CultureGrrl

Architectural Trauma: Downsized Berkeley Art Museum Plans May Not Include Toyo Ito

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:29:53 -0500

From the Museum of the Unbuilt: Toyo Ito's scrapped model for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Lawrence Rinder, fresh from conversing on Oct. 27 with his former Whitney Museum mentor, Max Anderson (who now directs the Indianapolis Museum of Art), announced on Wednesday a disappointing development that must have given Max traumatic flashbacks: The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), where Rinder became director after leaving his contemporary art curatorship at the Whitney, revealed that its planned new building, designed by Toyo Ito, is "being modified due to lingering economic uncertainty."

Max, as you may remember, stepped down from his Whitney directorship after the board decided not to proceed with Rem Koolhaas' design for that museum's expansion.

BAM/PFA had been trying to raise $200 million for its project, but the capital campaign, as of this month, had only pulled in $81 million, Rinder told Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle.

When I asked BAM/PFA for further details, including whether Ito would still be involved in the diminished project, Ariane Bicho, communications director, replied:

It's too early to say. We have several intriguing concepts on the table, and it's possible that Ito will be involved. The biggest change will be the scale of the project.

As far as functions, features and materials, it's just too early to say. University and museum leadership are currently looking at a range of possibilities, one of which includes repurposing the existing building at Center and Oxford streets.

We are currently analyzing what we can afford in the next iteration.

In his rave for Ito's design, back when it was announced one year ago, Nicolai Ouroussoff, the NY Times' architecture critic, was sadly prophetic:

I have no idea whether, in this dismal economic climate, the University of California will find the money to build its new art museum here. But if it fails, it will be a blow to those of us who champion provocative architecture in the United States.

Will someone please buy Nicolai a good stiff drink?

Mies van der Rohe: Celebrated at MoMA, Destroyed in Chicago

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:52:18 -0500

Mies van der Rohe's Test Cell building at Illinois Institute of Technology
Photo by Edward Lifson

A minor work of Mies van der Rohe, who is being celebrated in the Museum of Modern Art's current Bauhaus show, is being demolished in Chicago, a city very closely tied to his architecture.

For months, my blogging buddy, Ed Lifson, has been waging a relentless but futile campaign to save the' so-called Test Cell building---a modest cube that is part of the Mies-designed Illinois Institute of Technology. It is being knocked down to make way for a new train station. Blair Kamin, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, calls Test Cell a "clunky brick box." Lifson counter that it offers "a quiet message of doing much with little."

This week, Ed reports, it is being destroyed:

And so it will happen. This week powers that be in Chicago will demolish a little work by Mies van der Rohe. A small part of his extraordinarily important campus for the Illinois Institute of Technology will bite the dust....Tearing this down is like destroying forever a minor work by Mozart.

Jeanne-Claude, 74, Gatekeeper of the Christo/Jeanne-Claude Artistic Partnership

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:27:58 -0500

The poignant image now on Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's homepage

I got a chance to talk at length with Jeanne-Claude, who died last night at the age of 74, back in 2005 when "The Gates" captured the imagination of all New Yorkers, not to mention visitors from around the world. This glorious transformation made me see my childhood haunt, Central Park, with fresh, enlivened eyes, and the project created a bond among all of us who were fortunate enough to experience it.

Although the early obits have stressed her equal partnership with her husband Christo, Jeanne-Claude was first among equals when it came to handling the logistical and financial details of their projects. She was also the lead spokesperson when it came to dealing with the press, as I discovered when I conducted a joint phone interview with the couple for my Wall Street Journal piece about "The Gates."

This statement from the Common Errors section of their joint website succinctly defines their division of labor:

There are 3 things Christo and Jeanne-Claude do not do together:

They never fly in the same aircraft.

Jeanne-Claude does not make drawings, she was not trained for that. Christo puts their ideas on paper; he never had an assistant in his studio.

Christo never had the pleasure of talking to their tax accountant.

When it came to the pleasure of talking to the press, Jeanne-Claude was friendly, frank and funny.

