Even the New York Philharmonic wants to cash in on the star power of Gustavo Dudamel, the
talented, glamorous new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and there’s

nothing wrong with that. Just by chance, I stopped in on the NYPhil’s website today, and discovered that a one-of-a-kind T-shirt, autographed by Dudamel and violin master Pinchas Zukerman after their mid-January performance at Lincoln Center, is up for bid on eBay.

The minimum bid is $100, and proceeds go to the NYPhil. At the moment there are no bids, and you have until 11 a.m. PDT on Mar. 12 to make a bid. It’s the only bit of Dudamel memorabilia on eBay now — but who knows where this could go?

Picture credit: © Dan Porges

[Read more…] about Dudamel — T-shirt star?

You may have missed the most interesting arts story in Sunday’s New York Times, because “Pulling Art Sales Out of Thinning Air” appeared in the business section. It was a profile of Larry Gagosian, with a “nut graf” — the paragraph giving the gist of the story — saying: “Everyone is vulnerable. Especially Larry Gagosian.” 

Some of the choice bits:

His business is the ultimate black-box operation, a never-ending and international swirl of cash and canvas that is built for maximum secrecy. What is certain is that his overhead is a multiple of his competitors’. Also certain is that the prices of work by the young artists he has been luring into his galleries — prices that have doubled or tripled in some cases, courtesy of his imprimatur — are falling like bank stocks. Worst of all, the days of the $75 million private deal have ground to a halt.

[Read more…] about Eye on Gagosian

In honor of the Armory Show in New York — where, barring a miracle, sales are likely to be slow — today I was going to post a cartoon that’s on view in an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum: “On the Money,” a collection of New Yorker cartoons, is full of very funny drawings by artists commenting on money and how it defines us (whether it belongs at the Morgan is a question for another day, and also related to money). But late yesterday, I learned from the Morgan that it could not grant permission for me to reproduce it. So — you’ll have to visualize.

The cartoon, by Whitney Darrow, Jr., shows an man beside his painting, and reads “Buy now, save up to $50,000.” It was published in September, 1951. Darrow meant the man to be the artist, but now it could well be a dealer, too! 

UPDATED: Last night I ran into a senior figure in the art world, who told me that he’d been told that sales during February’s five-day ADAA Art Show, which I wrote about for the Daily Beast (link), came to just 14 sales among the 70 dealers. I posted that here, with a caveat, and set out to confirm. When I finally reached Linda Blumberg, ADAA’s executive director, she said that was wrong. Speaking from the Armory Show, she did not have numbers at hand; but, she said, more dealers sold something than not, and some sold many pieces. “Granted,” she added, “more were at the lower end of the price scale.” But not all, as I mentioned in the Beast piece.  

I won’t be writing about the Armory Show, but The Art Market Monitor has been keeping track of several reports from the floor.    

 

All around the globe, financial traders, corporate executives, and consumers are
holding back, keeping their wallets closed and sitting on their hands. No one — as recent economic statistics depressingly show — is doing much buying. So it comes as rather a shock to find out, as The Art Newspaper just revealed, that Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is rushing in where others fear to tread. Govan has commissioned Jeff Koons to make a titanic life-size replica of a locomotive suspended from a crane for LACMA’s collection. Price tag: $25 million. The Art Newspaper called it the most expensive commission ever by a museum, and said LACMA has already spent about $1.7 million of the $2 million so far pledged for the piece. I have to wonder about Govan’s sanity.

[Read more…] about LACMA’s astonishing Mr. Govan

Last week, I wrote a piece on Forbes.com about UNESCO’s International Year of Astronomy (link), which kicked off in January. In it, I mentioned the “Galileo: Images of the Universe From Antiquity to the Telescope” exhibition opening this month at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

I particularly like shows like this, exhibitions that link two disciplines, because they attract both audiences, in this case, people who are interested in either science or art.

Americans, I’ve been told by experts in arts participation, often favor one discipline — always attending the symphony for example but rarely going to an art museum, and vice versa.

At times like this, when cultural institutions are seeking to broaden their bases, cross-disciplinary shows are a good model.  

My Forbes article was by no means a comprehensive roundup of all activities during the International Year of Astronomy. But afterwards I learned of a show like the one at the Palazzo Strozzi much closer to home. On April 4, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia will open “Galileo, Medici and the Age of Astronomy,” which — judging from its website — also looks great. Alongside Galileo’s gear, there’ll be art and artifacts from the Medici family.

Here are two samples, both borrowed from the Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence: at right is a polyhedral sundial, with nine faces all telling the same time no matter which face is used, from 1587; below is a cylindrical sundial, whose horizontal brass arm marks time on the cylinder, from 1574-1587. From afar, they look like works of art.   

I thought there was going to be another example of this in last Sunday’s New York Times, when I saw the City section’s article about “birding in a museum.” It put me in mind of a little tour at the Metropolitan Museum I had a few years ago: New York Audubon, with the Met, escorted bird-lovers around the collection, picking out and explaining images of birds from antiquity through the present. It was charming.

Some of the hard-core birders present had probably not set foot in the Met before. But I bet they’ve been back.

The City section’s story, by the way, was about an Audubon water color show at the New-York Historical Society — not quite the same thing, but no doubt a good exhibition anyway. 

[Read more…] about Reaching for the Stars