" button. (As most of you know, PayPal identifies the payor to the payee.) If your surrogate doesn't want to receive the e-mailed links to posts that I provide as a service to donors, he should reply to my initial e-mail and I'll immediately remove him from that list.

Miss my posts? Then please rise to the CultureGrrl Challenge: Five donors (any amount) and/or classified ads get me back to being a blogger, not a beggar. With another visual-arts ArtsJournal writer now moving on to what he believes to be bigger and better (and certainly more remunerative) things, I'm feeling unusually under-appreciated today.

With all my recent posts about the art market's high finance, I'm feeling more disconsolate than usual about CultureGrrl's low finance.

So, arithmetic art-lings, here's a bit of Blogger Algebra:

No Ads + No Donations = Zero Posts

Any sum of CultureGrrl Classifieds or Donations that totals up to at least 5 shows of support (in any amount) breaks my silence. You KNOW that I've got a lot to say!

If you'd like some activity in my main column, please create some activity in my middle column.

Workers adding pieces to "Big Bambú," a continuing work-in-progress

I was looking forward to today's press luncheon at the Metropolitan Museum with more than my usual breathless anticipation, because the pre-chicken reception was located on the Roof Garden, where Doug + Mike Starn's scaleable bamboo forest, Big Bambú, is installed (and will continue rising to more complex heights, until the end of the installation's run, Apr. 27-Oct. 31).

I had skipped the press preview two weeks ago, because it took place on a wet day, which precluded climbing through that maze. But before heading out on this sunny morning for the Met's press fest, I had absorbed the voluminous guidelines about who can and cannot ascend, weighed myself to determine that I had not yet exceeded the 400-pound limit (nothwithstanding my sumptuous Mothers Day feast), shod my flat feet in the requisite "flat, rubber-soled shoes with a closed toe and a closed back or back strap," and prepared to bring back to my art-lings a top-of-the-Met video, fit for a panda.



No such luck. (And not even any pandas.)

The press could look, but not climb, because no tour guides (required for the ascent) were in attendance. But wait a minute! Just when I'd given up, I encountered Tom Campbell.

"Will you be my guide?" I asked in jest, showing that I had donned sensible shoes for the occasion. Whereupon the Met's director bared the bottom of his business oxford and dashed my last hope. I guess I'll just have to return another time.

So here, from terra firma, is the best that I could do:

I was in listen-only mode for Sotheby's conference call with stock analysts late Thursday to see if Bill Ruprecht, the firm's president and chief executive, would venture to repeat his misleading claim about Wednesday evening's Impressionist/modern sale results.

He didn't.

While he twice boasted that Sotheby's Impressionist/modern total was three times what it had been last year, he never repeated his previous assertion that the results "were near the high end of the presale estimate." (Making the apples-to-apples comparison of hammer total to the presale estimate of hammer total, the results were, in fact, slightly below the midpoint of the low-high estimate.)

Now we'll see if the art-market journalists at this week's big contemporary art auctions also got my message.

Ruprecht also indicated to the analysts that despite Christie's increased willingness to provide consignors with minimum-price guarantees, Sotheby's would likely continue being conservative about taking such risks. The strongly performing 27 works from the Brody Collection at Christie's were all backed by guarantees.

The catalogues for this week's evening contemporary sales show Sotheby's offering no guarantees, compared to only two at Christie's. (Both of those Christie's lots have third-party guarantors, reducing or eliminating the auction house's risk.)

Speaking of the big auctions, why would any megabucks purchaser in his right mind want to take up Roberta Smith's challenge to publicly identify himself? He would only expose himself as a target for the kind of denigrating media coverage served up in the NY Times by Roberta and, previously, by Holland Cotter, not to mention the British Guardian's Jonathan Jones, who decried the sale of Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" as "a theft of world culture, art history and beauty from we, the people, by the super-rich."

The only people who really need to know where such treasures are hidden are the museum curators who want to borrow them for exhibition and the scholars who want to study them for publication. The leading professionals usually do, eventually, find out where the masterpieces are buried, and can usually be relied upon to keep collectors' confidences for the benefit of their own projects and, ultimately, the public.

Final Hammer: The $95-million (plus buyer's premium) Picasso

It's so easy to be cynical about moguls who lavish incredible sums of money on works of art, especially if you happen to be an impecunious art critic who can't afford a square inch of a 1932 Picasso. (I surely fall into that category.)

