"Women on the Verge" @wsj - The George Lindemann Journal

By ELLEN GAMERMAN and MARY M. LANE

A lady in a bonnet is shaking up the art world.

When "After Lunch," Berthe Morisot's portrait of a doe-eyed woman, sold for $10.9 million in February, it set a record as the most expensive work ever sold by a female artist at auction. It also helped power a wave of interest among collectors and dealers looking to identify undervalued female artists.

SB10001424127887323309604578430932517007190Yayoi Kusama/David Zwirner, Victoria Miro Gallery, Ota Fine Arts, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.

YAYOI KUSAMA: The 84-year-old is the top-selling living female artist of all time, fetching $118 million total at auction.

A woman's signature in the bottom corner of a painting has long spelled a bargain—men in the same artistic school or period can fetch more than 10 times the price of a woman's best sale. While an age-old debate rages over whether talent, sexism or lack of promotion has held many women out of the art world's boys club, everyone agrees that prices for female artists have always lagged behind those of their male counterparts.

Today's flourishing art market—marked by last year's record-setting sale at auction of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" for nearly $120 million—has lifted prices for male and female artists alike. As the supply of great pictures diminishes, more collectors are priced out of blue-chip works and are combing the market for previously overlooked names. A number of highly regarded women artists are seeing their prices rise as a result.

"Remember 'plastics' from 'The Graduate'? It should be 'women,' " says Tony Podesta, the Washington lobbyist who is one of a handful of collectors aggressively buying work by women artists.

This winter, a painting by Berthe Morisot sold for $11 million--the most ever paid for a woman's artwork at auction. Along with other big art-market moments for women in recent years, the record has auction houses and dealers re-examining this historically undervalued niche. Ellen Gamerman reports.

The records are toppling. Nine of the top 10 auction sales of work by women occurred within the last five years. The last two years marked record-high prices at auction for artists including Joan Mitchell, Tamara de Lempicka, Louise Bourgeois, Irma Stern, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Helen Frankenthaler, Rosemarie Trockel and Louise Lawler.

Auction experts and collectors are anxious to see how three Morisot paintings will sell next month during Impressionist and modern sales in New York, two at Sotheby's BID +2.20%and one at Christie's.

"Whereas before we looked at female artists as the land of opportunity, with prices like these, collectors say the window is closing for gender-specificity bargain buying," says Gabriela Palmieri, a senior vice president and contemporary-art specialist at Sotheby's.

imageCindy Sherman/Metro Pictures

CINDY SHERMAN: In 2011, the artist was the auction world's highest-priced photographer, male or female, with a $3.9 million sale. Here, the artist models in an untitled portrait.

Spanning centuries and a wide variety of styles, work by women is hardly a cohesive market category. Still, some collectors eagerly seek out female artwork.

Prominent women like Wal-Mart WMT +1.47%heiress Alice Walton, pop queen Madonna and songstress Barbra Streisand have long collected work by women. Barbara Lee, a national activist for women in politics, has filled her collection almost entirely with work by women partly to support artists she believes are underrepresented by museums and galleries. She recalled visiting Louise Bourgeois's studio in the early 1990s. "It was filled with sculpture from every period of her life—no one had purchased it," says Ms. Lee.

Others have less-altruistic motives. "A lot of collectors look for undervalued groups of art, and women could easily be considered the last big group," says Michel Witmer, a New York collector and board member of the European Fine Art Fair.

Dealers and auction experts are using several tactics as they scour the market. One is to find female artists whose works, backgrounds or artistic movements mirror those of prohibitively expensive male artists. These artists include: Joan Mitchell, who worked in the shadows of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock; Natalia Goncharova, one of the turn-of-the-century Russian artists led by Wassily Kandinsky; and Agnes Martin, who forged a path in a male-dominated period led by minimalists like Donald Judd.

Others track female artists whose works have hovered just under $1 million at auction, expecting them to pop into seven figures. Among those attracting attention: conceptual artist Sherrie Levine, known for appropriating photographs by artists like Edward Weston and Walker Evans; and Barbara Kruger, who plasters black-and-white photographs with loud slogans. Both their prices have been dwarfed by the multimillion-dollar sums fetched by fellow contemporary artists like Richard Prince or Christopher Wool.

