CultureGrrl

My guess as to how Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court would rule on the question of whether to reopen the Barnes Foundation case has proven, unfortunately, to be correct.

A bit less expeditiously than he had promised at the Mar. 24 court hearing, Judge Ott yesterday issued his ruling: He stood by his Dec. 13, 2004 decision to allow the Barnes to move from Merion, PA, to Philadelphia, saying that neither the Friends of the Barnes nor Montgomery County had appropriate legal standing to bring a suit requesting that the case be reopened.

In a press release (not online at this writing), Derek Gillman, executive director and president of the Barnes, commented:

This very clear ruling ends the present distraction and we are forging ahead with plans for the new building.

Carolyn Carluccio, deputy solicitor for Montgomery County, said this to me yesterday afternoon in an e-mail:

We are certainly disappointed. I will be meeting with the Chair of the County Commissioners, Jim Mathews, to determine whether it is in the County's interest to pursue an appeal.

There is more than a little irony in this part of judge's ruling:

As the Attorney General and the trustees point out, the County's "special interests" in protecting historical resources and nurturing economic welfare are matters within the purview of the Attomey General's office. That Office...protects the general public, and there is no authority for a second sovereign [i.e., Montgomery County] to participate on behalf of a subset of the general public.

The attorney general's office (as I previously stated in the post linked at the top) did a shockingly inadequate job in protecting the interests of the general public in the Barnes case, as Judge Ott himself scathingly observed in an earlier written opinion. Montgomery County did not seek to discredit the performance of the attorney general's office when it requested reconsideration of the judge's decision, because it did not feel it could properly attack another government entity. I'd call this a "Catch 22."

The Philadelphia Inquirer's report, quoting reaction from Friends of the Barnes, is here. The text of Judge Ott's ruling is here. We can only find it amusing that the judge confides he decided to do a Google search on "The Barnes Foundation," discovering "about 2,590,000 hits." If only he had clicked on Result 37---the CultureGrrl post to which I linked to at the top of this one.

A. Alfred Taubman, Sotheby's former chairman, out of jail and back (as a client) at the auction house last night

Last night was a watershed for Sotheby's, not just because of its many records broken by its Contemporary sale, but also because it was the last day for redemption of the antitrust settlement coupons (issued to compensate clients who were hurt by illegal collusion between Sotheby's and Christie's in setting commission rates). If you still have those pieces of paper, shred them or frame them as souvenirs: As of today, they're worthless.

I don't know how Christie's carried those coupons on its balance sheet, but since Sotheby's is publicly traded, we do know, from its SEC filings, that as of Mar. 31, some $41.8 million of those coupons were unredeemed of the original $125 million, with each auction house then having potential liability for half of those amounts. Sotheby's reflected its $20.9 million share of those unredeemed certificates as a liability on its balance sheet. That means that it should be reporting a one-time windfall equal to the final unredeemed amount in the next quarter. A total of $125 million in coupons was originally issued as part of the antitrust settlement.

A. Alfred Taubman (above), Sotheby's former chairman, who was jailed for his involvement in the commission-fixing conspiracy, was back in good form this month at his old haunts, chatting up other attendees and buying two works at the Christie's Impressionist/modern sale, as he told me when I ran into him before Sotheby's Contemporary sale. He had no clue that this was a landmark day in the antitrust annals. "I wasn't even involved in the operations of the company when I was there," he assured me---the same stance that he (unsuccessfully) took at his criminal trial.

A few other interesting revelations, quoted from the latest Sotheby's Form 10Q:

As of March 31, 2008, the Company had outstanding auction guarantees totaling $301.4 million, the property relating to which had a mid-estimate sales price of $313.8 million. The Company's financial exposure under these auction guarantees is reduced by $41.9 million as a result of risk sharing arrangements with unaffiliated partners. The property related to such auction guarantees is being offered primarily at auctions in May and June 2008. As of March 31, 2008, $88.9 million of the guaranteed amount had been advanced by the Company....