If you read Holland Cotter's jaded commentary in today's NY Times about the $106.48-million Picasso, you would think that whoever bought "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" at Christie's on Tuesday was looking for "trophy art" and "a mention in the news," but wouldn't know a truly important work by Picasso if it hit him on the head (or the elbow).

"It's an entertaining picture," sniffs Cotter about the much admired painting, "...though it's not what's great, meaning original, in his art. His toughness is. The seed of that is found in early Cubist painting and collage." I prefer Cubism too, and while I enjoyed the energetic pictures at Gagosian's Mosqueteros show of late Picasso last spring, I thought those fanciful, wacky works were overpraised. Chacun à son Pablo.

Do we know for a fact that the anonymous purchaser actually deserves Cotter's condescending decription? Is it just possible that whoever bought the most expensive artwork ever auctioned is a person of both enormous wealth and refined taste, who loves and appreciates art for the right reasons and can afford to indulge that passion?

Maybe. Maybe not. In any event, isn't this money better spent on art than on frivolous adornments and other forms of vapid, transitory conspicuous consumption? Maybe this person (or entity) will eventually donate or bequeath this "trophy" to a museum. Already a big chunk of the purchase money is being funneled to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, which is an heir of the estate of the former owner, Frances Brody. So the megabucks purchase (thanks to the legator) is in a substantial way benefiting the public.

As for my personal take on all this: I'm jealous, not disdainful, of someone who has the resources to indulge a desire for art at any price. (If only I could!) I'm also regretful that museums have been largely priced out of the masterworks market by such buyers.

But I'm also hopeful that the next resting place for Picasso's sleeping mistress may be a museum, or that her future travels may in some other way redound to the public's benefit.

That's not such a farfetched wish.

Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby's president

I've said it before in the Wall Street Journal (and numerous times on CultureGrrl). But it looks like I'm going have to say it again. Even Bill Ruprecht, the financially savvy president and chief executive of Sotheby's, hasn't yet gotten the message. So let's review:

If you're going to compare sale totals to presale estimates, you've got to use the hammer-price total for that comparison, NOT the total of hammer price-plus-buyer's premium. Presale estimates are predictions of hammer total, plain and simple. You have to compare them to the achieved HAMMER total (not hammer-plus-buyer's premium) to do a meaningful analysis. If you do the apples-to-oranges comparison, inflating the total hammer price with the buyer's premium, you are making the auction look stronger than it actually was. Apples-to-apples is a comparison of hammer price total to the presale estimate of the hammer price total.

Have I said this enough times yet for it to sink in? It's really not that difficult to understand.

It's bad enough when the auction-house PR people, whose job it is to make their firm look good (but also to do it accurately), make to apples-to-oranges comparison. It's a serious professional lapse when so many of the leading members of the art press, whose job it is to separate the hype from the facts, parrot the misleading comparisons in the press releases (as has occurred again with this round of sales).

But its even worse when the head of the company does this. Here's Sotheby's Ruprecht, analyzing this sale in his written comments for his auction house's just-released announcement of first-quarter financial results:

Last night's Impressionist sale brought outstanding results, ...coming in near the high end of the presale estimate.

As Bill surely knows, the presale estimate of the sale's hammer total was $141.35 million to $204.25 million. The total hammer price achieved was $171.27 million, slightly below the midpoint between the low and high estimates, not "near the high end." Only the apples-to-oranges comparison ($195.7 million, with buyer's premium) makes it appear to be "near the high end."

In its postsale press release, Christie's, which had its record Picasso to crow about, didn't make any claims about how its sale total compared with the presale estimate. But it did falsely claim that one of its Picassos, "Le peintre et son modèle," 1964, "sold above expectations" at $10.72 million (hammer price: $9.5 million). That painting actually fetched a hammer price BELOW the presale estimate of its hammer price---$10 million to $14 million. Even when inflated by the buyer's premium, the final price was near the low end of the estimate, not "above expectations."

Doesn't truthful accounting matter? And why do so many art scribes keep letting them get away with it?

Matisse, "Bouquet de Fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet," 1919

Poor Tobias Meyer was pulling teeth at tonight's Impressionist/modern sale at Sotheby's, trying to extract a few extra increments from bidders who finally managed to cough up $25.5 million (slightly above the $18 million to $25 million presale estimate) for the top lot---Matisse's decorative "Bouquet de Fleurs Pour le Quatorze Juillet." (Including the buyer's premium, the price was $28.64 million.) This offering was supported by an irrevocable bid, which was not indicated in the catalogue but was announced at the sale.

