February 2012 Archives

Prof. Larry Rothfield, University of Chicago

Having ignited enough controversy by allowing Timothy Potts, through his own words, to roil the repatriationists, I decided to wait for someone else to hammer home the significance of the incoming Getty Museum director's surprising comments.

Enter Larry Rothfield. As an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago, Larry is well accustomed to explicating subtexts. On his Punching Bag blog (dedicated to cultural-property issues), the former director of the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center called my conversation with Potts "disturbingly revealing" and observed that the incoming Getty director's "extraordinarily impolitic attitude" is "likely to enrage governments and ministers struggling to stem the tide of looting in the midst of massive cuts in their budgets. The Italians and Greeks, certainly, are hardly ignorant about their country's archaeological heritage. What they need is not education but material support for more and better monitoring, site police, and the like."

I agree with most of wroth Rothfield's comments, with two exceptions: There is as yet no reason to presuppose that Potts, in his new position, won't try to spearhead material and advisory support for the protection of archaeological sites. And given how Getty president James Cuno incompletely described the Getty's antiquities-collecting policy during our recent discussion on public radio station KCRW, it's quite possible that Potts believed that he had indeed "familiarize[d] himself with the details of the Getty's acquisitions policy" and that he had received the misleading impression that anything out of the source country before November 1970 was fair game for possible acquisition.

Here's how Cuno described the Getty's antiquities policy during our radio chat with Warren Olney, host of Which Way, L.A.:

The Getty has an acquisitions policy that is very clear on the matter and we will not acquire anything that we cannot prove to have been out of the country---alleged country---of origin before 1970. Case closed and questions answered in that regard..."

...or maybe not. Here's an excerpt from the Getty's written policy, which goes far beyond the 1970 "bright-line" date:

No object will be acquired that, to the knowledge of the museum, has been stolen, removed in contravention of treaties and international conventions of which the United States is a signatory, illegally exported from its country of origin or the country where it was last legally owned, or illegally imported into the United States.

Cuno stated in our discussion that this provision "goes without remark" because "you never acquire something that you believe was exported illegally, at whatever date and time it might have been exported. You always seek to adhere to all relevant and international laws, and that has to do with export licenses, as well as acquisitions. So it seems to me that it went unsaid because it was such a clear and obvious matter."

The "obviousness" of this matter evidently eluded past Getty acquirers, who must have known full well, or at least strongly suspected, that certain important objects in their collection lacked export licenses---most notably the still contested Getty Bronze, clandestinely spirited out of Italy. Museum founder J. Paul Getty himself is said to have declined to acquire that statue of a nude athlete because of its murky past. (It was purchased by the museum after his death.)

Under the previous directorship of Michael Brand, the Getty worked hard to improve relations with source countries and the archaeological community. Any change in the Getty's approach and guidelines for antiquity collecting should be characterized by deliberation and transparency, not by a selective deemphasis of some of its stringent strictures.

It was Cuno's responsibility to make sure, in advance of the appointment, that Potts had full knowledge of and concurred with the Getty's policy in its entirety, especially since this has been such a hot-button issue for the Getty. After I e-mailed the policy to Potts, following our phone conversation, he told me that "the Getty policy is very close to the UK government regime under which I have been working at the Fitzwilliam [Museum, Cambridge, where he is currently director]. So no surprises or change for me in this."

It could be that the Getty's written policy merits another look and, perhaps, some revision. I agree with Rothfield, Cuno and Potts that museums, source countries and the archaeological community need to grapple with the problem of "orphan objects"---antiquities that are in our midst, however they got here, but that lack a fully documented post-1970 provenance. These objects---some of them important---shouldn't be permanently banished from display and declared off-limits for scholarship, as some archaeologists seem to believe should happen. But there also need to be vigorous enforcement efforts to render such objects unmarketable, thereby diminishing the incentive for looting.

As Potts says about the orphan object, there needs to be some way of "trying to preserve it and study it and have it published, so that you can contribute something to the world of understanding." A step in that direction might be for museums, government entities or a yet-to-be-created international repository to hold orphan objects in trust for their undetermined "rightful owners" (possibly source countries), while allowing museums to show them and scholars to study them.

Museums that are members of the Association of Art Museum Directors have made a tentative, limited attempt to address this problem through an online registry of antiquities lacking complete post-November 1970 provenance that have been acquired by a museum since June 4, 2008 (the date when AAMD's registry was established). The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, has listed some 170 objects on that registry, by far the biggest group among the 11 institutions that have thus far posted.

This is a small start. There has been a deescalation of hostilities between American museums and source countries. Now a more detailed peace treaty needs to be carefully crafted.

The Appropriator Appropriated: Fairey-like images of Steve Jobs and Ron Paul (not to mention the famously exploited Robert Indiana "Love") being sold by a vendor recently in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

[UPDATE: You can hear me here.]

I was surprised by a call this afternoon from WNYC, asking me to comment on a subject that I have conspicuously and deliberately avoided on CultureGrrl. I usually have strong opinions on everything I blog about, but on this topic, I'm painfully ambivalent (which is why I've skirted it).

The occasion for the call was Shepard Fairey's guilty plea to criminal charges involving his previously admitted destruction of documents and manufacturing of evidence. The case arose from Fairey's famous (or infamous) appropriation of Associated Press freelance photographer Mannie Garcia's shot of Barack Obama. That photo was the basis for the colorful "Hope" poster that became an iconic image in the last Presidential campaign. The civil case brought by AP for the alleged infringement was settled out of court a year ago.

It's not the criminal conviction for illegal activities that I'm ambivalent about. That seemed a foregone conclusion (which may be why Fairey decided to give up and hope for leniency). The civil case, regarding the tension between intellectual property rights and artistic freedom is what's still got me tied up in knots.

