August 2011 Archives

Denver's new Mayor, Michael Hancock, expected to sign Still sales agreement with Sotheby's next week

The Denver City Council approved on Monday evening an agreement with Sotheby's for the marketing of four paintings by Clyfford Still from the estate of his widow, Patricia. The proceeds will fund an endowment for the Clyfford Still Museum, scheduled to open on Nov. 18. Were they not being offered for sale, the paintings would have been part of the collection of the new museum, which will house the works from the Still estate.

You can read the full text of that 12-page agreement here. It gives a fascinating inside look at a complicated arrangement between auction house and consignor.

Jan Brennan, Director of Cultural Programs for Arts & Venues Denver, the city agency overseeing the deal, told me that the agreement will become effective when it is signed by the Mayor, which is expected to occur next week. After that, the exact terms of commissions and guarantees will be negotiated, subject to the parameters of the preliminary agreement.

Denver received court approval in March to sell the paintings, contravening the explicit, unequivocal no-sale provisions in both Clyfford and Patricia Still's wills. This deviation from their wishes was deemed necessary because the museum "was unable to raise sufficient funding for its endowment fund for ongoing operations," in the words of the Denver/Sotheby's agreement.

What exactly is Denver planning to sell? I've previously published the numbers assigned by Still to the four otherwise untitled works. But neither the museum nor Sotheby's has thus far been willing or able to provide me with the images of the works they are marketing. The Denver City Attorney's Office, evidently convinced by my assertion that the images filed with the city are public records, sent me what it has in its files---low-quality, black-and-white images:


Images of the four paintings being sold to benefit Clyfford Still Museum's endowment, as filed with the City of Denver

Three of these four paintings are reproduced in the catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum's 1979 Clyfford Still retrospective. Two of them, reproduced in color, were among the 79 paintings in the show (which I saw).

To give you a better idea of what's being sold, here are my photos of the relevant pages from the Met's catalogue:


PH-89 (1949), 93 by 79 inches


PH-1033, 1976, 93½ by 83 inches

A third painting is seen in the Met's catalogue as part of a photograph of Still's 1946 show at Peggy Guggenheim's legendary "Art of This Century" gallery:


PH-351, 1940, 41 by 37½ inches, at center

Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, had previously told me (when I visited the museum's construction site last February) that he hoped to keep the four paintings together and "in the public domain." But the terms of the agreement with Sotheby's, still subject to the Mayor 's final approval, leave little possibility that a museum will be able to buy these pictures.

That's because if no private deal has been arranged by Sept. 19, the paintings will be put on the auction block at Sotheby's contemporary sale this November, according to the agreement. Given the fact that Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who took office on July 18, has yet to sign off on the deal, that leaves a very tight window for a sale to an art museum to be contemplated by curators and trustees, let alone consummated (unless institutions have already been approached and have expressed serious interest).

Also weighing against a private sale is the fact that Sotheby's has a much stronger financial incentive, under the terms of the agreement, to sell the works at auction, rather than privately: In a private sale, Sotheby's would get up to 5% of the purchase price, to a maximum of $7.5 million. In a public sale, the auction house's take (including the fee charged to the successful bidder---the buyer's premium) would be up to 15% of the price, to a maximum of $15 million---twice as much as the maximum compensation to the auction house for a private sale.

Unlike a private sale, where the auction house's fee would come exclusively from the sale proceeds, a public sale would potentially give the auction house the benefit of a to-be-negotiated seller's commission (if any) from Denver, and the buyer's premium from the successful bidder (25% for the first $50,000; 20% from $50,000 to $1 million; 12% for the excess above $1 million).

How much does the Clyfford Still Museum expect to receive from this sale?

Under the agreement, the minimum total guaranteed price at auction for the four-work consignment is $25 million---the amount the museum would receive from Sotheby's, whether or not the bidding reaches the level of the guarantee. (A private sale would also have to bring at least $25 million, but Denver would, under the terms of the City Council's bill approving the deal, retain the right to reject any private sale and try its luck at auction, even if the private offer topped $25 million.) The actual guaranteed price, still subject to negotiation between Sotheby's and Denver, could be higher than the $25-million minimum.

Similarly, the actual commissions to Sotheby's, while capped, are subject to further discussion and could be negotiated downwards, once the preliminary agreement is signed.

The financial parameters for a possible private sale suggest a best-case total price for the four paintings of a whopping $150 million: As noted above, Sotheby's could receive a private-sale commission of up to 5%, to a maximum of $7.5 million. That $7.5-million figure equals 5% of a $150 million pricetag (or an ambitious average of $37.5 million per painting). The record auction price for Still, set at Christie's in 2006 for 1947-R-No. 1 (69 by 65 inches), is $21.3 million.

As reported by Jeremy Meyer of the Denver Post, Christie's, which competed with Sotheby's for the consignment, took the highly unusual step of publicly lambasting Denver for choosing its rival. Christie's, according to the Post, has "hired attorneys, retained a lobbyist, requested public records and fired off a statement that said the awarding of the contract was 'arbitrary and capricious.'" [I am seeking a copy of that statement and will link to it here, if and when I receive it.]

I expect to have more on this situation, including analysis and commentary, in a future post.

The Chinese Flag

I won't summarize this for you. You have to read it.

In perhaps his most brazen defiance of Chinese authorities yet, Ai Weiwei has authored a piece for Newsweek that vividly describes the Kafka-esque quality of his life in Beijing under the current Chinese regime and gives his insider's perspective on the plight of arrested dissidents.

In detention for 81 days, Ai was released on June 22, with requirements that he remain in Beijing. (He has.) He was also instructed not to talk to reporters or use social media. (He has done both, in defiance of these strictures.)

His personal ordeal has made Beijing, for him, "A nightmare. A constant nightmare," as he said in his Newsweek piece.

For his own safety, I wish Ai would (if he can) leave. Through his increasingly bold provocations, he seems to be daring the authorities to silence him. I don't want to see Alison Klayman's upcoming documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, morph into a memorial. I do want to see him succeed in his quixotic struggle to change China, but what are the odds that he will prevail? (Then again, what were the odds for regime change in the Middle East?)

I'm holding my breath, observing this tragic drama with horror and awe, as Ai's life-and-death game plays out.

The Bennington Museum, closed today due to area flooding

[My report on NYC-area museums is here.]

Irene, although downgraded to a tropical storm, still wreaked havoc while working its way up north to New England. Particularly hard hit by devastating floods was Vermont, for which this was (as described by the Burlington Free Press) "the state's worst natural disaster since the epic flood of 1927."

A spokesperson for the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT, told me:

We were very fortunate to come through Irene unscathed. We never even lost power. We did close the museum on Sunday as a precaution during the storm. We are open regular hours today, Monday. Southern Vermont was particularly hard hit.

The Bennington Museum, located in Southern Vermont, has not replied to my e-mail, but did post this on its website:

Special Notice: Bennington Museum is CLOSED today, Monday August 29, due to flooded and damaged roads in and around Bennington.

The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown,MA, just 15 miles south of Bennington, tweeted:

Thinking of our neighbors and friends across New England who have been affected by Irene. The Clark is very lucky to be open today

In other Irene-related museum news: Heritage Preservation, a nonprofit cultural-heritage group, is gathering information about Irene-related damage to cultural and historic sites. Responses on this form will be publicly posted. The American Association of Museums, on its Twitter site, urges institutions to "complete this damage report to help centralize info for response efforts."

My selective survey of NYC museums suggests that most are returning today, Monday, to regular visiting hours, now that Hurricane Irene has left town. One exception, though, is the Museum of Jewish Heritage, located at the tip of Lower Manhattan---an area that had been subject to the city's evacuation order. [UPDATE: The museum's spokesperson now tells me that it did open today, Monday, just 15 minutes later than its usual 10 a.m. opening. Minor leaks were found, first-floor reinstallation is in progress.]

As you can see, that museum is right on the water:



The Museum of Jewish Heritage's spokesperson, Betsy Aldredge, told me this last night:

The staff is returning to the museum tomorrow [that's today, Monday] to prepare it for reopening as soon as possible. We will keep you posted regarding when we will re-open. We don't know yet. After the initial assessment, it looks like we are facing some minor leaks. Our staff worked very hard on Friday to safeguard the collection and the building.

On its blog Friday, the museum reported:

The staff has spent the past four-and-a-half hours de-installing artifacts from the first floor. As Gabe took a torah from its case---the torah that was supposed to be in the Nazi Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race. He found the act of safeguarding the torah to have incredible poignancy.

Here are what spokespersons from less beset NYC museums told me Sunday evening about their calm after the storm. [NOTE: This list is being augmented as reports come in.]:

---The Metropolitan Museum suffered no damage from Irene. Minor water incursions were easily contained. We will open as usual Tuesday. [The Met is normally closed on Mondays.]

