September 2010 Archives

This could conceivably be a case of "great minds think alike": Just one day after I posted what I thought was my own cleverly coined one-word critique of the Guggenheim's deal with YouTube---the "Googleheim"---that same hybrid word was deployed in a Sept. 23 article by Rachel Hewitt that appeared on the website of Chicago Art Magazine.

But that ain't all. In a puzzling turn of events that by no stretch of the imagination could be ascribed to "great minds think alike," the very same article that Hewitt ostensibly wrote for Chicago Art Magazine has now shown up (dated Sept. 27) on the Huffington Post's arts page, but under a different byline---Kathryn Born, Chicago Art Magazine's editor-in-chief. Will the real author please stand up?

It seems to me that if you're going to attack a museum's ethics, as Born/Hewitt did, you at least ought to have your own ducks in a row.

UPDATE: Born now tells me that "Hewitt was commissioned by me to write the story" and an assistant uploaded it to the Huffington Post. (She didn't specifically state that the assistant was responsible for the byline change.) As for "Googleheim," Kathryn writes: "Not a big creative stretch to put those two words together. It's not genius like Bradjelina or funemployed." (Actually, I had always thought it was "Brangelina.")

For the record, I'm not particularly concerned about whether Google (the parent company of YouTube) is providing financial support for the Guggenheim's "YouTube Play" initiative (although the museum does owe reporters a candid answer to queries about sponsorship).

What bothers me more is the Guggenheim's shameless promotion of corporate entities---both in naming its new video biennial for YouTube, and in hyping (at the bottom of this press release, for example) the business activities of the three commercial partners (also including HP and Intel) in this initiative.

Some months ago, when YouTube Play was first announced, I shot off an e-mail to a press spokesperson for HP, asking by what criteria that company can claim to be "the world's largest technology company," as it is described by the Guggenheim in its own press release. What about Apple and Microsoft (or Google, for that matter)?

HP's spokesperson and I had several I'll-get-back-to-you exchanges, but no answer was forthcoming. When the spokesperson attempted to talk to me about this off the record, I declined, insisting that this was a question that the company should be able to answer for publication, having made this claim publicly (abetted by the Guggenheim).

For what it's worth, this isn't the first time that the Guggenheim (which I recently praised here) has gurgled for Google. The museum's Design It: Shelter Competition last year compelled all entrants to design their submissions using Google SketchUp and then to geographically site their models on Google Earth. Mastering the SketchUp program (the Pro version of which is a product that Google sells) entailed a significant learning curve. Entrants also were required to upload their designs to Google 3D Warehouse, for which they had to sign up for a Google account. It was a global Google boondoggle, with the museum as accomplice,

And the Goog isn't the only museum to have flown that company's flag. Below is a photo that I took of the exterior of the Goo-per Hewitt back in June 2009, when it was promoting "Doodle 4 Google"---a youth indoctrination program. According to the museum's own description:

Children from across the United States were challenged to think like designers and utilize Google's iconic logo as a springboard to convey their message...

...not to mention Google's message:

My blogging buddy, Jon Lackman of the Art History Newsletter, has a little list that he's extrapolated by crunching the numbers from the National Research Council's just released database assessing U.S. doctoral programs in 62 academic fields.

Jon has listed 51 schools in order of their purported rank for art-history PhD programs.

Here are his Top 10:

1. UC-Berkeley
2. Columbia
3. Chicago
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. Harvard
7. NYU
8. MIT (same score as NYU)
9. Northwestern
10. University of Pennsylvania

Lackman comments:

The [National Research Council's] data is from 2005-2006, fatally outdated say some critics....

The NRC...refuses to produce authoritative rankings of its own, arguing that this would be misleading, since there are no universally agreed-upon objective criteria and uncertainties inherent in the data collection and analysis. I'm no statistician but this seems like a big cop-out....

I'm going to do something that would surely make the NRC cringe and just compute for each art-history program the average of the high and low rankings from both [of NRC's] methods, to produce a simple, ranked list.

Let the debate ("My school's better than your school.") begin.

Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell, and Asian art chairman James C.Y. Watt, at press preview for "The World of Khubilai Khan"

Where are the barbarians when we really need them?

The Metropolitan Museum's just opened exhibition of art in China during the period of occupation by Mongol invaders---The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty---is a typically brilliant exercise in object-wrangling. Although drawn from a wide variety of international sources, the bulk of the loans come from China, including many recent archaeological finds and some other treasures that never before left their homeland.

One of the latter is a stone post embellished with writhing dragons---a monument from Khubilai Khan's celebrated "stately pleasure dome" in Xanadu:



Where this assemblage of impressive objects falls short, though, is in incisive curatorial analysis. Even the label for the star object above seems to shortchange its significance: The description consigns "Xanadu" to parentheses and fails to mention that this monumental carving belonged to the fabled structure immortalized in Coleridge's poem. You would never know from its label that this imposing, evocative decoration had never previously budged from its original site:



This missed opportunity to engage general audiences is the least of this show's underachievements, however. More perplexingly, the exhibition and catalogue hype and sanitize this difficult period in Chinese history, 1215-1368, which, as Sherman Lee, the Cleveland Museum's late, legendary director, observed in his catalogue essay for his museum's own sweeping 1968 show, Chinese Art Under the Mongols, was too brief in duration for "the usual Chinese sequences of innovation, development, and gradual absorption so charactistic of the great classic periods." Perhaps more crucially, it was "a time politically dominated by foreign barbarians."

The B-word, typically associated with the invading Mongols, is largely eschewed by the Met in both its exhibition and its catalogue (with a notable exception, discussed later).

Perhaps a key to why this dynamic and disruptive era has given birth to a surprisingly tame exhibition can be found in the decision to consign the Met catalogue's forward (customarily written by the organizing curator) to Shan Jixiang, director of the Cultural Property Promotion Association, People's Republic of China.

Here's an excerpt from this property promoter's promotional prose:

Unification under the Yuan dyanasty contributed to the formation of a culture that was at once heterogeneous and integrated; it led to a new phase of exchange and harmony among various ethnic groups....An environment characterized by ethnic harmony and cultural eclecticism gave rise to artistic invention and diversity.

Contrast this with Cleveland curator Wai-kam Ho's contribution to his museum's 1968 catalogue:

Under the Mongolian policy of racial discrimination and institutionalized double standards, the Chinese most painfully affected were obviously the Confucian scholar-gentry, the pillar of the traditional society prior to the foreign conquest.

