Still more on the debate over whether it can ever be acceptable for a museum to sell work from its permanent collection to pay its bills.
Over at his Art Law Blog, the New York attorney Donn Zaretsky has what you might call a throw-all-the-pieces-in-the-air contribution from Adrian Ellis, who heads the arts consulting firm AEA …
Over the New Year weekend, David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum in New York and then the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, attached an interesting comment to my post from last week about museums selling off work from their permanent collections to stabilize their finances. Here’s most of what he had to say:
There is
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On his excellent Art Law Blog the New York attorney Donn Zaretzky has been playing devil’s advocate on the topic of deaccessioning — the occasional practice by museums of selling off works in their “permanent” collection. As you probably know, the longtime rule of both the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art …
The L.A. sculptor Robert Graham died over the weekend. Though he had many museum shows, it’s probably true that his best known works were his civic monuments and other outdoor sculpture. His work was resolutely figurative and it could be a mixed bag. His 1984 L.A. Olympic Gateway, with those muscular bronze torsos, was a little too …
In the hope that I might need free time for holiday cheer of some kind, Looking Around is shutting down for the next five days. Back Monday. But on the way out the door I wanted to take note of two more books that I enjoyed in recent months.
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton (W.W. Norton; 268 pages)
Thornton has degrees in …
Two days before Christmas, it looks like the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has accepted Eli Broad as Santa Claus. The L.A. Times is reporting on its arts blog that the museum’s trustees have accepted Broad’s offer of up to $15 million in matching funds for its endowment and another $15 million in operating expenses over five …
It appears that the trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, who met yesterday to choose between the $30 million rescue plan offered by Eli Broad and the option of a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, are moving towards the Broad proposal. I say “appears” and “moving towards” because no one is calling it …
Who says people don’t read anymore? I do it just about 24/7. This being the end of the year, I thought I’d cite a few of the art and architecture books I enjoyed the most in recent months.
Architecture first:
I.M. Pei: Complete Works by Philip Jodidio and Janet Adams Strong (Rizzoli; 367 pages)
For 50 years Pei has worked in his own …
We don’t know what’s next for the struggling Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, but we know the MOCA Board is promising an announcement after its next meeting tomorrow. Right now MOCA has two options on the table. One is that $30 million offer from omnipresent philanthropist and MOCA co-founder Eli Broad. The money would go to …
On the very day that the trustees of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art are meeting to consider the grim options in their financial crisis, this just in — the executive committee of the Board of Museum Associates, the non-profit that operates the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has just presented a plan to the MOCA board …
So what can I tell you about the Diller, Scofidio + Renfro refashioning of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center? It’s still a construction site — the official re-opening isn’t until February — but I previewed some substantially completed portions last week with Liz Diller and Charles Renfro.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, from …
Before we get to the Diller, Scofidio + Renfro renovations at Alice Tully Hall in New York, there was an interesting passage yesterday in a Los Angeles Times story by Mike Boehm and Kim Christensen about how the LA Museum of Contemporary Art burned through so much of its endowment that its very existence is now in question.
It appears …
In New York earlier this week I got a preview of the nearly complete renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which re-opens in February. My guides were Liz Diller and Charles Renfro, two thirds of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architects remaking large parts of Lincoln Center, the Manhattan performing arts complex that’s …
