Archives for July 2011

Maybe you saw the news last week that a German billionaire named Reinhold Wuerth (below right) has privately purchased Hans Holbein’s “Madonna with Basel Mayer Jakob Meyer and His Family” for at least $70 million. Experts are calling it the most important German Old Master to change hands since World War II. (Here’s a link to the Bloomberg story on it.)

 

That’s not the only reason this picture, which I saw in Frankfurt in 2005, can lay claim to fame. It’s unquestionably beautiful, celebrated for capturing the softness of Italian Renaissance masters and the unstinting realism of Northern Renaissance masters. And it’s in pristine condition.

 

But this painting is also famous for its past, which involves cunning 17^th century fakery, duped royalty, and dueling accounts more than two centuries later over which of two renderings was real and which a copy – all leading to a different renown: Holbein’s Madonna was the subject of what experts say was the first art historical conference.

 

For more than a century after it was completed in 1528, the painting led a quiet life, escaping the religious wars that left many devotional art works in splinters. Then it fell into the hands of an art dealer named Le Blond, of Paris. Recognizing its worth, he secretly commissioned a copy, then sold one work to Marie de Medici, the widowed Queen of France, and the other to an Amsterdam merchant.

 

Both works found their way to Germany. The Queen’s Madonna passed through at least two hands before being purchased for the Count of Saxony and put on display in Dresden. The merchant’s version was soon sold to an even richer Amsterdam merchant. It disappeared until 1822, when Prince William of Prussia bought it from a Parisian dealer as a present to his wife, Princess Marianne.

 

Which German royal owned the original?

 

The mystery raged until 1871, when both works went on view in Munich. Art historians assembled before the two paintings. For about three weeks, they scrutinized and debated. They decided in favor of the one purchased by Prince William, which by that time had passed through inheritance into the hands of Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse. And they issued what may have been the first art press release.

 

The proof was in the timing. Holbein had started the work in 1526, and when he returned to it to finish it two years later, Meyer asked for alterations. His daughter had wed, for example, and now wore the modest hair style of a married woman. “There are lots of changes,” Dr. Bodo Brinkmann, an expert on German and Nederlandish Old Master paintings whom I spoke with in 2005, when he was a curator at the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt, where it has hung (mostly) since 2003.

 

“The hair of the girl was once long; she was older when the painting was finished than when he started. The bonnet on the second wife was changed.”

 

The copy, he said, “does not show the changes, the pentimenti, that are a feature of time. The copy was made around 1630 and the pentimenti would not yet have shown.”

 

Much of this story – and more, including some heart-stopping moments regarding the painting’s near-extinction during World War II – is detailed in a booklet on sale at the Schlossmuseum Darmstadt, where the painting hung until 2003 (except for an occasional exhibition loan), when it moved to the Staedel museum in Frankfurt.

 

The Hesse family made the sale in mid-July to cover estate taxes. Had it not been listed as a German treasure, ineligible for an export license, it could have fetched more than $165 million, experts estimate.

 

The painting visited the U.S. in 2005, as part of “Hesse: A Princely German Collection,” which I wrote about for The New York Times.

 

 

 

 

The latest from Egypt has Prime minister Essam Sharaf reversing course, and cancelling his nomination of Abdel Fatah El-Banna to hold Egypt’s antiquities portfolio.

Sharaf (left) replaced Zahi Hawass late yesterday or early this morniing, but was forced to recall the invitation to El-Banna “following the demonstrations of archaeologists and the employees of the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) at the front gate of the cabinet building calling for the cancellation of El-Banna’s nomination to the ministry’s top post.”

Al-Ahram Online has the story.

Sharag is reshuffling his cabinet and word emerged yesterday that Hawass was out.

Here’s a recounting of some complaints against El-Banna.

Per Al-Ahram:

The archaeological communtiy is now speculating as to whether the MSA will be reduced to an antiquities authority affiliated with the cabinet or remain a ministry with the new minister announced later this week. 

More as I get to the bottom of this, if I can.

UPDATE: According to published reports, unconfirmed, El-Banna has angered many archaeologists and accused of corruption. Here’s one accounting from Bikyamasr:

…Researchers and Egyptologists had sent many requests to Sharaf expressing their disapproval of al-Banna and accused him of having “vengeance” against many of them.

Reports mentioned that al-Banna’s name is on corruption lists and many of his colleagues accuse him of using his position within the department for personal and financial gains…

  

The Egyptian government is reshuffling again today, apparently to address continued displeasure with the progess of reform since the January revolution, and the word is that Zahi Hawass is out.

