June 2011 Archives

Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence

What a difference a new president makes!

Thanks in part to personal conversations initiated by Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence, who assumed his post Jan. 1, an agreement has now been struck between Brandeis University and the three board members of the university's Rose Art Museum who had filed a lawsuit in July 2009 seeking to prevent the museum from shutting down and/or selling its art. As a result of this rapprochement, the lawsuit has been dismissed and the state Attorney General has closed her investigation.

In addition to the above-linked press release, I requested and received a copy of the full settlement agreement. You can read it here. It attributes the accord, in part, to "constructive and collegial conversations" between the litigants and the president. It stipulates that the Rose "will remain a university art museum open to the public, professionally staffed, and dedicated to its primary purpose of collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting fine art."

In a phone conversation with me this afternoon, Lawrence paraphrased another part of the agreement, pledging that "we have no plans to sell art, no intent to sell art, no design to sell art....The Rose will remain open as a university art museum and play a critic role at Brandeis."

The focus, Lawrence told me, will now be "on going forward....We've got a lot of things to plan in terms of how to bring attention back to the Rose. [When I visited and shot a CultureGrrl Video last December, it was sparsely attended.] I think we have the best collection of contemporary art in New England and I want people to be focused in on that and think about how we can enhance the role that it plays on campus and enhance the role it plays well beyond campus....We are thinking about ways of raising [the museum's] visibility and, frankly, bringing supporters back....Another major thing, obviously, is that now the search for a permanent director can move into high gear."

Roy Dawes, director of operations, has been the de facto director since the departure of the Rose's embattled former head, Michael Rush, who had taken a strong stand against former president Jehuda Reinharz's previously announced plan to sell the collection and close the Rose. That bombshell caused a storm of outrage to erupt in the university and museum communities, resulting in some serious backpedaling by Reinharz.

Plans for raising the Rose's profile, Lawrence said, include putting together traveling exhibitions, A traveling Warhol show is already in the works. When I asked if these would be structured as money-makers, he replied that the Warhol is not, but he didn't rule this out for the future "I would certainly think about the things that other major museums have done that have generated revenue for the museum. The exhibitions we're talking about right now would not fit into that [fundraising] category.

Speaking of income producers, the infamous Rent-a-Rose plan, signed a year ago with Sotheby's, has yet to result in any art-for-cash lease deals, which were to have been brokered by the auction house. (To his credit, Lawrence did use the word "lease" to describe these dubious deals, rather than the euphemistic "loan," which implies a more collegial arrangement.)

The president told me that his university is "still exploring" the possibility of leasing art, but "we would have certain limitations on what kind arrangements we would accept, in terms of who would be an appropriate custodian...[and] how long [the works] would be away. If we're to engage in this, we would want to do it in a way that's consistent with the Rose's being a major part of the life on campus.

"They [Sotheby's] have brought us a number of ideas in the abstract, some of which have been acceptable, some of which, we've said, were not."

As for the museum's previously serious financial crisis, which had impelled Reinharz's (later rescinded) decision to liquidate the art, Lawrence noted that "the university is in substantially stronger financial shape that we were two and a half years ago. Our endowment is roughly back to where it was at its all-time high, before the 2008 crash." The university's five-year plan to balance its operating budget by 2014 is "on track," he noted.

The Rose is currently closed for renovations. Its barebones website gives no clue as to when it will reopen this fall or what is planned for the new semester's inaugural exhibition in this, the museum's 50th-anniversary year.

With a supportive president, a financially stronger institution and an end to legal wrangling, there will surely be much to celebrate.

Randolph College President John Klein

The Association of Art Museum Directors has now posted online the link to its June 22 letter to Randolph College President John Klein, reaffirming AAMD's previous censure of deaccessions (past and possibly future) by the Maier Museum of Art, Lynchburg, VA, to raise funds for the college's general financial needs.

Now Klein has responded to AAMD's missive.

In a message sent this morning to faculty and staff, Klein noted that "the letter from the AAMD will be reported in the media." (Actually, it was already reported yesterday, in my last CultureGrrl post. Liz Barry of the Lynchburg News & Advance picked up on the story today.)

"We would like our community to understand that the AAMD does not have jurisdiction over the College and did not ask its members to stop participating in exhibits with the College," Klein observed. It seems that, from his standpoint, AAMD's stern admonishment is very easy to ignore.

I have a query in to AAMD's president, Dan Monroe, which I sent him yesterday, asking: "Since you're not imposing sanctions, what leverage do you have over Randolph College? What future action might AAMD take to follow up on the letter and encourage the college to take it seriously?"

If I hear back, I'll update here.

In keeping with Randolph's astonishing statement (as reported by AAMD representatives who visited campus) that the Maier Museum, notwithstanding its name, is not a museum, Klein's letter to faculty and staff refers only to "the College's collection," never using the M-word. Maybe they should now rename their art repository the Maier Mausoleum, since its artworld reputation is dead.


Randolph College's Maier Museum

Although AAMD has not gone so far as to instruct its constituents to entirely shun the Maier (as it had done with the National Academy), I suspect the association's members will be less than eager to cooperate with an institution that flouts professional standards.

We can only hope that the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (of which the Maier is not a member, according to the listing on AAMG's website) will also reaffirm its 2008 condemnation of the Randolph disposals, and that other organizations and educational leaders whose opinions may hold more sway over Randolph's president will forcefully weigh in.

Most important will be the force of public opinion, particularly that of the college's own constituents and its surrounding community. They should not remain silent in the face of Klein's intransigence. In April, a group of Randolph students staged a protest against possible future sales of artworks, to show "we haven't forgotten," in the words of a sophomore.

Here's Klein's letter:

Dear Colleagues,

The College received a letter late last week from the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) informing us of its decision to censure the actions taken nearly four years ago to sell four paintings from the College's collection for the purpose of increasing the College's endowment. It is important to note that the College is not a member of the AAMD, nor is the College eligible to become a member.

Randolph College has been engaged in a dialogue with the AAMD since mid-2010 in an effort to open conversation about this issue and explain the College's position. While we are disappointed in the AAMD's decision to voice its disapproval of the College's decision to sell art, we respectfully disagree with the organization's reasoning [my links, not his]. We understand that the AAMD is dedicated to protecting its interests, but Randolph College's Board of Trustees is also charged with protecting the interests of this College and our future.

Our board members have a fiduciary responsibility to make the best decisions for the future of Randolph College as an educational institution. The decisions they made four years ago---however painful---were the best decisions for the College then, and they remain the best decisions for the College today. Members of the Board of Trustees and I have met with representatives of the AAMD and have shared information about the progress the College has made, as well as the importance of the College's art collection.

Randolph has a remarkable collection of artwork that provides unique opportunities for our students. The artwork owned by the College continues to be a part of the educational experience here and is an important part of our future.

The letter from the AAMD will be reported in the media, and we would like our community to understand that the AAMD does not have jurisdiction over the College and did not ask its members to stop participating in exhibits with the College.

Randolph College has made great progress in every aspect of college life during the past four years. The College is on a real upswing and seeing growth and other positive results, including the current $6 million Student Center renovation, which has been funded completely by alumnae donors. However, it will take several years for the College to grow to its enrollment goal of 1,100. The sale of artwork is one part of a long-term financial plan that will allow the College to preserve its future and enhance the educational opportunities it offers to students. The end result of the hard decisions we have made will be a better college with a brighter future.

We will continue to keep the community informed.

Signature of Dan Monroe, AAMD's new president, affixed to letter sent to Randolph College's president condemning Maier Museum's past and (possibly) future deaccessions

Back in October 2007, the Association of Art Museum Directors condemned Randolph College's plan to sell four artworks from its Maier Museum, with proceeds to be used for general university purposes. (The Maier is not a member of AAMD.)

In a longer, more strongly worded letter sent last Wednesday to Randolph President John Klein, AAMD's new president, Dan Monroe, reaffirmed the association's "censure of the previous sale of a work [my link, not his], the plan to use the proceeds (or the income therefrom) for operations, and the announced intention [my link, not his] to continue such practices."


Rufino Tamayo, "Trovador," 1945, sold by Randolph College for $7.21 million at Christie's, May 28, 2008

AAMD's investigation leading up to this new censure was detailed in an e-mail sent to members. It states:

In October 2010, members of the AAMD's Board of Trustees met with leadership of Randolph College and the Maier Museum to give them the opportunity to present their position and to offer AAMD's support in finding alternatives to deaccessioning works from the Maier Museum to fund operations at the College.

