October 2011 Archives

Max Hollein, director of Frankfurt's Städel Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle and Sculpture Collection of the Liebieghaus
Photo: Gaby Gerster
© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt/Gabi Gerster

I'm always peskily pointing a finger at other peoples' mistakes, so I guess I should own up to one of my own.

As CultureGrrl readers may remember (although I probably shouldn't remind you), I posted, back in August 2008, that an "informed" source had told me that the four-person shortlist for the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was believed to include three Met curators (including the ultimate victor, Thomas Campbell) and a wild card, Max Hollein, Frankfurt-based director of the Schirn Kunsthalle since 2001 and, since 2006, also director of the Städel Museum and the Sculpture Collection of the Liebieghaus.

I rashly predicted that this German wild card would win New York's premier art-museum directorship.

Less than a month later, at the end of the press conference that introduced Campbell as the anointed one, then director Philippe de Montebello teased me about my bad call. But I didn't know how misguided I really was until wild card Max himself, visiting New York for two days recently, invited this gullible scribe to chat with him, drink some coffee and also (as it turned out) eat some crow.

I consoled myself with the fact that my mega-gaffe had resulted in my meeting him for a wide-ranging discussion, which included details about the Städel's major capital project and also Hollein's take on his institution's problematic Nazi-era past, the subject of a recently concluded study that he oversaw.

Son of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Hans Hollein, Max arrived at Untitled, the Whitney Museum's restaurant, carrying a flipbook of photos to illustrate his discussion of the Städel's almost concluded 50-million-Euro renovation and underground expansion, designed by Frankfurt architects schneider+schumacher. The museum will reopen its modern galleries in mid-November, its old master galleries in mid-December and its new contemporary wing in February.

The new wing features portholes in its sod-covered roof, which will illuminate the grounds at night...



...and will function during the day as skylights for the flexibly configured galleries:


Renderings © schneider+schumacher architects

While at the Whitney (which I had chosen as our meeting place), Hollein took in the intermittently engaging Feininger retrospective (now closed) and the consistently exhilarating David Smith show (to Jan. 8). He seemed as surprised as I had been, when I mentioned that Karen Rosenberg of the NY Times had been lukewarm about the Smith display, which had given me a rush of pleasure, both for the quality of works (gleaned from a variety of lenders) and for the interactions of well chosen examples from diverse media.

A smaller version of the display that had been organized by Carol Eliel for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney's show includes not just Smith's celebrated sculptural oeuvre (both late, large masterpieces and early, small works) and his paintings and drawings, but also a group of the artist's own less known photographs of his own work (more famously photographed by Dan Budnik). Also on view are several of his revelatory sketchbooks, including this object lesson in how he took the forms in a photograph of a violinist and abstracted them:


Pages from Sketchbook #40, 1950-54, Estate of David Smith

Here are two views of the Whitney's spacious installation:





But back to Max: He impressed me with his astute ideas regarding museum management and collection-building, not to mention his over-achieving career of managing three independent art venues simultaneously. He has been notably resourceful in raising private support for the Städel, in a country where many museums get substantial public subsidies. (The Schirn and Liebieghaus are municipally funded institutions; the Städel is private.)

Although about 20% of the Städel's operating budget comes from the city, "it's really the citizens who have to step in," he said. The 40-million-Euro cost of the new wing is about 65% funded by private donors.

The only time when Hollein's otherwise confident demeanor grew uncharacteristically hesitant was when I asked how his museum might proactively address the revelations, published in a recent study that he co-edited, regarding the Städel's role in the Nazi era (or, as he called it, "the time of National Socialism").

Hollein noted that his institution had rescued some Expressionist works that would otherwise have been destroyed by the Nazis, who had regarded them as "degenerate." But he also acknowledged that the museum had acquired works that were expropriated from Jewish owners. This history is described in detail in Eckard Michels' October 2011 Art Newspaper review (not online) of the German-only study, "The Städel and National Socialism."

Hollein never specifically answered my question, though, about how his museum would move forward from the book's candid, disturbing revelations. He did note, however, that restitutions by his museum had already occurred.

Observing that when he arrived in 2006, the museum's officials "knew very little" about their institution's Nazi-era role but were often questioned about it, Hollein stated this:

I said, "Let's take the subject very differently, be completely open about it and deeply research it with an outside research group."...A lot of it we knew, a lot of it we didn't. It's ambiguous.

After some digressions, he repeated my previous question, "What comes next?" But he still didn't provide specifics:

Not only have we learned a lot, but this made us understand that these were also, although we tried to neglect it, formative years of the institution. And you have to be very sensitive about that. This [the Nazi era] is a moment where the institution went through a period that had significant results, both in losing works from the collection, in having acquired works....

The Städel was one of the first institutions to start researching the provenance of its work, which started way before my time. We restituted a couple of works, which isn't directly linked to the [latest] research. I think our efforts for restituting works were actually amplified through the research.

At the Städel, I don't think there are too many difficulties still there, because the core part of the works acquired during the Second World War were already restituted in the Fifties. There are always requests for information and we continue to work on that.

When you say, "What's next?", it's to be more open and not be secretive about that time. The time between 1933 and 1945 will be an integral part of our history and no longer the black hole where we say, "It was the dark ages of Germany so we went into hiding." It's  part of the institutional development, with its results---some of them actually positive, where we would never have had this Expressionist collection, but some of it obviously negative.

Towards the end of our hour-long chat, on a day when he was also planning to visit some artists (including Yoko Ono) and attend the meeting of the board (to which he belongs) of New York's Neue Galerie, I couldn't resist asking two burning New York questions:

What vision would you have brought to the Met, had you been chosen to lead it? What had the search process been like?

Whereupon Max (figuratively) dropped an egg on my head:

I was never in the process. I know that people talked about me and I think that people even did some background information. But I was not involved in it.

Splat! Egg on my face. He had never even been contacted in connection with the director's search, let alone interviewed. So much for my "informed sources."

But we must move on: Would someone please leak to me plausible shortlists for the directorships of the Getty Museum and Houston Museum of Fine Arts? (On second thought, maybe not.)

Cover image (from Hartley's "Hall of the Mountain King") of the collection highlights catalogue for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art



In my June 16 CultureGrrl post about Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum, I stated that Moshe Safdie's "wow" architecture (a work-in-progress when I visited Bentonville, AR, last May) could get the museum only so far. I wrote:

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

Now we know more, thanks to the highlights catalogue, Celebrating the American Spirit: Masterworks from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (also the title of the inaugural exhibition), recently issued by Hudson Hills Press (available through various online sources, but, strangely, not on the museum's own website).

Although the museum's director, Don Bacigalupi had tantalizingly told me that the collection would be "a revelation to visitors and maybe even a revelation to people in the field," it now looks like it won't be that much of a surprise to those who have already perused the group of about 70 previously announced works (missing for a while, but now back online).

