May 2011 Archives

Rendering of the planned Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) today announced that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has been appointed "as an independent auditor to monitor its contractors' and subcontractors' performance in the area of worker welfare" for construction projects on Saadiyat Island, including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi and Zayed National Museum. PwC describes itself as "one of the world's largest providers of assurance, tax, and business consulting services."

According to TDIC:

PwC will report to TDIC on key aspects of worker welfare, including holding of personal documents, illegal recruitment fees, payment of wages, health and safety, and working and living conditions. The results of the audit reports will be released in a comprehensive report to the public [emphasis added] on an annual basis.

During the reporting cycles, PwC will conduct formal and informal interviews with construction workers in their own language, as well as with the Contractors' and Sub-Contractors. In gathering facts and reporting their findings, PwC will conduct scheduled and surprise site visits to check contractors' compliance.

They will also be conducting site visits to assess the living and working conditions of the workers. To preserve independence and in compliance with international standards, PwC will work with TDIC's Internal Audit Department, and will also communicate directly with the TDIC Audit Committee as and when needed.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international watchdog group, had previously been highly critical of conditions for construction workers at the Gehry-designed Guggenheim and other projects on Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island. In March, HRW issued a statement endorsing an announced boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi by a group of artists who were concerned about alleged workers' rights violations at the project. It remains to be seen whether these critics will be mollified.

The Solomon Guggenheim Foundation this morning expressed its support for PwC's appointment as "an essential component of safeguarding workers' rights and ensuring that the contractors and sub-contractors working on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi construction site comply with UAE [United Arab Emirates] labor laws and TDIC's Employment Practices Policy [my link, not theirs]."

The Guggenheim commented:

We look forward to a continuing dialogue with TDIC and recognize that these issues are complex. We remain committed to the workers on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi construction site, to maintaining the integrity of our joint project with TDIC and to establishing a truly international museum that will reflect and celebrate the cultures of the Middle East while fostering an atmosphere of open, intellectual exchange.

There has not, as yet, been an official groundbreaking for the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, but the pilings for the foundation are in the ground, according to a Guggenheim spokesperson. In January, two curators were appointed for the Abu Dhabi facility---Suzanne Cotter and Reem Fadda.

As you consider various outdoor alternatives for enjoying Memorial Day weekend, here's a suggestion for those in the NYC metropolitan area: a pleasant ferry ride from the tip of Manhattan to Governors Island, where a gloriously sited exhibition of 11 sculptures by Mark di Suvero---from large to monumental---awaits.


Governors Island Ferry Terminal at the Battery, Lower Manhattan

I was told that six of the sculptures on the island are owned by the artist. So some of the works labeled "Private Collection" must, in fact, be his. A 12th sculpture will be on view in Brooklyn---at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

This the first off-site exhibition organized by the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY, which is trying to entice more visitors from New York City to its sprawling, art-filled grounds upstate. At yesterday's press preview, there was a stack of two-for-one admission cards for Storm King available for the taking at the island's visitor center.

I've always had a special fondness for di Suvero's imposing yet friendly works. Back in 1975, at the time of the Whitney Museum's landmark di Suvero exhibition, he was a lionized art star. But by 1993, he was one of several figures I featured in my Mar. 7 NY Times "Arts & Leisure" piece (to which I cannot find a link) about well known, respected artists who had somehow become unfashionable and/or fallen into obscurity. In the both categories at that moment was di Suvero, who (unlike Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher and Frank Stella, among others) turned down my request for an interview.

Here's what I wrote about his elusiveness:

"I'm not sure he wants to advertise himself as a neglected artist," said his [di Suvero's] dealer, Richard Bellamy, owner of Oil & Steel Gallery in Long Island City. Mr. Bellamy did suggest one trait that may explain why Mr. di Suvero had fallen from favor: "He's a bit of a maverick, and he's not that much interested in gallery shows."

But at the end of the following month, his first exhibition at Gagosian Gallery opened (presumably too soon after my article for it to have played a role in that). His visibility began to rise. When I attended the 1995 Venice Biennale, his works were triumphantly installed up and down the Grand Canal.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has just released photos of preliminary renderings by Snøhetta, the Oslo- and New York-based architectural firm, of its planned 225,000-square-foot expansion, to be completed in 2016. Constricted by its site to a long, narrow footprint, it appears to tower and glower menacingly over the fanciful Mario Botta building, which it exceeds in height by 50 feet:


All images courtesy of Snøhetta

The pinkish 1995 Botta building, with its distinctive granite striped turret and round skylight, appears to have nothing to say to the flat white screen that will serve as its backdrop. Then again, as John King observed in his article for the San Francisco Chronicle, "the details [not to mention the renderings] are sketchy," so it may be unfair to leap to premature conclusions. The material for the building's skin has not yet been determined, according to King.

SFMOMA's director, Neal Benezra, had previously told me that he hoped the new addition would present a more welcoming aspect than the façade of the Botta---a building that some San Franciscans love to hate, but that I find appealing, in a wacky way.

In its blandness, compared to the strong statement of its forerunner, the planned addition reminds me of the slab-like annex designed by Gwathmey Siegel that rises behind the Guggenheim Museum's signature Frank Lloyd Wright facility.

Here's an aerial view, with the striped turret of the Botta to the left. The addition is the massive long, narrow building, which appears to connect to a rooftop sculpture garden on the right (with the obligatory Calder).



The new building's design actually looks most interesting when viewed from an airplane. Here's a nighttime aerial rendering (Botta's oculus to the right):



And here's a glass-walled corner gallery, as seen from the street:



More information about the $480-million project (which includes $100 million for endowment) is provided in the museum's just-issued press release. This is still a work-in-progress, and will presumably have to go through a public approval process before ground can be broken.

There was much speechifying at today's "groundbreaking" for the Renzo Piano-designed Downtown Whitney, with the architect, Mayor Bloomberg, Whitney director Adam Weinberg, museum trustees and the Manhattan Borough President taking the podium. Piano lofted an all-white model of the building, calling it a "25,000-pound meteorite" (still looks like an ocean liner to me) that will alight next to the High Line:



Today's so-called "groundbreaking" consisted of a performance enacted inside a large tent set up for the ceremony on the former site of the late, lamented Premier Veal (Lamb Too) building. "Breaking Ground" was an ingenious Whitney-commissioned piece by cutting-edge (literally, in this case) choreographer Elizabeth Streb, who stood beneath a barrel filled with soil that torrentially descended upon her helmeted head after a rope was pulled to release the dirt.

Six dancers from her STREB Extreme Action Company heedlessly hurled themselves, one at a time, through a series of panes of glass, with loud crashes and shards flying towards (but not, one hopes, onto) the dignitaries in the front row. The large heap of dirt deposited on Streb and landing onstage was fitfully shoveled by the project's principles:


Front row, left to right: First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris, Whitney co-chair Robert Hurst, Renzo Piano, Mayor Bloomberg, Whitney co-chair Brooke Garber Neidich, Adam Weinberg, Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin, City Planning Commission chair Amanda Burden

Notably absent was the museum's chairman emeritus and lead funder of the project, Leonard Lauder (also surprisingly missing from the press release), who, we were told, is recovering from surgery.

You can read the facts and figures about the project in the press release linked at the top of this post.

But first, relive with me the most interesting part of the program---the fly-through video of the new building, which at last gives us a pretty good idea of what we can look forward to, hopefully in 2015, by which time the Whitney hopes to have raised the remaining $212 million in its $720-million capital (and endowment) campaign. (For the math-challenged, $508 million been raised thus far.)

The press release is curiously silent on what the skin of the new building will consist of, but Piano's website says it is "clad in light gray enamel steel panels." Click the arrow and have a look around:

Before other stories rose to the top, I had been planning to start this week on a lighter (and light-filled) note---CultureGrrl's supplement to Saturday's offering from Real Clear Arts, where ArtsJournal blogger Judith Dobrzynski posted her photos of the James Turrell skyspace that she and I both visited earlier this month.

So now let's get to it. Here's its bunker-like exterior, nestled into a hillside:



But where is this verdant hillside?

It's on the property of the in-construction Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, one of several outdoor commissions for Alice Walton's new facility, where Judith and I participated in a press tour.

Turrell had spent three days at the Bentonville, AR, site, working on the lighting design for "The Way of Color." (I've also seen the artist's Tending (Blue) at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, but have not yet made the pilgrimage to their illustrious forerunner, his celebrated Roden Crater.)