At that meeting the Trustees heard a presentation by John Klein, President of the College, and Peter Dean, a trustee of the college. They stated that the Maier was not an art museum, but rather a program of the college, and so was not bound by the professional standards of the field.

On Apr. 20 of this year, members of the Board of Trustees [Alex Nyerges, director, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and William Eiland, director, Georgia Museum of Art] visited Randolph College to understand better the nature of the Maier Museum and how it functions on the campus.

The following are excerpts from the June 22 letter sent to Klein (and leaked to me). On behalf of AAMD, Monroe wrote:

We have carefully considered Randolph College's position that the Maier Museum of Art is not an art museum and is therefore not subject to AAMD's prohibition against selling art to support operations. We find this position irreconcilable with the College's public statements in its advertising, promotion, and Form 990 filings, all of which state that Randolph College operates an art museum.

We are sympathetic to the fiscal challenges Randolph College confronts, but once a college or university creates a museum, it must manage that museum according to the standards of the museum field. Failure to do so not only compromises the standing of the Maier Museum of Art, but also that of the art museum community as a whole.

Based on these points, AAMD confirms its censure of the previous sale of a work, the plan to use the proceeds (or the income therefrom) for operations, and the announced intention to continue such practices....

As we have with other institutions facing some of the challenges you have identified, AAMD is very willing to discuss with the leadership of Randolph alternatives to the course of action currently being pursued.

Even more illuminating is the extremely detailed Q&A (also leaked to me) prepared by AAMD to explain the ramifications of its letter. (It's interesting to note that the association has stopped short of asking its members to refuse to collaborate in any way with the Maier, if the deaccessions do occur---an action taken against the National Academy that I regarded as excessive.)

Some Q&A excerpts:

Q: What is the purpose of the censure that AAMD has imposed on Randolph College?
A: Our hope is for a similar outcome to that of the National Academy Museum---that Randolph College will put in place a financial plan to set the College on a solid financial footing without future deaccessioning of works from the Maier Museum to meet expenses. As with the National Academy, we have offered our support in finding alternatives to the course of action currently being pursued by the College. If the College remains unwilling to consider alternatives to the sale of art, then we hope that they will stop promoting the College as home to an art museum, or using the notion of having a museum on campus as a tool for recruiting students and donors.

Q: Does the censure of Randolph College mean that AAMD members cannot loan or borrow works from the Maier Museum?
A: No. AAMD has not sanctioned the Maier Museum at this time.

Q: Why didn't the AAMD impose sanctions on the Maier Museum, in addition to its censure?
A: AAMD hopes that Randolph College will work with the AAMD to change its current plans and AAMD believes the current censure is the best approach at this time to achieving that goal.

Q: What action could Randolph College take that would cause the AAMD to lift its censure?
A: If Randolph College made---and followed---a commitment not to deaccession works from the Maier Museum for operating funds, AAMD would lift its censure.

Among the three works that the Maier Museum, Lynchburg, VA, had planned to auction at Christie's (in addition to the Tamayo), before court challenges and the art-market recession intervened, was its signature George Bellows:


George Bellows, "Men of the Docks," 1912, Maier Museum

Monroe's strong, well-reasoned defense of core professional principles is an auspicious beginning to his year-long tenure as AAMD's president. I encourage you to click the above links to read the full letter and Q&A.

Yikes! It's GROWING! The view from the webcam of the Philly Barnes

The Barnes Foundation, which plans to close its Merion galleries on Sunday, in anticipation of its eventual move to Philadelphia, today announced (in an e-mail, not on its website) that it had raised "more than $200 million," which, in the foundation's words, "fulfills campaign promises to fund both the new home [my link, not theirs] for the Barnes Foundation on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and an initial endowment."

Not exactly.

When it became clear that building costs would escalate from the initial estimate of $100 million to $150 million, the Barnes didn't raise its capital campaign goal accordingly. Instead (as I originally reported in 2009, here), it lowered its goal for endowment from $100 million to $50 million, keeping the total campaign goal at $200 million but fudging its promise to put the place on a sound financial footing.

[CLARIFICATION: I'm now told that the preliminary endowment goal was $50 million. That was increased back in 2006 to $100 million (which, in a previous version of this post, I had mistakenly called the "initial goal"). That higher endowment goal reverted to $50 million, when building estimates rose $50 million to the current $150 million.]

The Barnes also reported today on its "extraordinary growth in its membership from 400 in July 2009 to more than 10,000."  This success may have had more to do with an urgent imperative to visit the old Barnes than with general enthusiasm for the new: The foremost membership benefit touted online was complimentary access to the Merion facility. Andrew Stewart, the Barnes' spokesperson, told me today that he believes the membership increase occurred because "many more people are aware of the Barnes now and are excited about the new building project....As we have reached out to the community with membership mailings, through our website, and on the phones, people have responded enthusiastically."

Critics of the move have repeatedly questioned whether a $50-million endowment would be sufficient to bankroll the Philly Barnes' operations. Now, in an astonishing article that seems (quite literally) to give aspiring thieves a roadmap for hijacking the Barnes move, Philadelphia-based freelance writer Don Steinberg, in the Wall Street Journal, has suggested that transporting the Barnes' precious cargo might be inadvisable because of the risk of loss or damage. Even more astonishingly, the piece is accompanied by a slideshow of "great works [that] have been lifted from museums around the world."

One of the many errors in that piece (commenter Brian Ferguson, flagged one; the still uncorrected "Isabella Steward [sic] Gardner" is another) is the statement in the first paragraph that "the hard part is over---the near-decade of court filings seeking to enable, or prevent, the move of a collection estimated in some quarters to be worth as much as $25 billion."

As CultureGrrl readers know, the legal briefs are, in fact, still flying, with oral arguments on the latest petition by those opposing the move set to be heard on Aug. 1 in Montgomery County Orphans' Court.

In the meantime, the Barnes hopes to open its new Philadelphia digs, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, late next spring. Construction is proceeding apace, as evidenced by the above shot from the Barnes' webcam.

On June 10, Stewart informed me (in an e-mail responding to my queries) that "construction is moving along on time" and "construction costs are on target....The Gallery part of the building [the small rectangle to the left, seemingly engulfed and overwhelmed by the larger structure] is scheduled to be finished by August, so we can run systems through three seasons [before] opening." (Given what happened in winter 2007 at another Williams/Tsien art museum, that seems like a very good idea!)

If you haven't reserved a time slot to visit the Barnes between today and Sunday, sorry, you're out of luck: The last days for public viewing of Dr. Albert Barnes' Barnes are officially sold out.

Most Wanted: Vermeer, "The Concert," 1658-1660
 
It seems like a longshot. But Jason Felch's and Ralph Frammolino's "Chasing Aphrodite" Twitter page now tantalizes us with the following:

Coming tomorrow: a story in the LA Times about how the arrest of #whiteybulger could help crack the biggest art heist in history.

That could only be the 1990 theft of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including three Rembrandts and the above Vermeer.

James "Whitey'' Bulger, the alleged former Boston crime boss, wanted for 16 years, was arrested Wednesday night in Santa Monica.

But I wouldn't book your flight to see the missing Vermeer at the Gardner just yet. Last year, Stephen Kurkjian of the Boston Globe reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly, the federal prosecutor leading the Gardner investigation, said that "he is convinced that James 'Whitey'' Bulger had nothing to do with the [Gardner] crime."

And here's what the Gardner Museum itself tweeted this afternoon:

Lots of twitter re: #whiteybulger and the Gardner! We have no info to tie him to the theft. Until a recovery is made, our work continues.

We can all dream, can't we? Wouldn't it be great to get these back, in pristine condition, just in time for the Jan. 19 opening of the Gardner's Renzo Piano-designed expansion? (There may not be "The Concert," but there will be an "expanded concert series"!)

You'll have to keep your own eyes on the Boston Globe and LA Times websites tomorrow. I'm going to steal a lo-o-o-ng weekend (sans laptop), accompanied by the entire CultureFamily (including the recently inducted CultureDaughter-in-Law and the future CultureSon-in-Law).

My bum knee and I will (I hope) be playing tennis and golf (very gently), with help from my new, very supportive (but not aesthetically pleasing) Cho-Pat knee brace. (Now where's that Advil when I really need some?)

I feel I ought to write a proper appreciation of Thomas N. Armstrong III, the former director of the Whitney Museum, who died on Monday at age 78. It was under his leadership, from 1974 to 1990, when, for better or worse, this museum of American art became much more strongly associated with edgy contemporary work than with the historic icons that were the bedrock of its collection.

