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Record Breaker? Picasso, "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," 1932, offered tonight at Christie's It seems to me that many art-market reporters have been too gullible in buying the auctioneers' and dealers' spin that art prices are going to come roaring back during the coming round of evening Impressionist/modern and contemporary sales. Consider this from Carol Vogel of the NY … [Read more...] about Bullish Art-Market Predictions: Irrational Exuberance? Tilted Playing Field?

ArtsJournal's downtime last week was due to dastardly technological deeds involving the ad server for our blogs' righthand columns. Those columns are still down at this writing. In the event that you actually took seriously my invitation last week to welcome me back from my travels "by decorating my bare ad space and activating my dormant 'Donate' button," the benefaction … [Read more...] about Filling An ArtsJournal Void: Images on CultureGrrl Classifieds!

Part of the site for the planned Downtown Whitney, as seen from the High Line Getting back to my New York roots after my Southern sojourn, I need to keep my prior promise to take on art critic Roberta Smith's recent Whitney screed, which followed close upon another negative bit of prominently placed NY Times coverage by Carol Vogel and Kate Taylor that raised doubts about some … [Read more...] about Downtown Whitney: NY Times-Generated Crisis of Confidence—Part II

I'm back from my Southern sojourn, y'all, and coincidentally, so is ArtsJournal---again available to all art-lings on every web browser known to man and in four of the five continents. (No Antarctican art-lings yet, to my knowledge.) I missed you and hope some of you missed me. I do see from my traffic stats that many of you (like me) have returned to your blog addiction.So … [Read more...] about MeTube: The Grrl is Back (with some Tinterow Tintinabulation)!

So what's going on with the ArtsJournal site and, by extension, CultureGrrl, which is still sending you scary messages instead of my smiling face if you try to access me on Firefox or Safari? (It's fine on Internet Explorer, minus the righthand column.) All I can tell you is that the head of ArtsJournal, Doug McLennan, has posted (on a non-AJ site) a very detailed … [Read more...] about Where is CultureGrrl? Still in Limbo (but back soon)

There have been some kind of dastardly doings on the ArtsJournal website, which have caused AJ and all its blogs (including this one) to go down and to send you a very scary-looking message instead of my smiling photo. AJ and CultureGrrl seem to be back up and running on Internet Explorer (although I didn't see my middle or righthand columns, when I last looked). … [Read more...] about Where Is CultureGrrl? Blog Attack!

We all make mistakes. (Hey, I made one yesterday.)But the NY Times salary survey article that I criticized in yesterday's post has a three-paragraph correction in today's paper, detailing five different flubs. Arts reporters need to be careful with those figures! [UPDATE: That link goes to the current day's corrections, but if you go to the original article, you'll see the … [Read more...] about Dept. of Corrections: NY Times Cultural Salaries Survey

Is nastiness a sign of desperation? The Wall Street Journal today launched its scoop-filled Greater New York section, covering the metropolitan area (including culture). The NY Times has struck back with a snarky memo from Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., its publisher, and Janet Robinson, its CEO. Here are some excerpts:In the spirit of journalistic camaraderie, we welcome the … [Read more...] about Wall Street Journal’s New “Greater New York” Section: NY Times Gets Nasty UPDATED, CORRECTED

Screenshot from trailer of film on Barnes Foundation, The Art of the Steal[CORRECTION: My original link to Knight's piece mistakenly led to non Pulitzer-worthy CultureGrrl post instead (now fixed).]In a highly important and perspicacious opinion piece, dated Apr. 25 but online now, the LA Times' art critic, Christopher Knight, ponders the Getty Museum's revolving-door … [Read more...] about Christopher Knight’s Pulitzer-Worthy Column on the Getty Trust’s Future CORRECTED

The western end of the site for the planned Downtown Whitney Do the NY Times' art writers really want to kill the planned Downtown Whitney? If so, they're doing a really great job. I was astonished last week when the Times' new arts reporter Kate Taylor (formerly of the NY Sun and very briefly with the Wall Street Journal), old hand Carol Vogel and veteran art critic … [Read more...] about Downtown Whitney: NY Times-Generated Crisis of Confidence—Part I

Christopher Knight, art critic for the LA Times, responds to Online Now: My WSJ Piece on the Future of Art Bibliography: The Getty announced in April 2009 that its role as sole funder of the BHA would end in a year and began to search for help. Thomas Gaehtgens, the director of the Getty Research Institute, recently told the Los Angeles Times that attempts to find assistance to … [Read more...] about BlogBack: Christopher Knight on Art Bibliography Controversy

An Italian court yesterday turned down an appeal by the Getty Museum of a lower court ruling that called for the so-called Getty Bronze be immediately relinquished to Italy. But a report [via] by ANSA, the Italian news agency, indicates that the Italians may be open to another of their object-swapping deals to help settle the matter. That makes this a good time to take a … [Read more...] about Italian Silver Swap: The Met Didn’t Get What It Bargained For

[NOTE: This post was written in a rush, earlier today. I've since fleshed it out a bit, with a few more images, links and one correction.] I've seen a number of profound landmark Picasso shows in my lifetime. Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a recession exhibition opening next Tuesday, which exposes most of the Met's works by that artist, is not one of them. Put … [Read more...] about MeTube: Infrared Insights at the Met’s So-So Picasso Show UPDATED

Do we really need the Bibliography of the History of Art? Or is it a dinosaur?Below are some some more thoughts on that question, taken from interview excerpts that didn't make it into my article about the Getty Research Institute's (GRI's) withdrawal of support for the BHA, which appears on the "Leisure & Arts" page of today's Wall Street Journal (p. D7).The chief argument … [Read more...] about More on BHA: Arguing Over Alternatives; Avery Index Rescued by Columbia

You can read me now: A Biblio-File Brouhaha---my piece that will appear on the "Leisure & Arts" page of tomorrow's (Tuesday's) Wall Street Journal. But the early word on my analysis is not good: "Outside LA, art folks commonly (& mistakenly) assume the Getty can & should pick up the tab for everything. Get over it," tweets Christopher Knight, the LA Times' art … [Read more...] about Online Now: My WSJ Piece on the Future of Art Bibliography