A Rockwell Record, With A Hopper To Match "A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction... It was not the only record of the day. 'Hotel Window,' a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million." The New York Times 12/01/06

Celebrating Your Surroundings, No Matter How Bleak It's not easy promoting high culture in a city like Detroit, where urban blight is a far more common sight than public art. So for the architecture of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, organizers decided that they needed to embrace the city they hoped would be embracing it. "Housed in an abandoned car dealership on a barren strip of Woodward Avenue, it fits loosely into a decades-long effort to restore energy to an area that was abandoned during the white flight of the 1970s. But the design springs from a profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization." The New York Times 12/01/06

Judging By His History, We're Sure It's Quite Tasteful "Banksy, the anarchic graffiti artist, has poked fun at Michael Jackson, the pop star who faced child abuse charges, by featuring him in a drawing inspired by Hansel and Gretel... Jackson is seen trying to coax a little girl and a boy with a sweet in one of four works displayed in Santa’s Ghetto, an amusement arcade that opens in Central London today." The Times (UK) 12/01/06

Expanding Corcoran Buys D.C. School The Corcoran Gallery of Art has agreed to pay $6.2 million to buy the Randall School from the District of Columbia. "But gaining the site wasn't easy. A holdover from the early 20th century, the building was last used as a school in 1978. The city installed a men's shelter in part of the building, and artists leased other parts for studios. When the Corcoran's plans were announced two years ago, advocates for the homeless protested, as did the artists, who complained about the lack of affordable studio space in Washington." Washington Post 11/30/06

Come On, Feel The Decay At a time when cities are making themselves ever more sterile in order not to spook skittish suburbanites, the architecture of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit takes a different tack. Its "design springs from a profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization. Designed by Andrew Zago, its intentionally raw aesthetic is conceived as an act of guerrilla architecture, one that accepts decay as fact rather than attempt to create a false vision of urban density. By embracing reality, it could succeed where large-scale development has so far failed." The New York Times 11/30/06

This Is Why You Want To Keep Your Architect Happy The architect of a major Berlin railway station has won an unusual lawsuit against the station's owner, in which it was alleged that cost-cutting measures by the railway authority (which resulted in a partial redesign) amounted to a "defacement" of the building. The presiding judge ruled that the station was indeed a work of art, and that the railway's decision to change it without the architect's permission caused significant harm to the design. The railway is appealing, but if appeals fail, the station will have to be rebuilt at a cost of €40m or more. The Guardian (UK) 11/30/06

NY Museums Playing Musical Chairs With Expansion Sites New York's Whitney Museum of American Art has made official what had been rumored for several days, that it will build a new branch at a site in Greenwich Village that was abandoned last week by the Dia Foundation. "Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art, which you would think would leave well enough alone after raising $825 million to overhaul and endow its Midtown mega-complex, is also talking about another addition. This churning has to do with three trends that are forcing museums to make extraordinary, difficult bets on the future: spiraling construction costs, dizzy real-estate prices and an art market that's gone bonkers." Bloomberg 11/28/06

Getty Tells Its Side Los Angeles's J. Paul Getty Museum has been taking plenty of heat over its battle with the Italian government concerning antiquities that may have once been illegally looted. But the Getty's director says that he isn't the one standing in the way of a settlement, and accuses the Italians of moving the goalposts after a tentative agreement had been reached. Los Angeles Times 11/28/06

Where Seams And Drape Meet Steel And Sweep A new museum show in Los Angeles is drawing some unexpected parallels between the worlds of architecture and high fashion. The exhibit "starts with the unexceptional premise that fashion and architecture are, if not equals, cognates—related languages with a common root. They both translate a two-dimensional pattern of abstract shapes into a seamed, three-dimensional volume." The New Yorker 11/27/06

ROM Reups Its Chief Despite Expansion Troubles "In a stunning vote of confidence, the Royal Ontario Museum's board has extended the contract of its director and chief executive officer, William Thorsell, until 2010, even though the Renaissance ROM expansion is about six months behind schedule and short by about $37-million." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/29/06

Canadian Art Hot At Home A busy auction night in Toronto highlighted what has become apparent in recent weeks: that the art boom occurring on both sides of the Atlantic is even stimulating interest in (and higher prices for) works that might previously have been considered of only regional interest. "The fall auction season for Canadian art [hasn't] approached anything like the heat of international art auctions. [But this week's] sales looked like yet more signs that collectors' appetite for Canadian art, far from softening, is actually broadening." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/29/06

Moral of the Story: It Ends Better When Everyone Plays Nice The Italian government has agreed to loan two valuable antiquities to New York's Metropolitan Museum and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, in exchange for the museums having returned contested antiquities to Italy. The amicable settlements in New York and Boston stand in stark contrast to Italy's ongoing battle with Los Angeles's J. Paul Getty Museum. The New York Times 11/29/06

• Is Anyone Not Stealing From Italy? "Seeking to build on its success in bargaining with a few American museums, Italy has asked the New York collector Shelby White to consider returning more than 20 ancient artifacts that it argues were illegally mined from its soil... Rather than implicitly threaten legal action, however, as it occasionally has in pursuing objects in major museum collections, the government hopes to rely on moral suasion." The New York Times 11/29/06

Parsing The Sudden Popularity Of Chinese Art In this season of unfathomable auction records and price spikes in the art market, Asian art has been some of the hottest, and most surprising, work to be sold at auction. And it isn't just Western buyers who are looking to the East. "Wealthy buyers from China and other parts of Asia are now jockeying with European and American collectors to buy Chinese works that only five years ago were largely ignored by the international art market." The New York Times 11/29/06

MoMA Finally Complete The newly expanded home of New York's Museum of Modern Art (all of it) is finally open to the public, and Nicolai Ouroussoff says that the last of the newly built spaces is "unlikely to appease those who feel the museum has become a soulless corporate machine. But at least it underscores what is most alluring about the museum’s recent expansion... Seen from the street or the garden, the museum presents a continuous pattern of activity, reaffirming its public mission." The New York Times 11/29/06

Critic To Artists: You're All Idiots A UK Art Fair recently polled 500 artists, asking them who their ten favorite artists of all time might be. The result was an eclectic list that left at least one critic distinctly unimpressed. "The artists’ artist Top Ten consists entirely of painters, and errs towards the splodgy and the splashy type much beloved by those who revel in the craft of oil painting... This is the Top Ten of an artist who thinks conceptual art is a con and that the ability to balance illusion with a love for gooey paint is paramount... It is the taste of an art student stuck in 1962." The Times (UK) 11/29/06

The Great Northern Spirit It sometimes seems as if all the great British artists come from (or at least have some connection to) the northern part of the country, which is somewhat surprising, since London, the great UK art capital, is in the south. "What is it about the North that gets everyone painting, sewing or puddling about in clay before carving chunks out of marble or timber? Time was when you could blame unemployment or even the rainy weather keeping people indoors, but neither of those seem convincing reasons any more." The Guardian (UK) 11/27/06