It is no exaggeration to say that the most unique and decisive single factor that substantially altered the entire cultural scene of the 14th century, expecially the arts and crafts, was the universal humiliation and frustration of these scholars and the various forms of their reactions...against their reverse in fortune.

So much for Shan Jixiang's "new phase of exchange and harmony."

Only Met curator Maxwell Hearn deviates significantly from People's Republic-style political correctness at his institution. In his illuminating catalogue essay on Chinese painting, Hearn describes the causes of a "stylistic shift" during the period, as well as the influence of "dynastic change" on the format of paintings.

He even dares to invoke the B-word (albeit in quotation marks):

Those who had held office under the Song...suddenly out of work, turned to art to express their enduring loyalty to the Song and their opposition to they new order of "barbaric" conquerors....Yuan figurative art often evokes ancient cultural paradigms that might serve as emblems of moral courage and survival in the face of adversity.

And in his own companion exhibition to the loan show, Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change, drawn largely from the Met's own collection, Hearn forthrightly analyzes the period, pulling no punches:

This exhibition focuses on the revolutionary transformation in painting that took place during the Yuan. Drawing upon the scholarly aesthetic of the late Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), Yuan literati painters no longer took truth to nature as their goal, but rather used painting as a vehicle for self-expression. In the hands of highly educated scholar-artists, brushwork became more calligraphic, assuming a new affective dimension that transcended its representational function....

[The] aesthetic shift was accompanied by a similar change in content: the representational imagery and auspicious symbolism of Song paintings took on political or personal overtones that reflected an artist's state of mind, and inscriptions written directly onto the picture surface allowed the artist's "voice" to became an integral part of a work as well.

It is this the kind of lucidity of thought and expression that I missed from the larger show and its often turgid catalogue.

Was the Met constrained in its scholarship by a need to kowtow to its Chinese lenders? We'll probably never know. But there should have been a way to present an analysis of the material that gives viewers a fuller understanding of specific stylistic and substantive changes, demonstrating how Chinese art was influenced by the incursion of foreigner rulers and the interactions of the various cultures that were brought together by the unification of diverse geographical areas under Mongol rule.

Cleveland's Lee called this tumultuous period "a true watershed in Chinese cultural and social life." That's a concept that should have informed the Met's presentation, using the show's well-chosen objects to elucidate it.

NY Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, whose district includes Metropolitan Museum

New York Governor David Paterson on Sept. 17 signed the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA), which I previously discussed briefly here. It took effect immediately.

Widely supported by museums (and sponsored by Assemblyman Jonathan Bing and State Senator Liz Krueger), the new law will allow financially challenged nonprofits leeway in withdrawing funds from "underwater" endowments---those that are valued at less than their original amounts at the time the money was given. Some 46 other states already have UPMIFA laws on the books, according to Bing and Krueger.

In his joint press release with Krueger, Bing said that he was "proud to author legislation which will allow these institutions to remain solvent during the economic downturn."

But what the press release fails to make note of are provisions in the new law (at S 555 in the text) that draw a roadmap for institutions seeking release from or modification of restrictions placed by a benefactor on the use of donated funds. These mischievous provisions closely track the legal doctrine of cy pres that was controversially (and, to my mind, wrongly) used by the Barnes Foundation, the Cleveland Museum and Fisk University to justify trashing donor intent.

The New York law invites institutions to apply for court permission to deviate from donor stipulations "if the restriction has become impracticable or wasteful, if it impairs the management or investment of the fund, or if, because of circumstances not anticipated by the donor, a modification of a restriction will further the purposes of the fund."

Donors ("if available") and the state attorney general must be notified of proposed deviations and must "be given the opportunity to be heard."

As for the widely publicized new rule allowing institutions to tap "underwater" endowments, there is some comfort for donors whose benefactions were made before the effective date of the law. Institutions are required to notify such patrons before relying on UPMIFA to dip into those funds. What's more, such donors must have a 90-day window for instructing the institution NOT to "spend below the original dollar value of my gift." Future donors, however, will have to specify this wish in the original terms of gift, to avoid an underwater dousing.

The law does stipulate that nonprofit cultural institutions and universities, in tapping endowments, must exercise "good faith" and "the care an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would exercise under similar circumstances." There's a lot of guidance in the law about what this means, but also a lot of leeway.

While endowment-tapping may be a necessary expedient in economically troubled times, the danger is that instead of helping an institution remain solvent, such withdrawals could serve to deplete resources to the point of no return.

Far more dangerous is providing legal encouragement for future disregard of donor intent. That enshrines bad institutional practice into bad law.

The unexpurgated version of my WQXR "Arts File" segment that you may have heard (in edited form) on the radio or online this morning is now posted on the station's website: New Arts Season, Rising Ticket Prices.

You can hear me here right now (click arrow on left), with more comments about my own cut-rate cultural explorations (including a Pitmen pitch) and ending with a plea (that didn't make the final cut) for donors to step up their outlays so that less well-heeled individual ticket buyers don't have to. (You'll also hear me say "Metropolitan Museum" when I meant "Metropolitan Opera." Art, not opera, is the usual focus of my professional preoccupations!)



But what I really want to know is: How did the Arts File producer know that she had in me the perfect cheapskate for this assigned topic? From talking to her, I learned that she hadn't read my Metropolitan Opera lament before she called me. I guess my Bronx accent must make me sound like a shlepper.

But wait. There's more! Below is a CultureGrrl Video from the cheap seats. I shot it at the Frank Gehry-designed Sosnoff Theater, which is part of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. I was there Aug. 22 for a Leon Botstein-conducted performance by the American Symphony Orchestra that was part of a meaty, provocative Berg and His World series. The concert I attended was titled, Crimes and Passions (scroll to bottom), but it might have been more appropriately called, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

Speaking of which, my video almost caused me a nervous breakdown, because my new, souped-up mini-camcorder repeatedly crashed my aging computer. This clip begins with my irreverent view of an unintended water feature outside the Gehry building (which predates his much more successful, more expensive Disney Concert Hall, home of the LA Philharmonic).

I then take you inside the theater to my vantage point up in the rafters. Next to me perched a young woman on an even more uncomfortable seat for the same price as mine---a highchair with a metal rung on which she uncomfortably rested her feet, since most women's legs are too short to reach the floor. Believe, me, there can be no napping at this concert on this chair:



I had suffered on one of these instruments of torture the last time I attended a performance at the Sosnoff. Never again!

