After nearly 12 years of fighting, it looks as if the legal dispute over Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally is finally going to trial. In a little noticed ruling, U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered the trial on Sept. 30.

If you don’t remember what this is all about, I certainly do. It was just about this time in October 1997 that I went to a reception preceding the opening of The Leopold Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, and heard a whisper about a much earlier and long-forgotten claim on Wally. After weeks of investigation — when I learned of and saw documents indicating that Wally had been surrendered under duress by the owner, Leah Bondi Jaray, to the Nazis — I wrote an article about it and many of Leopold’s collecting oddities: “The Zealous Collector” was published on Christmas Eve, 1997 and led, several days later, to the Manhattan D.A.’s subpoena of the painting.

Coming back to you? There’ve been so many twists, turns, claims, counter-claims and digressions since then that I’ve lost track, too.

That’s why it’s good that David D’Arcy, Andrew Shea and Barbara Morgan are producing a documentary on the case — “Portrait of Wally” — with Shea directing. They have interviewed more than 20 art historians, provenance researchers, attorneys (including Robert Morgenthau, who issued the subpoena, and Michael Mukasey, the U.S. District Court Judge in the case until his appointment as U.S. Attorney General in 2007), journalists (including me), and other experts.

[Read more…] about Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally Goes to Trial

Mario Resca is at it again. Resca is the corporate executive, the former president of McDonald’s Italy, whose late 2008 appointment as a cultural official charged with transforming many of Italy’s cultural treasures was met with a 7,000-signature protest.

So much for all that. As Resca has shown, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal printed last January, for example, he has ideas worth considering. Now, The Art Newspaper has obtained an interview, and Resca took the opportunity to elaborate on some parts of his plans for Italy’s cultural sites. And though he said he has won over some of his critics, he also tweaked them, rightly so, saying:

“Many of our great museums do not have an up-to-date catalogue or inventory of their collections….where have our high priests and vestal virgins of culture been for the past 20 years? Why have they not reported the misappropriation, the state of neglect, the lack of any protective measures and the chronic underfunding?”

The article is not online, so you’ll have to buy the October issue of the paper to see the whole thing.

Here are a few key points:

• Come January, he’ll have control of about 40 million Euros, allowing him to start totally redeveloping the Pinacoteca and Accademia di Brera in Milan.
• He plans to introduce a tax law to encourage donations to museum, instead of penalizing them.
• He wants to decentralize authority, letting museum directors actually manage their institutions — and he’ll “rationalize” them, as too many draw very few visitors.
• Recognizing his lack of art/museum expertise, he’ll appoint three experts, one each in archaeology, in classic/modern art, and in contemporary art, to help him reverse the decline in visitorship and other troublesome trends.

Resca said he’d just returned to Rome from the U.S., where he had accompanied the Beffi Triptych to the National Gallery of Art for an exhibit and, later, met with Thomas Campbell, head of the Metropolitan Museum. That gave him an opening for signaling he wished to lend art: He praised the interest in Italian culture abroad “which is why the works much be exhibited abroad: they are our best ambassadors.” Does that mean higher fees? Maybe, but who isn’t exacting stiff prices for art loans these days?

A few questions notwithstanding, Resca may turn out to be a good thing for art.

Is Jazz At Lincoln Center tiptoeing to territory pioneered by its neighbor, the Metropolitian Opera? It looks a bit that way.

This week, you may be able to go to the movies to see a performance by Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis and Norah Jones doing the music of Ray Charles (right). It won’t be live (not by a long shot — see below), like the Met’s simulcasts, but it will be in high-definition.

This is a “first” the JALC press office told me. The 90-minute concert, which includes “Unchain My Heart,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “Busted,” “Makin’ Whoopee” and 11 other Charles hits, was recorded last February (!!!) and was sold out. But the time lapse appears to have made possible a multi-format release.

A Canadian company called Digiscreen is offering the show, in surround sound, plus rehearsal footage and interviews (here’s a link to the Oct. 15 offering, including a video). It’s available Oct. 15 through Oct. 21 in the U.S., in many places, including Butte, Mo., Allentown, Pa., Chicago, El Paso, and Las Vegas.

On Oct. 18, you can see the program on HDNet or listen to it on Sirius satellite radio, and on Oct. 20, you can buy the DVD. Next spring, Blue Note will release a live album of the concert. JALC seems to have thought of everything.

But back to the cinema: I’m not sure there’s enough going on at a concert to engage movie audiences: for one thing, Met director Peter Gelb has always insisted that it’s the live part of the Met simulcasts that appeals to audiences.

Still, this is worth a try. I’m not sure if this is a test, the start of a new full-court-press audience development program, or a one-off occasion, and those questions, sent to the JALC press office, were not answered.

So we’ll have to wait and see whether the costs — there had to be some — are worth the results.

Photo: Courtesy Jazz At Lincoln Center

[Read more…] about Jazz At The Movies: Is This Part Of A New All-Media Effort?

If anyone doubts the ripple effect of museum deaccessions, take a look at Fort Dodge, Iowa. There, the city-owned Blanden Memorial Art Museum is under fire for moving to sell more than 370 works of art in a sale set for today. Though museum leaders said the sale has been planned for a long time, and was triggered by an Association of American Museums report that criticized “overcrowding” at the museum, it wasn’t until pressed that the museum disclosed the works it planned to deaccession.

Worse, until yesterday, there were no prohibitions on purchases by museum staff or trustees and the sale included a “buy it now” option, causing worries that the Blanden would not achieve decent prices for the works on offer. The museum was also planning to sell works given to the museum by the federal government. According to the Fort Dodge Messenger:

[Yesterday, the museum] removed eight items from the sale list. Seven of those items were given to the museum in 1935, two years after it opened, by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. That agency commissioned unemployed artists to create works during the Great Depression.

The withdrawal of those pieces came after the U.S. General Services Administration contacted City Manager David Fierke on Thursday and asked the museum to refrain from selling any Depression-era artwork commissioned by the government. That agency requested that any such unwanted works be sent to the federal government.

Museum director Margaret Skove said the money raised will go toward conservation — not, as rules for larger museums would dictate, for acquisitions.

Meanwhile, a major benefactor, William Doan, had said “Cancel the auction or walk into the darkness of an uncertain future that may damage the reputation of the museum and the city for decades to come.”

Once the auction was allowed to proceed, according to the Messenger, Doan said that:

the Doan Family Foundation, of which he is the president and chairman, will no longer support the museum with money or gifts of art. Over the years, that foundation has given more than 50 artworks to the museum.

”We are never coming back, ever,” he said. ”We could not trust the museum ever again.”

Here’s the Messenger‘s account, with lists of the works to be sold and those removed.

True, the art involved isn’t by the likes of Eakins or Kandinsky, but that doesn’t mean this example isn’t worthy of attention. It’s the trend that matters, and even small museums have to be held to standards.

UPDATE, 10/11 A.M.: According to the Messenger, the auction raised about $10,000 for the museum.

UPDATE 2: And it gets worse — see comment by Doan below.

Photo: Courtesy Blanden Memorial Art Museum  

I was not surprised to read today’s Modern Arts Notes post about Michael Conforti’s refusal to discuss single-collector shows with AJ co-blogger Tyler Green. Conforti is, of course, the director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute as well as the current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. He is a thoughtful, scholarly man. We often agree, I think.

But last summer, when I was at the Clark to review its Dove/O’Keeffe: Circles of Influence show for the Wall Street Journal (mentioned here), I talked with Conforti about the same subject. It isn’t hard to see that single-collector shows are becoming more common, and I asked Conforti whether he thought AAMD needed to set some rules. To my surprise, he didn’t think it was an issue. At all.

Let’s face it: single-collector shows are going to continue, especially if money continues to be tight. Some are good, even very good. But they are unquestionably subject to abuse. Collectors can dangle the prospect of donations to a museum, essentially pressing it to go all out on an exhibition that includes works that wouldn’t ordinarily be shown. Or to take a particular point of view. They can play museums off against one another, as each vies for the promise of the works. They can use exhibits to drive up prices of their works, quickly selling after the works come down from the walls. Or not so quickly. And so on. This is not hypothetical — privately, directors and curators admit these things happen.

For whatever reason, I dropped the issue and did not ask the Association of Art Museum Curators for its opinion — but I’m glad Green is.

Rules won’t be easy to define, but they’re needed.

Photo: Courtesy The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute