Archives for January 2008

Conceptual rendering from Zaha Hadid Architects for MSU's Broad Art Museum It's becoming a franchise, like the Guggenheim. The next Eli Broad-branded museum, which I mentioned at the end of this post, will be designed by Zaha Hadid, it was announced yesterday. The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (not to be confused with Los Angeles' Broad Contemporary Art Museum) will be built … [Read more...] about And in Other Eli Broad News…

---Remember when I told you that the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum, opening next month at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would have a gallery named for (then unannounced) collector/benefactors, who didn't mind that some other guy's name was on the building? Now those names are out: LACMA trustee Jane Nathanson and her husband Marc have forked over $10 million for … [Read more...] about LACMA and Met Updates: Contemporary Gallery Namers Named; Hirst Shark Gets New Roommate

I haven't gotten a copy myself yet, but it's rare to read a review of an art-market book that starts like this one. Richard Morrison, arts writer and chief music critic for the London Times writes: If you read no other book about art in your life, read the one that's gripped me like a thriller for the past two days. Just published by Aurum Press, it's called "The $12 Million … [Read more...] about An Early Rave for the “Stuffed Shark” Book

Planned East Entrance of New-York Historical Society Can someone whose first loyalties are to one museum of American art serve without conflict on the board of another? The New-York Historical Society apparently thinks so. Philip Boroff of Bloomberg reports that Alice Walton, founder and president of the planned Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR, has been named to the … [Read more...] about Kindred Spirits: Alice Walton and Linda Ferber

Enough posts about Philippe or taxes! (Or maybe we should write about Philippe's 2006 taxes.) No, let's get back to serious art history: We can now rest assured that the sitter for Leonardo's mysterious lady really is who we thought she was. Sylvia Westall of Reuters reports: Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen … [Read more...] about Mona Lisa Is Identified…and She Speaks!

Don't get too excited. The Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2007, signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 29, corrects (in Section 3) what was probably an unintended and absurd estate-tax burden for heirs of charitable fractional-gift donors, which was caused by sloppy drafting of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The new law doesn't address the PPA's two other … [Read more...] about Partial Relief from 2006 Fractional-Gift Deal-Killers Enacted

Terracotta kylix (drinking cup), Greek, Attic, red-figure, ca. 515-510 B.C., Signed by Euxitheos as potter and Oltos as painter, Interior, running warrior, Exterior, obverse, assembly of gods on Mount Olympus; reverse, Dionysos mounting chariot among satyrs and maenads, 20½ inches diameter, Lent by the Republic of Italy Photo: Direzione Generale per i Beni Archaeologici, … [Read more...] about Pictures from a Restitution: What the Met Will Get

For your hot-button art coverage in today's (Sunday's) NY Times, skip the "Arts & Leisure" section. You need to go to "Week in Review." There you will find Rachel Donadio's What Awaits the Met, another Philippe-philic article that ends by taking some nasty and questionable swipes (via the intemperate Jed Perl) at both the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. And on the … [Read more...] about NY Times on the Met Succession and the Broad Recision

Michael Govan Despite Eli Broad's recent bombshell, Michael Govan still hopes that key pieces from the collector's 2,000-work contemporary trove may eventually become the "backbone" of LACMA's permanent display. In a wide-ranging discussion with me late Wednesday (which got bumped from the blog because of "all Philippe, all the time"), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's … [Read more...] about Broad-sided: Michael Govan on the Elusive Eli

  It's down to the wire for the Metropolitan Museum's (actually, now Italy's) Euphronios krater. Sunday is the last day it will be on view in New York before it departs on its one-way flight to Italy. But fear not, all you students assigned to fill out worksheets (above) on Greek objects. This just in from the Met: The Ministero per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali … [Read more...] about Euphronios’ Last Day is Sunday; Italy to Substitute a Jug, Cup and Vase

Talk about being on the news! This Jan. 9 press release just came in from the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA: Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, today announced his plans to retire before the end of the year. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is fortunate to host de Montebello who will present the lecture "Museums, Why Should … [Read more...] about Clark Snares de Montebello…at Least for a Night

Before Jean Nouvel's Fab comes Kieran Timberlake Architects' Prefab (above) I took a lot of flak from skyscraper lovers over this post about the MoMA Monster---the 75-story stalagmite to be deposited by Jean Nouvel in the now vacant lot next to Mega-MoMA. Nicolai Ouroussoff of the NY Times can't say enough good things about it. I'm a native New Yorker: I too love skyscrapers. … [Read more...] about Slaying the MoMA Monster: Russell to the Rescue

Photo by Don Pollard, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum The following interchanges took place as part of yesterday's press conference, not in Philippe de Montebello's office, where I had conducted a far-ranging interview with him at the beginning of his tenure, for a magazine profile. In the course of the half-hour press briefing, I managed to elicit three very thoughtful answers … [Read more...] about My Q&A with Philippe de Montebello

You can hear me now, by going here or clicking below: … [Read more...] about My De Montebello Appraisal for New York Public Radio

The future site of the new Barnes "Art Education Center" What's in a name? ---In a press release that hit my inbox today from the Barnes Foundation, I learned not only that Ballinger, a Philadelphia firm, has been named associate architect for the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (to be designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects), but that the new facility that will … [Read more...] about Department of Renamings: Barnes Foundation, “Artemis”