At dusk, the round interior of Crystal Bridges' skyspace, topped by a perfect-circle oculus open to the sky (allowing in the snow and rain on inclement days), becomes a mesmerizing, hallucinatory light show, with the oculus appearing to dramatically change color because of the orchestrated color changes of the space that frames it. An occasional bird makes a cameo appearance, jolting one's reverie.

Here's some of the scribe tribe at the recent press preview, along with David Houston, the museum's director of curatorial, third from right. (At the bottom of this post is my video of David, elucidating "The Way of Color.")

Warren Olney, host of "Which Way, L.A.?"

I'm a bit player in this one, which also includes Ralph Frammolino, co-author with Jason Felch of the new book on the Getty's past antiquities scandals; and Ron Hartwig, the Getty Trust's vice president for communications.

Our segment on Chasing Aphrodite (for which I bring up the rear) should air at about 7:06 p.m., LA time (10:06 p.m., NYC time) on KCRW's "Which Way, L.A.?" You can listen live, here.

[UPDATE: The podcast is now embedded and the end of this post.]

Assuming that all my comments are included, you'll hear me mention one of the things that saddened me the most in reading this exhaustively researched, inside-story account of the Getty's troubled past: its blows to the reputations of two respected museum professionals---former Getty Museum directors John Walsh and Deborah Gribbon. In painful (sometimes anonymously sourced) detail, "Chasing Aphrodite" reports on how much Walsh and Gribbon knew about the dicey recent histories of the Getty's antiquities and how little they did to stop such dubious purchases (or, later, to come clean about them).

That said, I don't regard Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri as the hero that Felcholino make him out to be. I'll never forget this conversation that I had with Ferri when we were both speakers at a UNESCO-sponsored antiquities conference in Athens.

Here's what the now retired Italian prosecutor told me about the unduly prolonged criminal proceedings against True (which finally ended last fall, after five years, when Italy's statute of limitations had run):

I used to worry about how long it was taking. But the more it lasts, the more will be the shame.

Frammolino today told Warren Olney of "Which Way, L.A.?" that "the ultimate aim" of the Italians was "to get these things back." But a subsidiary aim was to torture, for as long as possible, the Sacrificial Curator, Marion True, even after it was clear that the objects Italy sought were indeed returning to Italy.

Below is the podcast. Ours is the second segment, at about 8:36 into the program. (You won't hear me weigh in until Warren questions me at about 22:38.)

I hate immediately posting over my important Rotten 'Soft Diplomacy opinion piece on U.S. museums' insufficient response to the plight of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. But this is also important:

The Association of Art Museum Directors has just posted its revised Professional Practices in Art Museums, with some important changes. (These guidelines are reconsidered every 10 years.)

I pass these on to you without myself absorbing their full import, because I've really got to skip rope and pound the punching bag in preparation for Round Two of the Hartwig-Rosenbaum bout---our planned discussion on tonight's Which Way, L.A.? (on Los Angeles public radio station KCRW). Our exchange is pegged to the this week's publication of Felcholino's Chasing Aphrodite, their tome exposing the antiquities-related scandals at the J. Paul Getty Museum. An interview with one or both of the authors is also expected to be part of the program.

Here are the just-released changes in AAMD's professional guidelines, as relayed to me by a PR spokesperson for the association. The first one, as it happens, is antiquities-related. And the change to Paragraph 38 prohibits a use of art-acquisition endowments that I had deplored in a post (to which I link, below) regarding the Cleveland Museum of Art. (I guess I won that one.)

I'll be examining the new language more closely later, unless I'm battered to a pulp by the Getty Trust's vice president for communications. (Just kidding; we got along fine last time!)

• Paragraph 19 (Paragraph 18 in 2001 edition)
---The language has been clarified regarding obligations of a museum director to ensure that a museum not knowingly acquire a stolen work of art.

• Paragraph 27 (Paragraph 27 and 28 in the 2001 edition)
---The document now distinguishes more clearly between a director's personal collecting of works of art that overlap with or relate to the museum's own collection, and personal collecting in areas that do not overlap.

---Language regarding conflict of interest guidelines on this issue--previously a separate paragraph, #28, in the 2001 edition--have now been combined into one paragraph.

• Paragraph 38 (Paragraph 41 in the 2001 edition)
---The language pertaining to the use of collections, and prohibiting their use as collateral, has been both expanded and clarified. In addition to prohibiting the use of collections as collateral, it also precludes the use of art acquisition endowments as collateral. [Cleveland, do you copy???]

---Museums cannot use a work from the collection as security for a loan, except in the specific instance of the acquisition of that same work. In other words, the seller may retain a security interest in the work until final payment is made (much like a lien on a car when its purchase is financed).

Virginia Meets China: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' director Alex Nyerges, second from right, and Governor Bob McDonnell, fifth from right, visit the Forbidden City, Beijing, to sign a cultural-exchange agreement with China.

My fellow AJ contributor, Judith Dobrzynski, has an important post today, pegged to the Milwaukee Art Museum's (MAM's) upcoming Summer of China (which is headlined by this major loan show that recently appeared at the Metropolitan Museum).

CultureGrrl readers will not be surprised that I strongly agree with the view expressed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's arts writer Mary Louise Schumacher (seconded by Judith) that MAM's China extravaganza "should not pass without an airing of Ai Weiwei's case" (my link, not Mary Louise's).

The same could be said about the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' recently announced "historic cultural exchange agreement" with Beijing's Palace Museum.

The VMFA's director, Alex Nyerges, recently said this to the Modern Art Notes blog:

On a practical level in terms of the staff, certainly Ai Weiwei's arrest was a topic of conversation, but quite simply our partnership and relationship with the Palace Museum has nothing to do with the Ai Weiwei situation whatsoever.

Similarly, Milwaukee's director, Dan Keegan, told Schumacher:

The political situation is extremely complex and the Museum is sensitive to the discussion that Ai Weiwei's detention has created and we are obviously concerned for his well being. To that point, I think that our "Summer of China" can play a role in expanding understanding and forwarding the dialogue between cultures.

In a brief conversation before we took our seats at Metropolitan Museum's recent press lunch, curator Maxwell Hearn and I discussed the Met's stance regarding this issue. Hearn, who on July 1 will become the head of the museum's Asian art department, alluded (like Keegan) to the complexity of the political situation in China, noting that much progress has been made there and predicting that there will be continued, albeit gradual, movement towards greater openness and tolerance.

Hearn touted the beneficial effects of cultural exchange in promoting international understanding and, like several other museum officials, suggested it could be counterproductive to attempt to interfere in China's handling of its prominent dissident artist.

I felt let down by Hearn's apparent willingness to avert his eyes from this injustice, especially because I had previously admired how he had subtlely undermined the party line, during the Met's recent showing of The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty. His catalogue essay for that show tellingly highlighted Chinese artists' "opposition to the new order of 'barbaric' conquerors," and he had mounted a concurrent exhibition, Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change, drawn largely from the Met's own collection, that demonstrated how "Yuan literati painters...used painting as a vehicle for self-expression" which "took on political or personal overtones."

I saw Hearn in a better light after hearing the Met's director, Tom Campbell, run through the list of upcoming exhibitions during the press lunch: I discovered that indirect but pointed commentary on China's current political situation was again on the schedule: The Art of Dissent in 17th-Century China, curated in New York by Hearn, will demonstrate how "former Ming subjects turned to the arts...to assert their defiance and moral virtue."

[CLARIFICATION: A reader (not Campbell) interpreted the first sentence in the previous paragraph to mean that I regarded Hearn "in a better light" than I regarded Campbell. I had, in fact, intended to express my APPROVAL of the presence of the "Dissent" show on the schedule, as reported to us by Campbell. No invidious comparisons between the director and the curator were in any way intended nor, I hope, implied.]

The first gallery in the "Dissent" show will feature "Ming Martyrs." Ai, sadly, may come to be regarded as a modern-day martyr. Drawn from a non-profit Hong Kong public collection that was assembled by the late Hong Kong collector Ho Iu-kwong, this show had previously been displayed at the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

What I interpret as Hearn's inclination to make a strong political statement through indirection is a very Chinese strategy---notably employed by Ai Weiwei himself and by his late father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, who was jailed for his political activities.

I like this suggestion by one of the commenters on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's article:

MAM should sponsor a concurrent exhibit of Ai's work, and that of other dissenting voices in China. People interested in Chinese culture could experience ancient art and modern art---and understand the context of what is happening. In this way, MAM is promoting dialog about what is going on in China, without choosing sides or getting too political.

American art museums cannot in good conscience take a see-no-evil approach to the detention of one of China's most celebrated artists, which was very belatedly and inadequately explained by the Chinese authorities and has been characterized by complete lack of due process, even under China's own legal standards. Saying that the situation is "complex" and that speaking out against injustice could backfire is simply playing by China's rules. This craven deference to totalitarian sensibilities is contrary to the mission of cultural institutions to champion artists and freedom of expression.

Silence, in this case, is not golden. Signing a petition is not enough. Speaking of which: Why isn't Tom Campbell's name on the petition's list of lead signatories?

UPDATE: The reader referred to in the above "clarification" also noted that Tom did sign the petition as an individual and posted this statement supporting Ai on the Met's website.

Ian Wardropper, Frick Collection's director-designate

Colorful and dynamic, he's not. Strong on scholarly and administrative credentials, he is.

I was almost as surprised to learn that Ian Wardropper had been named to be the Frick Collection's next director as I had been when I first heard, almost three years ago, that the under-the-radar chairman of the Metropolitan Museum's department of European sculpture and decorative arts was on the shortlist for the directorship of that museum. It must have rankled, at least a little, when the Big Job went to a rising star, tapestries expert Thomas Campbell, who was one of the curators serving under Wardropper.

As for Colin Bailey, the Frick Collection's second-in-command as associate director and chief curator (appointed as chief curator by Samuel Sachs II, the predecessor of current director Anne Poulet), it must also rankle that he was (according to Kate Taylor's and Carol Vogel's NY Times report) on the shortlist for director of the institution where he has worked for ten and a half years, only to be passed over in favor of an outside candidate who, according to the Times, was not even on the shortlist.

Bailey, as you may remember, was an inaugural fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, in its intensive program to groom future museum directors and other top officials. (Another CCL inaugural fellow, Gary Tinterow, the Met's  chairman of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art, was also reportedly on the Frick's shortlist.)

As you may also remember, Wardropper was in 1997 the hapless purchaser for the Art Institute of Chicago (where he was a curator and department head) of the infamous Gauguin Faux Faun, a contemporary concoction by forger Shaun Greenhalgh of Bolton, England. That sculpture's accompanying documentation was also thought to be counterfeit.

In his 2007 Art Newspaper article on Wardropper's whopper, Martin Bailey wrote:

Writing in Apollo in September 2001, Art Institute sculpture curator Ian Wardropper recorded it as one of the most important acquisitions of the past 20 years. He described The Faun's features, as "bound up with the artist's self-image as a 'savage'." That same month The Faun was displayed in Chicago's definitive "Van Gogh and Gauguin" exhibition, which went on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

That said, Wardropper has a long, distinguished track record of publications and exhibitions. I favorably reviewed his show (co-curated by James Draper) of two years ago---Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, defending it against a drubbing by Ken Johnson in the NY Times. What I didn't tell you is that Wardropper came up to me at a subsequent press preview to thank me for what I wrote, saying that it had meant a great deal to him. I was both astonished and grateful, because few people take the trouble to tell me how they feel about what I write.

The Frick's press release announcing his appointment says that Wardropper's "scholarly catalogues on Italian Renaissance bronzes and maiolica are under way; and five volumes of a series on [Metropolitan Museum] department highlights are in process." Who will carry on this work after Oct. 3, when Ian assumes his post at the Frick?

The Frick also emphasized Wardropper's administrative ability, including his having played "an increasingly involved role―along with trustees, director, and development colleagues―in the fundraising efforts required of large-scale projects, among them the multi-million dollar renovation of the [Met's] Wrightsman Galleries in 2006-07.

As I predicted, there are many in the museum field who do not joyously welcome the additional government oversight for deaccessions embodied in the new rules approved on Tuesday by the NY State Board of Regents (and also approved by CultureGrrl).

Both the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors yesterday issued statements that express their shared ambivalence.

AAM declared:

We wholeheartedly endorse the principles embodied in the regents' decision. Recognizing that New York State is unique in its oversight structure for museums, AAM would prefer these important standards be enforced by the professionals in the field [emphasis added]. Past events have shown that sunshine and transparency provide the best sanctions on museums, as institutions that violate the field's accepted principles and best practices risk the erosion of the public trust that is essential to their success.

The regulations, in fact, mandate more "sunshine and transparency" than would otherwise be standard practice, by requiring museums to file with the state an annual list of all objects or groups of objects deaccessioned---a document that I assume, under the Sunshine Law, would be publicly available.

Meanwhile, AAMD, under its new executive director, Christine Anagnos, has issued yet another in it series of factually clueless statements:

AAMD strongly supports the principle that funds from deaccessioning may be used only for the acquisition of works of art. Indeed, it has been a core principle for AAMD and its members for many decades. We believe that such issues are best handled through professional associations like AAMD or AAM, rather than through legislation [emphasis added]. AAMD recognizes that the intention behind the bill is to support a core principle that we ourselves uphold, and are glad to have an endorsement of our principle.

Christine (and Kaywin), New York hasn't handled this issue "through legislation" (at least not yet). The new policy was established by a unanimous vote of the NY State Board of Regents to amend its rules, which govern most of the museums in the state. This had nothing to do with the State Legislature.

Ralph Frammolino, left, and Jason Felch with their finished product

Felcholino, the investigative reporting team, above (who clearly appreciate my nickname for them), have been doing a victory lap in Sicily, where the eponymous, although probably misnamed (scroll down), goddess of their new book, Chasing Aphrodite, was unveiled Tuesday in a small museum in Aidone, Italy, after having been a star attraction for more than two decades at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Two Getty curators, Karol Wight and Claire Lyons, attended Italy's celebration of the return of this 425 - 400 B.C., seven-foot Greek sculpture to the country from which it had likely been looted.


Cult Statue of a Goddess (the "Aphrodite" aka "Morgantina Venus"), 425-400 B.C., Greek, returned to Italy by the J. Paul Getty Museum

The Los Angeles museum's acting director, David Bomford, did not attend the ceremony but offered a written statement for the occasion, cryptically titled: Remarks from David Bomford, Acting Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, on the Occasion of the Opening of the Renovated Gallery at the Museo Archeologico in Aidone.

The publication date of Felcholino's muckraking tome is next Tuesday, but many of us, including officials at the Getty, have been reading advance copies. Following up on my cordially contentious antiquities-related LA Public Radio discussion with Ron Hartwig, the Getty Trust's vice president for communications (who has a more favorable view than mine about the naming of James Cuno as the Getty's new president), this seemed like a good time to get the Getty's advance review of the book that dredges up all the dirt that the Getty would rather wipe its hands clean of.

Here's my rather long-winded question and Hartwig's that-was-then, this-is-now response. (Remarks in brackets were added by me later):

ROSENBAUM: What is the Getty's overall response to "Chasing Aphrodite"? Do you feel it is a fair and accurate report, or do you take exception to it (or to certain parts of it)? If the latter, what are the specific aspects of the book with which you take issue and why?

To my mind, the most serious, documented allegation in the book is that most or all the key players at the Getty (including John Walsh and Deborah Gribbon [both former directors of the Getty Museum]) knew full well that a significant number of antiquities acquisitions, due to their dicey provenance, were likely to have been or almost certainly were looted and/or illegally exported, but the administration deliberately engaged in a cover-up of this knowledge. Is this an accurate depiction of what happened at the Getty? If not, why not?

HARTWIG: "Chasing Aphrodite" recounts a dark period in the Getty's history. The events in the book have been written about and dissected for decades now [most notably by Felcholino in their eye-opening series of articles for the LA Times, now considerably augmented with startling new revelations].

But, that period is over; it is history. Most of those involved have passed away or are no longer with the Getty, so we aren't going to discuss or debate specifics.

The Getty is a changed organization. We now have perhaps the best governance policies and procedures among nonprofits, our acquisition policy [my links, not his] is among the strongest in the museum community, and we have renewed, positive relations with both Italy and Greece. We are glad that Jason and Ralph have talked about the Getty's role in leading reform in interviews about their book [my link to their NPR discussion, not Hartwig's].

We are focused on what is happening today, and on the future. Our goal is to make sure the Getty's excellent work here in Los Angeles, and around the world---collecting and exhibiting art, providing opportunities for scholars and researchers to further their studies, and helping to preserve cultural heritage---overwhelms the negatives associated with a chapter now closed.

I also thought it prudent to question the Getty's general counsel, Stephen Clark, about any possible legal difficulties raised by the issues explored by Felcholino:

ROSENBAUM: Regarding "Chasing Aphrodite," I'm wondering whether you see any legal complications, going forward, from the revelations therein. Do you have any concern that either foreign or U.S. prosecutors might find cause to follow up on the book's revelations (some of which have already appeared in the LA Times)?

The authors strongly suggest a pattern of purchases of looted and/or illegally exported antiquities, with full knowledge (or at least very strong suspicions) by former Getty officials of the dicey nature of those acquisitions. Do you foresee any legal issues being raised because of this?

Also, could you please update me on the latest status of the Getty Bronze case?

CLARK: I don't see any likelihood of foreign or U.S. governments initiating new legal proceedings based on the Felch and Frammolino book. All of the information in the book has been public for many years now, and all of the questionable objects have been restituted.

The Court of Cassation in Rome remanded the Getty Bronze case to the local court in Pesaro. A judge there will review the matter starting with a hearing in July.

If all goes according to plan, I'll have a soundbite on New York Public Radio (WNYC) on this evening's "All Things Considered" and/or tomorrow's "Morning Edition," regarding the NY State Board of Regents landmark deaccession regulations. Here's a link to producer Abbie Fentress Swanson's written story (which quotes me). I'll embed the audio here, if/when it's available online.

In catching up with today's news (which I wrote about here), the NY Times' Robin Pogrebin got it wrong: She quoted "Assemblyman Richard Brodsky." But the author of the Brodsky Bill to regulate museum deaccessions is, in fact, no longer an Assemblyman, having run and lost last year for the State Attorney General's post. (The Brodsky Bill is now the Englebright Bill, which I also linked to in my last post).

Here's Brodsky's statement on the new Board of Regents regulations, calling their passage "an extraordinary moment in the cultural history of the state."

What I was hoping Robin would do is call some New York museum directors for their reactions to the new rules. I expect some support, some ambivalence, and maybe some hostility from those who reflexively resist regulation.

I welcome BlogBacks from those who might want to sound off.

John King Jr., New York State's newly elected Education Commissioner

It's been a long slog, but a new, overdue national model for the regulation of museum deaccessions was enacted today by the NY State Board of Regents.

The Regents unanimously approved a permanent amendment to Regents Rule §3.27, relating to museum collections management policies. The new rules, effective June 8, will govern deaccession practices of all museums and historical societies chartered by the Regents. (Institutions created before 1890 are chartered by the State Legislature; a bill is still pending there to regulate deaccessions for those institutions.) The Regents' temporary emergency amendment to Rule §3.27 had expired on Oct. 8, after the board had voted against making it permanent.

The rules approved today would allow museums to dispose of works from their collections only if at least one fo the following 10 criteria is met:

---The item is inconsistent with the mission of the institution as set forth in its mission statement.

---The item has failed to retain its identity.

---The item is redundant.

---The item's preservation and conservation needs are beyond the capacity of the institution to provide.

---The item is deaccessioned to accomplish refinement of collections.

---It has been established that the item is inauthentic.

---The institution is repatriating the item or returning the item to its rightful owner.

---The institution is returning the item to the donor, or the donor's heirs or assigns, to fulfill donor restrictions relating to the item which the institution is no longer able to meet.

---The item presents a hazard to people or other collection items.

---The item has been lost or stolen and has not been recovered.

This goes farther than the professional guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors. AAMD lists criteria that "might be contemplated" by museums considering disposals. The Regents' rules dictate, rather than suggest. Still, "refinement of collections" leaves a lot of wiggle room. And one person's "redundancy" is another person's "depth."

Under the approved amendment, deaccession proceeds may be used only for "the acquisition of collections, or the preservation, conservation or direct care of collections. In no event shall proceeds derived from the deaccessioning of any property from the collection be used for operating expenses or for any [other] purposes."

The amendment also states that objects from museum collections and/or their sales proceeds "shall not be used as collateral for a loan."

I particularly like the requirement that "each institution shall include in its annual report [to the State Education Commissioner] a list of all items or item lots [groups of related items] deaccessioned in the past year and all items or item lots disposed of in the past year." Filed with a government body, these reports enumerating museum disposals would, I assume, be public documents.

The emergency amendment that was allowed to expire last fall had listed only four conditions under which disposals were permitted. Museum officials had persuasively (and appropriately) argued the need for additional rationales for deaccessioning, such as return to rightful owners.

The adoption of permanent regulations was temporarily scuttled by objections from some museum officials who did not welcome government interference in their disposal decisions. Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times had quoted a letter sent to the Regents by Glenn Lowry, the Museum of Modern Art's director, less than a week before the Sept. 14 meeting where the rules to tighten restrictions on deaccessioning were rejected. Lowry had argued that the rules "would remove from Regents-governed institutions the curatorial discretion that has made them among the most respected in the world." (The Times, at this writing, has not yet reported on today's landmark action by the Regents.)

After the failure of the regulations to be adopted, the Regents in November appointed a 16-member Ad Hoc Advisory Committee to study deaccession issues. That committee favored the adoption of the new rules, according to Jeffrey Cannell, deputy commissioner for cultural education. Its members included: Martin Sullivan, director, National Portrait Gallery; Henry Lanman, associate general counsel, Museum of Modern Art; Thelma Golden, executive director and chief curator, Studio Museum in Harlem, Michael Botwinick, director, Hudson River Museum; Scott Schaefer, associate dean of science for collections, American Museum of Natural History.

When the amendment was rejected last October, David Steiner, the state's education commissioner, stated that, after hearing views from museums statewide, "there was no consensus on the efficacy of those emergency regulations."

Yesterday the Regents elected a new education commissioner, John King Jr., formerly senior deputy commissioner. He will now be charged with administering the new collections-management rules.

A small sigh of relief.

If Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei were in demonstrably poor physical condition, it's unlikely that the Chinese authorities would have allowed his wife to see him yesterday, albeit briefly and closely monitored. Ai had been previously unheard from since taken into custody on Apr. 3.

Alexa Olesen and Isolda Morillo of the Associated Press report:

Lu Qing told the Associated Press she was allowed to meet with her husband at an unknown location for around 20 minutes Sunday afternoon and that he seemed conflicted and upset, though insisted he was healthy and his physical needs were being met.

The indispensable Tania Branigan of the Guardian has published extensive quotes from Ai's family and his lawyer, reacting to Lu's visit. Branigan reports:

Ai was not handcuffed, was wearing his own clothes rather than a uniform, and retained his beard. He said he had his blood pressure checked several times a day and had received medication he needed for diabetes. He was able to exercise by walking and said he was eating and sleeping well....

Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer who has said he is willing to represent the artist if necessary, said Ai was not in a jail or a detention center, but that neither Lu nor Ai were sure where he was being held.

He said police had still not informed Ai's family of detention and that he suspected the artist was being held under residential surveillance.

A week ago I visited and videoed the sculptural installation that recently opened in New York (and is now also in London) of Ai's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads.

I'm traveling today and will have more commentary later on Ai's situation, including what I regard as the overly circumspect response by museums and galleries.

But for now, here's my report on the installation, including my shock at discovering that there was no mention whatsoever of the artist's current plight. There is, however, a kiosk selling "Circle of Animals" teeshirts and catalogues at $20 a pop, with proceeds going to AW Asia, the for-profit business of one of the installation's chief organizers, Larry Warsh. AW Asia financed the fabrication of the sculptures, according to its director, Taliesin Thomas, with whom I spoke. Warsh, who frequently travels to China, is a dealer and major collector of Chinese contemporary art and a promoter of the Chinese art market.

Here's my CultureGrrl Video:

Margaret Juntwait, host of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast

Was the maestro ailing?

This afternoon's start of the season's final performance of Wagner's "Die Walküre" at the Metropolitan Opera (I attended the first one on Apr. 22) was delayed for 40 minutes, with no explanation for those of us who were listening to the radio broadcast. (This performance was also to be broadcast live in HD in movie theaters around the world.) The comparable radio announcers, Margaret Juntwait and Ira Siff, gamely and ably filled the time, like sportscasters during a rain delay.

