Modern Art Notes

A quick holiday update:

• FAMSF continues its shameful run under director John Buchanan: Tut is coming. (Finally. As you may recall, several years ago the museum said it was taking the show, then it dropped it.)
• Christopher Knight on an exquisite "modern sex painting." (And he lands a clean shot on John Richardson, too.)
• Steven Litt unveils the 2008 Xmas stamp. Hint: It was made round by Botticelli, squared by the USPS, and provided by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
• LA Weekly's Doug Harvey says that Martin Kippenberger was a sleazy alcoholic trickster, which rocks.
• The New Orleans Times-Picayune's Doug MacCash previews Propsect.1.
  

• No wonder the National Mall is a mess;
• Cathy Opie takes cooler vacations than I do [via];
• Shepherd Fairey to receive the mid-career treatment from art museum;
• Is it just me, or are the MFA Boston's Monets never in, oh, I dunno... Boston?;
• I have no idea what this is, but I love it; and
  
• If fog envelops a Vienna building, you can bet that Olafur Eliasson is near.

New York painter Elizabeth Peyton is everywhere this month. Calvin Tomkins profiled her in the New Yorker. Roberta Smith reviewed her NuMu show today.

If it feels like this has all happened before, it's because it has. Five years ago Tomkins' wife, Dodie Kazanjian, profiled Peyton for Vogue. The rather stupefying story inspired one of my favorite MAN posts. (Background: There's a Blake Gopnik-related joke in the post that made more sense back in 2004, right after Gopnik had reviewed a Corcoran show by far-too-vividly describing how something at the Corc inspired him to want to vomit.) Anyway, for a riff on art writing and arts journalism at its silliest, click here.

LACMA's blog is my new daily obsession. (And not just because I screwed up a link to it yesterday.) Today: The neat-o story of a curator who really, really, really wants an installation to be juuuust right for the museum's visitors.

1.) I continue to be disappointed in the strange behavior of many of Washington's under-performing museums. The latest unfortunate trend: DC museums are teaming up with dealers in their programming: The Hirshhorn has signed up at least one dealer for a talk. The Phillips and the University of Illinois placed three salespeople on panels during a recent symposium. And then there's the Corcoran...

Later this month a DC commercial space, Irvine Contemporary Art, is hosting a show of Shepherd Fairey, Al Farrow and Paul D. Miller. That's fine, that's great, there's obviously nothing wrong with a commercial gallery doing a show.

But there is a problem when a non-profit art museum (and school) explicitly promotes a business, which is what the Corcoran is doing on on Oct. 17 when it hosts a Fairey and Farrow Q&A with a Corcoran curator in the Corcoran auditorium. Worse, the Corcoran admits that it's eager to promote the commercial exhibition: "We most certainly coordinated our program around the exhibition opening for a number of reasons -- from availability of the artist to building buzz through cross-promotion of the program and exhibition," a Corcoran spokesperson told me via email.

The Corcoran is making a mistake so obvious that it's hard to believe no one inside the museum flagged it. That kind of non-profit-promoting-a-business is discouraged by both museum industry association guidelines and by the federal tax code. The Corcoran should immediately cancel this promotional event.

2.) As good as New York is this exhibition season, I'm pretty excited by the mid-Atlantic too. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts hosts Dan Cameron's well-received Peter Saul retrospective and, as I mentioned last week, a Franz West retrospective is coming in Baltimore.

3.) Quick preview of next week on MAN: Throughout this year-(plus)-long presidential campaign season, the American flag has been an issue in a way last seen in 1992, when flag burning was a major topic. Republicans have tried to make patriotism an issue, strangely seizing on American-flag lapel pins as a kind of litmus test. Progressives such as Jon Stewart have pointed out that Republicans love America and symbolism, but that they seem to have less regard for Americans. Meanwhile, artists have used the American flag in art for decades. So next week: Prominent contemporary art curators will share favorite works of art that include or address the American flag.

4.) Art Institute of Chicago boss Jim Cuno is featured on this Bad at Sports podcast.

5.) I think I'm developing a slight obsession with Francis Alys' work. C-Monster has great pics of the Fabiola installation at LACMA.

Some links on MAN got switched around this morning. To read about some fabulous WW1 and WW2 propaganda posters on view at the Norton Simon, click here.

Snap! Oh no they did'n'! This morning I linked to this minimalist Obma button. Now, from the unclear-on-the-concept file: The Paln version. [via]

• Haven't done any of these in a while: Severed-head rhymes. I'll add this one and this one.
• Christopher Hawthorne says this man is the world's most underrated architect.
• Who says minimalism has to be apolitical?
• Ed Winkleman has a reminder to museums regarding their missions.
• I've always loved U.S. war posters from the early and mid-20thC. Apparently the Norton Simon and Unframed's Austen Bailly do too. (Complete with a Colbert reference!) BTW, those US propaganda posters are a plain influence on this recently ubiquitous artist/work. Not exactly related: Considering the Obama logo. (More here.)
  

This post was getting a little messy with back-and-forth between Sotheby's and the University of Iowa Museum of Art. So here's where we are:

• The University of Iowa Museum of Art says that its report to the University of Iowa regents was not accurate: In 2007 a previous UIMA director and administration approached Sotheby's about selling Jackson Pollock's Mural. UIMA's acting director, Pam White, says that while the sale issue is closed at UI, the museum will amend its report so that it no longer says that Sotheby's proposed the sale of Mural.
• White confirmed what UIMA previously reported regarding Max Beckmann's Karnival Triptych and other pieces. (From the report: "Sotheby's also suggested the possibility of selling other UIMA pieces, such as Max Beckmann's Triptych..." Sotheby's refused to specifically address that passage yesterday.) "We have a letter from Sotheby's that simply says that if you are interested, here are some other pieces that would be good [to sell]," White told me. So once the fox was in the henhouse, it looked around and licked its chops.

The moderator of tonight's Obama-McCain debate is an art museum trustee. Christopher Knight asks: Might we finally get a cultural policy question?

Here's the exhibition website of the season: Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet.

The ambitious project, which was organized by the Berkeley Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego with an assist from the conservation group Rare, is a mix of artist residency and exhibition. The concept is straightforward but it must have been a challenge to execute: The two museums and Rare arranged for artists to spend time in ecologically sensitive parts of the planet and to make something in response to those places. The show is at MCASD until Feb. 1, 2009, and at BAM from Feb. 25 to June 28.

The website is both smart and accessible to all ages. There are the usual bios of the artists, but there are also photographs and other documentation of their trips to UNESCO World Heritage sites, description of their projects, and information about the conservation issues at each site. (The website will be updated throughout the show.) Several of the artists created spin-off features: For example, Xu Bing created an installation that utilized drawings of children who live near Mount Kenya National Park. Xu is now selling those drawings on this website, with all proceeds going to benefit reforestation efforts in Kenya.

Best of all, the website (and probably the show, which I haven't seen yet) does what more contemporary arts organizations should do: It demonstrates how the voices, experiences and work of artists can help engage the rest of us in global issues. "Art changes the world by changing the way you see," artist Diana Thater says on the site. "People can change the world through conservation, but we have to realize that the way the world is depicted also changes the world. That's what's interesting about this project. There is a certain percentage of people who will say, 'Ah! That's beautiful! What is that?' And you can change the world that way."

The entire site is well worth a surf, but here are some of my favorite parts:

• Ann Hamilton's (Galapagos) video installation;
• Mark Dion's (Komodo National Park, Indonesia) account of his visit, project;
• Rigo 23's (Atlantic Forest South-East Reserves, Brazil) photos documenting his inclusion of local artisans in his project; and
• Dario Robleto's (Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, US/Canada) discussion of his visit, project, and interaction with a glaciologist.

Related: MCASD installation shots. The SDU-T's Robert L. Pincus on the show. Wunderkammer has pics of the show at MCASD. Podcasts related to the project.

In the paperwork that the University of Iowa Museum of Art filed with the University of Iowa regents that I quoted on Friday and again this morning, UIMA said that Sotheby's "proposed" to sell UIMA's Jackson Pollock, Mural. Here's the relevant passage from UIMA's filing to the UI regents (emphasis added):

In 2007, Sotheby's, Inc. proposed to assist the University in selling Mural. A draft proposal from Sotheby's provided that Sotheby's would offer Mural for sale for a period of 120 days at a purchase price that would result in payment to the University of an amount not less than $150,000,000. A Sotheby's representative held a preliminary meeting with Howard Collinson (then director of UIMA) and Nancy Willis (then chair of the Museum's Advisory Committee) and then forwarded the draft proposal to Ms. Willis, who delivered it to the Office of the General Counsel at the University. The matter was discussed extensively by administrators at the University, and Director Collinson discussed the proposed sale with the Museum's Advisory Board. The Museum's Advisory Board recommended strongly against selling Mural. Then-Provost Hogan did not approve the deaccession, and the University did not further pursue the matter with Sotheby's.

Sotheby's also suggested the possibility of selling other UIMA pieces, such as Max Beckmann's Triptych, although the exploration of such possibilities is not documented further. No agreement to offer any of these works was ever executed.

This afternoon a Sotheby's spokesperson called MAN to dispute that the auction house was the protagonist. From a Sotheby's spokesperson:

While our conversations with the University of Iowa  were and will remain confidential, all information we provided to the UI was in direct response to the specific requests of the former Director of the University Art Museum and there was no proactive contact on Sotheby's behalf.

Obviously if Sotheby's responded to solicitations from UIMA regarding both the Pollock and the Beckmann (and other UIMA pieces), Sotheby's has not been acting in a predatory fashion, as I said earlier today.

To that point, I asked Sotheby's if UIMA asked the auction house for a proposal regarding Beckmann's Karnival Triptych. (As noted in the quoted passage above, UIMA's report says, "Sotheby's also suggested the possibility of selling other UIMA pieces, such as Max Beckmann's Triptych.") Sotheby's would not specifically address the Beckmann, saying that the "comment [above] covers everything."

As of this posting, UIMA has not responded to a request for comment. UPDATE, 10/07/08: UIMA says that it made the initial contact to Sotheby's regarding the Pollock. It stands by its report regarding Sotheby's and the Beckmann and other pieces.

• Kate Taylor, recently of the New York Sun, surfaces in the NYT with a fine story about a major collection of New Guinea art currently at FAMSF's de Young -- a collection that might not be at FAMSF for long. Apparently this is what it takes for the NYT to cover a big arts news story (and well): Someone new.
• Speaking of Ess Eff, Timothy Buckwalter has a three-part interview with Chron art critic Kenneth Baker: One, two, three.
  
• I snuck this onto the blogroll last week: LACMA has a blog. And it's good.
• Fine Marjorie Garber essay in the Boston Globe about how the arts are a huge hit among students at college campuses. Someone should distribute it to the University of Iowa regents...
• I feel better knowing that I'm not the only one fascinated by Titian's dogs.
• A Bechers as inspiration for a photo-exploration of a neighborhood.
  
• Fritz Haeg talks with Jeff Jahn about artist-as-ecologist. Or vice-versa.
• If you have or read a particularly smashing post that you want to make sure I consider for linkage, email it to LinksforMAN-blog (at) yahoo(d o t)com.

The news of the weekend broke late Friday: The University of Iowa regents unexpectedly released the University of Iowa Museum of Art's assessment of its famed 1943 Jackson Pollock, Mural. The evaluation reveals that in 2007 Sotheby's guaranteed UIMA $150 million if it could auction off the painting, a shameful bit of unseemly predatory behavior. The Los Angeles Times' Christopher Knight called the offer "shocking."

(Reminder: The University of Iowa regents are only looking at the value of the Pollock when it comes to considering its flood-related costs. They have not evaluated the worth of UI's science labs/facilities, the books in its library or its medical research facilities for possible sale.)

The UIMA report inadvertently makes the case for a legislative re-evaluation of auction house behavior: The New York state legislature should make it illegal for auction houses (and dealers) to approach non-profits with the purpose of encouraging them to violate the basis of their tax exemptions. Such legislation should extend to keeping predatory auctioneers from targeting not just 501(c)3s, but related institutions, such as universities and their art museums. (UIMA is not a separate, independent (c)3. Perhaps it should study becoming one.)

UPDATE, 10/6/08: Sotheby's disputes that the auction house was the protagonist; would not specifically address the Beckmann. If Sotheby's responded to solicitation from UIMA regarding all paintings, Sotheby's has not been acting in a predatory fashion, as I said in this post earlier today. UPDATE, 10/7/08: UIMA corrects itself, says that it made initial contact with Sotheby's on the Pollock. Still waiting for information on the Beckmann, etc. UIMA stands by its report regarding Sotheby's and the Beckmann and other pieces.

In a related story, this is the biggest art world news story of the last couple months. The Wall Street Journal, the LAT and Time have all covered it. Bringing up the rear: The Des Moines Register and, of course, the pathetically oblivious New York Times, which seemingly runs only art-news items first leaked to its staff. (Meanwhile, from NYT 'Weekend' editor Jan Benzel last week.: "I mean, don't you want to know how Daniel Radcliffe spends his time between 'Harry Potter' shoots? I certainly do.")

• Robert L. Pincus examines director Hugh Davies' tenure at MCASD via acquisitions. Unfortunately Pincus opens the piece with the most misunderstood quote in 20thC art history.
• I dig the lede of Richard Lacayo's story on Renzo Piano's new California Academy of Sciences. (It's in Golden Gate Park, across from the de Young.)
  
• The Minneapolis Star Tribune does all it can to screw up a neat Linda Mack story about the last building Eliel Saarinen designed before his death: Minneapolis' Christ Church Lutheran: In cutlines it gets the name of the architect wrong, and it cuts the story off a third of the way through. So a little link jujitsu: Here's a full version of the story, here's the slideshow.
• In the Village Voice, Ben Davis reviews a Bronx Museum show in which artists respond to failed urbanity.
• In the NYT, Dorothy Spears on Mary Heilmann as the new 'hero' artist: No macho, just a painter who perseveres.
  
• I Twittered myself into a political pundit, and the Minnesota Indy picked up my explaining the similarity between Sarah Palin and Matthew Barney.
• Via Jen Graves, this is cool.

According to a document the University of Iowa Museum of Art prepared for the University of Iowa board of regents, in 2007 Sotheby's offered the University of Iowa Museum of Art a $150 million guarantee if the museum would sell Jackson Pollock's 1943 Mural. Sotheby's also wanted to sell a major Max Beckmann painting in the UIMA collection. UIMA refused all offers.

The board of regents required UIMA to submit the document because it wanted an assessment of the painting so as to evaluate whether it might consider selling the painting to raise money for flood relief. UIMA's director, the director of the largest museum in the state, the Des Moines Art Center, the chairman of the relevant AAMD committee and the governor of Iowa have all come out against the sale of the painting. The regents' next meeting is October 29-30 in Ames.

Publicly traded companies are in the business of making money, but attempting to loot and plunder (healthy) university art museums is ethically reprehensible. (Imagine what might happen if the auction house making the same offer to the Met or to MoMA!) Sotheby's should be embarrassed.

UPDATE, 10/6/08: Sotheby's disputes that the auction house was the protagonist; would not specifically address the Beckmann. If Sotheby's responded to solicitation from UIMA regarding all paintings, Sotheby's did not act in a predatory fashion, as I said in this post on 10/6/08. As of this updating, UIMA has not responded to a request for comment. UPDATE, 10/7/08: UIMA corrects itself, says that it made initial contact with Sotheby's on the Pollock. Still waiting for information on the Beckmann, etc.

Apparently unrelated confluence: Right now the Nelson-Atkins is showing an exhibition called Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway, 1830-1960. I haven't seen the show, but the website has lots of images and it looks cool. (The KC Star's Alice Thorson dug it.)

If you planned your trip for a couple weeks from now, you might leave Kansas City on the Southwest Chief bound for Chicago, switch over to the Lake Shore Limited and disembark in Rochester, NY. The Eastman House will feature three RR shows: The photographs of O. Winston Link, Tracks: The Railroad in Photographs from the Eastman House Collection and an Andrew Cross video installation.

(Feeling really adventurous? A major exhibition of Carleton Watkins and his contemporaries opens at the Getty later this month. Watkins and his peers did a lot of work for the railroads. Take the Lake Shore Limited out of Rochester, then in Chicago switch to either the Southwest Chief or Texas Eagle.)

When I went through the Tomma Abts show at the NuMu I found myself thinking, 'Why isn't she a sculptor, too?'

Abts paintings are precisionist not so much in a way that recalls Sheeler, Demuth, or the precisionist most inclined toward abstraction, Ralston Crawford. They're precisionist in the adjectival sense: They're absolute, controlled, and fantastically careful. They have tightly-contained topography, complete with ridges that intersect in acute angles. They are tactile. The colors are unfashionable, muted, even severe. Sometimes I think that if Jay DeFeo has made The Rose small, it would have been a Tomma Abts.

(I thought that again when I read Ken Johnson's NYT review of Abts' NuMu presentation: "Stylistically the paintings seem oddly out of sync with the present; they could be recently rediscovered works from the 1950s or '60s," Johnson wrote. Defeo was behind the curve too.)

This is all a long way toward saying: Abts has made sculpture. In 2006 she made this cast alumninum sculpture, Aeid. It's a little bit smaller than her paintings: Aeid is 18.88 by 14.94 inches, Abts' paintings are 19.8 by 15 inches. The Walker Art Center just bought it. You can see a quite different picture of it here.

Related: Christopher Knight's scything take on Abts at the Hammer.

In a swipe at the way museums lacking contemporary expertise rush toward the contemporary, I said that the Getty Villa was hosting a Jim Dine drawings show. That was a mistake. There was a Jim Dine drawings retrospective at the National Gallery in 2004. The Getty Villa show is of Jim Dine sculpture.

• The Polaroid timeline.
• Museums are beginning to play with Twitter.
• Are photographers taking inspiration (in part) from photo-realist painters?
• Obama: The campaign in photographs.
• Love this: Gallery give-aways as wrapping paper, and other ways of interacting with commercial galleries.
• Collage: How to build a Sarah Palin from an Anita Bryant.

One of the things I like about Franz West's epoxy-resin-and-fiberglass sculptures from the late '90s and '00s is that they're specifically ambiguous. They bring to mind lots of familiar shapes and even art historical references, but before you can nail them down to any one thing, they slither away.

At left is West's Swimmer (2005), which the Baltimore Museum of Art has recently acquired in advance of the museum's presentation of the first American West retrospective.

In this series of work, West's references begin with the body. Swimmer starts as a friendly, fleshy, gummy vagina dentata? Unless it's an open mouth. Is it ecstatic or anguished? Or maybe it's another orifice altogether.

But body references aren't all that West plays with. After he leads with a potentially vulgar shape or implication, he abstracts away from it until the sculpture touches on other points of familiarity. I think of the body being for West what the landscape was to American abstract expressionists: A place away from which to work. (In a related story, is Dorit a sex toy... or is it a clever riff on seriality? Another recent Baltimore acquisition, Violetta (below, with Swimmer), is a jarringly comfortable lavender intestine-cocoon-sofa.)

One of the hallmarks of West's best work is that it resists immediate identification with anything, a trait he shares with many European and American artists of his generation. West was born in 1947 and spent his formative years during the years pop art and minimalism were king (or at least ducal). West's work often seems to be a reaction against the tidy shapes of minimalism or the ready imagery of pop.

Swimmer is a good example: The surface recalls Oldenburg papier-maches. There's the bright, poppy color that recalls both McCracken and Pepto Bismol. And please don't fetishize the art object: You can sit on Swimmer, which is fantastically democratic, but also a little creepy. (There's no reason to think that West would have thought one whit about Copley's Watson and the Shark, which is at the National Gallery of Art, but I sure do.)

• I'm also available via Twitter. Content includes links to many MAN posts and, well, to other stuff.
• If you have or read a particularly smashing post that you want to make sure I consider for linkage, email it to LinksforMAN-blog (at) yahoo(dot)com.

A couple weeks ago I noted how gee-whiz cool it was that Lynne Cooke's essay about Francis Alys' Fabiola projatect was available on LACMA's website. (The exhibition on view at LACMA.) I wondered why more museums didn't post scholarship related to exhibitions on their websites.

Over the last couple of weeks I've asked several museum types about this. The answer has little-to-nothing to do with the publishers of exhibition catalogues, and everything to do with 'that's the way we've always done it.' All a museum really needs to post essays/etc. on its exhibition website is the permission of the essay author. For example, when LACMA wanted to post Michael Govan's Dan Flavin essay on its website, they had remarkable success in obtaining Govan's permission. Most museums just don't think to ask or don't think to include the essays on their sites. They should.

Pictures/images are a little trickier. The Baltimore Museum of Art is one of many museums that has started its own Flickr stream. I asked the museum why so few of the images there were licensed under Creative Commons. The explanation: We can post images of the works, but quite often the museum doesn't have the right to create a CC license of an image of a given artwork. (Pesky artists' rights and all.)

All of which means that this picture of Franz West's Dorit is completely awesome, but I can't post it on MAN. (If I took a picture myself and posted it, that would be OK under fair-use law.) In a related story, the first American Franz West retrospective opens at Baltimore next month. It will travel to LACMA next year. Here's hoping that LACMA and the BMA share the written content (essays and artist interview) from that catalogue online.

• See the Peabody Essex Museum's newest trustee near-orgasmically writhing in bed (while clothed).
• There are two new books out about fake Vermeers. Christopher Knight says this is the one to read.
• Some arts organizations have dedicated, tax-based sources of funding. One example: The St. Louis Art Museum (which is free to the public). Should your museum pursue same?
• The NYT's Friday Weekend section editor is answering questions this week. Maybe she can explain to us how the Times magically arranges for arts news to always happen on Fridays, and whether Carol Vogel really does have a gavel-shaped red phone with a direct line to Christie's.
• Five famed photographers on their favorite films. [via]
• Once upon a time, architects designed houses for people who had four-figure net worths. One of the most beloved examples is Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House in northern Virginia. Wright's client died last week, making now a good time to revisit his story.

A couple notable blog posts on last week's (eternal) Spiral Jetty series here on MAN:

• Greg Allen, who has ties to Utah and who has written extensively about Spiral Jetty, raises additional questions about the Jetty and stewardship;
• Kriston Capps, who has written about the Jetty for The American Prospect, asks whether groups working on Jetty preservation are as focused on land as they are on water.

A food bank doesn't plant trees in city parks. The Red Cross doesn't build houses, Habitat for Humanity does. So why are non-contemporary art museums so intent on becoming contemporary art museums? 

In recent years art museums with virtually every imaginable focus have tried to make sure it does contemporary art. Each museum has its own reasons: The Met's confused installation of Damien Hirst's shark looked like a lame donor-grab because it was. Sometimes museums chase audience or hipster cachet.

In the last couple weeks I've noticed two particularly cringe-worthy examples. First up, at the end of next month the Getty Villa is showing a series of drawings sculpture by Jim Dine, the Clive Cussler of contemporary art. If Jim Dine didn't exist Pace Wildenstein would create him. (Oh, wait...) UPDATE: Correction here.

And over this past weekend the Phillips Collection, America's first museum of modern art, a museum with a spectacular 1890-1940ish collection, held a symposium on painting in the 21st century, an area in which the museum has virtually no art and no curatorial expertise. (Perhaps this is why three dealers ended up on the day's program.) I attended. Some of it.

My favorite part was a panel discussion on criticism and painting, during which Washington Post provocateur Blake Gopnik said that painters were responsible for what he considers to be the weak state of contemporary painting criticism. Call it the Gopnik Doctrine.

On its own that's a pretty remarkable assertion, but it was flat-out amusing given the 'keynote address' that preceded it. The keynoter was Suzanne Hudson, who opened her talk by discussing the alleged death of painting (I could have sworn I heard Whitesnake and Richard Marx songs in the background) and then quickly moved on to painting's alleged death within the context of today's art market, inadvertently using ten minutes of whiplash to fuse two decades of cliches.

The best part: Under the Gopnik Doctrine, painters are to blame for Hudson's talk.

All of which isn't to suggest that museums shouldn't be interested in contemporary issues, just that they should try to engage within the context of what they do best.

I love it when museums think everyone else is stupid. Case in point the Seattle Art Museum, a museum that has long had, er, transparency issues.

SAM could be facing an acute financial problem as a result of the failure of Washington Mutual. Here's why: Several years ago SAM and WaMu partnered on a new building for both the museum and the bank. As part of the deal, WaMu pays rent to SAM.

When WaMu's troubles first made news 10 days ago, the Seattle P-I's Regina Hackett asked SAM what could be the financial hit to the museum, that is, how much rent the bank paid to the museum each year. A museum spokesperson "declined to say" what WaMu was paying.

That was silly and unnecessary. The figure was in SAM's tax returns, which is open to the public. So sure enough, after WaMu failed and was purchased by JPMorganChase, Hackett requested the tax filing, looked up the number and reported it on Friday: SAM received $4.6 million in rental fees from WaMu in SAM's most recently available fiscal year. The museum has a operating expenses of $24 million.

• Wal-Martist Tara Donovan profiled by Carol Kino in the NYT. And Donovan tells W's Diane Solway where she was (ha!) when the MacArthur genius people called her with the news.
• Christopher Knight considers why the faux-debates ignore cultural issues.
• Knight also says that the pope is concerned about Martin Kippenberger's frog.
• Robert Pincus reports that Tijuana -- a city of 1.4 million -- has built its first kunsthalle. Did you know: With over five million people, metro SD-Tijuana is bigger than Miami, Phoenix, Seattle and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
• It's nice that the LAT is proud of it's not-exactly-local museum director, but Michael Govan is becoming known for a lot more than just a pretty face and a creative contract.
• In the midst of an NYC-based financial meltdown, Nicolai Ouroussoff channels Gordon Matta-Clark.
  
• Combat painter Steve Mumford's story is well-told, which is awesome. The latest chronicler: the KC Star's Alice Thorson on the occasion of a Mumford show in Missouri.
• Speaking of Thorson, she writes about a Nelson-Atkins show that examines artists' take on technology and industrial progress (in the 19th century).
• After Ike, the Rothko Chapel was happy to find that its Rothkos were mold-free, says the Houston Chron's Douglas Britt.
• The Corcoran is deaccessioning ten paintings. Missing in Jackie Trescott's Washington Post story are curators and trustees, which makes me wonder a bit... Also lacking: Perspective from the industry.
  
• How lost was Holland Cotter in his review of Cathy Opie's Guggenheim retrospective? Cotter's second paragraph is problematic.
  
  

  [Opie] is an insider and an outsider: a documentarian and a provocateur; a classicist and a maverick; a trekker and a stay-at-home; a lesbian feminist mother who resists the gay mainstream; an American -- birthplace: Sandusky, Ohio -- who has serious arguments with her country and culture.
  

  With that first (cliched) phrase Cotter is setting up classic, oppositions. Insiders can't be outsiders, and outsiders simply can't be insiders. A provocateur can't be as mundane as a stay-at-home... but Opie manages to be both the yin and the yang. We get it.
  
  So that last one: an American -- one from Sandusky, Ohio -- can't have serious arguments with her country? Please.
  
  And let's not even get started on whatever Cotter was talking about referring to "leather queens." At least he got that opposition right. Or wrong. Or whatever.

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

I hadn't planned on including this post in this week's series on the future of Spiral Jetty. However during the week enough emailers asked me about federal protection that I thought I'd add it as a postscript. Non-Jetty content resumes Monday.

When I asked Friends of Great Salt Lake director Lynn de Freitas if she thought there was any kind of federal monument protection that would be help preserve Spiral Jetty, I could practically hear her wrinkle her nose at me.

"There is this funny, knee-jerk thing about Utah and the feds," she said. "There's this belief that we don't need to talk to the feds."

de Freitas remembered Utah's reaction in 1996 when the Clinton administration effectively unilaterally created the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The state didn't like that the governor and the state's congressional delegation were told about the new monument only 24 hours before it was created. To make matters worse, President Clinton announced the monument from Arizona.

With the exception of that kind of presidential edict, only Congress can create a new national monument. Given Utah's experience with Grand Staircase, experts such as de Freitas and National Trust for Historic Preservation mountains/plains director Barbara Pahl aren't enthused about that as a viable option. Besides, even you if conservationists were to push through some type of Spiral Jetty National Monument, there would be other issues. Just because an area is designated a monument doesn't mean it's necessarily closed to industry.

"Even if you get a bill, you'd have to [pass] a bill that has a stipulation that talks about protection," Pahl said.

Another kind of federal recognition, placement on the National Register of Historic Places, provides virtually no protection.

All of which leaves Jetty preservationists with one clear option: Work with each other and with the state government.

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

In September, at an early meeting of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's just-appointed Great Salt Lake Advisory Council, an official from the Utah Department of Natural Resources made a surprising admission: The reason that Utah, the state with the most industry-permissive extraction policies in the West, had convened a major new effort to consider how to best utilize the lake was that thousands of people from around the world had raised a stink when an oil company tried to drill near Spiral Jetty. Instead of taking a pinprick approach to conservation, the state decided to take a comprehensive approach. [Photo]

The advisory council, which includes environmental advocates such as Friends of Great Salt Lake, industry groups such as Great Salt Lake Minerals, and a range of local administrators and elected officials, is charged with ensuring the long-term viability of GSL and its  ecosystem. Conspicuous by its absence on the panel is the Dia Art Foundation, which owns Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Dia is based in New York, all of the other groups are at least nominally Utah-based. (For example, Great Salt Lake Minerals is a subsidiary of a Kansas-based company.)

"The makeup of the commission was intended to represent a broad collection of stakeholders while maintaining an effective body," Huntsman spokesperson Lisa Roskelley told me. "Yes, all of the representatives live in the state, though certainly anyone from Dia who is interested would be more than welcome to attend any of the meetings or be part of the technical committees that will be providing information to educate and aid the process."

(Dia said that it looks forward to making a presentation to the group.)

The council's focus poses two challenges to Dia: First, the state of Utah is taking a holistic approach to lake management and so far this year Dia has focused on the Jetty itself but not on broader issues in the ecosystem. Next, if Dia becomes more broadly interested in working on issues relating to the GSL ecosystem, how can a New York-based non-profit, a group with responsibilities, projects and close relationships in Texas, New Mexico, and all over New York state, be effective in Utah?

One way is for Dia to be involved with state officials. For example, Dia took the lead in making sure the governor trekked out to see Spiral Jetty. Dia officials say they will continue to work with the governor and with the Utah Department of Natural Resources.

But Dia could also be effective from a distance by forming coalitions with interested groups, a more rigorous version of its ad hoc relationship with FOGSL. Dia says that it is counting on FOGSL to help keep an eye on the Jetty through the advisory council process, but Dia has no formal connection to FOGSL. It provides FOGSL with no funding for Jetty-specific work or advocacy.

"We haven't, to be honest with you, considered re-granting to them," Dia deputy director Laura Raicovich told me. "That's not really what Dia does."

"That's not a bad idea," added Dia director Philippe Vergne. "But we haven't thought about it."

And why should it? Dia has has little experience in participating in broad-based coalitions that work on mutual interests. (For example, FOGSL was unaware of Dia's 'buffer plan' until I asked FOGSL about it.) Meanwhile environmental groups are accustomed to working in coalition with a range of allies -- associations of hunters, fishermen, philanthropy, scientists and so on.

Dia's approach isn't surprising: Art organizations, especially art museums, typically don't work in coalitions with other groups on issues such as this because there's rarely a reason to. (Is there an art museum equivalent to an entire ecosystem?)

To make matters even more difficult, there is little or no philanthropy leadership around conservation issues at the Great Salt Lake, nothing remotely like the coalition-driving philanthropic partnerships that have built up around other ecosystems, such as the Hudson River. Dozens of organizations work on issues that impact the health of the Hudson. Down the Atlantic seaboard, the largest non-profit that works on Chesapeake Bay issues, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, spends $20 million a year. FOGSL's operating expenses last year were $57,000.

And therein lies an organizational challenge for groups with an interest in the GSL, and specifically for people with an interest in Spiral Jetty: It's hard to blame Dia for not partnering with a non-existent coalition. It's hard to expect FOGSL to have morphed into the Chesapeake Bay Foundation when GSL conservation issues are relatively new. It's hard to know who would organize philanthropy around GSL issues, the kind of issues that are important to brine shrimpers, hunters and art lovers. There is an opportunity for leadership.

Vergne has been at Dia for less than two weeks, but it sounds like that's where he wants to go.

"We are taking a very holistic view of what responsibility means," he said. "As you know and due to the nature of the piece in both cases, Spiral Jetty and also for the Lightning Field, when we talk about the enviornment we're talking about miles away from the piece...[The] work needs to be secure and protected so of course it's the road and the physical nature of the Jetty but it's also preserving the experience of the work and the experience of the work includes the way you access the work the way you experience the work on site."

Check out Culture Monster, the new arts blog from the Los Angeles Times. Especially cool: A Christopher Knight post on Mark Bradford's post-Katrina ark for New Orleans. In a related story, C-Monster throws down.

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

Over the spring and summer, as Dia formulated what to do to preserve Spiral Jetty, it looked back to what it had done with other earthworks in its care, notably Walter De Maria's Lightning Field. For decades -- practically since the creation of the work -- Dia has pursued a 'buffer' strategy by which it bought up ranchland (or conservation easements) around Lightning Field. [Photo of aerial view of Rozel Point.]

Informed by that experience, in March Dia officials approached the state of Utah with a similar plan in mind. "The first step that we asked that the state to take was that it conduct a viewshed analysis on the actual area," Dia deputy director Laura Raicovich told me. "They're working on that, and we should have the results of that literally any moment. Once we have that in hand, we can do an analysis on our part of both the viewshed impact and possible geophysical impact on the Jetty from oil drilling. This proposed [Pearl Montana] test-drilling sites are only, in all likelihood, the first of other attempts. It's not just about defeating this set of proposals, but dealing with the future."

Several potential Dia allies think it's an idea with potential. Barbara Pahl, the mountains/plains director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation says that NTHP has worked with industry to donate leases to conservation groups. In 2002 the Anschutz Corporation donated some Montana drilling leases to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, effectively saving a canyon important to American Indians.

I asked Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake, if she thought creating a buffer around the Jetty, perhaps by Dia controlling oil leases, was an effective approach.

"Yes, it could create a precedent of sorts, if indeed [the state allows] that precedent to be created at all," de Freitas said. "It's a great idea. Those are the kinds of leveraging measures that can put the conservation community's playing cards in the game. If the state really is looking for some sort of economic livelihood, and for the sake of protecting something that is really for the greater good, then why wouldn't they take a smaller value in return for the lease potential. You've got a player, you've got an interested party that can pay and isn't that great because it's really a win-win." [Photo of Great Salt Lake Minerals Co. evaporation ponds in Clyman Bay. GSLM has proposed doubling the size of these ponds. The expansion would be roughly north and east of the existing ponds.]

But would the approach go far enough toward preserving the Jetty? Buying up leases would address one issue -- drilling, rigs and potential oil leaks or spills -- but it doesn't seem to address other Great Salt Lake issues that could potentially impact the Jetty, such as the GSL's mercury level or the impact evaporation ponds could have on the ecology of Clyman Bay.

"I think that's absolutely right," de Freitas said. "The interesting kind of conundrum here for Dia, as I see it, is the integration of the ecosystem into the preservation plan for Spiral Jetty."

Tomorrow: How the Pearl Montana proposal and how it might impact Spiral Jetty changed everything in the Great Salt Lake, and what that means for the future.

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is in the collection of the Dia Art Foundation. In Lynne Cooke's 2005 book on the Jetty, Dia describes itself as the Jetty's "custodian." So where is Dia on the three clearest ecological threats to the Great Salt Lake?

On Monday I asked Philippe Vergne, who was seven days into his tenure as Dia's director, and deputy director Laura Raicovich about these and other issues. (Raicovich was Dia's acting director after Jeffrey Weiss left Dia in March. In an email, Weiss declined to discuss the Jetty.) [Photo]

Vergne said he was unconcerned with the Great Salt Lake's level, which is at a 40-year low. The lake level has concerned Utah officials, industry and sportsmen because the lake's level seems out-of-whack with recent precipitation levels. Vergne, who doesn't have a brine shrimpery to think of, instead considered the lake level within the context of the Jetty's history. "It's something that's been part of the life of the Jetty and Robert Smithson was aware of that," Vergne said. "[Sunday] in Beacon we screened the film about the Spiral Jetty and a few years ago the Jetty was under six feet of water. Some of that is natural."

I asked Dia officials if the staggeringly high mercury levels recently discovered in GSL imperiled the Jetty itself, the red algae that Smithson considered essential to the piece, or even visitors to the Jetty.

"Obviously that's not our area of expertise," Raicovich said. "We've been trying to keep abreast of those developments. It's not just the oil drilling itself or the visual impact from a derrick, or a rig, or the impact of a spill, but this mercury issue is potentially enormous."

And what about Great Salt Lake Minerals Company's proposed evaporation ponds? [Photo, with evaporation ponds at bottom.]

"I don't really know enough about that to comment," Raicovich said. "I just know what's in the paper." Raicovich said that Dia has not studied the question of whether the ponds would impact the Jetty or its viewshed, and that it has not contacted EPA about its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on the ponds. The DEIS is due to be released next month with three public hearings to follow in November.

The challenge for Dia is that it is an art museum-with-a-(big)-twist. It has lots of experience working with artists and with art objects -- but with little experience in tackling varied, layered, and expansive ecological issues or in working with numerous allies as part of a coalition. As a result, Dia's approach to the Jetty -- and to works such as Walter De Maria's Lightning Field -- has been to address single issues as they come up. Think of it as keeping the temperature at a safe level by putting out fires instead of addressing climate change.

This approach has worked well in other places. The only clear threat to Lightning Field was ranching-related development on the edges of the field. Dia worked with the state of New Mexico on the issue and in June Dia finished raising $1.1 million and purchased a conservation easement for 6,000 acres on the south side of Lightning Field. When artist Michael Heizer became uncomfortable with the possibility of nuclear waste-laden rail cars passing close to City, Dia hired a Washington lobbyist, took some meetings with the secretary of the Department of Energy, and was effective.

But Dia's record isn't as good on the Jetty, which is why both art lovers and Dia's putative allies are concerned. When Nancy Holt sent out a letter about the drilling threat on Jan. 29 and the blogosphere picked up on it the next day, Dia was caught unaware of the issue. [UPDATE: Dia says that it became aware of the issue on Jan. 28 and began working on it then.] Dia didn't issue any kind of public statement until Feb. 6. If Utah hadn't extended the drilling public comment period because of blogosphere-driven reaction, Dia would have missed the issue completely.

Officials at several groups with an interest in GSL issues have told MAN that Dia has dropped out of sight in recent months, even failing to return phone calls and emails. No one questions whether Dia understands or values the Jetty -- the organization has produced a significant scholarly publication on the Jetty as recently as 2005, it has ensured that officeholders such as Utah's governor visit the Jetty to experience it for themselves, and it has made sure it was accessible to visitors -- but Dia's most obvious allies have significant questions about whether Dia is interested in working with allies on the broader environmental issues that have the potential to impact Spiral Jetty.

"The interesting conundrum here for Dia as I see it there is the integration of the ecosystem at stake," said Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake. "In the Jetty's part of the lake there are a lot of appealing aspects of development that could happen up there, in Gunnison Bay, that is. Whether or not Dia is..." de Freitas trailed off before starting again. 

"I don't know. I'm not used to working with the arts community. I really don't know what level of expectation can really come from an organization interested in the preservation of a single piece like Jetty, and how feasible it is for Dia to consider, 'What about these other things?' I would like to think they are every bit as interested in them as Friends and the broader conservation community are. But I can't be sure. I don't know what kind of soul-searching Dia's going to do, whether it will come back and say, 'Yeah we're with you for the long haul, regardless of what the issue is.'"

Which is not to say that Dia doesn't have its own ideas about preserving the Jetty. More on that here.

• Some Dallas parents are concerned that art:21 could inspire their kids to learn more about art on the internet. [via] Just for you, Dallas: Here's a new art:21 interview with Gabriel Orozco.
  
• Anthropologie loves art so much that they appropriate it.
• The Houston Chronicle's Douglas Britt asks why Houston's mayor shut down the arts... but left movie theaters open.

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

The Great Salt Lake is changing quickly. It is not clear why.

Lake levels have plummeted to the lowest levels in over 40 years. Mercury levels are rising and rising fast. The problem has emerged so quickly and unexpectedly that the Great Salt Lake now has one of the highest concentrations of mercury of any body of water in the United States. And this summer extractive industries filed new applications in an effort to create immense new evaporation ponds just west of Spiral Jetty. The ponds would be so enormous that they'd nearly double the size of existing GSL evaporation pools. If they are approved, the size of the new evaporation facilities would be bigger than the footprint of Salt Lake City.

[The image above shows evaporation ponds in Bear River Bay to the east of Spiral Jetty, which is off this image to the left, west of the Promontory Mountains. The green patches on the right of this Google Satellite picture are Ogden exurbs.]

"When you manage a hemispherically important ecosystem with one eye covered something has to give," says Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake, the environmental group that monitors the lake. "It's not just Spiral Jetty that's at risk. Currently, economics is the bottom line for all management decisions about Great Salt Lake. Development on and around the lake, diverting water for the growing population, and failing to fund research to determine why Great Salt Lake has the highest mercury levels ever recorded in the nation puts the entire ecosystem at risk of death by a thousand cuts."

Each of these developments has potential ramifications for Spiral Jetty.

Lake level
Last week the Great Salt Lake's elevation was 4,194 feet, a 40-year low. That has puzzled scientists: The winter of 2007-08 was a wet one in Utah. Lake levels should be higher. Instead, they're low and falling, effectively sped up because of the shallowness of the lake. It's not clear if the changes in lake level are part of a natural cycle -- they seem too extreme and relatively sudden for that -- or if they stem from increases in population around the lake.

Robert Smithson, the artist who created Spiral Jetty, expected that the Jetty would sometimes be visible and that it would often be underwater. If lake levels continue to recede because of human intervention -- and not just because of global climate change -- obviously the work will be substantially less likely to be underwater.

Mercury level
Three years ago U.S. Geological Survey scientists conducted routine tests around the Great Salt Lake and found something that stunned them: The lake's mercury levels were alarmingly high. Those 2005 tests found that the most poisonous form of mercury, methylmercury, exceeded 25 nanograms per liter of GSL water. How high is that? When the same form of mercury was found in the Florida Everglades at just one nanogram per liter, governments posted fish consumption warnings.

The state of Utah, caught off-guard, responded to the news by warning residents not to eat certain kinds of ducks. Multiple federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are now using federal funding to study the issue in an effort to find out what's going on.
 
There are three ways that increased mercury levels could affect the Jetty. First, it's possible that high mercury levels could effect brine shrimp, birds, or the red algae that gives the Jetty a blood-like hue. That hue was important to Smithson, who spoke and wrote frequently about the importance of the red algae to the Jetty. (See Smithson talking with Kenneth Baker in an interview first published in Dia's 2005 Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities, and in his application letter for the Jetty's land lease. Also, Suzaan Boettger explains Smithson's interest in the red algae in her book Earthworks.)

Second, it's not clear what affect mercury could have on the salts on the earthwork itself. Finally, It is unclear if high mercury levels in the Great Salt Lake could eventually impact human visitation to the Jetty (or to other parts of the GSL).

Evaporation ponds
In 2007 the Great Salt Lake Minerals Corporation filed to install 33,000 acres of new evaporation ponds in the Great Salt Lake. Most of them, 22,700 acres would be installed just west of the Jetty. The rest would be on the other side of the Promontory Mountains, in the Bear River Bay. [The image at right is taken from GSLM's application. The black area marks the proposed new evaporation ponds in the Jetty's neighborhood. I added the red dot to mark the Jetty.]

It's not certain that the ponds would be visible from the Jetty or Rozel Point. They are further west of the Jetty than the Promontory Mountains are east. Regardless, the ponds would certainly introduce a dramatic change into the ecology of the northern sections of the lake. Groups such as the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network and FOGSL have expressed concern about the new pools.

As with the proposed oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake, the ponds must go through what is effectively a permitting process. Next month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will release a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) regarding the Great Salt Lake Mineral Corp.'s plan. The EPA review will examine a range of environmental factors, including "wildlife habitat, water quality, Great Salt Lake water elevations, wetlands, hydrology, cultural resources, transportation, endangered species and industry." The DEIS is expected to be released in October, and EPA has scheduled three public comment meetings in Utah in November.

While these are the three most apparent, immediate threats to the ecology of the Jetty's neighborhood (and possibly to the Jetty itself), no one I've spoken to in the last three weeks expects these to remain the only threats.

"[The Jetty's] part of the lake is being looked at for obvious reasons for oil and gas, but also for its high concentration of salts and the easy evaporation of those resources," FOGSL's de Freitas says, adding that the state of Utah tends to approve such use. "Remember, the state motto for Utah is, 'Industry.' That's the whole thing."

Tomorrow: Where does Dia stand on these issues?

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

On January 29, 2008 artist Nancy Holt emailed friends about a threat to her late husband Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty: Pearl Montana, a Canadian oil-and-gas company, had asked the state of Utah for permission to engage in energy exploration and extraction near the Jetty. The greatest and most important earthwork in the world was potentially threatened by a corporation that wanted to make a buck regardless of the possible cost to the health of an ecosystem or to a seminal artwork. Holt urged people to contact the state of Utah as soon as possible, to explain to state officials the cultural import of the Jetty and to urge the state to deny Pearl Montana's application. Holt asked them to act quickly: The end of the public comment period was 36 hours away, on Jan. 31. [Photo]

Holt's email was first published on Jan. 30, here on MAN. By the end of the day, scores of blogs picked up on Holt's plea. (Most of the traditional media didn't pick up the story for a week. The New York Times, for example, didn't publish anything until Feb. 6.) On that afternoon after Holt's email went up on MAN, so many blog readers from around the world flooded the state of Utah with emails and phone calls that the state extended the public comment period on Pearl Montana's application. Mostly as a result of a blogs-driven, international 'Save the Jetty!' outcry that resulted in Utah officials receiving over 3,000 emails, Pearl Montana's application was delayed. On August 7 state officials rejected it. Thanks substantially to blog readers, art won.

For now. Eight months later it's clear that Pearl Montana's initial application to explore and drill for oil just west of Spiral Jetty won't be industry's last attempt to treat the Jetty's neighborhood as a commercial resource. It's also clear that drilling is just one of many threats to the Great Salt Lake and to the Jetty. Conservationists are confident that Pearl Montana will be back with a revised application soon, that the company is waiting for the initial 'save the Jetty' fervor to die down. [The map at right is an old Google Satellite image of the Great Salt Lake. The Jetty is marked with a red dot.]

The question is: Is Spiral Jetty threatened by future commercial development? And are arts organizations, most of which have little or no experience in dealing with the confluence of interests and entities involved in preserving an artwork in the landscape, using all available and appropriate measures to save the Jetty?

In a way, Smithson himself expected the Jetty and other earthworks to serve as a catalyst for this kind of engagement between industry, government and environmentalists. Smithson wrote this in 1972, as part of a proposal to a mining company for a project in Ohio:

Our new ecological awareness indicates that industrial production can no longer remain blind to the visual landscape. Earth art could become a visual resource that mediates between ecology and industry.... I am developing an art consciousness for today free from nostalgia and rooted in the process of actual production and reclamation... A dialogue between earth art and mining operations could lead to a whole new consciousness.

Smithson was prescient. That "consciousness" is the debate which began when Pearl Montana filed its first application and when the art world responded. 

This week on MAN I'll detail the latest threats to the Jetty and its view-shed, as well as threats to the Great Salt Lake that could have -- or are already having -- a substantial impact on the Jetty. Here's the lineup:

• Tomorrow I'll discuss the health of the lake and industry's latest attempts to claim more of it;
• On Wednesday I'll write about Utah's first, tentative steps to decide what kind of resource the Great Salt Lake should be, and what the stakeholders are doing about the GSL and the Jetty;
• On Thursday I'll discuss whether the Jetty should be protected by the state or the federal government; and
• On Friday I'll analyze at whether existing organizations with stewardship of the Jetty and an interest in the lake are doing enough.

This morning's bit of ham-fisted fundraising comes from the Smithsonian, which is using the 'events-only' email distribution list of at least one Smithsonian museum to beg for money. It's possibly the silliest fundraising solicitation I've ever received.

First, let's remember that for years the Smithsonian has fiddled and spent money on private jets while its facilities rotted. Those museums and storage facilities have rotted to the tune of $2.5 billion. Congress, upset at rampant mismanagement throughout the SI, has long ignored the need. And now the Smithsonian wants to build another $1 billion worth of new museums. This is an old, old story.

But this morning the SI sent out an email saying " The U.S. Congress has challenged us to raise the money needed to address this critical situation immediately. We have 9 days left in our fiscal year to show Congress we have the support of people like you!" The email goes on to say that the SI has to demonstrate it can reach an unspecified goal that Congress will give it an extra $15 million, one two-hundred-and-thirty-third of what the SI says it needs. And there are only nine days! This just became extra super-duper important now, but it's so double-secret important we can't tell you what the goal is!

In a related story, the SI leaked to the NYT the news that former Gates Foundation boss Patty Stonesifer will  be the new chairman of the SI board. The Gates Foundation is America's largest grant-making foundation and has $39 billion in assets. But nevermind that: There are only nine days left!

• Several years ago, when I was working as an art critic for Bloomberg, I wrote about how horribly awful the Damien Hirst 'pill paintings' show at Gagosian was. My editor didn't like that I'd ripped the show, and she told me I had to be wrong. Her rationale? Gagosian claimed that the show sold out before it opened. (Yeah. I departed shortly thereafter.) On Saturday Roberta Smith examined how Damien Hirst toys with the market -- and how he isn't afraid to make horrible art (like pill paintings) to do it. Don't miss the last paragraph. UPDATE: Richard Lacayo cleverly agrees.
  
• Speaking of Smith, how close did she come to saying that Vincent Van Gogh was the greatest Western artist since the mosaicists at Ravenna?
• In the NYT Hilarie Sheets profiles Cathy Opie. Bonus amuseument: Watching the NYT figure out what to call the leather community. Or the S&M community.
  
• SFMOMA's temporary Sol LeWitt murals installation lasted eight years, reports the SF Chron's Sam Whiting. Here's what's next. (Although what their financial value has to do with anything I have no idea. The works are in SFMOMA's collection. They've been permanently demonetized.)
•  The Chron's Kenneth Baker digs a show of (the tres underrated) Frank Lobdell at SF's Hackett-Freedman.
• The SD Union-Trib's Robert Pincus says this show at MCASD (which has an awesome website) makes you think in all the right ways.
• Struggling Detroit has lots of empty space. Why not let artists take advantage of it, posits the Detroit Metro Times' Rebecca Mazzei.
• Over the summer I spent a week discussing the Baltimore Contemporary's Cottage Industries show, an exhibition about communitarianism and art. A Detroit couple, Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert take to the Metro Times to propose a project that would have fit right in. And Berliners Stephane Orsolini and Erika Mayr create a project involving bees and open space. The Baltimore Contemporary picked up on something...
  

I'm taking a day off. Back Monday with a week-long examination of the future of Spiral Jetty and the role arts organizations are (or aren't?) playing.

While some newspapers have been gallivanting about the globe spending big dollars and daily attention on vacuous entertainment-meets-business stories such as the Hirst auction, the most important arts journalism of the week comes from Mark Stryker in today's Detroit Free Press: The Detroit Institute of Arts, one of America's finest museums, is facing major financial problems. Stryker reports that the DIA is facing a staggering FY 2009 operating budget shortfall of $17 million on operating expenses of $34 million. [Image: A DIA Degas.]

Stryker does a nice job of outlining the factors that have gone into DIA's troubles: macro-economic problems in Detroit and in Michigan, years of operating shortfalls that have been covered by depriving the museum's endowment of roughly $100 million, and a massive decline in government support. He also outlines how the museum hopes to fix the problem -- and the plans sound mighty thin.

The DIA story certainly has particulars rooted in problems in Michigan, where unemployment is at nine percent. (The national figure is 6.1 percent.) In metro Detroit it's even higher -- 10 percent -- and in the city itself the figure is over 14 percent. (Compounding the hurt: In Detroit consumer prices are up five percent in the last year.) The Michigan economy is so strained that not even the beloved Detroit Red Wings sold out playoff games during their recent run to the Stanley Cup.

But what's happening at the DIA is also part of an under-examined macro-narrative: During the first peak period of American museums, then-wealthy cities in America's industrial belt supported great collections and museums. Many of the finest art objects in America are in museums in Detroit, Toledo, Dayton, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Rochester, NY. [Image: A DIA Van Gogh.]

But over the last couple decades the rust belt economy has suffered, and those cities have faced economic stagnation or recession. This past summer, a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that cities such as Dayton and Buffalo lost as much as seven percent of their population just last year. (Meanwhile, population is booming in the sun belt, a region with few great museums.) When Buffalo's Albright-Knox looked at its ability to stay relevant as a contemporary art museum, it decided it had to deaccession art in order to be able to continue to acquire art.

And now the DIA is in trouble. They won't be the last rust belt museum to struggle.

Sez DCist: Polar bear stunt bemoaned here this morning organized by Greenpeace and local provocateur Mark Jenkins.

• The MFA Boston has met its expansion fundraising goal of $504M.
• Before people get too excited, let's remember that (for now) this is a possible New York issue, not a national one.
• The Getty is advertising on television? [via]
• SFMOMA takes down its massive Sol LeWitt wall murals.
• Jim Hodges designs clothes?
  

The latest Carol Vogelism, from today's breathless NYT coverage of the Hir$t orgy:

Alberto Mugrabi, a New York dealer, sat through the two-day sale but was able to buy only two works, a spot painting and a drawing. He called the event a phenomenon. "It's a way to escape from reality," he said. "And over time it could be a really good investment."

Interesting. A 'phenomenon!' A "really good investment!" Sounds... promotional. Makes me wonder if Mugrabi... and sure enough. From Vogel, in Tuesday's paper:

Alberto Mugrabi, a Manhattan dealer and collector, said he had been getting calls from people who have never bought a work of art before, asking for his advice. "It will open up his market," said Mugrabi, who owns about 150 works by Hirst and will be attending the sale.

If today's story was about traders shorting AIG or on hog futures, any journalism outlet would insist that the quoted expert's financial interest was outlined. Vogel, who seems to only make these mistakes on the bullish, pro-market and pro-auction-house side of the gavel, should have learned this by now.

No sooner do I finish tweaking the Washington Post for failing to write anything substantial about new Smithsonian secretary G. Wayne Clough, than the Post goes Annie Oakley and publishes something substantial about Clough.

Jackie Trescott's story has far more details on Clough's background than did Monday's NYT piece, but ultimately it's a source-greaser, that old Washington standard whereby welcome-to-town feature stories are used to cozy up to an administrator in an attempt to ensure future access. In fact, Trescott may have even taken a sly dig at the genre in a particularly puffy section in which she tells us how the new boss is a man of the people:

While touring the Smithsonian, Clough has shown that same personal approach that people back in Georgia admired: very hands-on. At the airplane restoration facility in Suitland, he walked into an area where the workers were wearing masks and sanding. "He got right in there and climbed over barriers," said Gen. John Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum. "And he shook hands with mechanics who had grease all over them."

Cute. But like the NYT, the Post skirted the major questions.