The popular artworld stance is that anything out there should be fodder for the artistic imagination. Warhol (who also got sued) is the always-cited appropriation example. But I can't help also being concerned about artists' exploiting, without permission, copyrighted work by other professionals who earn their livings by being content providers.

If all goes according to plan [sometimes it doesn't; see below], you may hear me wrestle with this quandary in a soundbite after 6 p.m. today on WNYC (perhaps also to be repeated during the weekend). You can click the "Listen Now" link in the right column of the station's website, or hear it in the New York metropolitan area on 93.9 FM or 820 AM.

If and when the brief segment goes up on the station's website, I'll link to it below and embed the audio, if possible.

I should end the week by thanking the 12 CultureGrrl Donors who heeded my plea two weeks ago to support the Comeback of CultureGrrl. I hope others will copy their creative act.

UPDATE: There's nothing on WNYC's website at this writing (aside from its earlier report on the guilty plea), and I don't know whether my comments were aired. If I learn more, so will you.

Sunset at the Getty Center
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum

[Part I is here.]

During our conversation last Thursday, I had a detailed discussion with incoming Getty Museum director Timothy Potts regarding international cultural property issues---a thorny subject in which he has taken a deep interest, as an archaeologist, a former acquirer of antiquities for the Kimbell Art Museum (which he previously directed) and a likely future acquirer for the Getty.

What most startled me was his lack of thorough knowledge about the Getty's written antiquities-collecting policy, which is more stringent than the UNESCO Convention's guidelines regarding cultural property. (UNESCO's rules, ratified by the U.S., restrict museums from acquiring objects lacking a well documented, clean provenance that goes back at least to November 1970.)

In light of the Getty's history of past antiquities-related mishaps and scandals (which led to its adoption of its unusually strict policy), the failure of Getty officials to fully brief its prospective museum director (and to seek his concurrence) regarding these acquisition rules seems a significant omission, calling into question the current administration's wholehearted commitment to the policy put into place by the previous administration.

Indeed, the Getty's new president, James Cuno, said during our recent radio gig on KCRW that "The Getty Museum is absolutely clear, probably more than any museum in the country, that 1970 is the bright-line date." He ignored the fact that the written policy actually goes far beyond that.

I began the part of my conversation with Potts that concerned antquities-acquisition policies by asking if his thinking had changed since the time when he played a leading role in drafting the Association of Art Museum Directors' 2004 guidelines. Those allowed museums to acquire an ancient piece with incomplete provenance if that object could be proven to have been out of the source country for a mere 10 years before the proposed acquisition. AAMD's policy was tightened in 2008 to conform to the November 1970 standard promulgated by UNESCO.

ROSENBAUM: Do you still think the "rolling 10-year rule," which you supported, was a good idea or have you revised your thinking on that?

POTTS: Has my thinking evolved? No. I think the same issues are still there. The difference between the policies is the extent to which they prioritize the question of what happens to the material that, through no fault of its own, is discovered through development, through road-building, through accidental discoveries of all different kinds. And that is the majority of the category we're talking about.

The 10-year rule was an attempt to find a way of putting enough distance between the excavation of the object---by someone who shouldn't have been doing it, in some cases---and the acquisition, but to still provide a mechanism where it could be properly documented, recorded, published and therefore could make its contribution to the understanding of the culture.

The later policy clearly took the view that this was less of a priority than the clarity of a single line and date of 1970. There's no inconsistency between those policies. They're just weighing those two different considerations slightly differently.

ROSENBAUM: I think the first policy was seen as essentially giving an opportunity for object-laundering: You hold it for long enough time, and then it becomes clean. That's what the critique of that policy was.

POTTS: Both policies say that if they've been held long enough, it is okay to buy them. They're just drawing that line at different points: One's a fixed line and one's a moving line.

ROSENBAUM: The Getty's policy is different and more strict. It goes beyond UNESCO. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with that?

POTTS: I haven't seen a document on the details of the policy. My understanding is that the Getty does abide by the 1970 rule and I certainly would abide by the 1970 rule and have absolutely no problem with that. I do think that rule raises some very interesting and important questions about what happens to that material [objects with murky post-1970 provenance] and what role museums can play, if any, in its being preserved and published, even though we're not going to own it. What is to happen to it, so that it's not just lost and completely abandoned to the private markets and forgotten about?

Works are still being looted. The context is still being lost at an increasing rate. So the problem hasn't gone away. I think sometimes people use 1970 as a bit of a fig leaf to disguise the real problem, which is there is still a huge amount of ongoing looting and this issue is not being addressed.

ROSENBAUM: I'm surprised to hear that you haven't seen the Getty's document on its policy regarding antiquities. It's online and was adopted in October 2006. It goes way beyond UNESCO. It says:

No object will be acquired that, to the knowledge of the museum, has been stolen, removed in contravention of treaties and international conventions of which the United States is a signatory, illegally exported from its country of origin or the country where it was last legally owned, or illegally imported into the United States.

That applies even if the object does have a clean provenance going back to November 1970. How do you feel about this?

POTTS: It's unlikely that they will ever be in conflict, because if it [an illegal export or import] was before 1970, it's unlikely that there would be the information that would determine that it was legally exported or not. But if there is, that's always been the case: If there's information that something's been illegally exported, that's a big problem.

ROSENBAUM: I don't think anybody denies that the "Getty Bronze" left Italy under circumstances that were illegal in Italy. And it left before 1970. It's one of those instances, and I'm sure there are others, where it's pretty clear that it didn't get an export license. [In fact, the museum's founder, J. Paul Getty, is said to have passed on the opportunity (scroll down) to acquire that same Greek male nude, Victorious Youth, because of his own concerns about illicit export.]


"Victorious Youth," Greek, 300-100 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum

POTTS: Today I'm not going to get into what happened with the "Getty Bronze" or the antiquities policy of the Getty. Whatever policy we've got, there are going to be further issues that need to be addressed in terms of maximizing what museums and all the art community can do to preserve the cultural heritage that survives, in whatever way it's been excavated.

Museums were criticized for owning these things. Well they're not owning these things. They're not buying these things. But that doesn't absolve them from the responsibility of trying to preserve it and study it and have it published, so that you can contribute something to the world of understanding.

The only way to address it is on the ground in the source countries. We have to support better policing of the sites, better understanding by the local communities of the importance of the archaeological heritage, particularly to them. And it's only through these programs that we're really going to tackle the core problem, which is the illicit excavation that's still going on and the huge urban projects, dam building, and so on. The educational process has to happen not only with the local community but also with the government and ministers.

Looking into one of Potts' pots, Jason Felch's and Ralph Frammolino's Chasing Aphrodite blog on Friday examined the murky history of a Greek Douris cup, ca. 480 B.C., that the Kimbell Art Museum acquired in 2000, under Timothy's directorship. (Looting Matters blogger David Gill had raised questions about that cup's provenance in 2009, here.)

I asked Potts about the cup during our conversation. His reply: "I'd have to check."


Douris (painter), "Red-Figure Cup Showing the Death of Pentheus (exterior) and a Maenad (interior)," c. 480 B.C.
Photo: Kimbell Art Museum

He was more expansive, though, with Chasing Aphrodite: "We did due diligence on the object and were confident that it fell within the AAMD and other U.S. guidelines then in force."

Felcholino pressed the Kimbell, which promised to post the vase on the Association of Art Museum Director's registry for objects with murky post-1970 histories. At this writing, it's not yet on that registry. But its appearance there, if it happens, would be an anomaly: The registry was intended only for acquisitions made after the June 2008 date when that list of possible loot was established.

Given the doubts raised by their recent statements (and in light of their announced intention to consider broadening the scope of the Getty's antiquities collection), the Getty's new president and incoming museum director would do well to affirm an explicit, unequivocal commitment to complying with all of the principles embodied in the Getty's groundbreaking written policy for antiquities acquisitions. If they intend to fudge those rules, they should say so, say why, and say it now, before any non-conforming acquisitions are made.

The Getty Center, Los Angeles

[Part II is here.]

My comments on last night's KCRW public radio segment, analyzing the designation of Timothy Potts as the J. Paul Getty Museum's next director (effective Sept. 1), were informed by a detailed discussion that Timothy and I had by phone last week. Still in England as director of Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum, Potts intends to visit the Getty within the next six weeks to two months, to meet the staff and prowl the campus.

In the meantime, below are some of his thoughts on his new post, excerpted from our recent conversation.

We discussed the Getty's unusual and sometimes problematic administrative structure, in which four constituents---the museum, the research and conservation institutes and the grant-making foundation---are overseen by the Getty Trust's president, whose priorities may not always be in sync with the museum director's. In a quote that has been picked up in recent media reports on the Getty's future under Potts, Michael Brand, the former Getty director (who left, in part, because of differences with the trust's late president, James Wood), told me that "there is indeed a major structural problem at the Getty that transcends any individual personalities."

Here's what Potts thinks about the Getty's administrative complexities:

ROSENBAUM: How are you going to break the curse of the four-headed Getty---the fact that it seems to have created a dysfunctional situation in the past. In particular, I think that both you and [Getty Trust president] James Cuno are very strong museum leaders who have very strong ideas. I wonder how that dynamic will play out.

POTTS: Well you call it the curse of the four-headed Getty. I don't see it as a curse. Part of the great attraction to me of the Getty was precisely the fact that it does have these other dimensions right next door. If you're interested in understanding the world of art in all its dimensions, it doesn't get any better than the Getty. This is certainly not a curse. To me it's the great attraction of being there.

Then it just gets down to the question of the individuals who are running these different parts of the Getty: Is the structure and are the individuals collaborative and are they working well together in developing projects that take advantage of those elements? I can't speak for the Getty three years ago or 10 years ago, but my clear impression now is that those elements are working very well together. There is an entirely cooperative and collegial relationship and I just don't see a problem.

It's early days. though, to see if there's a truly "collegial relationship" at the Getty under the reign of its new president. Cuno's brief tenure (since August) has coincided with museum staff upheavals---the recent departure of its acting director, David Bomford, and the just announced elimination of two museum administrative positions. The trust will be taking over certain financial and administrative functions that were formerly under the museum director's purview.

While it's not unusual for a new chief executive to want to name his own team, it remains to be seen whether Cuno's personnel and governance changes will create additional challenges for the incoming director.

Here's what the previous director, Michael Brand, told me today about this latest restructuring:

These changes are clearly a significant new stage in the evolving relationship between the roles of the Getty Museum director and the trust president, but it would not be appropriate for me to comment on details. Nevertheless, I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my two departing former colleagues.

Tom Rhoads [the museum's associate director of administration] was my first senior appointment as I rebuilt the museum's leadership team in 2006 and he played an invaluable role in helping us achieve the 25% budget cut in 2009 without resorting to mass staff layoffs or permanently damaging the integrity of our programs. Guy Wheatley [museum manager at the Getty Villa] played a highly important role in the renovation of the Getty Villa and then continued to ensure a creative interface between the operational team there and the curatorial voice.

Also possibly changing under the Getty's new regime may be the scope of its art collection. Here's what Potts had to say about what I have called a possible "sea change" at the Getty---new collecting areas that are under consideration (which Cuno also alluded to on Warren Olney's Which Way, L.A.? radio show):

ROSENBAUM: You recently told the LA Times that you were impressed by James Cuno's willingness to "think afresh, almost from the ground up," what the Getty should be doing. What are some of the things that ought to be thought afresh?

POTTS: We have talked about an opportunity to think afresh the way the collections have been built in ways that were and weren't within [J. Paul] Getty's original collecting interests. [The museum, like its founding collector, focuses on European old master paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture; illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, Greek and Roman antiquities.]

Is the collection developing in the ways that it would be interesting and meaningful and fruitful to develop? Where are the markets in these areas? It's also a matter of where the great works are still available and more affordable. So it's a question of both opportunistic and in-principle thinking about how the collection as a whole hangs together and where do there seem to be gaps or ways it could grow that would be most meaningful.

In the ancient world, to take an obvious category, it [the Getty's collection] is basically Greece and Rome plus a bit of Etruria, but it's not the other cultures that they grew out of that or influenced them---I mean, all the connections in the late antique period between Byzantine art, Islamic art and others. There are whole civilizations that are not covered.

But there are real practical issues: Is it too late to develop collections in those areas of the world? Is there enough funding to seriously address those other opportunities?

ROSENBAUM: Are we talking about Egyptian art, Ancient Near East [Potts' specialty], China?

POTTS: There are the cultures you've mentioned. And there are continents! There's pre-Columbian art. But I'm just picking names out of the air here.

In addition to the question, which I raised on yesterday's radio broadcast, about whether it's still possible to find a critical mass of important, available objects in these areas at this late date, an ambitious collection-expanding gambit would raise the question of how the Getty will navigate the risks of acquiring antiquities with questionable histories of ownership---a problem that in the recent past had compromised the museum's reputation and its collection.

Most museums have stopped or dramaticallly diminished their acquisitions of antiquities in recent years, due to the difficulty of finding objects with well documented histories of ownership that go back at least to November 1970 (the widely adopted museum standard). Should the Getty dive back into these perilous waters?

That's a topic for another day:

COMING SOON---Timothy Potts' past and present views on antiquities collecting.

Here is the audio for the "Which Way, L.A.?" segment, hosted by Warren Olney, about Timothy Potts' appointment to the directorship of the J. Paul Getty Museum, effective Sept.1. (It aired tonight at 7 p.m., LA time, on KCRW, Southern California's public radio station.)

Ours is the lead topic in a longer program. You'll hear me join in at about 13:16 into the podcast. (My commentary was informed by my phone interview on Thursday with Potts.) And below, for background, are links to some of the documents referred to during our conversation.


Here are documents that we discussed:

---LA Times reporter Jason Felch's post on the Chasing Aphrodite blog, where he reproduced a memo from Getty president James Cuno to his staff, informing them about a restructuring of the J. Paul Getty Trust that will remove certain financial and administrative responsibilities from the museum director, giving them instead to officials at the trust who oversee all four Getty programs (conservation, research, grant-giving foundation and the museum).

I found Cuno's plan problematic, as you will hear. I think it institutionalizes the encroachment of the Trust into the museum director's proper prerogatives---an issue that, in part, caused former Getty Museum director Michael Brand to come into conflict with the trust's former president, the late James Wood. I was surprised that Potts would accede to this shrinking of the museum director's financial and administrative role. (However, his munificent compensation (scroll down), which Felch discovered hiding in plain sight on the Getty's model-of-transparency website, may help make Potts more flexible.)

---The Getty Museum's antiquities-collecting policy (see items 3 and 4), which neither Timothy Potts (in his interview with me last week) nor James Cuno (on today's program) seemed to get quite right. As I noted on the show, the Getty's standard is more stringent than the "1970 bright line" that they both referred to (and that other museums observe, with some exceptions). It would be good if they both knew and acknowledged this significant difference (which Cuno tries to say is insignificant.)

---The now repudiated former antiquities-collecting guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors, involving a rolling 10-year-rule for antiquities acquisitions, which Timothy Potts helped to draft. These rules, making it easier to acquire possibly hot objects (after a 10-year cooling-off period), were superseded by these guidelines, requiring museums to post on a new Object Registry any future antiquities acquisitions that lack a documented ownership history going back at least to November 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention governing cultural-property transactions in those nations (including the U.S.) that have adopted it.

Warren Olney, host of "Which Way L.A."

[UPDATE: The show has now aired, but I managed to give you the wrong link for listening live. But (if you can overlook your annoyance at being misdirected) you can soon hear the program's archived audio, which I'll embed in my next post.]

Fighting a bad cold (but hopefully not fighting my fellow program guests---Jason Felch and James Cuno), I'm scheduled to be heard at 7 p.m., LA time, tonight on Warren Olney's Which Way, L.A.? on KCRW, Southern California's public radio station.

If all goes according to plan, we'll be discussing the story that I broke last Monday on CultureGrrl---the naming of Timothy Potts to the directorship of the J. Paul Getty Museum. My commentary will be fortified by a lot of hot tea and by a 40-minute phone conversation that I had with Potts on Thursday. (I guess that means Potts had no hard feelings about my preempting the Getty's announcement.)

As CultureGrrl readers know, Cuno is the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust (and author of his just published, upteenth book extolling the virtues of the "encyclopedic museum"---Museums Matter). Felch is co-author with Ralph Frammolino of Chasing Aphrodite, the definitive investigative report on the Getty's past antiquities scandals, controversies and reforms.

I'll be writing more about my conversation with Potts later. For now, here's Felch's Friday LA Times article that raised questions about Potts' past beliefs and practices regarding museums' antiquities collecting. Potts, an archaeologist, is current director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and past director of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

You can listen live at 7 p.m., LA time, here [my mistaken link]. I will embed the audio on CultureGrrl after it appears online.

