A presentation about the application of AAMD's guidelines [emphasis added] for collecting antiquities and ancient art, and updates on changes in the field, led by Maxwell Anderson, chair, Task Force on Archaeological Material & Ancient Art; Sharon Cott, general counsel, Metropolitan Museum of Art; and [attorney] Josh Knerly, Hahn Loeser & Parks.

For my masters thesis, I did a systematic analysis of the museums' listings in AAMD's Object Registry. It's obvious that some museums are using the database as a way to pay lip service to the AAMD Guidelines, while still continuing their old practices of accepting unprovenanced donations.

Sometimes there are lucrative deals with influential donors: The Walters Art Museum's Bourne Collection [the registry's objects with TL 2009.20 accession numbers] came with a nice endowment.

Using the registry to justify the purchase of antiquities with spotty histories completely defeats its purpose. The Cleveland Museum's Drusus head was listed back in August, almost immediately after its controversial acquisition.

Then there's the added problem that some of the museums have not updated their own collecting policies to comply with the AAMD's 2008 guidelines, as well as internal inconsistencies: In many places, the choice of using the Object Registry seems to be up to the curators.

[The above links are mine, not hers.]

In the wake of a scandal over its acquisition of looted antiquities, the J. Paul Getty Museum is trying to verify the ownership histories of 45,000 antiquities and publish the results in the museum's online collections database.

The study, part of the museum's efforts to be more transparent about the origins of ancient art in its collection, began last summer, said Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig.

Critics of the New York Public Library's $300 million renovation plan have doubted whether its most important engineering challenge is even possible: the removal of seven levels of century-old book stacks that support the Fifth Avenue building's Rose Main Reading Room like a 53-foot-high Erector set.

Now officials have answered the skeptics [except for one who can no longer answer back]. They intend to install 12 new support columns in between the existing stacks, all while library patrons read in the vaulted space above.

Restoration and retrofitting would be easier and cheaper than supporting the reading room with the enormously complex and expensive [emphasis added] engineering needed during demolition and reconstruction.

It can be done. It has to be done carefully. I assure you, we can do it.

AAMD's members understand that it is important to follow these guidelines---and we have every confidence that our members are doing so [emphasis added].

The Object Registry supports those guidelines by making it possible for members to acquire objects about which there may be unknown provenance details--and at the same time, publish those acquisitions in such a way as to encourage anyone with additional information to come forward.

I never thought I'd see in my lifetime Manhattan liberals praising David Koch. Well, it's $65 million!

Under the direction of Dr. Sirén, the Helsinki Art Museum has worked with partners around the globe, including some of the world's largest art institutions.

This head was previously thought to depict Zeus, the king of the gods, who is called "blue bearded" in the Homeric poems. [As you can see in the above photo, the head has remnants of blue pigment on its beard.] But [the head] is now believed to represent his brother, Hades, king of the Underworld, based on its association with finds from the ancient city of Morgantina, Sicily.

In keeping with the principle of repatriating works when compelling evidence warrants it, the decision to transfer this head is based on the discovery of four terracotta fragments found near Morgantina in Sicily, similar in style and medium to the Getty head.

Getty Museum curators initiated discussions with Sicilian colleagues on the possible relationship between the head and the fragments in 2011, and then worked with the director of the Morgantina Archaeological Park to corroborate the identification. These fragments indicate that the original location of the head was the site of a sanctuary of Demeter, which was clandestinely excavated in the late 1970s.

Member museums normally should not acquire a work unless provenance research substantiates that the work was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970 or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970....The museum must prominently post on the AAMD website...an image and the information about the work...and all facts relevant to the decision to acquire it, including its known provenance [emphasis added].

Personal planning has complex strands to it, related to how one lives one's life. She was thoughtful about what she was doing and wanted to do and I was here to help her for a long time. We knew her goals and it was a long, thoughtful process.

Her papers, as well as those of her husband, industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable [who died in 1989], which include notes, correspondence, research files, manuscripts, drawings and photographs, will become part of the GRI's [Getty Research Institute's] rich architectural collections.

The Getty acquired these extensive archives from Huxtable in December 2012 and they will become widely available to researchers once they are processed and cataloged. In addition, Huxtable bequeathed the entirety of her estate as well as her intellectual property rights to the Getty, in order to advance the study of architecture.

The agreement was a combination: We purchased Mrs. Huxtable's archives. (As you know, we don't disclose price.) She gave us Garth Huxtable's papers and she bequeathed virtually her entire estate to the Getty. The estate includes her homes. Her estate will be liquidating her assets and the Getty will receive the proceeds.

Though a self-described "unrepentant modernist"---a passionate advocate of the steel-and-glass aesthetic---Huxtable was no ideologue....As a critic, Huxtable combined the forensic skill of a Clarence Darrow with the righteous passion of an Old Testament prophet. Her prose was clarion-clear and uncompromising, yet leavened by wit and verve.

The installation at the Andy Warhol Museum will be quite different from the installation at the Met. Of course, we will have many more Warhol works on display in our galleries, and perhaps the biggest change will be the space dedicated to the exhibition: In Pittsburgh, we will spread the show over six floors of the museum.

Sadly, about six of the works from the Met show were unable to travel to Pittsburgh for a variety of reasons, but we have replaced them with similar works by the same artists from the holdings of the Carnegie Museum of Art, our sister institution. We are also incorporating Kara Walker into the mix, based on her recent statements about Warhol's Shadows paintings being a huge influence on her and her work.

Finally, we will be making many different juxtapositions and comparisons [emphasis added] between Warhol's work and the participating artists that will be quite different from the Met exhibition. We have taken the criticisms of the Met show into account as we redesigned the show for Pittsburgh.

The media play right along [with art-market hype], almost never questioning the quality of the works or the abilities of the artists.