It was odd to see the megabucks deal struck by Egypt for the current Tutankhamun show being held up...as a gold standard for cultural diplomacy. Many observers, including Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum, found that arrangement to be, as de Montebello had disapprovingly described it, "dominated by lucre and the need to make make colossal sums of money for the...circulators and for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities."

Seven years ago, when the Taliban were roaming the streets of Afghanistan, it was hard for us to imagine...having the opportunity to display part of the art and culture and history of Afghanistan here in the United States....New York has important symbolic significance for us because the same evil forces of terrorists that destoyed your Twin Towers destroyed the twin [Bamiyan] Buddhas in Afghanistan.

By bringing this collection to you, we want to emphasize that you cannot destroy the history, identity, determination and courage of the people by acts of sabotage and terrorism. It is also a token of our appreciation as Afghans to you for your support in helping us recover our country, our culture and in helping us rebuild Afghanistan....

Our national museum [shelled in 1994, and attacked by the Taliban in 2001] still is not in a condition to be able to display these objects. The museum suffered a lot, and a lot of the items were looted.

This is a way of displaying the real Afghanistan, the Afghanistan behind the headlines that unfortunately have been dominant in the past five or six years.

...and even today, on Page 1 of the NY Times.

In one way, Munson was right, though: 40% of nothing IS nothing. Afghanistan's deal with National Geographic (organizer of the American tour with Washington's National Gallery) calls for the strife-torn nation to receive a lump sum of $1 million for the tour, plus 40% of the exhibition's net proceeds. Kathryn Keane, director of traveling exhibitions development for National Geographic, conceded to me at the press preview that "we don't anticipate any profit [from which to draw Afghanistan's supposed 40%]. There will be some royalties [for Afghanistan] from the merchandise."

And what merchandise!

Here's just a sample (actually, the priciest sample):



And here's its label:



You read that right, shoppers: $24,000---another in a line of outrageously expensive souvenir trinkets developed by the Met for various "treasures" shows in recent years. These contemporary fabrications are described in the Met's press release as "museum-quality jewelry" but, to my mind, they lack museum quality, let alone any value related to the museum's exempt purpose---its educational mission. This relationship to exempt purpose is required by the IRS in order for museum merchandise proceeds to be exempt from unrelated business income tax (UBIT).

The pricey baubles in the "Afghanistan" shop are not replicas of objects in the show. They're loose "adaptations" that were "inspired by the traditional shapes seen in the original gold jewelry and ornaments on exhibition," according to the press release.

When he fashioned the above necklace, could the Turkish designer, Gurhan Orhan, have had vaguely in mind the authentic exhibition piece below?


Ornament for the neck of a robe, gold, turquoise,garnet, pyrite, Tillya Tepe, Tomb V, lst century A.D.

For shoppers on a budget, there's always this teeshirt, adorned with another "inspired" neck ornament---this one directly attached to the shirt. It's yours for $40.



I'll try to rinse out the bad taste these wares left in my mouth, and savor the memory of the glorious exhibition. I'll have more to say later about two of the greatest treasures of "Afghanistan" (at least at this showing)---the Met's own incomparable curators. (Unfortunately, that post could come considerably later: My husband next week will begin wearing a metallic ornament of a different sort---a hip replacement. I will NOT be posting from the hospital!)

For now, I'll leave you with the exhibition's moving coda, which you'll arrive at just before you enter (arrggh!) the gift shop:

The renovation of Alice Tully Hall, now complete, is already considered a smashing success.

Pretty much everyone seems to love every aspect of the new Tully, designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

I hate the new Tully Hall. To me it is everything Lincoln Center and its enthusiasts insist it is not. I find it corporate, sterile, claustrophobic and as acoustically arid a hall as I've ever heard.

The sound was too often brittle, not resonant. It's easiest to gauge the quality of a performance and its sound on very familiar pieces. The two warhorses on yesterday's inaugural program were Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," for which the sound seemed dry; and Stravinsky's "Pulcinella Suite," which lacked the requisite sparkle.

Lots of glass and hard corporate-looking surfaces; not much charm, let alone cushy comfort.

After the concert, I...ran into architect Liz Diller, who said the hall sounded great to her from her perch in the balcony. When she asked what I thought, I tactlessly observed that, from where I sat in the rear orchestra, the sound seemed a little dry.

"Dry??? I know you have problems with our work, Lee."

The hall itself was shockingly impassive....If you've been dreaming that the dryness of the old Tully Hall has been banished, and that the new hall, with its rich hues, will yield a lush, vibrant tone, it's time to wake up.

I am here for as long as Philadelphia will have me and I can do wonderful things [like maybe roll back today's $2 admission increase?]. There is no other place I would like to be, no other place I can imagine myself. This is one of the great museums in the country. There is a lot of great work to be done here in terms of the [architect Frank] Gehry project. So much work in terms of strengthening the staff and resources. There is no better place for me to be.

What happened was this: The Inquirer and Times agreed to the embargo. Later the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer was brought into it. We all agreed to 12:30 a.m. Monday publication. I had warned the museum's PR person that sometimes the Times rolls out news in a kind of stealth way---that is, it is not on the online layout, but you can find it if you search for it and, of course, if you have Google News Alert, the alert will link you to the item.

He [the museum's PR person] got an assurance from the Times this would not happen. So at about 7 p.m. the museum's PR person called to say the Times had published the story. We had our story up about 10 minutes later; the Plain Dealer, maybe a 45 minutes after that.

The story was not appearing on the Times layout at any point last night as far as I can tell. But what happened was exactly what the Times said would not---that Google News Alert linked to it, and anyone who looked for the story could find it.

I'd call that violating the embargo, and I think the Times would have a hard time arguing otherwise.

We're a big organization, with multiple publishing systems for print and digital, and we need to work hard to make sure everyone on each side is talking to the right people on the other, particular in the case of "embargoed" information. You'll note the quote marks. I don't have anything in particular against embargoes except that I'd prefer not to have them.

When we do have them, I'd prefer that they not be tied to morning publication in the newspaper. Here's why: The newspaper is printed at night, and as the finished files for the newspaper are shipped to the printing plant they are also shipped to the digital newsroom, where they are published rather faster than they are at the plant. If someone misses a flag on the file and posts to the Web, I'm stuck explaining myself to the blogosphere. No fun.

I thank you for flagging it.

One of the special aspects of the new Acropolis Museum is that it reconstitutes the original narrative continuity of the Parthenon frieze. For nearly a century and a half, no one has seen it "whole," until now. Divided between Athens and London, no one could follow the extraordinary story-telling achievement that was important to Phidias and to the people of Athens. The frieze is not a series of discrete "tableaux," but rather a kind of cinematic continuum.

So when the architects of the Acropolis Museum and its curators were confronted with dealing with the fact that it was unlikely that the British Museum would return the Marbles in time for the opening, we studied a number of alternatives. One included taking the very white, exact plaster molds given to Greece by the British Museum and putting a scrim in front of them, so as to give the absent segments a ghost-like presence.

While this worked somewhat when the viewer was standing, motionless, exactly perpendicular to the frieze, it created a dense and opaque mask as soon as the viewer saw these same segments at an angle. (The original frieze was conceived to be seen in motion, as viewers walked alongside the temple, inevitably looking at it at an angle.)

Additionally and not unimportantly, the scrim made these segments hard to read, occluding the narrative, and interposed an extra layer of material that violated the planar limit of the marble, which Phidias and his crew had worked hard and skillfully to respect.

