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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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The Perelman-Gagosian Brawl

You may not be avid readers of the business section of The New York Times, so you may have missed an article in Sunday’s paper headlined The Feud That’s Shaking Gallery Walls. In it, Ron Perelman says, “Art is such a beautiful thing. But it’s been sullied by an ugly business. It needs to be fixed.”

ronald-perelmanDo you find it strange that a man who’s been buying and selling art for a very long time suddenly decides he’s had enough or that he was had? After all, he willingly entered into the transaction he has now gone to court to protest.

Here’s the gist: One day in 2011, Perelman wanted to buy a Cy Twombly painting called Leaving Paphos Ringed With Waves, which happened to hang in Larry Gagosian’s Madison Avenue gallery. Gagosian told him it would cost $8 million; Perelman offered $6 million. There was no deal. (The two had been doing business together for years; Perelman “had bought or sold nearly 200 works of art through Mr. Gagosian,”  the piece says.)

Perelman still wanted the picture so he went back “with another offer” (undisclosed). Gagosian said it’s no longer available, but that he could get it back for him at $11.5 million. Meantime, the Mugrabi family had bought it for $7.25 million “paying in part with their ownership stake in artwork also co-owned by Mr. Gagosian.”

Perelman Perelman ultimately buys it for $10.5 million. So the Mugrabis made “a quick $2 million profit and Mr. Gagosian a $1 million commission.” (I know the numbers don’t quite add up, but I’m quoting the article, which by the way makes no mention of sales tax, which could have been, no, should have been, substantial.)

Then they both sued: Gagosian said Perelman never paid the $10.5 million, and in part offered art that wasn’t wanted or worth what he had claimed. Perelman said the whole transaction with the Mugrabis was a “sham,” serving only to get more money out of him.

Gagosian has withdrawn his suit, but Perelman has spent some $3 million pressing his.

…his desire to shine a light on the market went far beyond his Twombly purchase….His lawyers have sent subpoenas to some of the biggest players in the business and sent art experts to galleries and dealers and even to visit artists. He subpoenaed members of the Mugrabi family. …He has also submitted subpoenas to the auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips, according to court filings.

He’s even enlisted a former F.B.I. agent who is well versed in the art business to interview big collectors and dealers, according to two gallery owners. Major artists close to Mr. Gagosian have also been questioned, these gallerists say.

Neither party is sympathetic in this case. But Perelman was no babe in the woods here; he entered into the Twombly transaction of his own free will. One can’t help but think that he is playing some sort of grudge match against Gagosian.

And sadly, the courts have to waste  time on this.

I’m all for more transparency in the art trade, but I don’t think this is the way to get it. Ron Perelman, carrying the torch for other people? Please. When has that ever happened before?

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Forbes

Detroit Institute Addresses Compensation Complaints

A short time ago, the Detroit Institute of Arts responded to the criticism that has kept it in the news for the wrong reasons this week–and threatened to undermine support for the millage tax that provides $23 million on operating support each year. Board chair Edward Gargaro signed the statement, which said that “unfortunately misunderstandings have occurred.” Indeed.

AMEricksonIn a key paragraph, Gargaro promised to discuss the matter the public officials threatened to repeal the millage:

We will continue to provide our community with exceptional museum programs and will do so in a way that is responsible, transparent and reflects proudly on the history of this great institution. Representatives of the DIA Board of Directors will meet in the near future to consider the best means to work with elected officials in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne Counties to ensure that there is full transparency on compensation decisions. We will continue to steward our resources, which to a significant extent have been entrusted to us by citizens of the tri-county area, in a very careful, responsible manner that recognizes both the exceptional quality of the museum and the exceptional leadership of those who are directing its course, and we appreciate the continued support of all of the citizens of the tri-county area.

The statement runs through all the numbers, and adds a critical fact–that Annmarie Erickson (at right) was promoted at one point, but did not receive compensation for that until much later, retrospectively. Consequently, she did receive a 36% pay increase.

When the contract was finalized, Ms. Erickson received her salary increase at that time retroactive to the date of her assumption of her new duties, and in 2012 she received a 2011 performance bonus as well. The 36% pay increase which has been reported so prominently in the press resulted from this “bunching” of compensation related to 2011 into 2012. Had the compensation been paid in 2011 when it was earned, the increase in compensation from 2011 to 2012 would have been 4% not 36%.