Given the fact that the conductor, Met music director James Levine, had already dropped out of the May 5 performance of the opera, announcing the next day that he would take the entire summer off "to rest and recuperate from his ongoing back condition" (missing a Carnegie Hall concert, Tanglewood concerts and the Met's tour in Japan this summer), I had visions of his being infused with painkillers to get him onto the stage. I knew that the final, widely broadcast performance was one that he would refuse to miss, no matter what.

But no. The problem was atttributed to the cumbersome, complicated set that is part of director Robert LePage's new production of the Ring Cycle. Part of the radio broadcast's filler during the curtain delay was a previously taped interview with Levine, who essentially dodged Juntwait's question about how well the new set was working for him.

WQXR, New York's classical music station, at last reported on its website (and also on the air):

According to a statement from the Met, the delay was "due to a problem with an encoding sensor in one of the planks that comprise the set. The problem was discovered this morning as the stage was being set for today's opera, so the sensor had to be fixed before the performance could begin."

As I write this, Act II is about to begin, setting the stage for Brünnhilde's signature "Hojotoho!," which had been the occasion, during the performance I attended, for soprano Deborah Voigt's being momentarily vanquished by the set, losing her footing on its steep, slippery slope and landing flat on her rear.

[It's now a few minutes later.] The music sounds glorious and I didn't hear any audience gasps during the passage that had previously accompanied the woman warrior's undignified flop.

But when a highly expensive set gets so complicated, obtrusive and even dangerous that it compromises the audience's and singers' experience, priorities should be fixed, along with the sensors. "Spider-Man the Opera" shouldn't be in the repertoire.

Renzo Piano's sketch for the planned Downtown Whitney

[Part I is here. I have since learned that my commentary for WNYC on MoMA's purchase of the American Folk Art Museum's building was aired, as well as published.]

Having been in retrenchment mode during the Great Recession, the Metropolitan Museum appears ready to flex its financial muscles again: It has just announced a new board chairman (effective Sept. 13)---Daniel Brodsky, a real estate mogul. Its most recent annual report showed an operating surplus of $3.7 million in fiscal 2010 (ending June 30), compared to a whopping deficit of $8.4 million the previous year.

What's more, In January, the Met announced a donation of pre-recession magnitude---$10 million from Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch (chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels) for a complete renovation of the Costume Institute's galleries. (Speaking of which, elected on Tuesday as a Met trustee was Vogue's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, bumped up from her spot as "honorary trustee," which she had held for her role as the Costume Institute's gala chair and megabucks fundraiser.)

In addition to imminent openings of two long-planned suites of galleries (art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia in November; American art in January), the Met is planning to redesign and rebuild its entire four-block outdoor plaza on Fifth Avenue.

But the big news is that the museum is now preparing to annex (for at least eight years), the building currently occupied by the Whitney Museum, to be used as the Met's contemporary-art outpost. This is scheduled to begin in 2015, when the Whitney intends to decamp for its 200,000-square-foot, Renzo Piano-designed building in New York's Meatpacking District. The Whitney bit off more than it could chew, both financially and operationally, when it thought it could manage a farflung, two-building operation.

The Met will not only pay to lease the building---about $3 million annually, but will also "share additional revenue with the Whitney," according to Carol Vogel's report in the NY Times. The museums' announcement (linked at the top) also says that the two institutions "will seek to collaborate on collections sharing, publications, and other educational activities," making this win-win even more winsome. The Met is considering whether to rebuild its own contemporary art wing, so it has now secured back-up space for those collections during the possible construction. It intends to continue showing contemporary art in its main building.

What's potentially wrong with this picture is the contradiction embodied in Vogel's article: While noting that the deal gives the Met "much needed space" for its contemporary collection, she also notes that the Met's contemporary works "have long been considered its weakest link." Does it really have enough important pieces in storage to fill another entire museum? Presumably this temporary expansion, which might be extended, will be used to entice art donors to enhance the holdings.

One thing we do know is that the Met has insufficient space to show its large sculptural pieces. There's its Anthony Caro, currently in his temporary show on the roof garden (flanked below by Jennifer Russell, the Met's associate director for exhibitions and Gary Tinterow, chairman of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art):


Anthony Caro, "Odalisque," 1984, Metropolitan Museum

And who can forget the Chillida that the Met controversially almost sold five years ago because, as Tinterow had told me, it was too large to be exhibited at the Met?


Eduardo Chillida, "Silent Music II," 1983

This Chillida became one of a group of large-scale sculptures sent by the Met on long-term loan to the "Landmarks" installation at the University of Texas, Austin. (Strangely, I don't see the Chillida on the current list of artists in that installation, nor do I see it in the museum's online collection database. I've got a question in to the Met about this.) Maybe some of those works can be retrieved from Austin to be enjoyed by New Yorkers.

UPDATE: Tinterow has informed me that the Chillida "has not been sold. It has been on loan [my link, not his] for many years at the Nasher [Sculpture Center] in Dallas" (another good home).


The Met's Chillida at the Nasher

Meanwhile, the Whitney told Vogel that its capital campaign has now raised some $500 million---a nice bump from the $372 million reported a year ago. When I chatted with him a few weeks ago at the Glenn Ligon press preview, Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney, stated that the latest tally would be announced at the Downtown Whitney's groundbreaking, May 24. He offered to tell me, off the record, how much had been raised. (I declined.) Carol received that information, on the record, before the rest of us, along with an advance briefing on the entire WhitMet story. The preferential "Times First" policy continues. (Pass the ketchup.)

The Whitney apparently upped its fundraising goal when we weren't looking: The $680-million campaign has now become a $720-million campaign. And that's with the Met's expected assumption of the operating costs of the Breuer building during its sojourn there.

At least the Guggenheim (in New York, anyway) is staying put. I can't imagine its ever abandoning the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building. After all, its edifice is more of an international tourist attraction than its collection and exhibitions. Not so the Breuer, which Weinberg himself once publicly ridiculed with the observation that the "darkness of it and the moat scare people who think there are alligators and not art in there."

In other Renzo Piano museum news: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, has just announced that it will open its controversial new wing on Jan. 19.

One final note: Fellow fans of kitschy murals will be saddened to learn that our beloved Premier Veal (Lamb Too) building, on the site of the Downtown Whitney, is now just a cherished memory...unless, perhaps, Adam has decided to preserve and restore this adorable, cross-eyed livestock tableau as lobby decor!

The American Folk Art Museum's sliver building on W. 53rd Street

Help me! I have a lousy sense of direction and can't seem to find some of my favorite NYC museums!

The Whitney Museum's building is going to be (temporarily, at least) an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum. The American Folk Art Museum building will be part of the Museum of Modern Art. And the Whitney will be...where? (Groundbreaking for its behemoth Renzo Piano-designed facility in New York's Meatpacking District is scheduled for May 24.)

All of these dislocations (perhaps even the Met's move) were the result of faulty planning.

I'm not saying this only with the benefit of hindsight. Almost three years ago, in my radio commentary on New York's WNYC, I presciently questioned the practicality and financial viability of the Whitney's two-building plan (starting a little before the half-way point on the audio bar). I then quoted Jennifer Russell, now associate director for exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum, expressing similar misgivings.

As for the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), there have been rumors swirling around the New York artworld for years that it lacked adequate financial underpinning for its new Tod Williams Billie Tsien-designed facility, adjacent to MoMA, which opened in 2001.


The dark gray building building near the center of the photo, adjacent to MoMA, to the left rear of the empty lot, is the American Folk Art Museum.

I talked yesterday about AFAM's current predicament with Marlon Bishop of New York Public Radio (WNYC). They've posted a written piece about our conversation, but (as far as I've been able to determine) no audio was aired. [UPDATE: A friend heard me Thursday morning, but, to my knowledge, the audio isn't online.]

Back in September 2008, when the Brad Cloepfil-redesigned home for the Museum of Arts and Designed opened on Columbus Circle, its director, Holly Hotchner, boasted to me about the financial underpinning backing her project ($86 million raised towards the $90-million capital campaign goal; $13 million towards the $20-million endowment goal). During our conversation, she contrasted that financial success with what she then understood to be the shaky situation at AFAM.

