Status of the Rose

Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz sent around a list of "Frequently Asked Questions'' yesterday, and it included the following:

• "The Rose is NOT going to close. The Board of Trustees voted to keep the Rose open as a teaching and exhibition gallery that is even more fully integrated into University life and the academic enterprise. A faculty-student-trustee committee is looking into ways to accomplish this goal. We envision a day when the Rose will host additional events, welcome more visitors from both on and off campus, and exhibit student and faculty art alongside some of the collection's notable works." (Just what Holland Cotter ordered up!)
• "The Board of Trustees voted to authorize Brandeis to sell a limited number of pieces in the collection -- if the need arises in the future. Nothing will be sold into the currently depressed art market."

Fairey Nuff

Some end of the week Fairey-fair use links:

Fairey was on NPR's "Fresh Air" yesterday to talk about the dispute. You can listen here.

He and Larry Lessig also spoke at the New York Public Library last night. The NYT's Jennifer Schuessler was there.

And Marquette's Bruce Boyden has the fourth in his series of posts on the dispute, this time looking at "two intriguing mysteries" in the case: (1) which photograph the work is based on and (2) how the image was created (i.e., "whether Fairey simply photoshopped the Garcia photo, or rather created the poster by hand").

"Nonprofit groups are up in arms over President Obama’s proposal to limit charitable deductions"

Robert Frank: "The plan would allow charitable donors earning more than $250,000 a year to deduct only 28% of value of any donations, down from 33% or 35% currently."

Nabbed

ARTINFO.com: "Police in Las Vegas have arrested a man suspected of stealing about $500,000 worth of art from galleries in Laguna Beach and West Hollywood 10 years ago."

"A captivating portrait of the world's biggest unsolved art theft"

The Wall Street Journal reviews Ulrich Boser's new book on the Gardner heist.

Fish Mural Suit

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the city of Clearwater, Florida on behalf of a tackle shop owner who was fined for having a mural of game fish painted on his shop. The suit claims that the mural is a work of art and therefore exempt from the city's commercial sign regulations. Story here.

More Museum Cuts

I mentioned the Detroit Insitute of Arts and the Las Vegas Museum of Art earlier this week.

Now, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has announced that it too is "cutting staff, delaying exhibitions, curtailing programs, trimming salaries and — subject to city approval — increasing admission fees." They're eliminating seven percent of the staff.

The High Museum in Atlanta also announced a series of budget cuts, including a similar seven percent reduction of its staff.

And today the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore announced it was laying off five percent of its staff and canceling a planned collaboration with the Musee d'Orsay and the Getty. Also, "earlier this year, Hackerman House, where the Walters' Asian art collection is displayed, was closed weekdays."

As museum consultant Libby Ellis said back in December, "most people have no idea how bad things are out there today."

Agis Update

Artist Maurice Agis was found guilty of breaching health and safety rules, but the jury was unable to come to a verdict on manslaughter charges arising out of a public art tragedy in the summer of 2006. UK prosecutors said they would make a decision on whether to retry him within seven days.

I think I have a new favorite museum director

Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego:

"We museum directors can huff and puff about how once we bring these artworks into our collections that they no longer have value because they've been removed from the market, that they become this special trust that is the patrimony of our cities and that they're held in trust for future generations. It's B.S. We go on and sell them and the rule is the proceeds from the sale can only go to replenish the collection."

"We have acted upon the information, but we have been unable to corroborate it"

The Boston Globe reports on a jailhouse tip in the infamous Gardner theft. So far it hasn't panned out. Geoff Edgers isn't holding his breath.

20%

The Detroit Institute of Arts is laying off about 20% of its staff. They've also cut back on some programs, canceled a few traveling exhibitions, and, in December, cut museum hours by four per week. Their operating costs are about $15 million a year.

"Now people are looking to every asset they have to unlock cash"

The New York Times had a front page story today on art-backed lending: "At a time when stock portfolios are plunging and many homes ... have no equity left to borrow against, an increasing number of art owners are realizing that an Old Master or a prime photograph, when used as collateral, can bring in much-needed cash."

Related post, from a couple years back, here.

Yeah, that'll work well with a jury

The lawyer for an art dealer being sued by a congregation of nuns in upstate New York "blasted [the] allegations against his client as 'a pack of lies.'"

