Wednesday, October 28, 2020

"In a shocking last-minute move, the Baltimore Museum of Art has 'decided to pause' its plans to sell three works from its collection with Sotheby’s .... The news was announced by the Maryland institution just two hours before two of the works were expected to hit the auction block in New York."

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Breaking news here .

"A Billionaire Is Allegedly Blasting the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Theme Song to Punish His Neighbor for Complaining About His Dale Chihuly Sculpture"

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 Your headline of the day.
Monday, October 26, 2020

"In defence of progressive deaccessioning"

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Glenn Adamson makes the case in Apollo magazine. He addresses three arguments critics have made in recent days. The first is that "equ...
Thursday, October 22, 2020

More Baltimore

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Hard to keep up with all the Baltimore commentary. I'll try to round a bunch of it up here and update as they come in. Christopher Knigh...
Saturday, October 17, 2020

Full Circle

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Thinking more about Mark Stryker's excellent tweet yesterday --  where he basically says in one sentence what I've been trying to s...

"He would also withdraw the portion of his complaint that his rights were violated under the Visual Artists Rights Act."

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 An update on the toilet gardens lawsuit .
Friday, October 16, 2020

A Second Round of Deaccessioning at the Brooklyn Museum

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This round includes works by Monet, Miró, and Degas. Previous round here . These sales are completely ethical -- the AAMD, which as we all ...

"While fine arts experts and critics may try to shame the Everson and other like-minded museums for the decision to deaccession for the purpose of creating an endowment to diversify the collection, these voices are echoing decades of status quo art history textbook and gallery etiquette, rather than the realities we are living today."

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 "To seek to impose one’s ideals of an art museum, without considering how significantly the world has changed these last few decades, ...

Latest on the Baltimore Museum Deaccessioning

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The LA Times : "A group of 23 prominent supporters of the Baltimore Museum of Art, including former trustees at the BMA and the nearby ...
Tuesday, October 13, 2020

"Museums are not mausoleums or treasure houses, they are living organisms, oriented to the present as well as the past, and that is where the fundamental disagreement lies."

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Baltimore Museum curators Asma Naeem and Katy Siegel respond to critics of the museum's recently announced deaccession plan.
Tuesday, October 06, 2020

"Baltimore Museum to Sell 3 Blue-Chip Paintings to Advance Equity"

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Still catching up on blogging, and last week's big story was the Baltimore Museum of Art putting three major paintings up for sale and p...
Monday, October 05, 2020

Cert. Denied in the 5Pointz Case (UPDATED)

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Story here . Background here . Brian Frye tweets : "I think VARA is terrible policy & I think the underlying decision was wrong on ...
Sunday, September 20, 2020

"Today came news that the cutting-edge warehouse, opened by the real estate firm Carye Equities for a reported $40 million and managed by shipping industry experts, is shutting down for good."

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 ARCIS -- once described as "a tax-free zone in search of a tax" -- has closed down. Eileen Kinsella has the story here .

And speaking of Deaccessioning Hall of Fame Scholar-in-Residence Brian Frye ...

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 ... an interesting conversation between him and another friend of the blog , artist/lawyer Alfred Steiner, at Brian's excellent Ipse Di...

The other big deaccessioning story ... (UPDATED)

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 ... is that the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse is deaccessioning a Jackson Pollock -- estimated at $12-18 million -- and will use the pr...

"It is the kind of sale that once would have engendered criticism, perhaps even sanctions .... But it is now completely within the parameters of loosened regulations ...."

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I've been behind on my blogging the last few weeks, but the big news of course was the announcement by the Brooklyn Museum that it woul...
Saturday, August 29, 2020

"Mr. Brand speculated that this painting was chosen precisely because it had been stolen before, and thieves assumed it 'must be important.'"

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 NYT:   17th-Century Dutch Painting Is Stolen. Again .
Tuesday, August 25, 2020

"According to a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday, Frederick 'Hank' Robar is requesting no less than $7 million in damages from the village as the infamous 15-year dispute over his 'toilet gardens' enters its likely most contentious chapter to date."

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There's a headline for you. Story here . One of his claims is under VARA.

What Happens If Your Gallery Goes Belly Up?

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 Tom and Charles Danziger explain .
Monday, August 17, 2020

"The style we’re after is very much inspired by your work and that of other artists like Steven Paul Judd and Frank Hyde"

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 The Art Newspaper:   Redbone music video sparks artist dispute over copyright infringement . Another example having to do with the scope ...