Archives for September 2007

Peter Dobrin It takes a music critic to solve the Barnes problem. Bucking his own newspaper's MegaBarnes-friendly news coverage, as well its editorial writers' campaign in strong support of the Barnes Foundation's planned move from Merion to Philadelphia, Peter Dobrin, the Philadelphia Inquirer's music critic, solved the whole Barnes mess in two paragraphs in the most recent … [Read more...] about Peter Dobrin of “Philadelphia Inquirer” Devises a Barnes Solution

Judge Michael Ponsor of U.S. District Court in Springfield, MA, apparently agreed with my layman's surmise that the Visual Artists Rights Act does not apply to the Christoph Büchel mess at MASS MoCA. What's more, the North Adams, MA, institution is free to display the material assembled for the abandoned project. As reported by John Dyer in the Boston Globe, Judge Ponsor ruled … [Read more...] about MASS MoCA Gets Thumbs-Up from Art-Loving Judge

Mary Cassatt, "Françoise in Green, Sewing"---Good enough for Adelyn Breeskin It's still the same old story: A museum decides it needs to sell works to raises big bucks for one or more major acquisitions. It puts out the story that the works to be deaccessioned are seldom or never exhibited, and/or redundant and inferior to other comparable works in the collection. Then I ask … [Read more...] about St. Louis Art Museum’s Off-the-Wall Deaccessions

The space where Christoph Büchel's "Training Ground for Democracy" was to have been installed Although it doesn't mention NY Times art critic Roberta Smith by name, the Sept. 18 entry on MASS MoCA's blog, FAQ re: Training Ground, was clearly intended as a rebuttal to her Sept. 16 diatribe against that institution for its handling of the aborted Christoph Büchel … [Read more...] about MASS MoCA’s Rebuttal to Roberta Smith’s Scathing Critique

Benvenuto Cellini, Saltcellar, called the "Saliera," Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Wilfried Seipel, well known in international museum circles as the longtime director of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, will be out of that job by the end of next year. The Associated Press reports: The Austrian Culture Ministry will not renew a contract for the embattled director of … [Read more...] about Wilfried Seipel to Lose His Directorship at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

Rembrandt, "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer"---A Rare Met Purchase Many have remarked, sometimes with irritation, on the eccentric organizing principle behind the just-opened The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (to Jan. 6). Indeed, my fondest hope, after I learned the show's title and before I learned that the museum's 228 Dutch paintings were … [Read more...] about Message of the Met’s “Age of Rembrandt” Show: Give Us Your Paintings!

Revisiting the the Neue Galerie's website today, I discovered that you CAN arduously arrive at the sketchy provenance information that used to be provided, but only after going through the seven-step procedure and then entering an individual artist's name in the search box. As I noted in my previous post today, you cannot, at this writing, get there through the "Browse by … [Read more...] about Update on the Neue Galerie’s Provenance Listings

This and this seem to be the start of a new trend of conspicuous nonconsumption by the culturally conscious superrich. It goes like this: Pay outlandish prices to preempt the sale of works scheduled to be offered by the auction houses. Then return them to their country of origin. You can buy this kind of publicity! Could this be a way out of the antiquities wars? (Just … [Read more...] about Conspicuous Nonconsumption of Art: The Latest Fad Among the Superrich

Ronald Lauder, standing left, Maria Altmann, seated right, and You-Know-Who, center From the serious to the ridiculous: ---You may remember when I reported on the Neue Galerie's much delayed, technologically exasperating and frustratingly fragmentary posting of the provenance for its collection on its website. Now, if you persevere through the seven-step, provenance-finding … [Read more...] about Department of Broken Promises: Neue Galerie’s AWOL Provenance Posting; NY Times’ Flatlining “ArtsBeat”

---Jacqueline Trescott of the Washington Post reports on protests by eight of the 25 board members of the National Museum of the American Indian over the appointment of Kevin Gover to be the museum's next director. Gover is a lawyer with no museum experience, but with an avowed "deep interest in and knowledge of Indian history and culture." The dissidents argue that all the … [Read more...] about Wink at These Links: Flap Over American Indian Museum Director; Prediction That the Bubble Won’t Burst; Candid Portrait of Schjeldahl; “La Tribune de l’Art” in English

Edgar Degas, "The Milliners," c.1898, 29 5/8 x 32 1/4 inches, St. Louis Art Museum The St. Louis Art Museum's recently announced purchase of Degas' "The Milliners" for about $10 million is the latest example of the sell-to-buy syndrome discussed in my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece about the difficult collecting environment for museums. When I spoke to him yesterday morning about … [Read more...] about The Art Sales Bankrolling the St. Louis Degas—UPDATED

Oh happy day! As of this very moment---midnight---the NY Times has removed its "TimesSelect" paid subscription requirement for online access to articles by its columnists and, more importantly, to much of the newspaper's archives---from 1851 and 1922 and from 1987 to the present. But, for some reason---unexplained in either the corporate announcement or the article in today's … [Read more...] about Start the Presses! NY Times Gives Free Access to Its Online Content

It took the NY Times 11 days to do it, but yesterday it finally published two letters criticizing Stephanie Strom's astonishing Sept. 6 front-page hatchet job on tax deductions for charitable contributions. One of those letters came from Mark Rosenthal, who has worked for more than 30 years as a curator for art institutions including the National Gallery, Guggenheim Museum and … [Read more...] about NY Times Belatedly Publishes Letters Criticizing Anti-Charitable Deduction Article

You can now link here (on WNYC's website) or simply click below to hear the audio of my commentary on the Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" show today on New York Public Radio. You can also go here for my own irreverent photo essay on this grand hodgepodge of a show. Speaking of photo essays, the NY Times should correct the caption that accompanies the second image in … [Read more...] about Audio Link to My “Age of Rembrandt” Commentary on NY Public Radio

Those of you who surf here from WNYC's website this morning will have already seen the Metropolitan Museum's authorized images of great masterpieces from its "Age of Rembrandt" show. But the majority of the 228 works---an array of all the museum's Dutch old master holdings---are usually (and often for good reason) hidden away in storage. This motley assemblage cries out for a … [Read more...] about The Met in Dutch: An Irreverent Photo Essay