This next-new-thing vibe remains to this day, exemplified by the Whitney's plan to move from its Breuer building to the Renzo Piano-designed behemoth in the trendy Meatpacking District. The scruffy surroundings and wide-open interiors of the new Downtown Whitney appear more in sync with art of the future than with the Hoppers and Hartleys of the past.

My difficulty in writing an elegiac obit is that the first thing that comes to mind whenever I free-associate on the name "Tom Armstrong" is his acrimonious relationship with the late contemporary artworld heroine and feisty feminist icon, Marcia Tucker, whose reputation rose after she was bounced from her curatorship at the Whitney to establish the increasingly important, still vibrant New Museum. Armstrong's reputation suffered as a result of the Tucker contretemps and his publicly aired conflicts with the Whitney's board. It's fair to say, I think, that artworld reminiscences have been kinder to Tucker than to Armstrong.

As far as I can see, there's no mention on the Whitney's homepage (or elsewhere on its website) about Armstrong's passing, nor do I see anything on the website of the Warhol Museum, where he later served briefly as director. (Perhaps by the time you read this, tributes will be added to those sites.)

In comments for William Grimes' NY Times obit, the Whitney's current director, Adam Weinberg, focused on the undeniably important works that were added to the Whitney's collection during Tom's long tenure.


Jasper Johns, "Three Flags," 1958, purchased by the Whitney Museum under Tom Armstrong

There's one vivid remembrance that I have of Armstrong, which I previously mentioned here. It now has an ironic twist, due to recent musical-chair developments in the New York museum world:

At a museum directors' panel discussion that I attended some years ago, Armstrong, then at the Whitney, startlingly assailed the Metropolitan Museum's then director, Philippe de Montebello, for the Met's plans to ramp up its involvement in modern and contemporary art with the help of its new Lila Acheson Wallace Wing.

"It's not your territory!" Armstrong growled, objecting to this encroachment on what Armstrong had claimed as his own museum's turf.

In a sense, Tom was right: The Met and contemporary art, under de Montebello, never seemed a comfortable fit. The irony is that the Whitney's building is soon to become, quite literally (if, perhaps, only temporarily), the Met's "territory" for contemporary art: If all goes according to plan, the Met will occupy the Breuer for at least eight years, when the Whitney decamps to its Piano digs in 2015.

Ai Weiwei on Metropolitan Museum's roof garden
Photo from the website of upcoming film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

I've been away from the computer all day, for personal reasons---my own diagnosis this morning of "patellofemoral syndrome" (aka "bum knee"); my friend's need for me to accompany her to an afternoon hospital appointment.

So I'm now just catching up with the cheering news of Ai Weiwei's release by Chinese authorities, after his 81 days in detention.

New York Public Radio (WNYC) had e-mailed me late this morning for comment on this development, but since the station has already published a long post on its website, I assume I'm too late. [Wait a minute! While still writing this, I've learned that they may yet add my remarks.]

[UPDATE: They expanded their post to use some of my other comments in this post, as well as some of the statement below.]

Here's what I sent them:

The entire international artworld and all who value human rights rejoice at Ai Weiwei's long overdue release.

But there's a certain irony in the statement of U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner, at a news conference today, that "it's always a good thing when such an individual,... who's only in prison for exercising his internationally recognized human rights, is released."

It appears, in fact, that Ai's release was conditioned on his renouncing his "internationally recognized human rights": A report in the Wall Street Journal stated today that he has been barred from speaking to the media (or tweeting!) for at least a year.

Freedom of expression is essential to an artist's work. Although his body may have been freed, his mind and creative spirit are still in detention. I suspect that after a period of physical and mental recuperation from his ordeal, this irrepressible, resilient artist may somehow find a way yet again to make himself heard and understood.

We must also hope that Ai's associates, who were also detained, will now be released.

Here's the full Q&A (scroll down) with the State Department's spokesperson, which occurred before our government had received official confirmation of Ai's release:

Q: Would you---if these reports are correct, would this be---would you be happy?

Mark Toner: Look, it would always be---it's always a good thing when such an individual, as we said, who's only in prison for exercising their---his internationally recognized human rights, is released. But there's obviously more individuals who've---who are being held, so we want to see and urge---we want to see a release of all these people.

Q: So his release would be a good thing but you'd like to see more?

Toner: Yes.

Comments posted in English and Chinese on the Twitter page of Alison Klayman, director of the upcoming documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, indicate that Ai, upon his release, responded positively to friends' text messages asking if he had been freed. Klayman herself tweeted at 12:04 p.m., U.S. Eastern time, that she had spoken (by phone) with him: "He is with his mom and happy he is out."

As usual, Tania Branigan of the Guardian is the go-to person for an illuminating on-the-ground report from Beijing. In her long article, Branigan notes:

Although in theory police are able to take further action on a case for up to a year after a suspect is bailed, in practice detainees who are released do not usually face trial unless they are judged to have re-offended.

Here's the brief report by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, explaining the official rationale for Ai's release. There has been widespread speculation in the West that international pressure played a key role in this development. The Guardian's Branigan notes:

The decision to bail Ai comes days before Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visits Europe, where leaders were expected to press the case for the release. It is impossible to know whether the events are connected. Although China has often released dissidents on the eve of major political visits, it has not done so recently.

And Edward Wong of the NY Times, in his detailed report on Ai's release, observes:

Few dissidents who have been detained in recent years have been shown leniency. International pressure so far has not helped Liu Xiaobo, a writer who was given a 11-year prison sentence in 2009 on subversion charges. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October, which he was not allowed to collect.

As Toner of the State Department suggested in his remarks to the press, the international community needs to exert continuing pressure for more far-reaching human rights reforms in China. Today's happy event, we hope, will be just a start.

The way this has played out should cause those who oppose Chinese repression (including museum directors and curators) to rethink the conviction of some that applying public pressure to China can only be counterproductive. As I've suggested previously, restraining one's own freedom of expression about China's curtailment of freedom of expression is simply playing the game by China's rules.

In the Reuters video, below, showing Ai's return to "freedom," we see the usually voluble artist reduced to waving off questioners. "I cannot say anything," he told reporters who address him in both English and Chinese. "I'm on bail."

With that, he took shelter from the journalistic barrage and shut the door.

Yesterday was a banner day for the Walton clan. The family business, Wal-Mart, had a huge win when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a huge class-action suit on behalf of female employees who had claimed discrimination on both pay and promotions.

In less momentous news (unless you're an art enthusiast), Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, scheduled to open on Nov. 11 in Bentonville, AR, got good press in a long New Yorker piece by Rebecca Mead (posted online yesterday, printed on paper in the June 27 issue).

I've already shown you "Stella" the pig. Here's another sculpture on the Crystal Bridges trail, whcih figures in Mead's piece:


Dan Ostermiller, "Shore Lunch," 1999
"We hope children will crawl all over him," Alice told the New Yorker.

Like Carol Vogel, Mead (who was on the same Bentonville, AR, press tour that I attended last month) got a chance to interview the founder. But unless Carol has a more detailed piece still in the works, it appears that Rebecca did a much better job (which a lot higher word-count to work with) in getting an in-depth look at how and why Alice collects and what her goals have been in envisioning Crystal Bridges.


Crystal Bridges' construction site, photographed last month

That said, there are plenty of perplexing holes in Mead's account. A cavity as big as the construction site is this unsupported (and debatable) assertion:

Walton has earned the respect of the museum establishment.

There's no doubt that this self-designated museum leader desires artworld approval. Her loans of art to museums around the country (while her own project is still in process) have garnered gratitude and goodwill from the recipients. But the only comment Mead adduces to support her blanket assertion about "respect" is this equivocal assessment by the Metropolitan Museum's former director, Philippe de Montebello:

I suspect it is going to be a substantial and fine collection of American art.

Although the Walton family business, source of the museum's funds, has just won a major verdict, the jury is still out on the question of how Alice will be judged by the museum establishment.

In addition to de Montebello, perhaps Mead should have touched base with American paintings scholar Carrie Rebora Barratt, currently the Met's associate director for collections and administration, who felt aggrieved by Alice's controversial 2005 purchase of the New York Public Library's "Kindred Spirits" by artist Asher B. Durand. While I suspect that Barratt, in her current position, would be circumspect in discussing Crystal Bridges, her frustration with that transaction was strongly expressed when I interviewed her for the article I did on the "Kindred Spirits" kerfuffle in the Wall Street Journal.