Here's an excerpt from my WSJ article:

"The Gates"...were briefly in play, when one New York dealer, representing a collector, offered the artists $10 million for 50 of the fabric-festooned frames. Jeanne-Claude amusedly recounted, in a joint phone interview with husband Christo, that the rebuffed agent gamely doubled his offer to $20 million.

"Nobody can buy this project," declared Christo. "Nobody can charge tickets for this project, nobody can own this project---because freedom is an enemy of possession and possession is the equal of permanence. That is why this project should go away." According to Jeanne-Claude, the Brooklyn Museum also learned this lesson when it requested four of the gates. Its director, Arnold Lehman, said he knew nothing of this, but a museum spokesperson, Sally Williams, suggested that a curator might have initiated the inquiry.

They were (and are) the real deal: Their partnership necessarily had its business component, but it wasn't about the money. It was the means to the end of enthralling the art pilgrims who flocked to their improbable, impractical projects with the mystery, beauty and rapture of their boundless imagination.

Metropolitan Museum’s Red-Ink 2009 Annual Report, Now Online

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:32 -0500

Okay, all you museum wonks. It's that moment you've all been waiting for---the online debut of the Metropolitan Museum's annual report for fiscal 2009!

The Report of the Chief Financial Officer, as predicted, showed a whopping $8.4-million operating deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30. Even scarier, the Report from the President and Director mentioned the "likelihood of budget deficits in the range of $20 million-plus a year for years to come unless significant expense reductions occurred." (Necessary measures have now been taken, including the previously announced 14% staff cut.)

At the end of the above-linked president's and director's report is the complete list of those who chose to take the voluntary retirement package offered this year by the Met to expedite staff reductions.

One of my favorite sections, Objects Sold or Exchanged (scroll down), wherein the Met is required to list all objects that it has sold during the previous year for more than $50,000, was commendably boring this time around:

During the past fiscal year, the cash proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned and nonaccessioned works of art were $42,800. No works of art sold were valued in excess of $50,000.

What I don't understand, though, is that "Proceeds from Sales of Art" on p. 57 of the Financial Statements (under "NON-OPERATING") totaled $600,000, not the $42,800 mentioned on the bottom of p. 33. I have a question pending with the Met about that, and will update here or in a subsequent post, if and when I learn more. Art purchases totaled $38.92 million, down from $48.93 million the previous year.

Total endowment funds dropped by 26%---from $2.51 billion at the end of fiscal 2008 to $1.86 billion at the end of fiscal 2009.

With the budgetary crisis presumably dealt with, maybe the Met's trial-by-fire director, Tom Campbell, will finally get a chance to focus more fully on the non-financial functions that had made the position seem so alluring back in early September 2008, when he was named as Philippe de Montebello's successor, just before the economy tanked.

While we're talking high finance, my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Donor 88 from Arlington, VA, and CultureGrrl Repeat Donors 89 and 90 from Lansdale, PA and Seattle, for their gifts in anticipation of my Big Birthday.

For the rest of you, there's still time to ring my "Donate" bell, to help me ring in my next decade. It starts (gulp!) today.

Knox-ious Notoriety (and the MoMA Monster mash): "Knox Notch" in the New Yorker

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:03:49 -0500

Knox Martin's protest art: what remains of his "Venus" mural (with his recently added signature)

Last month, CultureGrrl. This week, the New Yorker!

The Knox Notch (scroll down) hit the Big Time in the magazine's Nov. 23 issue (which landed in my snail-mailbox yesterday), with its appearance in a full-page photo of Jean Nouvel's in-construction 100 Eleventh Avenue.

You can see the photo in the online version of Paul Goldberger's Jean Nouvel and the Art of the Façade, but Knox's incongruous, irascible gesture is more prominent and subversive in the larger print version. (The above photo is mine.) What I particularly love about the magazine photo: "KNOX" flanks the left side of Nouvel's "vision machine" (which all but obliterates Martin's vision) while flanking its right side, at about the same height, is another vertical vision---the hazy but unmistakable form of the Empire State Building.

