Archives for June 2018

I leave town for a five-day vacation and news breaks out on several important art-museum stories that we've been following (not to mention on several much more important national news stories that we've been roiled by). Here's what my family (including my three little grandchildren) gazed upon while I took my eyes off the ball: And here's the first of my catch-up … [Read more...] about What’d I Miss? News Flashes from the Berkshire Museum & Frick Collection

Cultural property lawyer (and blogger) Ricardo St. Hilaire responds to Antiquities Ambiguities: Parsing the Legal Arguments in the Battle of the Getty Bronze. I'm glad you are covering this case. Cases in Italy can be dragged out for years, as you know. But if the Italians ultimately win, there next big challenge will be to enforce the judgment in the U.S. It's one thing to … [Read more...] about BlogBacks: Cultural Property Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire & Getty Spokesperson Ron Hartwig on the Getty Bronze

Italian Judge Giacomo Gasparini's June 8 decision giving the laurel wreath to Team Italy in the Olympian legal contest over the Getty Bronze seems to me persuasively well-reasoned (although awkwardly worded in the Getty's 46-page translation). Americans who (like me) have ogled the Getty Museum's celebrated nude would be loath to lose one of the world's few surviving … [Read more...] about Antiquities Ambiguities: Parsing the Legal Arguments in the Battle of the Getty Bronze

In the latest development in a tangled legal dispute that will probably outlive us all, the J. Paul Getty Trust announced that it plans to file an appeal with Italy's Court of Cassation of a June 8 Italian criminal court decision calling for the California museum to relinquish its celebrated statue, "The Victorious Youth" (aka "the Getty Bronze"). For now, it's the … [Read more...] about Never-Ending Saga of “The Getty Bronze”: Italian Criminal Judge Rules It Belongs to Italy

Where's Max Hollein when we really need him? Several "what-were-they-thinking?" moments jolted me recently at the Metropolitan Museum, reaffirming my belief in a bedrock principle of museum management: An art museum, particularly a complicated operation like the Met, needs a director who has had substantial curatorial experience and also, preferably, has served elsewhere as … [Read more...] about Infernal “Heavenly Bodies”: How the Directorless Metropolitan Museum Went Astray

Christopher Bedford, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, said all the right things in explaining his decision to deaccession seven of the museum's works in order to purchase works "created from 1943 or later, allowing the museum to strengthen and fill gaps within its collection [emphasis added]." In the recent press release announcing the planned disposals, Bedford … [Read more...] about Deaccession Deception: Baltimore Museum’s Castoffs Leave Holes in Its Collection