CultureGrrl reader Marilyn Hollman responds to Fisk's President, Hazel O'Leary, to Retire: New Hope for the Stieglitz Collection?:

I am so happy to hear about a possible new view of the wonderful Fisk collection. Even when I visited 10 or so years ago, I could see that the campus was a trifle shabby. Funding may have become more scarce since. However, I loved the campus and I loved that it had this terrific collection. What a legacy that college has, and I hope it continues!

Bob Smietana's report in the Tennessean about O'Leary's impending departure is here. One alarming fact from that piece:

When she became president in 2004, enrollment was at 842 and rose to 947 in 2006. Last fall, it had dropped to 550.

As it came to pass in Waltham, MA, so may it also happen in Nashville.

A change of president at Brandeis University brought about a new commitment to retaining the endangered Rose Art Museum and its important collection.of contemporary art, which the previous president had targeted for possible sale.

Now comes the news that Fisk University's president, Hazel O'Leary, will retire from that post at the end of this year. O'Leary spearheaded the wrongheaded plan to sell (to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges of American Art) a half-share of her institution's celebrated Stieglitz Collection.

In the meantime (and there's still a lot of "meantime" before O'Leary leaves), the prolonged litigation continues over the controversial proposed sale, which runs counter to the written stipulations of the Stieglitz Colllection's donor, artist Georgia O'Keeffe.

Fisk's lawyers this week filed a brief opposing the Attorney General's request to be allowed to appeal the latest decision (a Fisk victory) to the State Supreme Court.

The Getty Bronze: Still an object of contention with Italy

Nothwithstanding the credentials of the Getty Museum's director-designate, Timothy Potts, as an archaeologist who participated in excavations in Jordan, Iraq and Greece, he is already receiving critical scrutiny regarding his stand on cultural-property issues. Repatriation of antiquities has long been a hot-button topic at the Getty, which has relinquished some 40 objects to Italy and several to Greece.

On their Chasing Aphrodite blog, investigative journalists Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino (authors of the eponymous book, linked above) said this yesterday:

Despite his background in field archaeology, Potts has more recently held some controversial views on the collecting of unprovenanced antiquities....Given their pro-collecting positions in a museum world that has largely turned a different direction, it will be interested to see how [Getty Trust president James] Cuno and Potts decide to deploy the Getty's wealth in the coming years.

In an e-mail to me, a museum professional privately characterized both Potts and Cuno as "ardent opponents of restitution." From what I've seen, that more accurately describes Cuno's past stance (which, in coming to the Getty, he has prudently modified---scroll to the bottom) than Potts'.

In their blog post, Felcholino mention the New York symposium organized by the Association of Art Museum Directors on May 4, 2006, where Potts served as moderator of the two afternoon panels. (Cuno was moderator of the morning sessions).

As you might expect, CultureGrrl was in the audience and taping. Below are excerpts from Potts' introductory remarks that afternoon, which he began by expressing what turned out to be a vain hope: "The best thing that can come out of these sessions is a sense of common purpose."

Here's what else Potts said, which struck me as reasoned and nuanced, unlike much of the heated, black-and-white debate over antiquities ownership. He started by posing himself two questions:

Question: Should museums collect antiquities from the great civilizations of the past?

Answer: Of course. Museums are the repositories of the world's cultural heritage and best equipped to preserve it and to educate us about them.

Next question: Should museum buy loot ripped from its cultural context by criminals?

Of course not. It would be immoral and illegal. You cannot buy anything that is stolen. You cannot buy anything that that has been imported in contravention of the restrictions and treaties that the U.S. has with various foreign countries. And the question of what is stolen property often involves the patrimony laws of the source country. As educational institutions with humanistic and scientific missions, museums see themselves as having ethical responsibilities beyond the requirements of law.

Museums have a responsibility to pay a positive role in the preservation of material remains of ancient cultures and in furtherance of understanding and access to them. This places a spotlight on real-life judgments as to whether the acquisition of antiquities (and under what circumstances) advances those objectives or not. And here we are required to ask, primarily, what are the real-world consequences of acquiring or not acquiring objects.

Almost all sides will agree that these are rarely matters of all or nothing---that we buy nothing or we buy anything and everything. The real question is under what circumstances is it responsible to collect? What conditions can be required that would forestall any material incentive for further looting? How far back in time does the provenance history have to go? How high on the scale from possibility to probability does the negative effect have to be to outweigh the positive benefits of bringing important objects into the public and scholarly domain, where possible claimants can identify them and come forward? [Unfortunately, he didn't answer these questions.]

Tradeoffs will be inevitable, for what best preserves one category of objects may put another category at risk. What advance to scholarship may be ideologically unpalatable because it turns out that the excavation of the objects was tainted? Is it appropriate to consider what would happen to an object if it could somehow go back to its source country? Is it reasonable to consider whether other collecting countries and the agencies in the source countries are making complementary efforts to our own?

[We should also] take the cultural and historical perspective, starting with appreciation of the role that the collecting of antiquities has played since the Renaissance in the preservation and understanding of ancient civilization and through that, enriching cultural life. Museums are an important stimulus, promoting interest in other cultures, traditions and ways of life and furthering the understanding of the influence and connections and differences between them.

Potts ended his introductory remarks by calling for a clearer delineation of "conditions for responsible acquisitions." What's needed, he said, is "a policy that dovetails with an enlightened and realistic balance of rights and responsibilities for preserving cultural heritage amongst all the relevant parties---museums, archaeologists, source country governments, international agencies, etc."

And then, as you might expect in a panel discussion among museum directors (including Cuno) and archaeologists, the fur flew.

UPDATE: The LA Times' Jori Finkel and Mike Boehm score the first post-designation interview with Potts.

Timothy Potts, J. Paul Getty Museum's new director-designate

[More on this here and here.]

I don't know when the Getty had planned to announce Timothy Pott's appointment (which I "announced" yesterday), but I did know that once I let the cat out of the bag, they'd want to take charge of the story.

UPDATE---Jori Finkel of the LA Times reports:

Cuno, just home from a work trip to India, said "the board of trustees affirmed my decision unanimously at a board meeting" in January to hire Potts. He had originally planned to release the news later his week after he had time to unpack, he said, but rushed the announcement after Lee Rosenbaum published a leak Monday on her blog CultureGrrl.

Below is the Getty's press release, hot off my inbox and online. (There's nothing at this writing on the Fitzwilliam's website.) In it, Potts specifically emphasizes that he buys into the Getty Museum's coexistence with "sister institutes devoted to research, conservation and philanthropy"---a structure that has previously caused tension and dissension among the constituents.

Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and former director of the Kimbell Art Museum to take the helm of the Getty Museum on Sept. 1

LOS ANGELES--James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust announced today that he has appointed Dr. Timothy Potts to be the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Potts will assume his new role on September 1.

Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, since January 2008, Potts was the director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1998-2007. Prior to that he was the director of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

"I have known Dr. Potts for almost fifteen years and have worked closely with him on policy positions taken by the Association of Art Museum Directors. I know him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, advanced learning, and refined connoisseurship," said Cuno. "He knows and believes in the values of the Getty Trust and the combined strengths of its four programs. I am confident that he brings the vision and experience that will move the Getty Museum forward on an international stage."

"I am delighted to be joining the Getty Museum at such a promising time, when its leadership, ambitions and prospects are stronger than ever," said Potts. "Like others in the museum world, I have for many years admired (and sometimes been frustrated by!) the quality of its collecting and the innovative way it pursues its scholarly and educational mission. It has evolved into much more than an artistic showpiece of national and international renown, however. With the Museum and its sister institutes devoted to research, conservation and philanthropy, the Getty represents a uniquely well-rounded 'university of the arts.' No other institution does more to collect, preserve and understand the history and materiality of art than the Getty, and I greatly look forward to working with the Museum's outstanding staff in building on this achievement over the years ahead."

As director of the Fitzwilliam, Potts dramatically expanded and upgraded the exhibition program, leading to record attendance and increased sponsorship and donations. Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts was named Exhibition of the Year for 2009 by Apollo Magazine and its catalog won the M.B. Berger Prize for British Art History. The recent exhibition "Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence" set a new attendance record of over 150,000 visitors and received international critical acclaim. His acquisitions have included "The Lutenist" by Hendrick ter Brugghen, "The Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene" by Marcantonio Bassetti, and a Louis XIV marquetry cabinet-on-stand by André-Charles Boulle.

At the Kimbell, Potts presented numerous acclaimed exhibitions, including "Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry"; "Turner and Venice; Stubbs and the Horse"; "The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso" (Exhibition of the Year 2007, Apollo); "Gauguin and Impressionism;" and "Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art." He also led an active acquisition program, purchasing important sculptures by Bernini, Donatello, Michelozzo, Gian Cristofero Romano and a highly important 15th century German silver and gilt Virgin and Child; and paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Gerrit Dou.

A specialist in ancient art, Potts also acquired for the Kimbell works from ancient Greece by the vase painter Douris and the sculptor Lysippos; an Egyptian 5th Dynasty funerary statuette; and a Maya royal jade belt pendent and Maya vases with painted and incised decoration. From China he acquired sculptures of the Tang period and a painting by Tan Zhirui of the Yuan Period. Potts served as a Trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and as a member of its task forces that drafted guidelines for U.S. museums on the acquisition and loan [my links, not the Getty's] of antiquities.

At the National Gallery of Victoria, he oversaw the most significant addition to the Australian museum landscape in decades, with a $76 million redevelopment of the existing museum and the design development of a second venue of the Gallery on Federation Square devoted to Australian art. He introduced free admission, doubling attendance to over 1.2 million on a revenue-neutral basis.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Potts received his B.A. (Hons) from Sydney University and his doctorate in ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology from the University of Oxford. He has undertaken research and published widely on the art and cultures of the Near East and the Mediterranean world. Recent studies have focused on Mesopotamian art, history and historiography; the origins and spread of writing in the ancient world; and antiquities and cultural patrimony. Potts has conducted archaeological excavations in Jordan, Iraq and Greece.

[More on this here, here and here.]

Once again, I've proven to be inept at predicting future museum directors.

But my wrongheaded guess (scroll to the bottom) as to who might be tapped to lead the J. Paul Getty Museum impelled someone to set me straight. According to a highly informed, reliable source (who requested anonymity), the not-yet-announced choice is someone who, back in June 2008, was on CultureGrrl's shortlist of Who Should Succeed Philippe at the Met?.

Like the Getty's previous director, Michael Brand, he's a native Australian:


Timothy Potts, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge (and former director of Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth)

Contacted by me by phone today, Ron Hartwig, the Getty's vice president for communications, said that a museum director would be announced before the end of June. He declined to confirm or deny that Potts has been chosen, or even that a choice has been made.

"I'm not surprised that you'll hear leaks or rumors, or whatever it is," Hartwig told me. "When we have something to announce, we're going to get it out as quicky as we can."

On Potts' watch, the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge has recently reopened its gallery of French Impressionists and other 19th to early 20th-century artists---part of what the director called a "staged program of refurbishment of [the Fitzwilliam's] galleries, which provides an opportunity not only to refresh the displays but, just as importantly, to bring the fruits of new research and interpretations to bear on the understanding of our works."

I think he is a good, even inspired, choice. Here's my impression of Potts (whom I once interviewed at length at the Kimbell), as described in my "Who Should Succeed Philippe" post (with a couple of updates in brackets):

There's one big cloud over Potts---his precipitous, unexplained resignation [in 2007] from the more prestigious and undoubtedly better paid directorship of the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth....Clearly, the Met's trustees [and now the Getty's] would have to get the full story before reaching a decision.