On that discordant note, here's my concert-hall video:

If all goes according to plan, you'll be able to hear me tomorrow morning in an "Arts File" segment on WQXR, New York's public classical music station. I'll be commenting on the high cost of attending cultural events (mostly music and theater, with a little bit of art thrown in). I'll also touch upon the strategies used by the budget-minded NYC cultural consumers (myself included).

I've blogged previously about hitting the Great Wall of Price Resistance (including here, where I described my travails in ordering Metropolitan Opera tickets for the new season). The best (although least likely) way to beat rising ticket prices is to be a call-in winner for WQXR's fall preview giveaways, this week and next. (I'm pinning my hopes on winning the Met's entire Ring Cycle.)

Several years ago, I actually won WQXR tickets to a great Daniel Barenboim piano recital at Carnegie Hall where, by sheer happenstance, the occupant of the seat next to mine was none other than the Rabbi from my synagogue. I also won a trip for two to Australia on call-in with a different radio station, by knowing the title of a slightly obscure Bee Gees song for which one line of lyrics was provided (but that's another story).

You can hear me talking about the cheap seats at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow on 105.9 FM or by clicking the "Listen" button on the right side of WQXR's website. The podcast will be posted later on the station's website. I will, of course, give you the link, once it's up.

At least my museum admissions are covered by my press pass!

Early Rendering of Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

My previous post---describing the detailed written agreement protecting the rights of construction workers at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi---was headlined: Guggenheim's Armstrong Does It Right.

But today's post critiquing the agreement on the website of Human Rights Watch (HRW) could have been entitled: "Guggenheim's Armstrong Does It Wrong."

The international watchdog group finds fault with the landmark Employment Practices Policy (EPP) just published by Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC). The EPP will govern not only construction of the Guggenheim's new satellite museum but also that of other new cultural facilities being overseen by TDIC on Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island.

HRW's headline for its analysis of the EPP was:

Guggenheim's Labor Provisions Need Enforcement: Museum Promises to Prevent Migrant Worker Abuse, but Fee Reimbursement, Independent Monitoring Lacking

While acknowledging that "the Guggenheim's public announcement is an important affirmation of the private sector's role in protecting worker rights," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, was far from satisfied:

The agreement is incomplete and lacks the monitoring and penalties that will turn promises into real protection.

Specifically, the watchdog group asserts:

The provisions...notably lack a requirement for contractors to reimburse workers for huge recruitment fees that effectively force laborers to remain on the job until the fees are repaid. The announcement also lacked provisions for independent, third-party monitoring as well as any provisions that address worker rights to collective bargaining and a fair minimum wage.

I applaud HRW for its vigilance on the important issue of the exploitation of migrant workers. But its critique, in this instance, may turn out to be an illustration of the adage, "No good deed goes unpunished."

While it is true, as HRW states, that there are no "explicit provisions" requiring reimbursement of workers' recruitment fees, the released summary of the EPP does explicitly state that workers must not be charged such fees:

The contractor shall be solely liable for and shall pay all recruitment fees for an employee. No one involved in the construction of TDIC's projects shall utilise the service of any agent or agency charging an employee any recruitment fee.

Anyone who peruses the full 39-page text of the EPP cannot fail to be impressed by its rigorous delineation of rules for appropriate working conditions and employment practices. Americans may also be a little horrified that some things that we regard as givens (i.e., "Employees shall be provided with drinking water and toilets") don't go without saying. One nice Middle Eastern touch in the policy guidelines: "The Contractor shall provide Employees with prayer rooms."

There are detailed provisions for the Guggenheim, the TDIC and the United Arab Emirates to monitor compliance with the agreement. But it's true, as HRW states, that nothing is mentioned about collective bargaining or a "fair minimum wage" for the construction workers. The EPP does not mention anything about "independent third-party monitoring." But it may be reasonable to expect that the Guggenheim, having already shown a serious concern for the treatment of workers on its project, will monitor its site closely.

It is also true, as HRW has noted, that the EPP mentions nothing about collective bargaining or a fair minimum wage for construction workers. Nevertheless, it seems to me that tremendous progress has been made in changing the expectation of the exploitation of migrant works in the United Arab Emirates to an expectation of fair and humane treatment---a condition that (we can only hope) may become infectious, providing a template for future development.

One thing that the Guggenheim's director, Richard Armstrong, is unlikely to deliver on, however, is his prediction (made during a 2009 CultureGrrl interview) that the Guggenheim's Abu Dhabi facility would open in 2012-13, with groundbreaking in autumn 2009.

This morning, I asked Eleanor Goldhar, the Guggenheim's deputy director and chief of global communications, for an update on the progress (or lack thereof) on the Abu Dhabi project. She informed me that there's been "no official groundbreaking" and that Frank Gehry's final design is "to be announced later this year or early 2011." The projected completion date is has been put off to late 2013 or early 2014 and the museum's opening is currently slated for late 2013 to early 2014.

Left to Right in Abu Dhabi: Lee Tabler, CEO of Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company; Richard Armstrong, director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; architect Frank Gehry; Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Guggenheim's chief officer for global strategies and director, Guggenheim Bilbao; Frederick Henry, Guggenheim trustee

When I interviewed Richard Armstrong in February 2009, shortly after he became director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, he assured me that he was sensitive to the concerns repeatedly expressed by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others about the exploitation of migrant construction workers in the United Arab Emirates, which encompass Abu Dhabi.

Armstrong then told me:

We're keen on making certain that everyone is treated justly. We want to be vigilant in that direction.

He later followed up with a detailed letter to HRW, assuring the watchdog group that he took their concerns with the utmost seriousness.

And now this just in, proving that this wasn't just lip service---a detailed Employment Practices Policy, publicly released by the Guggenheim and Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), which oversees the development of cultural facilities on Saadiyat Island. The jointly issued six-page summary of the guidelines sets forth the "rights and benefits that will be guaranteed to all employees, as well as policies and procedures that have been put in place" in connection with the construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Included are stipulations about living accommodations, working hours, payment of wages, and regular monitoring of conditions affecting health and safety.

A letter accompanying the summary of the EPP, signed by both Armstrong and Lee Tabler, CEO of Abu Dhabi's TDIC, affirms that "both parties are deeply committed to safeguarding the rights and welfare of employees at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum site."

I had been planning to write a satirical CultureGrrl post about the Googleheim. (YouTube is a subsidiary of Google.) But now Richard has utterly disarmed me.

Wait a minute! Looking back at my 2009 two-part Q&A with Richard has gotten me to wonder: Now that he's made good on his human rights pledge, as well as his plans to oversee the restoration of the plantings within the New York building (as intended by Frank Lloyd Wright), the installation of seating on the ramps, and a completely reimagined museum restaurant, is Armstrong now poised to follow up on a more startling comment that he made to me back then, after I asked whether he envisioned any additional international satellite museums?

Here's what he told me:

If you're meant to have a global network, there's not deep connection to Asia at present. If one were truly putting together a pearl necklace across the globe, you'd say there's a large part of the world that's not being addressed at present.

This is a guy who seemed to have strode into the rotunda knowing a lot about what he wanted to accomplish, and he's been working his way down the checklist ever since. I expect a new Global Guggenheim announcement any day now!

Steven Pleshette Murphy, Christie's new President and CEO

Veteran auction watchers are scratching their heads at yesterday's unexpected news that Christie's has tapped Steve Murphy, an American with no art-related background or auction-related experience, to be the London-based auction house's chief executive officer, "effective immediately." The official announcement was issued today by Patricia Barbizet, non-executive chairman of Christie's and CEO of Artemis, an investment group owned by French magnate François Pinault. (Christie's is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Artemis.)

Barbizet also announced that Edward Dolman, CEO of Christie's for almost 11 years, had been "promoted to chairman of Christie's International." He will "focus on business development [i.e., snaring consignments] and client relationships at the senior-most levels."

As reported in Christie's announcement, Murphy's most recent executive gig was as president and CEO of Rodale Inc., the U.S.-based publishing company whose best known magazines include Men's Health and Prevention. Its books include The South Beach Diet and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

But not mentioned in the auction house's announcement is the fact that Murphy's time at the helm of at Rodale ended a full year ago---Sept. 1, 2009. Maria Rodale, the family company's board chairman, who announced that change at the end of July 2009, succeeded Murphy as CEO. At that time, Publishers Weekly reported that Murphy had been known at Rodale not only for financially astute leadership but also for corporate restructurings and workforce cuts.

In a statement that had been issued by the publishing company, Murphy enigmatically explained his resignation this way :

After a wonderful decade at Rodale, I have decided not to renew my contract and to take time off to pursue my own creative interests.

So what's this new Christie's CEO really like? Jon Fine wrote this for Businessweek in 2006:

He dresses well---almost too well. (Think three-piece suits in September.) He exudes the faint aura of a performer, of being aware he is being watched. [At least he looks and acts the part of an auction-house executive!]

Neither quality is common at the family-owned Rodale, based in Emmaus, Pa., which still retains the institutional DNA you'd expect from a company that has been popularizing "organic" since the 1940s.

But Murphy is a bit of an outsider in New York media as well. He came to Rodale from Disney, not Condé Nast. Chatter about turnover in his executive ranks, which Murphy and Rodale dismiss, persists. If his industry peers compiled a short list of top executives, there's a good chance Murphy wouldn't crack it. And yet his track record at Rodale since his arrival in 2000 is likely as good as anyone's and better than most.

In a motion filed in Davidson County Chancery Court on Friday, Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper echoed CultureGrrl's critique from Wednesday of the muddled logic in Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle's Memorandum and Order. In an astonishing turnaround from her previous pronouncement in favor of a Nashville-only solution for Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection, the judge on Tuesday rejected the AG's plan for temporarily housing the collection in Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts until Fisk could reassume custodianship. She also gave Fisk's lawyers a big assist in gaining her approval for a $30-million collection-sharing agreement between the university and Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR, by providing them with her recommended wording for their revised proposal, due to be filed by Oct. 8.

Here's what the AG said in his Motion to Clarify Lyle's Sept. 14 Memorandum and Order:

The Attorney General offered a proposal that would guarantee the continued maintenance and display of the Collection in Nashville 100% of the time into the future....

The Court in its ruling earlier this week rejected the Attorney General's proposal as a "short-term solution" and a "temporary fix." The Attorney General would like to correct that apparent miscommunication. There is nothing "short-term" or "temporary" about the plan. It provides an appropriately funded and structured mechanism to support the full-time display and maintenance of the Stieglitz Collection in Nashville into the indefinite future [emphasis added].

The only "temporary" element of the arrangement is the appropriate suggestion that Fisk University should be able to resume custody and display of the art when it has the financial ability to do so.

What's more, the AG asked Lyle to do him the same favor that she did for Fisk's lawyers, by to "identify[ing] the specific provisions of the Attorney General's proposal that the Court believes to be inconsistent with cy pres relief and allow the Attorney General the opportunity to suggest appropriate modification."

(I'll provide an online link to the full text of the AG's motion, if and when I get one.)

In another head-scratcher from her Memorandum and Order of Sept. 14, Lyle overruled her own statement, on Page 11 of her Aug. 20 decision, where she noted that Tennessee's Court of Appeals had not found any intent by Georgia O'Keeffe, the donor of the Stieglitz Collection, to "perpetuat[e] the existence of Fisk." Contradicting herself and the higher court's finding, Lyle now says (on Page 5 of the Memorandum and Order, linked in this post's first paragraph) that "it would not be in keeping...with the donor's [O'Keeffe's] intent to keep the Collection in Nashville at the cost of sacrificing the existence of Fisk."

Meanwhile, moving north, it appears that Regent James Dawson, who had long been a vocal proponent of tightening the New York Board of Regents' regulations on deaccessioning, felt as blindsided by the Regents flip-flop as Tennessee's AG had felt by Chancellor Lyle's turnaround.

Dawson told me:

I did not know ahead of time that his [Regent Roger Tilles'] motion [to kill the more stringent regulations] was going to be presented. I argued against it and [as CultureGrrl previously reported] I abstained on the vote in Committee. Regent Tilles became chair of the Regents' Cultural Education Committee on July 1, 2010. [Dawson was its previous chair.]

This abrupt change in the Regents' approach to deaccessioning was engineered without proper consultation with those public officials and museum professionals who had long worked to safeguard the public's patrimony by tightening the regulations. And there has been no adequate public explanation as to how and why this reversal happened.

In reponding to my commentary on the Regents' flip-flop, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, whose bill to regulate deaccessions recently died in the State Legislature, told me that once the more stringent rules expire next month, he believes there is a loophole in the preexisting rules that would permit museums, under certain circumstances, to apply deaccession proceeds to operating expenses. You can read more details about his analysis in an update that I added to the middle of this post.

Ford Bell, AAM's president

This just in from Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums:

AAM finds the decision of the NY State Board of Regents to permit museums to sell objects in their collections to cover operating costs [see my comment, below] disturbing, holding possibly severe ramifications for the museum field. Museums are all about public service, conserving their collections in the public trust. The potential to deaccession objects to raise operating funds is counter to the museum mission, while potentially eroding the trust and confidence of donors, patrons, financial backers and the public at large ─ that trust is the coin of the realm for museums nationwide.

Giving museums an "out clause" of the generally accepted ethics and standards of the museum field in times of financial exigency is a bad precedent and sends the wrong message to the public about the role and values of museums. The idea of "just this one time" is the beginning of a slippery slope.

Since the first museum was founded on this continent in 1773, one axiom has always held true: the museum is there to preserve the collection; the collection is not there to preserve the museum. Museums have lived by this creed for more than 200 years, and contrary behavior affects the credibility of all museums and their integral role in our educational infrastructure.

Actually, as I wrote here, AAM's assumption in the first sentence is, I believe, incorrect. The expiration of the emergency amendment leaves in place the preexisting regulations, which did prohibit the use of deaccession proceeds for operating expenses. (See bottom of Page 5-top of Page 6 of the regulations for museum collections management policies. The parts that are not underlined are from the old regulations, which will remain in force.)

But unlike the emergency amendment, the old regs did not specificly prohibit use of deaccession proceeds to defray capital expenses or debts---a needed stipulation in these financially perilous times, when the temptation to monetize collections is acute.

CultureGrrl, I confess, was guilty of contributing to the confusion over operating expenses, when I quoted as authoritative two paragraphs from Robin Pogrebin's NY Times account. In my follow-up post, I tried to clear up the muddle; the NY Times should too.

Will the Association of Art Museum Directors have anything to say about the Regents' actions?

Roger Tilles, chairman of the NY State Board of Regents' Cultural Education Committee, discussing the deaccession decision at Monday's board meeting

In reversing its course on enacting strong safeguards against desperation deaccessions, the NY State Board of Regents at least owes the public a better explanation than it got for its sudden and unexpected flip-flop.

Here's what Regent Roger Tilles, chair of the board's Cultural Education Committee, said in the webcast meeting (at 27:50) of the full Board of Regents on Tuesday:

We discussed the Regents' rule that we have been passing as an emergency rule for several months [actually since December 2008] and upon reflection on it, I suggested that [it] would not be a significant improvement over the existing rules and that it would be perhaps more appropriate and timely at this point to keep the existing language.

And here's the "explanation" provided to the media by David Steiner, the state's Education Commissioner:

The Board of Regents sought input from the museum community statewide and found there was no consensus on the efficacy of those emergency regulations.

Since when do the regulators take action based on the consensus of the parties to be regulated? It stands to reason that museums would not favor being saddled with tighter restrictions. The appropriate question is NOT whether the targets of regulation agree that new rules are a good idea. It's whether there is an important public purpose to be served by new rules. The answer to that question is yes.

As we have seen time and again, cultural institutions cannot be confidently relied upon to police themselves in matters of art disposals, especially in times of financial trouble. Without regulatory safeguards, expediency will trump policy and the public's patrimony will be endangered.

I wouldn't go so far as Assemblyman Richard Brodsky did, when quoted yesterday by Erica Orden of the Wall Street Journal. Calling the Regents' action a "disastrous move," he predicted:

This is the precursor of the massive transfer of art held in the public trust into private hands.

I don't think that the floodgates have been opened. But the slippery slope has gotten a lot greasier. The Regents have now withdrawn their specific prohibition (contained in the expiring emergency regulations) against the use of collection sale proceeds to defray institutions' capital expenses and debt. This change may be seen by some institutions' trustees as tacit permission to do what had been explicitly forbidden. In these financially strapped times, easing those written stipulations is a particularly problematic step.

You can see the Regents' regulations on Museum Collections Management Policies here (on Pages 4-6). The now expiring emergency provisions are underlined.

As you will see, the regulations that were in force before the enactment of the emergency amendment do afford some protection against desperation deaccessions. Those rules state:

In no event shall proceeds derived from the deaccessioning of any property from the collection be used for operating expenses or for any purposes other than the acquisition, preservation, protection or care of collections.

But for almost two years, financially pressed institutions were on clear notice that "preservation, protection or care of collections," could not be construed to include capital expenses or the payment of outstanding debt. Loopholes now loom.

UPDATE: Another loophole, Brodsky asserted to me after he read this post, is that the old regs (under Paragraph 6-ii) did permit the use sale proceeds for operating expenses, if the institution first changed its corporate purpose so as not to include collecting the type of material to be sold. He said this had been cured (in the now expiring amendment to the regs) by the following language added to 6-ii: "Deaccessioning of items or material in its collection is limited to the circumstances prescribed in Paragraph 7 of this subdivision." Paragraph 7 (discussed below) sets forth the only allowable criteria for deaccessioning.

The expiring rules (in Paragraph 7) said that an institution could deaccession objects ONLY if at least one of four criteria were met:

---The item or material is not relevant to the mission of the institution

---The item or material has failed to retain its identity, or has been lost or stolen and has not been recovered.

---The item or material duplicates other items or material in the collection of the institution and is not necessary for research or educational purposes.

---The institution is unable to conserve the item or material in a responsible manner.

Anne Ackerson, director of the Museum Association of New York, who attended (as an observer) the Cultural Education Committee's meeting, told me she believes the above four criteria were the chief stumbling blocks to final approval of the amendment. That's because they omitted such widely accepted rationales for deaccessioning as refinement of collections and repatriation of objects to their rightful owners.

"Collection refinement," to me, is too broad a brush and can be used to whitewash a multitude of sins. Nevertheless, it would have been vastly preferable to tweak the amendment than to kill it.

Stung by this contretemps, the Board of Regents is now contemplating establishment of an advisory committee to keep museum professionals in the loop. Near the end of the report of its Monday meeting, the Cultural Education Committee said that it has directed its staff to "develop a proposed charge for a Committee on Museums and recommend membership to the committee. This recommendation will be presented at an upcoming committee meeting. Staff were further directed to ensure a balance of geographic location, institution size and type of collection."

Regent James Dawson ducks the vote.

Back in August, when it appeared that the bill introduced in the New York State Legislature to regulate museum deaccessions was dead, its chief sponsor, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, told me:

The Regents' regulations [my link, not his], warts and all, will provide significant protections for 98% of cultural institutions [those chartered after 1889].

"The museum lobby has gotten its way," I wrote in my post reporting on the Brodsky Bill's unfortunate fate. But little did I know that this setback in safeguarding the public's patrimony was just the beginning: It now appears that the State Board of Regents' temporary regulations tightening standards for deaccessioning (which the Regents had repeatedly indicated they would make permanent) are also dead.

Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times reports:

In a surprise development in the battle over whether museums should be allowed to sell art to cover operating costs, the New York State Board of Regents on Tuesday approved the expiration of emergency regulations regarding such "deaccessioning" on Oct. 8.

Those rules, which enjoined such sales, have been in effect since 2008. After hearing views from museums statewide, "there was no consensus on the efficacy of those emergency regulations," David Steiner, the state's education commissioner, said in a statement.

The Regents' vote against adopting the amendment to their collections management policies for cultural institutions went contrary to the recommendation of Jeffrey Cannell, deputy commissioner for cultural education, who had advised the board's Cultural Education Committee to adopt the temporary emergency regulations as a "permanent rule [to] become effective on Oct. 6, 2010."

According to the online report of Monday's Cultural Education Committee meeting, Regent Roger Tilles, the committee's chair, "suggested that the proposed amendment would not be a significant improvement of the existing rules and that it would be more appropriate to maintain the existing language." Regent Charles Bendit offered a motion to indefinitely postpone action on the amendment and three Regents voted in favor. Two abstained, including James Dawson, who at last January's Deaccession Roundtable in New York spoke eloquently in favor of tightening the Regents' deaccession regulations.

We have now had two shocking developments this week involving unexpected and seemingly illogical turnarounds by public officials on the question of institutional art disposals---the Regents' inadequately explained about-face and yesterday's court order by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle in the Fisk/Steiglitz Collection case.

What I really want to know is: Where are AAM and AAMD when we really need them? AAM was an early activist when it first looked like the Regents were going soft on deaccessioning. And it's surely time for AAMD to rethink its muddled August statement praising Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle's position on Fisk/Stieglitz. As I stated here, AAMD was operating on the mistaken assumption that the judge had ruled out the $30-million Fisk/Crystal Bridges collection-sharing arrangement. She has now, in fact, indicated her inclination to rule in favor.

Fisk's Monday prayer vigil for Alice Walton's millions

In a 31-page Memorandum and Order issued late yesterday afternoon, Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle handed a complete defeat to Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper, who had proposed a temporary arrangement to keep Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection full-time in Nashville, rather than half-time in Bentonville, AR, as is being sought by the university.

The AG's plan had been decried in a NewsChannel 5 interview by Fisk President Hazel O'Leary as "morally reprehensible." On Monday evening, the university held a prayer vigil at its Memorial Chapel to rally opposition against the plan that would temporarily relocate the art to Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts, without providing the $30-million windfall that would accrue to Fisk from its collection-sharing deal with Alice Walton's planned Crystal Bridges Museum.

The AG, for his part, issued a statement yesterday, prior to Chancellor Lyle's ruling, which criticized Fisk for "seeking to divide the community with rhetoric and name calling."

Cooper added:

The only plan that would take this important collection away from Fisk University, its students, and the community is the one Fisk has proposed. In return for a bargain-basement price, Fisk would immediately hand over control of the art to a Delaware corporation for display in Arkansas and risk loss of the entire collection permanently.

But Lyle regards the AG's "temporary fix" (as she called it) as "insufficient":

It appears that there is no long-term solution to keep the Collection in Nashville full-time.

To my mind, the flaw in the court's logic is that the AG's plan WOULD keep the collection in Nashville full-time. The only thing temporary about the arrangement would be the artworks' sojourn at the Frist, which would display and maintain the collection until Fisk could resume custodianship. Fisk argues that it can, in fact, afford the cost of maintaining the art, but that it will cease to exist if it can't collect the $30-million from selling a half-share in the collection (which would contravene the written no-sale stipulation set forth by its donor, Georgia O'Keeffe).

Chancellor Lyle ruled:

It would not be in keeping...with the donor's intent to keep the Collection in Nashville at the cost of sacrificing the existence of Fisk University.

The judge has ordered Fisk to come up with a modified deal with Crystal Bridges that would "eliminate potential divestment of a Nashville connection to the Collection." For example, under the current agreement, Crystal Bridges could lend money to Fisk to cover the university's share of collection-related expenses, but such loans would be "secured by a security interest in [Fisk's] undivided interest in the Collection," which could result in forfeiture of that interest to Crystal Bridges if the loan were not repaid.

Chancellor Lyle gave a detailed road map to Fisk's lawyers, drafting her own suggested wording for an agreement upon which she would look favorably.

Fisk's deadline for filing a modified agreement with Davidson County Chancery Court is Oct. 8. The AG's deadline for responding to Fisk's filing is Oct. 22. There has been no official comment at this writing by either side on yesterday's court order. Appealing to a higher court is an eventual option.

Abdi Farah, the artist formerly known as "Next"

Oh no. It's ba-a-a-a-ck!

Yesterday I was asked by e-mail if I'd "be up for posting some information" about the casting call for the next installment(s) of Bravo's The Next Great Artist, "perhaps even chatting with one of our casting executives (i.e. what they are looking for in applicants, what to expect from a casting call, etc.)."

I passed on viewing this show (after enduring its first hour), so I think I'll pass on interviewing its casting executive.

But in case you're interested, the three venues for the casting call are: Patrick Painter, Inc., a Los Angeles gallery (Sept. 19): the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Sept. 22); and, let us not forget, the Brooklyn Museum (Sept. 25), where the last season's winner, Abdi Farah, got his show.

The questions below, included in the artists' application (along with the standard queries about experience, training, nature of work and the all-important, "Why are you an artist?"), may give you some idea of what this reality show could be looking for:

---What is the most scandalous thing you have done in your life as an artist? For your art?

---Describe your most embarrassing moment...and/or describe what you wish was your most embarrassing moment!

Does the embarrassment of being humiliated by the show's judges qualify for the wish list?!?

Here are some indications of what they're probably NOT looking for:

---Have you met, worked with, socialized with, or do you know any of the judges or guest judges that have appeared on the first cycle of "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist"? If YES, please list names and detail the nature and extent of your relationship.

---Have you ever done or been involved in anything that would cause the Program producer and/or the cable network and affiliates that may exhibit the Program any embarrassment or monetary loss if you are chosen to participate in the Program? [Do the "Jersey Shore" producers worry about being caused "any embarrassment"?]

From the following question on the application, it sounds like not just one but (eek!) two more seasons of "Great Artists" may be looming:

Are you available to leave your family, work, and friends to go to a location to be designated by the Program producer for between approximately three and five consecutive weeks (plus time for promotion and publicity), beginning sometime in either October 2010, or April 2011, and again for one week in Winter or Summer 2011?

Hey, at least you might get a chance to meet Jerry Saltz! Then again, there's no official word yet about whether there will be any changes in the show's judges or its "mentor" (Simon de Pury). Is there a casting call for these arbiters too? (I've sent a query about this to the PR/marketing person who gave me the heads-up on the casting call. If I learn more, I'll update.)

Fisk History Department Chair Reavis Mitchell says Stieglitz Collection is part of university's "educational mission"

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, officially breaking its silence, has agreed to participate in a Nashville-only proposal, championed by the State Attorney General's office, for the maintenance and display of Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection at the Frist. The university hotly opposes this temporary relocation of its valuable collection, still hoping to monetize the art through a $30-million collection-sharing deal with Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR.

In its response to the AG's proposal, Fisk fumes:

In an outrageous theft from Nashville's oldest university, nothing would be paid to Fisk for absolute control over the Collection.

The Nashville-only plan was set forth late last week in a 10-page proposal filed in Davidson County Chancery Court by Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper. As described in the AG's press release issued on Friday, the plan, which needs court approval, "provides for the Tennessee Arts Commission to take temporary possession of the Alfred Stieglitz Art Collection from Fisk University and contract with Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts to maintain and display the collection."

The AG's press release further states:

The Collection would maintain a close relationship with Fisk and would continue to be known and identified as the "Alfred Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University."...Under the agreement, Fisk students and faculty would have additional access to the Collection for research and study....

Fisk University would be relieved of all costs associated with maintaining and exhibiting the Collection and would not be charged for any work needed to preserve and display the art. Fisk would have the right to ask that the Court return the art when Fisk is financially able to maintain and display it.

This arrangement would honor donor Georgia O'Keeffe's expressed wishes and do justice to a celebrated collection that was under-utilized at Fisk (which, for a time, had placed the Stieglitz Collection in storage at the Frist). But the deal would leave Fisk without its coveted $30-million windfall from Crystal Bridges.

According to the most recent court decision in its never-ending legal battle for permission to do the deal with Crystal Bridges, Fisk now has until Oct. 8 to file its response to the AG's proposal. Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle last month stated that if no viable Nashville-based plan for the collection were advanced by the AG, she would consider a revised Fisk/Crystal Bridges plan that more closely adheres to O'Keeffe's written stipulations for the care and display of the Stieglitz Collection.

In Fisk's above-linked response to the Nashville plan, President Hazel O'Leary implausibly suggested that only Walton's money could keep Fisk solvent:

Nashville has a simple choice to make, and that is whether it is better to keep the art in Nashville full time and have Fisk close or keep the art in Nashville half the time and have Fisk survive. The State of Tennessee and Metropolitan Nashville have decided that the art is more important than Fisk. We believe that continuing the education of our students is more important....

This so-called partnership between the Frist Center, the State and the Metropolitan Government is nothing more than the display of raw power in an undisguised attempt to steal this art from its rightful owner.  We will use every ounce of our energy to oppose this proposal.  This is a shameful day in the history of Nashville."

Under the AG's proposal, the State of Tennessee would "pay for insurance and any remediation or restoration and upkeep of the art." Subject to the approval of its board at its meeting tomorrow, the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency of Nashville and Davidson County (MDHA), from which the Frist leases its property, would provide up to $250,000 in funds to renovate part of the Frist for display of the Stieglitz Collection. According to the detailed terms of the agreement among the state, the Frist and the MDHA, the Frist would assume all costs of promoting and interpreting the collection, "including the development of a Gallery Guide."

It seems to me that any available government support for the Stieglitz Collection should be offered first to Fisk, subject to the condition that the art be properly displayed and maintained at the university where O'Keeffe had intended it to remain. If, as is likely, Fisk rejects that offer, I favor the Frist proposal as the best means to preserve the collection and the donor's intent. If Chancellor Lyle rules in favor of the Frist arrangement, Fisk is likely to appeal the decision.

While breathlessly awaiting the next development in this riveting saga, you can review the AG's key court filings in the protracted legal battle, here. More engagingly, you can view an array of artworks from the Stieglitz trove, along with an installation shot of the collection at Fisk's Van Vechten Gallery, in the video trailer (embedded at the end of this post) for a half-hour television documentary---The Gift: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University. That show premiered last Wednesday on Nashville Public Television (to be rebroadcast on Sept. 20 at 9:30 p.m.).

At the end of the transcript for NPT's program, Professor Reavis Mitchell, chairman of the history department at Fisk University, is quoted saying this:

I can't imagine the display of the Stieglitz Collection without a Fisk University. It's not separated. You can't separate it out. That's been the intent of the benefactors. That's been the intent of those who have been in charge of Fisk University for the last 50 years since the collection has been here, and that remains a vocal and viable point of Fisk and its art collections.

In the last of four extended interview video clips that are posted on the program's website, Mitchell goes into more detail about the importance of the collection to Fisk:

This wonderful collection becomes a part of the educational experience of those whose ancestors had been enslaved for more than 300 years. [Fisk is a historically black university.]...It brings wonderful visitation to the campus....Our focus is to use this art and have this art available to our students and to all who would study art....It's a part of that educational mission of Fisk....Without the art and without that collection, a portion of that would escape the student experience.

As part of the video trailer, you'll see the university's Stieglitz gallery bustling with visitors, notwithstanding several published reports that the collection averages only seven visitors a day. That figure (at odds with Mitchell's comment about the collection's "wonderful visitation") is likely derived from this statement in one of Fisk's court briefs:

Between Jan. 1, 2010 and July 21, 2010, approximately 945 persons signed the registration book at the Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk as visitors to the Stieglitz Collection, an average of less than seven persons per day.

Actually, if you do the math, it's less than five persons per day. Perhaps they're not counting some days on which the gallery is closed. (It's open five days a week during the academic year; four during the summer.) What we don't know is what percentage of visitors to the Stieglitz Collection actually sign its guestbook, and to what degree attendance is affected by the campus' being relatively unpopulated during the summer vacation months of May, June and July---three of the six and a half months for which the guestbook signees were tallied.

Saatchi Gallery, London

This is an "I told you so" post.

When I skeptically inquired last July whether MOCA London---Charles Saatchi's announced gift to Great Britain of more than 200 artworks from his collection (as well as his Saatchi Gallery building}---would definitely happen, Rachel Duffield, the megacollector's spokesperson, replied:

The gift has definitely been made.

Maybe "offered," not "made" would have been the more accurate word. Calling the announcement "premature" in my earlier CultureGrrl post, I questioned whether that gift had actually been accepted by its intended recipient. Saatchi's original July 1 announcement had hedged, stating that the Saatchi Gallery was "in discussion with potential Government departments who would own the works on behalf of the nation" [emphasis added].

Now Farah Nayeri of Bloomberg reports:

Charles Saatchi, who in July said he was giving the British nation his London gallery and more than 25 million pounds ($38 million) worth of art, is seeking other takers after talks with a state-linked body broke down, his gallery's associate director said....

Saatchi Gallery Associate Director Rebecca Wilson said talks with Arts Council England, which manages the funding of cultural bodies on the government's behalf, had ended.

Wilson told Bloomberg that those talks had ended on July 23, only about three weeks after the "gift" was announced. Other possible recipients have since been approached.

As to the reasons for the impasse, Tom Peck of the London Independent reports:

It is not clear why the talks failed, but it is understood that the idea of part-financing the institution after it had been handed over by buying and selling items from the donated collection runs against the code of ethics set out by the Museums' Association.

Other problematic aspects of the proposed gift, to my mind, were the utter lack of any operating endowment and the implied challenge posed by the new museum to the other public institution in London dedicated, in part, to contemporary art---the Tate Modern (currently trying to engineer its own expansion).

Speaking of implied challenges, it appears that there already IS a MOCA London in London! Doesn't adman Saatchi respect the sanctity of brand names? Maybe (as I suggested in my July post) this collector-centric institution should be more accurately (and non-competitively) named: "London Museum of Saatchi Art."

I wanted to acknowledge publicly (as I have in private messages) how very grateful I've been for all your expressions of support during this difficult time for me.

I'm still discombobulated by the loss of my father and the aftermath, but I've got another post in mind (although not yet in type) that I may manage to get up tomorrow, before the Jewish High Holidays put CultureGrrl to rest until Monday.

In the meantime, thanks for your kind wishes and for bearing with me during this time of mourning and healing.

Derrick Cartwright, Seattle Art Museum's new director, inheritor of its expansion-related financial problems

The story of the Seattle Art Museum's expansion-related financial shortfalls---largely the result of the collapse of Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu), its development partner in the mixed-use building project---keeps getting worse.

On Aug. 30, the museum filed a 27-page petition in Kings County Superior Court, requesting approval of a plan to make a 10-year loan to itself from its own endowment. The loan, not to exceed $10 million, would help SAM meet its obligations to pay, as rent, debt service for bonds issued by the city's Museum Development Authority.

The revenue from WaMu's lease on eight floors above SAM had previously been counted upon to pay the more than $4 million a year in debt service for the expansion bonds. JPMorgan Chase, which acquired WaMu in 2008, declined to honor the defunct bank's lease, but instead offered the museum a $10-million grant, to be paid over five years.

Because "SAM always respects its donors' intentions" (in the words of its court petition), its loan to itself will be drawn from the portion of the $96-million endowment that is designated for general operations (i.e., not for acquisitions or other specific purposes). As of June 30, SAM's general operating endowment amounted to about $32 million. A $10-million loan would therefore represent a draw-down of nearly one-third of those general operating funds.

This in an already challenging fiscal year for all museums, when financial shortfalls have resulted in SAM's 7% reduction in staff, a plan to close the museum's three buildings for two weeks beginning Jan. 31, and a 10% reduction in some administrators' pay. Director Derrick Cartwright "has planned for a still larger reduction to his own executive compensation next year," according to the announcement of these cutbacks.

Vanessa Ho of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports [via] that Nordstrom, the department store, now leases six of the eight floors directly above SAM, "but the rent will not cover the museum's debt. And fundraising has been slow." (A new fundraising campaign is planned.) In the Comments section attached to her story, Ho reports that the top four floors of SAM's 16-story building, which had been owned by WaMu, are now owned by Northwestern Mutual Life, whose Russel Investments will move this fall into the former WaMu Center---the 42-story office tower that was built behind SAM's 2007 expansion, as part of the development project.

I had previously written that this debacle, conceived and implemented under the museum's previous director, Mimi Gates, might inspire "second thoughts in the museum world about teaming up with commercial entities for future expansions."

Here's some more food for second thoughts: In New York we now have the example of the Museum of Modern Art's planned westward expansion on land that it sold for $125 million to real estate developer Hines. MoMA's growth has now been stalled by the financially driven delay in the construction of a controversial Jean Nouvel-designed mixed-use tower. That 1,025-foot-high skyscraper was to provide, at its base, room for MoMA's hoped-for expansion. There's been no word yet on if or when this project will proceed.

There are various figures with artworld connections on Vanity Fair's annual list of the world's 100 most influential people (to be published in the October issue, but online now). Only two, however, were selected expressly for their visual art creds.

This VIP roster is peopled by moguls and mega-celebrities. Influential visual artists, museum officials, scholars and critics need not apply.

You're likely to guess the first artworld luminary on your first try.

The second may come as a surprise.

But wait a minute! There are two other artworld figures on the magazine's companion list of up-and-coming members of The Next Establishment. Occupying the #10 slot is none other than LA MOCA's dealer-turned-director Jeffrey Deitch, who stands out as not being as young, rich and/or famous as most of his fellow aspirants. Coming it at #39 is Dasha Zhukova, Russian gazillionaire Roman Abramovich's 29-year-old curator/girlfriend. She perfectly fits the Vanity Fair mold and has the added attraction of being gorgeous.

Are Tom Campbell, Neil MacGregor and Henri Loyrette unworthy of mention in this company? They're as gorgeous as Jeffrey Deitch; they must be rich enough, since they don't seem to feel compelled (as Deitch has said he may) to sell art from their personal collections to make ends meet; and they have lots more clout in the artworld as the directors of three of the world's preeminent museums (Metropolitan Museum, British Museum and the Louvre, respectively).

Then again, Deitch's neighbors are reportedly the movie stars who rank #75 on VF's Top 100, and he's recently appeared in a soap opera episode. Celebrity points count...at least on the pages of Vanity Fair.