The sad part of this museum musical chairs is the forthcoming decampment of AFAM for its small uptown satellite facilty near Lincoln Center. MoMA's director Glenn Lowry, who never saw a property on his block that he didn't covet, managed to secure the right-of-first-refusal for his institution to buy AFAM's building. Through a spokesperson, MoMA declined to answer my question about how much it is paying to acquire the building.

One of the last financial straws for AFAM involved MoMA: The Folk Art Museum had hoped to sell its air rights to the MoMA/Hines skyscraper project (which grew to 85 stories after I wrote the post at this link), designed by Jean Nouvel. That project, now stalled due to the unfavorable financial climate, had seen its planned 1,250-foot height (which would have necessitated the purchase of AFAM's air rights) reduced by 200 feet during the city approval process. AFAM's executive director, Maria Ann Conelli, had been among those who unsuccessfully beseeched a City Council committee to allow the full height, during public hearings in October 2009:


Maria Ann Conelli, executive director, American Folk Art Museum, speaking on behalf of the MoMA/Hines skyscraper project at a City Council committee hearing.

Soon before the announcement of the sale of her museum's building to MoMA, Conelli resigned her post, effective this July. My phone message to Conelli yesterday, requesting comment, was unreturned.

My guess is that MoMA will eventually knock down the failed museum's building and add the land (and air rights) to the Nouvel construction project, if the developer, Hines, should eventually decide to proceed. A MoMA spokesperson informed me: "The details for how the building will be used have not been determined, though we expect to use it for exhibition space."

Critic Jerry Saltz writes for New York magazine that architecture killed AFAM. To some extent, I agree. This is a sliver museum, wedged into a tight space, with dark, narrow galleries. Its inhospitability (not to mention a condensation leak directly in front of artworks, which I had observed there four years ago and has presumably been fixed) raises concerns for the controversial new Barnes Foundation building rising in Philadelphia, designed by the same architects.


Interior of American Folk Art Museum


The Philadelphia Barnes, under construction

But it's the financials that really did AFAM in. Attendance was anemic, fundraising inadequate and it lost its megabucks patron and former board chairman, jeweler Ralph Esmerian, who became embroiled in lawsuits regarding his finances three years ago and was arrested on criminal charges last November. The recent financial downturn, which ate into all museums' endowments, must have further weakened AFAM's already shaky foundation. It has defaulted on the $32-million in bonds that had been issued by the Trust for Cultural Resources of the City of New York to finance its construction.

If AFAM had a low profile at its 53rd Street site next to MoMA, it's going to have an even lower profile at its Lincoln Square outpost on Columbus Avenue---a former public arcade that looks more like a storefront than a museum:



To its credit, AFAM has said that it is not raising cash by monetizing its collection. We can only hope that it will collaborate with MoMA and other institutions to increase visibility for its activities and significant holdings.

In happier news, the Whitney/Met deal sounds, for the most part, like a win-win arrangement. More on that, COMING SOON. [Part II is now here.]

A lot to remember: Andy Warhol, "Self-Portrait," 1963-4

If you've been following the news reports on the evening Impressionist/modern and contemporary sales this week and last at Sotheby's and Christie's, you know that the "recovery" of the art market appears to have stalled, along with the rest of the economic recovery. "Tepid," "far from stellar" and "rather underwhelming" are some of the descriptions from journalists attending the ho-hum sales.

Last night's contemporary sale at Christie's did well, however: Achieving a total of $301.68 million (including the buyer's premium), it was an impressive 99% sold by value, 95% by lot. Only three of the 65 works failed to find buyers.

I sat these sales out, pursuing other stories. But I couldn't resist tuning in, via the webcast, to the always entertaining Christopher Burge for part of last night's sale. I'm so glad I did! As the bidding progressed (and didn't) on Lot 22, I realized I was witnessing a strange kind of history.

About 10 minutes into the bidding, I switched on my camcorder to capture a blurry souvenir of what I knew was turning into the most drawn-out bidding war I had ever witnessed. The James Brown of the sales podium, earning the title, "Hardest Working Auctioneer in Art Business," also knew this was a strangely momentous occasion, wryly pronouncing this to be "the longest lot in history." When he said that, there were more teeth yet to pull.

Other Burge-isms: "Let's speed it up!" "Throw in a big one!" And my favorite: "I can't just stand here doing nothing!" In its post-sale press release, Christie's hilariously described this interlude as "riveting." "Excruciating" was more like it.

There were no fireworks, just exasperating hesitation on the part of the contenders, along with repeated (not always successful) attempts to get Burge to lower the bidding increments. In the end, he managed to extract a final bid of $34.35 million (against a presale estimate of $20-30 million) or $38.44 million with the buyer's premium---an auction record for a Warhol portrait, which Christopher labored mightily to achieve. It was the high price of the evening.

The Warhol was one of seven lots in the sale carrying a guaranteed minimum price that was fully financed by a third party. (The guarantor, typically a dealer or major collector, has to make good on the amount of the guarantee, if bidding falls short.)

At Christie's, the third-party guarantor is allowed to bid on the lot in which he has a financial interest. If the lot goes to another bidder for more than the guaranteed price, the guarantor customarily collects a fee based on the amount of the overage. If the guarantor is the winning bidder, his net cost for buying the work is less than it would have been for a disinterested bidder, because he receives a fee for having assumed the risk of being the lot's guarantor.

One wonders if the guarantor for the Warhol self-portrait could have been carefully (and very slowly) edging up the price to boost the upside over the guarantee for his own financial benefit, before deferring to the unsuspecting phone bidder who ultimately prevailed. I wasn't in the room, but even if I were, it would probably have been hard to know why the bidding was so agonizingly slow.

In any event, here's my blurry video of the (in)action on my computer screen, containing two spliced-together excerpts from the Warhol Ordeal:

Don Bacigalupi, executive director, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, on last week's hardhat tour with journalists

I had one of those astonishing did-he-really-say-that moments in my half-hour conversation last week with Don Bacigalupi, executive director of Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. We chatted during my visit to the in-construction facility in Bentonville, AR. The transcript of part of our discussion is posted below.

The most startling moment of our exchange was Bacigalupi's revelation that the Arkansas museum no longer craves the collection that has launched a thousand legal briefs. Those briefs are flying yet again, in preparation for as-yet-unscheduled oral arguments [UPDATE: scheduled for June 28] in Tennessee's Court of Appeals, regarding the museum's proposal to purchase a $30-million half-share in Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection. (Fisk's latest brief is here; the state attorney general's is here. Fisk has until May 23 to file a response to the AG's brief.)

Both sides, for different reasons, are asking the Court of Appeals to overturn this ruling by the Davidson County Chancery Court, which approved the collection-sharing arrangement, subject to serious restrictions on Fisk's use of the windfall: $20 million would have to be used "to endow a Nashville connection for the [Stieglitz] collection"; only $10 million could be used for general university purposes. Fisk wants the money to help solve its serious financial problems.

There's now a new player in the courtroom: An amici curiae brief has just been filed by a group calling itself the Task Force for the Rescue and Restoration of Fisk University. They oppose the sale on two grounds: Fisk's "current finances...are much improved" (thereby obviating the need to monetize the collection); and the disregard of donor Georgia O'Keeffe's written stipulations for the collection would "discourage future donations" to Fisk and to other museums and charitable and educational institutions.

The most prominent of the 13-members in the amici group is Lucius Outlaw Jr., professor of philosophy and of Africana and diaspora studies, and associate provost for undergraduate education at Vanderbilt University (located, like Fisk, in Nashville). Outlaw previously taught at Fisk.

Bacigalupi's words speak for themselves, requiring little commentary from me, although I'll interject a few links and italicized remarks within brackets. (I'm the "Q"; he's the "A."):

Q: You mentioned [to the visiting journalists over lunch] that you are going to be following professional best practices and guidelines,which are approved and accredited in the industry. In the Fisk matter that's pending right now, AAMD made a comment [criticizing the monetization of the collection]. It wasn't directed at you; it was directed at Fisk.

A: You made the comment directed at me, as I recall. I thought, "What is she doing? Does she want me ousted from my professional organization?"

Q: The point is that AAMD was directing its comment at Fisk, over which it has no leverage. And the place where it does have leverage is the place that desires membership in AAMD. My question is: How do you justify in your mind being the other side of a transaction that has been condemned by the leading professional organization in your field?

