July 2011 Archives

The flagship building of the American Folk Art Museum (with the red banner) on its last day. On left (behind the white "MoMA" fence) is the vacant lot where the Nouvel-designed MoMA/Hines tower may eventually rise. On the right is MoMA.

The financially struggling American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), which permanently closed its 53rd Street building to the public on July 8, closed its deal on Friday to sell the flagship facility to the Museum of Modern Art for $31.2 million. AFAM was given 90 days from the closing to clear out, making way for the MoMA Real Estate Juggernaut. It will continue to operate at what used to be its satellite facility, a much smaller space near Lincoln Center.

Meanwhile, on the very same day that AFAM relinquished ownership of its building, its former chairman and once preeminent patron, the fallen jewelry mogul and folk art collector Ralph Esmerian, was sentenced to six years in prison and slapped with a $20-million fine.

In her detailed report on Esmerian's case, Brook Mason of The Art Newspaper wrote:

At the sentencing, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote said that Esmerian "lived a life of fraud and deceit on a massive scale."

MoMA's right of first refusal to buy the property was incorporated into the prospectus for the $31.2 million in bonds issued by the Trust for Cultural Resources of the City of New York for the construction of AFAM's now 10-year-old building, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien.

But from a close reading of the prospectus, it appears that the procedures to be followed in order for MoMA to exercise its right of first refusal were not adhered to. Below is the relevant passage (second paragraph), as it appears in the prospectus for the bonds (on which AFAM has defaulted). The "Museum" to which this refers is AFAM:
____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

As you can see, the prospectus called for MoMA to get the chance to preempt another prospective purchaser, after that purchaser had successfully negotiated a contract for sale (which MoMA would then have to match, to acquire the property).

When I asked if MoMA had matched a third-party offer, Susan Flamm, AFAM's director of public relations, informed me:

Since the building was never on the market, there were no other offers.

But never marketing the building meant that AFAM never tested the waters to see whether it could have gotten a deal better than what it struck with MoMA.

According to the minutes of the May 18 meeting of the Trust for Cultural Resources, court permission and approval by the state Attorney General's office were required before this deal could go through.

You can read the entire bond prospectus here.

A MoMA spokesperson informed me that the right of first refusal actually originated much earlier than the time of the 2000 prospectus:

The 1979 deed between the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the American Folk Art Museum (then the Museum of American Folk Art) stipulates that MoMA will have the right of first refusal on the property. No reason is explicitly stated.

What exactly does MoMA intend to do with its new trophy? An adjoining parcel, as CultureGrrl readers will remember, was bought from MoMA for $125 million by developer Hines for a planned (but stalled) Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper.

I caught up with MoMA's director, Glenn Lowry, at the press preview for Talk to Me (to Nov. 7). Most of the tech dreck in that show didn't "talk to me," which I concede may be attributable to my having reached that crotchety age when innovations such as the already infamous Menstruation Machine (please don't ask!) come across not as ingenious but as inane or insane.

Glenn (unlike the exhibition) did talk to me, and what he said is that MoMA hasn't yet decided what to do with its new property. Undetermined is whether MoMA will knock the building down, gut it or keep it intact.

Lowry told me:

We acquired it because it was available. They [AFAM] were in trouble. They asked us to help out. I don't know if it's going to be part of the bigger Hines project, but at some point it's obviously going to be part of our overall campus. We acquired it to use it. How we're going to use it, we haven't even begun to think about.

I've been called many names, but, until now, "oracle" has not been among them.

That's how the American Association of Museums' new Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) is referring to the museum professionals and other experts (including me) enlisted to identify and reflect upon emerging ethical issues that museums will likely confront in the coming decades.

This nascent think tank, supported with funds from the federal government's grantmaking Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS), was organized in partnership with Seton Hall University's Institute of Museum Ethics (which had tapped me last April as a panelist for its thought-provoking Hide/Seek symposium).

Identifying emerging ethical issues is just the beginning of our group's crystal ball-gazing. Here's what will happen in the next round of this brainstorming exercise, according to AAM's description:

The Oracles will use an online survey to forecast how the field's position on these issues will shift over time, and explain their reasoning. CFM will summarize their responses and send it back to the Oracles along with the original questionnaire, encouraging them to revisit and revise their answers in light of the narrative of their peers.

In the course of multiple rounds, the Oracles will surface important broad issues, and may come to consensus on some points. The process may also surface and clarify areas of disagreement, enabling us to create and explore diverse views of the preferred future [emphasis added].

A report on all this (which I hope will eschew any further use of "surface" as a transitive verb) will eventually be issued by AAM.

My own hope is that this welcome and urgently needed focus on museum ethics will lead to a more robust role for Seton Hall's Institute of Museum Ethics, an outfit that's rich in potential but thus far relatively modest in accomplishment (not to mention short on funding). At a time when financial exigencies are threatening to erode core principles and standards in the museum field, an objective, university-based institute, providing needed analysis and support for best practices in the public interest (and bolstered by a Museum Studies faculty), is an idea whose time has come.

I see this initial exercise as a possible pilot for an ongoing, potentially influential museum think tank that would regularly convene leading experts to ponder (and publish reports about) specific hot-button issues, both in private conclaves and at freewheeling, deeply informed public symposia. (I confess that this is a dream that I'd personally like to help move towards realization.)

Below are the five hot-button issues involving museum ethics that I submitted as an "oracle" for CFM's forecasting project. For CultureGrrl readers, it will come as no surprise that these developments deeply concern me:

---Increased Pressure to Monetize Collections and/or Raid Acquisition Endowments: With a decline in other income sources, museums (including university museums) are feeling increased pressure to sell art to fund operations and pay debts. This needs to be forcefully addressed, possibly through legislation.

---Rent-a-Show: There has been a proliferation of "masterpiece" shows drawn from a single museum, designed to raise substantial income for the art-rich lending institution at the expense of the art-poor borrowing institution. This exploitation of the collection as a cash cow is contrary to the collegial relationship that should exist among sister institutions and ultimately could up the ante for everyone.

---UNESCO Convention for the 21st-Century: Notwithstanding the various accords that have been reached, there are still numerous objects in museum collections with dubious provenances that may yet be claimed by foreign countries. A global plan for dealing with this issue---allowing (in certain specified instances) for repose, encouraging collaborative loans and creating a licit market---needs to be formulated and adopted.

---Self-Interested Sponsorship of Exhibitions: With adequate financial support for exhibitions having become increasingly hard to obtain, there's been a growing tendency to mount private-collection shows that are sponsored and/or influenced by the lending collector. Also, single-artist shows are increasingly sponsored, at least in part, by the artist's dealer. The potential for conflicts of interest, improper usurpation of the curatorial role, and pay-to-play programming needs to be addressed.

---Blatant Disregard of Donor Intent: State attorneys general and/or the courts usually rubber-stamp museum plans to deviate from deceased donors' intent (thereby permitting the diversion of bequests, or the expansion or relocation of a museum that violate the founding donor's explicit written instructions). Just because this is deemed "legal" by the courts doesn't mean that it's ethical or proper professional practice. Disregarding the wishes of past donors can only discourage future philanthropy.

Attention CultureGrrl Constituents: Do you have any other pressing issues that you think I should bring to this table? If so, be sure to write your Oracular Representative!

UPDATE: You can directly contribute your own input to the CFM ethics survey here.

Ai Weiwei's Google+ photo

My advice to you is this: Hurry over to Ai Weiwei's Google+ page, just established yesterday [via], while you still can. Who knows how this latest (and, given his recent 81-day detention, most audacious) thumb-in-the-eye to the Chinese authorities can remain there, uncensored?

As Jeremy Page of the Wall Street Journal reported at the time of Ai's release last month, the dissident artist was barred from speaking to the media, "including through Twitter," for at least one year. He seems to believe he has found a loophole (for now) in Google+, the new rival to Twitter and Facebook.

Or maybe not: Page wrote, further down in his piece, that Ai "also confirmed that the ban applied to social media such as Twitter" [emphasis added].

In any event, it seems clear that the time Ai spent in forced contemplation of his alleged crimes did nothing to repress his spirit of political resistance. While his two inaugural comments on Google+ were innocuous ("I'm here, greetings," and "Here's proof of life"), he also posted some give-'em-the-finger images, in the tradition of some of his best-known photos:



Much of Ai's recent work has focused on documentation of governmental malfeasance or abdication of responsibility. His new site personalizes that practice, posting documents related to his own situation. This document, in the Buzz section, relates to the Chinese government's tax delinquency charges against him:

Entrance to Boston Museum of Fine Arts' "Art of the Ancient World" galleries

I knew that I could count on CultureGrrl's scholarly readers to evaluate the provenances provided to me by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the eight ancient Egyptian objects on loan to the museum from the recently indicted Virginia collector, Joseph Lewis II.

Archaeologist/blogger David Gill (who first alerted me to the Lewis case), caught my pass and moved the ball down the field: In his Looting Matters post, he examined the ownership histories that Virginia provided to me, saw some possible red flags, and suggested that "curators at Virginia MFA would be wise to ask for a full set of the documentation."

Let me toss David another one. This just in from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has one object on loan from Joseph A. Lewis II---a mummy mask currently on view in our Funerary Arts gallery. The Harer Family Trust lent the MFA the mummy mask in 1997. In 2007, the MFA received notification that the object had been sold to Joseph A. Lewis II. Because the object is a loan and not part of the MFA's permanent collection, we cannot share additional provenance information.

Museum spokesperson Karen Frascona also told me that the BMFA has never had any other objects on loan from Lewis.

Here's what's provided on the lone loan's gallery label:

Mummy Mask
Egyptian, Roman Period, 1st-2nd century A.D.
Painted plaster with plant fiber
Plant fiber has been added to this mask to create the illusion of human hair.
Lent by Joseph A. Lewis II

Frascona said that her museum could not send me an image of the mask for publication: "Because the object is a loan, we do not have reproduction rights." The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, by contrast, freely provided me with the full provenance and images for its eight ancient Egyptian objects on loan from Lewis.

Here's what Boston could provide me (at my request)---an image of its Funerary Arts gallery, where the Lewis mask is now on view. (But the mask is not in this picture.)


BMFA's Egyptian Funerary Arts gallery
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In other BMFA antiquities news, Geoff Edgers of the Boston Globe reports that the top portion of a Roman Imperial Period "Weary Herakles," which has long been partly owned by the Boston museum (and now is fully owned), will likely soon be united with its bottom portion and returned to its country of origin. The amputated legs and lower torso reside in a museum in Antalya, Turkey.

Strangely, the BMFA, which commented for the Globe's article, has yet to issue a press release on this. Edgers' scoop, reported from Antalya, was published last Sunday.

The BMFA jointly purchased its fragment in 1981 along with Shelby White and the late Leon Levy---the collecting couple whose names have been associated with generous benefactions to the Metropolitan Museum and other nonprofit institutions (scroll down) but also with some dicey antiquities acquisitions.

According to Edgers, "the arrangement [with Levy and White] called for the MFA to take possession of the work---it went on display on Apr. 2, 1982---but to receive the remaining 50 percent ownership only after Levy's death." (He died in 2003.)

Here's Boston's fragment, with the credit line supplied for the photo by the MFA:


"Weary Herakles" ("Herakles Farnese" type), Roman, Imperial Period, mid to late 2nd century A.D., marble, probably from Paros or Aphrodisias, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Leon Levy and Shelby White and museum purchase with funds donated by the Jerome Levy Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Wait a minute! "Purchase with funds donated by the Jerome Levy Foundation"? The Jerome Levy Foundation was established in 1958 by Leon, who named it for his father, Jerome. According to the foundation's 2009 tax return (the most recent that's available online), Shelby White is a trustee. It appears that the collectors purchased a half-interest in the sculpture and that the other half was purchased by the museum with money that came from their foundation. (I have no knowledge of whether the money was given in contemplation of this particular purchase.)

Speaking of half-shares, here's the bottom portion of poor Herakles (with an image of his missing piece on the wall behind it), as installed at the Antalya Museum:


Source: 3D Modeling of the Weary Herakles Statue

Edgers writes:

The MFA has decided the piece should be reunited with its other half and sent back to Turkey. The museum aims to formalize an agreement with Turkish officials this year---an agreement that the MFA hopes will enable Bostonians to see the unified statue through a short-term loan as early as 2012.

"This is a beautiful piece and we believe it should be back in Turkey, and that's a big deal,'' said MFA deputy director Katherine Getchell.

Now if only this reunification philosophy could be extended to another "beautiful piece"---the sundered Parthenon Marbles! Whatever one thinks of repatriation in general, I think that everyone who cares about culture should agree that museums have a moral and art-historical obligation to do whatever it takes to restore the integrity of important works that were meant to be seen intact.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the transparency scale (or is it just because of summer vacation?), I've heard not a word from Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, which also reportedly received Lewis loans. (I've e-mailed the museum's press spokesperson twice, called her once by phone, and e-mailed director Bonnie Speed, to no avail.)

Signing cultural-property agreement with Greece: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Stavros Lambrinidis

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Greece, restricting U.S. importation of that country's cultural property, was signed Saturday at the Acropolis Museum, Athens, by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Stavros Lambrinidis. Some of the proposed MOU's originally proposed provisions (at least one of which was subsequently modified) had been strongly opposed by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) at hearings held in October by the U.S. State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC).

According to the State Department's brief fact sheet, the new MOU (pending ratification by Greece) will restrict importation into the U.S. of Greek archaeological and cultural material "generally associated with the Upper Paleolithic through Late Byzantine periods"---that is, through the 15th century.

In first of its two October position papers criticizing the MOU (which I had briefly alluded to at the bottom of this previous post), AAMD asked the State Department not to enter into the agreement unless Greece agreed to take the following steps. (The ones that I've highlighted might be particularly problematic for the Greeks.)

• Taking action necessary, both administratively and legislatively, to provide long term loans of significant archaeological and ethnological material to museums in the United States

• Demonstrating its ability and willingness to work cooperatively and responsibly with museums in the United States on exhibitions of works for which import restrictions are sought

• Modifying its position that all artifacts created in Greece belong to Greece

• Indicating a willingness to at least consider a licit market for antiquities

• Demonstrating its ability and willingness to protect its sites from illicit and unscientific excavation

AAMD's strongly worded statement, written by attorney Stephen J. Knerly Jr., charged that "Greece has not taken sufficient measures to protect its cultural property and its efforts towards protecting its archaeological sites to date are not adequate."

When I asked Dan Monroe, president of AAMD, about his association's stance regarding MOUs, such as the agreement with Greece, he indicated that it is not the same as it was when the strongly worded statements were issued last October, under his predecessor, Kaywin Feldman.

Monroe told me:

We are changing the way in which we work with CPAC and will be taking a very hard look at the things that we would like from specific nations. I can say, with respect to the desire to create licit markets in many places, that we think that's viable in some places. But I think that as an across-the-board kind of request, it's not the time in many cases to be pushing for that. There are just too many nations in which the notion of creating licit markets is some time far in the future.

We would like to see reciprocity. There's been a focus on long-term loans. We're setting up a new mechanism whereby we'll deal with individual MOU requests on a case-by-case basis, taking a more nuanced tack. I don't want to characterize it in advance, because each one of these MOUs is very different. It depends on the nation and a whole batch of factors.

But we are very interested in creating ongoing cultural exchanges that work, where there is an easy exchange of loans, whether they're long-term or not. And we are looking for ways in which we can approach MOUs much more in concert with our colleagues in the archaeology community, which isn't to say we'll always agree, because we won't. But in many instances, there are opportunities for us to work closer together with regard to MOU requests.

The initiative to promote more constructive dialogue with archaeologists began "a couple of years ago," Monroe said, and is now being led by Maxwell Anderson, director if the Indianapolis Museum.

In a second AAMD statement on Greece, written by Larry Feinberg, director of the Santa Barbara Museum, that nation's MOU request was criticized as "overly broad." On this point, AAMD does appear to have gotten some traction: Feinberg in October described the original proposal as restricting the importation of material from "the Neolithic Era through the mid-18th century"---a longer time frame than the Upper Paleolithic-through-15th century described in this week's fact sheet outlining the final agreement.

I have not yet been able to determine any other ways in which the final version of the MOU might differ from the one on which public comment was sought nine months ago. Only a "public summary" of the proposed MOU, not the full text, was disseminated back in October, and the link to the summary, in the right column of this State Department webpage, no longer functions.

The detailed provisions of the new MOU are not currently on the State Department's webpage for cultural-property import restrictions. Its spokesperson, Elizabeth Gosselin, could not provide me with any details, beyond the fact sheet.

In declining yesterday to send me the text of the signed agreement, the State Department, through its spokesperson, offered the following explanation:

Although the agreement has been signed by the two governments, it will not enter into force until the Greek Parliament has ratified it. Under Greek law, any agreement pending before Parliament for ratification may not be released to the public until such time as it is ratified. Out of respect for Greek law and diplomatic protocol, the agreement will not be released at this time. Once ratified, we will announce the agreement with a media note.

I think that under American law, any agreement that we have officially signed ought to be public information. There is already too much secrecy in how CPAC, a federal government advisory body, operates. Once a State Department decision regarding foreign cultural-property requests is finalized, the full extent of what has been agreed to should be promptly disclosed to the American public.

In the past, CPAC has almost always acceded fully to foreign requests. Another rare exception, besides the latest deal with Greece, was the MOU with China, signed in January 2009, for which some modifications were made to an unreasonably sweeping request by the source country.

CPAC's pro-source country leanings should only grow more pronounced under its incoming chairperson, recently chosen by President Obama---De Paul College of Law professor and ardent repatriationist Patty Gerstenblith. She had previously been a member of CPAC from 2000-2003. She has now jumped from being entirely off the committee for eight years to being named as its chairperson.

Gerstenblith said this me today, regarding the signing of the Greek MOU:

The real story is, of course, that Hillary Clinton signed the agreement herself: It may be the first time that a secretary of state has personally signed a CPIA [Cultural Property Implementation Act] MOU. She has displayed a consistent and remarkable interest in cultural heritage preservation from the time she was First Lady through to today.

This just posted on the Restore + Save the Egyptian Museum! Facebook page (for Egyptologists) by Nicole Hansen, who in March had participated in a Cairo demonstration demanding that antiquities be kept independent from the Ministry of Culture under the post-Mubarak regime:

New list of candidates for [antiquities] minister: Abdel Halim Noureddin, Raafat al-Nabrawi, Wagdi Abbas, Hasan al-Saadi, Mohammed Hamza, and Adel al-Toukhi. Some I don't know but the three that I do know I could live with.

The search (and the confusion) continues...

The Incredible Reappearing Minister: Zahi Hawass

How many times can Zahi Hawass come back from the dead? 

The Art Newspaper (along with several Middle Eastern news sources, in Arabic) has reported that Hawass has been asked to stay on the job as Egypt's Minister of Antiquities, at least for now.

Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper writes:

On July 19 he [Hawass] told the Art Newspaper that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has asked him to continue to go to work. However, Hawass' future is now very uncertain.

According to this report (in Arabic) from Egypt's Al-Wafd newspaper, Hawass owes his reprieve to "instructions issued by...Sharaf...on Tuesday to all current ministers to return to the offices to run their ministries." In a cabinet shake-up, many new ministers were recently named. But in the midst of turmoil and protests, the swearings-in were delayed.