Although the otherwise puzzling visual detail of the colorful mural fragment calls for some explanation, Goldberger ignores it, focusing on the brilliance of the architect and his still incomplete apartment tower:

If you are tired of the way every modern building feels flatter and thinner than the one before it, well, so is Jean Nouvel...

...except, of course, when it comes to erecting an extremely thin, exceedingly tall tower on the postage-stamp site adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art---a project that Goldberger looks upon with favor.

He reserves his last two paragraphs for an attack on New York's City Planning Commission for lopping off 200 feet from the planned MoMA Monster, which he says will "eviscerate" Nouvel's design. I agree with him that this is a "bad compromise." It's a Judgement-of-Solomon edict that satisfies no one. In my view (and that of the project's opponents), any building erected on this postage-stamp site needs to be shorter...MUCH shorter.

A profile of the CPC's chair, Amanda Burden, published last month in Crain's, makes it appear that the commission's action may have been as much a matter of pique as policy.

Theresa Agovino reports:

Ms. Burden counters that Mr. Nouvel didn't present a finished design, even after having years to complete it, which she calls disrespectful. She brandishes a rendering of the tower with an unfinished top---a simple, open triangle enclosing a box that will house the building's operating mechanisms.
"They wanted special permission for this?" she asks contemptuously.

I'm not sure how Goldberger knows that the new, shorter design will be "a lot less graceful" than the original glass tower. As far as I know, Nouvel's revisions are still in progress. But maybe the eminent architecture critic has access to more drawing-board information that I do. He doesn't explicitly state whether he's actually seen the new design.

What I do know is that it's not just a matter of lopping off the top, as Paul seems to suggest. It can still meet the sky gracefully; it will merely have to accomplish this at the 1,050-foot height of the Chrysler Building instead of at the 1,250-foot height of the iconic skyscraper flanking Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue in the New Yorker photograph.

MeTube: Meet Me in St. Louis (with Ka-nefer-nefer and David Chipperfield)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:49:36 -0500

Since we just ended our previous post about cultural-property issues with the photograph I took in St. Louis of the Mummy Mask of the Lady Ka-nefer-nefer, let's go to the video tape!

This is a CultureGrrl First---a video where this reporter (not some museum honcho) is the speaker. Let's wander around the St. Louis Art Museum's Egyptian galleries and then repair to the grand entrance lobby, where we will encounter the architectural model for SLAM's planned (and delayed by one year) expansion, poised to break ground later this year.

Has David Chipperfield become the go-to museum architect for cities along the Mississippi?

Cultural Property News: CPAC Reviews U.S. Agreement with Italy; NY Times vs. Hawass, Continued

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:41:48 -0500

At its meeting on Friday, the U.S. State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee heard testimony from museum directors, archaeologists and representatives of dealers and collectors as part of its interim review of this country's Memorandum of Understanding with Italy. The best summary I've found of these proceedings is on the Cultural Property Observer blog of Peter Tompa, an advocate for coin collectors and dealers and one of those who testified.

I'm hoping that the Association of Art Museum Directors (which has posted members' CPAC testimony in the past) will provide links to the full testimony of its director/representatives who spoke Friday in Washington: Maxwell Anderson, Indianapolis Museum of Art; Gary Vikan, Walters Art Gallery; Michael Conforti, Clark Art Institute (and AAMD's president); Kaywin Feldman, Minneapolis Institute.

According to Tompa's account, Feldman told CPAC that "her institution is the poorer because it had to return a long-term loan of "orphan artifacts" under the AAMD's new provenance rules and due to current restrictions, that void remains at her institution."

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has recently added 10 objects---mostly Greek and Roman coins---to AAMD's registry for recently acquired objects with uncertain post-November 1970 provenances. It joins the Metropolitan Museum and Portland Art Museum in this effort to provide greater transparency.

Meanwhile, the NY Times continues its campaign against Zahi Hawass' reenergized campaign to repatriate objects to Egypt. (Give him a few fragments, he asks for Nefertiti.) In today's paper, science writer John Tierney picks up where Michael Kimmelman left off. But Tierney goes further, indiscriminately swallowing the entire James Cuno argument.

Tierney argues:

Restricting the export of artifacts hasn't ended their theft and looting any more than the war on drugs has ended narcotics smuggling. [By that logic, should we therefore also end the war on drugs? And what about the effect of export restrictions combined with greater enforcement efforts to curtail looting?]....

Dr. Hawass may consider the Rosetta Stone to be the property of his government agency, but the modern state of Egypt didn't even exist when it was discovered in 1799 (much less when it was inscribed in 196 B.C., during the Hellenistic era). The land was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and the local historians were most interested in studying their Islamic heritage. [Does this mean that modern-day Egyptians have no legitimate interest in preserving and studying the ancient cultural heritage of their region?]

I'm not saying that Hawass should get whatever he's seeking. I'm just saying that many of the arguments that have been advanced by "universal museum" proponents are specious.

The Hawass watch continues with Ian Parker's Letter from Cairo: The Pharaoh, a New Yorker profile that makes him seem like a megalomaniac, with an emphasis on the latter part of that word.

Although we haven't heard much about this lately, our country hasn't been exempt from Hawass harassment. The last time I looked, however (just nine days ago), this radiant lady was still safely ensconced in St. Louis (and posed serenely, behind glass, for her CultureGrrl photo):

Mummy Mask of the Lady Ka-nefer-nefer, Dynasty 19 (1307-1196 B.C.), from Saqqara, St. Louis Art Museum

Paying It Forward: You Donated to Me, I Bought Teachout’s "Pops"

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:36:59 -0500

You win, art-lings!

I still have to write my paid piece, but three donations had already hit my PayPal account by early this morning, so I'm going to have to keep my promise and keep on blogging. You've already had my post for today, but I have several things in mind for later this week.

Flush with your contributions, I headed to my local Borders bookstore, looking for Terry Teachout's newly published Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.

I was hoping to find it here:

But alas, it was in an obscure corner, where the "non-best" biographies are stashed. What are they thinking?

That's two small steps for Louis Armstrong, three giant steps for Neil Armstrong, his alphabetical neighbor. (Wait a minute! Shouldn't Louis come first, before "First Man" Neil? Where's a librarian when we really need one?)

Now there's just one copy left of Louis. I could probably have wangled a free tome from my esteemed ArtsJournal blogging colleague, but I wanted to pay it forward!

I haven't begun to read it yet, but while thumbing through, I chanced upon a juicy part---the description of Satchmo's anger that after having played a pioneering role in breaking down racial barriers, he came to be perceived by some (notably fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie) as an Uncle Tom.

One thing I do know from the get-go: Terry is an exhaustive researcher and a graceful, lucid writer.

And one other thing that I know: My warmest thanks go out to CultureGrrl Repeat Donors 85 and 86 (from Paris and Boston) and New CultureGrrl Donor 87, from Winnetka, IL.

Did I say PARIS? Paris, FRANCE?!? Finally!

How about we close out 2009 with at least 100 clicks on my "Donate" button? Did I mention, art-lings, that my Big Birthday is coming? (Why do I keep reminding myself about that?)

MeTube: Max Anderson at Indianapolis Museum’s Nascent Art & Nature Park

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:08:21 -0500

Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, under construction adjacent to the Indianapolis Museum of Art

As I mentioned here, I was in Indianapolis last week---part of my week-long, three-city Midwestern journey.

You know who I saw in windy Indy---Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It was only hours after he had returned home from this trip, but he was not looking the least bit wave-tossed or jet-lagged (as you will see in the CultureGrrl Video at the end of this post). Having just helped to lead a tour from Catania to Cádiz aboard a three-masted yacht, he led me on a tour aboard a golf cart of the unmanicured 100 acres being transformed by IMA into the Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, opening next June.

This is no mere sculpture garden with "plop art." It will feature eight commissioned, site-specific works by Tea Mäkipää, Atelier Van Lieshout, Kendall Buster, Alfredo Jaar, Jeppe Hein, Los Carpinteros, Type A, and Andrea Zittel, which will later be rotated out as future commissions cycle in. The artists were selected by Lisa Freiman, head of the IMA's contemporary art department, in consultation with Anderson. (More information about the park and the artists is here.)

Here's Max, just off the Sea Cloud II, in front of Tea Mäkipää's "Eden II," which is about to be transported to a manmade lake, as he explains during our video conversation:

Below, in the background, is the water in which the vessel will be anchored. As you can see, the park is already used for non-art purposes:

But enough of me. As I mentioned, this is likely to be my last post for a while, unless three thoughtful donors step up to the plate. For now, let's listen to Max:

CultureGrrl’s Pay-to-Play: No Donors, No Posts

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:19:56 -0500

No one chose to encourage me (as I had hoped) to resume posting upon my return from my weeklong Midwest trip. And now that I'm back, I've got a paid article I need to write.

I'm going to post one CultureGrrl Video (starring a native New Yorker relocated to the heartland) in the very near future. After that, silence for the rest of the week, unless three readers feel moved to send me a yellow-button birthday present (this Thursday, it's A Big One), by clicking "Donate" in my middle column.

I can't swear that I'll control myself if something comes up that's so important that I feel compelled to break my no-blog vow. But I'm sure gonna try.

My WQXR Museum Commentary: Abstraction Interaction

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:14:19 -0500

You can hear me now, discussing with Kerry Nolan the serendipitous synergy among three shows now on view at three major NY museums. Listen on WQXR's website, here (scroll down).

What a kick it was to hear my long-time radio hero, the station's witty morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, intoning: "CultureGrrrrrl. Did I say that right? CultureGrrrrrl" in his lead-in to my three-minute, three-museum Arts Report!

In yet another serendipitous concurrence, the music that preceded me was a (very atypical) work by Arnold Schoenberg, whom Kandinsky greatly admired.

Unfortunately, I short-shrifted my favorite of the three shows I discussed---the Guggenheim's majesterial Kandinsky retrospective. I ran out of time. Maybe next time (if there is one), I'll keep a clock by the phone.

Here's what I was talking about when I remarked on how good the Guggenheim now looks:

They've added some comfy seating on the ramps for contemplation of the artworks:

And they've kept the plantings (below, on the left and also towards the back) that Frank Lloyd Wright had included in the design for his masterpiece. They were restored to their rightful place for the museum's recent retrospective of the architect's oeuvre, and still remain:

I particularly loved the Guggenheim show because gazing at its energetic, explosive Kandinskys was what got me started appreciating modern art, back when I hopped on the D train in the Bronx to soak up culture in Manhattan. For me, revisiting the images that I took home on souvenir postcards in my youth is always a sentimental journey!

The other shows I spoke about were Bauhaus at the Museum of Modern Art and Georgia O'Keeffe at the Whitney Museum.

Due to Technical Difficulties...I May or May Not Be on Radio Today UPDATED

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:53:24 -0500

UPDATE: Yes! Just taped it. Will be aired momentarily.

I've written that headline twice before. This morning WQXR is having trouble getting a telephone hookup to work, and so far I haven't been able to hear my gracious host, Kerry Nolan.

I'm still on standby, hoping that the tech gremlins that always seem to bedevil me will yet be vanquished. Stay tuned (or maybe not).

Coming Tomorrow: My WQXR Radio Report on NYC Museum Exhibitions

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:29:22 -0500

If all goes according to plan, I'll be the second weekly contributor tomorrow morning to the new Arts Report feature on WQXR, New York's classical music station. That's the public radio station sold not long ago by the NY Times to WNYC (New York Public Radio). About three weeks ago, I contributed to member-supported WQXR in a different way. (No, art-lings, this was NOT pay-to-play; my donation was far too modest for that!)

As I told the producer I spoke to today, this gig is a kick for me because WQXR is the station I listen to most. I love WNYC and all the people I work with there. But they don't call me (or, more accurately, I don't call me) CultureGrrl for nothing: I'm a classical music buff!

You can hear me on WQXR tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. at 105.9 FM on the radio (if you're within broadcast range) or on the station's homepage by clicking the "Listen" button on the right. The podcast should be online shortly after the broadcast, so you can hear me at your convenience. (I'll update this post with the link, once it's up.)

I'll be talking about what I consider to be a serendipitous synergy among shows that are now up at three major New York museums. Maybe we can start a trend here!

The New Museum’s Dakis Fracas: Is It Pay-to-Play?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:03:43 -0500

"Guilty," the yacht embellished by Jeff Koons for collector Dakis Joannou

When does a single-collector show at a nonprofit museum cross the ethical line from inadvisable to unacceptable?

When it involves pay-to-play.

I'm not saying that's the case with the New Museum's much criticized future exhibition of works from the collection of Greek Cypriot industrialist Dakis Joannou. But I AM saying that since mid-October I've been trying, without success, to get the museum to let me know who the funders are for that show and whether any of that money is coming from the collector himself.

Even yesterday, after the notoriety caused by the NY Times' front-page article examining the museum-collector nexus, the New Museum said nothing about the funding for the show in the statement it issued to the NY Times, The Art Newspaper and me about the controversy.

Only in Linda Yablonsky's piece for The Art Newspaper (posted online yesterday) do we have an unequivocal statement (but not a direct quote) from Lisa Phillips, director of the museum, "that the museum is assuming all costs [emphasis added] associated with the Joannou exhibition and that her board has a policy against trustees lending a work of art if they are actively planning to sell it."

The Times' treatment of the crucial issue of lender funding was somewhat less precise: Deborah Sontag and Robin Pogrebin reported (again, not as a direct quote from a museum official) that "Mr. Joannou is not underwriting the exhibition." The problem is that providing partial support, or defraying the costs of the catalogue, shipping, insurance, etc., might not technically qualify as "underwriting." But it would nevertheless smack of pay-to-play.

I first raised the question about the exhibition's funding in an e-mail to the museum's press office on Oct. 17. I then noted that the press release for the show (now dated Oct. 29, but originally dated and sent on Sept. 25) said nothing about "where support for the exhibition will be coming from. Can you please tell me the funders?" I inquired.

On Oct. 19, Gabriel Einsohn, the New Museum's communications director, replied:

It is too early to share funding information details on the show---funding partially also depends on the types of work included in the show, and since the selection is still in the early process, again, can't share details at this point. Thanks for your interest.

My interest continued. That same day, I followed up with this query, to which I received no reply:

I can understand that the entire funding package isn't in place yet. But can you please tell me if any of the funding for the show will come from Joannou himself or his foundation (Deste) and, if so, will it be a substantial amount of the total cost?

Yesterday, in an Indianapolis hotel room, my jaw dropped upon seeing the page-one treatment of this contretemps. Just before I headed to the airport to fly home from my week-long travels, I shot off a list of detailed questions to Einsohn, reminding her that she hadn't answered my previous query.

In reply, she sent me the statement (which said nothing about the funding) that was also dispatched to the Times and Art Newspaper. She added that the museum would have no further comment.

Even if it's true that Dakis isn't providing funds to defray the costs of the show, there could be an indirect form of pay-to-play, which I directly inquired about in my most recent unanswered list of questions: Did Joannou significantly increase his support for general endowment or operations contemporaneously with the institution's decision to display his contemporary-art trove (shades of Guggenheim/Armani)? His status as a powerful player and an expected major contributor, as a member of the New Museum's board of trustees, makes this situation particularly rife with pay-to-play potential.

Notwithstanding the museum's aforementioned strictures "against trustees [and other collectors?] lending a work of art if they are actively planning to sell it," Joannou is well known as a seller (shades of Brooklyn/Saatchi). At last May's contemporary art sale at Sotheby's, for example, he unloaded two works---by Martin Kippenberger and Christopher Wool---that, as reported by the NY Times' Carol Vogel, were subject to an "irrevocable bid, meaning that before the sale, a buyer had already agreed to purchase the art for an undisclosed sum." That's sophisticated market-playing.

The New Museum has abdicated its curatorial responsibility by relinquishing the reins to Jeff Koons---an artist in the show and a good friend of Joannou. If I were one of the other artists in the collection, I'd be fuming over the decision to privilege Koons in determining how these works should be installed and interpreted. This is a far cry from the New Museum's inaugural theme show assembled by its savvy curators in its new building---Unmonumental.

I don't categorically dismiss the value and even desirability of occasional single-collector exhibitions, although I'm much more confortable with (and satisfied by) shows that are carefully and intelligently orchestrated by professional curators, who gather telling examples from a wide variety of sources.

But what's needed in these potentially dicey circumstances is complete transparency about both the sources of financial support and the rationale for putting the museum's imprimatur on a particular collection. What got the Brooklyn Museum into trouble regarding its famous, fabulous "Sensation" show (aside from the foolish elephant-dung uproar) is that the museum at first claimed that collector Charles Saatchi had provided no financial support for the show. It later emerged that he had paid to insure the works and later, when Brooklyn's fundraising came up short, he agreed to kick in $160,000 to ship the objects.

Other essential conditions for any single-collector show are stringent safeguards against works' being sold off the walls (or soon thereafter), as well as complete avoidance of even the appearance of pay-to-play.

A public museum's space and curatorial responsibilities should never be put up for sale to private interests. We need to know clearly, unequivocally and in great detail that this is not the case in this instance.

You can bet that critics attending the New Museum in early March, when the Joannou show is scheduled to open, will be examining this exhibition closely, with an eye to weighing its rewards against the risks to the New Museum's professional reputation.

Rocco Does Peoria; Congress Does a Number on the NEA

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:11:06 -0500

Rocco Landesman with the cast of "Rent" from Peoria's Eastlight Theatre; Kathy Chitwood, the company's executive director, shoulders Rocco.
Photo by Adam Gerik

It must have been quite a scene in Peoria last Friday, as important arts critics, including Bloomberg's Jeremy Gerard and the Washington Post's Peter Marks, trailed Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, as he did his penance for disparaging the Illinois town. By all accounts, Peorians were tickled pink to have a cultural eminence in their midst, while Rocco was a gracious guest. After the lovefest was over, Peoria received 42 minutes of audio podcast time in He Played Peoria---a post on NEA's "Art Works" blog. Whether this will translate into generous federal grants remains to be seen.

But falling under the radar of reporters on the Rocco Beat was a less heartwarming development---meddlesome language in the recent federal appropriations bill for the NEA (go here and then scroll down to click on H11018). This mischief was accomplished by legislators intent on micromanaging the agency.

You may remember that when I recently questioned the merits of NEA's The Big Read during my conversation with Landesman, he told me that the program was under review for consuming scarce resources that might be better used elsewhere.

Little did I know then that Congress had already taken steps to protect The Big Read, perhaps because it had gotten an early heads-up about Landesman's lack of enthusiasm.

Here's the inappropriate appropriations language:

The conferees [of the House and Senate] commend the National Endowment for the Arts for promoting literacy and reading in the United States through the highly acclaimed Big Read program. The Big Read engages communities of all sizes and Americans of all ages by celebrating the literary works of American writers. Since 2005, the NEA has awarded grants--leveraged with millions of private sector dollars--in every State and virtually every Congressional district in the United States....

The conferees remain committed to the Big Read program and direct the NEA to report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations, no later than 60 days after enactment of this Act, with a detailed funding plan for the continuation of this popular and successful program.

Why bother to engage arts experts in the rigorous process of making informed decisions about programs meriting federal support, when we've got the Congressional culturati ready and eager to do the job? This intrusion, to me, crosses the line between Congressional oversight and Congressional interference.