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MODERN ART NOTES
Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog
Meanwhile, at the Calatrava...
Been wondering what's up at the Milwaukee Art Museum since they built their Calatrava? First, MAM director David Gordon and critic Martin Filler exchanged, er, ideas in the New York Review of Books. Next, Filler laughs and laughs and laughs as Martinifest partiers run wild at the MAM. (Via AJ... and OK, OK, we just assume that Filler is laughing.) The best line:
Asked whether artworks had been damaged or are in need of cleaning, the museum said two sculptures had been removed for "review" and more would be known in two weeks, after the senior conservator returns to the museum and has had a look. The sculptures are made from resilient materials such as bronze.
Patina? Pshaw. And we hope that the senior conservator is made from resilient materials too.
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The Judd Foundation Sale, Part One
The thing is, we need the Judd Foundation.
Donald Judd is one of the three most important American artists of the last 50 years and one of the most important critics, too. (Judd's dismissal of Anne Truitt, for example, is part of the reason she has never received her due.) Still:
- There is no Judd biography. By comparison: There are lots of Warhol and Pollock bios;
- Major American museums such as the National Gallery of Art, SFMOMA, MAMFW and LACMA have enormous gaps in their Judd collections; and
- Judd's papers and facilities in Marfa and New York have been only lightly combed by scholars, historians and critics.
Barring the unexpected donation of Judd's papers to some cash-rich institution such as the University of Texas, the art world needs a healthy, functional, responsible Judd Foundation to catalogue and conserve Judd's papers. And given Judd's will, who but the Judd Foundation can preserve and keep open Judd sites in Marfa (the Judd Foundation oversees all the Judd sites in Marfa except for the Chinati Foundation sites) and New York, and ensure Judd's legacy by smartly placing work in important collections?
Of course this all takes money. Somehow, the Judd Foundation has very little of it. At the end of FY 2004 the Foundation had an estimated $200 million in art assets, but only $500,000 in cash. The Foundation's board members have not been active donors: According to the Foundation's tax filings, none of them gave money between FYs 2002-04 and the foundation has brought little in contributions from sources outside the Judd estate (such as private individuals or foundations) in those years.
Furthermore, trustees in a position to provide leadership donations seem to have shied away from making contributions to the Judd Foundation. Louisa Sarofim, a new Judd board member, is president of Houston's Brown Foundation. Brown gives about a quarter of its annual grants to arts organizations. In its most recent fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2005, Brown gave $49K to Ballroom Marfa, $302K to Chinati... and only $1K to Judd. (Brown's annual report says that it "does not expect to support" private foundations; Judd is a private foundation. However so is the Menil, and Brown has supported Menil quite substantially.)
Of course, during that fiscal year the Judd Foundation was about to hire an executive director. On Jan. 23, Barbara Hunt McLanahan, formerly director of Artist's Space, started at Judd.
When it was time to make a decision about how to bring in some money, Hunt McLanahan saw that foundation was art-rich, endowment-poor, operating-cash-poor, and had no recent history of fundraising success. Hunt McLanahan decided that the Foundation needed an endowment -- and that it had to raise it quickly.
So the foundation decided to sell 35 Judd sculptures at Christie's in May.
"In all of the discussions we had there were no other suggestions as to how we might make a $20M endowment," Hunt McLanahan told me. "I think people do enjoy being critical but if other people had other solutions..."
Part two is here.
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Morning reads
Coming later today: The Judd Foundation sale. First:
- Todd Gibson is right on curators = artists. Several years ago I was at the Hirshhorn for a Dan Cameron talk. It was snowing like a son-of-a-gun outside, so there were only about 30 people in the audience. During the Q&A someone told Cameron that she so admired his curatorial efforts that she thought of him as an artist. My snort was so audible that the person I was with shrank into her seat.
- Los Angeles is going to Paris for a major show at the Pompidou, says LATer Suzanne Muchnic.
- Lee Rosenbaum on antiquities in today's WSJ. It's free!
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Is Met violating own policy again?
 This Jean Ipousteguy bronze, David and Goliath (1959), from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be offered in Sotheby's March 15 contemporary art auction.
But should it be? The Met's deaccessioning policy states that the museum will not deacession any work of art within 25 years of when it was acquired, unless the museum receives approval from the donor or the estate of the donor. This piece was acquired by the Met in 1983 from the estate of Mr. & Mrs. Charles Zadok. Last week I asked the Met if such permission had been granted or if there was a policy change. The museum did not respond.
This is the second time in a month the Met has at least tried to deaccession a piece it has owned for under 25 years. In January, NYTer Michael Kimmelman caught the Met attempting to deaccession an Eduardo Chillida sculpture that it received in 1986 from Dallas collector Frank Ribelin. The Met withdrew the Chillida from that auction. If the Met responds, we'll pass it along.
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In Sunday's LAT: Me on the Getty
In Sunday's Los Angeles Times opinion section, I expound upon a point I made here a couple of weeks ago: With CEO/prez Barry Munitz gone, the focus at the Getty is on how the trustees will address the problems Munitz exposed.
In my write-up I also name several visual arts professionals that the Getty should consider adding to its board, and I name a couple candidates for the top job.
Not in the piece but also a good idea: It's one thing for a multi-millionaire to serve on the Getty board without being paid, but it’s quite another for someone whose net worth is merely in the six-figures to devote many hours to such a responsible position. No problem: The Getty should find a way to compensate its trustees in an effort to reward qualified professionals will want to add Getty duties to their busy lives. Another benefit of this policy change: A recent Council for Effective Philanthropy survey shows that paid trustees are substantially more involved in their trusteeship.
The problem with this: J. Paul expressly forbade it. However, wouldn't it be nice if the Getty thought it was a good idea, if it then convinced the California attorney general to agree it was a good idea (and thus the AG would allow a change to the indenture under which the Getty was created), and voila?
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Anselm Kiefer at MAMFW
 "At MAMFW? Kiefer at MAMFW?" you're thinking. "Isn't that show in Montreal by now? And hasn't it been there for, uh, a while?" Uh, yeah. It has been. Thing is, I'm behind. There's been LACMA news. And Getty news. And antiquities news. And my obsession with Julius Shulman. So I'm just now catching up.
That's not to say that Michael Auping's Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, wasn't a really good show. It was. So here we go...
- There are not many artists about whom you can say this: The bigger the scale on which they work, the more outsized and ambitious they build, the better they are. And Kiefer, unquestionably, is at his best when he's working huge.
- Kiefer is not really a painter. Sure, there are some gouaches and some watercolors in this show, but with one exception they're the weakest works here. And yes, there is some oil paint on some of his big canvases, but those pieces aren't about paint, they're about building things on canvases.
- Also, as he's matured Kiefer has increasingly limited himself to two compositional devices: acute perspective and strict horizon lines. He is especially fond of putting those horizon lines somewhere near the top of the canvas. That's about it for Kiefer as a painter.
