main

Anyone who attended the Metropolitan Museum's extraordinary Leonardo da Vinci drawings exhibition four years ago was painfully aware of the elephant not in the room: Although a section of the exhibition was devoted to Leonardo's lost masterpiece, the "Battle of Anghiari," only small fragmentary sketches, preparatory to this fabled fresco, were displayed. "No complete copy of … [Read more...] about Real-Life “Da Vinci Code”: Search Intensifies for Major Lost Leonardo

You already heard (here and here) of GAD (Guggenheim Abu Dhabi). But nothing the Global Guggenheim has done up till now prepares us for the emormous artistic and financial scope of LAD---the Louvre Abu Dhabi. On Thursday, Jacques Follorou reported in Le Monde that he had been given "access to the confidential clauses of the contract" for Abu Dhabi Louvre, and he reported the … [Read more...] about The Megabucks Global Louvre: Abu Dhabi Details Emerge

Yikes! Everyone is misconstruing the figures in Christie's press release recapping its 2006 sales totals. I won't name names, but U.S. auction scribes are heedlessly scrambling U.S. dollars and British pounds. In its press release, Christie's, which is a London-based company, gives all its figures in both dollars and pounds. But all the percentage increases apply only to the … [Read more...] about Auction-House Apples and Oranges (Continued)

Remember when Steve Wynn told his assembled guests at the elbowing of his Picasso that "this has nothing to do with money. The money means nothing to me"? Now Wynn has apparently suppressed these noble sentiments sufficiently to instigate a lawsuit against Lloyd's of London, seeking $54 million for the damage he accidently inflicted on "Le Rêve." He was to have received $139 … [Read more...] about Wynn Some, Lose Some (Continued)

Memo to NY Times photo editors: Isn't it time to retire Marion True's 2005 Italian perp walk photo? You used it again (how many times has it now been?) to illustrate yesterday's story about her bail hearing in Greece in connection with her acquisition, when she was antiquities curator for the Getty, of the funerary wreath that the museum has now agreed to return. Okay, … [Read more...] about Marion True’s Perpetual Perp Walk

Okay Christie's, stop being such a big bully. PLAY NICE! It wasn't not enough for you that your 2006 total art sales, at $4.67 billion, were "the highest [annual auction-house] results in art market history." You also had to send out a press release today, boasting that the $87.9 million fetched in November by "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was "the highest price paid for any work of … [Read more...] about Statistical Shenanigans at Christie’s: The 2006 Results

Derek Gillman, the new executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation, which intends to uproot Albert Barnes' celebrated collection from Merion to Philadelphia, will give the luncheon address on Mar. 14 at the three-day conference on Legal Issues in Museum Administration, organized by the American Law Institute of the American Bar Association. Gillman's topic: "The … [Read more...] about New Barnes Director Speaks on Hot-Button Topic

I promise never to be insufferably snobbish about Broadway musicals again. "Wicked," which I saw yesterday just to humor my daughter on winter break, was brilliant on every level: book, songs, set, performances. And, with my unerring nose for news, I happened to see it with a new cast, just announced yesterday on the Playbill site: Julia Murney as Elphaba, Kendra Kassebaum as … [Read more...] about When New Casts Happen to Old Broadway Musicals

Ronald Lauder scores a hagiographic 10-page profile in the current (Jan. 15) New Yorker (no link yet), which manages to avoid delving into any problematic areas, such as the possible conflicts among his roles as a Museum of Modern Art trustee, founder and president of the Neue Galerie, Nazi loot restitution advocate, and major purchaser of restituted art (most notably the … [Read more...] about Ronald Lauder’s Golden New Yorker Portrait

This just in from Deutsche Welle, the German broadcasting news service: Initially, around 600,000 visitors had been expected to view "The Guggenheim Collection" at the National Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn, which opened in July 21, yet in the end over 800,000 came to see the show. "We're extremely pleased," a museum spokesperson told reporters, not least because the … [Read more...] about More Rent-a-Show Developments: Guggenheim and Louvre

Speaking of post-Katrina New Orleans, Stevenson Swanson recently published a comprehensive update on the cultural impact of Katrina in the Chicago Tribune. From Swanson's piece: "There's no quick fix for a disaster like this," said John Bullard, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, which suffered an estimated $6 million in damage to its building and adjacent sculpture … [Read more...] about New Orleans Cultural Recovery Continues

As you may have noticed, CultureGrrl has a new fellow ArtsJournal blogger, CultureGulf, about post-Katrina New Orleans. I hear this is soon to be followed by CultureGulch (the art scene in Chelsea), CultureGolf (landscape architecture on the links) and everyone's favorite, CultureGrit (archaeological digs). Will MAN (Modern Art Notes) soon be going toe-to-toe with WOMAN … [Read more...] about CultureBlog Charades: Sounds Like…?

"Suicide Artist," who says that "anonymity is fundamental to my work," responds to Political Art at Harvard: Wake-Up Call for Artists?: Artists are responding to the war. The problem is that curators and galleries refuse to exhibit the work. Since 2004, when I began making "detonations" in response to the war in Iraq, only two curators have had the nerve to handle my … [Read more...] about BlogBack: “Suicide Artist” on Political Art

I occasionally attend cultural events that I might not otherwise choose, in order to have some quality(?) time with Paul, 26, and Joyce, 22: A couple of weeks ago, our family (plus Lisa, Paul's fabulous girlfriend) belatedly saw "Spamalot," which was fine, except that I was way too "CultureGrrl" about it: I conscientiously prepared for it by renting the DVD of "Monty Python and … [Read more...] about Pop Broadway Musicals: Family Fun?

My art-and-politics posts (here, here and here) have struck a chord, eliciting an unusual number of hits, e-mails and now, reverberations in the blogosphere. Click today's thought-provoking post on Artblog.net, in which Franklin Einspruch observes: Only artists whose talents lie in that arena, and mobilize to full effect given a political topic to chew on (Kathe Kollwitz and … [Read more...] about The Paucity of Political Art: Readers React