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

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.

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.

The Attorney General urges this Court to...reaffirm the State's commitment to respect and follow a donor's intent and to confirm that any relief...must as closely as possible adhere to donor intent. This Court's guidance is needed not only to clarify this important question of law, upon which the ultimate disposition of the invaluable art collection at issue hinges, but also to convey a clear and unambiguous message to potential donors of gifts for the public benefit that Tennessee courts will not substitute their judgment in contravention of a donor's explicit instructions.

Such a statement from this State's highest Court is necessary to avoid the chilling effect on future donor gifts created by the Court of Appeals' decision to ignore the donor's express intent in this case. Future donors of gifts for the public benefit must be assured that restrictive covenants they place on their gifts will be enforced; otherwise the public will be forever deprived of the benefit of many gifts.

If 100 readers are willing to donate $20 each within the next three weeks to express appreciation for last year's edition of CultureGrrl (or if a different combination of readers and benefactions achieves the same monetary goal), I'll continue....

If I don't get this vote of confidence, I'm going to take off at least a month, beginning Jan. 9, to undergo blogging-addiction withdrawal and seek other opportunities. I don't know yet whether I'll relapse in February. But my month's hiatus isn't an empty threat; it's a promise.

I am a firm believer that artists, and arts journalists, should get paid for what they do.  My least favorite phrase is "psychic compensation," which is the way artists have been exploited for years into doing work for free.

If you come to the show with an image of Degas as the painter of pretty ballerinas and horse track scenes, be prepared to find something tougher. If, on the other hand, you come with your defenses up---convinced that Degas, along with being an anti-Semite, was also a misogynist---prepare to have these defenses weakened.

A 36-year-old Denver woman, apparently drunk, leaned against an iconic Clyfford Still painting worth more than $30 million last week, punched it, slid down it and urinated on herself, according to a criminal case against Carmen Lucette Tisch.

On Dec.29, 2011, an incident of criminal mischief took place at the Clyfford Still  Museum. The police were summoned and the offender was arrested and is currently in police custody. Museum officials are cooperating with the authorities regarding the situation and are in the process of further assessing the incident.

The Clyfford Still Museum maintains the highest standard of security; our security officers acted swiftly and appropriately; the police were summoned immediately and the offender was taken into custody within minutes of the incident. We regularly evaluate our security procedures in order to protect both the Still collection and our visitors.

The painting involved in the incident is still being assessed, and our initial evaluations indicate that it can be treated and returned to public exhibition. Early estimated treatment cost is in the range of $10,000. Since opening in November, the Clyfford Still Museum has welcomed thousands of visitors who have enjoyed the collection and acted respectfully and appropriately.

This extremely rare and random act of criminal mischief is highly deplorable; however, it will not deter us from performing our mission and continuing to provide a world-class art experience to our visitors.

The Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, is sharply raising the fee many nonprofits, including museums, must pay [emphasis added] to the city in lieu of taxes.

For the first time, Boston's major tax-exempt institutions---its premier hospitals, universities, and cultural centers---are being asked to make regular voluntary payments to the city based on the value of their property [emphasis added] to help offset the rising cost of city services and cuts in state financial aid.

Although many of the city's nonprofit organizations have been making so-called Payments In Lieu of Taxes for decades, this marks a major change to a system that feels to some organizations uncomfortably close to tax bills. Boston officials recently mailed letters to leaders at 40 major nonprofits asking them to pay up to 25 percent of what they would owe if their property were not tax-exempt....

it is designed to gradually increase annual financial payments to the city by the major tax-exempt organizations from the $15 million they paid this year to $48 million over a five-year ramp-up period.

To say, "Now we are going to tax them, but we're not going to call it a tax" is very disingenuous.