Tuesday, August 21, 2012

"I have a lot more faith in donors than in the AAMD and its selectively, inconsistently enforced policies that generally apply the myopic rule of one-size-fits-all."

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I'm making former Crystal Bridges curator Chris Crosman an honorary member of my Museum Directors Hall of Fame.  At Lee Rosenbaum's ...

Two Simple Words in the English Language

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The Wall Street Journal:  The Lawyer Who Forgot He Was a Thief . Call it the Steve Martin Defense .

Abandoned Ship

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I also see that the defendant prevailed in the Burning Man/La Contessa trial .  The jury found that the plaintiff abandoned the work, so th...

Tell me again about the public trust (secret Picasso edition)

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Also while I was away, I see American museums continue to do a bang-up job of making sure important works from their collections will be acc...

"This type of inquisitive approach falls short of the 'hatchet job' that Biro's counsel described at oral argument."

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While I was away, the district court dismissed "most of" Peter Paul Biro's defamation claims against The New Yorker at the ple...
Monday, August 13, 2012

Break in the Action

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I'm away again this week, so, unless s omething really important happens , things'll be quiet around here until next week.
Saturday, August 11, 2012

"What is art? Hard to say, but whatever it is it seems to go up satisfyingly in price."

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SWAG .
Wednesday, August 08, 2012

"The levy is expected to raise $23 million a year."

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The new property tax to benefit the Detroit Insitute passed in all three counties yesterday.  Story here .
Tuesday, August 07, 2012

"How can anyone outside of a comic opera expect the authenticity of an old painting to be settled by a lawsuit?"

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Patricia Cohen has an interesting  article in yesterday's Times on "the divide between the court and the market" when it come...
Sunday, August 05, 2012

"The harm would come from the fact that no accredited museum would lend art to the DIA."

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I mentioned Judith Dobrzynski's Wall Street Journal article last week about the DIA millage proposal.  She has a follow-up post at her ...

Fisk Fight Finally Finished

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The collection-sharing arrangement between Fisk University and the Crystal Bridges Museum has been finally approved . I assume everyone i...
Thursday, August 02, 2012

"The Barnes definitely has the goods."

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" And for the first time, you can really see them. "

Burning Down the Bus

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Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento notes that a trial is under way over the destruction of a Burning Man art project.  As he points out, the Court alre...

"If the tax fails, Mr. Beal says he'd have to cut the museum's budget immediately: laying off 70 people; closing on weekdays except perhaps Fridays; shuttering half the galleries; stopping many educational programs; and curtailing some temporary exhibitions."

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Judith Dobrzynski has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Detroit Institute of Arts' property tax proposal.
Monday, July 30, 2012

"Officials hope that the vast storage facility, which is expected to be tax exempt, will encourage collectors and corporations to stockpile their art in Beijing."

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Beijing's getting a freeport .
Friday, July 27, 2012

Such a tragedy

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The Barnes has had more visitors in its first two months in Philadelphia than it did in all of 2009 in Merion . The Usual Suspects will do...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Confidence Game

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I mentioned this in passing the other day in discussing the Detroit situation , but I thought I'd flesh it out a little bit here. One ...

"What is the fair market value of an object that cannot be sold?"

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Been meaning to mention Patricia Cohen's front-page story on the IRS's attempt to collect $29 million in estate taxes on a Rauschen...
Monday, July 23, 2012

Were the Hall Monitors right about Jeffrey Deitch?

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Ed Winkleman doesn't seem to think so.
Sunday, July 22, 2012

Balancing Priorities in Detroit

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An interesting pair of stories out of Detroit this week. First, an article in the New York Times about the city's massive financial p...