It's Not How Much You Spend, It's What You Spend It On Much is being made of the disparity in acquisition budgets between UK museums and those in continental Europe and the U.S. But some in the UK arts world say that what's of greater concern than the raw budget numbers is the value system used to judge which art is worth acquiring. "Is an Italian painting that was obtained by a British milord in the 19th century an integral part of 'British heritage'? It is part of the history of British collecting, but that is not the same thing." The Guardian (UK) 11/27/06

Is This The Golden Age of Museumgoing? Museum attendance is booming across the U.S., and while not everyone agrees on just why the public is suddenly so taken with art, museums are doing their best to make sure the ride doesn't end anytime soon. From new or renovated buildings to the scrapping of admission fees, museums "have emerged as the pre-eminent cultural institution, a means of shaping the identity of a city." CNN 11/27/06

Two NY Museums Going In Opposite Directions Ever since New York's Dia Center for the Arts announced that it was abandoning plans to renovate a Greenwich Village industrial space into 45,000 square feet of exhibition space, observers have been wondering what the Dia's long-term future is, if any. "We need Dia, and Dia needs to do something decisive soon, even if it's only to open a temporary space." Meanwhile, buzz is continuing to build for the arrival of the New Museum, which has a $50 million home under construction in the Bowery. Village Voice 11/22/06

So Much For Cooperation Lee Rosenbaum says that the war of words between the Getty Museum and the Italian government is evidence that "a cautiously cooperative relationship has degenerated into an adversarial one. It now appears that that the objects that the Getty had hoped to return in exchange for a far-reaching accord, including loans of Italian antiquities, may instead be used as courtroom evidence against the Getty's former curator, Marion True, now on trial in Italy on charges of trafficking in illegally excavated antiquities." Culturegrrl (AJ Blogs) 11/27/06

Paris Plans A Skyline "Paris yesterday unveiled plans for a vast glass-enveloped office block that will become its tallest commercial building and loftiest construction since the Eiffel tower was inaugurated in 1889. The 'Phare' (Lighthouse) tower, designed by the Californian architect Thom Mayne, is a gently sloping eco-friendly glass construction complete with wind-turbines on its roof, that will be the centrepiece of an ambitious overhaul of La Défense on the western outskirts of the city." The Guardian (UK) 11/28/06

Research Center Completes MoMA's Five-Year Expansion "Frank Lloyd Wright's wood-block model for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Paper neckties with flowery designs by Picasso. Mies van der Rohe's 'projects-general correspondence 1920's 1930's.' MoMA's first guestbook from 1929. A rich trove of background for all the legendary works in the Museum of Modern Art will become more accessible to the public with the opening today of MoMA's new education and research building in Midtown Manhattan." Los Angeles Times (AP) 11/28/06

Forbidden Skyscraper Provokes Protest In St. Petersburg "Gazprom City, a proposed complex of stylish modern buildings that evoke, among other things, a gas-fueled flame, a strand of DNA and a lady’s high-heeled shoe, would sit on a historic site on the Neva River" in St. Petersburg, "opposite the Baroque, blue-and-white Smolny Cathedral. In any of six designs under consideration, the main tower would soar three or four times higher than this city’s most famous landmarks, an alteration of the landscape that has drawn heated protests from the director of the Hermitage Museum and the head of the local architects’ union." The New York Times 11/28/06

The Whitney Heads For The High Line "A month after the Dia Art Foundation scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that the city is transforming into a public park, the Whitney Museum of American Art has signed on to take its place and build a satellite institution of its own downtown. ... Plans call for the new museum to be at least twice the size of the Whitney’s home on Madison Avenue at 75th Street," museum officials said, "and to be finished within the next five years." Renzo Piano, architect for the Whitney's now-abandoned uptown addition project, will design the new museum. The New York Times 11/28/06

Richard Meier's Smog Eater "When the American architect Richard Meier was asked to design a church in Rome to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of Christianity, he offered an imposing white concrete structure dominated by three soaring 'sails.' The project’s main technical sponsor got to work on a coating that would enhance Mr. Meier’s trademark white sculptural forms. It came up with a material that essentially cleans itself, minimizing the need for maintenance. What the sponsor, the Italcementi Group, did not know was that the new material — which contains titanium dioxide, a white pigment — has another peculiarity. It 'eats' surrounding smog." The New York Times 11/28/06

Still Museum Goes With Experience Denver's Clyfford Still Museum has chosen the well-respected team of Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture to design its new home. Allied has plenty of experience designing museums, including recent projects in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Seattle. Denver Post 11/27/06

A Rebirth In Old East Berlin When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the stark contrast between East and West was starkly apparent, and reunification did nothing to immediately alleviate the unequal division of resources, especially when it came to the city's museums. But years of renovation and refurbishment finally have East Berlin's Museum Island beginning to glitter like the jewel it once was. The New York Times 11/27/06

New Drawing of Stonehenge Unearthed An important early sketch of Stonehenge has been discovered in a 15th-century manuscript in northern France. "The little sketch is a bird's eye view of the stones, and shows the great trilithons, the biggest stones in the monument, each made of two pillars capped with a third stone lintel, which stand in a horseshoe in the centre of the circle. Only three are now standing, but the drawing... suggests that in the 15th century four of the original five survived." The Guardian (UK) 11/27/06

Wait. Museums Have Something To Do With Art? "Museums, both private and public, exist in abundance in Asia. But, for the most part, the idea of what a museum is, what it is for - this is a recent construct... The allocation of government resources for building major cultural facilities represents a new trend where art museums are seen as a necessary status symbol of a truly 'world class' city." Lost in the neverending quest for status may be the value of art itself. The Guardian (UK) 11/24/06

• Popularity Isn't Everything "Our golden age of museum popularity will be looked on with shame and disgust by a future robbed of its inheritance. If museums are anything, they are attempts to preserve what is worth preserving. Today's vogue for reinventing the museum, questioning its traditional role as a 'collection', merging the curator and the artist, risks destroying the ark." The Guardian (UK) 11/24/06

Online Saatchi A Hit With Students "Charles Saatchi's popular internet gallery Your Gallery has taken a step into international student culture. Last week's launch of Stuart... has been seized upon by young student artists. Hits per day have risen to two and half million a day. About 500 art students have taken advantage of the opportunity to show an unlimited amount of work for free." The Observer (UK) 11/26/06