- But Kiefer as an object-maker is pretty fantastic. His works overwhelm the viewer with scale, material and layers of physically built-up stuff... and meaning. One of the special aspects of the Fort Worth hanging was that two monumental Kiefers, The Heavenly Palaces (2004, collection of the artist) and This Dark Brightness which Falls from the Stars (1996, Dallas Museum of Art) could be viewed from ground level and from up above, on the museum's second floor.
- Joseph Beuys' influence on Kiefer is mentioned so commonly that I wonder if no one really thinks about it anymore. I found myself thinking of Kiefer as Rauschenbergian, someone for whom the canvas was often the convenient surface onto which stuff was slathered, and not much else. Think of Kiefer as organic Rauschenbergism.
- In the Albright's The Milky Way (which is not nearly as dark as that JPEG), Kiefer shows us Germany's post-war scorched earth. Usually Kiefer's paintings about destroyed earth are read as being about German land being WWII battlefield, and as a metaphor for what Germany did to itself. Another reading: In The Milky Way, Kiefer presents charred earth and a visible vein of milk that looks like an open wound. After WWII, Germany's richest agricultural lands ended up under USSR control, in what became East Germany. Instead of returning to their previously level of productivity, they were choked by Soviet agricultural policy. I'd argue that Kiefer refers to a lot more than the war here.
- The first gallery of paintings at MAMFW included many of Kiefer's earliest surviving paintings. They are paintings about evil and shame. Each of them is painted with the perspective of someone hanging his head, looking down.
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Five easy things
Later today: Anselm Kiefer at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and probably more on antiquities.
Five easy things art museums -- especially contemporary art museums -- could do to reach broader -- and younger -- audiences.
- Host a blogger preview for every exhibit. Press previews are de rigeur for any show of note. But museum communications offices should realize that the bloggers in their communities have a cumulative audience approaching the size of all but the biggest one or two outlets in their cities. Metblogs, -ists and others maintain substantial local blogrolls. Use them. (Aside to the Armory Show: You're already No. 2 to Art Basel in the US, and you're fading fast. So your current round of letters denying respected and well-read bloggers press credentials is not smart. Furthermore, to deny someone credentials because you don't approve of what a blog has written (!) about the show? To insist on ideological purity? Please. And then to cluelessly disregard one of the most-widely read all-arts blogs around? Mistake. (UPDATE: Ionarts is in.) Blogging is no longer new -- any PR person worth his/her cell phone should know 10-15 art blogs worth including on every list he/she has. Miami is nicer in December than New York in March, you know.)
- Podcast. Many of you do that.
- Blog. Not enough of you do.
- Did you see how much great press and goodwill (and the crowds!) White Night generated in Turin? (It's worked for the Hirshhorn too.) Try it. And encourage the bars/shops near you to join in.
- Remember that while you may be a national-level museum in your field, you still have to attract local audiences. Involve local artists, writers, critics, gallerists, etc. in your programs. Build community.
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Sugimoto at the Hirshhorn, Part II
 Related: First part of Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Hirshhorn. And the Hirshhorn has just made available the podcast of the sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-insightful Brougher-Sugimoto Q&A.
The Sugimoto show is a big moment for the Hirshhorn, and not just because Sugimoto attracted an over-capacity crowd to his talk last Thursday.
After several years of often lackluster, occasionally irrelevant permanent collection installations (Zoltan Kemeny in the window-to-the-mall gallery, anyone?), still-new director Olga Viso has committed the Hh to a full slate of shows. "Directions" exhibs (a longtime Hirsh program) will feature one-gallery installations (or performances or whatever) by young artists. The Hirshhorn's new "Black Box" space will feature single-artist video art mini-surveys. And after Sugimoto, the museum will host a Hirshhorn-curated contemporary sculpture group show, MAMFW's outstanding Kiefer show (coming to MAN, deadlines willing, tomorrow), and a Wolfgang Tillmans survey co-organized by the MCA Chicago and the Hammer.
Best of all, Viso has apparently abandoned a short-sighted policy that would have charged people $100+/annum to participate in the national museum of contemporary art's education programs. (In fairness to Viso it seems unlikely that the policy was her idea. And we say "apparently" and "seems" because the "apparently" old policy is a touchy topic up in the staff quarters of Bunshaft's bunker. Here at MAN, we can read between the lines.)
Up on the stage, Sugimoto was explaining how he takes photographs. He is a conceptualist, he says, and he sees photos in his head before he sets up his equipment and takes a picture.
"I see my shot first," Sugimoto said. Then paused. "Unlike Mr. Cheney."
When the din died down, Hh chief curator Kerry Brougher asked Sugimoto how his movie screen photos came about. Sugimoto showed a couple of his early, test versions, mostly shot from the side because he didn't have permission to set up a camera and because there were people in the theaters. Pleased with his first three screen shots, Sugimoto said he looked for a place where he could set up his camera so it was square to the screen. Finally e found it: A New York City porn theater. (Any Hirshhorn staff who hadn't fallen under their chairs after Sugimoto's references to pot, LSD, the veep, were now firmly on the floor.)
In keeping with how he thinks of himself as a conceptualist, Sugimoto says that he's thinking more and more about how he installs his work. Recent installations include an outdoor, ice-covered installation at the Carnegie, a Shinto shrine he built in Japan, and, in a way, the Hirshhorn's dramatic installation of over-sized seascape prints. Don't miss it.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 22, 2006 | Permanent
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CoF on the Getty: No news is the news
Apparently 60 days wasn't enough for the Getty to address the issues the Council on Foundations was investigating. CoF announces that the Getty stays on probation:
The Council on Foundations today announced that while the J. Paul Getty Trust remains on probation, the association will continue to engage in positive and constructive dialogue with the Trust and is heartened by its commitment to address issues of misconduct...
Getty communications VP Ron Hartwig responds (release not online):
"We are pleased with the Council's reaction to our latest exchange, and in particular, their expression of confidence that, with appropriate changes to our governance policies in place, our status as a member in good standing will be restored. We have been working closely with the Council and we will continue to cooperate going forward..."
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Met, Italy have a deal
The wires are reporting that the Met and Italy have a deal on antiquities. However, none of them are reporting what exactly the deal, well, is. While we wait for the, uh, facts, check out Deborah Solomon's excellent NYT Mag Q&A with Met boss Philippe de Montebello.
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Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Hirshhorn
 Hiroshi Sugimoto wore black and looked a little bit uncomfortable. His suit was too big. So was his white shirt -- its collar bunched over Sugimoto's silver-and-black-polka-dotted tie, which seemed too wide for his narrow frame. The cuffs of the shirt were wrinkled. They were also too big. When Sugimoto supported his head with his hand, his head seemed in danger of disappearing into his sleeve.
