Stunning news from Austrian: Vermeer’s largest painting, The Art of Painting, has been
claimed by the heirs of a prominent Austrian family who say the work was sold by force to Adolf Hitler. American soldiers rescued it from salt-mine storage.

The work has hung in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna since 1946; the priceless 1665-6 painting is probably the most important work ever subjected to a restitution claim. I surely can’t think of another. It’s also Vermeer’s only “self-portrait,” albeit only his back.

According to news reports from Europe, Andreas Theiss — a descendant of Count Jaromir Czernin — has asked the Austrian Culture Ministry to return the painting. Theiss told Der Spiegel that Czernin, whose wife was Jewish, had sold the work “to protect the life of his familiy” for a price of no more than 1 million Reichmarks, “a fraction of its value.” Czernin was also related to an Austrian leader deposed by the Nazis.

The Culture Ministry confirmed the claim to Agence France Presse and said it would refer the request to a restitution committee. AFP also said that the family had claimed the painting before, in the 1960s, but their requests were denied by a ruling that said the sale was voluntary and the price was appropriate.

New laws have taken effect since then — and new attitudes, too.  

In July, I traveled up to Boston, and then Marblehead, where I interviewed Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, and if their names don’t ring a bell, they will soon. My article about them, just published in The Art Newspaper‘s September issue, calls them “The Most Important Collectors You’ve Never Heard Of.” If and when it is published online, I’ll update this post.
 Meantime, here’s a bit about the story:

In their charming tale, the van Otterloos began collecting by buying horse carriages to fill a barn they owned in Vermont. It was only at the suggestion of Peter Sutton, then a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and now director of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, that they started to collect Dutch Old Masters. Now they own what many believe is the best collection of them in private hands — excepting the Queen of England and the Prince of Lichtenstein, if you call their treasures private.

The van Otterloos own Rembrandt’s 1632 Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh, Aged 62, seen here (but on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and about 70 other master works. As the article reveals, most of them will go on view next year in an exhibition that starts at the Mauritshuis in the Hague, then moves to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. and two other American museums.

And in the article, the van Otterloos say definitively — for the first time, a few sources told me — that they will eventually put the collection into the public domain.

UPDATED: Here’s a link to the article on my website.

[Read more…] about “The Most Important Collectors You’ve Never Heard Of”

Take a look fall exhibitions schedules, and it’s easy to see how the recession has affected museums’ offerings: exhibits are staying in place longer and they are less ambitious than they were a few years ago, for a start. In fact, I think some small shows will provide the most excitement — and I’m not talking about Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, which will go on view at the Metropolitan Museum on Sept. 10.

Here’s one I’m really eager to see: Icons of The Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings From Papunya, which opened on Sept. 1 at the Grey Art Gallery of NYU. Organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, it has already been on view there and in Los Angeles.

“Early” is a matter of degree: these works were created in the 1970s, after a school teacher gave men from the Central Australian Desert paint, boards and tools and suggested they paint. Curator Roger Benjamin has said the images harken back to ancient mark-making. 

The mysterious abstract designs are said to be symbolic.

 The exhibit, described more deeply in the Grey’s press release and exhibition website, is the first to focus on these works. (It includes reviews, including this one from the Ithaca Times.) I was also able the see more about the show, and its story, at Amazon, where one can “look inside” the catalogue.

The paintings are all drawn from the collection of John (Cornell PhD, ’70) and Barbara Wilkerson, and have never before been exhibited as a group.

Unfortunately for me, NYU was closed this three-day weekend, and that meant that Grey was not open on Saturday, which was the first day I could have gone downtown to see the show.

Photo Credits: Mystery Sand Mosaic, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, 1974 (top); Classic Pintupi Water Dreaming, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, 1972, Photo by Tony De Camillo for the Johnson Museum (bottom).

You have to have mixed feelings about web exhibits: seeing art face-to-face is essential. So when a photo editor at Newsweek.com recently alerted me to just-posted exhibition of vintage photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia on its site, I was a tad skeptical that it was worthy of comment. 

(
Like all print properties struggling to make their way in the web world, Newsweek is trying new things, and posting arts and photo galleries on its site is one. Good for Newsweek.com.) 

When I looked at the site, I changed my mind.

The photos belong to the Library of Congress, which also has an online exhibit about them. The photographs were taken by Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), photographer to the last czar, who fled Russia, with his crates of glass plates. The LOC purchased them from his family in 1948. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of his subjects using three color filters and combined them into beautiful color images — they look as if they were taken yesterday.

The two web exhibits do different things and will appeal to different audiences. Newsweek’s slide show is more polished: editors chose some of the best images and added some context. It’s more likely to appeal to the general public. The LOC’s is more scholarly. You may want so spend some time at both.

Photo Credits: Peasant women offer berries to visitors to their izba, a traditional wooden house, near the small town of Kirillov, 1909 (top); Monastery of St. Nil’ on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver’ Province, northwest of Moscow, 1910 (bottom), Courtesy Library of Congress.

 

The sample is small, so use the salt, but a new report about corporate giving does not bode well for arts organizations. As Donna Devaul, executive director of LBG Research Institute, wrote when I asked, “I’m afraid the news is not great for the arts–many corporations that have supported the arts have cut their funding.”

Well, we knew that, but LBG has put some new numbers on it, based on a survey of 440 corporations, of which 79 responded — about the same rate as LBG’s similar survey last November. Then, LBG projected that philanthropy budgets overall would drop by 3 to 5%; now, the numbers suggest overall corporate giving will fall this year by 7 to 9%. By comparison, the study says, after 9/11, corporate giving fell by 12.1%, according to Giving USA. (In 2008, Giving USA said in June, corporate giving fell by 8%.)

Only 4% of those that give to arts and culture are increasing those gifts in 2009 vs. 50% that are cutting back support to arts and culture.

LBG’s new report, called “Making the Most of What We Have: Corporate Giving in the New Economy” (press release is here; full report is for sale).

Even in good times, corporations provide only a sliver of support for the arts, really, but this is a moment when arts groups can use all the support they can get. Every dollar matters.