An archaeologist by training, Potts is intellectually well equipped to deal with cultural-property conundrums [particularly relevant to the Getty], and he gets extra points for having not only a scholarly but also a business background. He recently spoke out on National Public Radio against rampant museum expansion, as part of NPR's exploration of current museological issues, pegged to Philippe's imminent departure. It's a myth, Potts told NPR, "that museums are hoarding in their basements these thousands of masterpieces that no one ever gets to see. It's a myth that they're all masterpieces. The core mission of the institution...is to collect, is to preserve, is to educate in less spectacular ways than the much-hyped exhibitions."

He expressed similar views in his October 2007 Washington Post opinion piece, Beware The Inexorable Drift Toward Populism. There he finessed the contradiction between his stated views and the Kimbell's planned Renzo Piano expansion [currently in construction] by saying, "In our case, it's to solve a particular problem: For more than half the year, we have three-quarters or more of our wonderful permanent collection in storage, because the space has to be given to visiting exhibitions."

Now let's see if two strong-willed museum leaders---Potts and Getty Trust president James Cuno---can make the Getty's problematic governance structure work, providing stability, at last, to this revolving-door directorship.

Will Barnet, "Self Portrait," 1981, National Academy Museum


Martin Puryear, "Bower," 1980, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Photos by Lee Rosenbaum

Two artists who couldn't be more different---Will Barnet and Martin Puryear---and a highly distinguished visual arts curator, collector, philanthropist and museum founder---Emily Rauh Pulitzer---are among the seven individuals and one organization upon whom President Obama will bestow the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony this Monday. (United Service Organization will get the award "for contributions to lifting the spirits of America's troops and their families through the arts.")

Puryear was the subject of an acclaimed 2007 Museum of Modern Art retrospective. Barnet was honored with a 100th-birthday retrospective (scroll down) at the reopening last September of the National Academy Museum in New York.

Princeton University philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, whose lucidly written, incisively argued Cosmopolitanism is an essential text in the debate over the ownership and stewardship of international cultural property, is one of eight to be awarded the National Humanities Medal at the same Monday ceremony, which will be livestreamed here at 1:45 p.m.

The marquee name among the medalists is actor Al Pacino. For the full list of honorees and their individual citations, go here.

Lee Rosenbaum, kultuur itoimittaja ("cultural journalist" to you!)

You can see me now on Finnish television---the online replay of yesterday's segment on Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE about the Guggenheim Helsinki, for which I was interviewed in Central Park (scroll down) on Tuesday.

I was, of course, the main reason why Olli-Pekka Sulasma and his trusty cameraman came up from Washington (just kidding), but while they were in the area, they also stopped in on the Guggenheim's deputy director, Ari Wiseman, whom you'll also hear on the two-minute video linked at the top. He expresses respect for the political process in Helsinki (where the City Council plans to take up the Guggenheim matter at the end of this month) and he explains why the Guggenheim wants to plant its flag in Finland.

Everything (except for Ari's and my contributions) is in Finnish, so I don't know the context in which they put my quotes. (Would any Finnish-fluent CultureGrrl readers like to help me out with this?)

Thanks to Google Translate, I can tell you what the title and online description of the segment say:

Guggenhem Seeks Additional Income: The U.S. Guggenheim Foundation says that it does not have a strict time limit on when a decision must be made on participation in the Helsinki museum project. Although the Foundation withdrew from Berlin, it is still committed to the international expansion of its operations.

Speaking of Berlin, Wiseman's chat with Sulasma had the unfortunate timing of being scheduled just after the news broke that the Deutsche Guggenheim, a modest space funded by Deutsche Bank, with changing exhibitions and major commissions, would close at the end of this year after a 15-year run. No one is saying why, but the announcement came soon after Deutsche Bank reported a 69% plunge in fourth-quarter profits, due in large part to investment banking losses tied to the European sovereign debt crisis. (A Guggenheim spokesperson denied there was any connection.)

Although I don't have an English translation of the anchorman's comments leading into my two cameos, I can tell you their context in my a 20-minute conversation with Sulasma. My flip observation about the $30-million licensing fee that would enrich the Guggenheim's endowment was part of a much longer response to the question of what the Guggenheim stood to gain from a Finnish outpost. This is the 2010 annual report (the most recent online) to which I alluded. On p. 59, chief operating officer Mark Steglitz states that the Guggenheim Foundation is "financially stable" but "is still challenged by a relatively small endowment."

At the end of our discussion, Sulasma sought my overall opinion on whether Helsinki should do the deal. My take on this, which I explained at greater length than you will hear in the clip, is that a sophisticated, culturally rich city like Helsinki shouldn't feel a need to rely on Americans to oversee a new cultural institution. A new museum, if needed, should grow out of the city's own cultural fabric and be masterminded and developed by its own art community. Any relationship with foreign professionals should be characterized by collegial cooperation, not costly colonization.

To prepare for my TV close-up, I needed to come to grips with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's $2-million, 186-page feasibility study promoting the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki. I'll have more to say on this later.

But for now, I'll acknowledge that the public availability of the full text of the feasibility study is, in itself, groundbreaking. That kind of full disclosure didn't happen under the directorship of Tom Krens, who invented the "Global Guggenheim" concept, with very mixed results. The more open management style of current director Richard Armstrong and the Finnish government's own culture of transparency are both to be thanked for allowing us to read and analyze the proposed project, which differs in many respects from previous incarnations of the Global Guggenheim.

Michael Brand, landing on his feet after his rocky time at the Getty and his interim position as consulting director of the in-construction Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, is heading back to his native Australia.

This announcement just hit my inbox:

Michael Brand...has been appointed director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Brand said the following about his new gig in Sydney, which will begin in the middle of this year:

While they [the AGNSW] are rightly focused on serving their primary audience and promoting Australian art, they are also resolutely international in their approach to art and culture.

The museum is currently hosting a blockbuster Picasso show, touring from the in-renovation Musée National Picasso, Paris.

Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, London, advised the Sydney Museum in its search.

All of which brings to mind the continued uncertain status of the Getty Museum, where J. Paul Getty Trust president Jim Cuno is presently doing double duty as museum director, after the departure of David Bomford, who assumed the acting directorship when Brand departed in January 2010. I recently heard a rumor that there would be an announcement regarding the Getty's vacant directorship this spring, but, alas, that rumor wasn't attached to a name.

Then I saw the Frick's Colin Bailey at Monday's press preview for the pleasurable Renoir, Impressionism and Full-Length Painting, and a light went on. Like curators Malcolm Warner of the Kimbell and both Gary Tinterow and Ian Wardropper of the Met, all of whom recently left their institutions to direct others, Bailey is a longtime top curator who got passed over when a higher position was handed out at his place. As CultureGrrl readers know, he has previously shown interest in becoming a museum director.

What's more, I think it would be difficult to find someone already directing a major museum who would want to subordinate himself to the strong-willed Cuno. Someone stepping up to a first-time directorship up might be the ideal candidate, under the circumstances.

This CultureGrrl guess probably has as much accuracy as this one did. Then again....


Colin Bailey, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, The Frick Collection

I have been deeply moved by the letters and verbal comments that I've received over the last month from devoted CultureGrrl fans (including some artworld luminaries). Some expressed distress over my plan to kill the blog; some wished me future success and expressed gratitude for my long run of uncompensated commentary.

I wrote that I would give myself at least a month to decide whether to end the blog permanently. I ultimately agreed with one appreciative reader, who clicked my "CONTACT ME" link and sought to persuade me to continue (in modified form) what I had started, some five and a half years ago. Here's what he advised:

I think it is very important for you to keep your blog. It is a record of your voice, and it is not colored (I hope) by the need to appease any particular faction. I also applaud and hope you continue to get WSJ and NPR/PBS etc.-type gigs. They put an authoritarive stamp on you: The powers that be, such as they are, want to associate themselves with your voice.

But I do believe the centerpiece is the blog: It is your history; it is a place people who know you can come or tell others to come. Now I think you have great flexibility and should use significant ingenuity about how you use your blog. Perhaps it is one good post a week; perhaps it is shorter and more derivative (uses other sources when necessary to knit the story). Maybe it should be on Huffington Post [where I also write] so that it gets wider readership.

But I think it is what gives your voice gravitas and should be maintained, even if it is a loss-leader to you. It is where you plant your flag.

Point well taken.

I'm planning, for now, to resume posting, on a much more limited basis---perhaps once or twice a week. I'm not going to cover everything that interests me---only a few developments that seem particularly blogworthy. I will try to continue my more robust presence on Twitter. But most importantly, I'm going to try to focus on paid journalistic gigs and on other professional relationships. I remain open to (but not optimistic about) invitations to blog for bucks.

Speaking of which, alert readers may already have noticed that I have restored my "Donate" button to my middle column. Those of you who expressed regret about missing my "Last-Gasp Fund Drive" now have a chance to welcome CultureGrrl back! Donors of $10 or more will receive e-mailed notifications when new items are posted. (Those of you already on my Donor list are, of course, grandfathered.)

Alas, I've not yet had a PBS gig, as my compassionate correspondent indicated, above (unless this website feature counts). But I did get interviewed again today by Finnish TV1. I think I should move to Helsinki!

This time I was interviewed by the Washington-based U.S. correspondent for the Finnish Broadcasting Company's YLE News. (More about this conversation later.)

For now, here are my new Scandinavian friends, posing in New York's Central Park against a backdrop that you all will recognize. (That's a microphone, not a featherduster, in the cameraman's right hand.)

An ebullient Anne Hawley, director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, speaking at the press preview for the expansion

By sheer good luck, my drive back home from my visit to Salem, MA (where I reviewed for the Wall Street Journal the Shapeshifting show at the Peabody Essex Museum) coincided with the press preview for Renzo Piano's expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

As it happened, that press preview also coincided with the Jan. 11 court date in the case against Whitey Bulger, an alleged former Boston crime boss who some believe might have something to say about the unsolved 1990 theft of 13 works (including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer) from the Gardner.

In my just-posted Huffington Post appraisal---Gardner Wander: The New, the Old, the Glass Bottleneck in Between---I take you on a tour of the new and old building in words, images and a 13-minute video. This is my first HuffPost piece to be accorded a big photo banner and byline at the top of the Huffington Post Arts page.

You'll hear director Anne Hawley and architect Piano speak in the new concert hall near the beginning of my video. At the end, you'll hear the Gardner's resident chamber orchestra rehearsing there. In between, you'll see the "glass bottleneck" that I refer to in the headline, and hear an extended riff on the Gardner's tapestries by Oliver Tostmann, curator of the collection.

Although I've been critical about several of Piano's past museum expansions (High Museum, Morgan Library and Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, Art Institute of Chicago), I deemed this one to be "an appropriate solution to a pressing problem---the need to preserve Isabella's unique creation while providing the space and services that modern museum visitors expect and museum staffers need."

Reasonable people will disagree. It's always controversial to attach a spiffy modern addition to a beloved historic building. Take a look and judge for yourself.

One thing seemed clear. These key players apparently really enjoyed working together.


Left to right, in the new concert hall: Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics; Scott Nickrenz, the Gardner's music director; architect Renzo Piano