Earlier in the day Sugimoto looked happier. He was dressed in workclothes, wandering the Hirshhorn grounds with a camera and a few assistants. He was looking up, around, every which way, and the scurrying helpers were trying to read his every move. They knew Sugimoto wanted to photograph Gordon Bunshaft's modernist fantasy, but they weren't sure how. (Hirshhorn officials, used to digs and cracks about their doughnut/hockey puck/bunker/etc. were thrilled at Sugimoto's interest.)
But now, Thursday night, Sugimoto was on a Hirshhorn stage for a conversation with Hh chief curator Kerry Brougher. The occasion was the Hirshhorn's opening of a new, Brougher-curated Sugimoto photography retrospective. The beautifully-installed exhibition upstairs is likely to be a crossover hit for the museum, and everyone at the Hirshhorn seems to know it. (There may be more on the show here soon; I don't have the catalog yet, etc.)
Sugimoto, confronted with an overflow crowd (dozens of people in the lobby couldn't get into the auditorium even though Hirshhorn officials held up the talk so that every available seat could be filled), started nervously. His English was a little bit swallowed, his discussion of his work abrupt.
Then, slowly, he began to loosen up. Upon showing a few photographs of fossilized trilobites, Sugimoto offered: "They seem like the ancestors of cockroaches." The audience chuckled. That helped.
Sugimoto talked about how natural history museums had opened his eyes to the world and how through them he became interested in art. The audience tittered. Unbeknownst to Sugimoto, about a third of the crowd had heard Martin Puryear talk about natural history museums during a 2004 talk. And much of the art-smart crowd had seen the Robert Smithson retrospective.
Sugimoto discussed how photography was a tool he used to go back in time, to play with time. He showed work he made when he was a student in California in the early 1970s, of a second-hand on a clockface. The next shot showed the second hand advanced a bit. And again.
Then Sugimoto discussed how he moved from straightforward, simplistic conceptual photography to more visually engaging work, to playing with dioramas and the effects of light:
"Maybe a little like President Clinton," he suggested. Confused laughs.
Sugimoto quickly ramped up his explanation: "That was the culture of the time in the 1960's and 70's," he said. Murmured laughs as the audience seemed to wonder if it was OK to laugh about drug use while in a federal building.
"I loved it!" Sugimoto half-shouted. More chuckles, mostly in astonishment. A Hirshhorn official sitting next to me almost fell over.
"Just a little bit of LSD changed my vision... and made it so new." Now the laughs were a response to funny. And all of a sudden Sugimoto looked comfortable in an ill-fitting suit.
Tomorrow: More with Hiroshi Sugimoto.
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Getty case moves to DC
Even though today is a holiday (therefore no more posting unless something big happens), the executive committee of the the DC-based Council on Foundations will meet to determine the next step in the Getty Trust drama.
As you may recall, 60 days ago the Council placed the Getty Trust on probation pending the receipt of additional information regarding charges of misconduct. By now MAN readers know the Getty's sins: questionable land deals, profligate executive spending, outsized severance packages, the Marion True Affair.
By tomorrow the CoF is expected to announce actions it will take. (Technically, CoF's action on the Getty may not be made public at all. But a CoF spokesman told me to expect word by Tuesday.) These actions could include private censure, continued probation, or revocation of membership. If the CoF revokes the Getty's membership, all of a sudden the Getty is an exposed pariah should the Senate Finance Committee want to hold a hearing on the Getty trustees' management.
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Ending the week right
Next week: Hiroshi Sugimoto loves LSD and watches porn, Anselm Kiefer and more.
Before we go for the weekend, Walter Robinson at Artnet gets one right:
The [College Art Association's] Frank Jewett Mather award for art criticism is shared by Gregg Bordowitz, a video artist whose writings are collected in The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (MIT Press), and Okwui Enwezor, a curator who is dean of the San Francisco Art Institute. (What is it with the CAA and its art criticism award? Can’t their panel find any actual art critics?)
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Getty vs. LAT over housing
Getty Museum director Michael Brand has responded to the LA Times' story on his housing arrangements. On Wednesday the LA Times ran this piece about the Getty's housing hunt. Here's Brand's response to the LAT, which also went out to Getty staff via in-house email:
Dear Sir,
You may recall we met at the January 6 roundtable discussion at your headquarters with other Los Angeles region arts leaders. At the meeting you raised the issue of how might the Times cover the arts in the future. Unfortunately, your front-page story today "Housing Search is Expensive for Getty" seems to at least partially answer your own question.
Since starting work as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum on January 2 I have not been asked a single question by your newspaper about the Museum’s acquisition, exhibition or educational programs. I have, however, been asked how much I earn and what sort of car I drive; one of your reporters also telephoned the Deputy Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to ask how many bedrooms are in the VMFA director's residence I occupied in Richmond with my family. This must be the first time the number of bathrooms in a three-bedroom rental property temporarily occupied by a museum director has appeared on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper. Despite this, and the "shock and awe" of westside Los Angeles housing prices, I am very pleased to be working in this great cultural city at a time when all of our art museums can really make a difference to how art is both produced and experienced.
Michael Brand
Director J. Paul Getty Museum
I'm familiar with westside housing prices. They're obscene. And museum directors are expected to entertain at a level far beyond their salary. That the Getty Trust would purchase a house in which its museum director would entertain, say, 50+ times a year seems reasonable -- and not too out of line with both practices and expenditures at peer institutions.
For example: Is the Getty's purchase of a $3.5 million home much different from the $248,000 in "mostly" housing-related expenses that the Met paid director Philippe de Montebello in FY 2004? Not really. (The Met paid de Montebello $255K in the same in FY 2003, and $254K in FY 2002 -- though this line wasn't explicitly listed as being housing related in the Met's FY 2002 tax return. I could keep going back in time, but you get the idea.)
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Two antiquities notes
On Wednesday I posted about how several antiquities traceable back to Phoenix Ancient Art gallery had found their way into news stories about looted art in the last week. (The NYO reported on the Levy-White collection, The Art Newspaper reported on a mask in St. Louis.)
Here's what to watch next: For some time antiquities observers have been wondering why the Italians haven't gone after the Cleveland Museum of Art, which purchased a Praxiteles (probably) sculpture of Apollo in 2004.
Cleveland's acquisition has been surrounded by suspicion as the sculpture has virtually no provenance. As Steve Litt of the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted in 2004, Cleveland bought it from... Phoenix Ancient Art.
Also today: From a Russell Berman-authored PPV New York Sun article that mostly treads the same ground the New York Times and LA Times covered on Feb. 3 and 4:
The Italians also reportedly want to be able to review the provenance of an tiquities on loan to the Met, with an eye toward the collection of a prominent philanthropist and Met trustee, Shelby White. Ms. White and her late husband, Leon Levy, gave $20 million to the Roman gallery set to open next year, but several antiquities from their collection on display at the Met have been questioned by Italian investigators.
