The news from Egypt continues to be dire. Earlier this week, we heard that storage rooms at the Giza pyramids were raided, and yesterday came more reports that pieces are being destroyed. What isn’t smashed is going…who knows where? But if they are collectable, knowledgeable authorities have suggested that artifacts will find their way into collections in places like Kuwait, Japan, China and Russia.

See below for more on what’s happening in “the trade.”

But first, a good source on the damage, Talking Pyramids, reported yesterday:

…looting continues in the pyramid fields with the raiding of storage warehouses south of Giza early yesterday morning.

Six guards and a policeman at the warehouses were bound and gagged by about 60 thieves who broke into the Selim Hassan artifact storehouse, which housed the reports of Dr. Selim Hassan’s excavations from years 1929 till 1968.

No wonder Minister of Antiquities Zawi Hawass is threatening to quit, though many doubt his candor. Not only has he been ineffective at protecting museums and sites, he has also been accused of corruption, which he denies.

Today, Hawass blogged about ongoing looting. He admitted that among the storage sites attacked was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s excavation storeroom at Dahshur, which has been raided twice — “looters were able to overpower and tie up the guards.” Other sites he mention are Qantara East, in the Sinai; Saqqara, where padlocked tombs were opened; Abusir, a Czech expedition; Giza, and Tell el-Basta and Wadi el-Feiran, near Sharm el-Sheikh:

Site inspectors at each of these locations are still carefully checking the magazine inventories against their databases to assess the full extent of the damage. I am waiting for the inspectors to finish their work and file their final reports with me.

That was just the storehouses. Hawass also cites damage at pyramid sites and Islamic monuments. The above picture shows damage to a Ramses statue at Aswan.

The accuracy of Hawass’s statements, given his past track record, can not be affirmed.

There’s not much people in the west can do about this. UNESCO, the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and dozens of organizations have called on Egyptian authorities to take action. Deutsche Well offers this view of the situation.

One name was noticeably missing from recent reports, but not for lack of trying to help. Yesterday I emailed Christopher A. Marinello, Executive Director & General Counsel, of The Art Loss Register, which registers and helps track and restore ownership of stolen art, to find out his view of what could be done.

Here’s what he wrote back:

I offered my assistance to Mr. Hawass within a day of the first events in Egypt. He did not respond. I wrote again after the first reports of theft….again, no response. We now know ZH is fighting for his own job at the moment.

The ALR has been made aware of a number of items that have gone missing and is actively investigating. We are working closely with law enforcement and various international Customs agents who are on high alert for this material.

We have also been contacted by many noteworthy names in the trade who are very concerned that these items do not go through their establishments. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have no qualms about purchasing these items.

The trade needs to be more vigilant. What we really need is for the institutions in Egypt that are suffering these losses to contact us and get them listed on the database immediately. We have agreed to waive all registration fees for museums in Egypt and cannot simply rely on the old order to keep watch and aggressively pursue Egypt’s cultural heritage while this situation unfolds.

Margaret Maitland has pictures and updates on the looted pieces, as ever.

See my more recent post, here, with a new inventory of items missing from the Cairo Museum.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Zahi Hawass

 

It’s bad form to look a gift horse in the mouth, but that maxim came to mind when I learned that Carlos Slim’s Soumaya Museum of Art in Mexico City “opened” yesterday.

Slim, either the richest person in the world or close, depending on various market gyrations, has been building a new museum for his collection, which spans the 15th century through the 20th and is said to include 66,000 works. The museum is called Soumaya after his late wife, who died in 1999. The six-story building was designed by his son-in-law Fernando Romero, and includes a 350-seat auditorium, a library, a cafeteria, and a lounge along with galleries. Slim’s collection will be shown on a rotating basis.

According to the Associated Press (via NPR):

Inside, the Soumaya features 183,000 square feet (17,000 square meters) of exhibition space encompassing six halls.

One hall will house Slim’s collection of coins, bills, gold and silver, for the first time on display to the public. The others will showcase his collection of portraits, fashion and furniture; works by European masters such as da Vinci and El Greco; as well as 19th- and 20th-century paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh.

Other reports, including those by Reuters and AFP, say the initial display includes a large selection of Rodin sculptures and paintings by Diego Rivera and Rufino Tayamo. 

Not known in general philanthropist, considering his wealth of more than $50 billion, Slim in this case has given a gifts to his fellow citizens — and the world. Admission will be free.

Slim will also maintain his previous Soumaya museum, a smaller affair in a different part of town.

This is all great, and I thank him. I wish Slim had not spoiled it a tad with his opening on Tuesday, a glitzy affair hosted by Larry King for 1,500 guests including Mexico’s president to Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.   

The rest of us don’t get to see it until March 29. Reuters also said that:

Slim plans to build a huge development anchored by the museum that will include offices, apartments and shops with a price tag of $750 million for the first phase of construction.

That makes it seem a bit more like a business decision than a generous gift; earlier reports placed the cost of the museum at $34 million (pretty slim, no?). But then again the museum was supposed to have opened last year, and the delay may have meant an escalation in costs.

But I quibble, and I shouldn’t. I am eager to see the collection and the building myself, or at least to hear what the critics have to say.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of AP (bottom)

In recent days, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have reported on their 2010s, and both are pretty much jumping for joy — which, of course, is not thrilling news for art museums.

Let’s look at a few numbers. In 2010:

• Total sales by both, including dealer and private-treaty sales, equaled $9.8 billion.
• Christie’s total ($5 billion, up 53%) was its highest ever, and Sotheby’s ($4.8 billion, up 74%) was exceeded in 2007.
• Sotheby’s sold 609 lots for more than $1 million, and Christie’s sold 606 for more than $1 million. I tried to find out how many U.S. homes sold for more than $1 million, but could not find the statistic. But, just for context — not direct comparison — the average price for an existing home sold in the U.S. last year was $173,100, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Those are all worldwide statistics, but Christie’s breaks out the totals by region, and the U.S. leads, followed by Europe.

Both houses report that Impressionist and Modern sales were highest, followed by contemporary art.

The Klimt at right fetched $27.9 million last June at Christie’s.

Without citing statistics here — they exist — it’s clear that income distribution in the U.S. is growing more uneven, with more money going into the pockets of the wealthy, many of whom become art collectors. Paddle registration by newcomers, according to Christie’s, rose 22.7% last year.

U.S. museums — collections of private collections, by and large — are going to become even more dependent on them. There will be more comments/criticisms about too-cozy relationships and questions about why some decisions are made (displaying collections, accepting art donations, etc.).

The best response to all of this is as much transparency as possible. Collectors will try to keep things private, but sometimes museum directors will have to gingerly convince them otherwise.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s 

Here’s a list of recent exhibitions, all mounted by the same museum:

• Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman
• Starburst: Color Photography In America, 1970-1980
• Roaring Tigers, Leaping Carp: Decoding the Symbolic Language of Chinese Animal Painting
• Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns
• Jeep, 1942
• Heavy Metal: Arms and Armor

Which would you most like to see? Which was most educational? Most uplifting? Which most fit with the institution’s founding ambition to be the “Art Palace of the West,” to “bring a public art institution to life for the benefit of all citizens”?   

Finally, which do you think attracted the biggest audience?

Easy to answer that last one: More women than men go to museums, and more people are interested in clothes than in art. Wedded Perfection, which ran from Oct. 9 through Jan. 30, set an attendance record for the Cincinnati Art Museum, which is where these shows took place. 63,176 came to see it, exceeding a record set seven years ago when 62,203 people came to see Petra: Lost City of Stone.

Wedded Perfection displayed nearly 60 gowns from the late 1700s through modern times. Interestingly, along with the show, the museum “decided to give away a wedding,” according to a press release that is not posted online. “Local couples were invited to submit video applications, telling us why they should be chosen. After an overwhelming response, we narrowed the list to four finalists, and asked visitors to the Cincinnati Art Museum to vote for their favorite.”

In a week when the National Endowment for the Arts redefined arts participation so that it looks as if more Americans are participating in ‘the arts,” none of this is surprising. Yes, museums are struggling to attract visitors in an entertainment-heavy world, but I can’t say I like that roster of exhibitions. Especially when you consider that a show called The Amazing American Circus Poster, opened on Saturday. Also on view, a micro car, contemporary Dutch design, a collection of contemporary art from the 21c Museum Hotel, which will open a branch in Cincinnati next year, and — at last — Force of Nature, which unites Barbizon paintings with contemporary Japanese ceramics.

The Cincinnati museum is a wonderful museum located in a park that’s not really near anything — so that’s a drawback it struggles with. The museum recently expanded free parking, which costs $4, to those who buy more than $15 worth of something in the gift shop or spend more than $10 on food, etc. Admission is free.

But I wish it were better at attracting people to — yes, I’m saying it — real art. I’ve put a few things from its permanent collection here. William Harnett’s Last Rose of Summer and Mantegna’s A Sibyl and A Prophet.

It’s not that costumes and design are not art (I’m wary of those Jeeps and the micro car, however), it’s simply that the mix in Cincinnati seems unbalanced to me — too many “crowd-pleasing” shows, the equivalent of Musak or easy-listening music.

I’ve written about these trends before (here, here and here). From my point of view, there’s not much to celebrate when a wedding show with a contest sets attendance records. But it all depends on what your definition of art is…

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum

I confess that I am not a big fan of Marc Chagall’s art, and I’ve never quite understood his popularity.

Nevertheless, I’m writing about Paris Through The Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle, which opens on Tuesday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art anyway. That’s because I am interested in the cross-fertilization artists experience, particularly at artists’ colonies (see an old NYTimes article of mine), and the Philadelphia show also explores La Ruche — “the beehive” — at left.

La Ruche was the three-story cylindrical building in Montparnasse, Paris, that many artists of the early 20th century called home. Chagall moved there soon after arriving in Paris in 1911, and worked there too.

La Ruche was founded in 1902 by French sculptor Alfred Boucher, but it soon became the hive of Eastern European artists, though not exclusively. At one time or another, the rolls included Archipenko, Kisling, Lipchitz, Soutine, Leger, Zadkine, Pechstein, Leger, Brancusi, Rivera, Modigliani, Delaunay, and others.

Must have been quite a place. World War II killed it, though.

In Philadelphia, the show is not a history of La Ruche, but the museum says it has explored creative exchanges that took place in the 1910s and 1920s among the artists who knew Chagall. They all mixed elements of cubism with their own folk traditions.

La Ruche had its own exhibition schedule, and Chagall, the museum says in its press release, once said, “In La Ruche, you either came out dead or famous.”

Paris Through the Window is representative of another trend at museums: though a few key works are borrowed — including the titular one, which comes from the Guggenheim Museum — most are drawn from the Philadelphia museum’s permanent collection. The economy bites.

Nothing wrong with that, btw. If the show’s advanced billing is correct, it looks as if the museum did a fine job of it.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum (bottom)