The floral was painted by Matisse in 1919 on France's national holiday, July 14, Bastille Day. But there were no fireworks in the saleroom, judging from the sluggish pace of bidding (much of it by phone from Asia, according to Kelly Crow's Wall Street Journal report). I followed some of the action at home, via Sotheby's live computer feed.

"Are we all done?" the hardworking, somewhat exasperated auctioneer repeatedly queried during the many lulls in the Matisse tussle. Several times during the evening, Meyer had to resist thifty buyers' attempts to chisel bidding increments below levels that he deemed reasonable.

One work that did handily trounce its presale estimate was Noguchi's sinuous bronze nude, "Undine," conceived in 1926 and cast in 1927:


Noguchi, "Undine," 1927, 76 3/4 inches high

This piece had come up in a conversation that I had Tuesday night with Bonnie Rychlak, the Noguchi Museum's curator, who was sitting next to me at the dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Queens, NY, museum. I had decided (wisely I think) that I'd rather hear several Philip Glass pieces, mesmerizingly played on a Steinway by the composer himself, than an endless recitation of prices in the melliflous tones of auctioneer Christopher Burge at that night's record-setting Christie's auction.


Philip Glass at the Noguchi Museum Tuesday night

Bonnie mentioned to me that the sculpture being auctioned this week was a particularly fine and interesting one---unusual because, although Noguchi generally "didn't like bronze," this early work was conceived for that medium (not cast later from a sculpture that had originated in a different material).

The statue is also unusual because it is unlike the abstractions for which the artist is best known. That didn't deter the cognoscenti, who bid it up to more than four times its $600,000-900,000 presale estimate. It was knocked down at $3.7 million ($4.23 million with premium, an auction record for the artist).

The sale's hammer price totaled $171.27 million, against a presale estimate of $141 million to $204 million. The sale total including the buyer's premium was $195.7 million, compared to $335.55 million at Christie's on Tuesday night (beefed up by the $106.48-million Picasso).

Sotheby's auction was a very respectable 87.7% sold by lot, 92.4% by value. Seven of the 57 lots failed to find buyers. Full results are here.

James Murdoch

At its annual shareholders meeting tomorrow, Sotheby's intends to add a new member to its board---James Murdoch, son of Rupert, who, according to Fortune magazine, is "the likely successor to take over his father's empire." That empire, of course, is News Corp.---the media giant that owns (among many other news organizations), the Wall Street Journal. James is currently News Corp.'s chairman and chief executive for Europe and Asia.

According to Sotheby's "Board Nomination Process and Criteria," contained in its Proxy Statement:

In 2010, on the recommendation of the committee, the Board decided to expand the size of the Board from eleven directors to twelve and add Mr. Murdoch as a nominee for election to the Board.

Will WSJ reporters now have to acknowledge the Murdoch-Sotheby's link when chronicling the Sotheby's-Christie's auction wars? Presumably the personal connection will be kept separate from the journalistic coverage.

Speaking of perceived (if not actual) conflicts: Serving on Sotheby's board for the past three years is Diana Taylor, managing director of Wolfensohn & Co., an investment banking firm. She is perhaps better known as New York Mayor Bloomberg's long-time companion.

Auction-house practices are regulated by the city. Purely hypothetically, if New York's Department of Consumer Affairs were to investigate practices at Sotheby's, Christie's or both, Taylor's connection to one of the arch-rivals could mar the appearance of impartiality.

I realize there's another side to this argument---that women have a right to their own professional lives and affiliations, regardless of their spouses' or long-time companions' professions. It gets a lot dicier, though, when the partner happens to be a government head.

Two knowledgeable Christie's sources (NOT Conor Jordan, above) this morning informed me (on the record but not for attribution by name) that the anonymous $106.48-million purchaser of Picasso's portrait of his sleeping paramour, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was NOT the same party who received a financing fee from the auction house for being the third-party guarantor of the coveted painting.

That means that the jaw-dropping new record for any artwork sold at auction is a clean one. Had the guarantor been the purchaser, the price paid would have been, in essence, discounted by the (undisclosed) amount of his fee. The hammer price for "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," 1932 (seen in the above photo), was $95 million, compared to a presale estimate of $70-90 million.

Thanks in large measure to the megabucks competition for the Picasso, last night's 69-lot Impressionist/modern sale (three lots withdrawn before the auction) fetched a hammer total of $296.55 million, compared to a presale estimate of $262.78 to $368.3 million. (The sale total including buyer's premium, which does not figure in the presale estimates, was $335.55 million.)