The news item here is that the Levy-White situation is still unresolved. Here's why the Italians is eager to address it: What's to keep the eventual Shelby White estate from leaving the Levy-White collection on long-term loan to the Met? It would be the perfect way future Italian government scrutiny of American institutions. The institutions could say, "What? We're just displaying it. It's not ours. Don't blame us."
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Where to be this season
Would you believe that the best art spot in America for the next few weeks is... Washington, DC?
On view now (or about to be in the next few days) is:
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Antiquities: Egypt, Phoenix, & SLAM
UPDATE: More on the mask in a thorough Malcolm Gay Riverfront Times piece.
So far Italy and Greece have been the recently active countries on wanting antiquities back. Today, in The Art Newspaper, Jason Kaufman reports that Egypt is jumping on the bandwagon. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's antiquities council and a shameless self-promoter if ever there was one, wants an ancient Egyptian mask 'back' from the St. Louis Art Museum. (I'll never forget Le Anschutz County Museum of Art's King Tut press conference, at which Hawass answered nearly every question by suggesting that people buy his autobiography.)
The most interesting item in Kaufman's story is this: SLAM bought the mask from Phoenix Ancient Art, the gallery co-owned by brothers Ali and Hicham Aboutaam.
MAN connects the dots: Phoenix also sold to Shelby White and the late Leon Levy. You may recall the Levy-White collection from Wednesday morning's New York Observer story: Italy claims to have new records from Phoenix that they say gives them claim to works in the Levy-White collection. Everyone seems to have Phoenix records these days...
Also: The St. Louis mask was the subject of accusations as recently as Jan. 19, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's David Bonetti reported that a "one-time forger and art smuggler" named Michel Van Rijn claimed that the mask was stolen in the 1990s. Van Rijn failed to provide "hard evidence" to support his claims to either SLAM or the Post-Dispatch. If Van Rijn sounds familiar, it's because he was the guy behind the Kimbell Art Museum's return of a $2.7 million Sumerian statue to... Phoenix Ancient Art.
Related: More on the mask in this PDF on SLAM's website.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006 | Permanent
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MoMA Atrium vs. Hammer lobby
Several readers (thanks!) have written in suggesting that I compare MoMA's space to the intensely problematic space in the lobby of the UCLA Hammer Museum. (The Hammer programs its lobby as part of its Hammer Projects series. This photo of Pae White's Hammer lobby installation gives you an idea of the space. The picture was taken at night, which masks how much natural light flows into the space from Wilshire Blvd.)
I think I've written here before that the Hammer lobby is the toughest install space anywhere -- think multiple levels worth of walls, a staircase, a parking garage and the busiest surface street in West LA -- so I think it's a good comparison. For example: Pae White and Katharina Grosse made the space work. I'm not so sure that Phoebe Washburn did (I like her work, but...), and I'm quite sure that Adam Cvijanovic's installation didn't do it for me.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006 | Permanent
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The MoMA Atrium: Solutions?
 What to do with MoMA's failed space? Most of you started out by cracking wise: Put a Pixar exhibit in it. Or a rock-climbing wall. Paint it. Maybe some prizefights. Turn it into an aquarium.
At first I was surprised that so many people chose to make jokes. I mean, that space represents major possibility. Then again, no one thinks MoMA is really paying attention to the proletariat, so why not try to be funny?
Here's my idea: Merge the atrium into the Getty. (Just kidding!)
In all seriousness, my suggestion for the atrium is about what Todd Gibson suggests (only he explains it much better): Find a way to make it a Turbine Hall-type space, offered to contemporary artists not afraid to take on a void.
Is the atrium a challenging space for an artist? Absotively. (I can imagine Katharina Grosse conquering it, but after her...) And would MoMA be willing to, essentially, borrow an idea from the Tate Modern? Probably not. But converting the atrium to this kind of use would help bring the present back into the Museum of Modern Art. And artists would relish the challenge -- not to mention the platform and the visibility.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006 | Permanent
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Morning kickoff
In the New York Observer, Jason Horowitz reports that occasional NYT reporter and socialite Shelby White's collection is coming under increased scrutiny from the Italians:
On Monday, Paolo Ferri, a leading prosecutor in the Italian investigation, told The Observer that his team had unearthed fresh evidence on Jan. 31 linking new items in Ms. White’s collection to the Aboutaam family, the owners of the Phoenix Ancient Art gallery and the target of several investigations and convictions in Egypt and New York.
The NYT last reported on the Levy-White collection in depth on Dec. 10. White's last byline was on Nov. 14. (Both are PPV only.)
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 15, 2006 | Permanent
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Richard on portrayals of Muhammad
In today's Washington Post, Paul Richard offers an excellent piece about the history of portrayals of Muhammad. Several examples are in Washington collections, but, "For reasons that include "cultural sensitivity," and today's bloody news, none of these old paintings is currently on view [at the Smithsonian]," Richard writes.
Ah, but they are on the web. (Naturally the WP website has buried Richard's story, the only important visual arts story that's been in the Post in eons. And they could have found these links in under five minutes.)
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LA = Pittsburgh?
In case you missed it, in yesterday's NYT Michael Kimmelman wrote a long essay on the Getty Trust, and then summed up his piece with this:
In The Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight, the paper's art critic, has lately suggested that the Getty think more globally by acting locally, starting with a town hall meeting for people to vent and dream.
So here's what I might ask. Why doesn't the Getty think big?
Next time get the Rubens. Pay whatever it takes, and competitors might not bother to compete in the future. Broaden the collection. Los Angeles doesn't have Byzantine art to speak of. It also doesn't have a place with enough room and firepower to import landmark exhibitions like the Met's Byzantine extravaganzas. The Getty could provide both.
And why not broker an all-out merger with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which while using the Getty's deeper pockets would provide a perch downtown, not on a fancy Westside hilltop? MoCA's [sic] collection, exhibitions and expertise would instantly add luster and zip to the Getty and move it decisively into the 20th and 21st centuries of art.
Kimmelman is right about the Getty and acquisitions, but after that...
If Kimmelman thinks Knight hasn't been thinking big, he hasn't been reading him very carefully. Ten days ago Knight re-wrote the Getty's entire grant program and envisioned the Getty Trust building another museum. (The last one the Getty renovated cost $275 million, so museum-building ain't exactly a small idea.) And Knight has consistently taken on the big-picture questions around the Getty.
And what about the idea of merging MOCA into the Getty? Aside from the mere impracticality and the overwhelming unlikeliness of the idea, what about that makes any sense at all? Does Kimmelman visit Los Angeles as infrequently as he does Pittsburgh? Does he just not pay much attention to institutions west of the Hudson?
MOCA is the best-programmed contemporary art museum in America. (In the last couple years MOCA has originated or co-originated the Rauschenberg combines show, Masters of American Comics, Visual Music, the Robert Smithson retrospective, A Minimal Future?, Ecstasy, and more. No other American contemporary art museum has a record anywhere close to that.) MOCA has a strong, growing permanent collection. (True: It needs a place to show it.) No museum in America does as much with a $16.6 million annual budget.
So why does Kimmelman think that MOCA should be subsumed into the management disaster that is the Getty Trust, an institution with no contemporary art expertise, and with no trustees that either know or care about contemporary art? Simply because MOCA would give the Getty 'zip?!?!'
Worse: The idea diminishes MOCA, a museum that deserves a heckuva lot more respect than being the butt end of a half-tossed-off merger idea. It's exactly the kind of suggestion you'd expect from a provincial art critic who doesn't pay much heed to what's going on outside his island.
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Charlie Finch goes too far
For months a steady progression of arts bloggers (me included) has noticed that Artnet columnist Charlie Finch has been shamelessly and lustily careening from one female artist to another. His most recent effort, The Seduction of Natalie Frank, has set off a tempest.
Taken by itself, the piece an eye-roller. But considering Finch's track record, it should be the last straw. This essay takes Finch farther than he's ever gone before into the creepy realm of manipulative sexualization. The arts blogosphere, including many of its leading figures, has objected:
At a time when Jerry Saltz is pointing out that over four out of five Chelsea solo shows go to men, Finch's writing isn't merely in poor taste, it's practically predatory.
The way Finch treats female artists is sadly formulaic. First, he's prurient. Then, after he's suitably aroused, he promotes a young female artist as his Latest Find. The subsequent essay is always beyond boorish -- it does little more than validate artists based on what they stir in Finch's loins. Artnet should deny him its platform.
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The Getty's post-Munitz challenges
Sorry for the posting sloth – AJ’s software has been down since Saturday morning…
As was clear from the weekend's news stories, we've hit a new phase in the Getty Trust story. The focus of the story will no longer be Munitz's extravagance, his questionable grant-making, the strange handling of L'Affaire True or real estate dealings; Now the story is about the Getty’s trustees and how they allowed this all to happen -- and for so long.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the California attorney general's investigation of the Getty Trust will continue. We don't know if that investigation focuses on the trustees' actions (and non-actions), on Munitz himself, or both.
The Council on Foundations has given the Getty trustees until Feb. 19 to answer questions about governance issues. The New York Times looks at the severance packages paid out to Getty employees – hush money if you will, because the packages had non-disclosure agreements attached. And on Capitol Hill, Sen. Charles Grassley is still saber-rattling at the Getty, but unless his Senate Finance Committee does something quickly it will become obvious that his scabbard is empty.
Finally, in a must-read essay (Michael Kimmelman has been reading Knight closely of late -- more on that tomorrow), Christopher Knight pointed out that if you put a mere money-man in charge of the world’s biggest art philanthropy, it shouldn't be a surprise when he is more interested in empire-building than in art.
All of this points to an obvious question: How have the Getty's trustees been so asleep at the switch, and for so long?
One reason is this: At the overwhelming majority of charities, trustees/directors are involved with the organization on a regular basis. Typically they raise money, often most of the organization's budget, and then oversee how it is spent. Because they had a hand in bringing in the money being spent, they have an interest in ensuring that money (raised from their friends and associates) is spent wisely.
This does not happen at the Getty Trust. The trustees don't raise funds, though many of them gave the trust a token $5,000 in the most recent year for which a tax return is available.
For years the Getty trustees have failed to hold Barry Munitz accountable for how he ran the Getty Trust. It's proper that the focus is now on them.
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Solid day in the NYT
MANnote: Expect at least one post tomorrow.
Today the NYT has four good pieces worth enjoying:
- First, Carol Vogel's Inside Art notebook has two smart, edgy bits, and a third item that is plenty interesting to we Gerald Murphy fans. Today Vogel raised all the right questions. (Except in that last item... CV says the Yale University Art Gallery's director is Jock Whitney? Uh, no. Jock Reynolds.)
- Roberta Smith checks in with a smart review of the Frank Stella 1958 show at the Fogg.
- Ken Johnson makes his second appearance on MAN this week, this time with a review of Speak, a cartoon show that should be extra-interesting to Angelenos.
- Nicolai Ouroussoff and Terry Riley cross paths again -- this time over MoMA's new Spanish architecture show. (There's a slide show accessible via that link too.)
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Munitz out: The morning after
Note: I've been adding to this post throughout the day...
Last October, in possibly the least-blind blind item ever, MAN broke the story of Getty Museum director Deborah Gribbon's resignation. Gribbon's departure set off a 16-month long chain of events that led to Getty Trust president and CEO Barry Munitz leaving the Trust in disgrace. (MAN had that first too, see Getty chairman John Biggs' letter below.)
As we all know by now, Munitz (who had several years left on his contract) had to forego a severance package and pay the Getty $250,000 -- that would cover 111,110 pounds of blood red oranges, 12,000 Getty umbrellas, about 100 first-class airline tickets (remember -- it's embarrassing to fly commercial class), and on and on.
While the LA Times reports (that's this morning's must-read) that Munitz was on his way out the door before this month's Vanity Fair story was published (as I wrote earlier this week), the VF piece made it clear that Munitz had few defenders left among Getty trustees. His ouster clears the way for new leadership at America's largest arts foundation and the third-largest foundation overall. Some morning thoughts:
- As a result of Munitz's efforts to stock his board (something that good non-profit-world CEOs do this all the time), there are no art-world insiders among the Getty trustees. (That part is Munitz's fault.) Surely after the Munitz debacle the Trust realizes that art world bona fides are important for the president/CEO of the Getty Trust to have. Here's hoping Biggs appoints a search committee full of art world luminaries, and that the Getty employs a search firm with art world experience.
- For at least a year now Getty employees have had virtually no contact with trustees, no outlet for their concerns. The trustees should establish better communications with the Trust staff -- and should include them in the hiring process.
- Speaking of the hiring process, the Getty should invite L.A. art people to be on the search committee. Like Jeremy Strick or Paul Schimmel. And how about at least one artist, too?
- Who the Getty needs as president/CEO: An LA person. An art person. Someone with foundation-world experience. Not a mere careerist bureaucrat.
- Likely candidates: Warhol Foundation boss (and former LA city councilman and mayoral candidate) Joel Wachs. (The early MAN favorite. At, say, 5-to-1.) John Walsh. Others?
- Is the California attorney general office's investigation over? Is the AG more focused on Munitz than on the Trust as a whole? Or are the two investigations, one into Munitz's actions and one into the trustees' oversight of the Trust?
- Has anyone spotted a Porsche Cayenne (with a wicked sound system!) on EBay this morning?
- Last weekend the Trust held a trustees meeting. Did the Trustees discuss the ongoing antiquities-related back-and-forth between the Getty and Italy and Greece, and if so, did they come to any conclusions about how to proceed from here?
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MANscoop: Munitz out at Getty Trust
First on MAN: Barry Munitz is out as president and CEO of the Getty Trust. The Los Angeles Times' reporting on the Trust finally took its toll... Getty chairman John Biggs' 5:05 pm PST email to staff is below.
Back-posted: Morning-after analysis.
Links to coverage: Los Angeles Times Thursday night story. LAObserved. Getty press release. Complete Los Angeles Times page of its ongoing Getty coverage.
To all Getty Staff:
I wanted to let you know before we send out our news release that the Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust will announce today that Dr. Barry Munitz, president and CEO for the past eight years, has decided to resign, effective immediately. He indicated that he made this decision after lengthy consideration so both the Getty and he can move forward.
In a letter to the Board, Dr. Munitz said that with the Getty's vision and strategic priorities clarified and supported, a new museum director in place, the Getty Villa reopened after an eight-year period, the Trust endowment in solid financial shape and talks underway to resolve issues surrounding the Getty's antiquities collection, his work at the Getty was complete.
As many of you know, Barry joined the Getty as CEO at a critical time. The Getty Center had just opened and Barry worked diligently to define strategic priorities and expand collaboration among the Getty's four program areas. We wish him well.
Since it will be reported in our release, I also wanted you to know that by resigning Dr. Munitz acknowledged he would not receive a severance package, and he has agreed, without admitting any wrongdoing, to pay the Getty Trust $250,000 in order to resolve any continuing disputes with him. [Emphasis added.]
The board plans to explore a full range of options as it considers Dr. Munitz's successor.
I'm pleased to report that Dr. Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, has agreed to serve as interim president of the J. Paul Getty Trust.
Most of you know Deborah, but for those who do not, she is the Director of the Getty Foundation. Deborah is an art historian by training. She joined the Getty in 1983 to launch a publications program that underwrote and published scholarly works on Art History, and has served as director of the Grant Program, interim director of the Getty Research Institute and dean for external relations of the Getty Trust.
Deborah is a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a member of the executive committee and chairs the academic policy committee, among other responsibilities. I know each of you will give her your support through this time of transition.
John Biggs, Chairman
J. Paul Getty Trust Board of Trustees
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Violence in Chelsea
 Thomas Hirschhorn's show at Barbara Gladstone made me wince. Not because there were photos of bloody, sinewy, body fragments everywhere, or because witnessing the effects of bombs on bodies is shocking. Not because the copies of carefully-planned Emma Kunz pieces in the show created a juxtaposition with the chaos. (Tape! Wrap everything in packing tape! But not tidy-like! Make a mess of it!) And not because the text built into the show was thought-provoking; It's not.
The show made me wince because while it's certainly a desperate, screaming howl, that's all it is. Instead of expressing anything thoughtful or insightful about violence, and instead of provoking feeling, Hirschhorn merely screams for attention, trying to focus it on how violence is used or, perhaps, on himself. Simply presenting viewers with hundreds of images of dismemberment and with possible suicide bomb parts is not an idea, it is a technique.
"For all its brutal obviousness and faux-populism, there is something deeply confused and confusing about Mr. Hirschhorn's project," Ken Johnson wrote in a New York Times review that tried, as I am, to make sense of Hirschhorn's mess. Johnson, who usually doesn't have trouble getting to a judgment on shows, spends 845 words never getting to one here, which says a lot. (His contextualization of the show in the last three paragraphs is especially interesting.)
Great art about violence mixes domination with vulnerability to create tragedy. Hirschhorn's installation is missing all three elements. (Goya's The Shootings of May 3 is my favorite example. Jerry Saltz raised Guernica in his review, but like Johnson never seems to get to a firm thought.)
 At Sperone Westwater, in an otherwise so-so pairing of Carla Accardi and Lucio Fontana, one Fontana stands out. Concetto spaziale (roughly translated as 'conceptual spaces,' and a favorite Fontana title), a painting from 1958, shows two mushroom cloud-like shapes, one blooming above ground, one blooming below.
By 1958 the hydrogen bomb was an established part of the American nuclear arsenal, but thermonuclear capability reached Western Europe only in November, 1957, when Britain tested its first H-bomb. By 1958 the Brits, Americans and Soviets were all testing bombs with bigger and bigger yields. (By the end of that year they'd be discussing a test-ban treaty as well.)
Fontana's ink-and-graphite sketch on canvas seems to show both atmospheric and underground detonations, against a white void, an expression of both power and fear. Nearly 50 years later, at a time when the possibility of nuclear weapons being used as a terrorist device is a stronger threat than ever, and when Iran seems determined to build a bomb, the image is still haunting.
Related: Ambainny visited Gladstone, Artinfo's Sarah Douglas interviewed Hirschhorn, Melissa Lo on Hirschhorn in NYC and in Boston, Alicatte Amp, David Behringer thinks Hirschhorn wants attention.
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Solving MoMA's Atrium
MoMA's atrium is the most unfortunate, wasted bit of museum space since I.M. Pei brought triangulation into museum architecture. The MoMA atrium turns paintings into specks of color that squatting on tundra. It turns Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk into a mere meeting place, lowering it to the level of the Stan Musial statue outside St. Louis' Busch Stadium.
True, MoMA has had some successes in the space: Robert Rauschenberg's Rebus had a commanding presence in the atrium, so too the current Cy Twombly. But that's not exactly a great batting average. (Doh!)
So what should MoMA do with the space? Bloggers: Suggest. I'll keep an eye out for blogged ideas and in a few days I'll link to the best suggestions, as well as present my idea for the space. UPDATE: Everyone's very funny so far. That's fine -- but does anyone have any serious ideas?
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Munitz & Getty in Vanity Fair
 The March Vanity Fair, on newsstands next week, will feature a seven-page Vicky Ward article on the state of affairs at the Getty Trust. 'Article' might be overstating what this is. 'Summation of Los Angeles Times coverage' would be more accurate.
Ward's story (MAN received a preview copy yesterday) adds nothing to the Times' stories except the Getty and its $650/hour PR firm gave Ward access to Trust boss Barry Munitz. (Nothing! How did VF run this without getting more?)
Still, the story is useful to Getty-watchers because it reveals two things: It reveals that Munitz essentially has no defense that explains away the problems the LAT has chronicled and that he is on thin ice. If the LAT's reporting was little more than a pack of vicious lies spread by a paper out to get Munitz, here was Munitz's chance to go point-counterpoint on that reporting. Munitz even had a sympathetic writer in front of him, one so in touch with Munitz's inner-self that three times in the story Munitz bursts into tears.
As far as Munitz's standing in Los Angeles and with his trustees: There are no board members in Ward's story who rise to Munitz's defense. There are no prominent Angelenos willing to defend Munitz and the Trust. The closest Ward gets to a defending-Barry quote is former Paramount head Sherry Lansing (you can see "Dr. Gary Munitz" [sic] presenting Lansing with an award here), who says: "The person that I have been reading about is not the person I know." The best Ward could find was a character witness offering blandness. (Usually character witnesses come into play during, ahem, sentencing.)
I've said this before: Every time another story comes out about Munitz's tenure at the Getty Trust, it gets more embarrassing to be a Getty trustee. At some point -- and just judging from the lack of voices in Ward's story we're getting close -- Munitz will pay for embarrassing his bosses.
In other magazines: Former Conde Nast editorial director James Truman will make an announcement about his new art-and-travel-focused LTB title on Monday, says WWD.
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Worthy reads
I've been pondering this for a few days and I can't come up with a coherent thought on this: Doug Harvey juxtaposes his Getty Villa review with a review of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. I think that means something, I think Mike Kelley would agree, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it means. But it is entertaining.
Also worth reading:
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No, it's not.
From Artinfo's write-up of the AICA awards: "Criticism is in crisis," said Carey Lovelace, vice president of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), at the group's annual awards ceremony...
Except it's not. And Lovelace didn't explain what exactly the crisis is. There are more people writing about and reading art criticism now in America than ever before. (Unless of course readers are reading the wrong critics -- how dare they!) How is that a crisis? For just a hint at proof thereof, check out the blogroll to the right. And their blogrolls.
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Changing the priorities of the Getty Trust
In Sunday's Los Angeles Times Christopher Knight suggested that the Getty build another museum, collect more intensively, expand its collecting field, create a Documenta-ish-LA, and that it fund first-class air travel for its chief executive. (OK, I made up that last one. Actually, credit for that one goes to Getty Trust boss Barry Munitz, because he already does it. Who could forget: "You have to understand life in LA -- people find it embarrassing to travel commercial class.")
Knight's essay isn't just a list of what the nation's third largest foundation should do, it's an indictment of what it's been doing for the last several years. The Getty has done plenty of good (both Knight and I were thrilled that the Getty purchased the Shulman archive, for example), but the Getty has also funded a variety of, uh, strange projects. The all-time classic: In 2003 the Getty gave a grant to support the Southern California Leadership Network's Leader of the Year Luncheon. The group's Founder's Award honoree was... Barry Munitz. (The last four paragraphs of Knight's essay are especially damning.)
While the Getty is the target Knight's sights, his essay is effectively a meditation on how a dominant philanthropy should participate in a city's cultural life. In previous essays Knight has been critical of the Pew Charitable Trusts model, which might be described thus: Hijack an existing cultural institution, instruct it to drive downtown, and then park it on a prominent street so that tourists may come rubberneck at the result. In the Pew model, culture is an ends to a means: civic prominence and tourist dollars.
Knight's model is more confident: LA is already one of the world's four major centers of art production, and with the recent influx of curatorial/directorial talent out of the East and into Los Angeles (think Philbin, Garrels, Govan, Brand) it could assume a mantle in which NYC is increasingly disinterested: the home to America's most progressive art institutions. Artists, who have flocked to LA in droves in the last two decades, have noticed the potential of the area. The Getty should follow their lead.
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Acquisitions: Walker Art Center
 Walker Art Center director Kathy Halbreich might be the most admired museum director in America. "I watch her from afar, kind of like a guru," Hammer director Annie Philbin recently told me. Added Guggenheim boss Lisa Dennison: "Kathy is the model. She's done incredible things."
So when I recently talked with Halbreich I didn't dare ask her if she had a Dr. Lakra tattoo somewhere on her person. It's a fair(ish) question: In 2005 the Walker acquired seven works by Dr. Lakra, a Mexican artist who also makes works on paper. (It's not like Dr. Lakra wasn't available had Halbreich been interested: He tattooed people at Art Basel. He was also in the just-closed Pin Up: Contemporary Collage and Drawing show at the Tate Modern. That's a Lakra at left, but it's not one of the ones that the Walker scored. You can see more of his work here if you click through the Flash.)
Only two artists were more-acquired by the Walker in 2005: Kerry James Marshall (see below) and Jasper Johns, who gave the museum nine prints. (The Walker has a nearly-complete set of Johns prints.) Other artists the Walker acquired in multiple in 2005 include: Katharina Fritsch and Daniel Guzman (four), Laylah Ali, Susan Choi, Christian Marclay, Julie Mehretu, and Takashi Murakami (two).
Despite being in the top echelon of contemporary art museums in terms of acquisitions expenditures (in the last few years the Walker's acquisitions expenditures have been in the $1.7-2.5 million range), the Walker has found it difficult to compete with wealthy private collectors for major works. (Who hasn't?) Like its peers, many of the Walker's 2005 purchases are works on paper by artists such as Glenn Ligon, Tara Donovan, and Trisha Donnelly.
The Walker also does an admirable job of choosing young artists and staying committed to them throughout their careers. The Walker has collected Robert Gober since 1985, and just added a sent of gelatin silver prints from 1978-2000. (This was last year's Gober add.) Other artists the Walker acquired in 2005 with whom it has a dedicated association include: Mehretu, Fritsch, Chuck Close, Sam Durant, Paul Thek and Kara Walker.
Other pick-ups:
- Ross Bleckner's 1998 painting Tolerance.
- I mentioned Kerry James Marshall above. In 2004 the Walker purchased his painting Gulf Stream. The eight KJMs the Walker added in 2005 were all studies for the painting.
- The Walker has added works by Sam Durant in each of the last two years. In 2004 it was Direction through Indirection (Bronze Version), and this year it was Bogota, Columbia, 1992, a lambda-print-on-mirror piece.
- Museums are falling over themselves to own Florian Maier-Aichen. Last year the Whitney added the best Maier-Aichen I've seen: Untitled (Long Beach). The Walker bought Untitled (Tenaya Lake).
- The Walker was the first museum to purchase a painting by Chuck Close, Big Self-Portrait of 1967-68 (the well-known story is well-told in Close Reading), and the museum has remained committed to Close's work ever since. It owns a number of works on paper as well as a painting of Kiki Smith. In 2005 the Walker added one of Close's photogravure self-portraits.
- I can't help but wonder if AAMD passed some kind of rule requiring museums to own Andreas Gursky. Because this year the Walker bought its second: Ruhrtal.
- Eventually the entire Kenneth and Judy Dayton collection will end up at the Walker. This year the Walker picked up an untitled 1970 brass piece by Donald Judd from the Daytons collection.
- The Walker organized Julie Mehretu's first traveling museum show and owns her 2001 painting Babel Unleashed and her 2003 painting Transcending: The New International. In 2005 the Walker continued to add Mehretu by scoring two prints, one of them a partial gift of the artist. (See one of htem, Entropia: Construction, here.)
- In recent years the Walker has acquired a number of works by Paul Thek: A set of etchings in 2002, and a 2003 purchase of Untitled (Heartman), a drawing on newsprint, among others. The 2005 acquisition is Untitled (Foot), a latex piece from 1968.
- The Walker has added a Katharina Fritsch to its collection nearly ever year since at least 1999. One of 2005's adds was Light Green Umbrella (below).