The nomination of Abdel-Fattah El-Banna to replace Hawass was withdrawn, after he was rejected by the secretariat of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The council objected to El-Banna's being a restorer, not an archaeologist.

I'm starting to regret ever picking up this story. In an unstable Egypt, these shifts back-and-forth seem to have no end. I've noticed that Kate Taylor of the NY Times hasn't touched this since she posted online Sunday that Hawass was going to "lose his job in a cabinet reshuffle."

Late Friday afternoon, Stephen Bonadies, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' deputy director for collections and facilities management, responded with laudable swiftness and thoroughness to my request for a complete list of ancient Egyptian objects loaned to the museum by Virginia collector Joseph Lewis II, who was recently indicted (along with three dealers) for the alleged smuggling of other Egyptian antiquities (not those at the VMFA).

Might the stated ownership histories of any of these pieces be cause for concern? The VMFA's director, Alex Nyerges, told me last week that the objects were "to the best of our knowledge, purchased by the owner [Lewis] and lent to the VMFA in good faith."

I'll leave it to you to evaluate the provenances provided:


Mummified Ibis, L: 14", Linen, mummification resin and animal remains
Ex: Canadian Private Collection; Ex: Sadigh Gallery, NYC; Ex: private Swiss collection before 1970


Mummified Falcon, L: 12.5", Linen, silver gilding, polychrome paint, animal remains
Ex: Canadian Private Collection; Ex: Sadigh Gallery, NYC; Ex: private Swiss collection before 1970


Canopic Jar, H: 28.6cm, Conglomerate Limestone (calcite)
Ex: Bonhams Antiquity Auction #17822, Lot #49, Apr 28, 2010, London; Ex: collection Annie Trotter 1990, London; Ex: collection James B. McMullen, 1950


Canopic Jar Lid in Wood, H: 13cm, W: 9.5cm, D: 10.1cm; Wood and polychrome paint
Ex: Sands of Time Antiquities, Washington, D.C., Ex: Collection of William Bowmore, Brisbane, Australia 1960s


Canopic Jar Lid made in terracotta, 12 cm circumference, Terracotta, pigment
Ex: Rupert Wace Ancient Art, London, UK; Ex: French private collection before 1950


Canopic Jar, H: 30.5 cm, Alabaster (calcite)
Ex: Bonhams Antiquity Auction #16853, Lot # 257, Oct 28, 2009, London;
Ex: collection Annie Trotter 1990, London; Ex: collection James B. McMullen, 1950


Wood Canopic Box, H: 45.5 cm, W: 21 cm, L: 21 cm; Wood and polychrome paint
Ex: Gorny & Mosch Auction # 168, June 24, 2008, Munich, Germany; Ex: Private US collection before 1970


Mummy Bead Set, H: 31", W: 9"; Colored faience beads
Ex: Nomis Antiquities, Van Nuys, CA; Ex: private Swiss collection of Simon Ohan Simonian, before 1970

Farewell, Abdel-Fattah El-Banna. We hardly knew you.

Erupting protests by Egyptian archaeologists (which I gave you a first heads-up about in my previous post) were evidently so effective that Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said, in effect, "Just kidding!" and withdrew his nomination of El-Banna to succeed Zahi Hawass as that country's antiquities minister.

The nomination is still listed in an earlier Al-Masry Al-Youm article, but Al-Ahram apparently deleted its announcement of this and other cabinet appointments from its website. Hawass, at this writing, still hasn't commented about his departure on his website.

According to another Al-Masry Al-Youm article, the secretariat of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities issued a statement saying that it had rejected the Prime Minister's appointment on the grounds that El-Banna, a restoration specialist, doesn't specialize in archaeology and should not assume the ministry's responsibilities. (I had given you a heads-up about this basis for the archaeologists' opposition in my above-linked previous post.)

According to Al-Masry Al-Youm:

The statement [of the Supreme Council of Antiquities] called for dissolving the Antiquities Ministry and returning its responsibilities to the council, which it said would act as an independent, scientific institute run by specialists.

Still uncertain is whether a new antiquities minister will be named or whether the Supreme Council of Antiquities will now reign supreme. Hawass, who had previously been secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was named to the newly created cabinet position of Minister of Antiquities in the waning days of deposed President Mubarak's regime.

Interestingly (to me, at least), Al-Ahram appears to be reading CultureGrrl. Its report today on the withdrawal of El-Banna's nomination reproduced the identical (somewhat cropped) photo that I had published atop my previous post (and reused on this one). That image came from a screenshot that I had taken by pausing a YouTube video of Egypt's almost-Minister of Antiquities.

Abdel-Fattah El-Banna, Egypt's new Minister of Antiquities

In what the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram has described as "the latest cabinet reshuffle," Zahi Hawass is being replaced as Egypt's Minister of Antiquities by Abdel-Fattah El-Banna---one of many new appointments just announced by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

UPDATE: The link in the above paragraph now calls up a "Page doesn't exist!" message on Al-Ahram's website. Al-Ahram now reports that Sharaf canceled El-Banna's nomination, immediately after protests erupted (see below). More on these breaking developments, here.

Al-Ahram noted:

The cabinet reshuffle comes following the demands of Tahrir Square protesters for a new revolutionary cabinet.

Paul Barford, in his Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues blog, has the most complete description (drawn in part from the new minister's YouTube channel) that I've seen thus far of Hawass' successor:

Associate professor at Cairo University [and] stone monuments restoration specialist, he obtained his Ph.D. from Warsaw University, Poland, in engineering geology [and] majored in restoration of historic buildings.

He has been campaigning against Hawass for some time. He does not seem to have been disposed particularly favourably to an American foreign mission in the past. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, he personally led a protest to oust Mark Lehner and his team from the AERA dig house [my link, not Barford's] earlier this year.

At this writing, Hawass has not commented on this turn of events on his website. A widely circulated news video purportedly shows Hawass' cab being surrounded by angry protesters as he attempts to depart from the ministry building.

A statement (in Arabic) posted on the Ministry of Antiquities Facebook page calls upon museum professionals and archaeologists to mount a "general strike" to "contest the selection" of the new minister, decried as "an insult to archaeologists" (perhaps because his specialty is restoration, not archaeology).

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post called El-Banna's new position (since rescinded) "Minister of Culture." He had been named to become Minister of Antiquities.

Alex Nyerges, director, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

In my previous post about the indictment of collector Joseph Lewis II for alleged antiquities smuggling, I mentioned that this case "could reverberate through the U.S. museum and collecting communities."

I have not yet heard form Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts says it will get back to me on this next week. Both reportedly had received objects by gift or loan from Lewis, although there is as yet no indication that any of these were smuggled goods.

Another museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (unmentioned in my previous post), did respond to my query about whether it has any objects given or on loan to it from Lewis, a Virginia resident (no relation to the RIchmond museum's major benefactors, Frances Lewis and the late Sydney Lewis).

The VMFA has just sent me the following statement:

"The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has eight objects on loan from the Joseph A. Lewis Collection, all of which were, to the best of our knowledge, purchased by the owner and lent to the VMFA in good faith," said Alex Nyerges, director and CEO. "These Egyptian antiquities are on view in the recently reinstalled Egyptian galleries. They were borrowed to further our educational mission of teaching museum visitors about the art, history, and culture of ancient Egypt, one of the most important civilizations of the ancient world."

In my query I had also asked for any Lewis objects to be identified, with photos. And I had asked to be told what action, if any, the museum might take regarding those objects.

The museum's spokesperson, Suzanne Hall, told me that the prepared statement "is all we have to share at this time."

Under indictment: Egyptian art collector Joseph A. Lewis II

A criminal indictment concerning alleged smuggling of Egyptian antiquities and money laundering, unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, could reverberate through the U.S. museum and collecting communities.

Egyptian art collector Joseph A. Lewis II of Chesterfield County, VA, from whose residence objects were seized on Wednesday, was one of four defendants charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District, with "conspiring to smuggle Egyptian antiquities into the United States and conspiring to launder money in furtherance of smuggling," according to the U.S. Attorney's press release. The alleged crimes occurred in 2008 and 2009.

The other defendants are antiquities dealers Mousa Khouli, Salem Alshdaifat and Ayman Ramadan.

"This is a ground breaking case for Homeland Security Investigations," according to James Hayes Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), New York. "It is the first time an alleged cultural property network has been dismantled within the United States."

A glowing 2008 profile of Lewis, titled "You Don't Know Joe," discusses the skin-care magnate's museum connections:

He and his wife, Sofi, collect Egyptian antiquities, particularly mummy cases, coffin boards, and afterlife statuary like scarabs. (They've given or loaned several pieces to Atlanta's Michael C. Carlos Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.)

I sent queries (more than two hours ago) to both museums. If I learn more, you'll learn more.

The U.S. Attorney's above-linked press release provides these details about case:

As alleged in the indictment, from October 2008 through November 2009, Lewis purchased a Greco-Roman style Egyptian sarcophagus, a nesting set of three Egyptian sarcophagi, a set of Egyptian funerary boats and Egyptian limestone figures from Khouli, who earlier acquired those items from Alshdaifat and Ramadan.

Each of these antiquities was exported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and smuggled into the United States using a variety of illegal methods intended to avoid detection and scrutiny by U.S. Customs & Border Protection ("Customs"). Specifically, the defendants allegedly made false declarations to Customs concerning the country of origin and value of the antiquities, and provided misleading descriptions of the contents on shipping labels and customs paperwork, such as "antiques," "wood panels" and "wooden painted box."

Most of the smuggled antiquities have been recovered by law enforcement. The innermost sarcophagus of the nesting set was seized during a search of Khouli's residence in September 2009. The middle sarcophagus and most of the outer sarcophagus were seized in November 2009, after they arrived via sea cargo at the Port of Newark, New Jersey.

The Greco-Roman sarcophagus, funerary boats and limestone figures were seized during a search of Lewis's residence on July 13, 2011 [emphasis added]. A civil complaint seeking forfeiture of Egyptian sarcophagi, Iraqi artifacts, cash and other items seized in connection with the government's investigation was also unsealed this morning in Brooklyn federal court.

If convicted, each of the four defendants faces a maximum jail sentence of 20 years. Khouli and Lewis both pled not guilty and were released on $250,000 bond. Alshdaifat was arraigned yesterday in Detroit, pled "not guilty" and was held in custody. Ramadan is a fugitive, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

The 17-page indictment alleges:

Khouli provided Lewis with false provenances which stated that the Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s when, in fact, both Lewis and Khouli knew that Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers.

The indictment also reveals detailed information about how the objects were allegedly smuggled, such as, "splitting a single antiquity into separate packages that were shipped individually over the course of several weeks to conceal the size and value of the fully-assembled antiquity."

You can read the entire 17-page indictment here. Kate Taylor's NY Times story, which includes comment from Egypt's antiquities minister, Zahi Hawass, is here. The AP story, for which reporter Deepti Hajela sought comment from the defendants' lawyers, is here. (And thanks to David Gill of the Looting Matters blog for giving me my first heads-up on this story.)

Sign in Asia Society's lobby heralds show postponed from March to next month.

In the history of exasperatingly difficult-to-organize exhibitions, few can top Asia Society's upcoming Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara, now expected to open on or about Aug. 9 for a run of about three months, as its curator, Adriana Proser, told me today. The show of sculptures, architectural reliefs and works of gold and bronze from the Gandhara region of Pakistan (in present-day Peshawar) had originally been announced for last March.

"You have no idea what we have been through," Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society Museum, told me during our recent chat at her New York museum. "I've persisted because this is a unique opportunity for us to show the cultural heritage of Pakistan at a time when U.S.-Pakistan relations are probably at their lowest ever."

Then they got even lower. We spoke at the end of June, after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by U.S. troops, but before the recent announcement that the U.S. is suspending or canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to Pakistan.

"Nobody works with Pakistan," Chiu told me. "Many other museums had tried....Every week there was something---from a drone strike to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Every week there was something that would basically stall our project. And every week I had to call and ask for help. But a lot of people in Pakistan want to see the show happen."

Aside from unstable diplomatic relations, there were numerous freak disruptions:

The governor for Lahore was assassinated. Our former chairman, Richard Holbrooke [who became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan] died. Both were champions who had helped us with this. There was a major flood. Then, the Ministry of Culture, with which we had an agreement, was dissolved by constitutional amendment....

A member of the [Pakistani] President's office decided it [the planning of the show] should be devolved to the provinces. So I had to renegotiate agreements with the provinces. It required nearly 10 signatures, from one government department to another....I've been to Pakistan many times to try to make this happen.

We had many champions in Pakistan. If you remember, we did the Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan show [in 2009]....We've presented performing arts, singers, poets, for decades. So we already have the very close connections, and favors that we could to call in....No other museum could do this.

The majority of works will come from the National Museum, Karachi and the Central Museum, Lahore.

"People in Pakistan see its importance," Chiu said, "because it shows an unknown cultural heritage of Pakistan. When people say 'Pakistan,' they don't think of a Buddhist heritage. They don't think of a Buddhist center of learning that is all about peace. It's unique opportunity for us at Asia Society to be able to present it."

"These works," Chiu predicted, "will never leave the country again."

With the $31.2-million sale (to be consummated on July 22) of its flagship building on New York's W. 53rd Street, the financial trainwreck that is the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) was given 90 days to clear out of its 10-year-old Tod Williams Billie Tsien-designed facility. It will settle into what was had been its satellite location---a comparatively small site near Lincoln Center.

Its W. 53rd Street building is being bought by the Museum of Modern Art, which has not yet announced its plans for the property. AFAM is flanked on the east by MoMA and on the west by the vacant lot that may one day become the site of the Jean Nouvel-designed MoMA/Hines tower. It's conceivable that AFAM's land may be annexed into that stalled mixed-use development. My request to MoMA for an update what it may do with its latest real estate acquisition has not yet been answered.

AFAM has a new acting director, Linda Dunne, succeeding Maria Ann Conelli, who resigned, effective this month.

In an official announcement, posted today, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art reported that it netted 3,000 members since the July 1 start of its membership drive. As of this morning, the total was actually about 3,100, a spokesperson told me, adding that 1,434 of those had signed up on the museum's membership website. Others have been "faxing, mailing [and] e-mailing" membership requests, according to director Don Bacigalupi. So I'm not yet clear (although I've asked) on how many signed up in person at the tents set up around the museum's hometown of Bentonville, AR, during the drive's inaugural July 4th weekend.

In any event, the sprawling museum is expecting such a huge surge of members from around the country that it has decided to stay open for 24 hours on members' preview day, Nov. 9, when admission will be by timed ticket. Still no word, though, on whether the $800-million museum (and that's just the endowment from founder Alice Walton) will charge the general public an admission fee after the Nov. 11 opening, or whether members will be granted free admission.

But what about the mysterious disappearing collection, which largely vanished from the museum's recently relaunched, jazzed-up website? Sandy Edwards, the museum's deputy director for museum relations, told me this:

The website is in its first phase of the redesign. Over the next several months, we will be returning the collection to the site---all with additional interpretation....

...and maybe also with additional acquisitions? One of those, a contemporary work, was posted earlier today on the museum's News page, but has now mysteriously disappeared. This is all so frustrating! Come on, Alice. Show us what you've got!

Speaking of the museum's munificent benefactor, Edwards told me that the Wal-Mart heiress has granted interviews to Fortune magazine and CBS Sunday Morning (in addition to the NY Times and New Yorker magazine).

"At this time," Edwards told me, in response to my own request, "we do not think she will be available for additional interviews prior to opening."

What, no time for CultureGrrl? Thankfully, CultureGrrl Repeat Donor 171 from Santa Monica had a moment to click my yellow button. On CultureGrrl Members Day, he'll be granted 24-hour access to my blog. Then again, so will you! Every day here in the blogosphere is a Members Day.

Pay whatever you wish, art-lings, but you must at least pay nothing.

George Shackelford at entrance to Boston Museum of Fine Arts' "Art of Europe" galleries

The official announcement is not scheduled until Monday. But the word has gotten out that George T.M. Shackelford, chair of the Boston Museum of Fine Art's European art department and its senior curator of modern art, will become senior deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, where he will play an important role in planning for the museum's expansion into its planned Renzo Piano-designed addition, expected to open in 2013.

Speaking of which, I asked the Kimbell for a status report on the addition's construction (which began in October) and for up-to-date drawings and renderings, but I was told that these won't be available until the fall.

Here's the Kimbell's press release (dated July 11), which is not on the museum's website at this writing.

George's Boston swan song is likely to be a scholarly crowd-pleaser---Degas and the Nude, co-organized with the Musée d'Orsay, opening in Boston on Oct. 9. He will assume his position at the Kimbell early next year.

As you may remember from the CultureGrrl post about my December visit to the BMFA, the museum had then just begun what was intended to be a comprehensive rethinking and reinstallation of its European art holdings. In my companion CultureGrrl Video for that post, Shackelford walked us through that project's "starter gallery"---the space just off the new Norman Foster-designed atrium devoted to 18th-century European decorative arts, sculpture and furniture (with some paintings). No word yet from Boston on who will see that project through or how this change in supervision might affect it.

Tennessee Supreme Court building in Nashville, site of recent Court of Appeals oral arguments on Fisk's Stieglitz Collection

I recently obtained the voice recording of the entire 42 minutes of oral arguments by opposing lawyers in the never-ending Stieglitz Collection case, now under consideration by the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Both sides---Fisk University and the Tennessee Attorney General---are appealing from this decision by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle. 

Near the end of listening to the June 28 legal wrangling, I experienced one of those memorable did-he-really-say-that moments.

From revelatory testimony by Fisk's own lawyer, it would appear that Alice Walton's in-construction Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, at a pivotal moment in this protracted legal battle, had an easy way out of its deal to purchase a $30-million half-share in Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection.

Without explicitly stating that Crystal Bridges would prefer to disengage from the controversial plan, the museum's director, Don Bacigalupi, had revealed to me during a recent interview that his institution's holdings had grown so substantially that "we don't really need that [the Stieglitz] collection in the way I think it was perceived we needed that collection four or five years ago." [You can listen to the audio of that statement at the bottom of this post.]

Nevertheless, he asserted (probably correctly, from a legal standpoint) that his museum was contractually bound to honor its agreement with Fisk, contingent only upon court approval of the deal.

Bacigalupi added:

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.

But in fact, Crystal Bridges needed to do more than just "stand by" for this deal to go through: Without the cooperation of the museum and its lawyers at a recent turning point in this court case, the controversial half-sale could likely have been scotched. Bacigalupi's assertion notwithstanding, the museum's proactive effort to save the deal did, in fact, have a significant "effect on the litigation."

Near the end of his verbal sparring two weeks ago with deputy attorney general Janet Kleinfelter, Fisk's lawyer, John Branham, noted that Chancellor Lyle had rejected both the plan of the Attorney General and the Fisk/Crystal Bridges deal for the future of the Stieglitz Collection, which Fisk wants to monetize, in order to improve its dire financial condition. Instead of approving either proposal, Chancellor Lyle in September had instructed Fisk (in Branham's words) to "come back to me with a revised agreement [the terms of which the judge outlined in detail], and then I'll look at it."