Assuming that the 365-page, 151-work catalogue represents the quality and scope of the works in the collection (many of which do not actually belong to the museum, but are "promised gifts" from Walton), the holdings seem to be strong in certain areas but by no means a comprehensive survey. (This is, however, still a work-in-progress.) The collection appears to be very heavily weighted towards high-quality Hudson River School paintings---the specialty of Walton's art adviser and Crystal Bridges board member, John Wilmerding. As one might expect, it's a predominantly middle-of-the-road, conservative assemblage.

There's not much in the way of challenging abstract work, edgy pieces or recent contemporary trends. There's little in the way of sensuality, let alone nudity (the most notable exception being Benjamin West's "Cupid and Psyche," 1808). There are some great 18th-century paintings (Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale), some good American modernism (Hartley, O'Keeffe, Feininger, Demuth, Dove, Joseph Stella, Stuart Davis), a smattering of Pop. Don't even think about Minimalism. Why am I not surprised that there are two Will Barnets and one each by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth?

Although Bacigalupi had previously indicated to me that the inaugural installation would include major examples of Abstract Expressionism (not evident on the collection's website), the Museum of Modern Art has nothing to worry about. The highlights catalogue includes a small, very early (non-drip) Pollock, a small David Smith oil-on-board (a biomorphic abstraction of a cello player), two Hans Hofmanns and several works by second-generation AbEx-ers Joan Mitchell and Grace Hartigan. Don't look for de Kooning or Rothko.

There are a few offbeat choices, reflecting the quirky taste of the founder, who has a well known penchant for cute animals and strong women. As the museum's long-time curator, Chris Crosman, noted in his "Introduction to the Collection":

Crystal Bridges' approach to collecting is unabashedly populist.

This one has become something of a signature work for the museum:


Norman Rockwell, "Rosie the Riveter," 1943
Image courtesy of Saturday Evening Post; Photo: Dwight Primiano

In many instances, the collection reminded me of another American art collection that I recently viewed---the McGlothlin Collection, promised (by bequest) to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which I described as "somewhat quirky, with a number of fine works, but also quite a few that are not typical of the artists' most celebrated output."

This is partly a function of the collectors' individual tastes, but largely determined by what was still available on the market when they began to acquire. Walton didn't start in earnest (with the museum firmly in mind) until 2005 and she was undeniably late to the game: The days when a single collector could put together a top-quality, comprehensive collection of American art are likely behind us. With great financial resources and good advice, Walton did as well as she could and certainly created an important cultural resource for her native Arkansas.

As Bacigalupi observed in his foreward for the catalogue, "conventional wisdom would suggest the impossibility of starting a new museum from scratch in the 21st century." Alice has achieved that improbable goal, but calling her institution, "America's Next Great Museum" (Crystal Bridges' new advertising slogan) may be hyperbole.

A long list of those who have assisted in the birth of Crystal Bridges is acknowledged in the catalogue, but Robert Workman, Bacigalupi's predecessor (now director of the Flint Hills Discovery Center, Manhattan, KS), is unaccountably unmentioned.

But although he's missing, you don't have to be: You can now reserve timed tickets on the museum's website. But the "Buy Now" buttons should have been more accurately (and invitingly) be labeled, "Reserve Now," since admission is free.

Charles Willson Peale, "Yarrow Mamout," 1819

I started having traumatic flashbacks to the "Gross Clinic" morass, after reading Stephan Salisbury's two excellent in-depth articles in the Phladelphia Inquirer about the Philadelphia Museum of Art's purchase of the above portrait, sold by the Philadelphia History Museum at Atwater Kent. The proceeds, according to Salisbury, are being used "to pay off most of a $1.4-million bank loan," in connection with the museum's $5.9-million renovation project. Closed since January 2009, the Atwater Kent is scheduled to reopen this June.

The Peale portrait, offered privately through Christie's, is "one of the very earliest known works to depict a freed slave in the United States and the earliest known painting of a Muslim in America," according to the Philadelphia Museum's celebratory announcement of its acquisition, now on view.

When I read that Philadelphia Museum would bankroll its purchase by selling seven paintings and two 18th-century side chairs from its collection, I was poised to mount my high horse for another charge against dubious deaccessioning. After all, the paintings being monetized are by big names---Mary Cassatt, George Inness (two works), William Merritt Chase, Severin Roesen and Charles Willson Peale (two works).

But when the Philadelphia Museum (with admirable, very prompt transparency) sent me images and the complete (very scant) exhibition histories for these castoffs, they appeared to be very minor works by major artists---no great loss to the public domain.

Here, for example, is the Cassatt---"Head of a Girl in a Hat with a Black Rosette"---which had no special-exhibition history whatsoever and no history of display in the museum's permanent-collection galleries:



But while the Philadelphia Museum appears to have done the right thing, the Atwater Kent has disregarded a widely accepted standard of museum stewardship---that the collection should not be monetized to fund capital projects. The history museum has argued that its use of the proceeds is justified because the renovation is related to care of its collection. Categorizing a far-ranging capital project as "care of the collection" is too big a stretch.

UPDATE---Here's what the Professional Standards and Ethics of the American Association for State and Local History say on this subject: "Collections shall not be deaccessioned or disposed of in order to provide financial support for institutional operations, facilities maintenance or any reason other than preservation or acquisition of collections, as defined by institutional policy."

The sale of the Peale is be only the tip of the Atwater Kent's Titanic-sized deaccession iceberg. According to Salisbury's report:

Thousands of artifacts have now gone to market to raise money, free storage space, and focus the collection on items deemed of relevance to Philadelphia. Since 2003, the museum has sold between 5,000 and 6,000 items, according to officials, more than half since 2007.

Truly big-ticket art sales began in December 2009 with the sale of a Raphaelle Peale still life for $700,000 [actually $842,500, with buyer's premium, against a presale estimate of $300,000-$500,000]. Though the price of "Yarrow Mamout" has not been disclosed, knowledgeable speculation puts it in the $1.5 million-plus range.

In comments quoted by Robin Pogrebin for a NY Times article last year detailing previous Atwater Kent disposals, Gregory Kleiber, the museum's treasurer, offered this justification for the sell-offs:

We're a history museum, not an art museum.

That argument, reminiscent of the justification for the disposal of "The Gross Clinic," makes some sense for a medical school like Thomas Jefferson University, which sold the iconic Eakins to fund its core activities. But if collecting and displaying paintings aren't part of the Atwater Kent's core mission, why does its website feature 15 paintings (here and here), including Peale portraits depicting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin?

The Atwater Kent's announcement of its most recent sale asserts that the Peale was "not directly aligned with the History Museum's mission of showcasing Philadelphia's material culture." But like Eakins, Charles Willson Peale was a Philadelphia artist. What's more, the sold painting has strong associations with that city: As noted in the Philadelphia Museum's above-linked announcement of its acquisition, "upon its completion, 'Yarrow Mamout' was exhibited at Peale's Museum in Independence Hall, Philadelphia," which is said to have been the first museum in the U.S.

The jettisoned Raphaelle Peale, according to its Christie's auction catalogue description, had an extensive exhibition history at various institutions including its previous owner, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (which in 2009 finalized a transfer of its art and artifacts to the Atwater Kent, but shares the proceeds from sales). The Christie's catalogue description misleadingly states said that proceeds from the Raphaelle Peale were designated for a "Museum Collection Fund," making this disposal appear to follow professional guidelines that deaccession proceeds be used for purposes that are directly collection-related.