Related: Perhaps one of the Walker's blogs will ask Halbreich if she sports a Dr. Lakra tattoo. Or maybe Walker blogger Paul Schmelzer, who edits Eyeteeth, will challenge her to get one (Schmelzer digs tats)... James Wagner -- of course! -- spotted Dr. Lakra in Chelsea in 2004... Previously in MAN's Acquisitions Series: The UCLA Hammer Museum (MAN only writes about museums at which Gary Garrels works or worked. Which, as it turns out, is all of them.)... You can view six years worth of Walker acquisitions in its annual reports (lots of images and other good tidbits there too)... Both Daniel Guzman and Dr. Lakra show at the same Mexico City gallery: Kurimanzutto... The Walker's collections website is one of the better collection sites I've seen. The Walker also opened James Turrell's Sky Pesher in 2005.
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Catching up
Did I miss anything while I was away?
In case you've been living living in a combine since Wednesday night, here's what you missed: On Wednesday I got word that Michael Govan's candidacy for LACMA director was being presented to the museum's trustees that evening. Furiously I tried to find out if he'd been hired or just presented. (Carol Vogel didn't bother to wait for Govan to be hired and ran a story with the preposterous headline: "Dia Official May Be Hired by Los Angeles Museum." Can you imagine the 'A' section running that hed? Perhaps: "Iraq May Have WMD." Oh wait...) Finally, on Thursday afternoon, LACMA's trustees voted to hire Govan. Expect more on him -- and a MAN Q&A later this week.
Then the Met gave some old stuff back to Italy and the LA Times tag-team of Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino told the story best. More on that later too.
One of the reasons I was in NYC was to attend AICA USA's annual awards ceremony. The unexpected awkward moment of the evening came when Michael Kimmelman (who otherwise did a fine job as emcee) presented an award to the Carnegie International and its curator Laura Hoptman. In introducing the show, Kimmelman mentioned that it was in Pittsburgh and then went on to say grossly inelegant things about the Steel City, about how unfortunate it must be for anyone who has to go there, be there, etc. (I wish I had the exact quote.)
There was an audible murmur in the room: Kimmelman's condescending provincialism was stunning, especially to those of us who learned to love art in towns not dissimilar from Pittsburgh. (I fell in love with art in a city about the size of Pittsburgh, underneath Saarinen's Arch, and in front of a Matisse at the St. Louis Art Museum. AJpal Terry Teachout has written about similar experiences.) Kimmelman's dismissal was in especially poor taste because he was giving an award not just to the oldest survey of contemporary art in America (a show that is not in New York), but to a museum whose city has supported that show and contemporary art for over a century.
When Hoptman accepted her award she took a few polite jabs at Kimmelman, pointing out how wonderful it was that Pittsburgh always embraced the International. That's something worth noting, applauding and copying. That Kimmelman mocked it tells us a lot about why the New York Times covers art the way it does.
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Breaking...
Remember Monday's Storylines? LACMA's board is meeting as of this posting. This is no cracker-box job, this is stars, sun, surf and let's-do-lunch...
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Next in art: Blogs. (Groan.)
I've been thinking about posting this for a while, but I've let it go. Then today, over at Eye Level (that's the Smithsonian American Art Museum's blog), Kriston Capps points out that art dealer Barry Neuman is goofily wrong about art blogs. Read Kriston's post for the relevant wrongness.
I certainly agree with what Kriston wrote (as usual), and as a bona fide, seriously authored-type myself I'll point out that Neuman is missing some really good art blogs. Look at the sites I link to most often: Not a David Rimanelli or a Jack Bankowsky among them, thank God. (Thank God.)
Here's what's really next in art blogs: More smart observers (I'm sorry -- I meant unqualified people) writing intelligent posts about interesting topics. After all, it's not bloggers who are equating Cezanne with James Brown, is it?
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Quick hits
Lots of email on Jed Perl's TNR MoMA rant. Will I be discussing it here? No. Why? I've already read what Perl said in plenty of other places (including here) and I commented on it when it was first written and when it was said in about 3,000 fewer words. Irrelevance is a well-worn argument writ long.
From the guilty pleasure file: I still love a good art theft story. Modern Kicks has the details on seven paintings, missing for 28 years, that showed up in the Berkshires. (And the links post that MK has under that post is chock full of good stuff, including a mention of a show about Islamic art and the West. I should have included the series of Persian miniature paintin shows at the FS|g, which I loved.)
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Ecstasy @ MOCA, Part II
 One of the really enjoyable things about Ecstasy was that I never knew what was coming around the next corner. Lots of those corners were dark, which turned left and right-turns into moments of discovery. I think there's kind of a studied chaos to the installation (I think that there are only one or two straight 'paths' through parts of the show) and it works.
I love Pipilotti Rist (to view her site you'll need to allow the pop-up), but Related Legs is a strange choice. MOCA owns a fantastically trippy Rist (I Couldn't Agree with You More) and it isn't on view very often...
Because blogs are for dreaming (and because a good contemporary group show makes the mind work like this): Wouldn't it have been cool if MOCA had done the Father of Ecstasy on Grand Avenue? They could have included plenty of LA Light & Space, including early Bob Irwin, Doug Wheeler, and James Turrell, Marina Abramovic, Ross Bleckner, some Surrealism (Matta, say), and on and on. (Come to think of it, this Gugg Bilbao show kind of sounds like what I had in mind.)
A good group show includes some total disasters: Fred Tomaselli has long been happily churning out redundancies on a flimsy theme. (MOCA is probably making a killing in Tomaselli t-shirts, which seems about right.) [A]ssume vivid astro focus digs the 1980s baroque-style, but so what? Glenn Brown: Why? Rodney Graham bores me to tears. Does anyone else get the feeling that Ann Lislegaard is a smart person still trying to figure out how to make smart art?
The smartest presentation was the room-sized installation mural/paintings Sky Shop by Franz Ackermann. Painted around us we see skyscrapers falling, urban collapse accelerating and within the context of the exhibit, it's all the product of an altered state. Which is exactly what religious fundamentalist-inspired terrorism is.
There's a whole what-could-have-been-here game to play (this is a good thing -- I like it when a group show that inspires me to continue thinking along a certain theme) and here's my first contribution: Saskia Olde Wolbers' Placebo sure could have been here. So too Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water. Or lots of other Kusamas.
The Erwin Redl (that's his website) MATRIX II installation is smart, trippy, and disorienting, a Tron landscape come-to-life. It's also a simple, old-fashioned grid, updated with technology (LEDs). Many critics, including Peter Schjeldahl, have pointed out that if you stare into an Agnes Martin grid you feel like you're lost in an Alberta snowstorm. If you stare into Redl's grid you feel like you're lost in absinthe.
Carsten Holler's Upside-Down Mushroom Room is fetching fun, but it would be about four times better if MOCA re-painted the 'floor' white every couple of weeks. Seeing footprints all over the 'ceiling' kind of ruins the trip.
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