This is all critical information to voters and residents. As I said earlier, Beal and Erickson probably deserved their raises–but optics are important. Good that they are being addressed. especially now that the last piece of the Grand Bargain puzzle is falling into place.

Mistake at DIA: A Pay-Raise Ruckus And A Solution

In the last two years or so, I’ve often praised the Detroit Institute of Arts for conducting itself in the right way–with respect to passing the millage and in how it has handled itself during the city’s bankruptcy. Now, though, it has made a major mistake–in terms of optics if not substance.

GargaroAnd it may cost the museum big, in terms of local support. Some local legislators are threatening to take action.

According to several reports, the board handed out big raises to the top two execs in 2012: Director Graham Beal received a 13% raise in total compensation to $514,000, including a $50,000 bonus, and COO Annmarie Erickson saw her pay rise 36% to $369,000, including the same bonus.

Both undoubtedly worked hard: 2012 was the year they campaigned hard to persuade voters in three Detroit counties to tax themselves a tiny bit, about $15 a year on every $150,000 of a home’s fair-market value, for 10 years and hand over what would amount to $23 million a year to the DIA for operations. In return, residents received free admission to the permanent collection galleries. As I wrote then, in an article for The Wall Street Journal,

In recent months Graham Beal has been working all but nonstop, speaking at community breakfasts and Rotary Club lunches, appearing at city council meetings, county hearings and fund-raising events, doing media interviews, conferring with political strategists. “I have not yet kissed any babies,” he says, with a slight chuckle that turns into a sigh.

So did he and Erickson deserve a raise? Probably–at least the bonus.

Detroit didn’t declare bankruptcy until July, 2013, but the  DIA board must have seen a crisis coming in some manifestation. Now, when pensioners and Detroit’s creditors are all taking haircuts, the action of trustees, no matter how well-meaning, looks off-key and out of line.

As the Detroit News reported:

Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak, said he spoke Friday with Gene Gargaro (pictured), chair of the DIA compensation committee, and asked him to either have the money returned or put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.

If nothing happens, Woodward said, he would take steps to dissolve the Oakland County Arts Authority that collects the voter approved $11 million annually for the DIA.

“The DIA must act now to acknowledge the mistake, apologize and fix it,” Woodward said. “Otherwise, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to see that no further Oakland County monies go to it.”

Asked for comment Monday, Gargaro confirmed he spoke with Woodward on Friday and told The News: “I need time to consider what Dave and I discussed … when I have something meaningful, I will share it with you.”

Another lawmaker, Eileen Kowall, also said she’s talking to the DIA board of directors in hopes that they will reconsider.

Kowall, the Detroit Free Press reported, “…said she has gone to bat for the museum in the past, supporting legislation to ensure money from the millage goes to the DIA and not other uses. “I felt kind of blindsided I guess,’ she said. ‘I felt a little bit like a chump.’ ”

Optics matter in cases like this. It’s going to be sticky no matter what happens, but I think the DIA board should reconsider–and either make its case publicly or find another solution.

Way back when, you may remember, some rich board members of the Museum of Modern Art supplemented Glenn Lowry’s salary with their own funds. Mike Bloomberg did the same for some members of his mayoral staff. Perhaps that is what can happen here.

 

Mystery Solved: The Man Who Bought The Rothschild Prayerbook

Though I was hoping, last January, that the Getty Museum had purchased the marvelous Rothschild Prayerbook when it came up for auction at Christie’s, no press release ever emerged from Brentwood, so I had long since figured that it had disappeared into a private collection and wouldn’t be seen for some time. I was wrong.

RothschildPrayerbookThe 150-page prayerbook, you’ll recall, is a lavishly illuminated medieval Book of Hours, and at the time of its sale was considered to be the most important illuminated manuscript in private hands. It had been commissioned by a member of the Dutch imperial court, made in Ghent or Bruges around 1505-1510, and contains a Madonna and child by Gerard David, plus 67 full-page illuminations by Gerard Horenbout, Simon Bening and Alexander Bening, the top illuminators of their day. Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-74) bought it sometime in the 1800s, but the Nazis grabbed it from his heirs in 1938. Soon after Austria finally returned it to the family in 1998, the late Baroness Bettina de Rothschild consigned it to Christie’s. In 1999, it fetched almost triple its presale high estimate of about $4.7 million–setting a record of nearly $13.4 million. There were five bidders.