The Associated Press has a short story, which does not mention Hawass, but he has apparently let the word out and he confirmed that in a text message to The New York Times. Kate Taylor blogs about it here.

There’s no word on a replacement yet.

El Ahram is listing some new ministers, and says more announcements are expected through the day.

UPDATE, 8 p.m.: The Guardian has a longer article, calling Hawass “the biggest casualty” of the reshuffle. But still no news of a replacement.

UPDATE 2, Monday: Please go here for a more recent post on this subject.

 

What do people notice when they visit museums and stand before a piece of art, looking? Today’s New York Times touched on the question in Michael Kimmelman’s commentary today on visiting Leonardo’s Last Supper — because crowds at the Santa Maria delle Gracie are controlled by limiting visitors to 15 minutes with the painting. Not that everyone wants that much, was Kimmelman’s point. (But they should…)

This gives me an excuse to visit the outcome of an experiment at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,* the results of which were announced a few weeks ago (when I was busy writing something else). But the story is fresh, unreported, I think, and so I’m back with it.

Earlier this year, the Met invited visitors to “submit a photo of one detail in a single work of art from the Met’s permanent collection that captures your imagination, along with a photo of the full work of art and your own brief text (approximately 50 words) describing why you find that detail compelling.” It was a contest — called “Get Closer” — and entries were accepted between February 25 through April 8, 2011. The Met then chose five winners from the entries, gave each one a one-year membership at the Met, and posted their pictures on the Met’s website.

You can see the winners here. Other submissions were posted on Tumblr here.

I don’t know the criteria for winning, but I actually prefer some of the other entries. I’ve posted two others here. (Admittedly, I would have cropped the first one in closer, to just the hand or even just the thumb.) But you’ll have to go to the Tumblr site to find out what works they are details of, and some other examples of details that engaged people.

But the point of the exercise is both clear and worthy. The Met is using social media to get people to spend more time with a work of art, to really observe.

This is one of these experiments that should not only be repeated at the Met, but also replicated at other museums.

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

On my recent visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts, I was rather amazed to find out that despite the state’s and the city’s deep troubles, which has meant a cutback in virtually all public money to the DIA, director Graham Beal keeps buying wonderful pieces of art. As Beal took me around the galleries, he stopped often to tell me that something was new. How was this possible, in these tough economic times?

No mystery, actually: Detroit is one of those museums with a storied past and enlightened donors who left endowments specifically for acquisitions.

Unfortunately, times are so tough (the city lost 25% of its population between 2000 and 2010, and economic activity along with it), and the DIA has had to cut back quite a bit already, that Beal has had to go to the descendants of two of those donors to ask for relief. That’s the story I wrote for the July-August issue of The Art Newspaper, which has not (yet) posted it online.

So please go take a look at the paper — among other things, you’ll find out a few things he’s been buying, including the nautilus pictured here.

But here’s the gist: In 2007-08, the DIA’s operating budget was $34 million; in the most recent year it had cut that back to $24 million. Since the late ’90s, at least, the museum has operated in the black every year. To stay that way, about 16 months ago, Beal approached the descendants of one benefactor and asked if he could use the income generated by the benefactor’s acquisitions endowment for operations. Beal notes that this very same donor had allowed the same move during the Great Depression, and his descendants quickly agreed. Beal declined to name the donors, but I believe from other reporting that it’s the Ford family. Beal also sought and received permission from probate court.

A few months later, Beal asked the same question of the family of another deceased acquisitions benefactor, and members there also agreed.

The terms are five years for both agreements. Together, the two funds generate about $2 million a year, which will now be used for operations — money the museum won’t have to raise. Keep in mind that, aside from Detroit’s current woes, the museum had raised about $330 million to pay for its recent renovation and modest expansion, plus add to its unrestricted endowment, which now totals about $80 million. There is such a thing as donor fatigue.

I give Beal a pass on this move: the DIA’s other acquisitions endowments still generate about $2 million a year for purchases, for one thing. For another, he went through all the right procedures with donors — after he had more than “trimmed” the budget. He’s not invading the principal of the funds, just using income. He’s not spending it on expansions. And the DIA has plenty of treasures — never enough, of course, but plenty. Plus, he didn’t hide it.

The move was not ideal, in a perfect world, but museum staff and services, plus opening hours and all the other things that go into a museum, matter too.

I’m guessing other museums in the same situation may be doing the same thing. I hope they have followed similar procedures.

UPDATE, 7/18: My article is now posted online here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts