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While I raided the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's website, the indispensable Jori Finkel was engaged in a far more sweeping raid, excavating Ban Chiang objects from websites of museums around the country. Although they likely didn't acquire these pieces through the particular sources who are now subject to federal investigation, major museums around the country appear to … [Read more...] about Major U.S. Museums Have a Ban Chiang Problem

The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver's new David Adjaye-designed building, which opened Oct. 28, bills itself on its website as "a fiscally responsible project. The construction cost for the new building is $16.3 million." But fiscal responsibility appears to have declined into fiscal difficulty: Paula Moore of the Denver Business Journal reports: Several contractors who … [Read more...] about More Denver Museum Building Woes

Critic Peter Schjeldahl, in his current New Yorker piece---"European Tour: New galleries demonstrate Philippe de Montebello's method"---perpetuates a common misconception about the Metropolitan Museum director's modus operandi. Favorably (but somewhat belatedly) describing the museum's recently expanded and reconfigured installation of 19th- and early 20th-century European … [Read more...] about Philippe de Montebello’s Unobtrusive Curatorial Interventions

I've now had a chance to peruse Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle's Feb. 8 "Memorandum and Order" in the Fisk University Stieglitz Collection case, in which she barred any sales from the collection. It's clear that the judge based her decision on the very principle---donor intent---that Alice Walton unconvincingly tried to appropriate in her campaign to purchase a … [Read more...] about Frisking Fisk: Parsing O’Keeffe’s Angry Letter, and What Should Happen Next

A CultureGrrl reader of Greek heritage, with a passion for Greek art (and for anonymity), correctly urged me to point out another crucial difference, in addition to size and subject matter, between the Euphronios ceramic that is still in the Getty Museum's collection and the one recently relinquished by the Metropolitan Museum to Italy: For the Getty's, as I previously stated, … [Read more...] about More on the Getty’s Euphronios (and how it differs from the ex-Met’s)

Have you seen these paintings lately? "The Boy in the Red Vest," Cézanne … [Read more...] about More Details on Yesterday’s Armed Heist from the Bührle Collection UPDATED

In a ruling late Friday, Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle rejected Fisk University's plan to sell a half-share of its Stieglitz Collection to Alice Walton for $30 million. I don't yet have a copy of the ruling, but Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, has the story. Reginald Stuart writes: In a major setback for Fisk University, a Tennessee judge has barred the … [Read more...] about Judge Nixes Fisk-Walton Deal for Stieglitz Collection

"Wine Cup with a Drunk Man Vomiting," Greek, ca. 490 B.C., attributed to Euphronios as potter, Onesimos as painter, J. Paul Getty Museum The Metropolitan Museum has relinquished to Italy its famed Euphronios krater, but you can still see a work by that celebrated potter at the Getty Museum (above). Granted it's considerably less grand than the ex-Met's masterpiece in size and … [Read more...] about At Least The Getty Still Has Its Euphronios

Someone who knows more about how headhunters work than I do (and that's just about everyone) informed me that far from having an inside track for the Metropolitan Museum's directorship (as I suggested he might), Max Anderson might be disadvantaged by the fact that the Met's search firm, Phillips Oppenheim, was involved in his landing the directorship of the Indianapolis Museum. … [Read more...] about Headhunter Protocol and the Met Director Derby

Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle yesterday rejected Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper's request for a four-month postponement of the Feb. 19 trial involving Fisk University's plans to monetize its Stieglitz Collection. Fisk wants court approval to finalize its $30-million deal to sell a half-share of the collection (a gift to the university from Georgia … [Read more...] about Court Backs Fisk’s Opposition to Walton’s Counter-Suitor

Right again, art-lings: I'm in Los Angeles for the press preview for the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,, but I can't tell you about that for while: The Wall Street Journal has first call on my time and thoughts. But I'll also be going to the Getty and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. I don't think Jason Felch is going to ask … [Read more...] about Lazy in LA: Three Days, Three Museums

If all goes according to plan (and it seldom does) this will be my first of three trips on three continents in the space of three months. Can I handle it? On this first journey, Broad-ly speaking, I'll have far too many opportunities to indulge my bad habit of punning. I'll also go on a swoopy Gehry Disney ride, accompanied by my husband and Mahler. I'll blog when I can, but … [Read more...] about Where in the World is Lee Going?

I'm a stickler for spelling. So when I visited the website for Phillips Oppenheim, the New York search firm that the Metropolitan Museum has just retained "to help organize and staff the international search for the institution's next director," I did not get a good feeling when I saw that the chosen headhunters had spelled the name of one of their cultural clients as … [Read more...] about Memo to the Met’s Search Firm: How Do You Spell “Hirschhorn”?

Detail from a Morgan exhibition label, showing Bronzino's "Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua," Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio The illustration, above, on a label in the Morgan Library and Museum's engrossing new show, Michelangelo, Vasari, and Their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi, shows the Bronzino fresco for which the artist's … [Read more...] about Roman Omen? Italy Nixes Reproduction for Morgan Show

In yet another case of art-related investigatory mayhem, the feds on Thursday swooped down upon Kass/Meridian, a Chicago contemporary gallery, as part of what the Chicago Sun-Times reported was "an investigation into an alleged scam involving galleries in Chicago and other cities." For more details, read the above-linked article. But also take a look at this photo, accompanying … [Read more...] about Feds Manhandle Art in Chicago