Here's what I wrote:

Among those blindsided was Carrie Rebora Barratt, the Met's curator of American paintings and sculpture, who, after lending her expertise to the library's collection-assessment project, had at least expected "someone at the library to say, 'We're doing this. Are you interested in these pictures?'" She had clearly understood, while advising the library, that it was thinking of selling its "most valuable works. I feel terrible. I wish there was something I could have done."

Or maybe Mead should have contacted the likes of Jan Muhlert, director of Penn State University's Palmer Museum and (when I spoke to her) a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors' Committee on College and University Museums.

In another WSJ article on the "Walton Effect," in which Muhlert and I discussed Walton's proposed purchase of a half-share of Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection for $30 million, I wrote:

Ms. Muhlert expressed disapproval that "any of our colleagues would take advantage" of a museum's selling for purposes other than "replenishing the collection." [Fisk wants to apply proceeds to fund operations and defray debt.]

In Mead's article, Walton argues "briskly" that Crystal Bridges had no effect in spurring sales by "institutions [that] were going to sell because they needed the money. They are there to fulfill a mission, and that is not to keep 'Kindred Spirits' two stories up, in a narrow hallway."

Actually, "Kindred Spirits" was one of many artworks displayed not in a vestibule but in the library's spacious Salomon Room, which, according to the library's own website, "was originally designed by architects Carrere & Hastings as a 19th-century picture gallery." That gallery contained other major works, in addition to "Kindred Spirits," from which Walton bought a Copley and a Stuart (and possibly other paintings) at a Sotheby's public auction occurring just months after the Durand disposal. (In 2009, the Salomon Room was converted into a wireless Internet reading room.)


Gilbert Stuart, "George Washington (Constable-Hamilton Portrait)," 1797
Sold by the NY Public Library to the collection of Crystal Bridges (Sotheby's, Nov. 30, 2005) for $8.14 million, then a record for an American portrait at auction

There was much else that the New Yorker's fabled fact-checkers missed in Mead's manuscript. For example, here's what Don Bacigalupi, now Crystal Bridges' director, himself had said in 2009 about what Mead now calls "the successful construction," under his directorial oversight, of the Toledo Museum's 2006 SANAA-designed Glass Pavilion:

All of our pro forma plans for how that buildng would operate, both programatically and and financially---how expensive it would be to run---were wrong. And so we had to learn to actually live in the building. I think buildings develop a life of their own as they emerge as part of your program. I think this year [three years after opening] is the first year we got it right....It takes some time. All the best planning that we put into it was not the reality.

What's most surprising is that Mead and her magazine's fact-checkers let Walton get away with denying that a 2005 Arkansas law "was designed to benefit solely her museum." It exempted "a qualified museum" from paying the state's 6% sales tax, allowing Crystal Bridges to acquire its expensive art trove without paying that tax.

Here's the relevant passage from the law (see #28 on the last page):

Sales tax exemption for purchases by a "Qualified Museum" for construction, repair, expansion, or operation. A "Qualified Museum" must have a collection with a value greater than $100,000,000 in an Arkansas facility prior to January 1, 2013. The aggregate costs of construction and acquisition must exceed $30 million. ---Act 1865 of 2005

If either Mead or Walton is aware of any other Arkansas museum that willl own a collection valued at more than $100 million before Jan. 1, 2013, we'd sure like to know about it.

The next landmark in the lead-up to the opening of Crystal Bridges will occur on July 4th weekend, when the museum will erect tents in Downtown Bentonville to sign up inaugural members. July 4 was also to have been the day for a "major announcement" by the museum about non-Walton donors who had pledged to significantly supplement the founder's outlay.

But Sandy Edwards, Crystal Bridges' deputy director for museum relations, now tells me:

We have taken another direction and will only be launching the membership campaign that evening at 5 p.m. on the Square. When it got down to operationalizing the event (a fair on the Square with a lot of excitement and little chance of quieting the public to hear important announcements), we simply decided it was more effective to focus on the single message of membership in that environment. We are now in the process of identifying dates between now and the opening for the other announcements.

Ozarks Unbound reports:

Membership incentives for the museum's "Original Members" (which encompasses the first 3,000 commitments regardless of donor level) include an invitation to a member preview event just prior to the opening and a special membership card featuring Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits" [emphasis added]. Additionally, members will enjoy special level-specific experience benefits, such as exhibition previews, complimentary publications, conversations with curators and directors, as well as private tours.

No word yet on what these different levels of membership will cost, and whether the benefits will include free admission. Edwards merely told me, "We have not announced the admission fee."

That seems to suggest that there will, in fact, be one.

Pollock, "Lucifer," 1947, Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Collection

Win one, lose one.

One can only speculate that when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art signed its deal to borrow (for at least 100 years) the 1,100-work Donald and Doris Fisher Collection, it may also have unintentionally helped Stanford University sign its deal to acquire highly important works (including the great Pollock, above) from the Harry W. ("Hunk") and Mary Margaret ("Moo") Anderson Collection. Had their Bay Area collection gone to SFMOMA, the Andersons' smaller but blue-chip benefaction might have been overshadowed by the larger Fisher trove.

In comments made to Jori Finkel of the LA Times, Hunk suggested that the Fisher/SFMOMA pact was indeed a significant factor in his decision to favor the university over the museum. He told Finkel:

We've already given 30 works to SFMOMA and now, in addition, SFMOMA has received for all practical purposes the [Don and Doris] Fisher collection, so their cup runneth over.

Major California collectors increasingly seem to feel the need to immortalize their agglomerations in museums-of-one's-own. Eli Broad's self-funded The Broad, dedicated to his 2,000-object contemporary collection, is scheduled to open in downtown LA the winter after next. The Fishers had unsuccessfully sought to establish a museum dedicated to their collection on the national park land of San Francisco's Presidio. The late Donald Fisher had been secretary/treasurer of the SFMOMA's board of trustees and co-chair of its collector's committee.

The Andersons' collection, which began taking shape almost 50 years ago, is legendary. In 2000, SFMOMA mounted a show of 330 works from that trove (far larger than the group of 121 works by 86 artists now going to Stanford), billed as "the largest exhibition in the history of SFMOMA---occupying three floors of the museum." That show was surely intended as a donation inducement.

Here's what Kenneth Baker, the San Francisco Chronicle's art critic, wrote at that time:

Probably no private collection illustrates the course of American art since World War II better than that of Peninsula residents Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson.

In his article last week reporting on the Anderson gift, Baker cited the Andersons' previous benefactions to SFMOMA, which, in 1992, "provid[ed] the core of its Pop art collection." In 2001-2002, they gave the museum seven Frank Stella paintings, dating from 1959 to 1988. Further details abouit the couple's collecting activities are provided on the Anderson Collection website.

Still unannounced are the Andersons' plans for the disposition of the many other works that remain in their collection. Lisa Lapin, Stanford's assistant vice president for university communications, told me:

Stanford is receiving what the Andersons consider to be the "core" of their collection with respect to the New York School. However, their entire collection is considerably larger---close to 800 works, including works on paper and outdoor sculpture, none of which are coming to Stanford.

What's surprising about the Stanford/Anderson deal is that the donors don't seem to be kicking in money for construction, operations or endowment of the eponymous gallery that Stanford wlll build in their honor, to open in late 2014. According to Lapin, "university funds from various sources, including philanthropy, are expected to be used for the construction and operations of the Anderson Gallery."


Left to right: Harry Anderson, Mary Patricia Anderson Pence (daughter) and Mary Margaret Anderson (wife).
Behind them: Kline, "Figure 8," 1952 (left) and Rothko, "Pink and White over Red," 1957 (both part of the gift going to Stanford).
Photo: Linda Cicero, Stanford University

Decisions about the architect, the size of the new building and the cost of construction "are still in the works," according to a spokesperson.

Wanna see this celebrated collection before a chunk of it leaves for Stanford? Monthly public tours of the Andersons' private facility will resume on Sept. 17.

[CORRECTION: The LA Times' owner, the Chicago-based Tribune Co., not the newspaper itself, declared bankruptcy and the executives whose behavior was described by Carr came to the paper from Tribune Co.]

André Harvey, "Stella," 2009, installed on outdoor path on the grounds of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Interviewing Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton about her in-construction Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was, journalistically speaking, a good get. Alice didn't appear, let alone make herself available for interviews, during the press tour of the facility that I attended last month (reported here, here, here and here).