The 27 works offered from the collection of the late Frances Brody (which included the star Picasso) were 100% sold, for a total of $224.18 million, including premium.

But it was a very different story for the non-Brody part of the sale: The sold rate for the various-owner conglomeration was a mere 67% by value, 69% by lot---a result that can only be called dismal. Only 29 of the 42 lots sold. The name of the game, it appears, is finding prestigious single-owner collections to sell.

At next week's big contemporary sales, the name is Crichton---also at Christie's. But unlike the venerable Brody collection, the late author Michael Crichton's trove contains not only long-held art but also a large number of works that he purchased at auction in a 2003-2004 buying spree. If nothing else, that could provide a good baseline from which to assess the current state of the contemporary art market.

For the complete results of last night's sale, go here for Brody; here for various owners.

Christie's catalogue for the Brody Collection

As an addendum to my auction post earlier today, I should let you know that I have an unrelated event to attend tonight and will not be joining the press scrum at Christie's. Nor will I be following the action online in real time.

In fact, because I'm on deadline for an article I'm writing that is related to my recent Southern sojourn, I may decide to wait until after next week's major contemporary art sales to do a wrap-up.

I can only hope that at tonight's postsale press conference, some brave soul in the scribe tribe will ask Christie's whether the top-estimated Picasso was bought by its third-party guarantor and, if so, how much that bidder received in "financing fees" (which, in effect, reduces the cost of the purchase).

Even better, maybe Christie's will speak without prompting.

Record Breaker? Picasso, "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," 1932, offered tonight at Christie's

It seems to me that many art-market reporters have been too gullible in buying the auctioneers' and dealers' spin that art prices are going to come roaring back during the coming round of evening Impressionist/modern and contemporary sales.

Consider this from Carol Vogel of the NY Times:

Optimism has returned to the multibillion-dollar art market. Expectations are so high that many will be disappointed if Picasso's 1932 painting, "Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust)," doesn't break the record for a work of art sold at auction when it is offered at Christie's on Tuesday [today].

That would mean that a work estimated to bring $70-90 million would instead top the astonishing $104.32 million fetched three months ago by Giacometti's "L'Homme Qui Marche I."

And this from veteran art-market writer Alexandra Peers of the NY Observer:

The rich are still rich and are apparently eager to forget the art market's swoon, as evidenced by the success of some recent auctions.

And then there's Lindsay Pollock's upbeat analysis for The Art Newspaper:

The reign of Alberto Giacometti's emaciated "Walking Man I" as the world's priciest trophy at auction is likely to be short-lived. The six-foot tall bronze, which fetched an outsized $104.3 million in February at Sotheby's, London, is expected to be overtaken by a painting of Picasso's lusty, lilac-hued mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter."

That there's a lot of exuberance on the sellers' side is clear enough, as Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Overall, the houses [Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury Co.] expect to sell at least $803 million worth of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art---twice as much as they sold last May.

Christie's $70-million low estimate for the 1932 Picasso, Crow notes, is "more than the auction house got last fall for its entire evening sale of Impressionist and modern art."

Christie's estimates that tonight's 72-lot evening sale of Impressionist and modern works will fetch hammer prices totaling some $266.18 million to $373 million. Sotheby's pegs its more modest Wednesday evening Impressionist/modern sale of 58 lots at $144.8 million to $208.8 million.

Abandoning the caution that was exhibited by both houses after the market went into post-Lehman freefall in the fall of 2008, Christie's has brashly offered guarantees for a hefty 32 of the 72 works in tonight's sale, 28 of which were from the eagerly sought-after collection of the late Frances [Mrs. Sidney] Brody. For six of those works (the star Picasso, as well as three more Picassos and two Giacomettis), Christie's has lined up third parties to fully finance the guarantees.

One of the things that I don't understand about the presale coverage for the sales is that no accounts that I've seen have noted that the possible record price for Picasso's Marie-Thérèse portrait could well merit an asterisk. The final price will not be what it seems if the winning bidder turns out to be the third-party guarantor for the painting (an outcome that most likely would not be publicly disclosed).

The "Saleroom Notice" of the online catalogue entry (but not in the hardcopy catalogue entry) for "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," Christie's discloses this:

Christie's guarantee of this lot has been fully financed by a third party who is bidding on this lot. The third party will receive a financing fee from Christie's, whether or not they are the successful bidder [emphasis added].

In other words, thanks to this fee arrangement (amount undisclosed), the third-party guarantor's net cost for purchasing this painting would be less than the final hammer price plus buyer's premium that anyone else would have to pay. What's supposed to be a "level playing field" among buyers at auction is significantly tilted. The supposed transparency of auction prices is clouded by what are, to my mind, inappropriate and murky side deals.

Sotheby's policy on third-party guarantees differs significantly, keeps the playing field horizontal. In response to my query, press spokesperson Lauren Gioia told me:

A third party guarantor does not bid [emphasis added]. Instead, he simply is a partner on the guarantee and shares in the loss or profit, as they case may be.

Gioia also clarified for me the rules governing irrevocable bids at Sotheby's:

An irrevocable bid is a bid provided by a third party that will be executed during the sale at a value that ensures that the lot will sell. The irrevocable bidder is only compensated if the bidding exceeds the level of the irrevocable bid and another bidder buys the lot. If the irrevocable bidder is the successful bidder, he pays for the lot, including the full buyer's premium, as does every other buyer at Sotheby's, and is not otherwise compensated [emphasis added].

Accountable to shareholders as a public company (unlike privately held Christie's), Sotheby's is still being cautious about offering price guarantees to consignors: It has only one guaranteed work in its Impressionist/modern sale---Picasso's 1965 "Femme au Grand Chapeau. Buste," from the estate of Patricia Kennedy Lawford. It has lined up an irrevocable bid (amount undisclosed) for that work, which is estimated to sell for $8-12 million.

In its recently issued Proxy Statement, Sotheby's was far more measured than the bullish journalists in assessing the current state of the market:

With the international art market showing signs of recovery, improved Company revenue margins, and a significantly reduced cost base, management believes that Sotheby's is well positioned to improve upon its financial results in 2010. At the same time, management remains mindful of the prevailing level of global economic uncertainty and the potential for continued art market volatility.

If journalists' art-market exuberance proves to be irrational (as I think it may), we'll soon be reading postmortem reports that buyers were "selective," with a few breakout prices among otherwise solid, if unspectacular, results. These sales could well be a case of too much material loaded too soon onto a gradually recovering but still delicate market. (There were 84 works offered by the Big Two at last May's Impressionist/modern evening sales, compared to 130 this week.)

I suspect that too many hopes may have been pinned on the anomalous Giacometti price. It's a confidence-booster, to be sure, but not necessarily a reliable indicator of the general state of things.

Then again, I may soon have to eat my grand chapeau!

ArtsJournal's downtime last week was due to dastardly technological deeds involving the ad server for our blogs' righthand columns. Those columns are still down at this writing.

In the event that you actually took seriously my invitation last week to welcome me back from my travels "by decorating my bare ad space and activating my dormant 'Donate' button," the benefaction option now awaits your clicks and I'm also ready to offer you a new ad alternative.

My CultureGrrl Classifieds (scroll down) now welcomes your small jpeg images, in addition to your copy, to be prominently featured in my middle column.

Simply click the drop-down menu for six different payment options via PayPal (the last two on the menu are for copy-plus-images). Send me your text via the Send ad copy here link, and you will receive my instructions for sending your jpeg.

After all, you've got so much money saved up to buy that Brody Picasso tomorrow. Surely you can spare some change!

Part of the site for the planned Downtown Whitney, as seen from the High Line

Getting back to my New York roots after my Southern sojourn, I need to keep my prior promise to take on art critic Roberta Smith's recent Whitney screed, which followed close upon another negative bit of prominently placed NY Times coverage by Carol Vogel and Kate Taylor that raised doubts about some Whitney board members' (most notably, Leonard Lauder's) support of the museum's downtown expansion.

Together, these slaps came across as a problematic campaign to erode confidence in a desperately needed project that has an equally desperate need to raise more cash. The Times has just made that task harder, without making a good case for why public misgivings might be warranted.

Roberta's intemperate arguments made no sense to me: She suggested that the Whitney's chosen site is a mistake because nearby Chelsea already has a large concentration of galleries where you can view art for free. This ignores the fact that New York has a long history of mutually beneficial synergy between art galleries and museums in close proximity. Whether it's the Met and uptown galleries, or MoMA and 57th Street galleries, public and private art spaces have traditionally been complementary, not competitive. The Downtown Whitney's location at an entrance to the popular High Line is another factor in its favor.

And the Whitney's chosen site has an advantage known to almost no one who wants to build anywhere in Manhattan: The neighbors actually want it there. There was much praise and virtually no opposition during the public approval process.

