Archives for January 2007

… [Read more...] about COMING NEXT: The Hegemony of the Money-No-Object Collector

American museum directors are always complaining that source countries uniquely target the United States in their antiquities repatriation efforts. (Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, another favorite target of source countries, might beg to differ.) Now, a report in today's Yomiuri Shimbun indicates that the Miho Museum in Japan may soon be targeted by Italy's … [Read more...] about Is Japan the New Front in Italy’s Antiquities War?

In today's LA Times, Christopher Reynolds and Hugh Hart reveal that the financial windfall from the Hammer Museum's ethically problematic sale in November 1994 of the glory of founder Armand Hammer's collection, his Leonardo Codex, is the gift that keeps on giving: To help bankroll the institution's exhibitions and programs, the Hammer...[has] been relying on interest income … [Read more...] about Hammering the Hammer: 12-Year-Old Leonardo Disposal Still Pays Museum’s Bills

California art museums are seeing exhibition-threatening surges in insurance premiums, according to the Jan. 12 San Francisco Business Times. Sarah Duxbury reports: Post-Katrina, California is considered a catastrophic zone, and its fine art museums are seeing insurance increases between 40 percent and 300 percent owing to the need to insure against earthquakes. The wide range … [Read more...] about Museum Insurance Rates Soar in a Post-Katrina World

Johns Hopkins University. Or at least so says a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has published the results of a new "Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index" that based its rankings on "faculty members' scholarly output [number of publications, awards, honors, and grants received] at nearly 7,300 doctoral programs around the country," according to the Art History … [Read more...] about And the Number One U.S. Doctoral Program in Art History Is…

Anyone who attended the Metropolitan Museum's extraordinary Leonardo da Vinci drawings exhibition four years ago was painfully aware of the elephant not in the room: Although a section of the exhibition was devoted to Leonardo's lost masterpiece, the "Battle of Anghiari," only small fragmentary sketches, preparatory to this fabled fresco, were displayed. "No complete copy of … [Read more...] about Real-Life “Da Vinci Code”: Search Intensifies for Major Lost Leonardo

You already heard (here and here) of GAD (Guggenheim Abu Dhabi). But nothing the Global Guggenheim has done up till now prepares us for the emormous artistic and financial scope of LAD---the Louvre Abu Dhabi. On Thursday, Jacques Follorou reported in Le Monde that he had been given "access to the confidential clauses of the contract" for Abu Dhabi Louvre, and he reported the … [Read more...] about The Megabucks Global Louvre: Abu Dhabi Details Emerge

Yikes! Everyone is misconstruing the figures in Christie's press release recapping its 2006 sales totals. I won't name names, but U.S. auction scribes are heedlessly scrambling U.S. dollars and British pounds. In its press release, Christie's, which is a London-based company, gives all its figures in both dollars and pounds. But all the percentage increases apply only to the … [Read more...] about Auction-House Apples and Oranges (Continued)

Remember when Steve Wynn told his assembled guests at the elbowing of his Picasso that "this has nothing to do with money. The money means nothing to me"? Now Wynn has apparently suppressed these noble sentiments sufficiently to instigate a lawsuit against Lloyd's of London, seeking $54 million for the damage he accidently inflicted on "Le Rêve." He was to have received $139 … [Read more...] about Wynn Some, Lose Some (Continued)

Memo to NY Times photo editors: Isn't it time to retire Marion True's 2005 Italian perp walk photo? You used it again (how many times has it now been?) to illustrate yesterday's story about her bail hearing in Greece in connection with her acquisition, when she was antiquities curator for the Getty, of the funerary wreath that the museum has now agreed to return. Okay, … [Read more...] about Marion True’s Perpetual Perp Walk

Okay Christie's, stop being such a big bully. PLAY NICE! It wasn't not enough for you that your 2006 total art sales, at $4.67 billion, were "the highest [annual auction-house] results in art market history." You also had to send out a press release today, boasting that the $87.9 million fetched in November by "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was "the highest price paid for any work of … [Read more...] about Statistical Shenanigans at Christie’s: The 2006 Results

Derek Gillman, the new executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation, which intends to uproot Albert Barnes' celebrated collection from Merion to Philadelphia, will give the luncheon address on Mar. 14 at the three-day conference on Legal Issues in Museum Administration, organized by the American Law Institute of the American Bar Association. Gillman's topic: "The … [Read more...] about New Barnes Director Speaks on Hot-Button Topic

I promise never to be insufferably snobbish about Broadway musicals again. "Wicked," which I saw yesterday just to humor my daughter on winter break, was brilliant on every level: book, songs, set, performances. And, with my unerring nose for news, I happened to see it with a new cast, just announced yesterday on the Playbill site: Julia Murney as Elphaba, Kendra Kassebaum as … [Read more...] about When New Casts Happen to Old Broadway Musicals

Ronald Lauder scores a hagiographic 10-page profile in the current (Jan. 15) New Yorker (no link yet), which manages to avoid delving into any problematic areas, such as the possible conflicts among his roles as a Museum of Modern Art trustee, founder and president of the Neue Galerie, Nazi loot restitution advocate, and major purchaser of restituted art (most notably the … [Read more...] about Ronald Lauder’s Golden New Yorker Portrait

This just in from Deutsche Welle, the German broadcasting news service: Initially, around 600,000 visitors had been expected to view "The Guggenheim Collection" at the National Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn, which opened in July 21, yet in the end over 800,000 came to see the show. "We're extremely pleased," a museum spokesperson told reporters, not least because the … [Read more...] about More Rent-a-Show Developments: Guggenheim and Louvre