The heavy-duty cultural property fight between Peru and Yale just got a little lighter. Peru has withdrawn the fraud and conspiracy charges from the lawsuit it filed in 2008 that asks Yale to return Inca artifacts removed from Machu Picchu bu Hiram Bingham when he “discovered” and explored the site in 1911-1915. 

According to the Associated Press, Peru “recently filed papers in federal court dismissing six of 17 counts from its lawsuit.” The article continued:

The fraud allegations that were withdrawn accused Yale of intending to deceive Peru by promising to return the artifacts and conspiring with Bingham to retain the artifacts unlawfully by fraudulently assuring that Yale would return the artifacts when Peru demanded.

The new action could move the case toward an easier resolution. But Yale didn’t take the opportunity to make nice completely, as the article made clear:

“Peru has dropped all claims of Yale having intentionally done anything wrong,” said Jonathan Freiman, Yale’s attorney. “We’re glad that they have done so, but we think the rest of the case is equally misguided and should be withdrawn, as well.”

Yale and Peru have come close to a resolution before: in 2007, they had a deal to give Peru ownership of the disputed pieces, but allow joint custody and exhibition. Peru changed its mind, and backed out of that deal.

Which put everything back in court: negotiations are better, needless to say. 

Here’s a link to the AP article and here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal “Masterpiece” column I wrote about Machu Picchu in 2008.

UPDATE, 5/27/10: Read my post about Peru’s claim for the Paracas textiles here.

 

Now this is hot news: a reason to like the Post Office!

As of Thursday, American stamps will carry the works of 10 abstract expressionists, in a new series of commemoratives. Better yet, the U.S. Postal Service, in the form of senior vice president Linda Kingsley and others, is venturing to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo to make the announcement in a first-day-of-issue ceremony with its director, Louis Grachos.

How did the Albright-Knox snare this honor?

Four paintings from its collection — The Liver Is The Cock’s Comb by Arshile Gorky, Convergence by Jackson Pollock, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 by Robert Motherwell and Orange and Yellow by Mark Rothko — were chosen by the 15-member Citizens’ Stamps Advisory Committee. That’s more than any other museum, obviously!

The other honored artists are Joan Mitchell, Hans Hoffman, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still and Adolph Gottlieb. Here’s a look:

According to the USPS,

…art director Ethel Kessler and noted art historian Jonathan Fineberg (Gutgsell Professor of Art History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) selected ten paintings to feature on this colorful pane of self-adhesive stamps. Kessler used elements from Barnett Newman’s Achilles (1952) to frame the stamps. The arrangement of the stamps suggests paintings hanging on a gallery wall. For design purposes the sizes of the stamps are not in relative proportion to the paintings.

Congrats to the Albright-Knox, which can use some good news. (Its next big exhibition, The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal 1941-1960, which I wrote about here, opens on Mar. 19.) 

We as a nation, need to see more art — everywhere — and you can help by buying these stamps, starting Thursday. The USPS pays attention to sales, I am told.

UPDATE, 3/11: Here’s a link to the press release, which has more details.

Photo Credit: USPS and Albright-Knox Art Gallery

 

If you live in New York, or were visiting, last week was a marathon. A few reflections:

• There may be synergy for out-of-towners to have the ADAA’s Art Show the same week as The Armory Show (right), but I wish they were separated by a month, as they used to be. The eyes blur…just from seeing those two fairs.
• And yet: The Art Newspaper calculated that “There is a record 483 galleries and artist projects in 11 further concurrent fairs.”
• And “It would take 64 hours and 25 minutes to see every presentation should five minutes be spent at each.” Who has that time, and stamina?
• “This year was better than last” is a common refrain; I’ve said it too (about this year’s Art Show, for one). But how can one say, really?
• Predictably, a press release arrived today: “The largest edition of The Armory Show in its 12-year history has proven a rousing success, with exhibitors reporting robust sales, and record-breaking crowds filling both piers to capacity and breaking previous attendance records.” No word from The Art Show yet, but…

Maastricht, another marathon, begins this week (…unfortunately, I won’t be going).

Actually, to my mind, the star artist last week — and before that — was William Kentridge. I was lucky enough to attend the opening of The Nose at the opera Friday night, and he definitely was the man of the night. I can not imagine a traditional production of the opera; Kentridge’s imagination made it work.

Kentridge did, of course, have a presence at The Art Show, in Marian Goodman’s booth.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of The Armory Show, The Metropolitan Opera

People, it seems to me, really like to look at art outside, which accounts for the popularity of sculpture parks and rooftop exhibitions. It’s a two-fer.

That’s one of the things the High Line, Manhattan’s new elevated park, has discovered (anecdotally), and that’s why I proposed an article to The Art Newspaper on Lauren Ross, the curator it hired last May. It was published last Friday (here). The High Line has already had about 2 million visitors since last June, and yes, people go for the park and the view, but they’re looking at the art, too.

My article talked about the upcoming installations, one large one and two smaller pieces:

• a sound work by Stephen Vitiello, which will open in June, will fill a a tunnel-like passage at 14th Street with 59 bell tones from throughout the city and state, recorded in places like churches, bicycles and the New York stock exchange.
• Viewing Station by Richard Galpin, who manipulates photographs of cityscapes by removing the colored emulsion, baring the paper underneath and leaving a constructivist-style image. He then creates a metal screen, also cut to mimic the geometry of the photograph; viewers look through that to get his abstracted view of the city (rendering above).
• Kim Beck will make the third work (similar to that below, which is called Space Available, and was installed at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 2008), debut TBD, consisting of three blank billboard-style works that refer to empty storefronts and other indicators of the recession. It’ll be installed on rooftops close to the High Line.

Some things I learned when speaking with Ross were inevitably left on the cutting-room floor, including Ross’s comment (in the wake of her tenure as Interim Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum) that while “feminist art is very important to me,” she “won’t keep a running count” of commissions to male and female artists. But she does promise that women and men will be equal in her commissions, over time.

I don’t have a sample of Vitiello’s piece for the High Line, but as it happens, his new installation — Something Like Fireworks — recently opened at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College. Here’s a taste of that.

There will be two additional commissions this year, and more next year, and…

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the High Line and the artists

 

History museums, and many art museums, sometimes have a hard time moving into recent decades, especially into pop culture. Is the subject really worthy of being in a museum? Is it scholarly enough? Etc.

The New-York Historical Society lucked out on this score. A couple of years ago, it realized it needed to do an exhibit on the Sixties, but what? It was lucky on four scores: One of its then-trustees, Emanuel Stern, was a Deadhead. The Grateful Dead were hoarders, saving what seems like everything they touched themselves and received from their rabid fans. In 2008, the Dead gave the archive to the University of California at Santa Cruz. And the Dead are the subject of serious scholarship.

So, from today through July 4, there’s The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. It’s the first and, for now, the only look at an archive that runs 600 linear feet. Interestingly, the IMLS gave UCSC more than $600,000 to help digitize the collection.

Deadheads will love the show, and others will get a lot of out it, too. The Dead were real innovators, and not just in music. They were great businessmen.

I wrote about the show for The Daily Beast (here), which has also posted a gallery of several items that are on view on Central Park West.