But Carol Vogel of the NY Times blew her chance to come up with something new and interesting. She signaled her intention to write a puff piece in the very first sentence:

The era of the world-class museum built by a single philanthropist in the tradition of Isabella Stewart Gardner, John Pierpont Morgan Jr. and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney may seem to have passed, but Alice L. Walton is bringing it back.

Unless Vogel managed to get a good look at the full scope of the collection (trust me, I asked for that when I was there!), she has no way of knowing whether Walton has managed to achieve her improbable goal of swiftly assembling a world-class collection in a mere five to six years. (The Metropolitan Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Art Institute of Chicago, to name three of the great American art collections, had more than a century's head start.)

As Vogel noted (and as I was also told by the museum's curators), it wasn't until 2005 that Alice began collecting with the museum in mind. Her holdings before that were, for the most part, of less importance, as I was informed during my visit.

That recent conversion to serious collecting is part of what makes the first paragraph of Vogel's article so eyebrow-raising: The other great museum founders whom she placed in the same league with Walton had put the horse before the cart: They were already voracious acquirers of great things before they envisioned creating a facility to institutionalize their collecting achievements and share them with the public.

Crystal Bridges will rise or fall on its collection. No amount of grandiose architecture and daring feats of engineering (for both the museum facility and the landscape) can trump the as-yet-unknown depth, breadth and quality of the collection.

The engineering is undeniably eye-popping: Those "two ponds" that Vogel refers to (which will lap right up against the buildings) will be man-made, created by a complex system of dams and weirs that will reshape Crystal Spring. When unleashed, after completion of construction, the water from the spring will flow through the site, going directly under the suspension-bridge pavilion (which will sometimes move slightly) for 20th-century art. (You can get some sense of the engineering details in this CultureGrrl Video of my hardhat tour with David Burghart, the facilities manager for the project.)


Don Bacigalupi, director, Crystal Bridges Museum, speaking in the 20th-century suspension-bridge gallery

The "Bentonville Effect" (assuming that architect Moshe Safdie can have the same impact in Bentonville as Frank Gehry did in Bilbao) may bring visitors to Arkansas once, to be awed by this incongruous cultural oasis, snugly nestled in a forest. But it is the quality of the art, exhibitions and programs that will keep them coming back (or not).

The greatest achievement of Crystal Bridges would be to serve as catalyst for a vibrant cultural scene in its region. Its recently hired curators have been lured there from major art centers. So I asked one of them where he would be able to find cultural sustenance beyond the walls of his museum. He mentioned (in all seriousness) the possibility of getting on airplanes.

Unless I'm missing something, Vogel's piece, online today, is not in the hardcopy of today's paper. (It's missing the customary note at the bottom of such pieces, which says when they will appear.) What IS, ironically, in today's paper is a piece by Patricia Cohen, announcing the purchase by the New York Public Library of the papers of the late Timothy Leary, the LSD guru.

As you may remember, the NYPL infamously sold to Walton (for a reported $35 million) its iconic Asher B. Durand masterpiece, "Kindred Spirits," to raise funds for purchases of historic books and manuscripts. Could it be that Durand funded Leary?

If Walton is wondering how her new museum will be received by the general public when it opens on Nov. 11, she may have gotten an unpleasant shock from the readers' comments already pouring in on Vogel's piece. While some expressed gratitude for what Walton has done, more were in the same vein as this first posting, by Mark of Philadelphia:

If only they [Wal-Mart] thought of American jobs the same way they seem to revere American art, oh what a perfect world this would be.

Cover of new book, depicting the purported Michelangelo of Buffalo

By now, we've had enough of the Michelangelo of Fifth Avenue, which was taken off view at the Metropolitan Museum and dispatched to its conservation department (as Keith Christiansen, the museum's chairman of European paintings, recently told me, when I asked why it wasn't on view).

But we now have a new aspirant---the Michelangelo of Buffalo. (It rhymes!)

I'm late in commenting on last month's NY Times piece, The Pietà Behind the Couch, by Kevin Flynn and Randy Kennedy. They, in turn, were late catching up with Colin Dabkowski's Oct. 14 story in the Buffalo News about the "discovery" of the supposed Michelangelo painting in Tonawanda (about 12 miles north of Buffalo), and Melissa Klein's Oct. 11 NY Post story about this Pietà-on-panel.

What I don't understand is why Flynn and Kennedy lavished 2,600 words on an audacious attribution that seems to have scant support among the experts (aside from William Wallace, who commented that "there is at least enough evidence to merit a more extensive examination," according to Flynn/Kennedy). The Times reporters never said a word in their story about the fact that Martin Kober's family heirloom, long couched behind the couch, bears an uncanny resemblance to this Michelangelo drawing from the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston:


Michelangelo, "Pietà," about 1538-44, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The online version (linked above) of the Times article makes this resemblance clear by displaying images of the two similar works side-by-side, with a single caption. But in the print version, one image was on the front page of the Sunday "Arts & Leisure" section; the other on the jump page. The text of the story doesn't say a word about why the image of the drawing is there, leaving readers to make their own comparisons and draw their own conclusions.

It would have made sense to quote the Gardner Museum's online entry (excerpted from a book by James Saslow) about its "Pietà," which suggests the possible origin of Kober's painting:

The drawing enjoyed a widespread and influential afterlife. It was copied by Michelangelo's assistants and adapted by artists such as Lavinia Fontana.

Acknowledging that the Kober painting could well have been a manifestation of this "widespread...afterlife" might have turned the Times' long story into a non-story.

A more interesting mystery, which Christiansen solved for me, is why the Met recently bought an overlooked painting by Corrado Giaquinto. It was snapped up by the Met (presumably at a bargain price) after it failed to sell at Sotheby's, New York, on Jan. 27 (at the same old masters auction where the Met more famously bought Perino del Vaga's The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist for $2 million).

Everyone else had regarded the Giaquinto as a wreck. Here it is (as pictured in Sotheby's online catalogue), greatly in need of cleaning:


Giaquinto, "Medea Rejuvenating Aeson," estimated at $100,000-150,000, unsold at Sotheby's Jan. 27 auction

And here's a blown-up detail (from the upper right) that shows the compromised condition of the paint surface:



"It looked like a piece of brown wrapping paper," Keith told me during a recent chat. Although it was correctly catalogued as a tapestry design for the Spanish royal court in Madrid, no bidder would touch it. But Michael Gallagher, the Met's chief paintings conservator, told the curator that he thought this invalid could be nursed back to health. (Gallagher has recently been in the news for his ministrations to two works by Velázquez---Philip IV and Portrait of a Man---as well as The Torment of St. Anthony, a painting now owned by the Kimbell Museum, which Christiansen attributed to the very young Michelangelo.)

When I discussed the Giaquinto with Christiansen last month, the restoration was in progress, and a scholarly article about the painting and its treatment was envisioned.

While the Giaquinto acquisition was unremarked (as far as I can tell) by the local press, French blogger Didier Rykner, in his Art Tribune, reported on this and several other acquisitions that occurred during what seems to have been an old masters shopping spree by the Met.

The painting is now listed in the Met's online collections catalogue. Its colors appear to be more vibrant than in the auction catalogue, but the contrasts between light and dark passages seem jarring (although it's hard to judge from a photograph):



A conservation exhibition, I presume, may be in the offing. Since this painting was envisioned as a design for a tapestry (which was "probably never produced," according to the Met), might the museum's director and former tapestry curator, Thomas Campbell, provide some scholarly input?

First things first.

I need to warmly thank those of you who rose to the Send CultureGrrl to Orlando challenge, which, I'm delighted to report, exceeded my goal of paying for my two nights at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference hotel. (Let's forget about the cost of airport taxis in Orlando or parking at Newark airport.) I surpassed my fundraising target (by $25) when CultureGrrl Donor 170 from New York cheerfully clicked my "Donate" button, less than two hours before I boarded my Newark flight.

I had another surge of gratitude for my devoted art-lings when the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter (and one of my co-panelists at the conference), James Grimaldi, wrote this to me after I had sent him a link to this pre-conference post:

Why didn't I think of fundraising for my trip?! I'm paying my own way too.

Really? The WaPo made Grimaldi pay his own way to represent his paper admirably on two panels (one, with me, about culture; the other about guns)? He brought additional luster to the paper by being honored at the conference (along with three co-authors) with the Freedom of Information Medal for WaPo's investigation into The Hidden Life of Guns.