Rather than having the long opaque patches resulting from the scrim, we felt that out of respect for the artist as well as the viewer, it was preferable to show the copy next to the original. The two cannot be mistaken. The original has the density of heavy, two-foot-deep stone, with 2500 years of yellowish and orange patina and darkened areas where fires raged over the temple. The reproduction of the Marbles currently in London is plaster-white, unmistakably a copy, but a highly respectful copy that gives the visitor a sense of the continuity of the extraordinary narrative that can be read only combined with the motion of the viewer's body in space. We think it was the correct decision.

I hope this clarifies our thinking, but most importantly, that you'll have a chance to go and see the completed installation in person.

Everett Fahy, chairman of the department of European paintings, 22 years of service

The Cleveland Museum of Art today announced the decision of its Director and Chief Executive Officer, Timothy Rub, to resign after three years of service to the institution. In September, Rub will take up the position of George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, succeeding the late Anne d'Harnoncourt.

"It has been a great privilege to serve as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as it is rightfully considered one of America's finest museums with a great collection, strong financial resources, a commitment to excellence and loyal support from the community it was founded to serve," said Rub. "With the remarkable transformation of its physical fabric now underway, the museum will, I am sure, continue to prosper in the future."

"I am deeply honored by having been chosen to lead the Philadelphia Museum of Art," said Rub. "This was a very personal decision because I have always felt a deep fondness for Philadelphia and its wonderful museum. It is the place where, as a young adult, I first looked at art in a meaningful way and considered a career in museums. At the same time, the decision was also a very difficult one to make as it means leaving a great museum and a community to which I have become deeply attached."

Rub's decision, coming after a productive but relatively short tenure..., caught trustees of the Cleveland museum off guard.

"It was a total surprise," said Alfred Rankin Jr., president of the Cleveland museum's board of trustees. "Surprise is probably an understatement."

Shock may be more like it, although Clevelanders had previously heard their man mentioned as a possible candidate for the Metropolitan Museum's directorship. At that time, I had asked:

Can he really get up and leave Cleveland before its renovated and expanded facility is functional?

I guess the answer is yes: The newly opened space is just the first of three new Viñoly-designed wings in the works.

Rub's announcement comes in the wake of the museum's May 4 announcement of budget cuts that included a "stepped reduction" in the director's salary. Will he now do better than the previously underpaid d'Harnoncourt? No one would say what his salary will be, "citing Rub's request to keep it confidential," according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Peter Dobrin.

Litt noted that "the sudden change adds a jolt of uncertainty" to Cleveland's capital projects:

Work on the Cleveland expansion and renovation will continue until late this year. Trustees will then vote on whether to build the next major phase, including the structures for a new West Wing, a new office area and a vast, skylighted atrium.

Trustees have said they are determined to finish the project by 2013, a slight delay from the original deadline of 2012.

While Cleveland is in shock, Philadelphia is jubilant. Gerry Lenfest, who plans to step down soon as the Philadelphia Museum's board chairman, told Dobrin:

I think he'll hit the ground running with his experience and background, and it's a real coup to get him.

But can they keep him?

This latest instance of museum-hopping gave me traumatic flashbacks to another move of a museum superstar from a community that had just come to know and love him---William Griswold's even speedier departure from Minneapolis to the Morgan. Bill has asserted that the New York post is his dream job and that no other position could ever tempt him. No such assurances have yet been heard from Timothy.

UPDATE: Was this story another NY Times embargo-breaker? The Inquirer's Dobrin, in his ArtsWatch blog, suggests yes. I myself couldn't find the Times story on its website, either on its arts page or on its front page (which posts breaking news). But Dobrin's piece links to Carol Vogel's. Could it be that, called on its jump-the-gun scoop, the Times took it down? (It WAS accessible, however, by searching for Rub's name on the Times' site.)

What we got from the Met and other institutions [including the Hispanic Society] was the back of their hand. Their position, as I understand it, is not an objection to a specific provision of the bill. Their objection is they don't want, in the end, to be accountable....

If the bill doesn't pass, there will be a two-tier system, where the privileged few [the older institutions] escape any public accountability, and everybody else will live under a regulatory system [created by the Board of Regents] which can't be as good as the bill. It's about the notion that collections are held in public trust. At a time when the bean-counters are gaining primacy at many institutions, there have got to be rules that preserve these collections for the public....

In the end, the Met's longstanding hostility to transparency and accountability is what has driven this dispute....When they said they had problems [with the bill], I asked them what they were, because we solved problems for the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Natural History. What it came down to in the end is that they [Met officials] don't want to be publicly accountable to the legislature or the Board of Regents.

One of the things I said to them was, "If you want to have a discussion, let's not wait till the fall; let's have it now. I'll call a meeting for June 5." The Met said, absolutely yes. And then all of a sudden, all of them were busy [as were invited representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum, according to notes the sent to Brodsky]. There clearly was a coordinated attempt to delay.

Thank you for your letter of June 2 [inviting museum officials to the June 5 meeting---short notice]. We greatly appreciate your interest in important museum issues. As you know, I would welcome the opportunity to further discuss your proposed legislation pertaining to deaccessioning.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my senior advisors on this matter are able to attend the meeting on June 5th. But I have asked Emily Rafferty, president, Harold Holzer, senior vice president for external affairs, Thomas Schuler, chief government affairs officer, and Sharon H. Cott, senior vice president, secretary and general counsel, to work with you on further exploration of this issue and the proposed legislation. Of course, I plan to keep myself closely informed on this matter and its ultimate resolution.

We thought that the bill, as we first saw it, had some serious flaws....To tackle one problem, the bill would place the legislatively created, larger institutions of this state under the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents. That is a sea change in the governance of museums. Our position is that this requires very serious discussion.

At the same time, this museum follows the same ethical practices that the Board of Regents asks of the institutions that report to it, and that is AAMD rules on deaccessioning....The Met, Natural History, other big museums are already following best museum practices. There's such a thing as over-legislating and over-regulating.

The bill requires the creation, rather promptly, of a registry of works of art. The Met has two million works of art. In this moment in the economy, we don't have the millions and millions of dollars it would take to do this....To devote staff, limited staff at this point, to transferring from ink on index cards to a computer system is going to take a very long time....

This bill seeks to undo 139 years of reporting as it existed, and of a board running this institution impeccably, under best museum practices. I think it's going to take a serious and long and exhaustive discussion---not to delay the legislation, but to discuss this sea change in governance that is being proposed here.

Heavy rain also came close to causing a catastrophe at Vienna's Albertina Museum. Water leaking into its storage area threatened serious damage to a number of priceless works by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Michelangelo.

The museum issued a statement saying: "Appropriate measures have been taken to guarantee the security of the works of art. Nothing has happened. A total of 100 works of art have been moved to a secure site."

The Vienna fire department has covered the museum's roof with waterproof material to prevent more leakage.

Vienna's Albertina Museum, home to landmark Impressionist works by Monet and Renoir, will start removing 950,000 artworks from its leaking underground depot following some of Austria's heaviest downpours in 50 years.

The gallery, which remains open, will start moving the works on Thursday, including pieces by Flemish painter Rubens and Italian master Michelangelo.

"There has not been any damage to the works so far," gallery spokeswoman Verena Dahlitz said on Wednesday.

One of the 200-year-old gallery's most important pieces, a delicate watercolour of a hare by Albrecht Dürer from 1502 [above], has already been saved.

Arrangements could...be made to continue long-term displays of the reunited marbles at each venue---the British Museum in London and the new museum in Athens.

The legislation was prompted by a number of recent high-profile moves, including the National Academy Museum's sale in December of two Hudson River School paintings.

Last year, the University of Iowa Museum of Art considered selling Jackson Pollock's 1943 "Mural" to defray the cost of damage from a flood but decided against it.

Thanks so much for your correct post [regarding Iowa's Pollock]. When I saw the story [Pogrebin's deaccession piece] online a couple of hours ago, I e-mailed Robin to get her to correct it. She refused.