Taking It Back The Chicago Tribune is asking its critics to write about a review they wish they could have back - an instance in which their immediate reaction, expressed on deadline, came to seem incorrect with the passage of time. For architecture critic Blair Kamin, a pasting of legendary architect Rem Koolhaas sprang immediately to mind. "As I've gone through the building over the last three years... I've been gripped by tinges of regret -- not so much that my criticisms were wrong, but that I blew them out of proportion." Chicago Tribune 11/26/06

• Reimagining Imagism Art critic Alan Artner goes all the way back to his earliest days at the Tribune for his mea culpa. "When, in 1973, I began writing regularly about visual art for this newspaper, the local crossbreeding of Surrealism and Pop Art known as Imagism was being promoted as the only game in town. [As] a native Chicagoan I resented that any one thing should have been exalted to the exclusion of nearly everything else... But the language in which I wrote about my recoil from Imagism was wrong because it was vehement. And that vehemence came from the mistake of reacting as much to the environment Imagism had caused as to the work itself." Chicago Tribune 11/26/06

Curators On The Run "Internationalism now rivals youth culture in the art world’s hot pursuit of the never-before-seen," and the result is a newly active job description for those who make their living curating new shows. "The downside, some curators say, is the perpetual demand for new introductions, which tends to encourage a pell-mell rush to judgment in unfamiliar areas." The New York Times 11/26/06

Engineering The Highly Improbable Cecil Balmond's name probably doesn't ring a bell, even amongst architecture buffs. But Balmond's career has been spent in the service of the world's great architects, finding ways to translate the most unlikely designs into real-world buildings that won't collapse under their own creativity. "As architects push the limits of their formal language, Mr. Balmond’s engineering genius has been crucial to the emergence of a new aesthetic of shifting asymmetrical structures that mock conventional notions of stability. Beyond making their projects buildable, his solutions spur such architects to explore forms they might not have considered before." The New York Times 11/26/06

Italy Scores A New Museum (With An Assist From Florida) "The Museo Carlo Bilotti is Rome’s newest cultural gem, with extraordinary art housed in a fastidiously restored 16th-century marble palazzo smack in the middle of Villa Borghese. But wait. Carlo Bilotti? A Medici? A Borghese? Guess again: Mr. Bilotti, who died last week at 72, was a loquacious retired Italian-American perfume executive from Palm Beach." The New York Times 11/25/06

UK Galleries Not Keeping Pace London may be one of the world's global art centers, but new evidence suggests that UK galleries are falling far behind the rest of the world in the acquisition of new works of art. "Our major museums are sliding at a terrifying rate down the international league table while the incentives to encourage private giving are insufficient." The Guardian (UK) 11/24/06

More Nazi Loot Turns Up In London A Cranach masterpiece on display at London's National Gallery was apparently seized by the Nazis and then taken from postwar Germany by an American journalist, according to sources at the gallery. "The discovery that the picture was spoliated was only recently made and the gallery is now trying to identify the pre-war owner of the painting... The fact that the painting has not been claimed may well mean that the entire family was killed during the war." The Art Newspaper 11/26/06

Afghan Museum To Return To Kabul "The Afghanistan Museum in Exile, in Switzerland, is closing, and its collection will be sent back to Kabul as Unesco has determined that the situation in the Afghan capital is now safe enough. Items donated for safekeeping are therefore being packed, for their return." The Art Newspaper 11/23/06

Italian Culture Minister Blames Getty For Broken Talks Italy's culture minister says the Getty Museum unilaterally broke off talks over the return of antiquities. "It is our government's duty to make it clear that all the world's museums which exhibit ransacked Italian works must return them". Ansa 11/23/06

• Getty Responds To Italian Charge "I want to repeat that we are deeply saddened that our talks with the Italian Ministry of Culture did not result in a mutually beneficial agreement regarding cultural cooperation and a joint agreement on the return of objects claimed by Italy from the Getty's antiquities collection. During our meeting with Ministry officials on November 17, we offered substantial compromises, including the immediate transfer of full title to the Cult Statue of a Goddess, if the Italian government would join the Getty in conducting further research." CultureGrrl 11/23/06

Reality Bites Turner Contender As part of his entry in this year's Turner Prize, artist Phil Collins held a "news conference" with stars of reality TV shows. "Cameras were trained on the media, who, in turn, had their cameras focused on the nine 'victims' of Supernanny, Wife Swap, Trisha et al. All felt they had been exploited in some way - manipulated by seemingly friendly producers who ruined their lives and spat them out in the TV production line." BBC 11/23/06

Nothing To Do With Art One of 15 artists participating in a London residency proposes to do "nothing" as her art. "With the increasing acceptance of the ways of contemporary art by a wider public, it is quite hard to elicit more than a rolling of eyes from a media and public, who look on artists as parents at their adolescent child who is desperate to separate." The Times (UK) 11/22/06

Inside The Art Thief's Mind "Stealing great works of art is not entirely rational. One suspects that even career crooks steal great art because they read crime fiction and know it is the kind of thing that criminals do. At least when the culprits are professional criminals, a deal is generally done with the insurers and eventually the masterpiece returns. But sometimes the thieves are amateurs, their motives bizarre and the prognosis unpredictable." Bloomberg 11/22/06

Canadian Judge Throws Out Rodin Lawsuit "An Ontario Court of Appeal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by 10 prominent Canadian businessmen that claimed a Superior Court justice was wrong to let an agent of Paris's Musée Rodin gather evidence from 28 plaster sculptures, attributed to Auguste Rodin, that the businessmen own." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/22/06

Getty To Return 26 Antiquities To Italy As Talks Break Down The museum failed to make an agreement with the Italian government about returning art. Museum director Michael Brand "noted that the museum was willing to give back some of its most important pieces and had even offered to transfer full title to Italy of its signature figure of the goddess Aphrodite -- as long as further research into its origins could be jointly investigated. The letter cites the source of the deadlock as the museum's refusal to return a prized bronze statue of a young Greek athlete, which along with the Aphrodite are considered the Getty's marquee pieces." Los Angeles Times 11/21/06

Getty Banks On Returns With No Guarantees "The museum’s move carries significant risks for the Getty. Unlike deals to return disputed art that Italy negotiated this year with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the ceding of art by the Getty carries no guarantee of loans from Italy or other reciprocal benefits." The New York Times 11/22/06

• Greece To Charge Ex-Getty Curator 'Greek authorities have recommended that felony criminal charges be filed against former J. Paul Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True for her role in the acquisition of a 2,500-year-old gold funerary wreath considered one of the museum's masterpieces." Los Angeles Times 11/21/06

Poll: UK Artists' Favorite Artist UK artists have voted Lucien Freud as their favorite in a survey. Freud "beat the likes of Rembrandt and Van Gogh - who also made the top ten - to become the artists' favourite artist." BBC 11/21/06

