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The fundraising campaign to save Turner's "The Blue Rigi" for the Tate Gallery, London, has reached its goal three weeks ahead of its deadline. Some £4.95 million had to be found by Mar. 20 to prevent its export to the private collector who was its winning bidder at auction last June. Some £3.05 milllion came from a variety of sources: the museum (£2 million); The Art Fund, an … [Read more...] about How the Tate Succeeded in Keeping “Blue Rigi”

Looks like the Harvard University Art Museums may have to put up with their substandard digs for even longer than its most recent plans anticipated. Hailey Heinz reports in today's Boston Globe [via]: Harvard and Boston Redevelopment Authority officials said last night that they would hold off on plans to build an art gallery in Allston, after local residents and politicians … [Read more...] about Science Trumps Art: Harvard Museum Project Postponed

If you try to build it, some neighbors will always protest (no matter what "it" is). And so it goes with the planned new Allston facility for the Harvard University Art Museums, which I described in yesterday's post . Today's Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, ran an editorial today, debunking community concerns about the new facility as "unfounded" and "misplaced." A … [Read more...] about More on the Harvard Museum Project: Neighbors (of Course) Object

I truly hope that this will be my last Glenn Lowry post for a while, because I'm getting as tired of writing about this controversy as MoMA must be of reading what I write. But I can't leave the topic without explaining in further detail why the secret supplementing of Lowry's compensation is not just unorthodox, but potentially unethical. We may never know whether there … [Read more...] about Why Does the Manner of Lowry’s Compensation Matter?

Can't Queen Elizabeth bankroll the conservation of her own artworks? Apparently not, judging from this announcement from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts of its "Rule Britannia!"---a show (opens Apr. 28) of 16th- and 17th-century paintings "whose core will be unprecedented loans from the collection of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain." To get the royal loans, the museum … [Read more...] about God Save the Queen’s Pictures

With yesterday's earthquake in the Chinese financial markets having created aftershocks around the world (including Wall Street, where my trading husband and son somehow managed to stay out of trouble), perhaps it's a good time to steer you to an incisive article, "Money Talks Mandarin" (no link), in the March issue of Art in America magazine, which provides a detailed look at … [Read more...] about Dicey Chinese Markets—Contemporary Art Division

Here's an interesting segue from my last post: A day-long conference, free of charge, organized by Fordham Law School's Office of Public Programming on Nonprofit Law, Economic Challenges and the Future of Charities will be held on Mar. 30 in New York. Hot-button topics include "Searching for Greater Accountability of Nonprofits: Recent Legal Developments and Proposals for … [Read more...] about Lowry to Speak on Nonprofit “Entrepreneurialism”

The detailed report in Sunday's Washington Post about allegedly unauthorized expenses that were charged to the Smithsonian Institution by its top official, Secretary Lawrence Small, makes me wonder the same thing I wondered when the NY Times ran its exposé of Glenn Lowry's unorthodox compensation: Is someone from Sen. Charles Grassley's staff leaking information related to its … [Read more...] about Smithsonian Audit: More Executive Compensation Controversies

Harvard is, by far, this country's best-endowed university, and its art museums are among the most distinguished at any institution of higher learning. So imagine my surprise when I opened my father's copy of the March/April issue of Harvard Magazine, the publication sent to alumni, and read about the substandard physical state of the Harvard University Art Museums: Some … [Read more...] about Renzo Piano Makeover Planned for Harvard’s Decrepit Museums

The battle over the Albright-Knox Gallery's controversial planned deaccessions moves tomorrow to the Buffalo Common Council, which will hold a hearing on this issue. Meanwhile, the Buffalo News published an editorial on Saturday supporting the upcoming disposals at Sotheby's, which it said were regrettable but necessary to give the museum "[financial] resources for … [Read more...] about Updates on Albright-Knox, Sotheby’s, Fisk

In the annals of weird stories about Salvador Dalí, this could be one of the weirdest: Forensic scientist Michael Rieders revealed at the annual meeting of the Academy of Forensic Sciences in San Antonio that he had taken DNA samples from 19 places on two feeding tubes that had been in Dalí's nose in 1984. To what use might Dalí's purported nasal DNA be put? According to the … [Read more...] about Is Dalí’s Art a Genetic Mutation? Let’s Go to the DNA!

Here for your literary exegesis is the text of the CultureGrrl-Glenn Lowry Q&A at yesterday's ADAA-sponsored panel discussion on museum collecting, which I referred to in yesterday's post: Rosenbaum (addressing the entire panel): You spoke a bit about the symbiotic relationship among collectors, artists and museums in order to help form collections. Where do lines have to be … [Read more...] about ADAA Panel: Lowry Indirectly Responds to His Critics

Have I been trying to get Glenn Lowry to comment directly and publicly on the compensation controversy? Am I CultureGrrl? Through his beleaguered PR spokesperson, Lowry and I have been in discussion about a discussion, but so far we have not been able to agree on the journalistic ground rules. That may be the end of it, but I still hold out some hope. It seems that I … [Read more...] about Lowry Ducks the Compensation Controversy

I've gotta run, but not without telling you that your assignment for today, class, is to pick up a copy of today's Wall Street Journal, to read the front-page story about how Stanford University president John Hennessy's close and problematic ties to the tech industry have earned him, in the past five years, "fees, stock and paper stock-option profits totalling $43 … [Read more...] about Required Reading for the CultureGrrl Syllabus

Oh great. Los Angeles has a country music station again, but they did it by bumping a classical music station. I guess I should be careful what I wish for! Like I said: Pop trumps country trumps classical. The Oldies? Don't get me started. … [Read more...] about Broadcast Bozos, One More Time