A: Parse your words carefully. It's been condemned strictly for the use of the funds. We have nothing to do or to say about that.

Q: But you're enabling it.

A: I don't know that you can say that. If I buy something from you and I give you a dollar, do I have the right to tell you what to do with the dollar? I mean, really! [Then again, if one disapproves of the purpose for which the seller will be use that dollar, one can decline to participate in the transaction.]

We're not even in the same industry: The university is one thing, and subscribes to a set of guidelines that are accreditable within their field; the museum subscribes to another. [Actually, the professional guidelines for art disposals by independent and university museums are strikingly similar.] If it were the reverse, and we were receiving the funds and we were doing something else to the funds, of course AAMD would have the right to talk to us and censure us and do whatever they wanted to.

I've looked at this every different way. When I came to this job, I inherited this contract. And it IS a contract. That's why your comment was very difficult to absorb, because I can't do anything about a legal contract. That's absurd in a way, to blame me for a contract that already exists.

Q: The contract is not in effect yet.

A: The contract IS in effect. Pending the legal outcome, it is in effect and you can do nothing to change it while it is in litigation. And we're not a party to the litigation, so we have no effect on the litigation whatsoever. We're innocently standing by, awaiting the judge's outcome.

You've asked me and others have asked me, "Would I enter into that contract?" I don't know. The circumstances were very different at the time. At this time in the life cycle of this museum, would we be pursuing that collection? Probably not. We don't really need that collection in the way I think it was perceived we needed that collection four or five years ago. [Emphasis added.]

The times have changed. The institution has evolved and grown, so it's fully a different experience. I've looked at every aspect of this and Kaywin Feldman [the president of AAMD] and I have had many conversations about it, as I have also had with Janet Landay [AAMD's former executive director] and Chris Anagnos [its current executive director]. I think they absolutely understand it from a colleague's perspective, from where I sit. Even though their public statement has been directed at Fisk, there's no institutional blame here.

I reacted so strongly to your comment about us being enablers because I don't think that's true at all and the impetus for entering into the discussion was to help save Fisk because I think it's a travesty to think about standing idly by while Fisk, the most historic black university in the country, goes bankrupt. And that was absolutely Alice's goal in entering into any discussion.

Q: If Alice really felt that way, she could give them the $30 million!

A: She HAS given them. She has made pledges to the university.

Q: I thought it was $1 million. [This is revealed in the court papers.]

A: Have YOU given a million dollars to Fisk University? Has anybody else?

Q: I wish I could!

A: Her care runs deep for that university and she believes that it would be a disaster to have that university go bankrupt. I think the way she went about it was right-headed. It was with the best of intentions, and it's been construed in every other way.

Q: How did the initial contact [between Walton and Fisk] work?

A: As I recall, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum entered into a relationship with Fisk to buy [Georgia O'Keeffe's] "Radiator Building" and she [Walton] went to the attorney general and said, "This is not a fair price. They're giving that painting away."

And as a donor, she was offended by the idea that O'Keeffe's wishes were being so brutalized that they were selling paintings, one-off, out of the collection, rather than trying to preserve the integrity of the collection, which the Crystal Bridges agreement does do: It preserves the integrity. It keeps the collection, in its entirety, together at Fisk and at Crystal Bridges.

Keeping the collection's "integrity" would mean (under the revised schedule for collection-sharing, set forth on p. 13 of Fisk's latest brief) that Fisk's students would be deprived of its use from Fall 2013 through Summer 2015 (one and a half years). After Summer 2017, the collection would switch venues every two years---not a desirable situation for students wishing to enjoy and study those artworks, and not in accordance with donor O'Keeffe's clear, written stipulations that the collection remain at Fisk and not be sold.

Warren Olney, moderator, "Which Way, L.A.?" on Los Angeles Public Radio

I'll be sharing my thoughts about James Cuno, the incoming president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, on Warren Olney's Which Way LA?, broadcast over public radio station KCRW at 7 p.m. LA time (10 p.m. on the East Coast).

My segment is supposed to air at about 7:12 p.m., Western. You'll be able to listen live here.

I'll also update this post with the embedded audio, once it's available online.

The Getty Trust's vice president for communications, Ron Hartwig, and I actually managed to have a cordial and, I think, interesting conversation, even though I had just criticized Cuno in this post for his "intemperate rhetoric" and his "extremist stance" on cultural-property issues.

You'll be particularly interested to hear Ron talk about how Cuno's job interview played out on this hot-button topic (and, later on, you'll hear my response to that).

Of course, the person I REALLY should have been talking with is Cuno!

UPDATE: Below is the podcast. Our "Getty" segment starts at about 12:09 into the program (after the "Teachers" segment):

James Cuno, speaking at the May 2009 inaugural ceremony for the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago

While most of the New York art press was gathered at the Metropolitan Museum yesterday to ingest the highly anticipated chicken and salad at that museum's spring press lunch, Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Trust lobbed this bombshell into our inboxes:

James Cuno, recognized both nationally and internationally as a noted museum leader and scholar and an accomplished leader in the field of the visual arts, has been named president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Dr. Cuno, who comes to the Getty after serving as president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2004, will assume his position August 1.

Three years ago, when Cuno was being mentioned as a possible successor to retiring director Philippe de Montebello at the Metropolitan Museum, I thought that was a very bad idea.

But naming him as president of the Getty is even worse.

In recent years, the Getty Museum, thanks in large measure to the enlightened leadership of its then director, Michael Brand, did a 180-degree turnaround from being arguably the most avid institutional acquirer of dubiously provenanced and/or looted antiquities to becoming a conciliatory repatriator of such objects and a resourceful initiator of cooperative, collaborative agreements with Italy, its chief antagonist in the antiquities wars.

With Cuno, that hard work to repair relations with former adversaries may go out the window. Currently director of the Art Institute of Chicago (from which the previous Getty president, the late James Wood, also hailed), Cuno has made no secret of his contempt for source countries' efforts to secure their cultural patrimony. Denigrating their point of view has been a constant refrain in his writings and talks.

This passage from Cuno's now out-of-print 2008 book, Who Owns Antiquity?, says it all:

I question the premise of nationalist retentionist cultural property laws: that it is the right of sovereign nations to legislate the protection of and access to whatever they consider to be their cultural property, that which they claim to be important to their national identities and self-esteem....Antiquities are ancient artifacts of times and cultures long preceding the history of the modern nation-state. And in all but a very few cases, they have no obvious relation to that state other than the accident of geography: they happen to have been found within its modern borders.

This intemperate rhetoric, presuming to tell other countries that they have no "right" to enact their own cultural-property laws and suggesting that they also have no right to derive a sense of national identity and self-esteem from the rich cultures that historically flourished in their lands, is waving a red flag in front of archaeologists and officials from the source countries for antiquities---the very people with whom the Getty has been conscientiously trying to reach a rapprochement.

Maybe Cuno is the right man to further the Trust's get-tough policy regarding the still contested Getty Bronze. But what I stated three years ago in my review of his Princeton University Press-published cultural-property screed still pertains:

I then wrote:

By taking an extremist stance that belittles the deeply felt and legitimate concerns of archaeologists and source countries to preserve archaeological sites and national heritage, he undermines efforts by reasonable people on both sides of the cultural-property divide to arrive at mutually beneficial compromises.

And he self-destructively undermines any role he might personally have played in working cooperatively with foreign governments to forge mutually beneficial sharing arrangements.

I'll tell you who might have been a better choice for the Getty: the man who took the opposite side of the cultural-property debate in a videoed conversation with Cuno that occurred at Indianapolis Univerity-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). Maxwell Anderson, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's director, expressed the philosophy of sharing and stewardship (rather than ownership) that has been the hallmark of recent Getty policy.

If Cuno runs true to form, that policy could soon change. With the museum's top spot still in play, due to Michael Brand's departure in January 2010, the question now becomes: What director would want to serve under a president with such a reactionary position on an issue that has been of utmost importance to the Getty Trust and Museum?

And how will Cuno and his yet-to-be-named director respond to questions that will doubtless be posed after the May 24 detonation of Felcholino's bombshell exposé, Chasing Aphrodite, a detailed investigation of the Getty antiquities mess?

CORRECTION: The original version of this post said that the Cuno-Anderson conversation took place at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

[UPDATE: Audio's now online, and embedded at the end of this post.]

If all goes according to plan, I'll be accorded a (probably brief) soundbite later today on the subject of Alice Walton's $800-million museum (and that's just the endowment). It will be part of Marketplace, an American Public Media business show that is heard on National Public Radio.

In the NYC area, this should air on NPR stations shortly after 6:30 p.m. I'll post the link and/or embed the audio on CultureGrrl, later this evening, if it's available.

One CultureGrrl housekeeping note: I send e-mail blasts with links to my posts to two donor lists. One of them (the under-$50 group) isn't working today, for some unknown reason. I've put out a desperate cry for tech support. But for now, if you read this, please check the blog itself for my updates until I manage to get things straightened out (if I can!). Or send me $50 via my "Donate" button and I'll add you to the still-functioning list. (I swear this is a glitch, not a ploy!) [UPDATE: I 've now found a workaround for this glitch.]

Speaking of which, my Orlando trip to speak on a panel now titled "Digging Culture: The Fine Art of Investigating the Business of Museums and Collectors," at the June conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), is still seriously under-funded!

UPDATE: They chose my sexiest sentence for their minute-and-a-half report on Crystal Bridges, as you will hear here, starting at about the 11:30 mark:

HELP! Let me down!!!

On Wednesday, you viewed my CultureGrrl Video overview of the exteriors of the monumentally proportioned, copper-topped pavilions that will open on Nov. 11 as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded and munificently funded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton.

Now, come inside with me as we watch the paint dry. To add a little suspense to this construction-site tour, we'll step outside in the middle of our journey for a wild ride in what the construction workers told me was a "boom lift" ("cherry picker," in my layman's lingo). Having just fired a few hardball questions at the museum's director, Don Bacigalupi, in a one-on-one interview after Wednesday's official press hardhat tour and lunch, I feared that my high-altitude adventure might be how they do away with impertinent journalists. (Just kidding about the last part.)

That's your intrepid blogger, in the photo above, shot from terra firma by David Burghart, director of facilities and grounds for the museum and its manager for the construction project. I'm starting to feel like the George Plimpton of the artworld. (I wonder if Alice, who's my age, has done this.)

David was my patient, genial guide for this in-depth personal tour---your first sneak peak (with some CultureGrrl commentary) at the interiors of the galleries:

the $16-20 million annual operating budget

Tent for the Costume Institute's gala tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

While I was no fan of the catalogue, I was wowed by the coup de théâtre that is Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum (May 4-July 31). The installation was more inventive and inspired than almost anything I've seen pulled off at this venerable institution. (You'll get some sense of that by viewing the CultureGrrl Video, below.)

Curator Andrew Bolton's wall text was illuminating; the object labels weren't. I wished for more in-depth information about the individual pieces, provided neither in the show nor in the catalogue.

Both the show and catalogue soft-pedal the perverse, transgressive sensibility that suffuses the galleries. The word "Romantic" keeps resonating on the walls and in the catalogue, but even the 19th-century Romantic concept of the dread-provoking "sublime" doesn't capture the dark, macabre quality of what we see and experience here. It's more about fetishism and sadomasochism than about the dreamy haze of reverie (except for a gauzy hologram, which you'll see in my video, of model Kate Moss dancing to poignantly elegiac music, at the end of which her image dissolves into abstraction and then nothingness). Edgar Allan Poe is, at one point, fittingly invoked: The show's "Savage Beauty" owes more to Poe than to Wordsworth.


Jacket of black leather and black fox, vest of black leather and silver metal, skirt of black leather, 2009-10, courtesy of Alexander McQueen

McQueen conscientiously learned the rules (tailoring from Savile Row, softness from Givenchy), only to break them, in the manner of many cutting-edge artists. Speaking of "cutting," I still wish that more light had been shed on the designer's meticulous methods and craft.

As Met director Thomas Campbell suggested in his remarks (both at the press preview and in his catalogue introduction), McQueen's creations (at least those in this show) were more art than fashion. Unlike "American Woman," last year's Met Costume Institute show, much of what you'll see in the video below is unwearable but unforgettable. It's not surprising that most of the ensembles from the show are on loan from the fashion house, not private owners.

I would, however, have loved to have seen one of the madly-hatted attendees at the Royal Wedding dare to wear this bird's-nest creation:


Shaun Leane and Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen, Headpiece: silver, Swarovski gemstones and gull feathers, courtesy of Swarovski

And McQueen did make a lasting contribution to real-life wardrobes with his "bumster" pants and skirts:


Left: "Bumster" trouser: black silk and cotton grosgrain, 1995-96, courtesy of Mira Chai Hyde
Right: "Bumster" skirt: black silk taffeta, 1995-96, courtesy of Alexander McQueen

Particularly enchanting was the gallery where mannequins pirouetted in mirrored compartments, accompanied by tinkling music that made them eerily reminiscent of wind-up dolls from a child's jewelry box. These elaborately clad visions wear hair helmets reminiscent of the signature coif of Vogue's British-born editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, long-time rainmaker for the Costume Institute's galas:


Left to right at the "McQueen" press preview: Met director Tom Campbell; fashion editor Anna Wintour; Alexander McQueen's creative director Sarah Burton; designer and McQueen friend Stella McCartney; curator Andrew Bolton

Sarah Burton, who took charge of McQueen's fashion empire after the designer's February 2010 suicide (and who designed Kate Middleton's gown for the Royal Wedding), managed to depart London for New York in time for the press preview:



Now join me in touring the most theatrical moments of this haunting display:

Bronze animal heads created by Ai Weiwei for his outdoor exhibition, "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads," Grand Army Plaza, New York

Today was to have been the official launch of Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals installation at the Pulitzer Fountain in New York. But the end of Osama bin Laden has put an end to that, for today, because it was to have been a ceremonial New York City event with Mayor Bloomberg in attendance. (For good reason, he has other things to attend to today, in light of momentous current events.)

I have no word yet when the official opening will be rescheduled, and I have not yet been able to determine whether the sculptures are being informally unveiled today, without ceremony. You can follow the ZodiacHeads Twitter feed for late-breaking developments.

One things seems sadly certain: Ai will almost certainly not be there to celebrate his work with us.

UPDATE: The animal heads, already installed around the fountain, will remain under wraps until the official launch.

Photo: British Monarchy Photostream on Flickr

The Metropolitan Museum has assured me that this isn't going to happen.

But when I came upon tomorrow's article for the Scotsman (online tonight), I couldn't help but wonder whether The Dress might yet show up as a late addition to the soon-to-open Alexander McQueen show at the Met. (After all, the director, Tom Campbell, speaks the Queen's English!)

Jane Bradley writes:

Kate Middleton's £250,000 [!?!] wedding dress is to go on display to the public. A Clarence House spokeswoman said plans were being drawn up to show the gown, created by Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton, but she could not confirm when or where.

She said: "The Duchess of Cambridge [the commoner's new moniker] is considering a number of options to give members of the public the opportunity to see close-up the skilled British craftsmanship that went into the making of her wedding dress."

Even if the dress doesn't show up at the Met, maybe Burton (creative director for the fashion house founded by the late McQueen) will. Tomorrow is the show's press preview, not to mention the Met Costume Institute's gala that night. Perhaps anticipating that The Dress would be designed by the McQueen fashion house, the Met chose actor Colin Firth, the King of "The King's Speech," as one of the McQueen gala's co-chairs. (Couldn't they have corralled a real royal for this occasion?)

Enough about the Met (at least for now). Bradley's article also reports on a fashion trend that I don't understand (one of many, I admit): I've read numerous reports that dress manufacturers everywhere are now working feverishly to churn out Royal Wedding knockoffs. Can it really be that thousands of brides want to be seen in the same dress (a cheap imitation, at that)? I expect we will also have a McQueen Halloween.

As the mother of a soon-to-be bride (I can't "confirm where or when," as was said of the showing of Kate's dress), I can only hope that CultureDaughter (quite as beautiful as Kate) finds her own look! I now expect to be flooded with e-mails from fashion houses, vying to gown her. (Just kidding.) But first, she'll be donning a cap-and-gown, later this month. (And she has not only said yes to a marriage proposal but also accepted a job proposal.)

As someone who has imminent travel plans (not to London, alas), I can only hope, art-lings, that you'll be patient if my posting this week is a bit spotty.