More MoMA To The Max? What's next for the Museum of Modern Art? How about another major expansion? "Several developers are in preliminary discussions with MoMA, [says director Glenn Lowry], "about the possibility of constructing a mixed-use building that would combine private commercial functions with more space for MoMA, probably to be used as galleries." CultureGrrl 11/21/06

Philly Tries To Protect Eakins; University Strikes Back "Thomas Jefferson University said yesterday that efforts by the city to stall removal of Thomas Eakins' masterpiece The Gross Clinic, which the university has agreed to sell, are an inappropriate, misguided attempt to 'restrict the University's control over its own property.' ... On Friday, Mayor Street nominated The Gross Clinic, owned by Jefferson since 1878, for protection as a 'historic object' under the city's historic-preservation ordinance." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/21/06

Germany Addressing Restitution Concerns "Germany's culture minister and top museums called Monday for more transparency in the return of paintings stolen by the Nazis, responding to concerns that the nation's galleries risk losing scores of valuable and popular works." Washington Post (AP) 11/21/06

Goya Thieves Trolling For Video Games? Law enforcement officers say the thieves who stole Goya's now-recovered "Children With a Cart" from a Howard Johnson motel parking lot likely weren't looking for it. " 'This time of year, close to Christmas, they probably thought they’d found a truck filled with PlayStations and broke in and started looking for the biggest-looking box,' said Steve Siegel, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the spokesman for the bureau’s Newark office." The New York Times 11/21/06

Artistic Voyeurism, With A Key "Several years ago the artist Nina Katchadourian found herself staring up at the sky full of office windows in Times Square and thinking about the faceless occupants behind them. 'You think, "My God, all those anonymous people up there, living and working," ' she said. 'There’s this sense of so much detachment between interior and exterior.' With the cooperation of one of those anonymous people and the help of the Public Art Fund, Ms. Katchadourian is now trying to build a bridge — or at least, as she says, stretch a tenuous thread — between those two worlds." The New York Times 11/21/06

Looking For That Connection Between Life And The Art "Whatever's happened, Robert Rauschenberg's famous 'gap between art and life' has turned into a new vividly dissonant gap between inner and outer life. Despite what's happening in the outside world, in our studios or in front of artworks we experience moments of genuine stillness, intensity, and meaningfulness—places on the edge of language that the world can't strip away." Village Voice 11/17/06

FBI Recovers Stolen Goya The painting had been stolen from a truck en route from Toledo to New York City. "The FBI said extensive media coverage of the theft led to tips that enabled the agency to recover the painting. But the agency did not reveal when, where or how the painting was recovered, citing an ongoing investigation." MSNBC (AP) 11/20/06

Reinventing The Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman is reinventing the museum. But "Lehman crossed a line in his relations with the art world this summer when he reorganized the Brooklyn Museum's curatorial staff –– dividing it into two teams, one for collections and the other for exhibitions. Some saw this as an effort to centralize power and thus pursue his vision for the museum more efficiently. By October, two senior curators and two board members had resigned out of frustration with the museum's direction. It seems a good time to ask: Setting aside the question of Mr. Lehman's popularity (or lack of it) in the arts community, will his approach work?" New York Sun 11/20/06

Buffalo = Frank Lloyd Wright Buffalo has restored a Frank Lloyd Wright building, and is working on resurrecting (and completing) others. "Around the country, 15 Wright projects have been erected posthumously, but the Martin House structures are thought to be the first Wright designs rebuilt at their original locations after demolition, said archivist Margo Stipe of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 11/19/06

Myopia, Exhibit One: The Whitney The Whitney's big celebratory 75th birthday show is a dud, writes Christopher Kinght. "Fittingly, apathy is pretty much what the show deserves. Why? Call it an eye for an eye. The myopia is breathtaking. We might be living in a new millennium, but this exhibition still thinks the only 20th century American artists of note are New Yorkers. This boring, repetitious lack of discernment might also help explain a rising tide of inchoate critical restlessness with Manhattan's art museum culture." Los Angeles Times 11/19/06

De Kooning For $137 Million Hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen "bought the 1952-53 oil on canvas, 'Woman III,' directly from the entertainment magnate and megacollector David Geffen, who in the last two months has emerged as equally prolific in selling his contemporary masterpieces. It is the last painting in de Kooning’s 'Women' series still in private hands." The New York Times 11/18/06

Questions Mount About Goya Theft The painting was stolen as it was being driven from Toledo to the Guggenheim in New York. "The likelihood that the thief or thieves knew that a valuable painting was on the truck and were aware of its location led the authorities to conclude that whoever stole the painting had obtained precise information about the contents and route of the truck, even though such details are closely held at the two museums involved — the Toledo Museum of Art and the Guggenheim — and among employees at the art shipper. Law enforcement authorities did not identify the shipper." The New York Times 11/18/06

That (Not So Fine) Line Between Art And Graffiti A man paints a giant cartoon of pinup icon Bettie Page on the side of his house in Seattle. Th city knocks on his door calling it graffiti and demanding he take it down... The Stranger (Seattle) 11/16/06

More Political Art In LA Politically tinged social/relational art shows" are on the rise in Los Angeles. "Characterized by a kind of shaggy-dog rhetoric, a hands-on DIY workshop aesthetic, and a post-Seattle sense of political theater married to a post-9/11 sense of urgency, these groups have taken on the unthinkable task of forging a crazy-quilt sense of community from the disparate and physically isolated pockets of disenfranchised creative types that riddle L.A.’s cultural infrastructure." LAWeekly 11/17/06

Museums - Plying Both Ends Museums are complaining about changes in the tax code about gifts. They're also selling pieces of their collections. "Museums are trying to have it both ways: benefiting from tax subventions because they supposedly can’t survive in the marketplace yet stepping into the marketplace when they deem it appropriate. Some are actually renting out parts of their collections. What’s so disturbing about collection rentals and sales is that they violate the reason that museums are treated differently from businesses." OpinionJournal.com 11/17/06

Bill Would Block Barnes Move "Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), who narrowly won re-election last week, on Wednesday followed through on a pledge to introduce legislation that would prevent the Barnes Foundation from being relocated to Philadelphia from suburban Merion, Pa. The bill would penalize any charitable institution that solicits donations contrary to the original benefactor's wishes." Los Angeles Times 11/17/06

Fashion As Art (And Where Does It Belong?) The fashion exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is surprisingly substantial, but the expected question remains: Are such exhibitions a sign of the coming apocalypse? "I want people to ask questions while they are walking through the gallery," MFA curator Pamela Parmal explained. "Is this reflective of the time? Is this art? Is this marketing? Are these people crazy?" The New York Times 11/16/06

Met Still Running In The Red New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art ran a $3.2 million deficit for fiscal 2006, the museum's fifth straight year in the red. In a clear effort to bring its budget under control, the Met hiked its admission fee to $20, and made good strides in boosting its endowment. The museum also sold off nearly $27 million worth of the art in its collection this year (compared to just over half a million the year before,) and spent only $34 million on new art (a third of what it spent in fiscal '05.) Culturegrrl (AJ Blogs) 11/16/06

Now That The Dust Has Settled At MoMA... New York's Museum of Modern Art has finally completed its $850 million expansion, and is now hoping to maintain the public interest that has been stirred up by its dramatic new digs and perceived upgrade in status. In a new interview, MoMA director Glenn Lowry responds to criticism of his supposed top-down management style, and insists that he has no intention of following other museums like the Tate and the Pompidou in creating branch museums in other cities and countries. The Art Newspaper 11/16/06

Is Koolhaas Reinventing The Skyscraper? "Set on a site that’s about as large as 37 football fields, Rem Koolhaas’s television authority headquarters in Beijing may initially seem intimidating. This 54-story tower leans and looms like some kind of science-fiction creature poised to stomp all over the surrounding central business district. But if the five-million-square-foot building is one of the largest ever constructed, its architect sees it as a people-friendly reinvention of the skyscraper." The New York Times 11/16/06

Warhol, De Kooning Sales Push Fall Auction Take To $1 Billion Yet another round of records was set at Christie's New York last night, as Andy Warhol's famous portrait of Mao Zedong sold for $17.36 million, the most ever paid for a Warhol. "Two other portraits of classic Warhol subjects - Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy - sold for over $30m in total. Willem de Kooning's Untitled XXV fetched $27.1m. The $240m sale set new records for 19 artists and caps a fortnight in which Christie's and rivals Sotheby's took $1bn between them." BBC 11/16/06

• Bordering On Giddiness The atmosphere at Wednesday night's auction was electric, as buyers and observers alike caught the unheard-of fever that seems to be permeating this season's high-end art market. "Christie’s had captured the best material this season, and the art world knew it. In the overflowing salesroom were dealers and collectors from all over the world." The New York Times 11/16/06

Dean's The Boss Tacita Dean, an English artist best known for her contemplative films, has won this year's Hugo Boss prize, a $50,000 award from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Bloomberg.com 11/15/06

The Mystery Of The $140 Million Pollock Sale Did David Martinez buy a Jackson Pollock for $140 million, as the New York Times reported last week? Martinez says no. Yet the Times is sticking by its story... Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 11/15/06

Met Bows To Grosz Estate, Won't Borrow MoMA Painting "In response to an ownership dispute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art says it has decided not to borrow a painting by George Grosz from the Museum of Modern Art for an exhibition of German Expressionist portraits that opened yesterday... MoMA, which has been discussing the issue with the estate for three years, counters that it has thoroughly investigated the claim and has concluded that it has no legal basis." The New York Times 11/15/06

Auction Prices Continue Their Ascent Fifteen sales records were broken at a Sotheby's auction in New York this week as the art market continues to explode. Francis Bacon's Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe sold for $15 million, the most ever paid for a Bacon work, while sculptor Anish Kapoor's "untitled carved alabaster sculpture from 1999 generated $2.3m, about five times the sum it had been predicted to earn." BBC 11/15/06

• Putting A Number On It "There is no mystery about the causes of the new boom. The rich have done very well over the last decade, and some of them, including hedge fund managers like Steven A. Cohen, are spending large sums of their money on art. New billionaires in China, India and, above all, Russia, have also entered the market. The mysterious part of the current mania lies in figuring out what exactly makes a piece of art worth $30 million instead of, say, $1 million." The New York Times 11/15/06

More Trouble For The MacLaren "Supporters of [Barrie, Ontario's] MacLaren Art Centre, which got enmeshed in a controversial, multimillion-dollar deal involving dozens of sculptures attributed to French master Auguste Rodin, are casting a wary eye on the election Monday of a mayor who claims the gallery has received enough taxpayer help and needs to be more 'self-sustaining.'" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/15/06

Who Decides A Painting Is Real? "Most masters have at least a few disputed authorships in their oeuvre. On the say of one person the worth of a painting can rocket or plummet overnight. No wonder canvases have been the fields of such ferocious battles." The Times (UK) 11/14/06

Goya Snatched Near Scranton While Truck Left Unattended The Goya painting owned by the Toledo Museum of Art, and stolen as it was being transported to the Guggenheim in New York "was insured for just over $1 million and was in the hands of a professional art transporter when it was snatched Wednesday in the Scranton, Pa., area. The transport vehicle was unattended at the time of theft." Toledo Blade 11/14/06

Who Ought To Be Next To Run The Met? Phillipe de Montebello has been associated with the Metropolitan Museum since 1963 and director since 1978 - an unusually long tenure. He shows no signs of moving on, but CultureGrrl has taken it upon herself to compile a list of possible successors... CultureGrrl 11/14/06

Museum Art Sales Face Judgment Of Time So Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery is selling off some of its art. So what? "Museums are devoting more and more resources to acquiring large amounts of contemporary art, work about which the judgment of history--supposedly what museums are all about - is far from settled. Such acquisition policies may be acceptable, but not when done by getting rid of masterpieces whose importance has been validated by time and critical opinion and that provide a context for the work of the present. Ironically, this plan is driven by perceptions about the notably erratic and currently inflated contemporary art market, rather than by any dire financial crisis." OpinionJournal.com 11/15/06

Iconic Eakins Is Sold; Now Comes The Aftershock "At least twice in the 1970s and 1980s, deep-pocketed buyers came knocking on the doors of Thomas Jefferson University seeking to purchase Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic." Alumni soundly rejected those offers, but they weren't consulted this time. "University trustees announced Friday that they had agreed to sell the painting for $68 million. The news, said David Paskin, senior associate dean at the university, hit Jefferson 'like a nuclear blast.' Yesterday, students, faculty members and alumni were still reeling from the shock, which caught everyone off guard, angering not a few by its seeming stealth." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/14/06

• Previously: College Sells American Masterpiece To Museums Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia is selling its prized 1875 painting by Thomas Eakins "for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton and under construction in Bentonville, Ark. That sum is a record for an artwork created in the United States before World War II." The New York Times 11/11/06

2,000-Year-Old Shipwreck Yields Amphora Bonanza "A shipwrecked first-century vessel carrying delicacies to the richest palates of the Roman Empire has proved a dazzling find, with nearly 2,000-year-old fish bones still nestling inside clay jars, archeologists said yesterday. Boaters found the vessel's cargo of hundreds of amphoras in 2000 when their anchor got tangled with one of the two-handled jars. After years of arranging financing and crews, exploration of the site off the coast of Alicante in southeast Spain began in July...." Boston Globe (AP) 11/14/06

Harvard Museums Reassess Plan For Temporary Home "The Harvard University Art Museums is reconsidering plans to turn a former bank building in Allston into its temporary home when it closes the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums for renovation in 2008. ... The original plan called for housing the majority of the 250,000 objects in the university's collection at the former bank building. At 25,000 square feet, the second site is less than a third the size of the former Citizens Bank building." Boston Globe 11/14/06

Montreal Museum Director Stepping Down "Guy Cogeval, the director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art since 1998, announced he will leave at the end of his contract next year." CBC 11/14/06

Goya Stolen En Route To Guggenheim "A 1778 painting by Francisco de Goya, 'Children With Cart,' has been stolen near Scranton, Penn., on its way to the Guggenheim Museum of Art." New York Sun 11/14/06

The Restitution Racket Restituted art stolen by Nazis has become big business. But "sometimes we are dealing with a business in which many secondary players, lawyers, art dealers, are trying to get their piece of the pie. These are often the driving forces and are driving up prices." The Telegraph (UK) 11/14/06

Two Fra Angelicos Found "Experts in Italian renaissance art have recently discovered two works by the Florentine painter Fra Angelico "hanging behind a door in the spare room of an elderly woman's two-up, two-down in Oxford. The paintings will go on sale next year and are expected to fetch more than £1 million." The Guardian (UK) 11/14/06

Change Roils Scotland's Biggest Art Fair The head of the Glasgow Art Fair may step down after criticism. "Pete Irvine was criticised by some Glasgow galleries for deselecting them in favour of more high-profile London and international collections. And following this year's annual event in April, two of the Scottish galleries excluded called for a public consultation over the event's future." Scotland on Sunday 11/12/06

Study: Most UK Art Is Unaccessible A new study of art in Britain's public institutions says that "over 80 percent (120,000 pictures) are probably held in storage or in buildings without access. What is publicly owned is not publicly accessible. Of the 150 collections which have so far been recorded by the foundation, only one (a hospital) was able to provide a complete set of data on the first attempt." The Art Newspaper 11/11/06

Fires Have Taken Toll On Historic Chicago Architecture "The succession of fires that has destroyed three Adler & Sullivan buildings in Chicago this year, casting a pall over the 150th anniversary of Sullivan's birth, presents a daunting challenge to city officials: How to prevent fire from sending more of Chicago's architectural treasures to the graveyard?" Chicago Tribune 11/12/06

Dealers Complain About Auction House Entry To Maastricht Art dealers are angry that Sotheby's and Christie's have bought their way into the Maastricht Fair. "Art fairs are supposedly the trade’s answer to auctions, a way of creating a glamorous event to attract buyers, so the presence of an auction house in a fair—let alone such a prestigious one—was seen as a Trojan horse." The Art Newspaper 11/10/06

College Sells American Masterpiece To Museums Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia is selling its prized 1875 painting by Thomas Eakins "for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton and under construction in Bentonville, Ark. That sum is a record for an artwork created in the United States before World War II." The New York Times 11/11/06

Critics Denounce Portrait Museum's "Appalling" Acquisition London's National Portrait Gallery has bought a picture of Lady Jane Grey for £100,000. But critics are deriding the purchase. "It's an appallingly bad picture and there's absolutely no reason to suppose it's got anything to do with Lady Jane Grey. But if the National Portrait Gallery has public money to burn, then so be it." The Guardian (UK) 11/11/06

Gym Teacher Returns Piece Of Acropolis A Swedish gym teacher has returned a piece of the Acropolis to Greece. "Birgit Wiger-Angner's family held the marble for 110 years, but she decided to return it to Athens after hearing about Greece's Elgin marbles campaign. The small fragment comes from the Acropolis's Erechtheion temple." BBC 11/10/06

True: Antiquities Market Is Corrupt Former Getty curator Marion True, on trial in Italy for thefts of antiquities, days the antiquities market is probably the "most corrupt" of art markets. "The museum had to accept the premise that the majority of antiquities available on the market had, in all probability, been exported from the countries of origin illegally," True, 58, wrote, explaining why the Getty adopted policies that restricted artifacts it could buy. Bloomberg 11/10/06

Buying Up Art As Fast As It Can Be Painted Art is totally hot right now, and we're not just talking about the big masterpieces that sell for millions at snooty auction houses in New York and London. "In an increasingly overheated world-wide art market, the demands of a voracious — and growing — community of buyers is putting pressure on artists to produce more work, faster, than ever before." Toronto Star 11/10/06

The Quiet Collector Makes His Presence Felt Until he sold off three paintings for a combined $283 million this fall, many outside the art world were probably unaware of Hollywood mogul David Geffen's status as a major collector. But "insiders have [long] acknowledged Geffen's inventory as one of the largely unseen wonders of the contemporary art world... To those who have watched Geffen quietly amass paintings by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning, these sales make a lot of sense." Los Angeles Times 11/10/06

Buffalo Gallery To Sell Off Old Masters "After six years of strategic planning and review, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has decided to sell artworks and objects that fall outside the institution’s mission 'to acquire, exhibit and preserve both Modern and contemporary art.' The works, which include everything from antiquities to old master paintings and other European art, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2007 and early 2008. The proceeds, expected to be around $15 million, will be used to acquire works that will strengthen the gallery’s holdings." The New York Times 11/10/06

Art Is So Bourgeois, Anyway An important Kirchner painting sold at the record-setting auction in New York the other day for nearly $40 million. But possibly more interesting than the work itself is the identity of the seller - "Anita Halpin, the 62-year-old stalwart and chair of the far left" Communist Party of Britain. "For a communist, it may seem a galling sum for 200cm by 150cm of canvas. Worse still, perhaps, for a woman with Stalinist credentials." The Guardian (UK) 11/10/06

Selling To Buy In Seattle The Seattle Art Museum is "aggressively pruning its American collection in the hopes that clearing out the weeds will make way (dollars-wise, that is) for better, bigger purchases... Obviously, the museum believes it can make headway in the department of cheaper and more available American art. Is that true? And does SAM have its eyes on a particular prize? The museum isn’t saying." The Stranger (Seattle) 11/08/06

Not About The Money, Obviously Teri Horton, who lives in a mobile home and gets by on Social Security, isn't exactly your typical high-end art collector. But ever since she was told that the painting she bought for $5 at a thrift store might just be an Jackson Pollock, Horton has given over her life to a tireless quest to prove the painting's authenticity. How driven is she? Well, she recently turned down a $9 million offer for the work. The New York Times 11/09/06

Better Late Than Never "After an on-and-off restitution battle lasting six decades, the Austrian Culture Ministry agreed on Wednesday to return a painting by Edvard Munch, Summer Night on the Beach, to Marina Mahler. She is the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife, Alma, who originally owned the oil." The New York Times 11/09/06

Christie's Finally Pulls Nazi-Linked Painting, But To What End? In withdrawing a Nazi-linked Picasso from tonight's art auction, Christie's is acknowledging the difficult status of the painting's ownership history. But the auction house is hardly conceding defeat: Christie's may yet seek damages from the man who has been claiming rightful ownership of the painting in court. The New York Times 11/09/06

Italy Frustrated Over Getty Talks Italian officials say talks with the Getty Museum over return of art Italians say is stolen have been disappointing. "I don’t think they understand the gravity of the situation. You have a major museum, and it is exhibiting dozens of stolen artifacts." The New York Times 11/09/06

The Half-Billion-Dollar Art Sale The evening’s total, $491.4 million, was well over $200 million more than that for any previous auction, topping its high estimate of $427.8 million. (The previous record was $269 million at Christie’s in May 1990.) Of the 84 lots up for sale last night, only 6 failed to sell. 'Not only did so much money change hands, but this sale it going to change the whole landscape when it comes to prices for postwar art'." The New York Times 11/09/06

Sotheby's Reimburses Collector For Fakes Sotheby's has been forced to reimburse the fashion designer Jasper Conran £78,000 after a pair of portraits sold as 16th-century originals were revealed as 18th-century fakes. The Guardian (UK) 11/08/06

Picasso - First It's For Sale, Then It's Not, Then It Is, Then... "A 1903 Picasso painting, which was to have been auctioned by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, has been withdrawn at the last minute due to its Nazi-era history." BBC 11/08/06

Quebec - Next Stop In The Louvre's Global Strategy "The Louvre will loan 276 works from its collection of artifacts, stretching from Egyptian times to the turn of the 20th century, to the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec." CBC 11/08/06

Investing In A ROM Story How do you get a big donor to step up and invest in your museum's story? You appeal to his interests. That's what the Royal Ontario Museum did, and it paid off big yesterday. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/08/06

Big Night At The Auction House Sotheby's makes a strong showing with Impressionists and Modern. "Throughout the evening, paintings by masters like Cézanne, Modigliani and Matisse that had been up at auction in recent years not only sold but also brought solid prices. Although there were few fireworks and only an occasional bidding war, the evening totaled $238.6 million, Sotheby’s highest auction total since spring 1990 and right in the middle of its estimate, $219 million to $299 million." The New York Times 11/08/06

Max Ernst Painting Stolen From Art Colgne Fair "The abstract, untitled painting from about 1957 was noticed missing from the stand of Salis & Vertes, a gallery with branches in Salzburg, Austria, and St. Moritz, Switzerland, as employees were packing up at the end of the fair." Bloomberg 11/07/06

Lloyd Webber Foundation Can Sell Picasso That's what a judge rules. "The auction was halted after a German man claimed his ancestor was forced to sell the work during the 1930s." BBC 11/07/06

• Christie's Still Might Not Sell ALW Picasso "Even though a Manhattan judge dismissed an attempt to block the sale of a $60m Picasso belonging to Andrew Lloyd Webber, Christie’s looked set to withdraw the painting from auction on 8 November." The Art Newspaper 11/07/06

Wait! The Architect Isn't Done Yet! "The rush to architectural judgment is like a vice. It's something you shouldn't do -- and an indulgence that's hard to resist." John King is reserving judgment on the Thom Mayne tower taking shape before the eyes of the public in San Francisco. But many of his readers have already formed strong opinions about it, demonstrating "that in an ever-more splintered world of self-defined tribes, the buildings around us are a shared experience -- no matter how vividly at odds our reactions might be." San Francisco Chronicle 11/07/06

World Trade Center Museum Delayed Until 2010 "The World Trade Center Memorial Museum's opening has been pushed back beyond the original target date of 2009, the Daily News has learned. Though the WTC Memorial, with two sunken pools marking where the twin towers stood, is still due to welcome its first visitors in 2009, the adjoining museum containing WTC artifacts won't open until mid-2010. The delayed museum debut must await completion of a visitors center, which will provide access to the museum's underground exhibition space." New York Daily News 11/07/06

Chlorine May Be Darkening Pompeiian Frescoes Pompeiian wall paintings colored with cinnabar have darkened since their excavation. "Art preservationists have been uncertain why the degradation occurs, but have suspected that sunlight causes the mercury sulfide to change crystalline phases, to a form called metacinnabar. But an analysis using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, shows that there is no metacinnabar to be found. Instead, Marine Cotte of the synchrotron facility and colleagues found two other degradation processes at work, probably caused at least in part by chlorine." The New York Times 11/07/06

Chicago's Architecture Endangered By Condos? "Fiercely proud of both its architecture and its distinct neighborhoods, Chicago is losing entire tracts of older buildings. Many areas bordering downtown where immigrant communities flourished a century ago have experienced a rush of residential development, leading local preservationists ... to worry that before long, the only architecture left in this inner ring of neighborhoods will be condominiums." The New York Times 11/07/06

A Jackson Pollock For $5? A former truck driver buys what she later comes to decide is a Jackson Pollock painting from a California thrift store. It cost $5. Is it really worth millions? An auction this week will tell the tale. The Telegraph (UK) 11/06/06

A Culture Of Guarantees? More and more sellers of art at this fall's auctions are asking for (and getting) guarantees. "Some 48 of the 168 works being offered at Sotheby's two evening sales have guarantees. Christie's has granted guarantees for 49 of the 168 works in its two evening sales." CultureGrrl (AJBlogs) 11/06/06

Glassed In: High-Rise Living, Corporate Style "In New York City, glass has long been considered a workplace material - honest, transparent and spare, as befits containers of capitalism. There's rarely much to see: Accounts Payable in one skyscraper looks pretty much like Accounts Payable in another. But in the past few years, as the home and office have merged thanks to portable gadgetry, apartment buildings have come to look like corporate headquarters, with their floor-to-ceiling, column-to-column windows." Newsday 11/06/06

Roofs Reconsidered "Thanks in part to the surging popularity of Google Earth and other Web-based programs, which give the public a bracingly new, if detached, way to interact with the built environment, rooftops are shedding their reputation as forgotten, wind-swept corners of the urban landscape and moving toward the center of architectural practice." Los Angeles Times 11/06/06

The West (History W/O The Kitsch?) The Museum of the American West (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage) has reinvented the way it presents history of the West. "In the next few years it has the potential to map out a new form of historical museum in the United States, one that is neither an intoxicated celebration of Western fantasy — turning itself into another stage set in a fictionalized drama." The New York Times 11/06/06

Architecture - The Next Wave? Architects have been producing flashier and flasier pojects in the past decade. But there are starting to be signs, writes Blair Kamin, that the most interesting architecture on the horizon speaks in a quieter voice. Chicago Tribune 11/05/06

End Of An Era At The DeCordova The director of Boston's DeCordova Museum is leaving his post after 22 years, and while rumors persist that he was pushed, Paul Master-Karnik insists that he made the decision to depart on his own. "During his 22 years at the DeCordova, he led a transformation of the once- sleepy institution. The DeCordova's current $5.2 million annual operating budget is more than five times larger than when Master-Karnik arrived. The museum's endowment has more than doubled, to $10 million. In 1998, the DeCordova finished an $8 million campaign that included the construction of a new, 20,000-square-foot exhibition wing." Boston Globe 11/05/06

Sort Of A Darwinian Theory Of Architecture A conservative think-tank in the UK is proposing a controversial plan to revitalize the country's cities: invite the public to submit lists of hated buildings that deserve the opposite of historic preservation. In other words, decide which old structures are really worth keeping, and knock the others down. The Observer (UK) 11/05/06

Looking Deeper Into The Old Masters New technology is allowing art experts to examine long-held beliefs about centuries-old works as never before. "Probing the surface with X-rays or infrared light or dating the work by dendrochronology — counting the rings in the wooden panel on which the image was painted — can reveal much about how a work was actually made... Such analysis can also uncover many twists and turns in the long trip from the artist’s studio to the museum wall." The New York Times 11/05/06

Never Mind The Art, How's Your Auction Etiquette? Auction season is an exciting time in the art world, but it can also be a confusing and expensive place for the inexperienced. "Within the already rarefied subculture of the art world, auction houses are a preserve all their own, with distinct practices, jargon and rites... How collectors comport themselves is nearly as important as what they’re willing to spend." The New York Times 11/05/06

The Chelsea Powerhouse 15 years ago, Manhattan's Chelsea was an urban blight. Now "by one count, made by the Web site chelseaartgalleries.com, there are now 318 galleries in the neighborhood, many more than SoHo had at its peak. Along with the garment district and the diamond district in Midtown, Chelsea has emerged as one of the largest collections of like businesses in the city’s history." The New York Times 11/03/06

Florence Still At Risk Forty years ago Florence suffered a catastrophic flood. But all these many years later "a number of major strategic measures had still to be built and that it was only in 2005 that local and central government and his authority got together to work out a strategic plan." The Art Newspaper 11/02/06

Shanghai Gets A New Art Fair A major new art fair featuring 120 galleries will be held in Shanghai next year. "The new art fair, 'ShContemporary 2007', is being organised by the Geneva gallerist and collector, Pierre Huber with Lorenzo Rudolf, former director of Art Basel, and Bolognafiere, an Italian fair organiser which already has offices in Shanghai." The Art Newspaper 11/02/06

German Police Investigate Tate Recovery German police are investigating how the Tate recovered two Turner paintings. "The gallery announced two years ago that it had recovered Shade and Darkness — the Evening of the Deluge, and Light and Colour (Goethe’s theory), which were stolen in 1994. The Times learnt yesterday that German police are investigating whether the Tate had broken German federal law." The Times (UK) 11/02/06

Fractional Gifts At Risk Under New Law "A recent change in federal tax law that was intended to curb abuses by the wealthy has museum officials grumbling that priceless art gifts could dry up... The old law allowed a collector to donate a percentage of an art object, take a tax write-off for the gift, and yet retain physical possession of the piece, often for many years. The new law caps the value of the donation, the time span of the gift and how the museum and private owner will share it. Museums say the original law enriched public art collections, cemented relationships with donors and cost taxpayers little compared with its benefits." Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 11/02/06

Pollock Sale May Be A New Record Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold a Jackson Pollock painting for a reported $140 million. The price, if accurate, is the highest ever paid for a painting, outstripping last year's $135 million acquisition of Gustav Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The New York Times 11/02/06

Fall Auctions Set To Make Waves "Just when it seemed as if art auctions could not get bigger or prices go higher, along come the catalogs for this fall’s important sales of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art. [The] evening sales have the highest estimates in auction history; they also carry the biggest risk. The auction houses have become so competitive for business that this season they have promised sellers larger and larger guarantees, undisclosed minimum sums that are paid regardless of a sale’s outcome." The New York Times 11/02/06

Whither The Whitney? Once again, New York's Whitney Museum is changing course, considering a complete abandonment of the Renzo Piano addition to its Manhattan home in favor of a new downtown outpost. "The Whitney’s latest about-face points to an underlying malady. Architects are only as good as their clients. They can give conceptual form to an institution’s identity, but they can’t invent it. The Whitney’s endless false starts are a symptom of self-doubt and internal confusion." The New York Times 11/02/06

• The Whitney's Great Opportunity "The Whitney could at this moment electrify everyone by changing the game entirely. It should take a page from London's enormous, and enormously fantastic-for-art, Tate Modern. Rather than continuing its uphill battle of trying to build an uptown addition that will be outdated the day it opens, the Whitney should rethink its paradigm and reinvent itself." Village Voice 10/27/06

Looting Iraq's Past Iraq's archaeological treasures are being looted. "But does this matter, in a country where a baker beside his oven, or a barber by his chair, can be gunned down as valid targets for sectarian hatred?" The Guardian (UK) 11/01/06

Looting Italy's Churches Thieves have been pillaging art from Italy's churches. "The thieves have turned to plundering churches for religious artefacts since a clampdown on the pillaging of ancient sites. Accords reached with many international museums have seen the return to Italy of illegally exported antiquities and thieves are looking elsewhere to find items to sell to collectors." The Guardian (UK) 11/01/06

Ex-Curator Shocks Hearing A former curator at Frederickton's Beaverbrook Gallery surprised a court hearing when he alleged that gallery records had been tampered with. The hearing is to determine ownership of the gallery's collection. "Among the paintings in dispute are J.M.W. Turner's Fountain of Indolence, estimated to be worth as much as $25 million, and Hotel Bedroom by Lucien Freud, which could be worth as much as $8 million." CBC 11/01/06

Bigger Is Sometimes Better Roberta Smith says that the overwhelming success of London's Tate Modern ought to give New Yorkers, who ponied up close to a billion dollars to build the new Museum of Modern Art, pause. "That MoMA could have spent so much money on a design that seems so unaccommodating — and already feels too small — for its growing audience is a travesty... The lessons of Tate Modern challenge a lot of conventional wisdom, at least that expressed in many American museums these days. Most important, Tate Modern’s huge building proves that being big is not the same as being corporate: it is possible to have a large institution feel personal to its visitors." The New York Times 11/01/06

That's Asking An Awful Lot From A Lobby... New York's Lincoln Center complex has tapped husband-and-wife team Billie Tsien and Tod Williams to design the new indoor atrium that officials hope will lead to higher ticket sales and the emergence of the center as a public gathering space. "Their early ideas for the atrium include a stone platform that could serve both as a bench and as a stage for free performances by Juilliard students. They want to incorporate some of Lincoln Center’s signature materials, like bronze detailing and travertine." The New York Times 11/01/06