Charles Croce, who recently became executive director of the Atwater Kent, assured the Inquirer that "Yarrow Mamout" would be his museum's last renovation-related disposal.

We can only hope.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, digital rendering of the east elevation

According to the Associated Press, the just-announced decision by Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Co. (TDIC) to start over in soliciting bids for concrete work on the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is "raising questions about the future of the high profile project."

But TDIC asserts that the project will go forward, after new bids are sought for concrete work---some 162,000 cubic meters for "back of house" areas and for a platform on which the new museum will be built, according to TDIC's now out-of-date update on the project (p. 7). The value of the concrete package had previously been estimated at around $109 million.

At the very least, it appears that this bidding do-over will delay the project's completion. Back in February 2009, Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim's director, had told me that the 450,000-square-foot museum would open in 2012-13. But Georgina Adam of the Art Newspaper reported today that, according to a TDIC spokesperson, the opening will be delayed to 2015.

When I asked Eleanor Goldhar, the Guggenheim's deputy director and chief of global communications, if the Art Newspaper report was accurate, she replied, "Yes." She assured me, though, that the project is going forward. 

In September 2009, a Request for Interested Contractors to Submit Pre-qualification for the construction project had put its total construction cost at "in excess of $750 million."

Kevin Brass of the Abu Dhabi-based National, reported today on what he had learned from a TDIC spokesperson:

"This [concrete] work, which forms a part of the multiple work contracts that make up the [Guggenheim] project, will be re-tendered at a future date, and all renewed interest from contractors will be welcome," the spokesman said.

Work has already been completed on land reclamation, the seawall and the building's foundation piles. Work on the design by the architect Frank Gehry is due to be completed early next year, the TDIC said....

Throughout the [United Arab Emirates] region, clients are re-tendering projects as they look for ways to cut costs and the competition for work intensifies among contractors.

Real estate analysts from the region, quoted in an article on the Guggenheim situation by Orlando Crowcroft, business news editor for Gulf News, cast some doubt on the project's future:

Saud Masoud, a senior analyst, Real Estate and Construction, at Rasmala Investment Bank, said that "cash flow and market pressures have impacted development work and continue to affect certain projects' viability [emphasis added]. Engaging in further loss-making activities becomes a tough choice, especially when market trough is not apparent. If tender economics don't meet requirements then the project could see delays."

Another analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, said the decision [to re-tender the contract] was "consistent with other moves that the Abu Dhabi government has taken recently to slow down or delay real estate projects [emphasis added]."

Meanwhile, confounding the skeptics (including me), the Guggenheim recently posted on its website an update on the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki, which would "raise the profile of Finnish art." The study team for the project is expected to make its recommendations by the end of this year, after a final meeting of its steering committee in New York on Dec. 9. If it gives a thumbs-up, approval would still be needed from the Guggenheim's board and Helsinki authorities.

Elected to the Guggenheim's board in 2008 was Carl Gustaf Ehrnrooth of Helsinki, an investor in his family's Corbis Investments S.A., which counts Finnish textile and clothing design company Marimekko among its holdings.

According to the Guggenheim's upbeat update on its website:

It is expected that this window onto the world for the Finnish community, and portal into Finland for artists and audiences everywhere, could help galvanize many aspects of cultural life in Helsinki....

Through its curatorial staff---envisioned to be based both in Helsinki and New York---and through its connections with the entire artistic ecosystem in Helsinki, the new museum would generate exhibitions and programs in partnership and dialogue with the other Guggenheim museums.

This nonhierarchical approach is fundamental to the Guggenheim's drive to democratize art, connect audiences to art, and reaffirm the radical proposition that art has the potential to effect change in the world.

If the concept is approved, a new building would be constructed. According to this news report based on information from Finland, the project could cost 100-200 million Euros and could open in 2017-18. No architects have yet been approached, but Cooper, Robertson & Partners is currently working on a space, site and program analysis, Goldhar told me.

The feasibility study is directed by Ari Wiseman, deputy director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the foundation's deputy director and chief officer for global strategies (as well as long-time director of the Guggenheim Bilbao). Janne Gallen-Kallela-Sirén, director of the Helsinki Art Museum, is the City of Helsinki's representative.

Contrary to prior practice, the Guggenheim would not tell me how much it is being paid for this feasibility study. To its own financial benefit, it has engaged in serial romances with other cities---Rio de Janeiro, Salzburg, Guadalajara, Taichung and Vilnius, to name a few---that were never consummated.

[CORRECTION: A previous version of this post wrongly attributed the LA Times' "insightful, incisive analysis" of the legal issues surrounding the resale royalty issue to Jori Finkel, who had written the LA Times' initial report on the artists' lawsuits against Sotheby's and Christie's (claiming resale royalties), as well as this follow-up. But the article discussed (and praised) in the post below was written by the indispensable Mike Boehm.]

In my analysis yesterday of the class-action lawsuit filed against Sotheby's and Christie's by artists and deceased artists' beneficiaries, I noted that the auction houses' obligations to collect resale royalties for transactions under the 1976 California law seemed clear. Therefore, I predicted, the respondents' legal strategy will likely be an attempt to attack the validity of the law itself.

Mike Boehm of the LA Times has now moved that ball way down the field. In today's article, Artists' Royalty Suit May Hinge on Constitutional Issue, he analyzes in great detail the legal objections likely to be raised against the law itself, if Sotheby's and/or Christie's attempt to challenge its constitutionality.

It's and insightful, incisive analysis, informed by comments that he elicited from legal experts. Mike gets one thing wrong, though. He writes:

If Christie's and Sotheby's were to lose the class action, they'd be on the hook not only for 5% plus interest on each disputed sale, but for attorneys fees and---the real potential haymaker to their bottom lines---punitive damages.

Not necessarily so. The plaintiffs are asking for all that. Ultimately, though, the question of how much the auction houses owe (or don't) will be up to the court to decide.

In the meantime, Christie's and Sotheby's are finally getting around to (perhaps) challenging a law that's been on the books for 25 years but which they have long ignored. We'll have to await their response to the complaint to learn their justification, if any, for that prolonged disregard.

Julia Bryan-Wilson's recent book chronicling the Art Workers Coalition

I'm not the only one having traumatic Sixties flashbacks to the Art Workers Coalition, brought on by the Occupy Museums protest (covered here by Philip Boroff and Katya Kazakina of Bloomberg).

Michael Botwinick, director of the Hudson River Museum, who was the Metropolitan Museum's assistant curator-in-chief (under Ted Rousseau) at the time of the infamous AWC cockroach intervention at a dinner meeting of the Met board's small, very exclusive Acquisitions Committee, disputed certain details in the account (second paragraph) of that incident that I linked to yesterday (summarized from a 2009 book on the AWC by Julia Bryan-Wilson, issued this year in paperback).

Here's Michael's firsthand account of what happened:

Yes indeed, it feels a little like 1968 again. But the acccount of the cockroach incident at the Met that you link to is wrong. It was not a protest of "Harlem on My Mind." That was at the Met in 1969.

The cockroach event took place some two years later in the spring of 1971 after the Met Centennial. It was an Acquisitions Committee meeting, which was held in the Wrightsman Period Rooms. It was on an evening the Museum was open. The AWC used whistles to confuse security and came in past the flimsy folding screens.

This was before walkie talkies, and the guards at the Met used a whistle signal system to communicate in emergencies. It was always assumed someone on the staff had tipped them off about the system and the dinner.

That small glitch doesn't take away from the real point of your post. But it is worth remembering that what pushed the AWC and others into confrontation with the Met was [director Tom] Hoving's Master Plan and the encroachment into Central Park---seems a little quaint now. This was distinct from the PASTA/MoMA strike [a job action by unionized employees of the Museum of Modern Art], which had a much stronger focus on workers' rights.

I am fairly sure of my facts. That was the first Acquisition Meeting I organized. It is a night I am not likely to forget.

Then again, another person who was "not likely to forget," Tom Hoving, in his directorial memoir, Making the Mummies Dance, suggested that this incident was related to an ongoing labor dispute with museum employees. Yet another account says the invading artists were "protesting the spirit of acquisition" at the museum.

Far out! Does anyone really remember the Sixties?

Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 2006, is moving on (effective Jan. 9) to the directorship of the Dallas Museum of Art, which Bonnie PItman left for health reasons earlier this year.

The DMA's announcement of the appointment is here.

Despite his embrace of his adopted Midwestern community, I always thought that it was a stop on Max's return to greater professional prominence, after his ill-fated stint at the Whitney Museum (which involved the scuttling of the Rem Koolhaas expansion plan that Anderson had championed). With the Kimbell, Nasher, Amon Carter, Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art and a new performing arts center (not to mention Meyerson Symphony Hall, home to the Dallas Symphony), the Dallas/Fort Worth area has a greater critical mass of important cultural institutions than exists in Anderson's current home city.

Now the Texas artworld only has one important art museum directorship yet to fill.

Art Workers Coalition, "Art Workers Won't Kiss Ass," 1969

Help! I'm getting traumatic Sixties flashbacks!

Does anyone remember the Art Workers Coalition? I started my art-journalism career as editor/writer for the Art Workers News, which grew out of the AWC and also counted a young Adam Weinberg, now the Whitney's director, among its staffers. (We were both there, however, in the early '70s, after the coalition had pretty much disbanded.)

The AWC had some clear, specific objectives about reforming museums, such as the inclusion of more women and minorities in exhibitions and on cultural institutions' professional staffs and boards. Perhaps its most famous (or infamous) action---at the Metropolitan Museum under Thomas Hoving---is recounted here (second paragraph).

By contrast, Occupy Museums (an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street), which today takes its protest to three New York museums, has a "message" (so far) that's little more than heated rhetoric about "a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite."

Are there any specific objectives here? Should museums cease making "absurd" quality distinctions about "individual genius" and randomly show everyone? Some rational goals need to be articulated, if this is to become a Movement, rather than a venting of frustration.

Paddy Johnson, the Art Fag City blogger, has posted the text of Occupy Museums' screed (including the above excerpt), as well as the group's schedule for descending upon a puzzling (and probably puzzled) assortment of institutions---the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick and the New Museum. (How did the Met manage to escape this fate?)

The group is scheduled to conduct a "teach-in" about the three targeted museums at 3 p.m. today in Zuccotti Park. At 4:15 p.m., it is scheduled to broadcast (on Livestream) a statement related to this protest.

Perhaps this amorphous expression of discontent will ultimately coalesce into something meaningful. But if the "Occupy" movement is looking to attack the forces that have played a significant role in widening the gap between the haves and have-nots, they've made a questionable choice in targeting art museums.

First page of California Arts Council's pamphlet on the Resale Royalty Act

Let me say this for the record (and then prepare to dodge the brickbats): I'm in favor of resale royalties for artists.

The fact that California's Resale Royalty Act is "little known" (as the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow describes it in her article today) is no excuse for ignoring it. This law is anomalous in the U.S., but not in Europe. It is surely well known to Sotheby's and Christie's legal counsel.

The two auction houses have just been sued in U.S. District Court, Central District of California, by New York artist Chuck Close, California artist Laddie John Dill and the heirs of Robert Graham (and also, in Christie's case, the Sam Francis Foundation). They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorneys' fees, under the California law.

The full text of their class-action complaint against Sotheby's is here. (The complaint against Christies is listed on the court's website but its full text is not yet available online.)

So what does the 1976 California law actually say? Here are its key provisions:

Whenever a work of fine art is sold and the seller resides in California or the sale takes place in California, the seller or the seller's agent shall pay to the artist of such work of fine art or to such artist's agent 5 percent of the amount of such sale....

When a work of fine art is sold at an auction [emphasis added] or by a gallery, dealer, broker, museum, or other person acting as the agent for the seller, the agent shall withhold [emphasis added] 5 percent of the amount of the sale, locate the artist and pay the artist.

If the seller or agent is unable to locate and pay the artist within 90 days, an amount equal to 5 percent of the amount of the sale shall be tranferred to the [California] Arts Council [which then is charged with trying to locate the artist or estate representative].

You can read the full text of California's Resale Royalty Act, here (at 986).

On a webpage titled, Attention: Looking for Artists, updated on Monday, the California Arts Council has posted a list of artists or their estate representatives whom it has not been able to locate, as well as another list of artists or estate representatives who "have been notified, and not yet responded or sent responses which are not yet complete." Among the big names on the latter list: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jennifer Bartlett, George Condo and (better know for his music than his art) Jerry Garcia.

The provisions of the law and the auction houses' obligations under it seem clear enough. But both Sotheby's and Christie's, according to Crow's report, intend to fight the claim in court, if necessary. My guess is that they'll attempt to attack the validity of the law itself.

My own concern about the law is that it takes 5% of the total resale price, not a percentage of the profits. It does not apply, however, if the resale price is less than the purchase price. Nor does it apply to resales under $1,000.

In my art-law bible, the three-volume Art Law: The Guide for Collectors, Investors, Dealers, & Artists (2005 edition), co-authors Ralph Lerner (counsel for major collectors who could be adversely affected by resale royalties) and Judith Bresler assert that "some question remains as to the constitutionality" of California's law. Noting that only two cases had been brought challenging the law (which was upheld), Lerner and Bresler write:

Perhaps the lack of interpretive activity under this statute is a reflection of art resale transactions being conducted elsewhere---to avoid the burdens of enforcement. Or perhaps resale transactions are being conducted in California under a statute largely ignored. Whichever is the case, the dearth of case law does not bode well for the future vitality of this statute...

...or perhaps new case law is about to be made, which could significantly bolster the future "vitality" of resale royalties.

As if this weren't enough, Sotheby's is facing a more immediate problem---the prospect of picket lines and demonstrators marring next month's presale exhibitions and major evening auctions of Impressionist/modern and contemporary art. The auction house's long-running labor dispute with art handlers has caught the attention of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, who interrupted an auction and also created disruptions at two of restaurateur Danny Meyer's upscale establishments. Meyer is a Sotheby's board member. (So is Diana Taylor [scroll down], Mayor Bloomberg's long-time partner.)

From MoMA to Sotheby's: Rufino Tamayo, "Watermelon Slices," 1950
Presale estimate: $1.5-2 million

November is rapidly becoming Deaccession Month, with the Museum of Modern Art now joining the Brooklyn Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Clyfford Still Museum (via the City of Denver), in selling museum-quality work from the "permanent" collection to fund future acquisitions. (The situation is somewhat different in Denver, which is selling works that are not technically being "deaccessioned" but had been intended for study and display at the new Still Museum. Proceeds from four Stills will be used to establish an operating endowment, originally to have been created through fundraising.)

MoMA has repeatedly been an aggressive deaccessioner of fine works to buy what its curators regard as finer works. Its latest disposable---Rufino Tamayo's "Watermelon Slices" (above)---has a distinguished exhibition history, as described in Sotheby's press release:

It has been in the museum's collection since 1953...and has been included in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art...and Tate Gallery.

Of the remaining Tamayos featured on MoMA's collections website, none are from the 1950s.

This upcoming sale (on Nov. 16) gave me traumatic flashbacks to another deaccessioned Tamayo---the one that had belonged to Randolph College's Maier Museum and was sold for a record $7.21 million, three and a half years ago, to bolster the college's finances:


Rufino Tamayo, "Troubadour," 1945, ex-Maier Museum

Interestingly, while getting rid of one Mexican artist's painting from its distinguished collection of Latin American art, MoMA is poised to open an exhibition devoted to another, who was Tamayo's contemporary: Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 13-May 14) "will reunite five 'portable murals'---freestanding frescoes with bold images commemorating events in Mexican history---that were made for a monographic exhibition of the artist's work at the Museum in 1931," according to the above-linked press release.

MoMA's show will also include "design drawings for his infamous Rockefeller Center mural"---"infamous" because the monumental work was destroyed after Rivera refused to bow to Nelson Rockefeller's insistence that he paint out the head of Lenin.

Letting bygones be bygones, Nelson's only surviving brother, David Rockefeller, MoMA's honorary chairman, provided what the museum calls "generous funding" for the Rivera show.

In other deaccession news: The Art Institute of Chicago has an under-the-radar consignment in next month's Impressionist/modern sale at Christie's---a Pissarro with an extensive exhibition history---not at Chicago but in various "Masterpieces" exhibitions dispatched by the Art Institute to Japan.


From Chicago to Christie's: Pissarro, "Juin, temps pluvieux, Eragny," 1898
Presale estimate: $1.5-2 million

Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum will reopen on Oct. 27 with three permanent collection shows celebrating its 50th anniversary. Emerging from a rocky period under the university's previous president, Jehuda Reinharz, when its future seemed in grave doubt, it now has the enthusiastic support of Brandeis' new president, Frederick Lawrence, and has undergone an extensive physical renovation,

In a conversation with me today, Lawrence said he's "very hopeful" that events related to the reopening "will bring back a lot of people who have not been to the Rose for some time and will bring us new people who have never been to the Rose," helping the museum to enlist new supporters. The plan to lease works from the collection through Sotheby's still exists, but no works have yet been rented out and there's "nothing new to report."

Lawrence added:

We have begun a strategic planning exercise, university-wide, to really begin to think about where we see ourselves going in the future and where we're gong to put emphasis....I see the whole area of the creative arts as part of our curriculum generally---and the Rose as a piece of that---as very much part of that discussion.

The capital project, undertaken with a gift from Sandra and Gerald S. Fineberg, replaced the front curtain wall "with new, more energy-efficient glass," installed a new climate control system, and (alas) eliminated the museum's signature water feature, which worked so well in last year's "Waterways" exhibition:


Installation shot of "Waterways"
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum

Here's that gallery, without the water:


Photo by Mike Lovett, Brandeis University

The moisture from the pool had always hindered proper humidity control for the art, noted Roy Dawes, the Rose's director of museum operations.

What the Rose still conspicuously lacks is a new permanent director to replace Michael Rush, who left his post in July 2009, after expressing strong public opposition to Reinharz's misguided mission to monetize the collection as an expedient for alleviating the university's recession-caused financial crisis. Dawes is serving, for now, as the Rose's de facto director. An update on the progress of the director's search is here. Lawrence today said he was "optimistic about the quality of the candidates" who have shown interest.

Invited to the Rose's evening VIP opening on Oct. 26 are artists, artworld luminaries and members of the campus community. In addition to previewing the new exhibitions, they will hear a conversation between artist James Rosenquist (whose "Two 1959 People" will be displayed) and Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg, a Brandeis alumnus.

Rosenquist, as CultureGrrl readers may remember, had agreed to (and then precipitously pulled out of) a fall 2010 one-man show that had been hastily scheduled at the then embattled museum, after three other artists---Bill Viola, Eric Fischl and April Gornik---had withdrawn from a planned exhibition, in protest against the university's unwillingness at that time to commit to preserving the permanent collection.

Like the American Folk Art Museum, the Rose's status has morphed from moribund to viable, making it ripe for new financial support to bolster that progress. On its homepage, the Rose has now posted a link to a donation page.

Speaking of support for previously endangered museums, the American Folk Art Museum last week posted an upbeat letter by its new president, Monty Blanchard, thanking friends for getting his institution on more stable footing. Among those he acknowledged was Joyce Cowin, who, Blanchard said, had "joyously committed to Lincoln Square and the Museum for many years, and whose recent substantial financial pledge in support of the revitalized Museum is the rock on which our future is built."


Entrance to the former flagship facility of the American Folk Art Museum on W. 53rd Street, next to the Museum of Modern Art (which purchased the building)
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum

Also among others Blanchard thanked was the NY Times, "whose critics' [read: Roberta Smith's] appreciation of and passion for our art and our institution is second to none and is always valuable to us." (Roberta's got the clout, but CultureGrrl 's Save the American Folk Art Museum! was predecessor of, if not inspiration for, Roberta's rallying cry for the museum's rescue.)

Surprisingly, those whom Blanchard thanked in his letter included the Museum of Modern Art (for being "a great neighbor [my link, not theirs] on 53rd Street") but not the Brooklyn Museum, New-York Historical Society or Museum of Arts and Design, all of which had expressed interest in collaborating with AFAM on future projects. Nor did he acknowledge the Metropolitan Museum for its planned display about 15 works from AFAM's collection as part of the opening of its new American Wing in January. All of these interventions would help give a higher profile to AFAM as an important star in New York's cultural constellation.

As of now, no future exhibitions are listed on on AFAM's website. The museum is currently showing quilts from its collection at its Lincoln Square facility.

In his letter, Blanchard said this about AFAM's future:

We must continue to be frugal with our financial resources, but for the first time in many years, we can think of undertaking new initiatives and developing new approaches to our mission of collecting, presenting, studying and disseminating our traditional folk and contemporary outsider art....All of us...feel a great sense of responsibility and opportunity to remain in the forefront of America's and the City's artistic dialogue.

Donations, anyone?

George Bellows, "Men of the Docks," 1912

It's no longer posted among the Bellows works listed on the Maier Museum's collections website (search on "Bellows"). So I can only assume that "Men of the Docks," the celebrated first work to enter the collection of Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA (purchased from the artist in 1920 for $2,500), has been formally deaccessioned, although not yet sold by Christie's, the auction house to which it was consigned almost four years ago.

Ever since the painting was unceremoniously stripped off the museum's walls, along with three other paintings, in October 2007, it has been inaccessible to Randolph students and the general public. It was to be marketed at Christie's to bolster the college's financial resources, but the sale was delayed due to a lawsuit by opponents and by the recession-induced weakening of the market for American art.

Now comes word that "Docks" will emerge from seclusion in a big way: It will have what amounts to an international presale exhibition at three major museums.

Here is the text of a letter that went out today to the college's alums from John Klein, president of Randolph College:

Dear Alumnae and Alumni,

Randolph College was asked by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to lend its painting, "Men of the Docks" (1912), by American artist George Bellows for the first comprehensive exhibition in three decades of the artist's prolific career. We are officially announcing this information to our community today.

"George Bellows (1882-1925)" will be on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. June 10 through Oct. 8, 2012; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Nov. 14, 2012, through Feb. 18, 2013; and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Mar. 16 through June 9, 2013. An accompanying catalogue will document and define Bellows unique place in the history of American art and in the annals of modernism.

The National Gallery of Art believes that the College's painting is an important addition to the retrospective, which includes 140 paintings, drawings, and lithographs by Bellows. It is a rare opportunity to honor and remember one of America's greatest artists.

Randolph College is honored to lend to an exhibition with such a far-reaching educational benefit. It is also our hope that the exhibition will provide the opportunity for members of our community to view "Men of the Docks" in the context of Bellows' career....

I know that you have fond memories of "Men of the Docks" from when you were a student at the College. Despite the necessary decision [emphasis added] in 2007 to sell four paintings from our collection, the College's commitment to both art education and the use of its collection as an integral part of that education endures. We wanted you to be among the first to know about this opportunity to lend this painting to such an important exhibition.

Since Klein is still calling his decision to sell "necessary," one assumes that the painting is still open for offers, which may now become more numerous and attractive thanks to the museum exposure. Or, alternatively, it may be a value-enhanced candidate for future public auction. Museums should not allow themselves to be used as marketing tools, showing works that they know may be sold off their walls or soon thereafter.

As CultureGrrl readers may remember, one of the first acts (last June) of the Association of Art Museum Directors under its new president, Dan Monroe, was to strongly reaffirm its condemnation of Randolph's plan to monetize its art. If the Bellows has (in Klein's words) "far-reaching educational benefit," it should at the very least have been kept at the Maier for the educational benefit of Randolph's own students, until market conditions were deemed sufficiently improved for this deplorable sale to go forward.

I think Randolph is in urgent need of a Brandeis Solution---a new president who appreciates the centrality of art to the institution's educational mission and who understands the importance of observing the principles of responsible museum stewardship.

I don't have to bellow any further about the Bellows. Ellen Agnew, who resigned her position as associate director of the Maier in protest against the deaccessions, has passionately done it for me:

Unbelievable, but unfortunately not surprising. Deny students and community members (whose predecessors purchased the painting from Bellows) the benefits of the painting for four years while it languished in Christie's storage, and then prostitute it publicly as a way to promote it and increase its value for subsequent sale. Shame on Randolph College and the National Gallery of Art.

The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond, 33.19 carats D color, gift from Richard Burton, to be auctioned at Christie's, New York, on Dec. 13
Presale Estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000

This could be a case of "Great Minds Think Alike."

Whether or not he was inspired by my piece (which he doesn't mention), the LA Times' Christopher Knight today posted a Critic's Notebook piece closely tracking yesterday's CultureGrrl post decrying LA MOCA's astonishing decision to taint its nonprofit museum space with a presale exhibition for Christie's upcoming series of auctions of Elizabeth Taylor's opulent possessions.

It should perhaps be noted that there have been previous instances of museums' allowing art galleries to sell art on their premises---both the National Academy in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia have hosted dealer-organized American art fairs.

Both Knight and I ended our screeds by blasting MOCA's deal with Christie's as a sellout. But the LA Times went me one better:

In negotiating the cheesy business arrangement with Christie's..., [Jeffrey] Deitch [the museum's director] got played. He should have held out for a cut on the sale of Liz's famous 33-carat Burton diamond, expected to ring up between $2.5 and $3.5 million. The only thing worse than selling out is selling out cheap.

My guess is that neither Christie's nor LA MOCA minds it in the least when we fulminate against this deviation from proper professional practice. For this kind of brazen gambit, there may be no such thing as bad publicity (unless the Association of Art Museum Directors or the IRS decides to look into the commercial use of this nonprofit space).

By writing about this, we may, in fact, have haplessly helped boost those $50 "premium ticket" sales for the LA MOCA showing!

Photo: Edward Quinn, courtesy of Christie's

The best and the worst of LA MOCA will soon be on display---respectively, its recently opened Under the Big Black Sun exhibition (to Feb. 13) and the latest episode in that continuing soap opera---Jeffrey Takes Hollywood.

The best of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is whatever its chief curator Paul Schimmel puts his mind to. From his distinguished track record (and also from his must-read exhibition essay for "Black Sun"), I'm guessing that his survey of California art from 1974-81 will be one of the best things about Pacific Standard Time, the Getty-instigated long-term project "encompassing every major LA art movement from 1945 to 1980." PST marks an admirable high in collegial cultural cooperation but could, with shows from some 60 cultural institutions in Southern California, ultimately prove to be TMI about LA.

Curiously, Adam Nagourney's NY Times round-up, just posted, of highlights from "Pacific Standard Time" features an abundance of quotes from LA MOCA's director, Jeffrey Deitch, but doesn't so much as mention his museum's big show.

While Schimmel's "Under the Big Black Sun" should be engagingly illuminating, "Under the Big Black Cloud" might be the best way to describe LA MOCA's new alliance with that most commercial of players---Christie's, the auction house. From tomorrow through Sunday, LA MOCA will play host in its Pacific Design Center space to Christie's glitzy presale exhibition for the upcoming dispersals of Elizabeth Taylor's couture, art, memorabilia and, of course, her diamonds. A link near the top of MOCA's homepage takes you directly to the auction house's website for its nine-sale Liz sell-off.

It was bad enough when LA MOCA (under previous director Jeremy Strick) opened up a Louis Vuitton boutique on its premises, as part of its Murakami show. But this latest commercial nexus is way over the top, like the opulent possessions of the actress it celebrates.
 
The LA Times has let LA MOCA off way too easy on this one. Jori Finkel wrote:

Asked about the appropriateness of a museum giving over its space to a commercial enterprise, Deitch offered examples of other museums renting out spaces, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art offering its Temple of Dendur hall for corporate events to the Brooklyn Museum of Art renting out its atrium for parties. "Rental agreements are routine," he says, "and this one provides more benefits to the public and to MOCA."

But it's one thing to rent space for a private event. It's quite another to allow a nonprofit art museum's space to be exploited by an outside business firm for directly commercial purposes.

Schimmel's above-linked essay for his "Black Sun" survey concludes:

The very messiness of the 1970s should not be cleaned up, codified, or organized the way previous art-historical periods have. Desire for the comfort of singular successive movements should not obscure what was among the richest moments in American art.

Maybe the messy 1970s don't need cleaning up. But MOCA's inappropriate relationship with commercial entities surely does. Profits from the preview are reportedly "to be split between the museum and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation." The $20 tickets to attend Taylor's display in LA sold out almost immediately. But for the really desperate, some $50 "premium tickets" have been made available for Friday and Saturday nights. (No, I will not give you that link.)

Helping Christie's do its Liz Biz is a MOCA "sellout" in more ways than one.

Speaking of questionable ways to raise money, my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Donor 177 (location unknown) and Repeat Donor 178 from San Francisco. Contributions and ad revenue have been disappointingly thin lately. Should I hock the diamonds?

From the Metropolitan Museum's collection: Miuccia Prada, Ensemble, fall/winter 2007-8, Gift of Prada

In a previous post, I fretted that the Metropolitan Museum's outsized success with its theatrically over-the-top Alexander McQueen installation (which, like everyone else, I greatly admired) might "considerably up the ante for sound, animation and atmospherics" in future shows at the Met and elsewhere. I feared that flashy bells-and-whistles might upstage the objects themselves and their scholarly interpretation.

One thing seems certain: "McQueen" has considerably upped the ante for Met's Costume Institute, which today issued a press release announcing its next extravaganza---"Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion," May 10-Aug. 19. (Hasn't Schiaparelli recently been done?)

According to the Met's announcement of Elsa/Miuccia:

Film director, screenwriter, and producer Baz Luhrmann will be the exhibition's creative consultant, working with film production designer Nathan Crowley, who will serve as production designer.

An Australian film director for Italian designers? Where's Fellini when we really need him?

The use of theatrical special effects that worked well for McQueen could prove gimmicky and obtrusive for these two women from different eras, who had a surrealistic vibe in common. (Schiaparelli died in 1973; Prada is contemporary.)

When exhibition design morphs into "production design," we're approaching cart-driving-the-horse territory, were quiet garments may be upstaged by flashy trappings.


From the Philadelphia Museum of Art's 2003-4 Schiaparelli show: Left, Afternoon Dress, winter 1930-31, black wool and silk. Philadelphia Museum; Right, Coat, winter 1930-31, black wool, Philadelphia Museum

View from my hotel window: Philadelphia Free Library in foreground, In-construction Barnes Foundation (with white rectangular light box atop its roof) directly behind it, Philadelphia Museum of Art at end of the parkway

When I posted on Thursday about the latest court decision reaffirming the permission for the Barnes Foundation's move to Philadelphia, I didn't mention that, by sheer coincidence, I was about to head down the New Jersey Turnpike that same morning, intending (among other things) to meander around the Barnes' construction site in the company of the foundation's amiable spokesperson, Andrew Stewart. My narrated video, shot after we parted company, is informed by Andrew's conversation with me about the project.

Before we check on how the place is shaping up for its May 19 opening, here for reference and comparison is a view of the late, lamented Barnes facility in Merion, as conceived by its founder, collector Albert Barnes. (It will still be used for foundation-related purposes.)



The litigants who were again rebuffed by Judge Stanley Ott in their attempt to stop the move say that they intend to continue pressing their case on appeal. At this late date, however, their chances seem slim to nil.

It's time for the rest of us to regard the move as a fait accompli and to judge the new Barnes on its own merits (or faults) as a facility for the foundation's outstanding (if quirky) holdings. One Philadelphia writer told me flatly that he had no intention of ever entering the new building. But those of us who don't want to deprive ourselves of the chance to revisit its treasures are going to have to try to dismiss our dismay and adjust to reality.

I was not allowed inside, so we'll only be able to peruse the perimeter. At the end of our tour, we'll stop to chat with Melvin the Sidewalk Vendor, to get his thumbs-up, man-on-the-street perspective on the new kid on the block. If you want some cheap eats, his hotdogs, at a mere $1.50, are not to be missed!

If you pass by the "Best Deli," please say hello from CultureGrrl and let Melvin know how to find his 30 seconds of online fame. (I unfortunately forgot to do so.)


Construction worker visits Melvin's hotdog stand, across the street from the Barnes

As you listen to my video narration, you'll hear me express some misgivings about how one aspect of the design by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (architects of the late, lamented flagship facility of New York's American Folk Art Museum) may impact the art---particularly works on paper, such as the Cézanne watercolors. I asked to speak with a conservator or curator about this concern. If I learn more, you'll learn more.

The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, in more peaceful times

The embattled Egyptian Museum again finds itself at the epicenter of violent protests. Alastair Beach of the Independent today reports on yesterday's events:

By around 7 p.m. central Cairo was boiling over with angry protesters as thousands of youths fought running battles with the police and gangs of regime loyalists.

At the northern side of Tahrir Square, close to the Egyptian Museum [emphasis added], the road was littered with rocks and broken glass as young men launched missiles at scores of plain-clothed thugs standing about 200 yards away near the Ramses Hilton Hotel.

Nearby, beneath a motorway overpass close to the Egyptian Museum, three teenagers scrambled to extinguish their burning T-shirts after being hit by a petrol bomb.

Egyptologist Nicole Hansen reported this yesterday on the Facebook page of Restore + Save the Egyptian Museum!:

There are committees being organized to go protect the museum now.

Even before this news broke, the situation for Egyptian antiquities was chaotic. Once again, there is a new appointee (effective Oct. 2) as secretary general of the Supreme Council on Antiquities, the post that was famously held by long-time occupant Zahi Hawass, whose website went silent in August.

In the latest issue of Al-Ahram Weekly, Nevine El-Aref reports:

Early this week Prime Minister Essam Sharaf appointed Mustafa Amin as the new secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) following the resignation of Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, who had held held the post [my link, not his] of head of Egypt's antiquities office for less than six weeks.

Before Abdel-Fattah, Abdel-Fattah El-Banna had been named to that post, but his appointment was controversial and he was never sworn in. The new head, Amin, is former director of the SCA's Islamic and Coptic Antiquities Department.

Al-Ahram Weekly says this about the reasons behind Abdel-Fattah's resignation:

Abdel-Fattah accused Egypt of abandoning its antiquities sector and leaving it in a desperate state, despite what archaeology had done for the country over the years.

He went on to say that the SCA was in debt to the tune of LE750 million to construction companies responsible for restoration work at several sites. It had also borrowed LE61 million from banks to pay the salaries of SCA employees, in addition to a further LE350 million from the government, which will increase to LE400 million after the addition of benefits.

"How can I pay all these debts?" Abdel-Fattah asks. "I don't even have enough money to pay for the restoration work and the delayed salaries."

A week ago, about 200 temporary employees of the Supreme Council of the Antiquities began peacfully picketing in front of the Egyptian Museum, "demanding the quick fulfillment of promises made by their bosses" Al-Ahram reported. Protests have also occurred at other antiquities-related sites around the country, according to Al-Ahram Weekly.

Without peace and stability, tourism (essential to Egypt's economic welfare) and archaeological and cultural activity are likely to be seriously compromised.

Speaking of political unrest and museums: Police were called Saturday to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum when about 200 protesters from the Occupy DC movement reportedly advanced on the building. As a result of this incident, the museum closed Saturday at 3:15 p.m., the Washington Post reported. The Post later revealed that a conservative reporter for the American Spectator, Patrick Howley, had claimed responsibility for instigating the attempt to enter the museum, so that he could journalistically "mock and undermine" the protesters' cause.

In a nutshell, Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court this morning reaffirmed his own previous decision to allow the Barnes Foundation (already far along in construction) to move to Philadelphia. He said that the persistent litigants who have been trying to halt the move lack standing to bring the case.

In the kicker, Judge Ott also decreed that "some portion" of the Barnes' legal fees and costs "should be borne by the unsuccessful petitioners."

You can read the entire decision here.

Will there be an appeal? Comments from the litigants' lawyers are expected later today. As much as I rue the move, I think that they should probably cut their losses. Like it or not, the decision and the new building are a fait accompli.

First Boston. Now Brooklyn.

Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin, described by Sotheby's as "unquestionably the most famous of all Russian painters during his lifetime [1842-1904]" (but relatively obscure during ours), has the dubious distinction of being a deaccession superstar this fall in what is fast becoming the Season of the Museum Disposals (benefiting the Clyfford Still Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Israel Museum, to name three).

Boston's monumental Vereshchagin, Pearl Mosque, Delhi, late 1880s, will be the highlight of Sotheby's Russian art auction in New York on Nov. 1.

Hopping onto the Vereshchagin bandwagon, the Brooklyn Museum has just announced that it will auction another monumental work, one of its three paintings by that artist, at Christie's, London, on Nov. 28:


From Brooklyn Block to Auction Block: "A Crucifixion in the Time of the Romans," 1887
Presale estimate: £1-1.5 million ($1.55-2.33 million)

In his post on the Brooklyn Museum's blog, Refining the Russian Collection, Richard Aste, who in spring 2010 became curator of European art, provided a candid explanation of his deaccession decision:

"Crucifixion by the Romans" is a wonderful example of Vereshchagin's passion for late 19th-century European academic painting. Theatrically staged in 1st-century A.D. Jerusalem, the picture is typical of the dramatic historical spectacles---here of capital punishment under the Roman Empire---that wowed period audiences across Europe and America. Today the painting continues to impress the viewer with its monumentality and academic exoticism or Orientalism, which Vereshchagin learned firsthand in Paris from the style's principal exponent, Jean-Léon Gérôme....

"Crucifixion" is not, however, an example of Russian avant-garde painting---the focus of Brooklyn's collection---which in Vereshchagin's own lifetime meant critical depictions of modern Russian society or Critical Realism. (The Museum owns two iconic Critical Realist paintings by Vereshchagin of the Russo-Turkish War, "A Resting Place of Prisoners" and "The Road of the War Prisoners," both now on view in Russian Modern [my link, not theirs---a 13-painting Brooklyn installation].)

"Crucifixion by the Romans" is a powerful expression of Vereshchagin's foray into Orientalism, and as such it merits greater study and exposure than it could get here [emphasis added], where it was last on view in 1932.

Fair enough. But if that epic painting "merits greater study and exposure," perhaps it should be transferred to another museum where it could receive those benefits, remaining in the public domain instead of (potentially) disappearing into the collection of an oligarch. The museum had famously transferred a large portion of its costume collection to the Metropolitan Museum, when Brooklyn determined that it could not appropriately care for and exhibit it.

But according to Sally Williams, the museum's public information officer, Brooklyn "had not given thought to transferring [the Vereshchagin] to another museum, as was done with the costume collection."

Brooklyn's two remaining Vereshchagins can be seen in the museum's third-floor European gallery:


"A Resting Place of Prisoners," 1878-1879


"The Road of the War Prisoners," 1878-1879

Why wouldn't Brooklyn want to hold onto (and maybe sometimes display) a different, more dynamic example by the artist? Aren't museums supposed to collect in depth? Might not a future curator rue this deaccession decision, as Brooklyn may now regret an earlier curator's disposal of a Frans Hals, "The Fisher Girl," which at this writing is being proudly displayed (scroll down), on loan, at the Metropolitan Museum? Met curator Walter Liedtke recently told me that his institution would enthusiastically welcome Brooklyn's Dutch castaway into its permanent collection, should its current owner decide part with it.

Pop Quiz for Brooklyn. Complete this sentence:

Those who ignore history...

Seeing Red: Clyfford Still, "1949-A-No.1," 93 by 79 in., the highest-estimated work ($25-35 million) of the four being auctioned by Denver to fund Clyfford Still Museum's endowment

In his rigorously argued, detailed essay, Fighting Still; Still Fighting, David Colosi, an interdisciplinary artist with a background in literary theory, has picked up my reporting and commentary on the upcoming auction of four works by the City of Denver and moved the ball down the field.

After analyzing the documentation provided in my posts related to the violation of donor intent regarding the gift of Clyfford Still's oeuvre to the City of Denver for its new Clyfford Still Museum and citing examples of Clyfford Still's fierce insistence on tight control over his work, Colosi cites another crucial bit of evidence (which I had missed) on this deal gone wrong---the press release (posted on the Still Museum's website [scroll down]) that was issued in August 2004 by Denver's then Mayor John Hickenlooper.

That official announcement of the Still estate's bequest to Denver lists these conditions from the agreement for the transfer of the artworks:

---The City must maintain, exhibit and handle the Collection in accordance requirements of the Will and Agreement [which include the explicit no-sale stipulations from both Clyfford's and Patricia's wills].

---The City must raise or otherwise designate funding sufficient to procure the museum and provide for a maintenance and operation endowment.

Having failed in its obligation to raise an endowment, the city plans to monetize four works that were intended for the museum, for an estimated $51-71.5 million.

Posted on the website for the Center for Three-Dimensional Literature, Colosi's article blasts the upcoming sale at Solheby's as "no less than a breach of trust on an agreement (both personal and legal) made between...Hickenlooper and Patricia Still....This gift would not have been awarded to the City of Denver if Patricia Still had known that the museum would sell works of art as a bail-out to establish an endowment. All of her legal literature spells this out with heart-stopping clarity."

Colosi's essay concludes with a shoutout to CultureGrrl, "whose research and journalism about this subject inspired me to write this article."

Same back at you, David. Your article should be required reading for the Denver City officials who are on the brink of misusing four works that were entrusted to their care.