Randolph College Update

In another case on the deaccession docket, the Lynchburg News & Advance's Christa Desrets reports that "Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Leyburn Mosby Jr. ruled that a trial will determine who should get the $500,000 bond that secured the barring of the sale of the art in late 2007." As she reminds us, "after Randolph announced in October 2007 that it would sell four paintings from the Maier Museum of Art, opponents filed an injunction against the sale." Initially, the judge ordered that a $10 million bond be filed to protect the college against any damages caused by the delay. It was later lowered to $1 million, but the plaintiffs were only able to raise half that amount. The injunction was then lifted, and the suit was eventually withdrawn. The judge ordered that the trial take place within the next six months.

Response to Rosenthal

ARTnews's Robin Cembalest responds to Norman Rosenthal's call for an end to any further Nazi restitution claims:

"[T]he fact remains that restitution research is very much a work in process. As ARTnews has chronicled repeatedly over the last two decades, initial efforts to research the history of supposedly 'heirless' art ... were met with stonewalling, obfuscation, and legal obstacles. Only now are closed archives being opened and some European governments showing a willingness to investigate the provenance of works in national collections. The result is a stream of new information about looted art."

Craps

The Las Vegas Art Museum is closing. Brief story in the NYT here. More from the Las Vegas Sun here.

A Rose is a Rose . . . isn't it?

In the New York Times this morning, Holland Cotter has some advice for "university administrators toying with thoughts of closing their campus museums and peddling the art, as Brandeis recently threatened to do":

"Just stop. Period. Bad way to go. If it helps, consider your museum and its collection in purely materialistic terms, as a big chunk of capital, slowly and fortuitously accumulated. Once spent, it is irrecoverable. Your university can never be that rich in that way again. Or view the art in your care as something that doesn’t belong to you. Like any legacy it belongs to the future."

He goes on to say that "university museums are unlike other museums. They are not intended to be powerhouse displays of masterworks .... They are, before all else, teaching instruments intended for hands-on use by students and scholars." They "are, at their best, equal parts classroom, laboratory, entertainment center and spiritual gym where good ideas are worked out and bad ideas are worked off."

Obviously this is meant to be a sharp criticism of the Brandeis move, but I'm not sure how effective it really is. Remember, the university's current plan is not to padlock the doors to the Rose and put all the work on eBay. They've been saying they plan to transform it into a research-and-study-center-slash-gallery ("The Rose museum ... will be turned into an educational center for Brandeis students and faculty, Reinharz told the Globe .... It will include more student and faculty exhibits, and the public will still be allowed to visit. 'We're saying we're turning it into a gallery and a teaching site for the faculty of the fine arts,' Reinharz told the Globe").

In other words, "before all else," it will be a "teaching instrument for hands-on use by students and scholars." At its best, it will be "equal parts classroom, laboratory, entertainment center and spiritual gym where good ideas are worked out and bad ideas are worked off." It may have slightly fewer works available than it does now to serve those various functions, but it should never have been intended as a "powerhouse display of masterworks" anyway.

When you look at it that way, the move doesn't seem so bad, now does it?

"One of history's greatest unsolved mysteries"

Kriston Capps reviews "journalist-turned-gumshoe" Ulrich Boser's new book The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft: "The mystery remains unsolved, but the case is reinvigorated in its retelling by a man who fully appreciates the value of the masterpieces and the magnitude of the criminal conspiracy that carried them away in the night."

Sales Tax Changes

Jo Laird emails a reminder that changes to the New York State sales tax law went into effect January 1 which will require the tax to be paid on certain sales by museums and other tax exempt organizations:

"The provision on sales at auction houses will eliminate an advantage that exempt organizations have had in selling art. If a buyer knows that he won't have to pay sales tax on a picture, he can spend more money on the work itself. That advantage has not only garnered more funds for museums and other exempt institutions; it has also affected donors' decisions in the past as to whether to sell art and donate the proceeds of the sale to a charity or to donate the art itself. Those calculations will now change."

The changes are described here.

"CAA will rep both the artist and his company, which has earned more than $4 billion over the past 15 years"

Variety reports that Painter of Light Thomas Kinkade has signed with Creative Artists Agency "in an effort to seek out TV, film and Internet projects."