Archives for September 2009

It may not be news at all that states are decreasing their arts funding. Nonetheless, a recent Associated Press article noted the same trend I did last week in corporate funding, namely, that it’s getting worse. Here’s the money quote:

The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies estimates states reduced their arts funding an average of 7 percent in the fiscal year that began July 1. That average doubles to 14 percent when Minnesota is not included because the state almost tripled its art budget to $30.2 million thanks to a new sales tax.

In financially strapped states like Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana and Florida, the reductions are steeper, falling 30 percent or more, forcing agencies to trim the amount or value of grants, shutter programs that provide arts education and lay off employees. In two states that haven’t completed their annual budgets – Pennsylvania and Connecticut – lawmakers are considering eliminating their state arts agencies entirely.

The rest of the article can be read here.

On the other hand, yesterday The Gap showed that corporate sponsorship is still alive, announcing that it will sponsor the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum’s spring show: American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.  

Considering the trouble Gap Founder and Chairman Emeritus Don Fisher has had trying to build a museum for his extensive contemporary art collection in San Francisco, written about here, that may be a wonder. It’s a natural marketing match for The Gap, of course. 

The show, by the way, makes use of the “newly established Brooklyn Museum
Costume Collection” at the Met, according to the press release. The clothes were transferred to the Met from Brooklyn last year, because Brooklyn had neither the room to exhibit them nor the ability to care for them. 

Details about the Gap sponsorship and the spring show are here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Yesterday the British press weighed in on Charles Saatchi’s new book, My Name Is Charles Saatchi and I Am An Artoholic. The Guardian’s take is here and the Daily Telegraph’s is here. Both are pretty mild views, with the Telegraph headline talking about his “secret life laid bare.”

Not so fast. Eileen Kinsella, writing in the ArtNEWSLETTER, details how art-world veterans on this side of the Atlantic are disputing Saatchi’s tales. She focuses on sales he made of works by Sandro Chia and Sean Scully, and whether or not he related them as they happened.

She also brings us up-to-date on Saatchi’s art-world reality show:

Saatchi and the BBC have plans for a reality television show documenting the U.K.-wide search for an artist who possesses the “talent, ambition and passion to make great art,” as it is described in a memo from Saatchi’s office. A panel including Kate Bush, Frank Cohen (known in Britain as “the Charles Saatchi of the North”), Matt Collings and Tracey Emin selected six undiscovered artists from more than 3,000 applications. The four-part series, which will be broadcast on BBC Two next month, will reveal which artist was selected by the panel and Saatchi to be included in the exhibition “Newspeak: British Art Now” at the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (Oct. 25-Jan. 17).

Can’t wait.

Here’s the link to her story. 

Stunning news from Austrian: Vermeer’s largest painting, The Art of Painting, has been
claimed by the heirs of a prominent Austrian family who say the work was sold by force to Adolf Hitler. American soldiers rescued it from salt-mine storage.

The work has hung in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna since 1946; the priceless 1665-6 painting is probably the most important work ever subjected to a restitution claim. I surely can’t think of another. It’s also Vermeer’s only “self-portrait,” albeit only his back.

According to news reports from Europe, Andreas Theiss — a descendant of Count Jaromir Czernin — has asked the Austrian Culture Ministry to return the painting. Theiss told Der Spiegel that Czernin, whose wife was Jewish, had sold the work “to protect the life of his familiy” for a price of no more than 1 million Reichmarks, “a fraction of its value.” Czernin was also related to an Austrian leader deposed by the Nazis.

The Culture Ministry confirmed the claim to Agence France Presse and said it would refer the request to a restitution committee. AFP also said that the family had claimed the painting before, in the 1960s, but their requests were denied by a ruling that said the sale was voluntary and the price was appropriate.

New laws have taken effect since then — and new attitudes, too.  

In July, I traveled up to Boston, and then Marblehead, where I interviewed Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, and if their names don’t ring a bell, they will soon. My article about them, just published in The Art Newspaper‘s September issue, calls them “The Most Important Collectors You’ve Never Heard Of.” If and when it is published online, I’ll update this post.
 Meantime, here’s a bit about the story:

In their charming tale, the van Otterloos began collecting by buying horse carriages to fill a barn they owned in Vermont. It was only at the suggestion of Peter Sutton, then a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and now director of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, that they started to collect Dutch Old Masters. Now they own what many believe is the best collection of them in private hands — excepting the Queen of England and the Prince of Lichtenstein, if you call their treasures private.

The van Otterloos own Rembrandt’s 1632 Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh, Aged 62, seen here (but on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and about 70 other master works. As the article reveals, most of them will go on view next year in an exhibition that starts at the Mauritshuis in the Hague, then moves to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. and two other American museums.

And in the article, the van Otterloos say definitively — for the first time, a few sources told me — that they will eventually put the collection into the public domain.

UPDATED: Here’s a link to the article on my website.

[Read more…] about “The Most Important Collectors You’ve Never Heard Of”

Take a look fall exhibitions schedules, and it’s easy to see how the recession has affected museums’ offerings: exhibits are staying in place longer and they are less ambitious than they were a few years ago, for a start. In fact, I think some small shows will provide the most excitement — and I’m not talking about Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, which will go on view at the Metropolitan Museum on Sept. 10.

Here’s one I’m really eager to see: Icons of The Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings From Papunya, which opened on Sept. 1 at the Grey Art Gallery of NYU. Organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, it has already been on view there and in Los Angeles.

“Early” is a matter of degree: these works were created in the 1970s, after a school teacher gave men from the Central Australian Desert paint, boards and tools and suggested they paint. Curator Roger Benjamin has said the images harken back to ancient mark-making. 

The mysterious abstract designs are said to be symbolic.

 The exhibit, described more deeply in the Grey’s press release and exhibition website, is the first to focus on these works. (It includes reviews, including this one from the Ithaca Times.) I was also able the see more about the show, and its story, at Amazon, where one can “look inside” the catalogue.

The paintings are all drawn from the collection of John (Cornell PhD, ’70) and Barbara Wilkerson, and have never before been exhibited as a group.

Unfortunately for me, NYU was closed this three-day weekend, and that meant that Grey was not open on Saturday, which was the first day I could have gone downtown to see the show.

Photo Credits: Mystery Sand Mosaic, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, 1974 (top); Classic Pintupi Water Dreaming, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, 1972, Photo by Tony De Camillo for the Johnson Museum (bottom).