At the conclusion of her piece, Roberta completely lost me by making what she herself acknowledged to be a "shocking" suggestion: The Whitney should "hire Larry Gagosian as a consultant." (Couldn't the megabucks dealer just donate his time?) Roberta wants Larry to help guide the Whitney because his recent exhibition of four Calder sculptures showed that he knows how to "make art look good."

Far from supporting her point, the photo of Gagosian's four very spaciously installed pieces that accompanied Smith's article clearly demonstrated how impractical it would be for an object-rich museum to let so few works consume so much space.

Roberta was also severely critical of the Whitney's current uptown quarters:

Its 1966 Marcel Breuer building has all the disadvantages of starchitecture and few if any of the rewards. Even in a country where museums are rarely designed with art in mind, it stands out as relentlessly unforgiving to works of all styles and periods. If the stone floor doesn't kill, the oppressive overhead concrete structure almost undoubtedly will.

It's true that even the Whitney's director Adam Weinberg has taken jabs at his own building, despite the fact that he agreed not to sell it (for an undisclosed period), in exchange for chairman emeritus Leonard Lauder's $131-million gift: In comments he made at a City Planning Commission hearing, Adam criticized the building's darkness and its moat which, he quipped, can evoke fear of alligators!

Roberta wasn't content to put her considerable clout in opposition to the Whitney's old and new facilities. For good measure, she took swipes at other recent museum expansion projects:

The New Museum's galleries [by newly anointed Pritzker Prize winners Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA] are generally viewed as horribly proportioned and oppressive in their lack of windows. [That wasn't what Martin Filler or Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff had said, let alone the Pritzker jurors.] The Modern's new building is, simply put, one of the great cultural tragedies of 21st-century New York....[Renzo Piano's] atrium at the Morgan Library and Museum, while beautiful as a space unto itself, is of the event variety; it has diminished, not improved, that museum's gallery spaces and their layout.

Neither Roberta nor the other Times critics were talking that talk when those new spaces opened. Indeed, back in 2004, Smith wrote about "the tender delicacy of Mr. [Yoshio] Taniguchi's ambitious transformation of the museum in which Modernism is made so exquisitely self-aware as to almost be understatedly Post-Modernist."

By contrast, I was an early critic of the initially well received Taniguchi-designed MoMA expansion and the highly praised Morgan expansion. One of the most effusive boosters of the expansion that (to my mind) marginalized J.P. Morgan at the Morgan was Smith herself:

Widely hailed as a triumph, Mr. Piano's design may ultimately qualify as a classic itself....A box of glass and steel set on an expansive plane of oak, it centers the Morgan's three existing buildings on a setting that feels, for all its crisp urban geometry, as natural as a forest clearing. This structure's affirmation of light, space and solid ground is a bracing prelude to almost any kind of art.

I've certainly been critical of Piano's additions to existing U.S. museums (the High Art Museum in Atlanta; the Los Angeles County Museum; the Art Institute of Chicago). But as I've previously noted, I believe Piano's most brilliant museum work occurred when he had free rein to design a freestanding building (Menil, Beyeler, Klee, Nasher), rather than an add-on to an existing institution. The Downtown Whitney, if it ever happens, could mark a return to form.

Meanwhile, the Whitney recently announced that it "will launch a series of large-scale, commissioned works on the site of its future downtown building [emphasis added]."

Does that imply that the building is indeed going to be built? Or did they really mean to say "its planned downtown building"? By 2013---when they have to fish or cut bait, in face of the deadline for closing on the purchase of the city-owned downtown site---we'll know for sure.

But by casting so much doubt upon this laudable project based on flimsy evidence and arguments, the Times has made the job of selling its merits to potential donors in a tough economic climate all the more difficult.

If this effort fails, New York, not just the Whitney, will be the poorer.

I'm back from my Southern sojourn, y'all, and coincidentally, so is ArtsJournal---again available to all art-lings on every web browser known to man and in four of the five continents. (No Antarctican art-lings yet, to my knowledge.) I missed you and hope some of you missed me. I do see from my traffic stats that many of you (like me) have returned to your blog addiction.

So where exactly were we (before we were so rudely interrupted)?

As some Internet Explorer users already know, I did manage to post yesterday about Holland Cotter's NY Times review of the Metropolitan Museum's Picasso show, in which he mentioned that the permanent-collection megashow had the advantage of being a "low overhead" production---an observation similar to my previous description of it as a "recession exhibition." But (as I noted yesterday) the Met's curator, Gary Tinterow, did make the point at the press preview that this show was not exactly done on the cheap.

I'll let him tell you why: