Linkage

• Jail sentence for Tracey Emin forger.
• Jail sentence for TV auctioneer.
• Fake Wyeth seized.
  

"The art world's Bernie Madoff . . ."

". . . and his deceptions."

"Here’s my prayer for greater understanding of the truth behind the Barnes Foundation move"

Philadelphia native Bob Duggan:

"I admire Dr. Barnes’s original intent. He wanted to bring modern art to the masses by putting his money where the mouth of aesthetic and educational philosopher John Dewey was. Somewhere along the way, however, that democratic ideal became lost in a web of visitor restrictions and zoning laws that threatened to bury the foundation alive. ... The new location will copy much of the bucolic nature of the original setting with the advantage of bringing the art to the people—all the people. Again, that’s what seems to be bothering those who continue to object to the move."

That, and the fact that they are moving a painting from a stairwell to its own room.

Lively debate in the comments to Duggan's post too.

Joe Simon may be done with the Warhol litigation . . . (UPDATED)

. . . but the Warhol litigation isn't done with him.

The Foundation's attorneys issued a statement today which closed as follows:

"The resources Mr. Simon forced the Foundation to expend litigating against these meritless claims would have otherwise gone to funding its charitable mission of promoting the visual arts and preserving the legacy of Andy Warhol. While Mr. Simon may now prefer not to face Defendants’ legitimate counterclaims, the Warhol Foundation is fully committed to pursuing all its legal rights and claims against Mr. Simon to recover the funds it has been forced to waste and give them back to the charitable causes to which they always belonged."

UPDATE: Here's Randy Kennedy's report in the NYT.

Fisk Fund (UPDATED 2X)

The chess match between the judge in the Fisk case and the Tennessee Attorney General continues. The AG has now submitted a new proposal that "clearly would most closely approximate Ms. O'Keeffe's intent," namely the establishment of a fund that has already "received commitments" that would ensure a permanent endowment "sufficient to generate the proceeds needed to pay the costs of keeping the Collection full-time at Fisk." The brief from which those quotes are taken is here. A second, related brief (opposing the revised Crystal Bridges deal) is here. AP story here.

I've long given up trying to predict how Judge Lyle will rule in this case, but I doubt this latest plan will fly with her. In her ruling rejecting the AG's last plan (for a relocation of the Collection to the Frist Center until Fisk's financial situation had improved), she said: "It would not be in keeping ... with the donor's intent to keep the Collection in Nashville at the cost of sacrificing the existence of Fisk University" (my emphasis). The new proposal relieves Fisk of the approximately $130,000 a year that it takes to maintain the Collection, but it does nothing to help with Fisk's larger financial problems. (She found that it was "on the brink of closing.") I suspect it will be rejected.

UPDATE: Fisk issues a statement opposing the plan, on the grounds I mentioned in the main post: it "does not address Fisk's fundamental financial challenge which is that without a large infusion of cash Fisk cannot continue to operate." It's "another scheme which fails to address Fisk’s survival," and "the Court has already ruled that any proposal must address Fisk University’s overall financial health." They even quote the line I emphasized above ("It would not be in keeping ...").

UPDATE 2: The NYT's Robin Pogrebin has a brief story on the development here.

"The case is done. I can't do it anymore."

Big news over the weekend that Joe Simon is dropping his lawsuit against the Warhol Foundation. Jason Edward Kaufman has all the details. Background here.

"We actually had to read the judge's decree and agree to the project constraints"

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece today on the design of the new Barnes building, and the architects' efforts to ensure that "the Philadelphia gallery would replicate the Merion layout, and that Barnes's distinctive ensembles, which juxtapose Old Masters with Impressionists, and African masks, Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, ceramics, hardware and other objects with paintings, would remain unchanged."

Remember: for all the moaning and groaning about the move, there is no way for us to predict exactly how adversely the experience of the Barnes’s art will be affected by its new home.

And coincidentally, a great quote from MoMA director Glenn Lowry showed up on Judith Dobrzynski's blog this afternoon. He says: "For any museum to thrive, it needs to grow and change and constantly rethink itself."

On the flip side, some people get upset when a painting is moved from a stairwell to, get this, its own room. Philistines! How could they?! Very "alarming." No growth, no change, no re-thinking allowed. Everything is perfect exactly as it is.

"Also unclear is the status of the museum's permanent collection"

The Chelsea Art Museum is in danger of closing. The Wall Street Journal reports:

"In August, [the museum's director] said she had pledged the museum's entire collection as collateral for a ... loan to make an interest payment on the mortgage. That move appears to violate regulations of the state Department of Education's Board of Regents, which supervises and grants charters to museums. The department has been gathering information about the museum's actions for review."

When an insurance company pays a stolen art claim . . .

. . . and the work is later found, who gets it -- the victim of the theft or the insurer?

Here's a case out of Massachusetts that comes down in favor of the theft victim, relying on the "plain and unambiguous language" of an agreement between the parties.

"It's a bizarre situation, to say the least"

A $1 million Gris painting, stolen in St. Louis six years ago, has been found in Florida.

"It’s not common for important philanthropic prizes to go to people whose work involves criminal trespass"

The NYT's Randy Kennedy reports that the TED conference has given its 2011 annual prize to French street artist J R.

"One expert describes the forgeries as 'gold standard'"

The Guardian reports that "panic is spreading through the art world following the discovery of forgeries among major 20th-century paintings sold in recent years by leading auctioneers and dealers worldwide, including Christie's in London."

Art Theft Central: "Unfortunately, this art forgery case underscores the need for art connoisseurship and authentication to utilize the current scientific technologies to confirm a work's provenance and history. Otherwise, buyers and sellers as well as art experts and historians will continue to play what can at times be comparable to a game of Russian roulette."

"One thing’s for sure: I’ll have a captive audience."

The New Yorker on Faith Ringgold's Rikers Island mural.

We Demand That You Not Close the Museum You Are Not Closing (a continuing series)

Mediabistro.com: Rose Art Museum Mounts Major Exhibition.

Even though they are not fungible assets, we deaccession artworks all the time

WNYC did a piece on the suspension of sanctions against the National Academy Museum (mentioned yesterday here). They talk to Lee Rosenbaum (who says "museum quality works are the public's patrimony"), Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento (who points out that one of the things we're talking about when we talk about the dreaded "operating expenses" is people's livelihoods), and Kaywin Feldman, president of the AAMD. Feldman's statement is, as AAMD pronouncements on this subject always are, amusingly self-contradictory: She says it's "common" for museums to deaccession for "a whole variety of reasons," but that museum works "are not fungible assets." Huh? If they are not fungible assets, then how can it be common to sell them? Similarly, she says it's "a very core principle" (not just a core principle, but a very core principle) that museums "conserve" their works "in trust for our community" -- but again: if that's the case, then how in the world can they be commonly sold, for a whole variety of reasons?

Please, sir, may I have another?

I've been distracted the last couple of days by some important -- though, as it turned out, utterly depressing -- business up in the Bronx. So I'm late getting to the news that the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad (not to mention repulsive and Stalinist) National Academy Museum, having been duly punished, and having publicly repented for its sins ("Never again," says the museum's director), has had the sanctions against it lifted by the AAMD. "On Oct. 4 the [AAMD's] board voted unanimously to suspend its sanctions in recognition of the academy’s actions over the last 20 months toward better financial planning and management."

Its horrible sin, you may recall, was selling a couple of works (they still have 7,000 others!), to keep from having to close its doors. The scoundrels!

This was a horrible sin because, although it may seem that museums own the works of art in their collections, the works are actually "held in trust" for the public and so cannot be sold under any circumstances. Never never never. Unless of course the museum wants to use the proceeds to acquire other, different works of art, or even just put them in an account labeled Acquisition Fund and let them sit there, in which case the discarded works are somehow no longer held in the public trust -- go mind your own damn business, public! -- and can be freely sold. It's a funny kind of public trust, you see. Don't ask so many questions. Move along or we will sanction you.

Judith Dobrzynski thinks the outcome is "fair," but reiterates her (repulsive Stalinist) view that "there ought to be a process through which museums in true danger of closing, which have exhausted all other possibilities, might petition a state attorney general or an AAMD-sanctioned arbiter or some other adjudicator for permission to deaccession some works to raise money to remain open." The Art Market Monitor notes the New York Times's "odd obsession with the State legislature’s attempts to make law out of the [AAMD's] sanctions against selling works for operating expenses," and says the National Academy "is now only on double secret probation."

Barnes Update

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Stephan Salisbury tells us that construction of the new Barnes museum is "proceeding at a rapid clip."

I always appreciate his non-melodramatic way of describing the move:

"Wealthy collector Albert C. Barnes installed the work in the Merion gallery almost a century ago and stipulated that it could not be moved. But the Merion gallery was sinking into penury in the 1990s and the board of directors eventually saw no way of continuing as an independent institution if a move did not take place. Many former students of the Barnes ... opposed any move, as did numerous denizens of the art world and Merion residents. But Montgomery County Orphan's Court finally approved the plan in 2004."

Sinking into penury . . . board decided a move was necessary . . . many opposed . . . Court approval. That's one way to say what happened. On the other hand: Theft!!! Conspiracy!!! Eleventy!!$!?!

"He eventually confessed . . ."

". . . saying his motivation for the theft was to exact revenge against the university for his perceived mistreatment while an employee there."

The former director of LIU's Hillwood Museum was sentenced to a year in prison for stealing Egyptian artifacts from the museum. NY Post here. Background here.

"A chorus of confusion"

Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, was on the Brian Lehrer show last week, trying to clear up the confusion around the expiration of the Regents' "emergency regulations," which press reports are incorrectly characterizing as now allowing museums to use sales proceeds to cover operating expenses. (The show's site, in describing her segment, says she "talks about the Board of Regents' decision to allow the ban on 'deaccessioning' ... to expire today, in order to help museums to cover their operating expenses.") Tisch says, at around the four minute mark:

"The emergency regulation is what is expiring on October 8, reverting back to the old regulation. And in that old regulation, there is a clear prohibition against selling art for any reason other than to acquire, to preserve, or to protect your collection. And that will absolutely be in place, that does not change."

She's right about that.

"An eclectic reader's dream" (UPDATED)

A nice review for Noah Charney's "Stealing the Mystic Lamb" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Well-written and thorough, this book reminds us of the influence and fragility of art, our veniality and heroism, and the delights found in both the beautiful and the strange."

UPDATE: And here's an interview with Charney on the Leonard Lopate show.