Archives for December 2006

While I'm on the subject of the Wall Street Journal, do not miss today's museum-related article on the estimable page for which I write, "Leisure & Arts" (on which there is nary an advertorial or infomercial). It's a piece with possible lessons for other single-collector museums that are chafing against the restrictions imposed long ago by their founders. Milo Beach, former … [Read more...] about Freer Freedom: How a Single-Collector Museum Cut Loose

Pure coincidence, no doubt. But it was almost as if Peter Kann, the chairman of Dow Jones & Co. (which publishes the Wall Street Journal), had read CultureGrrl's recent critiques of the UBS contemporary-art newspaper supplement that was folded into the WSJ, as well as my dismissal as "essentially an infomercial" of an WSJ online video clip, in which its own reporter interviewed … [Read more...] about “Art Journalism” UBS-Style: WSJ’s Boss Blasts Advertorials

Art Basel Miami didn't release any estimates of sale totals for the fair ending Sunday. So figure-happy journalists had to do some improvising. Among the most enterprising was Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock, who yesterday informed us that "three top sellers estimated that sales totaled between $200 million and $400 million." What exactly does this mean? Apparently, three anonymous … [Read more...] about Basel Miami Sale Totals: The Making of Art Market Myth

Actually, there is: U.S. artists today are still addressing issues of racial, sexual and economic politics. What people really mean when they ask this question, which came up again at a New York panel discussion about the art market that I attended at the Museum of Modern Art last night, is: Why is there no art engaging our current military misadventures? That question is … [Read more...] about Why is There No Current American Political Art?

The big art story in today's NY Times is not in the Arts section; it's the Business section's article by Landon Thomas Jr. about the mutual courtship between the newest art connoisseurs, hedge-fund kings, and donation-seeking art museums: In the fast-shifting sands of New York's moneyed classes, the explosion of hedge fund wealth has created a new financial pecking order. A … [Read more...] about New Barbarians at the Museum Gates

Should journalists censor themselves when they perceive security lapses in museums? An e-mail I received from a staffer at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who did not wish to be identified, took me to task for endangering that museum's security by my recent report, BMFA Needs Changing of the Guards. He said I should, instead, have filled out a Visitor Suggestion Form. And now, … [Read more...] about Museum Thefts: Blame the Journalists

Photo by Ravi Sawhney No, I'm not talking about Michael Richards' friend-in-need. I'm talking about that little guy, cozying up to that big guy, at a recent New York gallery show opening. Time Out New York has just ranked (with explanations and comments) the top New York City cultural critics in eight different fields, and Jerry Saltz of the Village Voice came out Number One, … [Read more...] about Critical Mass: Everyone Loves Jerry S.

You've all heard of blooks, but how many blogging auteurs can boast a "blovie"? This just in: The celebrated art collector and prematurely gray wit, Steve Martin, has just agreed to play the title role in my previously announced Miami-based comedy of manners, "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Gagosian." Is this typecasting, or what? Speaking of … [Read more...] about CultureGrrl’s Movie Rights

In case you haven't had enough of Art Basel Miami yet, here's the organizers' official report on results. No actual dollar volume is given, but you can read lots of self-satisfied quotes from dealers, who assure us that they did very well. Some 40,000 visitors are said to have attended, not to mention 1,400 journalists. But not CultureGrrl. … [Read more...] about Art Basel Miami’s Closing Report

Now that you've cleaned out the Miami sand from between your toes and the hype from between your ears, you're undoubtedly asking yourselves, "Now that I've seen the art of the last 10 minutes, what's the latest news about art of the centuries B.C.? CultureGrrl has your answers: At a press conference today in Athens, Greek culture minister George Voulgarakis and J. Paul Getty … [Read more...] about More Antiquities Restitution News

There is a not-to-miss, detailed article by Stephanie Strom on the front page of tomorrow's NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section, about the fractional gifts controversy. The good news is that a technical amendment is likely to address the mismatch problem, most clearly elucidated in The Art Law Blog. The shocker is that Sen. Charles Grassley may be going on a broader fishing … [Read more...] about Grousing About Grassley

For all of you art-fair groupies who are just getting back to your computers and newspapers after flirting with Andy Golub's body-painted girl in the green bikini, here's what you missed: ---Tom Krens, tired of being rebuffed by foreign municipalities, has decided to build his next Guggenheim in Idaho. ---The Whitney is channeling the spirit of Louis Kahn to design its High … [Read more...] about Art Basel Sour Grapes Wrap-Up

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, is going on an all-out public rampage against archaeologists who believe that museums should not collect unprovenanced or incompletely provenanced antiquities. He did it last May, at the Association of Art Museum Directors' symposium on antiquities collecting, and he did it, even more persuasively and exhaustively, … [Read more...] about De Montebello’s Latest Scholarly Diatribe on Collecting Antiquities

(Part I is here.) Art dealers and artists are not the only ones seeking clients at Art Basel Miami Beach. This affluent see-and-be-seen scene is also a potential goldmine for companies that offer financial services to high net worth individuals (i.e., megabuck collectors). So UBS signed on as the main sponsor of that art fair, is hosting events there for clients and would-be … [Read more...] about WSJ Blurs Distinction Between News and Corporate Promos—Part II

See an update appended to my earlier post today, for a link to a tribute to the late Robert Rosenblum by Mariët Westermann, director of NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. … [Read more...] about Another Rosenblum Tribute