July 2009 Archives

There's all-too-familiar and sad news coming from Milwaukee: the Journal Sentinel will begin August minus several of its arts journalists. Dance critic Tom Strini, theater critic Damien Jaques and books editor Geeta Sharma Jensen have taken the most recent buyout offer -- the fourth and most attractive one since fall, 2007 at the paper.

Mary Louise Schumacher, the art and architecture critic -- who's staying -- says that the three had 84 years of experience, collectively, in her blog post today. She also writes about the JS's past commitment to arts coverage, and says that many on the arts-entertainment staff remain. Still, I can't help but notice that those she mentions write about food, film, tech and pop music...the more popular varieties of the arts.

Twenty-seven other journalists are also leaving the paper, so it's not that the arts were targeted. Those leaving could still write, freelance, for the paper. Jim Higgins, the JS's assistant entertainment and features editor, writes: "As a line editor in this area, I can say we will continue covering performing arts and books with a combination of staff and freelance contributions."

But many people also expect additional layoffs. Who knows where they will fall? It's hard to construe this any other way than another black day for the arts.

Several days ago, AJ blogger Greg Sandow weighed in (here) on the recent Chorus America study, which purported to show that people who sing in choruses are better citizens than   those who don't sing in a group (nothing about singing in the shower...). To recap, here was the main point, taken from the press release:

An estimated 32.5 million adults regularly sing in choruses today, up from 23.5 million estimated in 2003....That's good news because singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S., such as a community chorus or a school or church choir, is strongly correlated with qualities that are associated with success throughout life...Greater civic involvement, discipline, and teamwork are just a few of the attributes fostered by singing with a choral ensemble.

Greg, rightly, picked the piece apart -- which made me glad, because I was almost suckered into writing an article on the study. Then I actually read it, and realized that I'd pretty much been wasting my time.

If only Chorus America were the only offender on this score (and btw I am not suggesting any maliciousness on its part). Unfortunately it's hardly alone among arts organizations. I've already written here about the useless statistics collected by the Association of Art Museum Directors, imploring them to collect better information. (They told me they're working on it...then said nothing was decided on the subject.)

Another example occurred in opera recently -- though it was not the fault of opera companies. Rather, an Italian medical professor published a study in Circulation: The Journal of the American Heart Association supposedly showing that listening to dramatic music, like opera, influenced the human cardiovascular system predictably and therefore had application in the treatment of heart disease and stroke.

Sounded great for opera, didn't it? 

Time for a little update on ArtBabble, the website for art videos founded by Max Anderson and the Indianpolis Museum of Art. Yesterday, AB's enthusiasts there sent out an email -- an e-babble, they called it -- announcing Art Babble News! of Ten New Partners! to Art Babble Fans!

I appreciate their enthusiasm, so I decided to announce the partners here: 

• Art Institute of Chicago
• KQED
• Museum of Arts & Design
• Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
• Norman Rockwell Museum
• Rubin Museum of Art
• San Jose Museum of Art
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Van Gogh Museum
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

But they had to come up with some numbers for me to make this post worthwhile. Since its launch in April, ArtBabble has had more than 100,000 unique visitors, according to Robert Stein at IMA.

They stay, on average, a little less than five minutes, he says, "which is comparable to the average length of a video on ArtBabble." And, "pages per visit is hovering around 4 and about 45% of our visitors are return visits."

Fittingly, IMA has posted the most videos -- 161. You can see which are the most popular since the launch by visiting the site, though as Rob Stein warns "to be fair most of these views likely occurred during the site launch..."

It looks as if the Brandeis University-Rose Art Museum brouhaha is turning some museum associations into, for this field, activists. A group task force is circulating a petition with the theme "Great Universities Have Great Museums," closely following the NEA's slogan, "A Great Nation Deserves Great Art."

When Brandeis announced in January that it intended to close the Rose Art Museum, a few critics complained that neither the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries nor the Association of Art Museum Directors moved quickly enough. Still, when ACUMG did protest, its statement deplored the university's move "in the most unequivocal terms." Branding the Brandeis decision a "dismal example" to other colleges and universities, David Alan Robertson, ACUMG's president (left), told The New York Times, "One fears that this opens a floodgate." (Robertson is also director of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern.)

Now ACUMG, AAMD, the College Art Association, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the University Museums and Collections group of the International Council of Museums, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation are seeking like-minded academics in an effort to make sure that floodgate stays closed.

The task force is asking university professors, presidents, provosts, and deans to sign an online petition. One email urges, "Pass the link on to all colleagues you know who care about academic museums and wish to support them during these challenging times."

The key paragraph:

At the heart of many of our great colleges and universities stand museums of art, science, archaeology, anthropology, and history, as well as arboreta and other collections of living specimens. Along with our libraries and archives, these academic museums advance learning through teaching and research. They are the nation's keepers of its history, culture and knowledge. They are essential to the academic experience and to the entire educational enterprise.

The task force plans to publicize the petition in a full-page ad in The Chronicle of Higher Education this fall, along with "selected signatures."

In the meantime, you can read the entire petition here, and you can see who has signed at www.acumg.org/webelieve. When I checked late on the evening of 7/28, there were pages and pages of signatures, some from museum directors and independent scholars as well as academics.

Ordinary folk can offer support at Save The Rose Art Museum.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Northwestern University and Save the Rose 

Did you by chance catch the 1,000-word article in the Sunday New York Times about the  remaking of France's President Nicholas Sarkozy as more cultured?

It outlined how Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni, is tutoring him, probably as prep for the 2012 election: she's changing not only his loud clothing and flashy watch to more suitably Presidential fare, but also his reading habits, his music, his films. The Daily Beast chimed in today with a more tabloidy version.

I was struck that neither one mentioned the visual arts. 

More than ten years ago, I wrote in the Times about the French trying to play catch-up with Britain, Germany, the U.S., etc. in contemporary art (link). Alan Riding, then European arts correspondent, continued the theme as recently as 2006 (here).

Just for a random test -- and not of all that much import, admittedly -- I googled "French contemporary art" and came up, first, with a gallery in London that sells French art and a Wikipedia entry that talks about the 20th Century.

But peruse any large international catalogue -- from Art Basel, say -- and you still don't see much great contemporary art coming from France.

Is the French public indifferent to contemporary art? Does anyone there care about Bruni's omission? Should they?

For whatever reason, jazz has been on my mind recently, but this isn't about the music exactly. This is about visual art. Over the weekend, an exhibit  about jazz caught my eye. 

Trouble is, The Jazz Century, which opened at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona on July 22 (and is on view there till Oct. 18), isn't coming to the U.S. 

Curated by art critic Daniel Soutif, the exhibit premiered at the Mart museum in Rovereto, Italy, then moved to the Musee du Quay Branly in Paris. Not a history exhibit, it's described as "a chronological account of relations between jazz and the arts throughout the 20th century [that] shows us how the sound of jazz has nuanced all the other arts, from painting to photography and from the cinema to literature, not forgetting graphic design and cartoons." Sculpture, too. And album covers, posters and sheet music.

Among the artists: Pollock, Picasso, Dubuffet, Bearden, Thompson, Warhol and many more.

Sounds delightful. Craig Winneker, writing in The Wall Street Journal in March, when the show was in Paris, concluded:

Like any great jazz piece, this show has so much going on at once you might need to play it a few times to catch all the nuances. But amid the flurry of notes, the beat is always there.

Three venues is the usual run, but this show belongs in the U.S.   

Here's a link to the WSJ piece; The Los Angeles Times also reviewed the Paris run here, and if you speak Spanish, you can get a glimpse here.

Photo Credits: Larry Rivers, Public and Private, 1983-84, top, Courtesy CCCB ; Thomas Hart Benton, Portrait of a Musician, 1949, bottom, Courtesy University of Missouri, Columbia.

Since Michelle Obama and the NEA drew my attention to the status of jazz last month (link), with festivals being cancelled and audiences shrinking, I've been paying much closer attention to it. The other day, a news item about the Newport Jazz Festival and impressario George Wein caught my eye. Wein, who helped found the Newport Jazz Festival 55 years ago and the Newport Folk Festival five years later, told the Providence Business Journal that he plans to create a non-profit organization to present the two events after this year's offerings.

But as I looked into that, I found something much more interesting: a company interested in the arts-health link.

First, Wein's thoughts:

It is my hope in the next few years that I might be able to make [the festivals] into a 501(c)3 nonprofit and have local people in the state and the city involved in it. That's the only way it will last forever.

Pointing out that most cultural organizations are nonprofits, he said the festivals "really belong in that arena now," adding that subsidies wouldn't have to be that steep. You can read the rest of the article here.

That's where I grew intrigued by CareFusion, the San Diego medical technology company that earlier this month agreed to sponsor next month's Newport Jazz Festival. CareFusion had already agree to sponsor what used to be the JVC festival in New York next year. 

An article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer brought back fond memories of reporting I did a few years ago. The story heralded Bert Levy, a 96-year-old docent at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which gave him a birthday party:

Levy has volunteered as a guide at the art museum since 1996, and his colleagues can't get enough of him. "He's revered," said Ronn Shaffer, a fellow guide. He quotes Shakespeare, reads and writes Latin, knows French, recites poems and doesn't hold back his sense of humor.

"The art museum saved my life," Levy responded -- explaining to the reporter that it was where he had turned for diversion after his wife, whom he had known since his teens, died.

Not to one-up Mr. Levy, or the Inquirer, but I attempted to write an article about volunteers at the Metropolitan Museum a few years ago. My lede was about Laura Reiburn Kashins, who volunteered at the Met for 28 years, until August 2004, when she was 101. She, too, told me that working at the museum saved her life, when I interviewed her by phone at (almost) 103.

More interesting, neither Ms. Kashins nor Mr. Levy are unique. I interviewed many Met volunteers, young and old -- they were so devoted to the museum that they seemed, at times, like a cult to me.

When was the last time you went to the movies on a weekday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.? How about a concert, a dance performance or a play? If you can't remember, I am not surprised. Most of us are working during those prime hours. We simply don't have the luxury of taking time off from work to go to a matinee. 

So why is it that 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (or, worse, 4 p.m.) are the most common hours for art museums to be open?

To save money, many museums are trimming back hours -- incredibly, some are cutting out evening hours. The Cincinnati Art Museum (left), for example, recently announced that it would no longer be open on Wednesday nights and said the decision was taken "to maintain the highest possible levels of service in programming and exhibitions."

Sorry, but I can't fathom decisions like that, which seem to me to be more for the convenience of staff than for the convenience of visitors. Traffic patterns at museums probably vary from city to city but, except for school groups, I'd bet that most museums see the bulk of their visitors on weekends and in the evening, if they are open. The Brooklyn Museum recently disclosed numbers showing that nearly 20% of its visitors come to the museum on just 11 nights of the year -- its Target First Saturdays, when the museum remains open until 11 p.m.

Cutting back on evening hours seems clueless, and self-defeating.

A few museums do seem to get this basic fact. When Seattle Art Museum recently cut hours, it announced that it will be closed on Tuesdays, beginning the week of Sept. 7 -- but according to its website, SAM remains open on Thursday and Friday nights until 9 p.m.

Who else is on this honor roll?  

I discovered, while looking up Jessica Lange's photography credentials on the Aperture website for my post about her show at the George Eastman House (here), that Philip Gefter -- a photo editor I used to work with at The New York Times -- has a new book out called Photography After Frank. It was published by Aperture last month.

I reconnected -- he, too, has left the Times -- and now I have a copy of the book.

Philip also wrote about photography for the Times, and you'll find many of those essays as well as new material in the book. Frank's 1959 book The Americans -- described by the National Gallery of Art for its recent exhibit Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans -- "looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a profound sense of alienation, angst, and loneliness" and was a turning point in photography. To refresh us on why, Philip writes:

Frank's pictures reflect the stream-of-consciousness art-making of the period, and his attempt to capture the experience of an authentic moment in visual terms established a departure from the traditional photographic imagery that preceded him. The immediacy, sponaneity, and compositional anarchy in his picture frame changed expectations about the photograph. 

From there, Philip divides his writings into themes, creating sections on The Document, The Staged Document, Photojournalism, The Portrait, The Collection and The Marketplace.

I caught only part of last night's country music event at the White House: it was streamed live, and but by the time I tuned in, Charley Pride and Alison Krauss & Union Station had already performed. Brad Paisley, however, was charming -- performing a love song and a hard-luck song, and talking about some changes the U.S. has gone through. At one point, he referred to Michelle Obama's great- or great-great grandfather, a slave, and the camera captured her emotional reaction.

Mrs. Obama, in contrast to the jazz event, apparently made no remarks at either the afternoon workshop or the evening event. President Obama did, at the evening concert. Here's what he said:

I know folks think I'm a "city boy" -- but I do appreciate listening to country music because like all Americans, I appreciate the broad and indelible impact that country has had on our nation. It's touched countless lives, it's influenced all genres of music, it's helped us make the American people more hopeful, it's captured our restlessness and resilience, and told so much of our story in the process.

After all, that's what country music is all about -- storytelling. It's about folks telling their life story the best way they know how -- stories of love and longing, hope and heartbreak, pride and pain. Stories that help us celebrate the good times and get over the bad times.  Stories that are quintessentially American. After all, name me any other country that would have produced a Hank Williams or a Willie Nelson. 

And like all great art, a great country song also has a commitment to truth -- to telling the truth like it is, without pulling any punches. And generations of performers have honored that commitment. Harlan Howard proclaimed country music "three chords and the truth." Garth Brooks said it's "honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt." And Dierks Bentley called it "the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy."

At the afternoon workshop with students, Krauss and Paisley talked about the importance of family in their career choices, according to the pool report. Krauss's mother told her, "If you can sing it, you can play it," and Paisley's grandfather gave him a guitar and told him, "If you learn how to play this, you're never going to be lonely." They were preaching to the choir, though, because the middle- and high school students in the room already had an interest in music.

There's no word, so far at least, on what Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, said about music and education in general in his remarks.

Just so you know -- a news collection that needs little or no comment (the boldface is mine): 

• The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported on the construction of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: "Museum officials on Friday opened a temporary lookout and a 1 1 /2-mile pedestrian and bicycle trail that crosses the museum property...the museum expects people to realize the scope of the building and be more patient for it to open, said Sandy Edwards, the museum's associate director." (more)
• From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "Shorewood's Atwater Park will soon be home to a sculpture by one of the world's most respected public artists, Jaume Plensa, best known for his interactive "Crown Fountain" in Chicago's Millennium Park. The purchase and installation of the 8-foot-tall sculpture, in the shape of a human body and crafted from stainless steel letters, is being made possible by an anonymous donor who wants to draw attention to Shorewood's new public art program." (more)
• The Brooklyn Museum reports a record of more than 80,000 people during the past year of its First Saturdays, the free art-and-entertainment evening from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. -- which take place every month but September. That's more than 7,200 per month/night. And it's almost 20% of the entire year's attendance on just 11 nights. Director Arnold Lehman has insisted not only that First Saturdays are critical to attracting new audiences but also (he told me) that the visitors actually do look at the art. (more) 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Jaume Plensa/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

New York's Old Master dealers used to have a week every winter, coinciding with the auction sales, that was filled with Sunday openings, evening hours, receptions and dinners. They'd put out their best art, and collectors would make several nights of it. Camaraderie was rampant. I don't know exactly what happened to it, but it shrank long before the recession set in, although some drawings dealers have been keeping the idea alive.

This year, London dealers tried something similar, to coincide with the July Old Master auctions there -- and they've now voted it a success. From July 4-10, 23 dealers around Bond St. and in St. James's, along with Sotheby's and Christie's, created an "event" called Master Paintings Week with art exhibitions and Sunday evening invitation-only openings to stimulate the market.

Galleries reported as many as 100 visitors a day -- collectors, curators and conservators from several countries, including the U.S. (among the museums represented were the Metropolitan, Philadelphia, Denver, the National Gallery, the Kimbell, the Getty, MFA-Houston). And dealers report a "significant number of sales" as well as the laying of groundwork for future sales.

This is country music week at the White House! Get ready to hear Brad Paisley (top) and Alison Krauss (bottom) and Union Station -- the top modern bluegrass band (she has 26 Grammys) -- in the East Room and the State Dining Room. The show begins Tuesday at 2 p.m., when Jay Orr moderates an educational workshop with the musicians for 120 middle- and high school students from around the country (40 are coming from Nashville, which is a little like coals to Newcastle, no?). The students are supposed to "learn about the craft of songwriting and the genres of country music, including bluegrass, honky tonk and rockabilly," according to the White House press machine.  

As she was for the first of these music events -- on jazz -- First Lady Michelle Obama will be there. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, will make the opening remarks. 

Then, at 7:30 p.m., Paisley and Krauss and Union Station will perform at the White House, with the president in attendence, and he'll make remarks. Eddie Stubbs, from the Grand Ole Opry will MC.

UPDATED, 7/20: 4 p.m.: The White House has just sent word that Charley Pride has joined in and will perform at the 7:30 gathering -- though not the workshop.

This is all part of the Obama Administration's effort to make the arts more prominent, more part of our daily lives, and to show the importance of arts education. I applaud it, and hope it works.

Yet another reason to visit Williamstown, Mass. this summer: The Prendergast In Italy exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art, which I mentioned here in passing several weeks ago, was unveiled this weekend. I drove up for the opening on Friday.

Disclosure: I am a lender of a small, very atypical work in the exhibition -- the first and probably the last time that will occur. At the dinner for lenders, I was seated among the curators -- Nancy Mowll Mathews, the chief organizer of the exhibition; Elizabeth Kennedy, Curator of Collection at the Terra Foundation, WCMA's intellectual and financial partner on the show; and Susan Davidson, senior curator of the Guggenheim, which will put the show on view in Venice, but not New York anymore. We gossiped about American art, among other things.

But back to the show, which has more than 60 views of Venice, Rome, Siena, and Capri, as well as various sketchbooks, letters, and photographs. They are beautifully colorful, mostly, and far more varied than you'd imagine.

When I learned that the George Eastman House was mounting an exhibition of photographs by actress Jessica Lange, I thought "Oh, no, yet another case of a celebrity getting attention for mediocre work just to attract attention." Think of all those actors and actresses (Katie Holmes in All My Sons, P. Diddy/Sean Combs in Raisin In the Sun) who get stage roles on Broadway simply because they'll attract crowds. And we won't even discuss book contracts.

But while I haven't seen the show -- 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange opens tomorrow -- I'm reserving judgment, for now, on whether this is celebrity fever. There are signs that it isn't.

Lange, it turns out, studied photography at the University of Minnesota and made documentary films before becoming an actress. She began shooting photographs in the early '90s, when her partner Sam Shepard brought home a Leica. Her work was published last year in a book, 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange. Her photographs have also been reviewed in Aperture. "Jessica's photographs very much reflect her personality," the magazine said in 2007. "They are delicate but powerful...loving, warm, and extremely poetic." And she has collected black-and-white photography for more than 20 years.

Still, it gives me pause that 50 Photographs was "originally organized" by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. The gallery doesn't list Jessica Lange on its website as one of its artists, but... The Eastman House bills the show as "the first major museum exhibition" of her work.

Don't you love academic kerfuffles? In June, I wrote here about the "Enduring Questions" grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grants were all about $25,000, and they went to professors developing undergraduate courses on such weighty matters as "what is happiness?", "what is the meaning of life?" and "what are the dangers of individualism?" The goal was to promote critical thinking. Twenty courses were chosen as winners, involving a wide range of academic disciplines.

Philosophers, in turns out, were stunned -- and hurt. Those enduring questions are their territory. Inside Higher Ed reported (here) on the controversy, explaining how philosophers felt:

One source of friction was the grant description's use of the world "pre-disciplinary," which it defined as, "questions to which no discipline or field can lay an exclusive claim. In many cases they predate the formation of the academic disciplines themselves." This remark, [Ben] Bradley [a philosophy professor at Syracuse University] notes in his blog post, seems to ignore the very existence of philosophy.

And here's a bit more:

John Powell, professor of philosophy at Humboldt State University, stated in an e-mail that he sees the framing of the questions in the grant application as evidence that NEH is looking for professors to teach philosophy without the philosophical context.

"The questions are so clearly mostly old chestnut philosophy problems that they seem evidence that NEH staff don't know what philosophy is," he stated.

As it happens, the NEH refined its grant guidelines for the next round (applications due Sept. 15), but not in any way that would solve philosophers' problems with the program.

Here's a suggestion: they should propose a course on "why history?" or, better yet, "what is art?"

Cezanne hardly ever lacks for attention, but this may be his year -- especially with regard to his influence. Following the fabulous Cezanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which I wrote about here), the Montclair Museum of Art will open an exhibition on Sept. 13 called Cezanne and American Modernism.

The museum says it's the first show to "examine fully the influence of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) upon modern American artists from 1907 to 1930." It will explore the critical way American artists and critics helped establish Cezanne's reputation as the "definitive bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the modern art movements of the 20th century."

This is a big deal for Montclair -- self-proclaimed as the most ambitious show in its 95-year history.

The exhibit includes 131 works, including 18 by Cezanne, plus paintings, works on paper, photographs, and archival documents of Oscar Bluemner, John Marin, Paul Strand, Paul Outerbridge, Man Ray, the list goes on.... After Montclair, the exhibit will travel to the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum.

The show will recreate part of various Cezanne shows in the U.S. -- the Armory Show in 1913, exhibitions at Stieglitz's gallery 291 in 1910 and 1911, among them. Yale University Press will publish the hefty catalogue, the work of 23 scholars.

It seemed like a good time to pose Five Questions to Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator at Montclair, the modernism expert who led the curatorial team for the show.

Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice has been on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,* since mid-March, and reviewed with high praise elsewhere. But I was able to go to Boston to see it for myself just this week, so I'll simply concur with any and all of that praise. It's a lush, revealing exhibit, not to be missed if you can get to the MFA before Aug. 16, when the show closes and moves to the Louvre.

As Holland Cotter said in his review, the exhibition consist of "56 grand to celestial paintings -- no filler here, not an ounce of fat." But as he also wrote:

You can pretty much kiss goodbye, at least for now, the prospect of more exhibitions like "Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice."...Transatlantic loans of the kind that make this show the breathtaker it is are a big drain on strapped museum budgets. Boston was lucky to partner with the Louvre on this project, but such masterpiece gatherings are likely to be rare in years to come.

I hadn't read Holland's review until after I saw the exhibit. Nonetheless, while I walked around it, studying the pictures, I couldn't help but think that, if exhibits do have to contract, Titian, Tintoretto, Venonese also proves a model for the future. (Perhaps I was still thinking about the coming one-woman La Velata exhibit, which I wrote about here over the weekend.)

Within Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, there are several smaller, less grand but no less satisfying exhibits -- two in particular are spectacular.

The news regarding the Lawrence Salander fraud just keeps getting worse. Today, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau's office arrested the Upper East Side dealer again, and added three new counts to the 100-count indictment handed up last March. Bloomberg has the news.

Morgenthau's office upped to total of Salander's thievery from collectors, artists and investors to more than $92 million. Salander-O'Reilly declared bankruptcy in November 2007, as did Salander, his wife, Julie, and his defunct gallery, Salander-O'Reilly, have all declared bankruptcy.  

The key sections in Bloomberg's article:

Manacled and grimacing, the 60-year-old dealer, who at his peak counted hedge-fund managers and tennis star John McEnroe as clients, pleaded not guilty in criminal court this afternoon. Five hours earlier he surrendered to Morgenthau's office in lower Manhattan.

And:

The new charges add three counts against Salander to the 100-count indictment presented in March -- and introduced a new bold-faced name to the criminal case. Morgenthau said Salander and Morse repeatedly sold works by Robert De Niro Sr., a painter who died in 1993, without informing his son, the actor Robert DeNiro, or remitting proceeds.

Morgenthau is quoted as saying: "He was a pretty good spender. I don't think there's much chance of getting any money."

MASS MoCA is 10 years old this summer, and in the past two weeks, WBUR has had two excellent reports on the museum and its economic and cultural impact on North Adams, its home.

A few numbers from the reports: with 150,000 sq. ft. of gallery space in a 400,000 sq. ft. complex, the museum draws 110,000 visitors annually. It pumps $14 million a year into local hotels, restaurants and shops. The state put $35 million into the project, and this year, according to director Joe Thompson, MASS MoCA moved out of the red and is finally making money. (WBUR doesn't mention it, but as I recall from past reports, it's real estate revenues that MASS MoCA taps to make money.)  

Not everything works, and MASS MoCA has seen many bumps over the past years, but still -- for a town deserted by its manufacturing companies, it's not a bad deal.

Nonetheless, according to WBUR (its reports are here and here), the wisdom of relying on MASS MoCA is apparently fueling a political debate in North Adams among its mayoral candidates. 

Coming soon -- this fall -- a movie that's bound to infuriate the contemporary art and contemporary music worlds, make them howl with knowing laughter, or both. It's called (Untitled), and I went to a preview of it last week, thanks to my co-blogger Amanda Ameer (Life's A Pitch). One of her clients, Pulitzer-prizing-winning David Lang, wrote the music.

The plot follows a contemporary-art gallerist in Chelsea who makes her money from sales of vapid paintings by a terrible artist, but seduces his brooding brother (played by Adam Goldberg, left), an unsuccessful composer who disdains his brother's schlocky paintings but envies his success. His music is so awful that even his parents walk out of his mostly empty concerts ("40 minutes of pure tedium").

"Ten thousand dollars a picture," the father says of the one son, in front of the other, "he's a genius."

But Madeleine, the gallerist (played by Marley Shelton, below) who exhibits dreadful works (many involving taxidermy, including a monkey with a vacuum cleaner) by a crazy, boorish artist, has a solution. She invites the composer, named Adrian, into her world, to present his music at her gallery. The story proceeds from there.

The zingers never stop. One collector is "not familiar" with Matisse. Ray, the taxidermy artist, leaves Madeleine her for a better dealer. Then she discovers a tongue-tied artist named Monroe whose works include a pushpin (which he hilariously "hangs") and a post-it note inscribed "Do!"

What are these things about? "I think I want what I want to say to go without saying," says Monroe. 

And there's a chubby-fingered new collector who made his fortune in technology and doesn't understand that money won't necessarily buy him the hot works he wants.

All the while, Adam's brother Josh yearns for a show of his paintings, but Madeleine hides his works in the back room, lest she be embarassed. An older, unfashionable art advisor comes in regularly to buy Josh's paintings, which all look alike, in bulk -- for hotels.

Is this a film a clef?

Wonderful news emerged from Portland, OR., this weekend: Come October 24, the Portland Art Museum will put Raphael's La Velata (Woman With A Veil) on view, thanks to a deal with the Italian government via the New York-based Foundation for Italian Art & Culture. It will be a one-painting exhibition and the lady, who resides in the Palatine Gallery in Florence and has been out of Italy only once or twice before, will also travel to the Nevada Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum. 

She can handle it -- much as Parmigianino's Antea was a star at the Frick Collection last year (Antea's run was actually extended). Aside the work's beauty, there's the question of who La Velata was -- the same woman, a baker's daughter, who was Raphael's mistress and the subject of La Fornarina, or not? Intrigue is always good.

But there's bad news in the announcement, too. The Portland Museum plans to charge general admission of $17 to see La Velata, according to The Oregonian. The museum will also be showing China Design Now during its run, which has a special admission charge of $15. Neither ticket comes with reciprocal admission to the other show.

It's bad enough to have a hefty $17 charge for a one-work show -- a charge that's steep even for a multi-work blockbuster that involves a lot of scholarly research, a catalogue, extensive loan agreements, lots of shipping, lots of insurance (yes, La Velata need insurance, too -- she's worth tens of millions of dollars). But to make visitors pay for another special show -- seen at the same time -- is beyond the pale.

Museum director Brian Ferisso told The Oregonian that his pricing strategy is a gamble to get people to become members of the museum. Single memberships cost $55 and dual-family memberships cost $85.

I'm all for membership drives. I'm all for trying new pricing stratgies, which I wrote about here in April. But exploiting Raphael's one-woman show this way will put her out of the range of many viewers -- especially as the holiday season approaches and in this economy.

I urge the museum to reconsider, and I urge Nevada and Milwaukee not to follow Ferisso's lead.

Update: According to the museum's website, it will now offer a premier ticket for $20 permitting entry to both La Velata and the China design show. 

Stop the presses: A 26-year-old has publicly "confessed" that he prefers to read (and pay for) newspapers, the real thing, rather than poach "free" content from the web.

I came across this disclosure in an article by one Alexander Ewing in Intelligent Life, a magazine published by The Economist, and was so charmed I decided to share it.

Why does he do it?

I think print is good for your health. Get away from the screen for a bit. Most of us spend too much time slumped in a backlit stare. Once freed you will find that print publications have intellectual cachet in the public sphere. A Mac laptop says little about its owner; the iPod user is indistinguishable. But the intern who arrives brandishing a distinctively salmon copy of the Financial Times is going places (if maybe a bit too keen). Emerging from the subway with a big-screen kindle tucked under one's arm does not have the same effect as a thumbed and refolded copy of the New York Times (nor can it double as an umbrella).

And get ready to smile:

Contrary to what internet networkers say, print is a social tool too...Fighting over the front section is a healthy morning ritual, and dividing and conquering a paper is a fundamental weekend activity. In public, a newspaper makes for a great shield. Broadsheets are particularly good for avoiding people you recognise on the train. Hiding behind a laptop is difficult. Forget the blackberry.

There's more, but I won't spoil it, even if you have to read the article online (here).

I hope he goes forth and multiplies.

While the arts world has had its eye on the White House, watching to see what President Obama is doing for the arts (the most recent report is from Politico, which published an article quoting yours truly on Wednesday), not enough people have been paying attention to Congress.

To wit: The other day I received an email update that floored me. It reported, glowingly, that 25 Representatives had signed a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) urging the House Appropriations Committee to allocate $50 million for the Office of Museum Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Let's see: 25 is less than 6% of the 435 members of the House. But Ford W. Bell, the president of the American Association of Museums, said:

I've already mentioned here some of the many things to like about the new Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, which is just across the street from the Albright-Knox and which opened last November. One of them is a current exhibition called "Anthony J. Sisti: A Forgotten Regionalist, Selections From the Collection."

The show is in keeping with the museum's mission to be "The Museum for Western New York Arts" for contemporary art and for modern works. Sisti was a Greenwich Village-born boxer turned artist who spent most of his life in Buffalo, where he had a well-known gallery.  

Classically trained in Florence and at the Albright Art School in Buffalo, his works, according to newspaper articles, were shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Art, among others, during his lifetime. 

But he seems to be one of those artists who suffered by being good at too many kinds of art: He painted political portraits of people like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gov. Al Smith, was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration, painted boxers in the ring, did landscapes. He taught art in Buffalo and New York. He was talented, but not very original. You can see the influence of artists like Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton and others in his work. (At right is Picnic At Chesnut Ridge, 1943.)

Apparently, Sisti was a bit of a swashbuckler, too. 

Located right across the street from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, locals say, is the first new museum to be built in the city in more than 100 years. It cost $33 million, provides 84,000 square feet of space, and is comely to boot. Last November, just before it opened, The Buffalo News crowed in an editorial (here):

Buffalo's museum district gains another jewel soon...the new Burchfield Penney Art Center is a welcome addition to this region's cultural life and visitor attractions. It's a spectacular achievement, and the opening in tough economic times of such a stellar showcase for the work of Western New York artists is a bright testament to community vitality....

The Burchfield Penney's 18,000 square feet of galleries and 5,000 square feet of education and program spaces expand the cultural offerings of the museum district in a wonderfully local way.

I agree, especially about the local part. The Center specifically bills itself as "The Museum for Western New York Artists," which means it's an opportunity to see something different. In its coverage (here and here), The News quoted the enthusiasm of local artists, too: 

Watercolor painter Tom Baldwin of Clarence Center said the museum offers opportunities for artists like himself. "I'm excited about the possibility of being able to exhibit here some day. It feels like a big-city art museum, it doesn't feel like a little place for local artists," Baldwin said.

He's right about the feel. When I was there last week, the Burchfield Penney offered several exhibitions. They include a gallery of Charles Burchfield's works -- along with a recreation of his studio -- plus a big sculpture show (at right). I could have been in Chelsea.

One of summer's pleasures is traveling up to Williamstown, Mass., to see what the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has on view. Usually, the summer exhibition is terrific -- and this year is no exception. Early in June, I spent time at Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence, a look at the "symmetry of influence" between Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe. Curated by Debra Bricker Balken, it's a beauty; my take on the show is published in The Wall Street Journal today. The bottom line is this:

"Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence"...is the first exhibition to explore their relationship. But what's important is not that visitors learn art history. It's that they see for themselves the way these two artists inspired each other over more than three decades and, more important, that they discover, or rediscover, the extraordinary, underappreciated Dove....

Dove emerges as the far more daring, more imaginative artist of the two. He, not she, tries collage, putting blue chiffon over metal with sand to make a serene "Sea II" that exceeds her wildly abstract "From the Lake No. 1." He, not she, creates works such as "Fog Horns" that evoke sound. And he, not she, never looks back at figuration, but turns out works that are increasingly spare, abstract and yet incredibly lyrical. His works are both more  layered, literally and figuratively, and more nuanced.

Along with my review, The Wall Street Journal has also created a slide show of eight works from the exhibition on line, so don't miss that. But I'm posting a few more here. From the top: Dove's Happy Clam Shell, 1938; O'Keeffe's Slightly Open Clam Shell, 1926; Dove's Sea Gull Motive (Sea Thunder or The Wave), 1928; O'Keeffe's Dark Iris, No. 2, 1927.

The show is a bit of a departure for the Clark: With about 60 works created between 1910 and the early 1940s, it's the first all-20th Century show, I believe.

But with its new Tadeo Ando-designed Stone Hill Center, opened a year ago, there'll be more. 

The current show at Stone Hill is called Through the Seasons: Japanese Art in Nature. It mixes screens as old as the 17th Century with contemporary ceramics. Another attraction there is the conservation labs, which are viewable through floor-to-ceiling windows -- creating an interesting tableau of people on the outside peering in.

Dove/O'Keeffe is on view through Sept. 7; Through the Seasons is on view until Oct. 18.

Photo Credits: Works by O'Keeffe, © 2009 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Works by Dove, Courtesy of and copyright The Estate of Arthur Dove / Courtesy Terry Dintenfass, Inc.

News Flash: Actor Kal Penn started his job at the White House today, as an associate director in the Office of Public Engagement, where he is the liaison to the arts and Asian-American and Pacific Island communities. To prepare, he told reporters on a by-invitation conference call this afternoon, he put on a suit and tie, brushed his teeth, flossed, and did the things most people do when they start a new job.

Don't blame Penn for those quotidian details, though -- he was merely answering the fluff-ball questions pitched by reporters from places like The Washington Post, People, TV Guide and Dow-Jones. They proved, again, either that celebrity still makes mush of many reporters or that no one expects all that much of Penn in this job, or both. (I was in the queue to ask a question, but my time did not come before his time was up.) 

Penn, whom I wrote about here in April, has been starring in "House" on television and the "Harold & Kumar" movies. He said today he's taking sabbatical from acting so that he can serve his country.

What else did we learn in the call, which lasted about 20 minutes?

Visiting upstate New York this weekend -- way upstate -- I spent a day in Buffalo, checking out two new must-see art attractions, the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the Darwin Martin House, Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece and the subject of this post. 

Even people who find Wright's prairie house style not to their liking will appreciate the Martin House. Although it's still being restored, and will be even more beautiful in about three years' time, the restoration group that saved it essentially announced that the home was ready for prime time this spring, when they opened a $5 million visitors center designed by Toshiko Mori. With its floor-to-ceiling windows, long flat shape and an orientation parallel to the pergola Wright use to unify the Martin House complex, the center is a perfect complement to Wright's design.

Here's the home's background: Around the turn of the 20th century, Darwin D. Martin, an executive of the Larkin Soap Co. and one of the country's best-executives, formed a friendship with Wright that led to several commissions, including the pioneering Larkin Soap Co. office building in Buffalo and the building of this domestic complex in 1903-05. It includes the home (front view, above; side view, below), a pergola linking it to the conservatory, stables, carriage house, a home for Martin's sister and (off to the side) a gardener's home. When Martin died in the '30s, his wife, who never liked the home because it was dark, moved to their summer place, Graycliff, also designed by Wright (and also open to the public, though I didn't get there).

Unoccupied, the Martin home fell into disrepair and was vandalized. Later, it was purchased by a well-meaning owner (who nevertheless modernized the kitchen with yellow formica counters!) who developed money troubles. His predicament prompted him to sell the pergola/conservatory/carriage house, which were demolished and replaced with apartment buildings.

It wasn't so long ago that the cultural world was cheering Dresden, the one-time royal residence of Saxony rich in artistic splendor. Its historical center, all but destroyed in World War II, was lovingly rebuilt. The state art collections there are among the best in the world. Artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Richard Strauss worked there. 

Germany asked UNESCO to make the Dresden Elbe Valley a World Heritage Site, signifying its status as being of universal significance, and in 2004, UNESCO complied, citing (among other things) "Its art collections, architecture, gardens, and landscape features [which] have been an important reference for Central European developments in the 18th and 19th centuries" and its "exceptional testimonies of court architecture and festivities, as well as renowned examples of middle-class architecture and industrial heritage representing European urban development into the modern industrial era."

Now, that's all over. Dresden is putting a four-lane bridge over the Elbe at a critical juncture and, at its recent meeting, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee stripped Dresden of the honor. I applaud the committee, for finally getting some backbone, and said so in an opinion piece for Forbes.

This is only the second time since the list was begun in 1972 that the committee has delisted a site. But UNESCO has few other tools to use with sites that are being exploited and ruined.

At its meeting last week in Seville, the committee also added 13 sites to the heritage list.

To celebrate the Fourth of July, here's a look at WaterFire, the public art installation in  Providence -- 100 bonfires burning along the city's three rivers. Started in 1994, it's 15 years old now, but locals say it still draws 40,000 to 60,000 people to the city each time it's put on (WaterFire happens more than a dozen times each summer). (Corrected per comment below.)

Artist Barnaby Evans has won several awards for it. In 1997, The Providence Journal called it "the most popular work of art created in the capital  city's...history." 

You can read more about WaterFire here.

Happy Independence Day.

Remember that "confidence report" from London-based ArtTactic that I wrote about here several days ago? Most of the study, which involves interviews with key participants in the art market, was behind a pay wall, and I was able to give you only a few bullet points.

Now ArtTactic has posted a podcast, with video charts, showing much more of its hand. It reveals more evidence for ArtTactic's verdict that there is "less negativity" in the contemporary market. But that's all relative. As is explained, the index ranges from zero to 100, so any index below 50 means that the firm received more pessimistic than optimistic views of the market. That index shot from 11 in December to 28 in June. But that's still gloomy, just less gloomy.

ArtTactic also breaks down the market by price categories; perhaps not surprisingly, the only category in truly positive territory was the segment for art priced at less than $50,000. There is also some, but less, confidence in the $50,000 to $100,000 and for works selling for more than $1 million. The middle market is the most dicey. Anecdotal evidence over the last six months has suggested the same thing.

In December, a significant number of people thought that recovery would take more than five years. With prices skidding since then, more than 60% of respondents now believe that recovery will take just 1 to 2 years. And the pace of price declines has definitely slowed down. As a result, people feel that the market is much less risky than it was in December. Because there is less liquidity in the financial world, there is perceived to be less speculation.

ArtTactic also ranks artists, and the top three rated for "long-term" value are Gerard Richter, Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman -- the same as those at the top in December. Damien Hirst is not in the top five, but he has apparently moved up smartly since December.  

The entire podcast, with charts, can be heard and viewed here.

Oh, yeah, and regarding the just-concluded June sales on London (versus the May sales in New York,

Back to my lunch with Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum,* which ensued after I noted here that on a recent visit the special-exhibition galleries were full but the permanent collection galleries were empty.

This is a problem of museums' own making. Over the years, they, aided by media coverage, have trained people to come for the special shows and nevermind the treasures they actually own. Now, with many museums cutting back on traveling shows because of financial woes, the problem is growing.

Brooklyn, it turns out, recently held a retreat on the subject. One obvious answer, hardly unique to Brooklyn, has curators devising "special" shows from their permanent collections -- AKA "shopping in your closet." In October, for example, Brooklyn will open James Tissot: "The Life of Christ" -- an exhibition of 124 watercolors drawn from 350 that were acquired by the museum in 1900, at the urging of John Singer Sargent.

None of these watercolors (that is a detail from Jesus Goes Up Alone onto a Mountain to Pray, 1886−94, above) has been on view in at least 20 years; some haven't been seen since the 1930s. They were first shown in Paris in 1894, and then went on the road to London, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and -- Brooklyn. Lehman plans to peddle the show to four other museums, earning fees from them that will pay for conservation.

In a similar vein, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum, which has been traveling for about a year and is going to about a dozen museums, will return to Brooklyn in mid-stream (next Feb. 12 through May 2) for a visit. By then, the museum will have readied a special gallery for several mummies in its permanent collection (which has 11 humans and several animals, all told) that are not in the traveling show; it will focus on the after-life. That's a mummy of Hor at left, entering the CT scanner at North Shore Hospital.

All of this makes sense, and none is controversial. But it doesn't address the problem squarely. There's more.