Neil MacGregor (Glasgow, 1946), director of the British Museum, popularizer radio and one of the most admired intellectual authorities in the UK, came to Madrid to celebrate more than the loan exhibition of drawings The Spanish stroke in the British Museum. Renaissance Drawings Goya. "This year marks half a century of the first time I visited the Prado. I remember it well, went with my parents, and I refused to go out to eat ... Wanted to continue seeing more rooms ". Then, MacGregor was a Scottish guy just a curious idea of ​​artistic taste: "I grew up in Glasgow, next to the home of refined Stirling Maxwell, who was one of the largest collections of Spanish art. And when he was eight, the city bought Christ of Saint John of the Cross, Dali. So at such a tender age thought that Spanish art collectors and collected them when cities bought, also were favored by their country. "

That boy became museum director, first in the National Gallery and from 2002 of the British institution that aspires to contain the world from antiquity to the present day. She also made radio history a BBC program (which became a book, published by Debate) in which two million years of humanity were explained in 100 objects. On the challenges that lie ahead for museums chatted with the country in the modern, sunny and peaceful cloister extending the Prado, a metaphor for how much they have changed in this half century galleries. "They've changed, yes, but the tables, not".

It is important not to be dependent on the private or the public

Show the past in the future. "They are still the places to understand the world in retrospect. In the Prado you realize that the history of Europe is a single, culturally and politically. We struggle lately for building a single European history when a story we've been building for centuries. The museums will allow us to understand the world. Obviously, the British is different, because it brings together objects of all civilizations. But it throws the same message: the world has always been connected. "

Free tickets for all?? "The tradition in Britain is that the museums are free, because that was the mandate of Parliament that created in the eighteenth century. They settled at no cost to British and foreign citizens. If you want people to understand the world you must make accessible and free entry. A museum is a public space of the mind and spirit that all citizens have the right to live ".

Surviving the cuts. "As in Spain, the institutions of Britain suffer cuts in public allocation. We fought using private money, making use of the store sales and sponsors, whether businesses or individual citizens. And then share our collection with the rest of the world, as I think you are doing with much discretion the Prado. On every continent right now you can see pictures of the gallery in Madrid. That, plus reaffirm that these treasures belong to the world, it also means that recipients of these collections support the museum's finances. "

"To achieve the perfect balance no formula. The British tradition has always been a mix between public and private. Half and half. I think that's a good percentage. The State guarantees the continuity and security of the collection and businesses, individuals and foreign museums help in other ways. The formula is difficult, but clear: lots of hard work. It can be a complex issue, but remember to museums who your audience is and how they should be addressed to him. It is important not to be totally dependent on the private or the public, you need to have independence when telling a story academically true ".

The pieces that were legally acquired there is no need to return them

Who does cultural diplomacy? "Depends what you mean by that concept. I do not believe in museums as a weapon of the state. Because the pieces do not belong. Now, when you travel to the works create a dialogue, a debate with people. Lately we are paying much more to China and India. They have never had the opportunity to see the pieces of ancient Egypt, for example. With them, we allow these countries to enter and interact with the story of our time, which is a global history. It is a form of communication, but should not be a subterfuge to employ Velázquez in the interest of a country or of another. "

Spoliation or property? Legitimate? "Do not believe in the return of the parts if they were properly acquired. And we know it was not always that way: there was a lot of looting in World War II. Things have not improved much in the last 30 or 40 years. But if the objects were obtained legally, as with the Parthenon, do not understand why would they return them. The same is true Flemish Paintings of the Prado, why should they be returned? Here are accessible to everyone. The great challenge is to fight against illegal excavations and be able to share these treasures with the world. These jewels do not belong to Paris, Berlin or Madrid, but that these cities should share. Religions divide, museums are world citizens ".

Challenges. "The danger for the future of museums is nationalism. The very existence of art collections is a denial of nationalism, because they provide a vision of humanity as a whole. Perhaps more important today than ever, when we see the dangers of division worldwide. These collections teach us to share. "

Is there a limit to the number of visitors? "It's a great dilemma. We have six million. There is a limit, undoubtedly. We must be able to accommodate that demand our buildings. And then we return to the idea of ​​the museum traveler, if visitors can not come here, we can send them the pieces. We must also work to make the collections accessible to all, on the web and on smartphones. And what the mobile is to make the collection accessible to all uses. "

Daniel Reich, 39, Resourceful Art Dealer, Dies

Nancy Siesel/The New York Times

Daniel Reich in his gallery on 23rd Street in Chelsea. He previously held exhibitions in his tiny studio apartment.

By RANDY KENNEDY

Daniel Reich, a scrappy and innovative New York art dealer who held exhibitions for two years in his tiny studio apartment and, even after renting a traditional gallery, continued to show art nomadically in places like the Chelsea Hotel and a former delicatessen in Midtown, died on Dec. 25 at his parents’ home in Larchmont, N.Y., his sister confirmed this week. He was 39.

MoMA expects to have the building demolished by the end of this year.

By ROBIN POGREBIN

When a new home for the American Folk Art Museum opened on West 53d Street in Manhattan in 2001 it was hailed as a harbinger of hope for the city after the Sept. 11 attacks and praised for its bold architecture.

In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.

The trove of signature works, which includes 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Légers and 14 works by Gris, is valued at more than $1 billion. It puts Mr. Lauder, who for years has been one of the city’s most influential art patrons, in a class with cornerstone contributors to the museum like Michael C. Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Robert Lehman.

The gift was approved by the Met’s board at a meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Scholars say the collection is among the world’s greatest, as good as, if not better than, the renowned Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures in institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Together they tell the story of a movement that revolutionized Modern art and fill a glaring gap in the Met’s collection, which has been notably weak in early-20th-century art.

“In one fell swoop this puts the Met at the forefront of early-20th-century art,” Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director, said. “It is an unreproducible collection, something museum directors only dream about.”

And many did. Discussions between Mr. Lauder and the Met went on for years, first with Philippe de Montebello, its longtime director who retired in 2008, and more recently with Mr. Campbell. While Mr. Lauder declined to say who else courted his collection, officials in the museum world have said the National Gallery of Art in Washington was among them. But as a New Yorker aware that his art could radically transform one of the city’s most historic institutions, he saw the Met as a perfect fit.

“Whenever I’ve given something to a museum, I’ve wanted it to be transformative,” Mr. Lauder explained. “This wasn’t a bidding war. I went knocking, and the door opened easily.”

In the New York art scene, which is heavily populated with big-time collectors, Mr. Lauder is a singular figure. While many of his peers have made splashy acquisitions, seduced by the latest trends, he has quietly and steadily built a museum-worthy collection with a single focus, on Cubism.

His gift comes without restrictions so it can be displayed as curators see fit. The Met is already beginning to receive the art, according to officials there, for an exhibition scheduled to open in the fall of 2014.

Mr. Lauder, 80, has also spearheaded the creation of a research center for Modern art at the Met, supported by a $22 million endowment that he has helped finance along with museum trustees and supporters.

The collection, which Mr. Lauder began building more than 40 years ago, is a product of taste and timing.

“I liked the aesthetic,” he said on a recent afternoon in his Manhattan apartment. He was in the living room, staring at a still life by Picasso richly punctuated with bits of newspaper and sand. “Back then,” he said, “a lot was still available, because nobody really wanted it.”

It was also relatively inexpensive because the fashion was for Impressionism and post-Impressionism.

Mr. Lauder and his younger brother, Ronald S. Lauder, a founder of the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side, are among the most influential collectors and supporters of art in New York. But while others buy widely, often in multiple periods and styles, Leonard Lauder stands out for his single-minded focus.

“You can’t put together a good collection unless you are focused, disciplined, tenacious and willing to pay more than you can possibly afford,” Mr. Lauder said. “Early on I decided this should be formed as a museum collection,” and “whenever I considered buying anything, I would step back and ask myself, does this make the cut?”

As a result, much of his art comes from some of the world’s most celebrated collections, including those of Gertrude Stein, the Swiss banker Raoul La Roche and the British art historian Douglas Cooper.

The term Cubism first appeared in a review of a 1908 exhibition at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s Paris gallery, which featured early Cubist works. What began as a collaboration between Picasso and Braque, Cubism became a pioneering movement that redefined concepts of space and time, high and low. Those artists, along with Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, took shapes that were familiar and turned them upside down, dismantling the traditional perspective.

Challenging the romantic view of painting, Cubist artists also began incorporating things like cardboard, sand, sawdust, rope, wood, wallpaper, stencils and bits of newspaper into their paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures. Their work paved the way for abstraction, which dominated Western art for the next 50 years.

Often, Mr. Lauder said, it took him years to find something he wanted to buy. “I’ve made more trips to Switzerland than I’d like to count,” he said with a chuckle. With the help of Emily Braun, an art historian who has worked as Mr. Lauder’s curator for 26 years, he was able to pick and choose the finest works that came on the market.

As a result, most of the works in Mr. Lauder’s collection have a particular historical significance. Two landscapes are from the groundbreaking 1908 Kahnweiler exhibition: Braque’s “Terrace at the Hotel Mistral,” from 1907, and his “Trees at L’Estaque,” from 1908.

“ ‘The Trees at L’Estaque’ is considered one of the very first Cubist pictures,” Ms. Braun said. “It created a new form of pictorial space that Braque arrived at from his close study of Cézanne’s landscapes.”

Rebecca Rabinow, a curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s department of Modern and contemporary art, noted other milestones included in the gift. “There are so many firsts in this collection,” she said.

Picasso’s “Oil Mill,” from 1909, was the first Cubist painting seen in Italy, which influenced the Italian Futurists. Another of his works, “The Fan (L’Independent),” from 1911, is one of the first works in which Picasso experimented with typography, in this case the gothic type masthead from a local French newspaper. Braque’s “Fruit Dish and Glass,” from 1912, is the first Cubist paper collage ever created.

Some of the paintings and sculptures in Mr. Lauder’s collection were particularly radical for their time, like Picasso’s “Woman in an Armchair (Eva),” the artist’s 1913-14 image of his mistress Eva Gouel, in which he translated the female body into his own Cubist language. Picasso’s sculpture “Head of a Woman,” from 1909, is thought to be the first Cubist sculpture.

That many of the works look both forward and back is of particular value to the Met’s curators. Picasso’s embrace of African tribal art, for instance, was crucial to his depiction of nontraditional forms.

“Cubism inspired not just Western artists, but it had a huge global impact,” Ms. Rabinow said. “We can tell so many different stories that we could never tell before.”

Up to now Cubism has been only sparsely represented at the Met. In fact it only received its first Cubist paintings in 1996. In a 2010 review of an exhibition of the Met’s Picasso collection, Holland Cotter noted in The New York Times, “When the Museum of Modern Art was wolfing down audacious helpings of Cubism, the Met was content with a tasting menu of Blue Period, Rose Period and neo-Classical fare.”

This isn’t the first transformative gift Mr. Lauder has made to a museum. As the longtime chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art (he is now its chairman emeritus), he donated millions in art and money, most recently in 2008 when he gave the museum $131 million to shore up its endowment.

While it is the largest gift in the Whitney’s history, it came with strings. Concerned about the future of its landmark Marcel Breuer building, which Mr. Lauder considers the Whitney’s spiritual home, he placed a stipulation on his gift that the building could not be sold for the foreseeable future. At the same time, he quietly masterminded plans for the Met to take over the Breuer building for at least eight years, after the Whitney decamps to its new home in the meatpacking district of Manhattan in 2015.

When the Met gets Mr. Lauder’s collection, Mr. Campbell said, it will take “pride of place” in the museum’s soon to be renovated Modern and contemporary galleries, in its main building. Before then the collection will be exhibited as a whole for the first time at the Met in 2014 in a show organized by Ms. Rabinow and Ms. Braun.

Realizing how his collection could help tell so many different stories when seen in the context of the Met’s encyclopedic holdings, Mr. Lauder did not put restrictions on his gift.

And he stressed that his donation doesn’t mean the end of his collecting. As recently as last month he bought a collage by Gris, which is part of the gift.

“I’ll continue to buy and add to the Met’s collection,” he said, then paused, smiled and added, “But only if the right things come along.”

The heirs of a French art dealer are demanding that a Norwegian museum return one of its featured paintings, a Matisse that was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 in Paris.

The family of Paul Rosenberg, a prominent Parisian gallery owner, has documents showing that the painting, known as “Woman in Blue in Front of Fireplace,” or “Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair,” was among those in the possession of the Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering in 1942. The documents include a long list, stamped with Goering’s initials, itemizing artworks taken from Mr. Rosenberg’s vault

But the museum, the Henie Onstad Arts Center, founded in 1968 by the Olympic skating champion Sonja Henie and her husband, the shipping magnate Niels Onstad, says Mr. Onstad bought the painting in good faith more than 60 years ago, giving the center ownership rights to the work under Norwegian law. The law requires a minimum of 10 years’ possession.

The museum, outside Oslo, said it did not know the painting had once been Nazi plunder, but it does not contest that, in light of the evidence. It says that it is continuing to negotiate with the heirs and to study the work’s provenance, and that it will discuss the family’s request at a board meeting next month.

“We need to investigate this matter properly,” said the museum’s director, Tone Hansen. “It is too early to draw any conclusions. We are in dialogue with the family and will continue to be so.”

She added, “This case has other aspects than pure legal aspects that have to be taken into consideration.”

The Rosenberg family became aware of the Matisse’s location last summer, when the Art Loss Register, an art-recovery company that had put the painting on its list of missing artworks, noticed that it was on loan to the Pompidou Center in Paris. The museum and the Rosenbergs have been negotiating quietly since.

Museum officials met twice with family representatives, first in Norway and then in New York. Marianne Rosenberg, a New York lawyer who is a granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg and took part in the second meeting, said a museum official offered to help resolve the matter by placing a plaque next to the Matisse, acknowledging that Paul Rosenberg had owned it. The family rejected the offer, she said.

A museum spokeswoman said she could not comment on the talks.

The Matisse was painted in 1937, the year Mr. Rosenberg bought it. According to documents gathered from Nazi files, as well as records kept by Mr. Rosenberg and his heirs, it was one of about 160 works that German soldiers were sent to seize from the Rosenberg Gallery’s vaults as part of a widespread confiscation of art owned by Jews.

“This is the most well-documented claim I have ever seen,” said Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer and the director of the Art Loss Register.

By 1942, the painting was in the hands of a Paris collector, Paul Pétridès. In 1949, museum records show, it was in the possession of Galerie Bénézit of Paris, from which, museum officials said, Mr. Onstad bought it in either 1949 or 1950. Mr. Marinello said that a lawyer for the museum, Kyrre Eggen, informed the Rosenbergs that the museum was researching whether it was possible that Mr. Rosenberg, who returned to Europe after the war in an effort to recover his property, took part in a transaction involving the painting before its purchase by Mr. Onstad.

Marianne Rosenberg called the museum’s theory “complete and utter fiction.”

“Our family was deeply affected by the war,” she said, “and we do not make frivolous claims, and that assertion is frankly insulting.”

The museum said it had never tried to hide its ownership of the painting, which it has lent to several European museums.

Ms. Rosenberg said it was not surprising that her family had not discovered the Matisse earlier, given that it has been busy for decades trying to recover more than 400 items looted by the Nazis and scattered around the world.

“The onus is not on the claimant to have to go scooting around looking in every catalog and small museums hunting for their stolen art,” she said.

The Matisse is among the prized possessions of the arts center, which has two Picassos, two Matisses and works by Miró, Klee and several dozen other prominent Modernists that it refers to as its “core collection.”

The museum’s initial collection was largely the artwork given it by Henie and Mr. Onstad. Henie, who won gold medals in Olympics figure skating in 1928, 1932 and 1936 before becoming a Hollywood star, died in 1969. Mr. Onstad died in 1978.

http://http//www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/arts/design/rosenberg-family-asks-norwegian-museum-to-return-a-matisse.html?ref=arts&_r=0

Whether we call them art or design (or Paul Kasmin’s compromise, “functional sculptures“), Mattia Bonetti’s works are consistently surprise. A hallmark of his high-gloss pieces, typically crafted from glass and various shiny metals, is the use of unexpected organic lines to offset their geometric foundations — take his 2009 aptly-named coffee table Meander as an example. The circular acrylic surface sits on tubes of patinated bronze cast into three-dimensional, wandering squiggles.

Mattia Bonetti Rocky side table, 2013; bronze and gold-plated bronze; courtesy of the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery

Furthering Bonetti’s characteristic duality is “Indoor/Outdoor,” a new show to open at Paul Kasmin next week. Here in his first outdoor collection, he cites cultural influences from the ancient world (see the use of marbled travertine in the Pompei sofa or the general emphasis on bronze) and imperial India (as seen in the pairing of plush red upholstery with a wood-colored framework in the Pliniana armchair). As the show’s name suggests, the works go as well in the living room as they do on the patio. Keeping in step with the recurring theme of never making up one’s mind, it’s only got one foot out the door.

“Indoor/Outdoor” is on view at Paul Kasmin from April 10 through May 4.

— Janelle Zara

George Lindemann Wins Inaugural Better Beach Award

March 26, 2013

The Graffitist Who Moved Indoors

Sibila Savage

The Barry McGee retrospective as it appeared in 2012 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. More Photos »

By CAROL KINO

Published: March 28, 2013

By ANNA RUSSELL

Joe Levack/Brooklyn Museum

EL ANATSUI'S 2007 'Earth's Skin' is at the Brooklyn Museum.

Ghanaian-born artist El Anatsui has had five record sales at auction in the last year and a nearly sold-out show at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. He's winning rave reviews for his solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. And one of his huge pieces hangs next to New York's High Line park, a prime tourist attraction. But none of this solves what gallery owner Jack Shainman calls his "luxury problem": Mr. Anatsui's pieces are too big for some collectors, and the artist is disinclined to make smaller works to feed his hungry market.

"I have a waiting list that is probably over 500 names for smaller works," says Mr. Shainman. "It's really good, but it's also really bad."

Mr. Anatsui's rise in the last decade has been, in the words of one dealer, "meteoric," thanks in large part to the success of his monumental tapestry-like metal works, made from twisted bottle caps, milk-tin lids and other recycled material gathered near his home in Nsukka, Nigeria. Ten years ago, his works sold for 1/30th their current prices, says Elisabeth Lalouschek, artistic director of London's October Gallery. She has been working with Mr. Anatsui since 1995.

Though Mr. Anatsui has worked on smaller-scale wood pieces in the past, he has lately focused on his metal works, which don't often come in a size small. Ranging from around 10 by 10 feet to much larger, the sheer size of his metal works makes them desirable but unattainable for many collectors.

Mr. Anatsui says that he made a few smaller metal works (around 5 feet by 4 feet) about two years ago, and that he "may make them depending on how the spirit moves [him]." "I would let work determine its own dimension," he added.

To be sure, some buyers will find room for the large pieces. At Mr. Anatsui's gallery show "Pot of Wisdom," which ended Jan. 19, Mr. Shainman sold nine of the 11 works, up from a normal year in which he might sell three or four. Mr. Anatsui's dealers say that his big pieces sell for between $700,000 and $2.5 million.

His prices are high at auction, too. Bonhams London set the record last May with "New World Map," which sold for $849,152. In November, Christie's and Sotheby's BID -0.15%in New York both sold pieces for $722,500, and in February Sotheby's sold "Zebra Crossing 2" for $772,150.

"There's this momentum that's developing," says Christie's Saara Pritchard, head of New York's First Open contemporary-art sale. Though relatively few of Mr. Anatsui's works have come to auction, she noted, five of those sales in the last year brought in record prices for him.

Mr. Anatsui's international success is a rarity for an artist living and working in Africa. Other African artists—like William Kentridge from South Africa or Yinka Shonibare, who grew up in London and Lagos, Nigeria—have achieved some prominence as well. But unlike them, Mr. Anatsui has always been based on the continent, in Ghana and Nigeria.

Ms. Pritchard said that the size of the pieces does play into their collectability. "It's made them difficult," she says. "It becomes prohibitively large in some cases," though she said she didn't think the monumental works will lose their appeal. "It's something that contemporary collectors understand and are willing to work around," she said.

Whether collectors are willing or not, Mr. Anatsui's dealers say that demand has never been a driving force for him. "He doesn't want to just produce work that can fit in people's homes," said Mr. Shainman. "He wants to produce great art."

As his solo exhibition continued at New York's Brooklyn Museum, and in the wake of a nearly sold-out show and record-setting auctions for his works, the Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui on Friday answered some questions about success, studio work and time off. Below, a lightly edited transcript.

—Anna Russell

What kinds of projects and materials are you most excited about right now?

I'm invited to do more projects outdoors now, and it comes with the challenges of reckoning with a far wider environment beyond the enclosed space of a museum/gallery. [Plus, there are] opportunities to work with other media and professionals like architects and engineers.

How has your life changed since you retired from your teaching position at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka? What do you most want to do with your time now?

I find there is a simplicity in managing one's time, and so one concentrates or focuses on studio practice more.

Your work has been selling extraordinarily well over the last few years. Your recent show at New York's Jack Shainman Gallery nearly sold out. What has the impact of this financial success been on your day-to-day life? Has it changed it in any significant way?

Beyond more-frequent invitations to projects abroad, and therefore more travels, I do not see a significant change in my daily life. It is still basic, and, given the circumstances of the countryside where I live, simple.

Do you find any differences in how your work is understood and appreciated in Africa, versus how it is viewed in America, or in the wider international art world?

Probably the works are understood and appreciated in the wider world. To me the issue is not who and where one is appreciated or understood, because art is a universal phenomenon. I believe connections are made when people who have seen my works come to tell me (this is common at openings) how the experience has touched them, or several artists claim it has inspired or challenged their own practices.

Your dealers have mentioned how prolific you are as an artist. How many hours a week do you spend on your art? What does a typical day of work look like for you? And how do you stay disciplined?

I'm in the studio every day, occasionally on Sundays too. A regular day is: 6 a.m., get up and go walking and play some squash; 9 a.m., arrive at the studio, work with assistants and the studio manager, reviewing what's been done or introducing a new project till 3-4 p.m. Then home to work out new ideas or take on secretarial aspects of my practice, the two of which at times can lead to late nights or early mornings.

What do you do when you're not making art?

[On] free evenings I go to the faculty club to interact with colleagues at the university, playing games like draughts [a variety of checkers], or occasionally chess, or catching up on the latest news around.