In January, I think, there was only one bidder, or maybe two, and the winner got it for $13.6 million. The hammer price was $12 million — exactly at the low estimate of $12 million to $18 million. Last month, he revealed himself–and far from hoarding it, he has put the prayerbook  on the road.

Trouble is, his road is in Australia. His name is Kerry Stokes, and he is chairman of Channel Seven there. He also has interests in other media, both electronic and print, plus property, mining, and construction equipment, according to Wikipedia. Based in Perth, he’s sending to Canberra and Melbourne, according to Australian reports.

Having paged through it myself, I know what he meant when he said “When I first saw it, I actually didn’t know if I should touch it and open it. I started to turn the pages and the hair on the back of my arm stood up. I’m a pretty tough nut, I guess, and I love art as one of the expressions that…probably appeals to the softer side a lot of people would deny I have. This is so unique I expect a lot of people will want to come and see it – we will have something else to offer that nobody else has and that’s the Rothschild Prayerbook.”

That’s from an account in the Daily Mail.

Stokes reportedly has a large art collection. In 2008, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presented an exhibit called PEEP: GLIMPSES OF THE LAST 4 DECADES FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION. It included Australian artists and others such as Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Alfred Jensen, Philip Pearlstein, and Walter de Maria. Then, last November through March, the AGWA presented A PRIVATE VIEW: MODERN MASTERS FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION, which included works by Monet, Courbet, Matisse and Magritte.

About the same time, he was said to be an “avid collector of rare illuminated manuscripts” and he lent twelve of them to the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery in Western Australia, in show called Celebrating Word and Image 1250 – 1600. A slide show at the link shows they are nice, but cannot compare with his new prize, a true treasure.

Even if you do not travel to Australia to see this (and it is amazing, as I was allowed to page through it at Christie’s), Stokes wants to share it–I’ve heard unofficially that he is making a documentary about the prayerbook.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s 

ArtPrize: The People And the Jury Pick Same Winner

-1e78abae0ca8f699In a remarkable development, the Grand, No. 1 ArtPrize–the open, two-track competition in Grand Rapids–went to the same artist: Anila Quayyum Agha’s entry was chosen by both the public and a jury of art experts. Her piece, called Intersections, uses light to project Islamic imagery in shadows.  Or as she wrote:

…the geometrical patterning in Islamic sacred spaces, associated with certitude is explored in a way that reveals it fluidity. The viewer is invited to confront the contradictory nature of all intersections, while simultaneously exploring boundaries. My goal is to explore the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic by relying on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, and the interpretation of the cast shadows. The form of the design and its layered, multidimensional variations will depend both on the space in which it is installed, the arrangement of the installation, and the various paths that individuals take while experiencing the space. The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference….

Alltold, ArtPrize winner this year were awarded $540,000. and Agha, who teaches drawing in Indianapolis, took home $300,000 of that. There’s asterisk, however, because the experts–Susan Sollins, Leonardo Drew, and Katharina Grosse–split their Juried Grand Prizem and gave half the $200,000 prize money to a piece called The Haircraft Project by Sonya Clark.

-7d3bf733b3cecf88When ArtPrize announced a change in this year’s contest, namely that the public prize and the expert prize would be equal in size, it also said “ArtPrize hopes to amplify and expand the conversation about the differences and similarities in the public’s and experts’ opinions.” I thought that was a good thing. I did not anticipate that the two would be decide the same, but that is far from a bad thing.

More than 41,000 individuals cast votes in this year’s contest.

The Grand Rapids Press has the story, with slides, and also a series of about 30 photos of Intersections, and it’s well worth a look. Interstingly, Michigan Gov., Republican Rick Snyder, who after months of suspense thankfully helped save the Detroit Institute of Arts during the ongoing Detroit bankruptcy case, showed up at the ArtPrize awards in Grand Rapids. Of course, he is in a race to continue as governor, and it was a good place to campaign. Still, there were probably other good places to campaign last week, when the prize was announced.

Here’s a list of all winners.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Press