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Score a scoop coup for Jason Edward Kaufman in The Art Newspaper, for this report posted Tuesday (and cited yesterday by the Washington Post) about the highly critical findings, publicly released yesterday, of a panel of major museum professionals charged with a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian's constituent art institutions. Appointed by Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian's … [Read more...] about Another Smithsonian Bad-News Day: Betsy Broun Gets a Bum Rap

Speaking of losing battles that I have journalistically championed... A new campaign was launched today in Great Britain, chaired by Parliament member Edward O'Hara, to return the British Museum's portion of the Parthenon marbles to Greece. I've supported the rejoining of the marbles numerous times (most notably in this NY Times Op-Ed piece), on the grounds that the sculptural … [Read more...] about Yet Another Campaign to Reunite the Parthenon Marbles

The beaten but unbowed Tom Freudenheim and Katka Hammond, one of the Buffalo Art Keepers (now more appropriately called the Buffalo Art Losers), respond separately to Albright-Knox Post Mortem: A Complete Defeat. Freudenheim writes: It's not that I don't agree with you [that the outcome of the anti-deaccession campaign was, regrettably, a "complete defeat"]. It's just that I … [Read more...] about Albright-Knox BlogBacks: Freudenheim and a Buffalo Art Keeper

a new MoMA PR person! Here's the PR on the PR: Glenn D. Lowry has announced the appointment of Cheri Fein as deputy director for marketing and communications at the Museum of Modern Art. As head of the marketing and communications division [repetitive, don't you think?], Ms. Fein will oversee some 24 staff in the departments of marketing, communications, and graphics. She will … [Read more...] about It’s Springtime, When CultureGrrl’s Thoughts Turn to…

Robert Buck, where were you when we really needed you? According to this afternoon's report by the Buffalo News of today's wildly successful (if thoroughly depressing) sale at Sotheby's of Chinese objects from the Albright-Knox Gallery's collection, the museum's former director finally weighed in, just a little too late to do any good. Buck is today quoted describing the … [Read more...] about Blowout Albright-Knox Sale: Ex-Director Buck Belatedly Bucks the Disposals

I love the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which Kathy Halbreich will leave as director in November. I admire it for its nerve and prescience in taking flyers on lesser-known artists and audacious exhibition concepts. It's a tradition that Halbreich has ably carried on from her legendary predecessor, Martin Friedman. As her contemporary, I also love that Halbreich explained … [Read more...] about Halbreich’s Legacy and Her Next Act

On the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page today---coinciding with the first day of a series of auctions of 207 objects from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery---former museum administrator Tom Freudenheim publishes his second WSJ piece decrying the sales. (Here's his first piece, in which he described the importance to him, as a boy growing up in Buffalo, of … [Read more...] about Albright-Knox Post Mortem: A Complete Defeat

For a antiquities gallery that, by its own admission, is trying to clean up its act, Phoenix Ancient Art got a reputation whitewash in Ron Stodghill's article in yesterday's NY Times Sunday Business Section, Do You Know Where That Art Has Been?. Phoenix is clearly pleased with this story: It has posted the piece on its website. Stodghill reports: The Aboutaams [owners of … [Read more...] about Phoenix Rises from the Antiquities Ashes

I KNEW someday my prince would come! Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has rescued me from my lonely anti-deaccession ivory tower with the courageous 11th-hour extrication of his museum's ancient Indian sandstone sculpture of Uma-Maheshvara from the jaws of the art market. Before hearing this welcome news, I'd been feeling increasingly isolated in … [Read more...] about Deaccession Backlash: Michael Govan Does It Right

With a headline like the one above, I've shot myself in the foot for the the most coveted prize in journalism. Then again, I can't win one anyway, since I'm not on a newspaper staff (let alone a journalist of Pulitzer caliber). My interest in the application and selection process was piqued, nevertheless, by the news from Editor & Publisher that Christopher Knight, art critic … [Read more...] about Pulitzer Jurors Lack Art Appreciation

Real estate mogul and art collector Raymond Nasher founder of the widely admired Dallas sculpture center that bears his name, died unexpectedly yesterday in a Dallas hospital. "It came as a complete surprise," Steven Nash, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, told the Dallas Morning News. Much courted by major museums for his superb collection of modern and contemporary … [Read more...] about Raymond Nasher, 85, Sculpture Center Visionary

Now the truth can be told: It was a matter of labor relations. I caught up Wednesday with Beverly Wolff at the artworld attorneys' ALI-ABA conclave in Philadelphia. She was the Museum of Modern Art's in-house counsel when Glenn Lowry was lured to MoMA with an unorthodox compensation sweetener. So I decided to pop The Question regarding Lowry's compensation package, … [Read more...] about Lowry’s Secret Compensation: Why MoMA’s Trustees Concocted Their Convoluted Scheme

Nikolai Zavadsky was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $283,000 in damages for his role in the theft of 77 objects from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. He was the husband of the late Larisa Zavadskaya, a curator at the museum. Last summer it was discovered that her Department of Russian Culture had suffered the loss of more than 200 … [Read more...] about Updates on the State Hermitage Museum

UPDATE: Albright-Knox sales get thumbs up from State Supreme Court. State Supreme Court Justice Diane Y. Devlin heard two hours of arguments in the Albright-Knox Gallery deaccession controversy today and will issue a decision tomorrow, the Buffalo News reported. Lawyers for the museum and Sotheby's were pitted against Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis and his Buffalo Art … [Read more...] about Buffalo Court Case Decided Tomorrow

In October, I wrote for Art in America about the Smithsonian American Art Museum's heightened commitment to contemporary art, as evidenced by the myriad new acquisitions in its expanded and renovated contemporary galleries. When it reopened last year, after more than six years of top-to-bottom makeover, SAAM's longtime director, Elizabeth Broun, took me first to the expansive … [Read more...] about SAAM’s Contemporary Commitment Backed by Two Curatorial Appointments