Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Unassisted

A pair of interesting stories from The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers over the weekend.

On Saturday, he reported that the Massachusetts attorney general's office is looking into certain financial practices at the nonprofit Citi Performing Arts Center.

Then, on Sunday, he had an update on the "Pollock Matters" exhibition opening next week at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art (mentioned last week here). Interestingly, Matter and "Williamstown-based forensic scientist and conservator" James Martin are still at odds over whether Martin can publish the results of a study he was hired to do two years ago (discussed earlier here). Martin is still saying "he won't release the study unless Matter and others in his camp agree not to sue him." Matter's attorney says "he offered Martin assurances that he would not be sued as part of a release, but that Martin declined to sign it"; Martin's attorney counters that the proposal "stated that if Martin were to sign, the McMullen catalog would be the 'sole and exclusive manner for publications and public disclosure' of his analysis. ... 'To say, "Yes, you can participate, but you have a sock stuck in your mouth the rest of your life," those aren't terms that are acceptable.'"

The official position of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which refused to permit the use Pollock images in the show's catalog, is: "we've seen no hard evidence these paintings are by Pollock."