---Both the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 will be open regular hours Monday (and the rest of the week). Neither building sustained any damage due to the storm. We took the preemptive move of removing some works from the sculpture garden on Friday. Same with the Young Architects Program courtyard installation at MoMA PS1.

---Everything good at the Brooklyn Museum. Usual hours this week, which means closed Monday and Tuesday.

---The Frick Collection sustained no damage. We will be open as usual this week.

---The New Museum is fine and will open as usual on Wednesday.

---More business-as-usual information regardng NYC museums is posted on WNYC's website.

---The Parrish Art Museum [on harder hit Long Island] weathered Irene just fine. No damage to art works or the building. We will reopen tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug. 30.

---The Nassau County Museum of Art [also on Long Island] has power, but the roadways on the property are presently impassable because of downed trees and branches. We're hoping to have that cleared in time to open tomorrow. But no guarantee.

---The Guggenheim is ready to open Monday morning and to welcome cabin-fever New Yorkers and visitors. Depending on when security staff arrives, we may need to stagger the opening of side galleries.

My recommendation is to go see the Guggenheim's Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity. The calming pleasure afforded by this Korean artist's retrospective is a perfect tonic for the hurricane jitters. ("Irene," of course, means "peace," as in the Greek goddess of peace.) Just don't spend too much time reading the labels, which mostly detract from, rather than enhance, the enchantment of this minimalist full-ramp installation, juxtaposing locally found boulders (which take on the character of compelling personages) with obdurate sheets of mottled metal...


"Relatum---silence b," 2008, steel and stone, courtesy Pace Gallery and Blum & Poe

...or ensconcing them on comfy cushions:



I also admired Lee's subtle scrim intervention, delicately veiling part of the Guggenheim's ramp...



...nicely complementing his delicate painterly gestures:


"From Line," 1974, Museum of Modern Art

But after what happened (scroll down to the video) this weekend on my terrace, a piece showing the damaging effect of a boulder on glass now has special resonance for me:


Lee Ufan, "Relatum," 1968/2011, steel, glass and stone, private collection

It looks like you'll have a number of post-hurricane options for your viewing enjoyment. And I'll update, above, with more re-opened (or not yet re-opened) institutions, if and when I receive more responses to my queries.

Now all you have to do is figure out how to get there!

National Hurricane Service's map of what's now (on Sunday) Tropical Storm Irene

New York's cultural institutions, like the rest of us, hunkered down for Hurricane Irene this weekend. Abbie Fentress Swanson, interactive content producer of WNYC (New York's public radio station), had the most comprehensive rundown I've seen of the various cultural closures and cancelations that were announced in the New York area, in anticipation of the hurricane: Theatrical and musical performances were largely canceled, museums prudently closed, both yesterday and today. We've yet to hear, though, about how art museums and their contents made out during the heavy rains, high winds and power outages.

I did manage on pre-hurricane Friday to get to synagogue to say Kaddish for my father on the first anniversary of his passing. As I lit the memorial candle in my home that night, it occurred to me that this flame might wind up doing double-duty as a light source in a power outage.

An earthquake and a hurricane in one week...What's next?

Later Friday night, I joined CultureSon and his wife for dinner in Manhattan, where the bar and restaurant scenes were hopping with young people striving to cram a whole weekend's worth of socializing into hurricane eve.

At this writing, from the other side of the Hudson, the rains have completely stopped but the winds are still kicking up. The worst of it, in my part of New Jersey (high on the Palisades, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan), hit at around 3 a.m. this morning, when I was awakened by the sound of truly ferocious and frightening gales.

How did CultureGrrl fare in a windswept apartment? Here's how:

Douglas Druick, Art Institute of Chicago's newly named president and director

Here's an appointment to a museum directorship that I think we can all agree on: It's well deserved, on all counts.

After a 26-year career of distinguished service to the Art Institute of Chicago, the scholarly, articulate and always welcoming Douglas Druick has been named as the new president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was already acting president and director as of the June departure of James Cuno, now happily ensconced at the Getty Trust. Previously (and simultaneously), Druick had been the chair of both the museum's Department of Prints and Drawings and its Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture.

In the museum's press release, its chairman, Tom Pritzker, alluded to the advantages of appointing from within, rather than searching for an outside candidate (as Chicago did when it appointed Cuno):

Many curators from the Art Institute have become directors at other museums and cultural organizations. To me, this [the appointment of Druick] reflects the strength of our organization. I could not be more pleased that the Art Institute itself is now benefiting directly from the breadth and depth of experience that only an institution of this size and stature can provide.

Some observers have rained a little on Druick's parade, taking note of his slightly advanced age. Here's Kate Taylor's report in the NY Times' on how he parried that senior-citizen question:

He said he planned to stay "a very long time." He added, "I wake up every morning anxious to be in the office and totally energized by this new position, and I have lots and lots of plans."

You go, Doug!

Two conversations that I had with Druick---one at the May 2009 opening of Chicago's Modern Wing, the other more than a year later at the New York press preview for Matisse: Radical Invention (jointly organized with the Museum of Modern Art)---demonstrated his dual strengths, as both an objects person and a people person.

In Chicago, he spoke to me about the benefits of the museum's just completed expansion, noting that the modern collection had previously been dispersed to several different locations within the sprawling museum, making it "necessary for visitors to stitch together the various experiences. Now we're able to be much more coherent and give the pictures and sculptures the room that they need. There's a real luxury of space now."

Here are what he saw as the chief benefits of this enhanced space:

I think the conversations between works of art are different. The great strength of Chicago is Surrealism....Now we're able to present them not only together but to do something with those...,situating them in a darkened space with more dramatic lighting against the experience of natural light in the galleries.

We make the point in the audio tour that we're presenting the history of modern art as it can be told in Chicago....We've made a conscious effort to play the history of the collection up against the history of the city by gesturing to the city.

From the macro of the overall installation, he drilled down into the micro of how individual artworks had benefited during the transition period from old to new galleries:

We used the time that the collections were down to do cleaning on some 30% of the modern pictures and reframe some 30% of them. Many of them are substantially transformed..., [including] Matisse's "Bathers by the River" [which Druick is standing in front of in the above photo]:

Matisse, "Bathers by a River," 1909-10, 1913, 1916-1917
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

If you had seen that picture three years ago, you would have been unaware of the gorgeous turquoise and all the pinks and the evidence of the artist's mark-making....Earlier in the [20th] century, conservators had inpainted areas....There had been interventions on the surface of the painting that we got rid of to reveal what the picture is all about.

He also noted that varnish (now removed) that had previously been applied to the surface of Matisse's Fauve "Geranium" had acted "almost like cataracts, not enabling the viewer to see the work with clarity."

Here's that vibrant picture:


Matisse, "The Geranium," 1906
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Because I didn't get a good look at the Modern Wing's galleries until after I had spoken to him, I was happy to get another chance to chat with Douglas the following year in New York, where I asked him about what I had regarded as a serious lighting deficiency in the skylit top floor of the Renzo Piano-designed expansion.

It wasn't until I viewed "Bathers by a River" at the MoMA exhibition that I felt I had finally seen it to good advantage. As I had said in my Virago in Chicago post, that painting had suffered "death-by-inadequate-illumination" at the Chicago press preview. Here's how it looked then (with natural light on the painting and a spotlight on the Matisse bust):



And here's how it looked under artificial illumination at MoMA:



This is what Druick told me in July 2010 about the pesky lighting tweaks in the Modern Wing:

We have been playing with the balance between natural light and artificial light....What is the optimal light at different times of year? In winter, the light is grayer than in the summer....The light level on the meters that we use to read light, may measure the same [at different times of year], but it doesn't feel the same. So it's playing with that: It's playing with the experience, not with the absolute light level. Sometimes we change the program settings. We change the total levels.

It's an experiment: What works in August doesn't work in January. It's figuring out how much change to you want over a year. We're getting closer and closer to what will be the status quo in the future.

Now Druick will have a lot more to play with. For a glowing assessment of Druick's ascension, go to this piece by someone who knows him a lot better than I---Alan Artner, the former art critic of the Chicago Tribune. (Bring him back!) Artner concludes by noting that "for this director, the position is not a steppingstone but a capstone to a remarkable career."

The Jewish Museum, New York

In my Wednesday post taking issue with the naming of Claudia Gould to the directorship of the Jewish Museum, I observed: "Reasonable people can disagree with me."

Now they have. (Even I am starting to disagree with me.)

The responses sent by readers (some labeled, "Not for Publication") have, in fact, been so reasonable that they have made me rethink my rush to judgment. My legalistic bent had led me to over-emphasize a technicality of my religion that makes one's "Jewishness" (or lack thereof) dependent upon matrilineal descent. (In announcing Gould's appointment, the NY Times had reported that her mother was not Jewish.)