James Grimaldi, during our panel discussion

It was meeting people like Grimaldi (and hearing them divulge trade secrets and strategies during the various panel discussions) that made the conference so valuable to me. Investigative reporters, who dig for the stories behind the public pronouncements, sometimes at great personal risk, are the elite of the journalistic profession. It was truly inspiring (and humbling) to inhale that atmosphere.

I didn't meet the NY Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, although there was a moment when, both alone, we closely passed each other in the hall. I considered accosting him, but he adopted the celebrity stance---head down, no eye contact. I just gawked.

I did attend his panel, where I heard him defend the honor and value of the Times in the post-WikiLeaks era.


Bill Keller, speaking at the IRE Conference

From the looks of its post-meeting press release, it doesn't appear that the Association of Art Museum Directors paid much attention to the two hot-button issues that I had suggested should be fodder for discussion at the group's annual conclave last week.

I still believe that forceful guidelines are urgently needed to rein in self-sponsored shows of objects drawn entirely from a collection of an individual or a corporation. And the association needs to put a lid on rent-a-shows, whereby object-rich museums extract big bucks from object-poor museums, letting financial exigency trump collegiality.

AAMD did report that a future task force may "address...relationships with foreign countries and the role of international exchange." We can only hope that the rental trend may receive critical scrutiny from that task force, countering the favorable verdict of the artworld luminaries who spoke at the panel discussion----euphemistically titled, International Collaborations in the Arts---that I recently attended at New York's Asia Society,

Speaking of exploiting collections as cash cows, the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, have just entered into a three-year, six-exhibition "partnership" (really a one-way rental deal, in the manner of the Louvre-High Museum "collaboration"), which will begin next June with more than 100 works from MoMA's collection shipped Down Under, in a show entitled, "Picasso to Warhol: 12 Modern Masters."

Some $6 million in government support will go towards the MoMA/AGWA project, according to a statement issued by John Day, Western Australia's Minister for Planning, Culture and the Arts. The director of the Perth museum, Stefano Carboni, a former curator and administrator in the Department of Islamic Art at New York's Metropolitan Museum, hailed "the opportunity to bring such high-calibre exhibitions to Perth."

At least Australia is being forthright about the finances of this arrangement, unlike the Art Gallery of Ontario, which refused to disclose to me whether its current Abstract Expressionist New York was designed to raise millions for MoMA, its first venue, which had assembled the show from its own collection. With its impending purchase (reportedly for $31.2 million) of the current home of the American Folk Art Museum, MoMA could probably use a few extra millions in reserve.

According to MoMA's 2010 financial statement, revenues from circulating exhibition fees totaled $2.9 million in that fiscal year, up sharply from $749,000 the previous year. MoMA's 2010 operating surplus was $1.88 million, up sharply from $320,000 the previous year.

The one hot-button issue that AAMD did mention in its wrap-up from Raleigh is the continued detention of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. While reaffirming its previously stated support for the petition calling for Ai's release, AAMD did not join those (like me) who believe that U.S. museums hosting major loan shows from China should in some way refer to the artist's plight.

Instead, AAMD stated this:

We believe it is vitally important to continue cultural exchanges, dialogue, and collaboration with China.

A more principled gesture was made on Friday by "a small group of artists [who] held a 'sing-in' at the Milwaukee Art Museum...in solidarity with...Ai Weiwei," as reported by Mary Louise Schumacher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Schumacher wrote:

The protesters were supportive of the exhibit, "The Emperor's Private Paradise," an unprecedented show of 18th-century objects from the Forbidden City. But they called upon MAM to take a stronger stand against the suppression of artists in China.

Its press release, AAMD provided a list of eight newly inducted members. Jeffrey Deitch LA MOCA's dealer-turned director, was notably missing from that list. In answer to my query, an AAMD spokesperson said that Deitch "has not applied for membership."

Tom Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum, didn't make it to North Carolina for the annual meeting of his colleagues. He did, however, make it to Italy, appearing at the VIP previews of the Venice Biennale, which began just prior to AAMD's meeting.

Max Anderson, whose Indianapolis Museum organized the Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla show at the Biennale's U.S. Pavilion, managed to jet from Venice to Raleigh in time to partake in AAMD's deliberations.

Judith Martin aka Miss Manners

I'm back, art-lings, and invigorated by the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference. I'll fill you in on this later.

But in the meantime, here's a ball that I dropped while in Orlando---another bit of anecdotal evidence suggesting that the cashiers at the Metropolitan Museum's ticket counter may not always be as "extremely well-trained" and "extremely nice" as Harold Holzer, the museum's senior vice president for external affairs (who told me he has supervisory responsibility over them) insists that they are.

CultureGrrl reader LaRue Allen, executive director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, responds to More on the Met's Admission Fee Hike: Lessons in Pricing and Etiquette and to The Shaky Finances Behind the Met's Admission Fee Increase (wherein I had quoted Holzer on this):
 

I'm a big fan of the Met and a member, so this admission increase won't have a direct impact for me. [Members get in free, after paying annual dues.]

But when my elderly parents visited the museum and paid half the suggested amount---what they could manage and felt was appropriate for seniors---the gatekeeper was visibly disapproving. ["Recommended" admission price for seniors currently is $15; regular adult admission, until July 1, is $20.]

Not so well-trained, in my opinion.

Where's Miss Manners when we really need her?

Harold Holzer, Metropolitan Museum's senior vice president for external affairs

What exactly is the "economic necessity" that the Metropolitan Museum says is behind its recently announced admission-fee increase?

Harold Holzer, the Met's senior vice president for external affairs, told me today that, unlike fiscal 2010, when the Met had an operating surplus of $3.7 million, the museum expects to run a deficit of about $2 million in fiscal 2011, ending June 30.

Fiscal 2012 is expected to be even more challenging: Operating overhead will increase with the opening of the new galleries for art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia in November; and American art in January.

What's more, the impact of the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009 will strongly reverberate next year, because the Met determines how much money it can withdraw from its endowment by taking a percentage of the average value of its endowment over the previous five-year period. This cushions the blow when a big downturn hits, but spreads the pain into subsequent years.

"For the first time since 2008, when the market took its big downturn," Holzer told me, "we are now finding, for the next year or two, that income [applied to operations] from the endowment [because of the recessionary impact] is not going to rise as it does every other year. That's a major change." Government support, Holzer also noted, has "fallen precipitously."

Similar problems are likely to be experienced by the many museums around the country that use a five-year (or four-year) averaging rule to determine how much money they can withdraw in a given year from the endowment to fund operations.

Responding to those who have characterized the Met's ticket sellers as unwelcoming to those who don't cough up the entire suggested admission fee (rising to $25 on July 1), Harold assured me these gatekeepers are actually "extremely well-trained, extremely nice and extremely efficient."

Take that, Randy and Emma!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On Friday, I promised to expand upon this post about the entirely predictable kerfuffle over the Metropolitan Museum's announced $5 increase in its suggested admission fee ($25, effective July 1).

I never heard what soundbite New York Public Radio did (or didn't) use from my 10-minute Friday conversation on this topic with WNYC's reporter. But the main point (aside from the crucial fact that the increase is NO increase for anyone who doesn't choose to pay it) is that the Met has, thus far, resisted the trend towards exacting additional fees for major special exhibitions---a mandatory charge imposed by many other institutions.

The required outlay for special exhibitions can, for many visitors, seem cost-prohibitive, like the hefty $25 pricetag for the Art Gallery of Ontario's current Abstract Expressionist New York (scroll down), an easily assembled greatest-hits show (supplemented by some less iconic works) from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The Met is, however, exacting a whopping $50 fee from those well-heeled fashionistas who want to attend its Alexander McQueen show on Mondays, when the museum is closed to the public. With its elitist vibe, that rich-people-only barrier to attending a popular show irritates me more than the Met's optional $5 general admissions increase.

Whatever the "economic necessity" (as the Met called it), increasing fees at a time when many people are struggling with reduced income is not a brilliant public-relations move. The expected backlash has, in fact, occurred, with Emma Allen on ArtInfo channeling the NY Times' designated tightwad, Randy Kennedy, by offering $9 to "the craggy-faced...ladies at the ticket counter, only to find that old Miss Havisham is shooting laser beams of disapproval at me from her cloudy, Tiresian eyes."

The obvious antidote for such confrontations is for museumgoers to undergo assertiveness training. (Who really cares what the ticket sellers think? Rembrandt awaits!) Also, these scattered reports of discourtesy at the ticket counter indicate that the Met needs to give its gatekeepers a crash course in etiquette. There's no excuse for making museum visitors feel unwelcome or inferior, no matter what the size of their outlays.