And then, Branham's kicker:

Frankly, I'm glad she [Chancellor Lyle] did. Most of them [the revisions] were beneficial to us. We had the power of the judge behind us, instead of negotiating with the Wal-Mart heiress [Walton]. We got a better deal.

If Crystal Bridges had wanted to find a way out of its agreement with Fisk, there was its chance: "The Wal-mart heiress" and the museum (which, its director said, didn't "really need" the collection anymore) could likely have refused to make changes that weren't part of the signed contract, extricating themselves from a transaction condemned by the Association of Art Museum Directors. The court had made it clear that it wouldn't approve the agreement as written.

In striving to satisfy the court, Crystal Bridges didn't just "stand by"; it agreed to strike a revised deal that was more advantageous to Fisk, in order to comply with the judge's wishes.

Nashville Public Radio, WPLN, recently ran a report on the Court of Appeals proceedings, which appeared as text on the station's website. Below, courtesy of WPLN reporter Blake Farmer, is the (unaired) audio for that report, which includes a soundbite of commentary from me, as well as the voice of Don Bacigalupi, excerpted from my interview with him last May at Crystal Bridges. (Click the arrow on the left side of the sound bar.)

Michael Kimmelman, critic-of-all-trades

I guess we'll have to suspend disbelief.

But NY Times culture editor Jonathan Landman's memo announcing the appointment of the paper's chief art critic, Michael Kimmelman, to the position of the paper's "chief architecture critic" (replacing Nicolai Ouroussoff) brought to mind the Metropolitan Museum's recent announcement of its new hire---Luke Syson, curator of Italian paintings before 1500 and head of research at the National Gallery, London. In January, Syson joins the Met as curator in charge of European sculpture and decorative arts, a position being vacated by Ian Wardropper (who steps up in October to the directorship of the Frick Collection).

In both cases, the announcements strive to make a case for the new appointee's qualifications and track record in a discipline where his expertise is less widely known than in his most recent area of concentration---paintings in Syson's case, art in Kimmelman's.

While noting that Kimmelman has written profiles of architects and that, long ago, he had been architecture critic for the New England Monthly, Landman's memo doesn't suggest that the new archi-critic commands an in-depth knowledge of his new beat. We are gratified to learn, however, that he is "a native New Yorker who notes how growing up in the West Village made him 'instinctively aware of the tenuous and evolving life of cities, and of people's stake in how cities change,'" in the words of Landman's memo.

Already there's been some negative buzz (scroll down) about the new architectural arbiter's perceived knowledge gap, in comments appended to the Architectural Record's blog post about the appointment.

The Architect's Newspaper's blog post on Kimmelman's appointment reported on the results of an Architectural Record poll asking readers to opine on who should be the Times' next architecture critic:

The top choice of 12 was Chicago Trib's Blair Kamin with 79 out of 685 votes. A close 2nd Place went to LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne with 76; with third (69) and fourth (66) going to Atlantic Monthly's Witold Rybczynski and AN's [Architect's Newspaper's] Julie Iovine. In Arc Rec's vote, Kimmelman attracted the fewest votes, 18, in a slightly eerie confirmation that what architects and what the paper of record think are very different.

Kimmelman won't merely be the Times' chief (will there be others?) architecture critic. He will also be accorded the catchall title of "senior critic" when he moves back to the U.S. this fall after four years in his amorphous, Berlin-based Abroad gig. He started writing for the Times back in the late '80s as a freelance music critic. And who can ever forget his tennis essays?

There's at least one likely benefit from these Times-ian musical chairs. Kimmelman's shifting attention should free up the paper's "chief art critic" designation, which Michael had unaccountably held on to in absentia.

It's high time to pass that baton to one or both of the veteran New York-based critics, Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter. Both of them write about art with a greater breadth and depth of knowledge than Kimmelman ever did.

Detail from installation of "Fifty Days at Iliam," 1978, Philadelphia Museum of Art

In his fine (but preliminary) obituary for Cy Twombly, who died Tuesday at 83, the NY Times' Randy Kennedy wrote:

He [Twombly]...mostly ignored his critics, who questioned constantly whether his work deserved a place at the forefront of 20th-century abstraction, though he lived long enough to see it arrive there [emphasis added].

[UPDATE: The Times has now published Kennedy's full-length Twombly obit, here.]

Indeed, Twombly was an artist whose difficult-to-appreciate but ultimately absorbing meditations in two-dimensional, scrawled mark-making and three-dimensional rough-hewn, found-object compositions have been accorded large, immersive (and, in some cases, permanent) installations by several U.S. institutions. (And who can ever forget the woman who kissed the Twombly?)

High-profile museum installations include: the Renzo Piano-designed Cy Twombly Gallery (a dedicated building operated by the Menil Collection, Houston); the Philadelphia Museum's large space permanently devoted to the monumental, 10-part Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978; the generous space for his work at the inaugural installation of Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the large special exhibition of what I previously called (in the Wall Street Journal) a "rhapsodic, revelatory survey of recent work..., including his monumental, lushly colored flower paintings"---a highlight of the 2009 opening of the new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing of the Art Institutute of Chicago.


Twombly, "Untitled," 2005, in the lobby of Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, at the new building's 2009 opening (which featured a special exhibition of his recent works)

In 2008, the Tate Modern, London, mounted a fullblown Twombly retrospective, curated by its director, Nicholas Serota. It traveled to Bilbao and Rome, his home town (but not to his native U.S.).

Twombly was a favorite of the Museum of Modern Art's late chief curator of painting and sculpture, Kirk Varnedoe. So it was particularly fitting that MoMA announced in March its acquisition of two paintings and seven sculptures, ranging in date from 1954 to 2005, which came from Twombly's own collection. On display since May 20 (to Oct. 3), the Twombly show has now become a memorial exhibition (as is Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, to Sept. 25).

AAMD's Dan Monroe's proliferating signature (on letter to Brandeis University)

Only a month into his presidency of the Association of Art Museum Directors, Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, has fired off another missive to a president of an institution of higher learning.

But this time (as distinguished from the recent condemnation of Randolph College's deplorable deaccessions), he's dispatched a letter of praise, not censure.

In statement sent Friday to Brandeis University board chairman Malcolm Sherman and President Frederick Lawrence, Monroe wrote:

On behalf of the North American art museum community and the Association of Art Museum Directors, I congratulate you and applaud your decision to reaffirm Brandeis University's commitment to the Rose Art Museum and to preclude the sale of works of art from the museum collection to provide support for University or Museum programs or operations....

Your decision to rescind consideration of sales of works of art from the Rose Art Museum collection to support operations and to reaffirm the University's commitment to the Museum as an integral part of the University protects and benefits the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis, and the national art museum community.

But in the letter's conclusion, AAMD appears to be trying to take some of the credit for this happy resolution:

We appreciate your willingness to engage in dialogue with representatives of AAMD throughout the past two or more years and we stand ready to assist you in any way we reasonably can to affirm and support your decision.

Actually Lawrence, who spearheaded the rededication of the university to the mission of its museum and its art collection, has been on the job for only six months, not for "the past two or more years." And he's an arts aficionado who needs no convincing about the art's importance to the university: When I visited the Rose last December, Roy Dawes, the museum's director of operations, told me that Lawrence, who had already toured the Rose prior to his January inauguration, was clearly "very involved in the arts community. I enjoyed looking at art with him. He was very insightful."

During my interview with Brandeis' president last week, he struck me as not only an arts enthusiast but also a smart manager, who needed no prodding or assistance from AAMD in handling this contretemps: He already shares the same values about deaccessions and knows full well how to build consensus. Would that Randolph College and Fisk University were favored with such effective and culturally attuned presidents.

Speaking of which, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools issued a statement on June 30, explaining its June 23 decision to continue Fisk on "warning status," which "applies to the entire institution." This means that the university's accreditation could be rescinded if SACS representatives are dissatisfied during their next on-site evaluation, this December.

Among the criteria on which Fisk has been found deficient is the requirement to demonstrate "that it has qualified administrative and academic officers."

Last November, a group of concerned alumni sent a letter to Fisk's board, calling for the resignation of the university's president, Hazel O'Leary, who spearheaded the in-litigation proposed sale of a half share of the university's Stieglitz Collection to Alice Walton's in-construction Crystal Bridges Museum. One of the reasons for the alums' loss of confidence was O'Leary's handling of this:

We are deeply concerned by, and opposed to, the Board-approved decision to seek court approval to sell a 50% interest in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection....

The present effort to gain court approval to contravene the terms of such a commitment---Georgia O'Keeffe's gifting the Stieglitz Collection and other works of art to Fisk University---erodes the faith and trust that must be invested in Fisk University, in the institution's stewards and senior administrators, to gain the confidence of those able and willing to make substantial contributions to ensuring Fisk's future as a viable and flourishing institution of higher education.

Furthermore, we are convinced that this effort in court---a multi-year, resource-draining, morale-depleting public relations fiasco---punctuated by very recent testimony in court by Ms. O'Leary that unless Fisk is allowed to sell the 50 percent interest in the Stieglitz Collection for the proposed $30 million, the University will have to close---is a manifestation of abject failure on the part of President O'Leary, and of the Board of Trustees:

---Failure to protect the interests of Fisk University in entering into a Joint Ownership Agreement with the Crystal Bridges Museum, a critical matter that had to be corrected at the direction of the judge hearing the case regarding the proposed sharing agreement

---Failure to serve as a proper moral and educational leader of the University by sitting in silence, in apparent agreement, while the attorney hired to argue the case for the sharing agreement made the educationally bankrupt and morally egregious declaration [my link, not theirs] that art created by Caucasians is of no relevance to the education of Fisk's African American students, only art created by African American artists.

Malcolm Bell, professor emeritus of Greek art at the University of Virginia and co-director of the American excavations at Morgantina

We interrupt your urgent business at the beach, swimming pool, tennis courts and golf course to offer you a diversion from today's Wall Street Journal---archaeologist Malcolm Bell's deeply informed but sure-to-be-controversial review of Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino's Chasing Aphrodite.

Its chief mission (which also seemed to be a subtext of Hugh Eakin's musings about Felcholino's book in the New York Review of Books) is to offer a spirited defense of the sacrificial curator, Marion True, whose tragic trajectory took her from a prominent position as the Getty Museum's antiquities curator to beleaguered defendant (now finally off the hook) in an Italian criminal trial, where she essentially took the fall for the entire U.S. antiquities-collecting museum profession.

"Her contributions far outweigh her mistakes," Bell concludes, after detailing True's contributions. Felcholino come down hard on her in their book, but offer much well documented evidence for doing so.

While Bell, in his review, does allude to his long-time collegial relationship to True, he fails to fully disclose his direct (if someone tangential) role in the "Aphrodite" saga. He is also a bit player in Felcholino's book.

I too have a slight conflict of interest in discussing "Chasing Aphrodite," which is why I've been somewhat hesitant to review it: I directly owe my highly enjoyable participation on the "Digging Culture" panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference to having been recommended for this desirable gig by Felcholino (two of my three co-panelists). I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Now that you know my mixed emotions on this, I'll try to overcome my scruples and give you my take on the book in a future post. I did mention, on "Which Way, LA?," that "Chasing Aphrodite" was "an investigative tour de force" (which it was). But I haven't said much (aside from a few comments in my CultureGrrl post about that KCRW radio broadcast) about how I regard the authors' interpretation of the information that they dug up.

My curse in covering the antiquities wars is that I can understand and sympathize with some of the viewpoints on both sides of this contentious debate. I think that also characterizes Bell's stance, even though he comes at things from the archaeologists' side.

In the meantime, I assume that Felcholino, on their Chasing Aphrodite blog, will soon weigh in with their reactions to Bell, just as they did with Eakin.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has quietly launched a completely revamped website, in conjunction with its launch today in the Bentonville, AR, of its membership drive.

Here's the card being proffered to "Original Members" who sign up at the tents in the town square (or online, for those of us who can't make it in person):

Eat your heart out, New York! Asher B. Durand's celebrated "Kindred Spirits," depicting Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant in the Catskill Mountains (and controversially sold in 2005 by the New York Public Library for a reported $35 million), is the new logo for Alice Walton's cultural oasis in the Ozarks.

But wait a minute! When they redesigned the website, they included lots of photos of the construction of the Moshe Safdie-designed pavilions, but they forgot the art!

On the collection portion of the site, where dozens of works were previously listed, with images, there are now a mere 20. (Some 400 works are to be included in the inaugural display, opening Nov. 11.) Interestingly, some of those now on the website are being shown for the first time, including two riotously colorful works---an Arshile Gorky...


Gorky, "Composition (Still Life)," 1936-7

...and a Nick Cave:


Cave, "Soundsuit," 2010

While you're wondering why Gilbert Stuart's "George Washington" has vanished, here's a job opportunity that is not for the faint-of-heart:

Wanna become the Director of Public Relations for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art? Now you can! But please don't apply unless you possess "the ability to handle sensitive issues and situations with discretion."