As of May 8, 2008, the Company had outstanding auction guarantees totaling $232.5 million, the property relating to which had a mid-estimate sales price of $239.9 million. The Company's financial exposure under these auction guarantees is reduced by $42.6 million as a result of arrangements with unaffiliated third parties. The property related to such auction guarantees is being offered primarily at auctions in May and June 2008, with the remainder of the property to be offered at auctions in the second half of 2008. As of May 8, 2008, $84.4 million of the guaranteed amount had been advanced by the Company and will be recorded within notes receivable and consignor advances....

At March 31, 2008, consignor advances issued to the one borrower totaling $62.6 million comprised approximately 22% of the net Notes Receivable and Consignor Advances balance. Of this amount, $57.5 million is related to an auction guarantee.

Sotheby's would provide me with no further details about the megamillion loan to one borrower, nor would Bill Ruprecht, its president and CEO, disclose to me the final figure for the amount of the auction settlement coupons that were unredeemed as of today.
Sotheby's stock has perked up a bit since my report last Friday. It was trading at $28.58 as of 12:15 a.m., up 7.04% from yesterday's close.

Why is this artist smiling?

No, the above photo was not taken at the Brooklyn Museum. It's Takashi Murakami, posing in front of his $15.16-million "My Lonesome Cowboy," immediately after last night's Sotheby's Contemporary sale, which set auction records for him and 17 other artists.

When I wrote yesterday about having once seen Robert Rauschenberg at a major auction of his work, it occurred to me that you just don't see artists attending their sales any more. So imagine my surprise when I beheld Murakami (who, happily, has ditched his celebrity stylists and looked very much like an artist), sitting at the back of the saleroom where another example of the raunchiest work in his current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum sold for an astonishing hammer price of $13.5 million ($15.16 million, with buyers premium), trouncing its $3-4 million estimate. (It comes from an edition of three, plus two artist's proofs.) The price was more than five times his previous auction record. Murakami told me later that none of his works had ever sold for that much privately either.

The artist returned the favor to Sotheby's by himself purchasing the last lot in the sale, Yoshitomo Nara's "Light My Fire," for $1.16 million, setting an auction record for a sculpture by that artist. He looked excited and gleeful as it was hammered down to him.

You can see the similarity in these two Japanese manga-influenced artists' sensibilities. Here's Murakami's new acquisition:



The $362.04-million total made this the highest grossing auction in Sotheby's history. It also outdid Christie's $348.26-million Contemporary total of the night before. But Sotheby's offered 83 works, compared to only 57 at Christie's. After some exciting bidding wars during the first half of the sale, some of the fizz was lost and 10 works went unsold.

The big success was the $77-million hammer price for Francis Bacon's "Triptych," against an estimate of approximately about $70 million. Setting an auction record for any work of contemporary art at $86.28 million (with buyers premium), it sold to a private European collector. Sotheby's has not, at this writing, provided the customary geographic breakdown of buyers.

Also astonishing was the $21-million hammer price (against an estimate of $6-8 million) for a golden Yves Klein, "MG9." At $23.56 million with premium, purchaser Philippe Ségalot, the Paris/New York dealer, set an auction record for the artist. Sotheby's joy was tempered, though, by the failure of the lot with the night's second-highest estimate---a Mark Rothko that had been estimated to bring "in excess of $35 million." It went unsold at $33 million, and, what's worse, the catalogue disclosed that the auction house itself had a direct ownership interest in it.

The one poignant moment of the sale occurred when this lot came around the turntable:


Robert Rauschenberg, "Overdrive," 1963

I had to fight back tears, seeing the earthbound stop signs that, to me, signified the stopping of Rauschenberg's life, and the bird at the top, representing his soul flying free. In writing about another work with (according to the auction catalogue) "many of the same elements" as "Overdrive," Calvin Tomkins once quoted Rauschenberg as saying this:

Look at that. The birds have freed the stop signs.

It set a new auction record for the artist. So what. Read Barbara Rose's appreciation from yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and forget about the financial appreciation.

For the complete price list, go here. The sale was 88% sold by lot, 86.8% sold by dollar value. The hammer total was $320.64 million---within the presale estimate of $288.05-356.65 million. Unless you include the buyers premium (which you should not, since the estimates don't include it), the total did NOT exceed the presale estimate---no matter what Sotheby's, the NY Times or Bloomberg tell you.

Top Lot: Mark Rothko, "No. 15," 1952

You've probably already heard about the bravura performance of Christie's in pulling off a highly successful contemporary art auction last night:

---Second-highest contemporary art auction total ever: $348,263,600
---Record auction price for a living artist, set by Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping": $33,641,000
---Auction records set for seven more artists
---Top lot: Rothko's "No. 15," 1952 (above), $50.44 million, the second-highest auction price for that artist (behind the $72.84-million Rockefeller Rothko).

The sale was 95% sold by both dollar value and number of lots, which sounds like a boom, not a bursting bubble. That perennial bear, collector Eli Broad, was quoted at the end of Carol Vogel's NY Times report as saying:

The market is defying gravity. It was amazing.

But wait. I'm amazed too! Did I really see Vogel correctly compare presale estimates to HAMMER PRICES (as distinguished from final prices, including buyers premium), no fewer than FIVE TIMES? Could it be that my point about the need to compare apples to apples is, at last, being taken?

Now if she would just do the same for sale totals. Vogel wrote:

Only three of the auction's 57 lots failed to sell, bringing the evening's total to $348.2 million, well above its $282 million low estimate but below the $398.6 million high.

Actually, the hammer price total, which is the only one that should be compared to the presale estimates, was $309.01 million---still comfortably within the estimate range, but not, as Bloomberg has it, "closer to the top" of the range. That assessment only works if you misleadingly compare presale estimates (which DON'T include the buyers premium) to sale totals that DO include the buyers premium---the apples-to-oranges fallacy.

Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff, do you read me?

For Christie's complete results, go here.

On we go to Sotheby's tonight, home of the highest-estimated work in this spring's New York evening sales---Francis Bacon's "Triptych," which the auction house hopes will bring around $70 million. The entire sale is estimated at $291.05-360.65 million, making this a potentially close horse race with its archrival.

John Schaefer, referee for WNYC's "Soundcheck Smackdown"

The undefeated CultureGrrl and my debate opponent, arts consultant Barry Hessenius, floated like a butterfly but didn't sting like a bee as we danced around the unanswerable question posed at yesterday's half-hour New York Public Radio Soundcheck Smackdown (for which I borrowed the empowering Wonder Woman costume from the Metropolitan Museum's display case).

Host John Schaefer (above) asked us who should lead arts organizations---veterans or rookies? The answer, of course, is, "It depends"---on the merits of the candidates and the particular needs of the arts organization. Duh.

Speaking of which, what were all those chauffered limos doing yesterday blocking the entrance driveway of the Metropolitan Museum's uptown outpost, the Cloisters? A security staffer told CultureSpouse, who was taking CultureMom there for a visit, that the Met's trustees were cloistered inside---something that he said very rarely happened in Washington Heights (instead of Fifth Avenue). A Philippe-succession conclave, perhaps? Or just a pleasant change of scenery?

But back to WNYC's unglamorous studios in Lower Manhattan: In the course of playing rope-a-dope, I did make some comments about the Met succession, as well as general remarks praising the Clark Art Institute's director, Michael Conforti; maestros Riccardo Muti and Pierre Boulez; the Morgan Library & Museum's new director, William Griswold; and J. Paul Getty Trust president James Wood (who, unbeknownst to me, while my ears were stuffed between headphones, had just instituted some stringent cost-cutting measures).

What punches did I pull in this title bout? You'll just have to click below and listen:

Robert Rauschenberg at MASS MoCA during installation of "The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece," 1999

The above publicity image of the late Robert Rauschenberg is the only photo of anyone other than my own family that I display in my house. (It's taped to a wall in my office.) He inspired me with the breathtaking audacity of his improbable but irresistible inventions and his feisty, rebellious spirit. As a speaker, he was as impetuous and unpredictable as his art. And I happened to be a few feet away during the legendary moment at the conclusion of the 1973 Robert Scull auction at Sotheby Parke Bernet, when Rauschenberg confronted the collector and declared: "I've been working my ass off just for you to make that profit!"

He was one of those artists who always came back into relevance, for good reason: His was a youthful, constantly questing spirit. Just a few months ago, at the press preview for the opening of the new New Museum, senior curator Laura Hoptman told me that Rauschenberg was one of of the main forebears for the artists in the new facility's very favorably received inaugural show, consisting of collages and assemblages by a new generation.

I can't agree with Michael Kimmelman, who seems to imply in his NY Times obit that the above piece, installed at MASS MoCA in 1999, "did not live up to his earlier achievements." I regarded it as an astonishing, ingenious tour de force.

Henri Loyrette, Director of the Louvre

How has director Henri Loyrette changed the Louvre since the Pierre Rosenberg days?

That's what a BusinessWeek magazine reporter based in Paris wanted to know when she called me yesterday for a phone interview. So I ranted about what I've called the "Louez le Louvre" phenomenon---the proliferating megabucks rental shows, whereby the French museum now raises millions of dollars for its endowment and capital improvements, at the expense of sister institutions around the world. Those borrowers accede to this monetization of museum collections in order to snare exhibitions that typically feature a few major masterpieces, a lot of B-listers and, most importantly, the Louvre's glittering (but now somewhat tarnished) aura.

The Paris palace isn't the only "universal museum" playing this game, nor was it the first: The financially pressed State Hermitage Museum has been using its collection as a cash cow far longer. But Loyrette has raised the stakes to new and disturbing heights, dispatching (or soon to dispatch) megabucks Louvre-branded displays to Atlanta, Indianapolis, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Denver, Quebec, Istanbul, Valencia, Verona and, let us not forget, the planned museum in Abu Dhabi, which is paying $520 million just for the right to use the illustrious museum's name. (I've probably unintentionally omitted a few other stops on the treasures-of-the-Louvre circuit.)

As I pondered all this, it suddenly occurred to me that there is a strange and troubling disconnect in the way the world's premier museums regard cultural property, depending on whether it belongs to them or it is owned by the archaeological source countries where important antiquities have been unearthed. The "universal museums" ardently argue that there should be a free international flow of cultural objects---that source countries should abandon their retentionist cultural-property policies because the objects found within their borders are part of world heritage and rightfully belong to all humanity.

But when it comes to the great works of international heritage in their own encyclopedic collections, some of these same museums are behaving not altruistically but avariciously. They want money---lots of it. And they seem to have few qualms about exacting big fees from sister institutions for works that they traditionally had lent collegially in years past. These masterpieces are also, arguably, a part of world heritage over which they happen to have stewardship. If they want the source countries of antiquities to share their cultural wealth, they should strive to be equally generous---not just with reciprocal loans to cultural property claimants, but with loan shows sent, at reasonable cost, to sister institutions around the world.

As Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello wrote last October in the French newspaper, Le Monde:

Loans must remain free. We understand that certain developing countries require money. But between developed countries, it's unacceptable....I have alliances with all museums. But no exclusivity. In matters of art, I'm a complete polygamist.

But even the Met and the British Museum have not been above using loan exhibitions as cash cows.

Another problem with charging megamillion rental fees is that the lender has to come up with some world-class masterpieces, or the borrowing institution is getting a bad bargain. But if the lender dispatches too many iconic objects to too many places, it is shortchanging its core audience---the visitors who come to the home facility expecting to see those works in the permanent collection galleries.

The typical compromise involves releasing a few superlative pieces to satisfy the renting institution, but also lots of second-tier material. The lending institution's home audience is still unhappy that their masterpieces are frequent fliers---as witness the petition that was signed against the Louvre Abu Dhabi by thousands who expressed their support of an opinion piece written for Le Monde by three prominent artworld professionals, decrying the use of "works of art as currency of exchange."

Knowledgeable people who visit these high-priced traveling shows are also dissatisfied, knowing full well that their renting institutions may be getting some great publicity value from the illustrious lender's imprimatur, but are not getting their money's worth in terms of overall quality (unless the lender is sending only A-list material, drawn exclusively from permanent collection galleries that are closed for renovation).

Rent-a-show may produce great gains for the lending institution's endowment and capital budget. But for the art-loving public, it's a lose-lose transaction. And works reserved for the highest bidders may be unavailable for more serious projects.

Financial exigencies should not trump scholarly imperatives.

Hey, I'm still on the right side of 60!

Nevertheless, I've been asked (partly on the strength of my Elderfield Too Elderly? post) to take the old folks' side in a debate tomorrow on WNYC, New York Public Radio, on the relative merits of youth vs. age in cultural organizations. I warned Soundcheck associate producer Brian Wise that although I oppose age-ism, I have a nuanced view on this subject: Over-65s who are still at the top of their game should not be put out to pasture, but new blood has some good points too!

That waffling apparently did not disqualify me. So (if all goes according to plan) you can hear me tomorrow live at 2 p.m. on Soundcheck. The youth-will-be-served side of this question will be taken by Barry Hessenius, a nonprofits consultant and speaker, who authored a 2007 book, Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits. Does he play hardball in debates too? Calling Chris Matthews (whose election-related topic on Friday happened to be "Age and race---new focus of 2008?).

Wait! Stop the broadcast! Hessenius' bio informs us that he "represented clients in the music and television industries from 1971 to 1983," after receiving his law degree. That would definitely make him (gasp) even more superannuated than CultureGrrl!

Listen tomorrow at 2 p.m. on 93.9 fm, or hear the live webcast here. I'm not sure yet if I will be able to embed the audio on my blog. If I can, you KNOW I will!

Francesco Rutelli (second from right) at a New York press conference last June where he announced the supposed signing of an accord with Princeton University

Apparently Francesco Rutelli's penchant for pressing for repatriation through the press, rather than through quiet, collegial diplomacy, survives his terminated tenure as Italy's culture minister.

On Friday, the Associated Press made the unexpected announcement that the Cleveland Museum had agreed to send objects back to Italy:

Italy has reached a verbal agreement with a U.S. museum in Cleveland for the return of artifacts Rome says have been looted or smuggled out of the country, a government lawyer said Friday.

Talks between Italy and the Cleveland Museum of Art are near their final stage, said lawyer Maurizio Fiorilli, who has helped negotiate the return of Italian antiquities from several other U.S. museums....

But Fiorilli stressed that that deal was still only a verbal one, although "we are at almost the final phase" of negotiations for a written accord. "There are no obstacles from our point of view," the lawyer said.

Dubious from past experience about Italy's unilaterally announced "agreements," I immediately e-mailed the museum, but received no reply until just moments ago (below).

Happily, the estimable Steven Litt of the Cleveland Plain Dealer did the fact-checking and reported Saturday that the accord was as much of a surprise to the museum as it was to me:

"No agreement has been reached, nor has the museum agreed to transfer any objects to Italy," the museum said in a statement Friday.

Cindy Fink, the museum's director of marketing and communications, declined to comment on Fiorilli's description of a verbal agreement.

Apparently, Rutelli had been behind an earlier AP dispatch which, in Litt's words, had "quoted Rutelli as having said: 'I immediately gave some good news to the new minister. Just these past days we have concluded the agreement---which will be formalized by Minister [Sandro] Bondi---with the Cleveland Museum.'"

Here is the statement that the Cleveland Museum just e-mailed me:

Discussions are continuing between the Museum and the Italian government, but no agreement of any kind has been reached, nor has any timetable been set. A spirit of cooperation and confidentiality has informed the discussions between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Italian government to date, and we look forward to this continuing.

This episode is reminiscent of Italy's supposed agreement with Princeton University, announced by Rutelli in June 2007 (above), but not finalized until October. The premature announcement had the double advantage of enhancing Rutelli's stature with his countrymen and putting additional pressure on Princeton to close the deal. Similar "agreements" with the Getty Museum were publicized before the real deal was signed.

Lucian Freud, "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," 1995

"Freud's Heavyweight Nude Gets $35 Million Price," alleges the headline (which may well be rewritten by the time your read this) for today's online art-market commentary by Martin Gayford in Bloomberg.

That's more than you or I know, since the Christie's auction where Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" (above) may flirt with the auction record for a living artist hasn't happened yet.

Gayford merely (and correctly) observed that "the auction house [is] expecting the 1995 work to fetch up to $35 million" when it is offered on Tuesday evening. The current auction record for a living artist was set last November, when Sotheby's sold another heavyweight, Jeff Koons' "Hanging Heart," for $23.6 million.