The NYT, a $140M Pollock, and confusion

What happened? Did David Geffen sell a Jackson Pollock painting for $140 million? Did a Mexico City businessman buy it? If you read the New York Times you probably don't know what to think. The paper has completely bungled the story.

The timeline: On November 2, Carol Vogel reported that Geffen had sold a Pollock for $140M to David Martinez. In the story Vogel said that Martinez did not return calls seeking comment. (The story is available behind the NYT PPV wall.)

Then word began to filter out that the NYT had made a big mistake. On Nov. 7 The Baer Faxt (an insider e-newsletter) reported that the NYT was wrong, that Martinez was not the buyer.

Josh Baer talked to Martinez himself and told me the following story: "As I said to Mr. Martinez, and he agreed, for him to go on the record as not buying the painting -- and be lying would be very strange. Wouldn't people in the financial community find it hard to do serious business with a liar? In that world your word is everything - why risk it?"

Two days later, Bloomberg's Linda Sandler also reported that Martinez made no such purchase. "Martinez is not the buyer of a painting by Jackson Pollock, entitled 'Number 5, 1948,' " a spokesman at Martinez's attorneys' office told Bloomberg.

Sandler also gave us a look at Vogel's reporting methods: "I left several phone messages for Martinez and he never responded." Vogel told Sandler. "If he didn't buy [the Pollock], why didn't he call and tell me?"

Then on Nov. 10, Kate Taylor of the New York Sun floated another theory: "Some speculated this week that Mr. Martinez, upset at being outed, pulled out of a deal to buy the painting." (However the same Sun story has Geffen's office confirming that the painting was indeed sold.)

The New York Times still had not run a correction. Instead, in a Nov. 11 "Arts, Briefly" roundup compiled by Ben Sisario, the NYT reported that Bloomberg was reporting that the NYT had goofed. (Somehow the NYT must have missed the original Baer Faxt item.) In an unusual, remarkable 303-word paragraph, the NYT both stood by its story ("experts reaffirmed yesterday that the transaction had taken place"), and refuted it by quoting a spokeswoman at Martinez's attorneys' office ("Mr. Martinez did not buy the painting. Nobody associated with Mr. Martinez bought the painting.")

The New York Times still has not run a correction. It is not clear if the NYT stands by its Nov. 2 story, or by its Nov. 11 story. Or both. Or neither. Yesterday I emailed NYT culture editor Sam Sifton to ask for an explanation. Sifton replied and "declined to comment on an ongoing story." That leads me to believe that the NYT is planning a third story on all this. Will the third time be the charm? Or will we all be as confused as ever?

For years it has appeared as though the arts desk has different standards than the news desk. The culture crew, for example, tolerated Grace Glueck's unethical relationship with a Massachusetts museum until MAN exposed it. I can think of only one point of comparison for the NYT's duplicity on the Pollock story: Judith Miller's reporting on WMD in Iraq and the paper's subsequent handling of Miller's errors.

Related: Geffen's collection, as teased out by LATer Christopher Reynolds. Key quote: "Piece for piece, work for work, there's no collection that has a better representation of postwar American art than David Geffen's. Period." -- MOCA's Paul Schimmel. Gawker thinks this whole thing is weird.