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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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A Very Ambitious, Private, New Museum For Miami

Get ready for another real estate deal museum, this one in Miami. Somewhere on Biscayne Boulevard, art collector Gary Nader plans to build a museum for Latin American art. It doesn’t yet have a site, but it has a design by Mexican architect Fernando Romero, a collection (600 modern and contemporary pieces Nader owns), and an exhibition program:

The first year of programming will feature a retrospective of works by Fernando Botero and a Brazilian art exhibit, along with individual shows of works by Latin American masters Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam, Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera.

That’s according to an article published about a week ago in the Miami Herald: Miami Art Collector Unveils Plans for Latin American Art Museum.

I wish Nader well, but wonder about a few assumptions. For example, the cost of the “90,000-square-foot museum, expected to open in early 2016,” was given as “about $50 million.” That seems somewhat optimistic to me, as does the timing. Nader is still assessing three sites. Getting all the paperwork and construction work done in a little over a year? Well, it wouldn’t happen in a lot of big cities, that’s for sure.

NaderMuseumRenderingAnd btw, there’s another complication: Nader told the Miami Herald he’s still talking to three potential development partners. (He owns a gallery in Wynwood.)

Nader has taken the route that the Museum for African Art in New York, now called  The Africa Center, tried (among others): he plans to pair the museum with condominiums in a $300 residential tower. The units, perhaps 300 in all, will go for $2 million to $20 million. If they can subsidize the museum, great!

Fernando Romero is, as you’ll recall, the son-in-law of multi-billionaire Carlos Slim, for whom he designed the Soumaya Museum–which when it opened in 2011 was set to be an anchor for a development intended to include offices, apartments and shops. I’m not sure what happened to that.

Romero, who apprenticed with Rem Koolhas, made an interesting exterior statement with the irregular, sloping, lopsided Soumaya. But it got mixed reviews as a museum. His idea for Nader’s museum is at left.

If you are going to Art Basel Miami Beach this year, you can get a look:

During Art Basel and through January, Nader will display the rendering and a model of the museum at his gallery, 62 NE 27th St. Guests can also see a preview of some of the Latin American art in Nader’s collection on the second floor of his gallery until the museum opens in 2016.

Please report back!

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gary Nader via the Miami Herald

Once More Into the Storerooms >> Discoveries!

1016728-1-669x1024Now it’s the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh’s turn to find fantastic art works in its storerooms, as many other museums have done. Among the newly discovered pieces: a hand-painted enamel bowl with roundels of butterflies from the Yongzheng period, a “bizarre googly-eyed dragon bowl” and cinnabar lacquer panel (below right) from the Qianlong period, a ritual bronze from the Western Zhou period, a Gupta period Buddha head (at left), a gilded bronze Thai Buddha head and a Bamana Boli figure.

Many are going into a reinstallation of the Carnegie’s “Art before 1300” galleries, which will open next year. The museum says it discovered strengths, like Chinese ceramics, Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from South and Southeast Asia and African masks, that it didn’t know it had.

1019076-1024x689The Carnegie does not have a dedicated curator for either its Asian or African collections.

So, in this case, “As part of an ongoing effort to strengthen visitor engagement with the museum’s permanent collection,” it hired outside consultants to review its collections: Philip Hu for the Asian works and Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers for the African collection, which is quite small. The museum also, of course, contacted curators at other museums, who–as is practice–“generously shared information and advice,” a spokesman said. The process has been going on for four years.

From the press release issued about these discoveries, I’ve pasted a few images here.

Also, there’s this wonderful Nkisi Nkondi figure, below.

Nkisi

I have just a little sympathy for museums that don’t know what’s in their storeroom–but not always that much. This case is more understandable. And also credit museums for announcing discoveries like these, rather than just putting them out there, as if they knew all along. Transparency on this matter is the way to go.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Art

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.

At The Philbrook: Retrospective For A No-Longer-Needed Exhibition

1954_12_PressThis Sunday, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa opens what I think should be a fascinating show: IMPACT: The Philbrook Indian Annual. It’s a retrospective on the competition the Philbrook held for 33 years, from 1946 to 1979, open to Native American artists. The museum says that

Over the years nearly 1,000 artists from 200 Native American communities entered almost 4,000 works of art for judging, exhibition, awards, and sale. The Philbrook Indian Annual played a pivotal role in the definition of twentieth-century Native American fine art through several key aspects of the competition’s design…

It stopped before I was paying much, if any, attention to Indian art–but I can believe that the month-long Annual played an important role in the recognition of the value of Indian art. Here are some aspects of the annual that made it different, drawn from the press release:

  • The Philbrook Indian Annual focused on paintings, in a variety of styles, while other juried shows of the era emphasized traditional Native art forms like pottery and basketry.
  • It was a juried exhibition, not an outdoor festival.
  • Jurors were mostly other Native American artists reviewing the work of their peers, rather than exclusively non-Native art critics evaluating work emerging from Native American communities.
  • It sparked a significant critical dialogue surrounding the definition of Native art: what it was and what it should be,  In 1958 Philbrook became the site of a national conversation about this subject when judges rejected a painting by Yanktonai Dakota artist Oscar Howe (1915–1983). They thought it was too contemporary to be Indian art. (His Dance of the Heyoka, c.1954, is above left, while  W. Richard “Dick” West, Sr.’s Water Serpent, c, 1951, is at right, below.)

Howe, who criticized the panel for its narrow view, catalyzed the Philbrook to create a new category for Non-Traditional Painting the following year, 1959.

1951_11_PressThe Philbrook’s curator Christina E. Burke organized IMPACT, drawing from the Philbrook’s permanent collection. As the release notes:

The Annual helped shape the Philbrook collection into one of the finest surveys of twentieth century Native American art in the world. From the Museum’s announcement in 1938, Philbrook received important collections of such traditional Native objects as beadwork, pottery, textiles, and baskets from donors like, Roberta Campbell Lawson and Clark Field.

But I still wondered why the Philbrook discontinued the Annual. Here’s what they said:

By then [1979] the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe had opened in 1962; major museums had begun to include Native American art in their exhibitions and galleries; and media, collectors, and museum professionals began recognizing Native artists for their fine art over traditional art forms. Philbrook made its impact on Native American art through the Annual during those 33 years and encouragingly created its own obsolescence when the conversation surrounding Native American art began to evolve. We continue our emphasis on Native American fine art today through our exhibitions and extensive permanent collections at both Philbrook locations.

Clearly, what constitutes Native American art versus contemporary art continues today, at museums like the Peabody Essex and the Brooklyn Museum. The Annual may not have lost its relevance.

But there’s some good news: IMPACT may travel, the museum says.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Philbrook