One Met fee increase that other reporters haven't picked up on (but which affects me directly, because I arrive by car) is the Met's recent discontinuance of parking discounts in its garage that were previously available to all its visitors. (The general public also uses the parking facility.)

The parking discount is now offered only to museum members (scroll down). For a two-hour stay (actually, for any stay between 61 and 120 minutes), that means non-members pay $24, instead of $19. (I mentioned my sticker-shock to the press office, which now permits me to get my ticket validated for the discounted rate when I visit for press previews. As an arts journalist, I am also granted free museum admission, without any dirty looks.)

It takes a business writer to come up with the most intelligent take on the question of admission pricing. In his NY Times column analyzing the Met's last admissions hike (up $5 to $20 in 2006), David Leonhardt wrote:

The point of all these versions of variable pricing is the same. The people selling the product want to attract as large a crowd as they can while still getting the maximum amount of money from each customer....The full price---the one that would scare away bargain hunters if it were the only option---is reserved for customers able to pay....

This plan...seems about as wise as is likely to happen.

Former Timeswoman Julle Iovine, writing in the blog of the Architect's Newspaper (where she is executive editor), got hold of culture editor Jonathan Landman's internal memo announcing the departure, after seven years, of Nicolai Ouroussoff, the NY Times' architecture critic.

According to Landman's memo, Ouroussoff plans "to write a book about the architectural and cultural history of the last 100 years."

Ouroussoff will be remembered by CultureGrrl readers for many memorable missteps (scroll down), but most of all for his unhinged recommendation in 2008 that New York's Museum of Arts & Design, newly reclad and refurbished by architect Brad Cloepfil, be knocked down at once. (Last I looked, MAD, deservedly, was still standing.)

But is there a successor? Where's the Times' venerable architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, when they really need her? (Writing perspicaciously for the Wall Street Journal, as it happens.)

In its revised Professional Practices in Art Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors did a laudable job in directly confronting many of the thorny issues that have roiled the field in the 10 years since the last iteration of this bible for best practices in museums. (More on these issues later.)

But there are a two hot-button topics that I feel urgently require closer examination and more stringent, detailed guidelines than are provided in the new 32-page document or in recent AAMD position papers. We need to hear more from AAMD on the proliferation of exhibitions bankrolled by self-interested sponsors, and on "rent-a-show"---the growing tendency for lending museums to extract large fees from borrowing institutions.

While the agenda for the annual meeting (which kicked off in earnest this morning) seems more focused on nuts-and-bolts than controversy, I hope that some fearless leader may introduce discussion on what I see as the growing erosion of standards regarding sponsorship. This issue have always been with us, but it seems more prevalent now, with financial support for museum operations and activities increasingly hard to come by.

In my view, AAMD should try to halt the practice of mounting shows that are largely or entirely sponsored by an individual or corporation with a direct personal or business stake in what's being shown. Unlike some commentators, I am not unequivocally opposed to single-collector shows or displays drawn from the output of one fashion house or jewelry designer (although I think these compendiums must be done sparingly, with very strong justification and full curatorial control).

To me, the great Smithsonian exhibition scandal is not the groundbreaking "Hide/Seek" show that aroused such controversy; it is the Van Cleef & Arpels show now at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York (extended to July 4):



I don't have to describe what's wrong with that show. Karen Rosenberg, in the NY Times, already has. Even in a more defensible case---the Metropolitan Museum's darkly enchanting Alexander McQueen extravaganza---the underwriter should have been someone other than the fashion house bearing the late designer's name. Failing that, the funding should have come from the museum's own exhibition budget.

If the sponsor's name is in the title of the show, the conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest is too close for comfort. There's also a slippery-slope problem: Financially pressed museums may fall into a pattern of doing shows attached to easily obtained, self-interested sponsorship (not to mention easily gleaned objects and supporting materials), rather than tackling shows that might be more difficult to organize and fund, but more worthy of the museum's time and attention.

A corollary to this: AAMD should frown upon the bankrolling of a one-artist show by the dealer representing that artist.

AAMD did address the issue of self-interested sponsorship in two 2007 statements, posted on its website: Managing the Relationship Between Art Museums and Corporate Sponsors, May 2007, gingerly suggests areas of concern in a series of questions; it should, instead, forthrightly enunciate clear guidelines. AAMD's statement on single-collector exhibitions---Art Museums, Private Collectors and the Public Benefit, January 2007---is likewise phrased as a seres of questions, not a list of ethical standards. (CultureGrrl's suggested standards are here.)

The second neglected hot-button issue that should be addressed is the pernicious phenomenon of "rent-a-show," which got whitewashed as "collaboration" at a recent panel discussion by museum luminaries---International Collaborations in the Arts, held in New York, May 18, at Asia Society. I regard these arrangements less as "collaborations" than as financially-driven exploitations of object-poor museums by object-rich museums.

The driving force in organizing this high-powered panel was Michael Shapiro, director of the rent-paying High Museum in Atlanta. Henri Loyrette, director of Rent-a-Louvre, which has "loaned" big shows for big bucks to the High and other museums, was also a speaker:


Left to right: Gabriele Finaldi, deputy director, Prado Museum; John Leighton, director-general, National Galleries of Scotland; Michael Shapiro, director, High Museum, Atlanta; Jeffrey Brown, correspondent and producer, PBS NewsHour (moderator); Elizabeth Glassman, president and CEO, Terra Foundation for American Art; Mark Roglán, director, Meadows Museum, Dallas; Henri Loyrette, director, Musée du Louvre

It's too bad that former Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello, who has publicly asserted that "loans must remain free" (particularly "between developed countries"), was seated in the audience instead of onstage.

To its credit, AAMD at least mentions this issue, in passing, in its new "Professional Practices":

Museums rely on one another for loans to exhibitions, and a spirit of cooperation and collegiality should inform decisions relative to such loans and the setting of charges and fees [emphasis added].

The growing tendency to exploit collections as cash cows, at the expense of sister institutions, can only be arrested by a more forceful AAMD stance. "Should" (in the above quotation) must be changed to "must."

A current show that I suspect may be a fundraiser for its lending institution is the Museum of Modern Art's Abstract Expressionist New York, now on view (to Sept. 4) at the Art Gallery of Ontario. At $25 a pop, admission fees for this visually impressive but insufficiently interpreted array seem calculated to enhance MoMA's bottom line, while temporarily depriving the home audience of an entire chapter of the contemporary-art narrative.

For all I know (although I doubt it), the beneficiary of the financial windfall from this big-ticket show may be the AGO. Spokespersons for both the Toronto museum and for MoMA declined to tell me whether AbEx NY is indeed structured as a megabucks fundraiser for the lending institution.

And what about the proceeds from the $60 AbEx Backpack? Has "Jack the Dripper" become "Jack the Shlepper"?

The Metropolitan Museum has just won the NYC art-museum admissions-fee race (at least temporarily).

Starting July 1, the recommended adult admission fee at the Met rises from $20 to $25, due to "economic necessity," as the press release helpfully explains. The "honors" for highest NYC art-museum admission price traditionally belongs to the Museum of Modern Art. But MoMA's tariff, at this writing, remains at $20.

There's a big difference between MoMA and the Met, however: The Met's fee is voluntary: You can pay whatever you want and still have full access to its riches. If you encounter the cashier's "aggressive disregard" for proffering 50ȼ (as the NY Times' Randy Kennedy experienced five years ago), just grin, plunk down two quarters, and walk in. (But if $25 is no hardship, just grin and peel off two tens and a five.)

I may update this post with further observations on this non-scandal, after New York Public Radio (WNYC) airs my commentary later today, and again on tomorrow's Morning Edition (if all goes according to plan). It will be a brief news item and there may not be any linkable story on the station's website. But you can listen live here. (Click "Listen Now" in the righthand column.)

[UPDATED here and here.]

Speaking of $25 for "economic necessity," my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Repeat Donor 169 from Boston, who brings me within $25 of my goal in my Send CultureGrrl to Orlando Challenge (scroll to the fourth panel in the 12-1 p.m. slot---"Digging Culture," also starring Felch, Frammolino and Grimaldi).

If you also want to spring for my dinner check during my Florida sojourn at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, I wouldn't object. Just click my "Donate" button and pay what you can. (Like the Met's $25 fee, It's strictly voluntary!)

Michael Taylor, new director of the Hood Museum, Dartmouth

Michael Taylor is a lean, mean exhibition machine. (Well, at least the last part is true.)

During his time as curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum, he's been responsible for a big chunk of that institution's best received, most illuminating shows, which have always been more than mere crowd-pleasers, thanks to the probing scholarship that sheds new light on material and artists whom we thought we already knew. Among his rapid-fire recent triumphs: Philadelphia's acclaimed Gorky Retrospective, Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, and (as co-curator) the majesterial Cézanne and Beyond.

So it can't be good news for Philadelphia that on Aug. 15, Taylor will step up and out, becoming director of the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, where he succeeds Brian Kennedy, now director of the Toledo Museum.

Among his other accomplishments, Michael is the reigning curatorial rock star of CultureGrrl Videos: His discussion of Gorky's "The Artist and His Mother" ranks third among my audience's all-time video favorites, beaten only by Jeff Koons' studio assistant and, in the Number One spot, Alexander McQueen, whose viewership got a boost from my Huffington Post audience. (As an aside---after McQueen, I decided to take a break from posting with Huffington, after waiting in vain for a response to my plea for compensation, which was prompted by the Huff's $315-million payday from AOL. I'm not exactly striking; I'm sulking.)

Enough of me. Let's return to Michael, whose swansong in Philly is the fascinating, popular Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle (to July 10), drawn almost exclusively from the museum's own collection. I was particularly taken by Michael's revelation that some of Chagall's idiosyncratic imagery, which strikes viewers as strange and fanciful, is actually directly related to the nuances of the Yiddish language.

Although not himself Jewish, Taylor has clearly absorbed a lot about the language, holidays and culture. He also revealed to me, when I asked about his roots, that one of his grandmothers (maiden name, Rose Goldberg) spoke Yiddish. So maybe it's in his blood!

One of the many "who knew?" insights in the show is that the upside-down head in Chagall's well-known painting of a tipsy poet, "Half-Past Three," is a visual translation of the Yiddish term, "fardreiter kop," which translates literally as "turned head." To me, its commonly understood meaning is, "mixed up, befuddled," but Michael's label intensifies that definition to "a state of giddiness or disorientation, bordering on madness":


Chagall, "Half-Past Three (The Poet)," 1911, Philadelphia Museum

I've never been to the Hood, and I'm not sure when or whether I'll get to attend one of Taylor's exhibition tours when he moves up north. So while we still can, lets give Michael what could be his final star turn in a CultureGrrl Video---a clip that I've been meaning to post ever since I attended the Chagall press preview last February.

In my video, Taylor names many of the well-known Paris emigré artists who French-ified their very Jewish-sounding names. (Who knew that "Pascin" was an anagram for "Pincas"?) He describes the strong influence of Léon Bakst (aka Lev Rosenberg) on Chagall's work. (In the background, you'll hear the strains of music from the Ballets Russes, for which Bakst worked as a designer.)

You'll also hear Taylor mentioning La Ruche---the artists' studio complex where Chagall lived and worked. The angled walls in a central section of the exhibition attempt to evoke the distinctive interior of that cylindrical hive of creativity.

At the end, Taylor discusses his exhibition's "act of retrieval" for Chagall's best friend, Moïse Kogan---an artist virtually unknown today, for a chilling reason that Taylor uncovered during his research.

Here's Kogan's demure yet sensual terracotta, which Michael discusses in the video:

Dan Monroe, executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum and incoming AAMD president

This is very good news.

At its annual meeting next week (June 5-8) in Raleigh, NC, Dan Monroe, executive director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, is to be named president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, of which he is currently vice president. He has a proven track record as a leader and thinker on hot-button problems facing the museum profession.

Monroe gets a CultureGrrl thumbs-up for his openness and his laudable, proactive role in tackling such thorny issues as: antiquities acquisitions, deaccessions by university museums, resolution of the contretemps over the National Academy's stealth deaccessions and AAMD's reaffirmation last year, engineered by a task force that Monroe co-chaired, of the bedrock (but endangered) principle that deaccession proceeds must be used exclusively for acquisitions, not for general financial relief.

I disagreed with Dan, though, on his previous stand regarding the use of deaccession proceeds by the Montclair Art Museum to satisfy bond requirements. In Paragraph 38 of its just-released  2011 edition of "Professional Practices in Art Museum," AAMD appears to agree with me.

The association has now posted the agenda for its imminent annual meeting, which appears to be all about technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, and not much about strengthening and defending the main mission of museums to collect, preserve, display and interpret works of art. Maybe that's covered during the various small-group breakout meetings.

One of the scheduled "innovation" speakers is Jeff DeGraff of Minneapolis, where AAMD's current president, Kaywin Feldman, also hails from. DeGraff is a self-described "visionary in the field of Innovation and Creativity [his caps, not mine]" with "a beautiful singing voice." At least he should be entertaining! The keynote speaker, Robert Stevens, is founder of the Geek Squad and chief technology officer of Best Buy. I guess you'd have to be there to find out why these are the experts whom museum directors most want to hear from.

Perhaps one day there will be REAL transparency, and the press will get to sit in on AAMD's conclaves. I'd love to be a fly on that wall---so much so that, many years ago, I foolishly attempted to infiltrate by swiping an unused name tag. I was recognized and summarily ejected!

"Hide/Seek" substitution: David Hockney, "Adhesiveness," 1960, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

It's great that the National Portrait Gallery's landmark, gay-themed Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (which closed Feb. 13) will travel---something that I've been urging since Dec. 8.

It's particularly commendable that the two venues on the tour---the Brooklyn Museum (Nov. 18 to Feb. 12, 2012) and the Tacoma Art Museum (Mar. 17-June 10, 2012) will restore David Wojnarovicz's hot-button video, "A Fire in My Belly," to its rightful place in the show, from which it was controversially removed (under political pressure) on Nov. 30, a month into its Washington, DC, run. 

There's one big problem, though: The version they'll be showing in Brooklyn and Tacoma is not Wojnarovicz's.

Given the chance for a do-over, the organizers are unaccountably perpetuating the NPG's misstep by allowing the four-minute pastiche of Wojnarovicz's piece---edited and reconceived by the show's guest co-curator, Jonathan Katz---to stand in for the late artist's actual work. The real reel exists in two longer versions and (unlike Katz's remake) has no soundtrack. It's bad enough that the curators violated the artist's moral rights once. There's no excuse for doing it twice.

This is the excuse that was recently offered to me via Sally Williams, the Brooklyn Museum's public information officer:

Our agreement with the National Portrait Gallery [is] to show as much of the original checklist as possible. And as it was first presented, we plan to show the edited four-minute version of David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in My Belly."

Bad plan.

When we were co-panelists at the symposium on Hide/Seek: Museums, Ethics and the Press last April at Rutgers University (co-sponsored by Seton Hall University's Institute of Museum Ethics), the NPG's director, Martin Sullivan, declared:

I think Lee [that's me] is correct as to the integrity of "Fire in my Belly." Jonathan [Katz] was trying to reconcile two things that didn't fit nicely together: One was the piece itself. The second was the behavioral dynamics of what happens in the busy space where people are moving back and forth. The option that we had was a kiosk...and it didn't work. And I won't do it again [emphasis added]...because the integrity of the artist's product was compromised.

Despite this, they ARE doing it again...and Martin shouldn't stand for it.

There will be some changes to the show, necessitated by the reluctance of the some lenders to again part with pieces for the tour. I've learned about two of these. (There may be more, as planning continues.):

---F. Holland Day's "Nude Youth with Laurel Wreath and Lyre," from the "Orpheus" series, to be loaned by the Library of Congress, will substitute for Day's "The Vision" from the same series.

---David Hockney's "Adhesiveness," 1960 (image at top), to be loaned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, will substitute for Hockney's "We Two Boys Together Clinging," 1961,

AA Bronson's crucial "Felix, June 5, 1994," owned by the National Gallery of Canada, which the artist had wanted withdrawn from NPG's show to protest the removal of the Wojnarovicz video, will be on view in the Brooklyn and Tacoma iterations. The Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe foundations, which had said they would discontinue support for all Smithsonian exhibitions unless the video were reinstated, are on board with additional financial support for the tour.

Speaking of financial support, my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Repeat Donors 167 and 168 from Paris, France and NYC, who have stepped up to my Send CultureGrrl to Orlando Challenge (scroll to the fourth panel in the 12-1 p.m. slot---"Digging Culture," also starring Felch, Frammolino and Grimaldi).

It's crunch time, art-lings: I'm leaving late next week and I've only got enough contributions for three-quarters of my two-night hotel stay. I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet (unless you take a moment to click my "Donate" button)!