September 2011 Archives

Michael Kimmelman's new Twitter logo photo

From the refined cultural capitals of Europe to the gritty, unkempt South Bronx? Who would've thunk it?

I'm a Bronxite, born and raised---grew up there (in what's now considered part of the South Bronx) and was schooled there (thanks, Bronx Science), until I left our fourth-floor walk-up apartment on the evocatively named Echo Place to head for college in Ithaca, NY. There I discovered that it's possible to wander around at all hours in one's neighborhood (the Cornell campus) without feeling a constant undercurrent of tension and wariness.

So imagine my surprise and delight to discover that Michael Kimmelman's professional U-turn---from the NY Times' chief art critic to its new architecture critic---involved not only redefining himself but also redirecting the paper's architecture coverage, which had focused chiefly on prestigious starchitectural projects during his predecessor Nicolai Ourossoff's tenure.

In the front-page review in which he kicked off his new gig on Monday, Kimmelman wrote:

The [architecture] profession, or in any case much talk about it, has been fixated for too long on brand-name luxury objects and buildings as sculptures instead of attending to the richer, broader, more urgent vein of public policy and community engagement, in which aesthetics play a part.

Via Verde [the Bronx housing project that Michael spotlights] helps shift the conversation.

While I haven't always agreed with Kimmelman, I have always appreciated his capacity for pointed, provocative advocacy---something that's been in relatively short supply (although not entirely missing) since he decamped for Europe. While he cannot (and should not) neglect the pomp of the starchitectural parade, it will be good to see a new emphasis on how projects actually work for the real people who occupy these spaces on a daily basis.

Unlike politicians who periodically alight for a soundbite in the 'hood and then move on, Kimmelman, a native New Yorker, is following up. On his new Twitter page, he wrote this on Wednesday:

Just shot Times video w city zoning czarina Amanda Burden surveying all the housing in South Bronx that has transformed the neighborhood.

Near the end of his Via Verde review, Michael indicated that he plans to return for another look at this urban architecture---when it is actually in use by its target audience:

The real test for Via Verde---watch this space [emphasis added]---will be once its residents have settled in, to see how green and healthy and gracious they actually find it.

Speaking of architecture critics on Twitter, Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker (and former architecture critic at the Times, prior to Muschamp and Ouroussoff) began tweeting up a storm on Sept. 19. He's well worth following (and I am doing so).

In light of his previous savaging of Jean Nouvel's Musée du Quai Branley in Paris, as well as his stated concern about how buildings fit into their communities, I'll be interested to see what Kimmelman has to say about the controversial MoMA Monster, designed by Nouvel. The French architect has consistently been an Ouroussoff favorite.

The Bronx has always been in the process of being "transformed." At least once every decade, the Paper of Record runs a piece about the "rebirth" of my native borough. The streetscape keeps changing, as different waves of aspirational immigrants move in, hoping to move up. But it always retains its rough-around-the-edges, polyglot flavor. (Speaking of which, the headline of this post derives from the infamous couplet by the comic poet, Ogden Nash---"The Bronx/ No thonx.")

I'll be interested to see the real Via Verde, as distinguished from the fragmentary architects' rendering that the Times published with Michael's article. Here, from the project's website, is a better rendering, showing the entire building:


Via Verde, Brook Avenue and E. 156th Street, designed by Dattner Architects, New York, and Grimshaw Architects, London

The best time to evaluate new architecture is when it is fully occupied by its intended users. Otherwise, as Kimmelman suggests, it's just sculpture, not a functioning structure. That's why, in reviewing a new museum building, I feel it's important to see the place when it's actually in use, not just during a viewing reserved exclusively for the press.

The VIP Art Fair, which fizzled in its inaugural online outing last January, because its online platform was dysfunctional, is trying again: "VIP 2.0" will come to a computer near you on Feb. 3-8, with "major systems upgrades, adding substantial server and bandwidth resources," according to the announcement that just landed in my inbox. "Significant load testing makes us confident [emphasis added] we'll meet peak demand, delivering a flawless, content-rich experience for our exhibitors and visitors."

I'm feeling less "confident," though, after clicking the e-mail's three links to the fair's website, which yielded this message:

Clyfford's auction adventure

If the City of Denver and officials of its Clyfford Still Museum believe that the controversy over their decision to monetize four works from the estate of the artist's widow will quickly die down, Kyle MacMillan, the Denver Post's art critic, is out to prove them wrong.

What's more, an online video (not mentioned by the Post) of a Denver City Council committee meeting demonstrates how delusional the city and its museum have been (and continue to be) in their business plan and their handling of the artistic legacy entrusted to them.

In his hard-hitting piece last Saturday, MacMillan noted that "ethical concerns were quickly---and rightly---raised" about orchestrating a sale that would not "honor the spirit of the Still family's very public gift to Denver or live up to the guardianship the city agreed to take on."

Like CultureGrrl, Kyle also suggested that the supposed "special opportunity" (as one Denver official called it) for a public institution to buy all four works before a Sept. 19 deadline was mere window-dressing. That's in part because Sotheby's, the auction house entrusted with this consignment, had a far greater financial incentive, under the terms of its agreement with Denver, for the public-auction option. More importantly, the window of opportunity for a museum to come up with an acceptable private offer was unrealistically short---a matter of a few days from Denver's final approval of the agreement.

The nearly hour-long online video of the City Council's Business, Workforce & Sustainability Committee (linked above) exposes the magnitude of Denver's folly. The resourceful representatives deployed by Sotheby's actually managed to convince city officials that instead of being a reputational fiasco, the violation (with court approval) of the explicit no-sale stipulations in the artist's and his widow's wills would bring the museum good publicity for its Nov. 18 opening.

In describing Sotheby's "comprehensive package that included public relations," Jan Brennan, Director of Cultural Programs for Arts & Venues Denver, gushed:

We were talking about and all excited about the opening of the museum, which would coincide very closely with the auction of these pictures in November. So it's an incredible promotional opportunity for our collection....It could be good for the museum [for people] to see a few of the paintings [at the auction house] and say, "I'd really like to see the body of his work."

Comments to the committee by Dean Sobel, director of the museum, revealed that the museum's business plan was as flawed as the city's understanding of public relations. Dismally failing to materialize was the expectation that this local project, devoted to a single, lesser-known Abstract Expressionist, would capture the imagination (and dollars) of donors nationwide.

In fact, more than 90% of approximately $30 million in contributions towards the building, Sobel reported, came from Denver's metropolitan area---a result that he said was "not anticipated....Some of our donors are ambivalent about the art but they understand the importance of it for Colorado and Denver." The biggest failure was the inability to raise funds beyond the cost of the new Brad Cloepfil-designed building. Opening without an endowment was unthinkable.

In elucidating the reasons why Sotheby's was chosen over Christie's, Brennan made the sore-loser auction house look better than it had when it went public with its disappointment. Christie's had apparently taken seriously the city's and museum's purported preference for a private sale to a public institution over a public sale to (potentially) private buyers.

Brennan revealed:

The proposal that we received from Christie's was not nearly as well developed [as that from Sotheby's]. They [Christie's] made as a primary proposal that we would have a private sale, and there was a small paragraph that said other options could be considered if this didn't work. They did not address the full range of questions that we asked for in the RFP [Request for Proposals], including a public sale. They just threw out that they'd be willing to consider that....

Sotheby's went down [to Maryland] and saw these paintings and spoke to us authoritatively from personal examination of the paintings. Christie's did not take advantage of the opportunity to see the paintings, although my understanding is that they had seen them some years ago.

The way this has played out makes Brennan's stated concern for the artist's and his widow's wishes sound like mere lip service:

We want to be very respectful to [and] mindful of the desires of the estate. We know that the Stills care deeply and have a preference that the paintings be available to the public.

With the November auction dispersal on the horizon, that preference---not to mention the stipulation that the works be kept together and never sold---seems to have been "honored" in the breach.

I hope that the Clyfford Still Museum, an exciting project, turns into a great boon for the artworld, the museumgoing public and Denver. But it's getting off to a very shaky start.

Carmine Branagan, director of the National Academy, stands her ground in front of Asher B. Durand's "The Morning of Life," 1840.

I wish the National Academy Museum a secure and productive future. And I'm delighted that it is finally back in business, having reopened in its Beaux Arts Huntington Mansion on Sept. 16. (I spoke very briefly Friday about its rebirth on WNYC's All Things Considered.) The Academy had been closed since July 2010 for renovation, under the auspices of architect Jane Stageberg, who stars in a CultureGrrl Video at the bottom of this post.

But I continue to have misgivings about the National Academy's leadership.

The Fifth Avenue townhouse is now a clean, well-lit place: Walls have been resurfaced and repainted. Some fabric wallcovering has been stripped off, some wood paneling removed, one fireplace eliminated---all questionable alterations. New lighting has been deftly designed by Richard Renfro, who also was responsible for the masterful illumination transformation at another historic mansion---the refurbished Morgan Library and Museum.

But the Academy's embattled director, Carmine Branagan, while deserving credit for reopening the place, demonstrated during her brief interview with me at the press preview that she still doesn't get it: She has no regrets, let alone apologies, for the Academy's deplorable stealth disposals of two important Hudson River School paintings, undertaken to defray the institution's operating expenses and debts (a story that I broke in December 2008 on CultureGrrl).

This violation of a bedrock principle of art museum stewardship---that sales proceeds must be used for acquisitions only---landed the Academy in deep trouble with the Association of Art Museum Directors. Due to this infraction, the association censured and blackballed the Academy until  last October.

The Academy remains on five-year probation. I can't imagine that AAMD's arbiters of museum ethics will be pleased by Branagan's responses to my questions at the press preview on Sept. 13.

Here's the Q&A:

Rosenbaum: Did the deaccessions help pay for this renovation?

Branagan: We deaccessioned in order to keep the doors open. The renovation was actually something that we hadn't even anticipated that we could do. But it became clear that these facilities wouldn't work, and then these bequests came in [from Eleanor Popper, a former student, and Geoffrey Wagner, in memory of his artist wife, paying for most of the $3.5-million renovation]. Without the deaccessioning, the Academy wouldn't even have been able to stay open. It was virtually bankrupt.

Rosenbaum: So "no regrets" is what I'm hearing. In other words, the deaccessioning needed to be done, even in retrospect.

Branagan: Do we all regret that we don't have those paintings? Profoundly! Profoundly we regret that. It's actually heartbreaking that we don't have those. And the sanctions were extremely difficult. Make no mistake that sanctions by the AAMD have meaning.

Rosenbaum: More meaningful than you realized at the time?

Branagan: I kind of knew. But there was no choice. There was no choice! So the collective Academy made the decision that staying open and being able to have the opportunity to continue this historic legacy was what was important. When the decision was made, it was, "Fasten your seatbelts! This is going to be a really, really rough ride."

Really Lee, the depth of the problem that the academy had, and the depth of the difficulty that was created by the deaccessioning was a shocking wake-up call that it's time to get your act together because you ain't doing this again, ever. So there's nothing like a crisis to create possibility. Do I regret it? Profoundly. We all regret it.

Rosenbaum: But you don't think it was the wrong decision, even now. It was the decision you felt was the only way to save the place.

Branagan: I don't think there's a right or wrong here. I think there's a necessity and it could have gone either way. If the decision was made not to do it, the Academy wouldn't exist. What that says to us is that if we went through this really difficult thing and we made this decision, then we'd better damn well make this institution relevant, at the very least, and bring forth a contemporary focus within this historic tradition.

The takeaway from this---that it was okay for the Academy resort to desperation deaccessions as a one-off---cannot be the statement that the Association of Art Museum Directors wants to hear. It had removed the sanctions in the belief that the Academy was "committed---both in principle and practice---to AAMD's position regarding the use of funds from deaccessioned works of art." Those words are from AAMD's announcement of its lifting of sanctions. AAMD's unprecedented punishment had crippled the Academy by preventing the association's member museums from collaborating with it in any way, including exhibitions and scholarly projects.

But whatever happened to the jettisoned Church and Gifford?


Frederic Edwin Church, "Scene on the Magdalene," 1854


Sanford Robinson Gifford, "Mt. Mansfield," 1859

When I had interviewed Branagan in her office almost three years ago, she had told me that, at the Academy's request, the buyer of the two deaccessioned paintings, a foundation, had made a firm commitment that they would hang publicly, most likely at an art museum and probably on "extended long-term loan."

They have not surfaced to this day.

In response to my recent query, Heidi Riegler, a spokesperson for the Academy, said her institution had no information about who bought them or whether they will be exhibited. Perhaps the buyer prudently decided not to be publicly linked to this infamous episode.

I have previously given my informed guess about the identity of the buyer, here.

As for Branagan's vow, at the end of her conversation with me, to make her institution "relevant" and "contemporary," the sculptural switch in its elegant rotunda gave me a rude shock. At left is how things looked prior to the renovation. At right, the view at the recent preview:

Gustave Caillebotte, "Man at His Bath," 1884
Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (which has acquired it)

[Part I is here.]

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is not alone in succumbing to the temptation of "trading up" by liquidating museum-quality works to buy other works deemed more important to the collection. Many have done it; the Museum of Modern Art has done it repeatedly---most notably in acquiring van Gogh's celebrated "Portrait of Joseph Roulin."

Boston, which is about to sell eight works from its collection to fund its purchase of Caillebotte's "Man at His Bath," has done this sort of thing before: In 2003, it sold two much-exhibited Degas pastels of dancers and a Renoir double portrait of the artist's third son and his housemaid to bankroll the purchase of a Degas masterpiece, The Duchess of Montejasi with Her Daughters.

Even the Association of Art Museum Directors, in its Professional Practices in Art Museums (p. 22), regards an "effort to refine and improve" the collection as an appropriate reason to sell.

So what's the downside of trading up? The problem is that art donors and the general public have a right to expect museums to be custodians of culture, not market traders. This especially holds true for works that have been deemed of sufficient importance by the curators to have accumulated extensive exhibition histories.

I requested and obtained the provenance and exhibition histories of the eight works that Boston plans to sell. (The presale estimates of these pictures, with images, are provided my previous post, here.) Five of these paintings showed no exhibition histories in the records that I was sent.

But the Monet, Pissarro and Gauguin have all been exhibited extensively. The Monet was in "Impressions of Light: The French Landscape from Corot to Monet," which ran at the BMFA from December 2002 until April 2003. In the museum's permanent-collection galleries, the Pissarro and one of the Sisleys ("Saint-Mammès: Morning") were on view from February to June 2003.

The Monet, Pissarro and Gauguin all figured in "Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Landscape," which traveled a decade ago from Boston to four major institutions: the National Gallery of Canada, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Ireland.

These three were also repeatedly dispatched to exhibitions in Japan, both at the BMFA's own satellite museum in Nagoya (Gauguin and Pissarro) and to a variety of other Japanese venues. They were also included in the BMFA's controversial rental shows dispatched in 2004-2006 to the Bellagio Resort and Casino, Las Vegas.

The fact that they were shown off-premises much more than at home means that Impressionist-rich Boston probably did not regard them as essential to hometown visitors. But the fact that they were so often included in traveling "Masterworks" shows means that they were deemed worthy of public display and should remain part of the public patrimony.

George T.M. Shackelford, the BMFA curator who orchestrated both the Degas and Caillebotte acquisitions (and their related deaccessions), has extolled the quality of his institution's eight consignments to Sotheby's November sales. In recent comments to Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee, Shackelford stated:

There's not a dud painting in this group. That's why we are very sad to see them go. It's not secondary material; it's great stuff. It has to be, to get the required sum.

Why couldn't the BMFA get the undisclosed "required sum" the old-fashioned way, by raising it? After all, the museum's director, Malcolm Rogers, proved to be a master fundraiser in the successfully concluded campaign that netted a whopping $504 million for new construction, renovations, endowment and operations connected to two capital projects---the new American Wing and the just-opened Contemporary Art Wing. What's a mere $16.6-24.3 million (the total presale estimates for the eight deaccessions), compared to $504 million? (Caillebotte's auction record is $14.3 million, achieved in 2000 for this painting.)

But it's precisely the focus on the megabucks capital campaign that may have diverted the museum from raising needed funds for other purposes, such as acquisitions. After all, how much can you ask of benefactors who have already been stretched to the limit?

This problem was explicitly acknowledged in comments made back in 2003 by Ann Gund, then chairman of the museum's collections committee, to Geoff Edgers of the Globe. She noted that the capital campaign (already then underway) had sidelined fundraising for the purchase of Degas' expensive duchess:

Usually, if there is something like this, we go and ask friends of the museum if they will contribute. But we want to keep our friends' eyes on the capital campaign.

What's the message that these deaccessions, past and present, send to Boston's benefactors? Their donations are crucial for major capital projects, but are not as essential for major acquisitions, which can be bankrolled by mining the collection. These are pernicious precedents.

Deaccessioning is an integral part of good collections management. But works should be sold because they are deemed unworthy of the museum's collection, not because of a sudden need to make a splash in the market. Deaccessioning decisions should be made independently of purchasing decisions.

The principle that disposals "should reflect policy rather than the reaction to the exigencies of a particular moment" was contained in previous versions of AAMD's "Professional Practices in Art Museums" (p. 21 in the 2001 edition). Interestingly and regrettably, that language was dropped in the 2011 revision. The slippery slope has been greased.

The Caillebotte, which had been on anonymous loan from February 1997 to April 2011 at the National Gallery, London (after which it went to the BMFA), will soon be part of the Boston exhibition that has become Shackelford's swan song there---Degas and the Nude, Oct. 9-Feb. 5. At his next gig---senior deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth---Shackelford may be less tempted to treat the permanent collection as fungible: The Kimbell, it seems, has ample resources of its own to fund stellar acquisitions.

Currently on display at American Folk Art Museum: "Star of Bethlehem with Satellite Stars Quilt," artist unidentified, possibly Pennsylvania,1930-1950

In my post earlier today on the rescue of the American Folk Art Museum (with an update on the Ford Foundation's support here), I stated that its administration's "first order of business" should be updating the museum's website "with an announcement of the good news on its homepage and some information about its plans, going forward."

Now that's happened.

Here's an excerpt from acting director Linda Dunne's Dear Members and Friends letter:

In addition to developing a financial plan, the Trustees are also creating a strategy that will increase the visibility of the Museum's renowned collections and extend the American Folk Art Museum brand. The Museum will seek to establish a revitalized and expanded program of loans to collaborating New York City institutions, as well as packaging traveling exhibitions around the U.S., as ways of sharing folk art with wider audiences.

The Brooklyn Museum, the New-York Historical Society, and the Museum of Arts and Design have expressed interest in working with the American Folk Art Museum to identify potential exhibitions where the museums respective collections inform and excite one another.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display approximately 15 major works of art from the collection in honor of the opening [my link, not theirs] of the American Wing and The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art.

I love the idea of New York museums in collaboration, not competition.

AFAM has elected a new president, Edward Blanchard Jr., who "is currently an investor in distressed hotel properties," according to Dunne's letter. We can only hope he also invests in distressed museums.

The next thing AFAM should do (aside from answering my phone calls) is post some forward-looking press releases on its moribund website (which still lists a long-departed staff member as public relations director). A particularly good sign would be an announcement of some future projects on the exhibitions page. This fall's show was to have been curator Stacy Hollander's "Life: Real and Imagined---A Decade of Collecting."

Is that show still on, Stacy? With Superstars: Quilts from the American Folk Art Museum scheduled to run through December, we may have to wait a while for new presentations at AFAM's small Lincoln Square facility.

This just in (in response to my query) from the Ford Foundation:

The Ford Foundation is making a one-year, $500,000 grant to the American Folk Art Museum to help secure a strong and vibrant future for this vital New York cultural institution. Our grant will provide support for museum operations, strategic planning, and innovative efforts to ensure that new and diverse audiences access the museum's unparalleled collection.

Folk art is a manifestation of the incredible diversity and spirit of America, and the American Folk Art Museum is a cultural treasure for New York City. We are pleased to help ensure that its acclaimed collection reaches as many people as possible.

That's a great start. But it's going to take more than a half million bucks to secure AFAM's long-term future. The trustees have reportedly also kicked in an unspecified amount. Hopefully, with the Ford Foundation's imprimatur, this snowball keeps rolling.

Kinder, Gentler Cuno: James Cuno [left], President and CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust, striking a deal with Pavlos Yeroulanos, Greece's Minister of Culture and Tourism
© J. Paul Getty Trust

In 2006, when the Getty Trust announced its agreement to return a funerary wreath and a statue  to Greece, it also announced "plans for future collaboration" with that country's Ministry of Culture.

This morning, the Getty announced that it will return two more objects to Greece and that the parties have signed a new "memorandum of understanding" that "encourages the exchange of scientists and scholars in the fields of archaeology, art history, conservation, cultural information technology and other fields of common interest in research and training."

This friendly handshake is the first concrete evidence that Cuno is moderating his formerly belligerent stance towards source countries.

Below are the givebacks, both of which were acquired by the Getty in the 1970s, after the cut-off date of the UNESCO Convention on cultural property. The press release doesn't say if Greece had proactively requested these objects or if the Getty had initiated discussions as a result of its own research. [SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF POST]

[UPDATE: More details, here.]

While there was serious talk of its folding, the American Folk Art Museum couldn't reasonably expect donors who care about its survival to step up to the plate.

Now it can.

Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times reports:

The American Folk Art Museum on Wednesday evening decided to continue operating at its current location at Lincoln Square in Manhattan with the help of financial infusions from trustees and the Ford Foundation....

The museum will try to expand its loans to other New York City museums and to mount traveling exhibitions. The Brooklyn Museum, the New-York Historical Society and the Museum of Art and Design have expressed interest in working with the Folk Art Museum to identify potential collaborations, museum officials said.

We can only hope that others follow the lead of the Ford Foundation, and that Ford provides some of its management expertise, along with its "financial infusion."

The museum administration's first order of business should be to revive its moribund website with an announcement of the good news on its homepage and some information about its plans, going forward.

If you want to donate, folk art-lings, now's the time.

Gustave Caillebotte, "Man at His Bath," 1884, private collection
Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (which has acquired it)

[Part II is here.]

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts this week announced its problematic plan to sell eight works (images below) at Sotheby's this November to fund the purchase of Caillebotte's "Man at His Bath" (above), a rare, nearly life-size Impressionist male nude. The museum's press release describes this candid post-ablution depiction as "one of the greatest works by artist" and "the first Impressionist nude to enter the museum's collection of paintings."

George T.M. Shackelford, BMFA's chair, Art of Europe, and its curator of modern art, told the Boston Globe's art critic, Sebastian Smee (who broke the story on Monday):

I hope in 50 years' time people will say that this was a good thing, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Or else they might say, "What were they thinking?"

And that's precisely the problem with monetlzing museum-quality works from the "permanent" collection to acquire works that today's curators covet but can't otherwise afford.

Tomorrow's curators (not to mention today's museumgoing public) may reasonably disagree with this judgment call to sell what are arguably second-tier works by first-rank Impressionists in order to acquire a single first-tier work by a relatively obscure Impressionist (although Caillebotte is much admired for such well known works as "Paris Street, Rainy Day," Art Institute of Chicago, and "The Floor Scrapers," Musée d'Orsay).

So that the Caillebotte can take its place in Boston's collection, a Monet, Pissarro and Gauguin---the three paintings in the eight-work dispersal that have the strongest exhibition histories---will (if the auction succeeds) irrevocably leave the building.

Already, Boston's tradeoff is getting some pushback. Writing for "The Angle," the Globe's news analysis site, Scott Lehigh debunked the sale of "eight paintings---several with prestigious exhibition histories" for "a view of a gentleman's just-bathed backside. Call me a Philistine, but somehow this just doesn't strike me as an astute trade."

Rebutting the butt critics, also on the "Angle" site, Dante Ramos, deputy editor of the Globe's editorial page, praised the BMFA for "selling familiar works to buy an unusual one."

Call me a Philistine, but I strongly believe that museum-quality works that are in the public domain should stay in the public domain. If they belong in the museum, they should stay there. As I've stated time and again, they are held in public trust and should not be used as trading chips.

Here are the images of the soon-to-be-auctioned works, supplied (at my request) by the museum. See for yourself what Boston will cast off to bring home the rosy derrière. (The online version of the Globe article did not publish these images.)


Claude Monet, "The Fort of Antibes," 1888
Presale estimate: $5-7 million


Paul Gauguin, "Forest Interior," 1884
Presale estimate: $1.2-1.8 million


Camille Pissarro, "View from the Artist's Window, Eragny," 1885
Presale estimate: $1.8-2.5 million


Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Bust Portrait of a Young Woman," c. 1890
Presale estimate: $1.8-2.5 million


Alfred Sisley, "Overcast Day at Saint-Mammès," c. 1880
Presale estimate: $1.5-2 million


Alfred Sisley, "Saint-Mammès: Morning (Le Matin)," 1881
Presale estimate: $2-3 million


Vasily Vereshchagin, "Pearl Mosque, Delhi," late 1880s
Presale estimate: $3-5 million


Maxime Camille Louis Maufra, "Gust of Wind," 1899
Presale estimate: $300,000-500,000

I'll have more to say in Part II, probably tomorrow, about "Bath's" slippery slope and the downside of trading up.

Why am I not surprised? This just hit my inbox from Sotheby's:

Sotheby's is delighted to announce that four masterworks by the celebrated American Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still will headline the Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011. The paintings come from the Estate of Patricia Still and are being sold by the City and County of Denver.

They are expected to realize a combined total in excess of $50 million, and are being sold to further support the endowment of the new Clyfford Still Museum, which is scheduled to open to the public in Denver on Nov. 18, 2011.

The total presale estimate for the four works is $51-71.5 million. The Still Museum, which opens Nov. 18, had previously indicated that it needed to raise only $25 million for the endowment. I guess they've opted for a fatter cushion.

As I previously observed when I divulged the details of Denver's agreement with Sotheby's, the absurdly small window of time (a matter of days, with a Sept. 19 deadline) for selling the paintings to one or more museums through private sale all but guaranteed that they would wind up at public auction. The supposed museum-purchase option was mere window-dressing.

Here, at last, are some decent images of the four works being sold (with court permission) in violation of the no-sale stipulations in the wills of the artist and his widow:


"1949-A-No.1," 93 by 79 in.
Presale estimate: $25-35 million


"1947-Y-No. 2," 69.5 by 59 in.
Presale estimate: $15-20 million


"(PH-1033)," 1976, 93.5 by 83 in.
Presale estimate: $10-15 million


"(PH-351)," 1940
Presale estimate: $1-1.5 million

A visitor making a rubbing last week at the 9/11 Memorial
All photos, unless otherwise noted, by Lee Rosenbaum

The 9/11 Memorial, on the site of the Twin Towers catastrophe, had a big buildup. But my visit there last week (as shown in the video at the end of this post) was a big letdown.

A sense of "spiritual uplift" may be too much to ask of any 9/11 memorial. It was that quality that Eric Gibson, appraising the finished project in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal, said he found lacking. Ground Zero will probably always remain a somber site.

But I left the plaza last Tuesday feeling dispirited and vexed, not comforted. The most solace I experienced came from chatting with the friend whom I encountered there by pure chance---Eric Gibson.

In some ways, my experience of the work of architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker doesn't matter much: I'm not the target audience for this project. The families and friends of the victims are. It is important for them to have a dignified designated site where they can get a sense of communing with loved ones they lost. They can find the names, make the rubbings to bring home, leave mementos and stand in reverent reflection on the sacred ground where their loved ones, 10 years ago, had walked and worked.



But for me, the long downtown pilgrimage---a gauntlet winding through several tourist-clogged streets and checkpoints (including a metal detector), accompanied by the wails of would-be visitors who discovered that they couldn't enter without a pass (available chiefly on the memorial's reservation webpage)---made me wish for an appealing oasis conducive to calm reflection at the end of my sweaty trek.

The memorial purports to convey "a spirit of hope and renewal, ...a contemplative space separate from the usual sights and sounds of a bustling metropolis." Instead, I found myself in stark, almost inhospitable, very citified surroundings, with only low rectangular-block benches for "repose," large expanses of hard pavement underfoot, and sparse greenery providing meager relief from the "bustling metropolis."

The eight-acre memorial quadrant was supposed to appear lushly planted, like this:


Rendering by Squared Design Lab

Instead, from ground level, it looked like this...



...and like this, with one of the two reflecting pools (which sit in the footprints of the vanished towers) on the right and the unfinished museum behind it, seen through the trees:



The reflecting pools were not light blue, as they appear in the rendering. They were, as architecture critic Witold Rybczynski described them in his negative appraisal for Slate, "bottomless black holes":



The copious waterfalls, interminably descending into the void, seemed to me like never-ending tears. Most fountains (like the one below, at Lincoln Center) cheer us by reaching upwards:


Lincoln Center's plaza

But the 9/11 Memorial's two reflecting pools bring us inexorably down. The architectural impact of the site made me feel dwarfed, insignificant---an effect exacerbated by the monumental monolith that serves as backdrop---the new, in-construction 1 World Trade Center by architect David Childs:



Come with me now and we'll visit the memorial together:

Roberta Smith, NY Times art critic

Better late than never.

NY Times art critic Roberta Smith has officially joined the Save the American Folk Art Museum campaign, with a powerful opinion piece (not in today's paper but online now)---As Folk Art Museum Teeters, a Grave Loss Looms.

Roberta ends her piece this way:

The transfer and dispersal of the collection should be fought to the bitter end, with every ounce of passion and ingenuity that the museum and its supporters can muster. New York, so fabulously full of so many kinds of refined high art, needs a museum dedicated to the great D.I.Y. low of the folk and outsider kind.

Unfortunately, the ball may have already rolled too far down the slope. Smith reports that "the [AFAM] board heard proposals at a meeting last Thursday from the Smithsonian [and] the Brooklyn [both of which are interested in acquiring AFAM's collection, should the museum fold] and also from staff members determined to keep the museum going. It will vote on the proposals in a meeting this week [emphasis added].

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the Downtown Whitney last May, Mayor Bloomberg spoke excitedly about the resourcefulness of New York City in initiating and sustaining such a rich panoply of cultural activities. But as I listened, the already announced plans for a lamentable contraction of such activities immediately came to mind---the closing of the Folk Art Museum's main building of W. 53rd Street; the departure of another financially beleaguered cultural institution, the New York City Opera, from its long-time home at Lincoln Center; the realization by the Whitney itself that it could not afford to follow its original plan of maintaining a two-building institution when its new facility opened in 2015.

Assuming that the AFAM's board is going to take the easy way out and ship its riches off to a larger institution (and one not exclusively dedicated to folk art), there remains the obstacle of the public approval process: The Attorney General's office and the State Education Department must weigh in.

One thing I have never understood (and which the museum has never explained, despite my queries) is why AFAM sold its midtown building for $31.2 million to the contiguous Museum of Modern Art, without first putting it on the open market to see if it could possibly fetch more. It seems to me that due diligence and fiduciary responsibility dictate an attempt to maximize the proceeds that could be applied towards the museum's survival. It also seems to me that the Attorney General's office, which rubber-stamped the deal, should have insisted that due diligence be exercised.

In reviewing any agreement that would mean the end of an institution enriching New York's cultural life for the last 50 years, the Attorney General's office should take a closer look at the real estate transaction that it hastily rubber-stamped and also insist, in the public interest, on a longer, more thorough exploration of options for keeping AFAM alive.

Mayor Bloomberg, cultural enthusiast and philanthropist that he is, should take a hands-on approach to this rescue.

LEFT: A Polaroid from the files of convicted antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici of a dirt-encrusted Athenian red-figure volute krater, attributed to the Methyse Painter, 460-450 B.C.
RIGHT: Photo of the same krater, restored, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

What took Minneapolis so long?

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which since 2005 has known and publicly acknowledged that the past history of its Athenian red-figure volute krater seemed dicey, has finally gotten around to concluding that it should be relinquished to Italy.

In a press release, issued late yesterday, the museum stated:

It was determined that the krater in possession of the MIA is, in fact, the same krater depicted in photographs seized [in 1995] in the course of an investigation conducted by the [Italian] Carabinieri....

"The decision to transfer the Volute Krater demonstrates the MIA's commitment to the highest ethical standards in developing and maintaining our collection," said Kaywin Feldman, director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Like so many mysteries, this one began with a fragmentary series of clues [emphasis added], calling into question the provenance of work."

How many "clues" that the krater had been looted did Minneapolis really need? The evidence of the Medici photos is not exactly "fragmentary." That cache of pictorial evidence had been convincing enough to impel both the Getty and Metropolitan museums to return important pieces to Italy.

In the above photos, it's undeniable that the figure on the unrestored vessel's right side is the same as the one on the center of vessel seen in Minneapolis' photo of its krater. Similarly, the figure in the center of the unrestored piece can be seen on the left in Minneapolis' photo.

The Minneapolis Institute has not been a model of transparency in responding to press queries about the krater (as you can see in my report of last December, linked at the top of this post). Nor has the museum's press release come clean on the piece's dirty provenance. Yesterday's statement omits the key details about the krater's past history that the museum must have known about (but didn't act upon) for a long time---its connection, through the Polaroids, to convicted antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici and the name of the person from whom the museum purchased the vessel in 1983---British dealer Robin Symes, a known conduit for looted antiquities.

My prior requests for information about the piece's provenance (also described in the top-linked post) were stonewalled by the museum, leading me to observe that Kaywin Feldman, its director, was not living up to the transparency espoused by the Association of Art Museum Directors, of which she was then president. (Feldman, who became director in 2007, was not responsible for acquiring the piece and was not yet its director when the museum first acknowledged that the provenance of the krater was suspicious.)

Mary Abbe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune mentioned the Symes connection in her report yesterday on the museum's give-back plan. Back in 2007, David Gill of the Looting Matters blog named Symes as the seller of Minneapolis' krater in this post (which, in turn, alluded to a mention of Symes as the seller in a 2005 Star Tribune article).

Abbe wrote this yesterday about the importance of the krater:

The vase was a Minneapolis star because the museum's collection of antiquities is comparatively small, and museum scholars had identified its artist, now known as the Methyse Painter. Only 19 other surviving items have been attributed to Methyse from an era when art was generally produced by anonymous craftsmen.

And in other Greek vase news, the Getty Museum recently managed to add this one to its collection:


White-ground lekythos with a funerary scene, by the Achilles Painter, Greek, 435-430 B.C.

As for its provenance, the museum's written description states:

The lekythos was first published by [Sir John] Beazley in the second edition of "Paralipomena" (1971). It was acquired by the previous owner in the 1960s and was examined in New York by Dietrich von Bothmer; notes in the von Bothmer archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art document its presence in the United States in the mid-1960's.

In other words, it was thought to have been safely out of its source country long before the 1970 cut-off point of the UNESCO Convention on cultural property. But who was that "previous owner? Julie Jaskol, the Getty's assistant director for media relations, told me it was Iris Love, the American archaeologist and antiquities collector, "who purchased it in Athens in the 1960s."

Shattered Legacy: The Barnes Foundation's fragmented new logo, unveiled on its new website

At a press conference yesterday, the Barnes Foundation announced that it would open its new Philadelphia facility to the public on May 19. It has also launched a new website.

Advance reservations to visit the museum will be accepted beginning Mar. 1. Members can reserve beginning Feb. 1 and get free admission (after paying the membership fee---a minimum of $90). There will be an additional charge for parking in the Barnes' lot.

What will be the admission fee for non-members? The website doesn't say. But for groups of 15 to 75, the price will be $20 per head. Adult admission to the nearby encyclopedic Philadelphia Museum of Art is currently $16.

As for future special exhibitions, all that the Barnes' website currently says is this:

Special exhibitions, including presentations of contemporary and non-Western art, will add a new dimension to visiting the Barnes Foundation, when its new building opens on the Parkway in Philadelphia. Albert Barnes collected some of the most radical art of his time, and the Barnes will honor that legacy [emphasis added] and reflect the breadth of his collections in its exhibition program.

Meanwhile, a decision is still pending in Montgomery County Orphans' Court on the desperation lawsuit to stop the Barnes from moving to Philly from its longtime home---the mansion in Merion, where its founder, Albert Barnes, had explicitly stipulated that his collection should always remain. (So much for "honoring his legacy.")

If I learn more about general admission prices, exhibition plans or anything else of interest, I'll update here.

Rear view of Cornell University's I.M. Pei-designed Johnson Museum of Art, with its new, mostly underground addition (still in construction), at left
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum

When I told you yesterday about the new addition to Cornell University's Johnson Museum of Art (designed by the I.M. Pei firm and opening Oct. 15), I didn't mention that it's been without a permanent director since June, when long-time director Franklin Robinson retired.

This just in: Stephanie Wiles, director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College since July 2004, will become the Ithaca, NY museum's new director in mid-November, pending approval by Cornell's board in October.


Wiles smiles at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
Janine Bentivegna Photoraphy

The Allen Memorial is notable for its art-rental program for students. Cost: $5 per semester per work (maximum of two). I wonder if Stephanie will bring the rental program to Cornell. I also wonder if the condition of the art is sufficiently safeguarded by this warning:

PLEASE take care of your art rental; the minimum repair fee for a damaged art rental is $35.00.

Presumably, works for rent do not include the Rembrandt etchings.

As a Cornell alumna, I once took a week-long Adult University summer course taught at the Johnson by Nancy Green, curator of prints, drawings, and photographs, where we got to closely examine some of the Dürers and Rembrandts (among many others) in the museum's impressive print collection. A specialist in Old Master drawings and prints and British and American art, Wiles previously worked as a curator in the Morgan Library's department of prints and drawings.

Unfortunately, the Johnson is still in directorial limbo for the installation of art in the new expansion, which will have a gallery area for contemporary installations and lots of space for open storage for works from in its 34,000-object collection. Until Wiles arrives, Peter Gould is interim director.

Cornell University's new Milstein Hall for architecture studies, designed by Rem Koolhaas
All photos (unless otherwise noted) by Lee Rosenbaum

It's not entirely finished yet and it's been under the radar in terms of press coverage. But Rem Koolhaas' new Milstein Hall, tucked behind the Arts Quad at Cornell University, has opened for the new school year, providing much needed studio space and meeting areas for students in Cornell University's architecture program.

This highly anticipated 47,000-square-foot facility is part of a sudden burst of starchitects on the Ithaca campus: I.M. Pei, Richard Meier and Thom Mayne, all Pritzker Prize winners, are helping to shape my alma mater for the 21st century.

The I.M. Pei firm's mostly underground addition to the Johnson Art Museum opens next month. You can get a sneak peak at its exterior at the beginning of my CultureGrrl Video, below, which focuses chiefly on the Koolhaas project.

Meier's massive, Lego-like life sciences building, Weill Hall, opened in 2008. It strikes me, both inside and out, as antiseptic, almost hospital-like, unrelieved by the graceful curves that make other Meier buildings (including those at the Getty Trust) more enticing:


Cornell University's 2008 Weill Hall for life sciences, designed by Richard Meier

The new William H. Gates Hall for computing and information science (yes, that Bill Gates, who kicked in $25 million) is in the process of being designed by Mayne of Morphosis and is scheduled to open in 2014.

Koolhaas' new facility is particularly newsworthy because the radically audacious Dutch architect and theorist (who studied at Cornell in 1972 and 1973) has managed to plant relatively few buildings in this country. Perhaps his highest-profile U.S. project is Seattle's much acclaimed Central Library, which I found alluring on the outside...



But not so attractive or reader-friendly on the inside:



Koolhaas endured two notable setbacks involving American art museums---his design for an aborted expansion of the Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue (under the directorship of Max Anderson, who strongly endorsed it), and his master plan for the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum Art (later reassigned by LACMA to Renzo Piano and, after him, to Peter Zumthor).

In another case of architectural musical chairs, Koolhaas took over Cornell's Milstein project after a design by Steven Holl was rejected (and a subsequent design by Barkow Leibinger Architects was similarly scuttled):


Architect's rendering of Steven Holl's design (unbuilt) for Cornell's Milstein Hall

Koolhaas' Milstein is a winner: a muscular yet engaging building, with a glorious open, sun-filled "studio plate" that accommodates the majority of the school's 200 students. Its bulky, tough concrete forms and large expanses of glass are softened with unexpectedly elegant touches---striated Italian marble that decorates the borders of two large cantilevers; light rods that enliven the glass wall beneath an overhang; white aluminum paneled ceilings, dotted with lights and embellished with a stamped pattern, that extend into the building from the underside of the cantilevers.

Boldly and inventively contemporary, Milstein stands in sharp, energizing contrast to the traditional Ivy League buildings that abut it and connect to it on two sides. Notwithstanding its distinctiveness, it is unimposing and unobtrusive---barely visible from the Arts Quad, the historic heart of Cornell's sprawling campus.

In a 2006 interview with the NY Times' Robin Pogrebin, the architect accurately characterized his design as "an exercise in modest, discreet intervention":


View of Milstein Hall from the Arts Quad, where only a small portion of the building peeks out from one corner of Cornell's academic hub. On the left is Sibley Hall, the architecture program's old headquarters (still in use).

One 12-minute video is worth a thousand words. Join me now for a ramble in and around this architecture for future architects. My narration is informed by the tour of the building that I received from the College of Architecture, Art and Planning's proud dean, Kent Kleinman, who preferred not to be videoed but consented to be photographed in the heart of this new, sprawling studio space:


Kent Kleinman, Dean of Cornell's College of Architecture, Art and Planning

Here's my video, which begins with a short introductory look at the I.M. Pei firm's Johnson Art Museum expansion, officially opening on Oct. 15, within sight of Koolhaas' new building:

I wouldn't have expected this of the New Yorker.

There's been a lot of talk about how to properly commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, without improperly exploiting it commercially. To my mind, this promotion from the New Yorker, usually an arbiter of good taste, crossed the line into skin-crawl territory:

The new art season is not quite upon us, but the new academic season is. I was incommunicado yesterday while making my way through the flooded Mohawk Valley (and avoiding my usual route through the Susquehanna Valley, where roads were washed out) to get to my alma mater, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. I'll be seeing some of the starchitects' additions to the campus, while my husband (whom I met in college), is busily planning his next class reunion.

I'll have more to say after I return home, assuming I can navigate through the still flood-ravaged region.

For now, I leave you with the Art History Newsletter's latest rankings of the top 50 art history doctoral programs. Here are the Top Five:

1) University of California-Berkeley
2) University of Chicago
3) Columbia University
4) Yale University
5) Princeton University

I won't even tell you where Cornell is!

Meanwhile, seventh-ranked Harvard University came in for a drubbing in its own alumni magazine, in essays by two of its alumni who deplored the university's relative inattention to the creative arts.

As one of a small group of alumni (including Bill Gates) who were asked for their visions of the university 25 years from now, composer/conductor John Adams wrote:

I...imagine a Harvard that treats the arts with the same sense of importance that it accords its schools of law, medicine, science, and business.  For too long Harvard has viewed the arts as an ancillary activity, as extracurricular, something its students do on the side. 

Similarly, Mia Riverton, an actor, writer, producer, and musician, wrote:

It is widely acknowledged within the alumni community that students seeking to realize their arts-related ambitions receive less attention and fewer resources than those in more traditional areas such as law, medicine, or---my personal bête noire--investment banking.

Rendering (by Squared Design Lab) of National September 11 Memorial and Visitor Center

With Sunday marking the tenth anniverary of the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, the news media are already barraging us with images more viscerally powerful than any work of art---the sights of the impact, the implosions and the immediate aftermath. For those of us who were uncomfortably close to the chaos and carnage, these familiar, fearsome images are still too painful to gaze upon.

I wasn't there on that day. My husband almost was.

He had uncharacteristically taken the whole summer off. But he had returned on Sept. 10 to the (now defunct) American Stock Exchange, within falling-debris range of the World Trade Center, in order to prepare for his return the following week. Had he already been making his daily commute (or had he decided to go in for his preliminary visit on Tuesday, instead of on Monday), he would have emerged from the World Trade Center subway stop at about the time when the plane smashed into the tower in which that station was located.

Instead, we first heard the news from our daughter, who called anxiously from her high school to make sure that her father was still safe at home. Some of her classmates weren't as lucky. We immediately turned on the television, saw the second tower fall in real time, and heard the quavering voices of the usually composed news announcers, unnerved like the rest of us by what they had just seen.

Virtually everyone in the NYC metropolitan area has a 9/11 story. Now we're all feeling compelled to rehash our personal accounts, having been forced by the resurrected images to relive that terrible day.

Many of us will make a pilgrimage to the National September 11 Memorial (pictured above), designed by architect Michael Arad and landscape architects Peter Walker and Partners. Its two reflecting pools sit within the footprints of the missing buildings. The names of the victims are inscribed in the bronze panels surrounding the twin pools. I've reserved a free visitor pass for myself, and so can you, here.

While we're at the site, we'll want to check on the progress of the in-construction One World Trade Center, designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It will be the tallest building in the country, at 1776 feet, evoking the year of the Declaration of Independence. (The 1776 idea originated with architect Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the site.)


Architects' rendering of One World Trade Center (not shown: the planned WTC 2, 3 and 4 towers, which would border the memorial site, on the right)

During my recent trip to Canada, I spent considerable time staring at (but not admiring) another David Childs building---the United States Embassy in Ottawa, a stone's throw from architect Moshe Safdie's National Gallery of Canada. (I didn't know that Childs was the embassy's architect until after I had viewed it.)

Here's the front view of our embarrassing embassy:



Here it is from the side, where you can see its disparate elements---a disharmonious clash of awkward forms:



Never was a Joel Shapiro sculpture so infelicitously sited.

Below is my video of Safdie's and Childs' architecture. My narration includes some unkind words about the latter (without naming the architect, since I did not yet know who it was). I was required to turn off my camera at the entrance to the National Gallery's exhibition of Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome (which, as it happens, closes on Sept. 11 and then travels to the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth).

I expect to post more, later, about the art that I saw on my journey. For now, here's my short stroll in the heart of Ottawa (with a short postscript):



Aside from Childs' architecture, there's another way in which my trip to Canada resonated with the aftermath of 9/11: If we are concerned about the possibility of terrorists entering the country through Canada, something should be done about metal detector #11 at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. When my husband walked through that detector, as we headed home, he launched into his usual explanation about his hip replacement (which always triggers an alarm and a pat-down). But he stopped in mid-sentence, realizing that he and his internal hardware had slipped through soundlessly.

UPDATE: Architecture critic Paul Goldberger has a thoughtful piece, Shaping the Void, about the rebuilding of Ground Zero, in the Sept. 12 New Yorker (which just hit my mailbox). In a live online chat supplementing the article, Goldberger said this about the original Libeskind plan:

Of the original plans, the Libeskind plan that was chosen was actually the one I preferred, because of its good balance between commemoration and renewal. He struck an important, and I think necessary, balance between the notion of turning the entire site over to a memorial and restoring the whole place as a business district.

New back injury: Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, I said that Levine had been stripped of his principal conductorship. Although he was for many years the Met's de facto principal conductor, Levine did not possess that official title, the Met has informed me. I had assumed (as did others) that since Fabio Luisi had been promoted from "Principal Guest Conductor" to "Principal Conductor," he had succeeded Levine in his new role. That assumption was erroneous.

This highly upsetting news from the Metropolitan Opera about its esteemed music director, James Levine, just hit my inbox:

After a fall last week that damaged one of his vertebrae, James Levine underwent emergency surgery on Thursday in New York, forcing him to withdraw from his performances at the Metropolitan Opera this fall. Levine was scheduled to begin orchestra rehearsals for the new season today. According to his doctors, he was successfully recuperating from another back surgery when the accident happened while he was on vacation in Vermont.

While Levine will continue in his position as Music Director, Fabio Luisi has been named the Met's Principal Conductor, with the new appointment taking effect immediately. In Apr. 2010, Luisi was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Met. He will replace Levine for most of the fall performances, conducting the new productions of "Don Giovanni" (premiering Oct. 13) and "Siegfried" (premiering Oct. 27), as well as the Met Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall on October 16.

"While Jim's latest setback is hugely disappointing for all of us, he joins me in welcoming Fabio's larger role," said Peter Gelb, the Met's General Manager. "I am very pleased that Fabio was able to rearrange his fall schedule, and I appreciate the understanding of those companies with whom he was scheduled to conduct."

In order to replace Levine, Luisi had to cancel performances with the Rome Opera, the Genoa Opera, the Vienna Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony....

[Levine] is scheduled to conduct "Götterdämmerung" from Jan. 27 to Feb. 11, "Das Rheingold" on April 4, and three complete cycles of Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" between Apr. 7 and May 12. He is also scheduled to conduct concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 15 and May 20.

We can only hope that he does, in fact, return in January. I already purchased two hard-to-find tickets to what is now Substitution Siegfried (in October). I've also got tickets for "Götterdämmerung" in January (which I hope Levine may yet be well enough to conduct). As CultureGrrl readers may remember, I last saw him conduct, in evident pain, at last spring's famous soprano-flooring premiere of the seemingly perilous Robert Lepage production of "Die Walküre."

By naming Luisi as principal conductor, the Met appears to be paving to way for a future transfer of the music directorship. I expect that's the likely scenario if Levine can't make it back to the podium in January.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it now appears that New York magazine's Justin Davidson may have been right. James Levine is a national treasure, but our country's premiere opera house can't afford to limp along in limbo much longer.

Jan Brennan, Arts & Venues Denver's Director of Cultural Programs: Contract-awarding process was "fair and appropriate."
 
In taking the highly unusual step of publicly taking Denver to task (scroll down) for choosing Sotheby's as its agent for the sale of four Clyfford Still paintings (to benefit his eponymous museum), Christie's may have created potential problems for itself in appealing to future consignors.

On Wednesday, I posed this (so far unanswered) question to Christie's spokesperson, Toby Usnik:

Might future consignors feel wary about contacting you in the first place, if they think it's possible that you might retaliate against them in a similar fashion?

I also asked Usnik for the full text of Christie's statement (mentioned in Monday's Denver Post article), which had called Denver's choice of Sotheby's "'arbitrary and capricious." Instead, Usnik sent me a one-sentence statement that was conciliatory towards Denver. Soon after that, he shot off another e-mail, instructing me not to quote that statement. It's possible that Christie's is rethinking its combative stance and is now engaged in damage control.

I have now obtained (not from Christie's) the full text of the auction house's earlier admonitory statement:

Christie's believes that it has the best track record in selling the paintings of Clyfford Still and was, in fact, chosen by the Estate of the artist to value his artistic legacy. We are concerned that the process of awarding of the contract was arbitrary and capricious. The public will not be served by rushing into a binding sale agreement before a full and complete consideration of proposals for sale. Based upon our review of the publicly available documents, we had offered a considerably more favorable bid to the City and its citizens.

Christie's hasn't yet answered my query as to the specific reasons why it regarded Denver's process as "arbitrary and capricious," so I can't judge whether there is merit to that charge. According to the Denver Post, the auction house engaged attorneys and a lobbyist to press its case.

I can only assume that the auction house wouldn't take such an adversarial stance against a private consignor, and was basing its objections on the fact that a government body has the highest obligation for due diligence, due process and public accountability. Then again, museums consigning works to auction have similar ethical, if not legal, obligations, so one wonders if Christie's actions could spook institutions seeking a sales agent.

Jan Brennan, Director of Cultural Programs for Arts & Venues Denver, the city agency overseeing the Still/Sotheby's deal, had this to say about the fuss raised by Christie's:

We are confident that the contracting process was fair and appropriate, and the City Council has indicated by its support that it is satisfied. We are proceeding now through the signature process for all city contracts and do not anticipate that there will be any delay....

The City Council followed standard processes in the approval of the Sotheby's contract, which does include a Committee vetting that took place on Aug. 24....At this meeting, Christie's objection was raised and we were questioned about the selection process and decision.....The approval of the contract is complete and not under any reconsideration.

If all goes according to plan, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock will give his final approval to the Sotheby's deal next week.

Auction-house squabbles aside, there is a much more serious issue tainting this sale, which I've previously discussed---the violation of donor intent, which has become increasingly rampant among institutions that seek (and usually receive) court approval to deviate from the written stipulations of deceased benefactors.

I'll have more to say about this vexing ethical issue, probably next week.