I still do think that it's relevant, though, to examine whether the director's professional and/or personal background include a deep knowledge of and personal affinity for Jewish culture, history and identity---the focus of the institution. This personal identification has been the general rule (with some exceptions) for directors of "identity museums," whether ethnic (i.e., Latino, African American) or religious. Nothing in the Jewish Museum's press release (or in the amplification, published here on Wednesday, that the museum sent in response to my queries) suggests that Gould has the deep knowledge or personal affinity that might be expected in someone assuming the Jewish Museum's top spot.

Still, upon reflection, I think that while it was legitimate for me to raise some questions, I came down too hard on this. There is much about Gould that we have yet to learn. A more appropriate stance would have been "wait-and-see," rather than "what-were-they-thinking."

Below are comments from two readers who wondered what CultureGrrl was thinking:

Alan Wallach, professor of art and art history and professor of American Studies, College of William and Mary, writes:

I think you're being too tribal about this. Ms Gould deserves a break. Let's see how she handles the job. I would add that I don't believe in a Jewish "essence"---or in essence as a philosophical category or, for that matter, as a way to describe identity.

[I had quoted the Jewish Museum's own description of its permanent-collection installation as examining "the essence of Jewish identity," and opined that the director should possess that "essence."]

David Ross, chair, MFA: Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts and former director of the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, writes:

I can't believe you would actually raise the fully bogus issue of whether or not Claudia is Jewish enough (or Jewish at all). I think you are completely wrong in even raising this issue---particularly if you actually believe it to be of paramount importance.

What matters are several other aspects of Claudia Gould's qualifications, which I assume the museum trustees seriously considered. First of all, is she interested in Jewish history and culture, as well as its intersection with other world cultures (both ethnic and faith-based)? Second, does she understand the ways in which a museum like the a Jewish Museum serves (to paraphrase Homi K. Bhabha) as site for the contest of values and ideas? The kind of programming that should flow from these two questions will be the proof of this.

And third, is she aware of the ways in which museums continue to be changed by the digital revolution, including the ways in which a wide range of audiences and constituencies---located locally, regionally, and internationally---can (and must) be served. That she seems more than aware of how the museum must learn to function within this new era is encouraging.

I am a long-time fan of the Jewish Museum, and have known and supported Joan Rosenbaum [its retiring director] since she first came to the museum decades ago. I watched in awe as she managed the expansion of the museum, and the rebuilding of its board of trustees and support from various patron bases. I've enjoyed her exhibitions---the obvious Modernist blockbusters, and especially those provocative exhibitions that questioned notions of Jewish-American identity. I am not someone who waited impatiently for Joan to retire.

Rather, I am someone who believes that the time is now right for a return to the kind of programming that (in the late '60s and early '70s) made the Jewish Museum a place where some of the most far-reaching and radical curatorial work was being undertaken---albeit for a world not yet ready to fully engage it. In 2011, the sophistication level of NYC museumgoers is far higher and it is more important than ever for the non-Jewish audience to understand the ways in which Jewish culture can be inclusive and open to the new.

I firmly believe that Claudia Gould will carefully guide the museum to a new position within the greater NYC museum community. Her own religious beliefs and practices could not be less relevant---so long as she demonstrates understanding and respect for the traditions that are at the core of the museum (and of Jewish life in America). By this I mean openness, tolerance, and a profound engagement with ideas---even (or perhaps especially) those ideas that challenge conventional orthodoxies.

Linda Dunne, acting director, American Folk Art Museum

At the end of my narrated slideshow about the last day of the American Folk Art Museum in its W. 53rd Street building, I wistfully stated:

We can only hope that there is a place in New York City for a museum of folk art.

With the NY Times' recent publication of two articles about the museum's dire plight---one on Saturday by Kate Taylor, the other today by Robin Pogrebin---the odds for AFAM's survival in New York may have been further diminished.

While I believe that the Times absolutely had a journalistic responsibility to publish Taylor's scoop about serious discussions now in progress to close AFAM and transfer its collection to the Smithsonian Institution (with some works possibly to be shown at the Brooklyn Museum), my feeling is that this news is likely to have a chilling effect on possible donors who might have been interested in contributing to an effort to save the museum but may now believe (if they didn't already) that any rescue attempt is a lost cause. (It is also possible, but less likely, that by highlighting the museum's desperate situation, the Times articles could instill a heightened sense of urgency in potential supporters.)

Shutting down AFAM should be Plan B. There wasn't much information in the Times' articles, though, about any Plan A: an all-out appeal to megabucks donors---public, private, corporate---to keep the museum and its major collections in New York, allowing it to gradually pick up the pieces with a renewed sense of purpose.

Linda Dunne, AFAM's acting director (who, we were told, assumed the role of museum press spokesperson after Susan Flamm left that post), has so far been a non-spokesperson for CultureGrrl---not responding to my phone messages or e-mails, which began earlier this week. Calls placed to various extensions at the administrative offices of the museum (even including the one for membership and development), connected me only to voicemails. If a live person gets back to me with some substantive news, you'll be the first to know.

Having suffered from not only budgetary but also managerial shortfalls, the museum needs to reach out (if it hasn't done so already) for help from its wiser professional colleagues in the Association of Art Museum Directors (to which it belongs) and in the New York museum community. The local museum with which AFAM has the greatest affinity, in terms of the nature of the collections, is the Museum of Arts and Design. MAD got everything right in its move to a bigger building that AFAM got wrong. Most importantly, it acquired the financial underpinning it needed before opening the doors, three years ago, to its new, inviting home on Columbus Circle.

A partnership with MAD could be worth exploring, as might be a two-city partnership with another preeminent American folk art museum---the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA. This might help to address the concern expressed to Pogrebin by Stacy Hollander, AFAM's curator, that transferring the collections to the Smithsonian and Brooklyn Museum would fail to "fulfill the function of a stand-alone folk art museum....The contribution in terms of the scholarship would no longer occur, and that would be a tragedy."

At the time of the closing of the W. 53rd Street museum, Hollander still had a show scheduled for this fall in AFAM's smaller Lincoln Square space: "Life: Real and Imagined---A Decade of Collecting." But the only shows currently listed on the museum's website are Current Exhibitions, Past Exhibitions and Traveling Exhibitions. I have not yet been able to determine whether any future exhibitions are now anticipated. (I'll update here if I hear.)

Paradoxically, while the Times was running its litany of AFAM's woes in today's "Arts" section, the Wall Street Journal today ran (in its "Greater New York" section) Melanie Grayce West's profile of crafts collector and museum benefactor Nanette Laitman, a prime mover behind MAD's successful move to Columbus Circle.

Even more paradoxically, Maria Ann Conelli, the former director of AFAM, who fled the sinking ship last month, is scheduled to be keynote speaker for the Directors Forum, Oct. 23-25 in New York, titled, "Expecting the Unexpected" [via], organized by the Art Museum Partnership.

Conelli's topic (scroll down): "Budgets, Boards and Bad Decisions." This is undoubtedly a subject that she knows a lot about.


Maria Ann Conelli, then AFAM's executive director, beseeching a City Council committee two years ago to approve, at full 1,250-foot height, the MoMA/Hines skyscraper, to which AFAM had hoped to sell its air rights

Claudia Gould, newly named director of the Jewish Museum, New York

[NOTE: I've somewhat rethought my position on this, here.]

Back in 1996, the Jewish Museum mounted an exhibition provocatively titled, "Too Jewish?"

That New York museum has now named a new director, whom I would provocatively describe as, "Not Too Jewish."

The last paragraph of Kate Taylor's NY Times article (online last night), which pre-announced (before the rest of us got the press release) the naming of Claudia Gould to become the Jewish Museum's new director, gave me pause:

Ms. Gould grew up in an interfaith home, with a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother [emphasis added]. She said she was attracted to the challenge of having to decide what it means "to be a Jewish museum today," a complex question for which she has no definite answer yet. Ask her again in a year, she said, "and maybe I'll be able to answer it."

For Jews (unless they are converted Jews), religious identity is determined by matrilineal descent. So I posed the obvious questions to the Jewish Museum:

---Is Gould Jewish?

---If not, does she identify as Jewish (as do some who are children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers)?

---If neither, why is it felt that her religious identity isn't an important issue?

Here's the full response that I received from Anne Scher, the Jewish Museum's director of communications:

Claudia Gould is not a religious person. She was raised in an interfaith family, exposed to both Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions. She identifies very strongly with Jewish and Italian cultures. The Jewish Museum is an art and culture museum [emphasis added] with great strengths and significant ambitions---an art museum presenting Jewish culture for people of all backgrounds.

To achieve those ambitions, our top priority is to have a director who has outstanding credentials as a top art museum administrator with a demonstrated expertise in guiding staff and program, as well as a special talent for understanding how best to reach and inspire the most inclusive audience possible, crossing backgrounds, philosophies, and generations.

With her interfaith background, Claudia Gould will have a particularly keen sense of the Museum's imperative for inclusiveness.

Notwithstanding her "identif[ying] very strongly with Jewish and Italian cultures," Gould's professional background, as detailed in the museum's own press release, focuses exclusively on contemporary art, containing no suggestion of any prior professional interest in Jewish culture: For the last 13 years, Gould has been director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Before that, she directed Artists Space, New York.

The Jewish Museum has had a distinguished history as a venue for the cutting edge, particularly under the 1960s directorships of Alan Solomon, Sam Hunter and Karl Katz. This feels like a return to that earlier focus.

The current (retiring) director, Joan Rosenbaum (no relation to CultureGrrl), while maintaining a strong schedule of special exhibitions (including some contemporary shows), also oversaw a 1993 expansion and renovation that inaugurated the absorbing, informative two-floor permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, which brought the museum's important collection of Judaica to the fore. Gould told Taylor that she hopes to change that installation several times a year, with occasional interventions by contemporary artists.

The uncomfortable question remains: Should the director of the Jewish Museum be Jewish?

Reasonable people can disagree with me (and the trustees of the Jewish Museum already have). But my own answer to my question is based on the fact that the Jewish Museum has traditionally been devoted not only to Jewish art and culture, but also to important issues and questions regarding Jewish history and identity. Calling it (as Scher now does) "an art and culture museum" feels to me like a highly problematic mission shift.

Don't just take it from me. Here's the museum's own online description of the mission of its above-linked "Culture and Continuity" permanent (for now) installation:

It examines the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present, over 4,000 years, and asks two vital questions: How has Judaism been able to thrive for thousands of years across the globe, often in difficult and even tragic circumstances? What constitutes the essence of Jewish identity [emphasis added]?

The museum's director, in my opinion, should share that "essence of Jewish identity." Among other things, that means being Jewish.

G. Wayne Clough in the Smithsonian Castle last January.
How's Frederick Waugh's "Southwesterly Gale, St. Ives" doing?

Few museum professionals are as qualified as Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough to evaluate today's East Coast earthquake, which CultureGrrl rode out in a Manhattan doctor's office. (My friend, the patient, was having a rocky ride for other reasons.)

Unlike others elsewhere in the same medical building, I felt nothing at all. But I did hear about the quake within minutes of its occurrence from others in the waiting room, who were on their smartphones. I placed several worried calls (getting through on the third try) to CultureDaughter, who now lives near D.C. and felt the quake strongly (but is fine).

Enough about me.

Clough, an earthquake engineer, described to MSNBC's Martin Bashir the scene in the Smithsonian's 1857 Castle, its oldest building and administrative headquarters, where a lot of plaster fell on his desk and "most people decided to get under the table, which was absolutely the right response. I tried to sit and feel the motions carefully, because I can tell a good bit about an earthquake from the motion....You actually had the passing of two waves---the compression wave and the shear wave [my link, not his]....There were little plaster particles falling, there was dust in the air and we have some cracking in some of the windows."

The Washington Post's Jacqueline Trescott reported about the situation at other D.C. museums, as well as at the Smithsonian. She noted that "the National Gallery of Art reported minor plaster and paint had fallen in corners of the West Building, but an early assessment didn't show any damage to any art." The Association of Art Museum Directors tweeted that several D.C. and Virginia museums that it had heard about are "a-ok."

My guess is that a full assessment of the integrity of buildings and the condition of their contents (including art) is still a work-in-progress.

For now, here's Bashir's full conversation with Clough. (Note to Martin: It's Smithsonian Institution, not "Institute.")

Bummed by the "bumster": A scene from "McQueen"

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has lately been boasting about the boffo box office for its recently concluded fashion retrospective, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Its exultant post-show press release announced that 661,509 attendees had made "McQueen" the eighth most popular show in the museum's history.

I'll leave it to Los Angelenos to say how they feel about the outsized attendance success of LA MOCA's graffiti-intensive Art in the Streets exhibition, which also recently closed. As for the Met's fashion extravaganza, the monstrous success and the disproportionate frenzy that this show provoked among otherwise sensible adults is astonishing and troubling. Two of my own friends confessed to me that they had withstood the lines and endured the gallery scrum during the final desperation-driven week of the three-month run.

People suddenly realized that this was their last chance to see the show-of-the-moment. But it's not likely to be a show-for-the-ages, like the Number 1 hit on the Met's Top 10 Countdown of popular shows, the King Tut extravaganza of 1978-79, or Number 5, "Origins of Impressionism," 1994-95.

Success breeds imitation. The curse of "Savage Beauty" is that the very attributes that helped make this seductive display such a deservedly big draw could undermine the very qualities that traditional art audiences value most about museums---deeply informed interpretation and unobtrusive presentation, giving primacy to the works of art.

As demonstrated by my very early review and video (posted on CultureGrrl before the exhibition opened to the public and reposted on the Huffington Post ), I was second to none in my admiration for the late fashion designer's darkly alluring (if mostly unwearable) garments, and, especially, for the ingenious installation's coup de théâtre.

What worries me, though, about McQueen's triumphant (but posthumous) reign is that the British designer may spawn a dynasty: The Met and other attendance-hungry institutions, dazzled by this flashy show's stunning achievement, may be increasingly tempted to emphasize theatrics over serious purpose.

As a sample of curatorial scholarship, "McQueen" was what-not-to-wear. Its accompanying publication, according to the Met, sold "well over 100,000 copies." But (as I previously wrote) this sumptuously illustrated book, with a macabre hologram on its cover, is one of the least erudite catalogues ever produced for a Met show. And while the introductory wall text for each section was illuminating, the individual object labels were disappointingly dim.

The Met's previous director, Philippe de Montebello, frequently fretted over the possibility that today's multimedia, multi-tasking generation might lack the patience and rapt concentration needed to appreciate the subtleties of objects that just stand there, motionless and mute. With its haunting projections, eerie audio, pirouetting mannequins and windblown fabrics, "McQueen" may considerably up the ante for sound, animation and atmospherics.

High attendance brings high revenues---not only from admissions (which were bolstered by a whopping $50 charge for those attending the show on Mondays), but also from retail sales. In the case of "McQueen," the merchandise spinoffs included armadillo shoe ornaments, crystal skull paperweights and tartan purses, which, as the Met proudly informed us, "sold out several times and were repeatedly reordered." Usually an admirable leader, the Met, triumphantly milking the McQueen cash cow for all it was worth, may now be pointing the way in the wrong direction.

One almost detects a note of regret in the Met's farewell to its star attraction, which must now make way for less trendy fare. Its post-"McQueen" press release states: "The exhibition could not be extended further, because the galleries need to be turned over for the preparation of the exhibition "Wonder of the Age": Master Painters of India, 1100-1900, which will open on Sept. 28."

That chronologically arranged traveling loan exhibition of some 220 works from a variety of lenders will be "devoted to the connoisseurship of Indian painting," according to its description. This sounds reassuringly like what we have come to expect from the Met. The show was organized not by the museum's own experts, however, but by the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, where it is currently on view.

For a project of great breadth and scholarly ambition that is co-organized by the Met itself, we must await December's The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, billed as "an unprecedented survey of the period [that] provide[s] new research and insight into the early history of portraiture."

That's my idea of a must-see at the Met---timeless masterpieces, animated by scholarly intelligence.

I had previously written a different version of above headline, with a different name as the appointee.

But this time, the designation of a new leader for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, replacing long-time antiquities head Zahi Hawass, may actually stick.

Nevine El-Aref of Al-Ahram reports:

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf appointed Mohamed Abdel Fattah the new Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). Abdel Fattah was the head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities sector at the SCA. He previously served as head of the Museums sectors and director of antiquities in Upper Egypt.

So far, the response to this appointment---on Egyptology-related blogs and on Facebook---seems to be cautiously positive, unlike the sharply negative response to the previous, immediately rescinded nomination of a non-archaeologist, Abdel-Fattah El-Banna, to the same post.

As for Hawass: Zahi updated his blog on Aug. 15 (after a month-long hiatus) with a Message to all my friends, in which he described "how so many Egyptians respect and love me," notwithstanding what he characterized as "false accusations" leveled against him. Regarding those, he stated: "I am now waiting for the Office of the Attorney General to finish their investigation; after this, I will be free to publish the details of these ridiculous allegations [my link, not his]."

Outwardly undaunted by the vagaries of his uncertain circumstances, Hawass says that he is now writing "a book about the Egyptian Revolution and its effect on our antiquities. I am also getting ready to start the second part of my archaeological autobiography."

The Zahi Saga continues...

Clyfford Still Museum
Photograph by Jeremy Bitterman

The in-construction Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, which received court approval in March to sell four of the artist's paintings that came from the estate of his wife, Patricia, announced last night that the City and County of Denver, which officially own the works, have engaged Sotheby's to get the deal done. It has not yet been stated whether the works will be sold privately or at auction.

The press release about the arrangement (not on the museum's website at this writing) states:

Sotheby's is currently working with the City [of Denver] to determine a strategy for the sale of these works that is consistent with the objectives of the City and the Clyfford Still Museum.

The chief "objective" is to make up for the museum's failure to raise sufficient funds for an endowment that could adequately support its annual operating budget. When I visited the construction site with director Dean Sobel in February, the operating budget was estimated to be $2 million for the 30,000-square-foot museum, designed by Brad Cloepfil and scheduled to open on Nov. 18. Sobel had told me in February that he hoped to keep the four paintings together and "in the public domain."

As of this writing, the images of the four paintings to be sold have not yet been released. 

As I previously wrote here, these paintings, which would otherwise have been part of the museum's collection, are being monetized against the express wishes of the artist and his widow, who stipulated in their wills that none of the works could be sold.

The museum is scheduled to open on Nov. 18. Here's an excerpt from the announced plans for its first displays:

The museum's inaugural exhibition will feature approximately 110 works drawn from the Still collection [of some 2,400 works], exploring both his early arrival at complete abstraction as well as the ongoing significance of figuration on his later work. The exhibition will include a number of never-before-displayed paintings, works on paper, and objects from Still's personal archives, as well as the only three Still sculptures in existence.

Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, Atlanta

Of the three American museums that were said to have received loans and gifts of Egyptian antiquities from collector Joseph Lewis II (who was recently indicted for allegedly "conspiring to smuggle Egyptian antiquities into the United States and conspiring to launder money in furtherance of smuggling"), only one----the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University---failed to respond promptly to my queries about Lewis-connected objects in its galleries.

On Friday I received this very belated press statement (responding to my several e-mails and a phone call, dating back to July 15) from Bonnie Speed, director of the Carlos:

The Michael C. Carlos Museum has 19 objects in its permanent collection [emphasis added] that were donated by Joseph A. Lewis. To the best of our knowledge, none of the objects donated to the MCCM by Lewis were purchased from the dealers currently under investigation [who were named in the indictment---my link, not hers]. The majority of these objects are on view in our Egyptian galleries, contributing to the Museum's educational mission of sharing and interpreting the art, history, and culture of ancient Egypt.

As CultureGrrl readers will remember, the Lewis objects at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were loans, not permanent-collection acquisitions. When asked, both provided information about those Lewis-owned pieces, although Boston, unlike Virginia, did not provide a photo or provenance.

It now turns out that the museum that took longest to respond to my queries (and then only vaguely, after repeated requests) may have the biggest Lewis-related problem: It acquired, rather than borrowed, the 19 works.

The Carlos' Egyptian art curator, Peter Lacovara, had orchestrated, almost eight years ago, the widely publicized return to Egypt of a mummy believed to be Ramesses I, which had entered the Carlos' permanent collection as part of an acquisition of a large collection of ancient Egyptian material from the Niagara Collection of Egyptian Antiquities, Niagara Falls, Canada. (Here's Lacovara's own account of this repatriation.)


Peter Lacovara, senior curator, Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art, Carlos Museum

Given the serious accusations by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District, regarding Lewis' alleged collecting practices, Speed's belated statement was far from satisfying. I immediately shot off another e-mail, requesting important information that was lacking in her intial response:

---Can you please send me a complete list of the 19 objects, with provenance (including year of donation) and images (if not all the images, perhaps five of the most important objects)?

---Have you done any further investigation of the objects' history since the announcement of the Lewis indictment? If not, do you intend to do so?

---How many objects are on view in the Egyptian galleries and where are the others (i.e., other galleries, storage)?

---Have federal or foreign government officials contacted you with questions or concerns about any of the 19 objects?

Priyanka Sinha, the museum's spokesperson, replied promptly:

The information in the statement I sent is the only information we are releasing at this time.

Doing considerable damage to the index finger of my right hand, I pounded the reply button:

A refusal to release further details seems to me to be contrary to the principle of museums' transparency about the works held in their collections---a principle that was honored by both the BMFA and VMFA, in answering my queries. [Actually,  Boston's and Virginia's loaned pieces were in their galleries, but not "in their collections."]

Please tell me the reason why you decline to release any further information.

If I hear back from the Carlos, you'll be the first to know.

In the meantime, let's review what the Association of Art Museum Directors (of which the Carlos is a member), says about collection-related transparency (p. 7 of Professional Practices in Art Museums):

The collection exists for the benefit of present and future generations. It should be made as accessible as is prudent for the protection of each object. Every effort should be made to provide information about the collection, document it visually, and respond appropriately to serious inquiries [emphasis added].

Trust me, art-lings. Mine was a "serious inquiry" and the Carlos did not respond "appropriately."

But let's not just rely on AAMD's pronouncements. Let's also take a look at the Carlos' own Collecting Guidelines:

Many factors contribute to a work's suitability for acquisition, including artistic quality, intellectual appeal, historical importance, attributes which foster understanding of a particular culture or artistic movement, and, above all, a credible provenance, or history of ownership [emphasis added]....

The museum will not knowingly acquire any object which has been illegally exported from its country of origin or illegally imported into the United States. Any object surrounded by the suggestion of being illegitimate will not be acquired.

In other words, too much was left unsaid when the Carlos' director, Bonnie Speed, averred that "to the best of our knowledge, none of the objects donated to the MCCM by Lewis were purchased from the dealers currently under investigation [emphasis added]." That's a far cry from a "credible provenance, or history of ownership"---the museum's own collecting standard.

It could be that the Carlos did its due diligence in examining the provenance of the 19 objects that it acquired from Lewis, and that they're all squeaky clean. If so (and, especially, if not so), the museum should fully disclose their ownership histories, including the year(s) the pieces were acquired from Lewis.

If the objects were acquired by the Carlos after June 4, 2008 and lacked a "credible provenance" dating back to November 1970, AAMD's guidelines require that they be posted to the online registry that the association has established for such objects.

At this writing, the Carlos is not among the seven institutions whose acquisitions appear on that website.

As a CultureGrrl aside---I had time to post this from home because my scheduled flight to Canada today was hit by one of those infamous (very belatedly announced) Newark Airport cancellations. I'll be taking off tonight (maybe) for my work-ation, hitting the hotel bed around midnight, if all goes according to (revised) plan. I may or may not post this week, but if I do, I won't be e-mailing links to CultureGrrl Donors until my return.

This gives me more time to peruse the catalogue for one of the exhibitions that I'm hoping to see...if only I can get there!

Northwest view of the new MoMA Monster, truncated by architect Jean Nouvel
Photos of plans by Lee Rosenbaum

Almost two years after architect Jean Nouvel was sent back to the drawing board by New York's City Planning Commission and City Council to lop 200 feet off his MoMA Monster (reducing its height to 1,050 feet), the developer, Hines, has at last submitted new plans to the city for the "asymmetrical, multi-faceted spire," which includes space for yet another expansion of the Museum of Modern Art.

Market conditions, as much as (or more than) development complications, have stalled the progress of the project. Steve Cuozzo of the NY Post recently reported (scroll down) that Hines is said to be "casting around for an equity partner to get its stalled 53 W. 53rd St. residential/hotel tower off the ground."I recently perused the latest public filings for the project, readily accessible by appointment, at the Department of City Planning. (The Observer's Matt Chaban, who wrote that he had made a "public information request" to see these government documents, had an appointment directly after mine. His report is here.)

The City Planning Commission's chair, Amanda Burden, pronounced herself pleased with the revisions.

"The top is glorious," Burden told me when I ran into her at the Downtown Whitney's groundbreaking, before the plans were formally filed. "It's going to be a great signature addition to the skyline." She added that the building's "facets are more pronounced" and there is more of a sense of movement around the exterior.

In a draft report, the commission had criticized the design for giving insufficient attention to the design of the tower's apex. In particular, the commission was "not satisfied with the attempts at incorporating mechanical equipment into the tower top, which results in a tower top with highly visible mechanical equipment." (The top four floors in the new design are still occupied by mechanical equipment.)

While there are as yet no full-color, detailed renderings of the tower's appearance, there are numerous line drawings from different perspectives. Here's a view from the northeast (a flipside of the view at the top of this post):


Northeast view of the MoMA/Hines tower

And here's a view that gives a clearer sense of the various segments of the building, which rise to different heights:



George Lancaster, Hines' spokesperson, told me that renderings will be provided "later this year." The images and information provided by Hines on the project's webpage are outdated.

Here's how the tower's "Key Architectural and Design Features" are described in the public filings:

The façade consists of several sloped planes at different angles, which ascend to a sharp needle at the top of the building. The tower top is distinguished by three distinct asymetrical peaks, of varying height and shape. The top peak has a vertex with an interior angle of 27 degrees.

The façade treatment of the building consists of non-mirrored glass and painted aluminum elements. And the interior structure of the building is expressed on the façade in an aluminum web "diagrid" pattern of nodes and spokes, which extends from the sidewalk to the top of the building, not including mechanical spaces.

The mechanical equipment at the top of the building is set behind a façade of blades, or louvres [thereby addressing the Planning Commission's concern].

The 78-story (reduced from 85-story) skyscraper's 629,058 square feet represent a slight reduction from the 658,000 square feet in the original design. There's been no downsizing of the 51,950 square feet allocated for the Museum of Modern Art's expansion, located on the second, fourth and fifth floors. The new plan allocates 480,449 square feet for residential space (floors 14-74); 96,659 square feet for a hotel (floors 8-13).

MoMA sold to Hines (scroll down) the land to be occupied by the project for $125 million. It now also owns an adjoining site that had been occupied by the American Folk Art Museum, for which MoMA recently paid $31.2 million.

When will this much delayed project finally break ground? Not until 2013 at the earliest; perhaps as late as 2015. That's what I learned (and confirmed with a MoMA spokesperson), after reading this passage in the museum's 2010 financial statement (P. 20):

In May 2007, the Museum [MoMA] sold approximately 162,000 square feet of development rights over undeveloped property owned in Manhattan. A gain of $98,176,000 was generated from the sale of these rights. The Museum retains ownership of the underlying land and approximately 48,000 square feet of development rights as well as below grade space, all to be utilized for gallery, storage, and mechanical facilities.

In December 2009, the Museum and the developer agreed to delay the closing of the sale of the additional air rights over undeveloped property until at least 2013, with additional extensions to 2015 [emphasis added], in consideration of which the Museum has received a deposit of the purchase price which is reflected in deferred revenue on the consolidated statements of financial position (see Note 8). [Note 8 indicates that the museum received $35-million as a deposit for the air rights; MoMA declined to reveal the total amount to be paid at the time of the delayed closing.]

Other air rights being transferred to the project include: up to 136,000 square feet from University Club; up to 275,000 square feet from St. Thomas Church; up to 31,389 square feet from the MoMA-owned property that was formerly the American Folk Art Museum.

Speaking of the sadly diminished AFAM, its public relations director, Susan Flamm, has thrown in the towel, fleeing to "pursue other interests" (including consulting for the Grolier Club). AFAM's acting director, Linda Dunne (who assumed her post after the embattled Maria Ann Conelli stepped down), will take on the PR tasks, at least for now.

CultureGrrl is also fleeing next week---to Canada for my two-city work-ation. Blogging will be on the back-burner. (But I do have one hot-button post planned.)

While I'm gone, my still unmet Canadian Challenge (seeking reader support for two of my five nights' hotel) remains active, as is my Donate button. Speaking of which, my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Donor 174 from Norman, OK.

Signature image on Ai Weiwei's Twitter page

When I wrote on Monday that Ai Weiwei's defiance of Chinese authorities (on Google+ and Twitter) was "at once heroic and horrifying," I didn't know the half of it.

Sui-Lee Wee of Reuters yesterday published an anonymous source's shocking account of the harrowing details of the dissident artist's detention. (That story was then picked up by Tania Branigan of the Guardian).

Here's an excerpt from Reuters (but you must read the whole thing):

In the first broad account of Ai's treatment in detention since he was released in June, the source, who declined to be identified fearing retribution, said the 54-year-old artist was interrogated more than 50 times by police, while he was held in two secret locations.

The questioning focused on his purported role in the planned Arab-inspired "Jasmine Revolution" protests in China in February and his writings that could constitute subversion, said the source.

That account runs counter to the Chinese government's repeated statements that Ai's detention was based on alleged economic crimes....

In the second location..., [Ai] was watched over by two police officers for 24 hours a day, with their faces often inches from his, watching his every movement even while his slept.

Ai had to ask the police officers for permission to drink water and use the toilet. He was not allowed to speak and was watched over by the officers even while he slept. They demanded that he put his hands on top of the blanket, the source said.

"It was immense psychological pressure," the source said.

Also fascinating, for both what it does and does not say, is a report [via] by Liang Chen of the Beijing-based Global Times, on what is billed as "Ai Weiwei's first interview since being released from detention." Its partial candor in airing Ai's views (highlighting those that can be construed as agreeing with government positions), is balanced by negative views expressed by conservative Chinese critics. The piece is a measure of some improvement in freedom of the press in China, tempered by continuing limitations on those freedoms.

High up in the piece is this account of a quote purportedly uttered by Ai:

While Ai continues to demand reforms, he said he has never called for a change to the form of China's government. "Overthrowing the regime through a radical revolution is not the way to solve China's problems," Ai said. "The most important thing is a scientific and democratic political system." 

Does that sound like him? I'm not so sure.

But this certainly does:

I will never stop fighting injustice.

Although the piece mentions Ai's Google+ account, it never mentions that he is also now back on Twitter, saying instead that he has been "banned" from using it.

Tania Branigan, China correspondent for the Guardian

As I said yesterday in my post about Ai Weiwei's electrifying return to Twitter, the recently released Chinese dissident artist seems determined to speak truth to power, no matter what the personal cost. In his latest tweet, posted nine hours ago, he explains why:

If you don't speak for Wang Lihong, nor for Ran Yunfei, not only you're the sort that doesn't speak up for fairness and justice, you have no love for yourself

A Twitter page that posts the English translations for Ai's tweets is here. The translations can also be found here.

As always, the indispensable Tania Branigan of the Guardian is the go-to person for in-depth information about these latest developments. She identifies the various detainees about whom Ai has been tweeting, and she spoke directly to the artist about his latest act of political resistance.

Branigan writes:

Wang is expected to face trial within weeks for "creating a disturbance" after demonstrating in support of bloggers accused of slander after writing about a suspicious death. Ran, a high profile blogger, was detained in March and later formally charged with "inciting subversion of state power." [Both were mentioned in today's tweet.]...

Four of Ai's associates---his friend Wen Tao, designer Liu Zhenggang, accountant Hu Mingfen and driver and cousin Zhang Jinsong [all mentioned in a previous tweet]---were held for around two months, and released shortly after him.

And here's part of what Ai said to Branigan:

So many people were related to my case and were inhumanely treated for so long ... How could society and the system do this kind of thing and use the name of justice?

Signature image on Ai Weiwei's revived Twitter page

Ai Weiwei, released from detention on June 22, was already asking for trouble by posting provocative documents recently on Google+.

But with his apparent return to Twitter, he's flirting with disaster.

Like his Twitter page, the English translation site for his tweets (managed by volunteers) is up and running again. His first rounds, on Saturday, were innocuous. But then he detonated these explosives. (All times are from Beijing.)

---Monday, 11:29 p.m.: I saw Liu Zhenggang today. It's the first time that he talks about the detention. He held up his right hand and said, "Reporting to supervisor, I need to drink water." Then, tears rolled off this tough man's face...He had a heart attack when he was at the detention facilities and almost died.

---Monday, 11:29 p.m.: For a certain period of time, we were held at the same location. I heard that another artist with a beard came in, but I never thought it was him.

---Tuesday, 12:09 a.m.: They were illegally detained because of me. Liu Zhenggang, Hu Mingfen, Wentao, Zhang Jinsong, innocently they suffered huge mental devastation and physical torture [emphasis added].

It appears that Ai will not---cannot---remain silent. We can only hope he will not be silenced.

I guess that when the outspoken artist recently told Jonathan Watts of the Guardian (in apparent violation of government instructions forbidding contact with the media) that "freedom of expression...is most important for my art," we should have known what would come next.

Ai seems determined to speak truth to power, at his own extreme peril. This defiance is at once heroic and horrifying.

"A new day," he just tweeted three hours ago (morning in Beijing), in a post that hasn't yet made it onto the translation site.

May he live to see many...and may they be full of sunlight.

The rubble-strew vacant lot at Houston Street and Second Avenue, now transformed as the site of the BMW Guggenheim Lab
Photo: Kristopher McKay
© Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

With federal and state governments already in financial meltdown, and with today's Dow drop suggesting that we could be coming down with another economic-flu epidemic, where can future arts sponsorship be found?

The answer, for better or worse, may be those corporations that remain robust in spite of it all---particularly foreign-based businesses that may not be quite as restricted in their philanthropy by the bottom-line concerns of shareholders as are many American firms today.

With support from both public sources and hard-hit individuals imperiled, it can be tempting for art museums to look for love in the wrong places---accepting expedient exhibition support from collectors or dealers who have direct economic interests in single-collection or single-artist shows. But that trip comes with too much conflict-of-interest baggage. There's another way---comparatively disinterested corporate support---as exemplified by the Museum of Modern Art's recent exhibition sponsorships by Hyundai Card.

The BMW Group deserves a hat-tip not only for sponsoring the BMW Guggenheim Lab, which opened free to the public last week on Manhattan's Lower East Side (to Oct. 16), but also for gamely allowing the Guggenheim's organizers---David van der Leer, assistant curator, architecture and urban studies, and Maria Nicanor, assistant curator, architecture---free reign in determining the project's content and theme, "Confronting Comfort," which, to a large degree, runs counter to the sponsor's core mission of selling luxury cars.


Inside the BMW Guggenheim Lab

At the press preview last week, I learned that the theme chosen by the Guggenheim for the first three venues of the lab (next stops: Berlin and Mumbai) involves sacrificing certain personal luxuries for the greater good. Among other things, that means getting cars (including BMWs) off the streets, in favor of mass transit.

As described by the project's website:

The Lab will explore how urban environments can be made more responsive to people's needs, how people can feel more at ease in urban environments, and how to find a balance between notions of modern comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.

The centerpiece of the New York installation of the lab, which will feature a wide range of speakers and film screenings, is a a group role-playing game, Urbanology, developed by the New York-based Local Projects with physical design created by the Rotterdam-based ZUS. (If all goes according to plan, you will be able to play that game online, beginning on Wednesday.)

Here's the Urbanology playing board, with its wooden playing tokens in the vitrines:



And here are some of the questions asked of participants in this role-playing exercise:

Will you mandate that car-rental companies in the city offer hybrid and electrical cars only?

Will you impose a $5 toll on cars entering downtown?

Will you subsidize consumer purchases of electric cars and install charging points around the city?

Since "Confronting Comfort" is a CultureGrrl sub-speciality, I confronted Thomas Girst, BMW's head of cultural engagement, about the disconnect between the lab's car-wary theme and the sponsor's products. As you'll see in the CultureGrrl Video below, Girst is a master of the martial art of deflecting uncomfortable confrontation. (He didn't even mention, but could have, that BMW sells hybrid cars and is about to roll out electric models.)

For the video, I first spoke with the designers of the Urbanology game, then grilled Girst, and finished by chatting with the amiable Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim, who told me that, to his mind, the "principal achievement" of the lab "would be to have a big impact on the discourse of what the city can be and, maybe more importantly, what it should be." The aspiration to be a beneficial urban game-changer may ultimately prove a stretch for a mere art museum to pull off. But there's no harm trying:



At the conclusion of the lab's two-year, three-city cycle, the Guggenheim Museum will mount an exhibition in New York presenting the findings of this project. (There will subsequently be two more three-city BMW Guggenheim Labs in other locations, with not-yet-determined themes.)

The minimalist design for this traveling intellectual circus was devised by the Tokyo-based Atelier BowWow, which itself has eschewed comfort with an open-to-the-street structure that provides scant shelter from the elements and no insulation at all from the considerable traffic noise on hectic Houston Street---a serious impediment to thinking at this well-intentioned think-tank.

Particularly hostile to comfort is the barebones seating for the New York programs. The chair below was occupied on Friday night by Ricardo Scofidio of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro architectural team, during the hour for which he sat (with no apparent discomfort) in the audience (after which he joined his wife and professional partner, Liz Diller, at the podium for a Q&A):



Diller, a member of the BMW Guggenheim Lab's advisory committee, spoke about her firm's practice---both its early conceptual projects and its more recent high-profile forays into major construction, for which she says her firm "has a vested interest in discomfort." Her firm's popular transformation of the High Line in New York, Liz enigmatically informed us, is like a Seinfeld show---"about nothingness.'

Walter Liedtke,curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, responds to my comments about his Frans Hals show in yesterday's post, The Whit/Met: Holland Cotter Thinks Outside the Breuer Box:

A few quick points about your piece: The "Laughing Cavalier" is in the Wallace Collection, which can never lend. Manet's pastel of "George Moore" could not have been displayed at the required low light levels while in the same galleries with the paintings on view in "Hals."

A big Hals show---yes, I could have done that. But I know that my colleagues at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, plan a big show on Hals and his Haarlem circle in the near future.

So much of what I read in the press seems to suggest that curators could do this or that if only museum policy or wisdom or vision or investment would allow it, and yet for 30 years I and every colleague I know in the Met have done precisely or pretty nearly the exhibitions they wanted to do, with a great deal of independence.

A number of CultureGrrl readers have responded to my call for a list of emerging museum-related ethical issues that I should bring to the table in my role as "oracle" for the American Association of Museums' new Center for the Future of Museums.

A week ago, I outlined my own ideas, which I sent to the CFM. But as soon as I submitted my survey response, I realized that I had omitted one crucial concern that I've written about recently and exhaustively.

Happily, Elizabeth Reiss, director of development at the Albany Institute of History & Art, raised the issue for me:

Are the culture wars over and who won?

Indeed, the conundrum of how to balance political pressure and professional judgment, which came to the fore in the recent "Hide/Seek" contretemps, is far from solved.

Reiss also identified some economic issues that have ethical implications:

The economy has forced salary cuts, which is translating to lower starting salaries. We are back to days when only the brave or family-funded can enter the field. Also, with less funds, we are examining every expense and trying to keep as close to mission as possible. Was doing multicultural programming and hiring staff from diverse backgrounds a luxury of higher funding, and has the lack of funding permitted some museums to withdraw into their ivory towers?

Senta German, associate professor, classics and general humanities, Montclair State University, who specializes in the Greek Bronze and Iron Ages, writes:

Fakes! What about issues of authenticity? How much did the Metropolitan Museum pay for that totally questionable Duccio [my link, not hers]? Never mind the Cycladic Harper [discussed near the end of this NY Times Magazine article].

Steve Miller, adjunct professor, Seton Hall University's M.A. Program in Museum Professions, citing the cautionary examples of two financially struggling institutions---the American Folk Art Museum and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, writes:

I have been wondering about how ethical it is for trustees to make major financial decisions for museums, such as expanding and/or borrowing money then walking away to let the place fend for itself. Unfortunately, when museums are created to be attractions, they inevitably run into trouble. Building, expanding, growing, etc., with the idea that the costs of doing so, both immediate and in future operations, will be covered by earned-income, is almost always a falacious expectation in the museum world.

But the comment that gave me the biggest kick came from New York attorney John Sandercock, who shares my distaste for the CFM's use of "surface" as a transitive verb (as in my headline for this post):

I am going to be teaching a graduate course in legal writing for foreign lawyers this fall at Fordham Law School and will be trying to keep the students from doing things like using "surface" as a verb (unless they are writing about submarines).

Instinctively, I agree with your dislike of "surface" as a transitive verb, but see this [which cites the Oxford English Dictionary].

One thing's for sure, art-lings: CultureGrrl readers are an erudite bunch!

If you want to bypass your Oracular Representative, you can go straight to the CFM with your suggestions about emerging ethical issues for museums.

Christie's was still calling itself "the world's leading art business," in its July 21 press release announcing its $3.2 billion total sales (public and private) for the first half of 2011.

But, in fact, Sotheby's, which issued its first-half results today, nosed ahead of its archrival, with total sales of $3.4 billion. Its press release stated that this was Sotheby's "highest ever" first-half result. But later, the company's spokesperson, Diana Phillips, told me that "2008 was slightly higher, at $3.44 billion." (When I get this confusion straightened out, I'll clarify here.)

[UPDATE: Phillips now says: "Consolidated sales for first half 2008 were $3.2 billion," making it Sotheby's second-highest first half result. I myself had reported back in August 2008 that the total sales figure then reported by Sotheby's for its first half was $3.44 billion (the figure given to me yesterday by Phillips). But I noted in my 2008 post that Sotheby's had then "fudged its figure a little bit: It included its contemporary art sales, occurring in London on July 1 and 2, which fell just outside this year's first half," but had been in the first half the previous year)." My guess is that Sotheby's has now "de-fudged" its 2008 figures, making this year's first half its highest.]

Sotheby's net income increased 54% to $129.7 million over the same period in 2010; Christie's, a private company, does not release income figures. Auction sales for the first half totaled $2.96 billion at Sotheby's; $2.74 billion at Christie's.

As this chart compiled by Sotheby's shows, Christie's has bested or equaled Sotheby's in auction-market share for 13 of the last 15 years. (You can click on the chart for a larger, clearer pop-up image):



Sotheby's total sales were up 44% over the same period last year; Christie's were up 25% by dollar (15% by British pound, the company's home currency). Christies laid claim to selling eight of the top 10 lots auctioned during this period, "each selling for in excess of $20 million."

In his conference call yesterday afternoon with security analysts, Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby's president and CEO, barely mentioned the turnabout in market share. He alluded to it, in passing, during the question-and-answer part of the call, but not as part of his opening remarks. Focusing on profitability (which Christie's doesn't divulge), he has habitually downplayed the significance of the total-sales comparison, which particularly made sense when Sotheby's was Number Two.

So ebullient was Ruprecht over the recent results that he seemed almost to forget (or to want his listeners to forget) the very recent history of a precipitous, economy-driven market slump after the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008:

As people have great uncertainty, whether it's debt ceilings, or whether it's about inflation in some part of the world, or about deficits in another part of the world, you see an awful lot of people migrating a certain portion of their assets to hard assets, particularly apart from real estate....

For the very wealthy, continuing to be able to own works of art that are currency-indifferent and likely to be valuable in almost any economic moment [emphasis added], with any set of economic thunderclouds on the horizon, seems to be pretty compelling....A lot of the volatility and the uncertainties about the economy seem to be drawing people to our world and making people feel more confident with this group of works as a way for them to deploy significant capital...

...that is, at least until the next major economic crash occurs. As you can see on the above chart, the Big Two's total auction sales plummeted in 2009 to $5.2 billion from a high of $11 billion in 2007.

But even the bullish Ruprecht acknowledges that although "we're in the middle of a situation where overall market is growing very quickly," the volume "cannot continue to grow at [this] velocity...ad infinitum."

Illustration for Holland Cotter's Met/Whitney thinkpiece: What's wrong with this picture?

Holland Cotter, the NY Times' Pulitzer-prize winning art critic, brainstormed about the future of the Metropolitan Museum in a long front-page piece in the Sunday "Arts & Leisure" section, coming up with some compelling suggestions for what the Met could do with the Breuer-designed building that it plans to lease from the downtown-moving Whitney for at least eight years, beginning in 2015. He's not a fan of the tentative plan to devote the Madison Avenue space to contemporary art.

There's no reason why the Met couldn't implement Cotter's excellent ideas in its current flagship on Fifth Avenue. To some extent, it has already done so.

Cotter noted (and others, including me, have also observed) that the Met is not particularly esteemed for its contemporary art collection. The veteran Times critic would prefer a more far-ranging, innovative focus in the Whitney's space:

We don't need a large amount of any one kind of art, from any one culture, from any one period, in any one medium. What we need to see is what we never see: as much as possible of the more than 90 percent of the museum's permanent collection that is ordinarily assigned to storage. And we need to see this art---all of it, not just modern and contemporary works---presented in experimental, un-Met ways....

What we want most from the Met is what only the Met can give: thousands of years of world culture brought to life in small polycultural exhibitions [emphasis added] shaped by skilled curators.

This mirrors one of my Ten Suggestions for Tom Campbell, posted on CutureGrrl one month before Philippe de Montebello's successor assumed the Met's directorship in January 2009. Among my (mostly unheeded) suggestions---"more cross-cultural exhibitions."

As I wrote then:

The proponents of the "universal museum" make a big fuss about how important it is to be able to compare art of different times and cultures in one institution. But they rarely mount exhibitions that explicitly illuminate such correspondences and influences.

Scene from the Philly Barnes construction webcam

Arguments in Montgomery County Orphans' Court, Norristown, PA,  have just concluded in the attempt by opponents of the Barnes Foundation's move to Philadelphia to convince Judge Stanley Ott to agree to a reconsideration of his decision permitting the foundation to relocate. That decision allowed the Barnes to deviate from written stipulations by founder Albert Barnes that his collection always be shown just as he left it, in the facility he built for it in Merion, PA.

Samuel Stretton, lawyer for the opponents to the move, told me today after the hour-and-a-half proceedings that Ott's decision on whether to reopen the case would probably occur in 20 to 30 days. If the judge rules against him, Stretton said, his clients will likely appeal to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Stretton conceded that Judge Ott, in comments in court today, showed that he was "concerned about the concept of finality": The case was initially decided by Ott in 2004; he stood by his decision in 2008.

Having sat in Ott's Norristown courtroom for some of the oral arguments in the initial Barnes proceedings, I completely agree with the Stretton's position that the Attorney General had failed to properly perform his duty to vigorously represent the interests of the public and of the deceased donor, when the Barnes Foundation sought the necessary court approval to overturn the trust indenture. Even Judge Ott, in a previous ruling (quoted by me at the post linked in this paragraph), had agreed that "the course of action chosen by the Office of the Attorney General prevented the court from seeing a balanced, objective presentation of the situation, and constituted an abdication of that office's responsibility."

But (as I previously commented here), while the arguments raised by the petitioners might be cause for an investigation of the former AG's divided loyalties and possible misdeeds, I suspect that, at this late hour, when construction is almost completed on the portion of the Philly Barnes that is intended to house the founder's collection, it's too late to stand in the way of something that's nearly a fait accompli.

I hope Sam proves me wrong.

AbEx Gap: Pollock flanked by two Newmans stand in for the entire New York School in painting-and-sculpture galleries at New York's premiere contemporary/modern museum.

Not to be outdone by the Metropolitan Museum's recently announced $25 suggested adult admission fee, the Museum of Modern Art last week announced that it would up its mandatory fee to $25. MoMA's rate hike (from $20) will kick in on Sept. 1. (Note to the thrifty: You can save $2.50, if you buy your ticket online.)

The timing of MoMA's announcement is particularly unfortunate, because It has lately been depriving its own ticket-buying audience of large groups of its signature works---the ones that visitors (especially one-shot summer tourists from abroad) hope to see when they make the pilgrimage to W. 53rd Street. They may be disappointed to discover that large contingents of must-see icons have been dispatched to loan shows at other venues.

As CultureGrrl readers may remember, MoMA's chief curator of painting and sculpture, Ann Temkin, had stated (a year into her tenure) that she deemed only about 10 works from the collection under her purview to be so crucial that they would almost always have to remain in the galleries. Who knew this might translate into decisions to ship off-premises, for long periods, large groups of works that we normally expect to find on MoMA's walls?

Two weeks ago, when I fled from the press preview of MoMA's high-tech Talk to Me show to the permanent-collection galleries for painting and sculpture, I discovered that the New York School was barely represented at New York's preeminent modern/contemporary art museum. That's because the museum's sprawling "Abstract Expressionist New York" show---some 100 works including almost all of MoMA's masterpieces from the period---is summering in Canada at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

In the introductory wall text for the above-pictured MoMA gallery (which also includes non-AbEx works by Francis Bacon and Giacometti), the museum did not so much as mention the words "Abstract Expressionism." Instead, it referred to "allover compositions built from webs of paint or walls of color [that] fill the viewer's field of vision."

For any wall-text references to Abstract Expressionism, you need to proceed to the galleries that present an extensive survey of Pop artists and other successors to the AbEx-ers. There we learn that Johns, Rauschenberg and Twombly demonstrated "both continuity and rupture with their predecessors," signaling "a way beyond Abstract Expressionism." (But don't try to make these comparisons for yourself. Right now, you can't.)

The show now in Toronto is essentially what we saw in New York for a very prolonged run (Oct. 3-Apr. 25). It is high on masterworks, low on insightful interpretation, with wall texts and labels that seem targeted to newcomers who don't crave deep insights into this pivotal period because they have entered the galleries knowing next-to-nothing.

Temkin essentially admitted as much when she invited a press focus group (including me), on June 2, 2010, to learn about her plans for the show (which opened on Oct. 3). She told us that a chief mission of AbEx NY was to expose those works to younger museumgoers, for whom this 60-year-old movement was distant, vaguely apprehended history. She also said that she was not going to provide in-depth insights in the related companion publication, because she wanted to ponder her own juxtapositions of MoMA's extensive holdings before thinking deeply about their significance.

The result reminded me of a terrific hand in bridge, where the cards you've been dealt are so powerful that you can just slap them down on the table (or, in this case, on the walls and floors) and make a grand slam without even thinking much about how to play it.


Installation shot from MoMA's recent "Abstract Expressionist New York" show

Glenn Lowry, director of the museum, alluded to the show's unambitious purpose in his preface to its catalogue, which also includes a brief essay by Temkin, but no in-depth commentary on the individual works:

For many younger viewers, for whom this period ended long before they were born, it provides a first chance [unless, of course, they caught the much more absorbing and illuminating Action/Abstraction show, just two years earlier at the Jewish Museum, New York] to view in depth works of art whose formal and philosophical concerns have great relevance to their own generation.

Fortunately, the Canadian vacation of this beautiful-but-dumb show ends on Sept. 4, so a more satisfying sampling of Abstract Expressionism should return to MoMA's galleries soon after its admission-fee hike take effect.

But soon after, another group of masterworks takes flight---Picasso to Warhol, opening at the High Museum, Atlanta, on Oct. 15. These snowbirds will staying south until Apr. 29.

Here's how the High describes that show:

With more than 100 world-famous works assembled exclusively for the High from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, this exhibition features fourteen key 20th-century artists, seen together for the first time in the Southeast.

Here's that exhibition's signature mastepiece:


Picasso, "Girl Before a Mirror," 1932
© 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This was one of the 10 works that Temkin had previously said should always be kept on view at MoMA (except, I suppose, when they're on loan elsewhere). Disappointed visitors can always head over to MoMA's giftshop, where they can view (and acquire) the "Girl Before a Mirror" magnet and the "Girl Before a Mirror" note card box.