Archives for March 2007

I love the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which Kathy Halbreich will leave as director in November. I admire it for its nerve and prescience in taking flyers on lesser-known artists and audacious exhibition concepts. It's a tradition that Halbreich has ably carried on from her legendary predecessor, Martin Friedman. As her contemporary, I also love that Halbreich explained … [Read more...] about Halbreich’s Legacy and Her Next Act

On the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page today---coinciding with the first day of a series of auctions of 207 objects from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery---former museum administrator Tom Freudenheim publishes his second WSJ piece decrying the sales. (Here's his first piece, in which he described the importance to him, as a boy growing up in Buffalo, of … [Read more...] about Albright-Knox Post Mortem: A Complete Defeat

For a antiquities gallery that, by its own admission, is trying to clean up its act, Phoenix Ancient Art got a reputation whitewash in Ron Stodghill's article in yesterday's NY Times Sunday Business Section, Do You Know Where That Art Has Been?. Phoenix is clearly pleased with this story: It has posted the piece on its website. Stodghill reports: The Aboutaams [owners of … [Read more...] about Phoenix Rises from the Antiquities Ashes

I KNEW someday my prince would come! Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has rescued me from my lonely anti-deaccession ivory tower with the courageous 11th-hour extrication of his museum's ancient Indian sandstone sculpture of Uma-Maheshvara from the jaws of the art market. Before hearing this welcome news, I'd been feeling increasingly isolated in … [Read more...] about Deaccession Backlash: Michael Govan Does It Right

With a headline like the one above, I've shot myself in the foot for the the most coveted prize in journalism. Then again, I can't win one anyway, since I'm not on a newspaper staff (let alone a journalist of Pulitzer caliber). My interest in the application and selection process was piqued, nevertheless, by the news from Editor & Publisher that Christopher Knight, art critic … [Read more...] about Pulitzer Jurors Lack Art Appreciation

Real estate mogul and art collector Raymond Nasher founder of the widely admired Dallas sculpture center that bears his name, died unexpectedly yesterday in a Dallas hospital. "It came as a complete surprise," Steven Nash, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, told the Dallas Morning News. Much courted by major museums for his superb collection of modern and contemporary … [Read more...] about Raymond Nasher, 85, Sculpture Center Visionary

Now the truth can be told: It was a matter of labor relations. I caught up Wednesday with Beverly Wolff at the artworld attorneys' ALI-ABA conclave in Philadelphia. She was the Museum of Modern Art's in-house counsel when Glenn Lowry was lured to MoMA with an unorthodox compensation sweetener. So I decided to pop The Question regarding Lowry's compensation package, … [Read more...] about Lowry’s Secret Compensation: Why MoMA’s Trustees Concocted Their Convoluted Scheme

Nikolai Zavadsky was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $283,000 in damages for his role in the theft of 77 objects from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. He was the husband of the late Larisa Zavadskaya, a curator at the museum. Last summer it was discovered that her Department of Russian Culture had suffered the loss of more than 200 … [Read more...] about Updates on the State Hermitage Museum

UPDATE: Albright-Knox sales get thumbs up from State Supreme Court. State Supreme Court Justice Diane Y. Devlin heard two hours of arguments in the Albright-Knox Gallery deaccession controversy today and will issue a decision tomorrow, the Buffalo News reported. Lawyers for the museum and Sotheby's were pitted against Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis and his Buffalo Art … [Read more...] about Buffalo Court Case Decided Tomorrow

In October, I wrote for Art in America about the Smithsonian American Art Museum's heightened commitment to contemporary art, as evidenced by the myriad new acquisitions in its expanded and renovated contemporary galleries. When it reopened last year, after more than six years of top-to-bottom makeover, SAAM's longtime director, Elizabeth Broun, took me first to the expansive … [Read more...] about SAAM’s Contemporary Commitment Backed by Two Curatorial Appointments

Having just returned from two days of panel discussions by artworld lawyers and museum administrators, I am amazed by how fixated some are on "managing" the press. So, here's my advice: The best way to manage the press is not to manage us. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I usually know the difference between someone trying to spin me and someone trying to inform me. If I … [Read more...] about How to Manage the Press: Don’t!

Today's NY Times has a piece by a woman, Patricia Cohen (editor of the newspaper's late, lamented "Arts & Ideas" page), reporting on an effort by an activist-author to train more women to write Op-Ed pieces for newspapers. (I've published six Op-Eds in the NY Times and one in the LA Times.) The article indicates that "65 or 75 percent of unsolicited [Op-Ed] manuscripts, or … [Read more...] about Why Are There No Great Women Op-Ed Columnists?

What are this foot and that hand doing beside Dr. Gross? I now believe it's a good thing, for more than financial reasons, that the Philadelphia Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are sharing ownership of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic." That's because of the thoroughly unconventional but provocatively engaging installation it has received at PAFA, where I viewed … [Read more...] about PAFA’s Lively Installation of “The Gross Clinic”

The buzz here in the City of Brotherly Love is that the Philadelphia Museum is likely to sell art from its collection in order to help fund the $68-million purchase of "The Gross Clinic." This was touched upon in today's WHYY radio report, which used a one-sentence anti-deaccessioning soundbite from me as well as comments from representatives of the Philadelphia Museum and its … [Read more...] about Will the Philadelphia Museum Sell an Eakins?

AJ Blogger Drew McManus, speaking yesterday on New York Public Radio's (WNYC's) Soundcheck (scroll to the final segment), could not answer host John Schaefer's key question about the impact of the 30 rare string instruments that the New Jersey Symphony bought four years ago and is now planning to sell: Did the sound improve? Unlike Drew, I'm from Jersey, and I can answer from … [Read more...] about Deaccessioning, Symphony-Style