Another contender: Helen Frankenthaler. There's some debate over the merits of the late abstract expressionist's work compared with those of the men who came before her—like Pollock, whose biggest auction sale topped $40 million—but collectors have shown they're ready to bet on her. Frankenthaler's auction record is just under $1 million, but her early work was recently featured in a show at New York's Gagosian Gallery, where a canvas sold privately for $3 million, according to a gallery official.

The evolution in the market for Joan Mitchell's work illustrates how collectors have recently "discovered" an artist long in the shadows of her male counterparts.

Mitchell, the late Chicago-born painter known for splattering strokes and bold colors, operated just outside circles of older abstract-expressionist peers like de Kooning and Pollock. In 1951, she exhibited alongside them in New York, but by the 1960s she had exiled herself to France.

In 2006, as the art market boomed, a 1970s de Kooning sold for $27 million at Christie's. A Mitchell work fetched $2 million, a big sum for the artist at the time, but one that suddenly had the whiff of a good deal in the Christie's salesroom. New York art adviser Abigail Asher remembers the scene: "A client turned to me and said, 'Wow, doesn't that seem inexpensive?' " she recalled of the collector, who had just bought a Mitchell privately earlier that week.

By 2011, Mitchell's market had climbed as hedge-fund managers and other trophy hunters pegged her work as a good investment. Ms. Asher recalled chasing a Mitchell canvas past its $6 million high estimate against another bidder at Sotheby's. The piece, a large-scale canvas in a riot of colors, sold for $9.3 million—her highest sum ever at auction. Ms. Asher, who lost out, slumped in her seat after the hammer fell: "It was the feeling of: 'The cat's out of the bag.' "

Last year, Mitchell's canvases were the two most expensive works by any woman artist sold at auction, according to auction database Artnet. Her work now hangs in museums around the world, including Ms. Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. A 1958 Mitchell painting will be on the block next month at Christie's.

A number of theories exist for why women have languished in the art world's bargain basement. Experts point to the smaller supply of work by women from certain periods—after all they're called Old Masters, not Old Mistresses—which limits the frequency of sales and holds down prices. Women also are underrepresented by major museums, where purchases and exhibits boost prices. Famous artists like Georgia O'Keeffe and Frida Kahlo do appear in museum shows, but the permanent modern art collections of most major institutions are comprised largely of work by male artists.

Others say women haven't marketed themselves as well as men. "Male artists are much more pushy and power-related," says Eva Presenhuber, a Zurich-based dealer who noted she recently threw a toned-down party for the artist Karen Kilimnik because the artist doesn't like to promote herself with splashy events.

Indeed, the upper echelons of the art world still belong to men: All of the top 100 works ever sold at auction were created by male artists, and fewer than 3% of auctioned works over $1 million last year were by female artists, according to Artnet. No living woman has cleared $10 million at auction to date, compared with scores of men.

One reason Morisot took off, experts say, is because she and artists like Mary Cassatt have styles similar to those of famous male painters of the period, in this case Manet and Renoir. They also have recognizable brand looks that are easy to live with. "It's no coincidence that the art you see reproduced in doctors' waiting rooms is [their] type of Impressionist work," says Philip Hook, a senior specialist in Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art department.

Morisot and Cassatt were prolific artists, but most of their work is ferreted away in museums, making those paintings that do crop up on the market highly sought-after.

In a packed Christie's salesroom in London last February, the Morisot canvas, "After Lunch," sold for roughly three times its high estimate after a protracted back-and-forth between two telephone bidders from Russia and the U.S. The piece is believed to have gone to an American.

The market prizes other female artists because of artistic styles and cultural sensibilities that translate well over time. Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish-born artist with a booze-and-party-fueled lifestyle, moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a wild fixture on the movie-industry scene. Her Art Deco paintings, brimming with men in tuxes, busty blondes and lesbian trysts, draw famous admirers today—and have reached record auction prices in recent years. Sotheby's will feature a moody Manhattan skyline by the artist during next month's sales.

Madonna, who owns at least two de Lempickas, has collected her for decades and considers her work a source of inspiration, a spokeswoman confirmed. When the singer's "Vogue" video came out in 1990, featuring Madonna's de Lempickas in the background, it sent a frisson through auction houses and art galleries. For years later, whenever anyone had a de Lempicka to sell, the reaction was always the same: "Everyone said, 'Oh, offer it to Madonna,' " says David Norman, Sotheby's co-chairman of Impressionist and modern art world-wide.

Other avid collectors include Barbra Streisand, who was first drawn to the artist's paintings in the 1970s when she was building a house in Art Deco style. "I found Lempicka's work to be so original," Ms. Streisand said in an email, praising the artist's style and technique. "The fact that she was a woman artist made her even more intriguing."

The gender gap narrows within smaller niche markets like photography. Cindy Sherman, a 59-year-old chameleon who spends years planning portraits of herself in various personae, briefly held the title as the auction world's highest-priced photographer, female or male, in 2011. An image of herself splayed across a brown linoleum floor sold for $3.9 million. Ms. Sherman's works, which sold for $1,000 at her long-standing gallery Metro Pictures in 1981, now typically fetch $450,000 at the gallery and are collected by art-market heavyweights such as Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad and Christie's owner François Pinault.

An older generation of women artists sees a much different art market today than the one they grew up with. Pat Steir, a 74-year-old New York artist who pours paint down her monumental canvases, recalled one summer in 1964 visiting a friend whose father was an abstract painter. One of his guests was Mark Rothko. Ms. Steir approached him, explaining that she had just gotten out of art school. "I said, 'Mr. Rothko, you're such a great artist, I admire your work so much,' and he said, 'You're a pretty girl. Why aren't you married?' "

Ms. Steir's art now hangs in most major museums across the U.S., including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Partner Without the Prize" @nytimes - George Lindemann

Partner Without the Prize

 

By ROBIN POGREBIN

 

Twenty-two years after being passed by, the architect Denise Scott Brown, 81, said at an awards ceremony for women in architecture last month that it was time she share in the 1991 Pritzker Prize that was given to her design partner and husband, Robert Venturi, with whom she had worked side by side.

 

Arielle Assouline-Lichten, foreground, and Caroline James started the Pritzker petition.

“They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony,” Ms. Scott Brown said. “Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity.”

Her remarks prompted two students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to start an online petition demanding that the panel that administers architecture’s highest prize revisit that decision.

The petition has now drawn 9,000 signatures, many of them from the world’s most famous architects, including six prior Pritzker winners. And it has reignited long-simmering tensions in the architectural world over whether women have been consistently denied the standing they deserve in a field whose most prestigious award was not given to a woman until 2004, when Zaha Hadid won.

“The progress of recognizing the place and the contribution of women in architecture has been incredibly slow,” said Barry Bergdoll, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s been thought to be boys’ stuff.”

The prize organization has long defended its exclusion of Ms. Scott Brown on the ground that back then it honored only individual architects, a practice that changed in 2001 with the selection of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. They are among the architects who have signed the petition, along with fellow Pritzker winners Richard Meier, Ms. Hadid, Wang Shu and Rem Koolhaas, who called the exclusion of Ms. Scott Brown “an embarrassing injustice which it would be great to undo.”

Mr. Venturi, 87, also signed the petition, but Ms. Scott Brown said he was not well and unable to comment. When he won in 1991, she did not attend the award ceremony in protest.

The Pritzker winner is chosen annually by a panel of a half-dozen or so independent jurors. There was one woman on the panel in 1991 and there is one woman on the panel today, Martha Thorne, the Pritzker’s executive director.

“Jurors change over the years, so this presents us with an unusual situation,” Ms. Thorne said of the inclusion request. “The most that I can say at this point is that I will refer this important matter to the current jury at their next meeting.”

The ceremony for this year’s Pritzker winner, Toyo Ito, is to be May 29 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The $100,000 prize, financed by the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, has been awarded since 1979.

While about half of architecture students in the United States are women, only a quarter of employees of architecture firms across the country are female, according to 2011 data from the American Institute of Architects. The number is smaller — 17 percent — when counting principals or partners in architecture firms.

Design professionals cite many reasons, including the sense that architecture involves business and construction, which have both been traditionally considered the province of men. And still persistent is the mythology of the architect as a solo male genius — the Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s “Fountainhead.”

“It’s embedded and the Pritzker Prizes embed it,” said Beverly Willis, an architect who founded the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which supports women in architecture. “They’re totally outdated, they’re totally passé and if they continue trying to isolate the Howard Roark man, they’re totally irrelevant.”

Ms. Scott Brown is one of the rare female architects to have achieved prominence.

“Denise Scott Brown is sort of like architecture’s grandmother,” said Arielle Assouline-Lichten, a Harvard design student who started the petition with Caroline James. “Almost all architecture students have studied her in school. Everyone grew up with her as the female professional who’s always been around and never really gets the recognition.”

Ms. Scott Brown, who was born in Zambia, met Mr. Venturi in 1960 at the University of Pennsylvania, where they were on the faculty and began working together. They married in 1967. She joined his firm that same year.

“Some people said, ‘She married the boss and thought she could get ahead,’ “ Ms. Scott Brown said in a telephone interview from her home in Philadelphia. “But if anyone was the boss, I was. We really were colleagues and we taught together. It was a very, very wonderful collaboration for both of us.”

Since 1960, she and Mr. Venturi have teamed up on buildings like the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London and Franklin Court, a museum and memorial to Benjamin Franklin in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. They have run a practice together — Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates in Philadelphia, now VSBA — written books together, taught classes together and jointly developed groundbreaking theories about architecture and planning.

“You can’t separate them,” Mr. Bergdoll said. “It’s one of those great partnerships.”

The couple is known in large part for upending Modernism by embracing the vernacular of neon signs and kitsch as legitimate design. Their work with a class of Yale architecture students in Las Vegas in 1968 — examining casinos, parking lots and fast-food restaurants — resulted in their 1972 book, “Learning From Las Vegas” (written with Steven Izenour), which became an influential design treatise and helped usher in the period known as postmodernism.

Ms. Scott Brown said she was moved by the recent outpouring of support. “There needs to be some kind of corrective action,” she said. “Let’s not say corrective — let’s say inclusive.”

Several design school deans have signed, including Mohsen Mostafavi at Harvard, Sarah Whiting at Rice and Jennifer Wolch at the University of California at Berkeley.

“The initiative on the part of the students is something that I really value,” Mr. Mostafavi said. “I hope they will be this proactive when it comes to their own futures.”

Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of Yale’s Architecture School, said he declined to sign the petition because he objected to its use of the word “demand,” but that he backed it in principle. “It would be wonderful for the Pritzker committee to review the situation and to offer her the prize,” Mr. Stern said. “The nature of the collaboration was so intense on every level.”

Architects say the Pritzker is unlikely to reverse its decision, in part because several members of the jury at that time are no longer living, including Ada Louise Huxtable, J. Carter Brown and Giovanni Agnelli.

The Web site ArchDaily on April 1 posited the counterargument that Mr. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker based on projects completed before Ms. Scott Brown joined the firm, like the Vanna Venturi House (1964). Yet the award citation directly acknowledged Ms. Scott Brown’s contributions.

“His understanding of the urban context of architecture, complemented by his talented partner, Denise Scott Brown, with whom he has collaborated on both more writings and built works, has resulted in changing the course of architecture in this century,” the citation said, “allowing architects and consumers the freedom to accept inconsistencies in form and pattern, to enjoy popular taste.”

For Ms. Scott Brown, the sting remains fresh. “When we married I suddenly was being told, “Look, let’s just keep this photograph of architects,’ ” she recalled. “I’d say, ‘I am an architect and they’d say, ‘Would you mind moving out of the picture, please?’ “

"Coastal cities ponder how to prepare for rising sea levels" @miamiherald

A lone person walks the water line in Long Beach Mississippi

By Erika Bolstad

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Americans in coastal areas, particularly on the East and Gulf coasts, will confront challenging questions in the coming years as they determine how to protect millions of people in the face of rising sea levels and more intense storms.

Should cities rebuild the boardwalks in New Jersey shore towns? Should the government discourage people from rebuilding in areas now more vulnerable to flooding? How much would it cost to protect water and sewer systems and subways and electrical substations from being inundated in the next storm?

Leaders from coastal communities along the East Coast gathered in New York City on Wednesday to talk about the consequences of Hurricane Sandy, as well as how they’ll address future sea level rising. The conference was sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, nonpartisan science advocacy group.

"What we really got a glimpse at was our collective future," said Joe Vietri, who heads coastal and storm risk management for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is heading up a comprehensive study of Sandy.

Rising sea levels caused primarily by global warming could worsen the effects of storms such as Sandy, particularly when it comes to storm surge. Since 1992, satellites have observed a 2.25-inch rise in global sea levels.

Just before Sandy, sea surface temperatures were about 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 30-year average for the time of year. Scientists who studied the storm determined that about 1 degree was likely a direct result of global warming.

With every degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more moisture. As a result, Sandy was able to pull in more moisture, fueling a stronger storm and magnifying the amount of rainfall by as much as 5 percent to 10 percent compared with conditions more than 40 years ago.

Coupled with higher overall sea levels, the intense storm meant more water surging onshore and penetrating farther inland. The storm’s effects prompted officials in Wilmington, N.C., to look at its vulnerabilities if seas rise up to one meter by the end of the century.

"People are listening, people are ready to take some actions," said Phil Prete, a senior environmental planner for the city.

The officials spent less time discussing the cause of rapid sea level rise: how to slow the carbon emissions that are heating up the Earth and warming the oceans. Many public officials in coastal communities instead are focusing on what they say are the consequences of global warming.

They have no choice, said Kristin Jacobs, mayor of Broward County, Fla., where extreme tides during Hurricane Sandy washed out portions of Fort Lauderdale’s iconic beachfront highway.

"Almost all of us are living in very low-lying areas," she said. "There are many lessons in South Florida already learned from multiple hurricanes. We have learned from those hurricanes, we have learned to plan for the future, and we’ve learned that this is our new normal."

The causes are also a settled question in Hoboken, N.J., where an estimated 500 million gallons of Hudson River water inundated the town and stayed for nearly 10 days, said Stephen Marks, Hoboken’s assistant business administrator. He called on the federal government and states to take a leadership role in addressing climate change, particularly in communities that are vulnerable to its effects.

"The debate about climate change is essentially over," Marks said. "Hurricane Sandy settled that for, I would say, a majority of the residents in our city."

But coastal populations are particularly vulnerable, and growing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month issued a report showing that already crowded U.S. coastal areas will see population grow from 123 million people in 2010 to nearly 134 million people by 2020. That puts millions more people at risk from storms such as Sandy.

People may be aware of the consequences of climate change, but it hasn’t seemed to have stopped anyone from moving to the beach – or hurt property values, said Vietri, of the Army Corps of Engineers. He noted that communities suffered far less damage if there were sand dunes or other protective measures, such as substantial setbacks for homes.

"You still have communities rebuilding almost exactly where they were prior to the storm coming," Vietri said. "You continue to have a situation where we have a tremendous population density living in high-hazard areas."

"I Refuse to Classify": Mattia Bonetti on Blurring Boundaries in Design

 

Mattia Bonetti/© Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com/Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery

Cleverly installed over astroturf rugs inside Paul Kasmin Gallery, Mattia Bonetti’s new collection of high-design furniture is meant to transition seamlessly from living room to garden. The Swiss-born, Paris-based designer is known for his irreverent, eye-grabbing, and — often — dazzlingly shiny functional objects. Titled “Indoor/Outdoor,” the exhibition showcases Bonetti’s ecumenical rage of styles, from a spartan contemporary take on the klismos (an ancient Greek chair) to a neo-baroque cabinet tricked out with gold-plated bronze baubles. Highlights include a table made from shimmering rock crystal, a wicker dining set cast in bronze, a table with legs that imitate the undulations of a pearl necklace, and a monolithic travertine bench fit for a giant.

 

The Swiss-born designer talked to ARTINFO about how he conceived the objects in the new show.

 What inspired your foray into outdoor furniture?

 

The idea was to bring the outdoor into the indoor, and to bring the indoor into the outdoors: to blur the lines. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to bring a garden chair into the home, or a settee outside. But I do like the idea of blending the two. I’ve been working on pieces that are originally made of wicker. They are cast bronze from a wicker model. Wicker by definition is associated with the outdoors, although in the 19th century it was very much fashionable to have wicker indoors as well.

 

Do you mix indoor and outdoor furniture in your home?

 

I do not because I live in an apartment. The only thing I can do is open the window and feel the air.

 

Was it your idea to install the AstroTurf in the gallery?

 

I wanted it that way because I think it explains the concept, because we have grass but we are indoors. Also, outdoor doesn’t mean necessarily in the middle of the forest. It can be a covered terrace or a balcony, or some sort of building in a garden, there are all of these indoor/outdoor spaces.

 

You call your works functional sculptures. Where do you see it falling between art and design?

 

To be frank and honest, all my works are to be used as furniture. On top of that, they may have an aspect that’s more sculptural than what you find on the market. Because once the function is answered, you can do whatever you want. You don’t need to be Bauhaus or minimalistic, although you can.

 

Do you have a favorite piece in the show?

 

I do like the [travertine] couch a lot because of its mass. It was carved from a block. It was very difficult to produce. Also, the little table made with rock crystal: I like it very much.

 

You like to play with organic and geometric forms. The rectilinear and modernist “Metals Coffee Table” couldn’t be further from almost-rococo curvature of “Rocky Side Table.” What interests you about refusing to adhere to a consistent style? 

 

I’m always divided between the two. Because I like both. I can’t make a decision and I don’t want to make a decision. I’m always very mixed up. Business-wise, it’s better when people systematically repeat one thing. It becomes a brand. It’s immediately recognizable. Whereas, I change very often. From one show to the next, things are very different.

 

The [Liquid Gold] cabinet combines the two [aesthetics], I would say, because it’s quite straight in line, but you have all these ripplings that are more informal. They could be called Baroque, with their guiding and the richness.

 

There are certain motifs that you do bring back, such as your table with the pearl legs or the dice motif.

 

Yes, I’ve done that before and then we decided to make it in a smaller size. I’ve done two dice pieces for a client in Hong Kong many years ago, but they were made of wood. We always liked it, so we said, why don’t we make one in metal that can go indoors or outdoors.

 

What appeals to you about the dice motif?

 

I think it’s very surrealistic. My work sometimes is also on the verge of surrealism. 

 

What designers influence you?

 

I quite like the design of the second part of the 19th century, the Aesthetic Movement. It’s very decadent but at the same time also on the verge of something very modernistic — and you can feel that. And I think it's very interesting when you have those moments of passage. Because you had people like Christopher Dresser, for example, who was so advanced. I like [Edward William] Godwin and that kind of thing.

 

Your work has been deemed “neo-baroque,” “neo-barbarian,” and “postmodern.” How would you classify yourself?

 

I don’t. I refuse to classify, but everything is ok.

 

What are you working on next?

 

I’m planning to have a show with my English gallery [London’s David Gill Gallery] in one year’s time. I’ve also been asked to do a couple of objects for Christian Dior’s shops, objects that will not be sold. They will be there to evoke. The first one is in Paris on the Avenue Montagne. They have an apartment that’s been installed as if it were Christian Dior’s original place. I think that some of the items did belong to him originally. They asked me to do a mirror, so I did a very surrealist mirror inspired by Dior imagery. I used the Dior ribbon in a new way and I made a hand that comes from the back of the mirror and goes through it — very surrealist. It’s a ladies hand, but it has spots like a leopard.

 

 

 

See a slideshow of Mattia Bonetti's "Indoor/Outdoor" at Paul Kasmin Gallery here

Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel, ante el proyecto del Louvre Abu Dhabi. / thomas coex (afp)


The Louvre Abu Dhabi is ready, two and a half years after its inauguration, to show the world the backbone of its permanent collection. In total, 130 objects from different places over the last four millennia in the exhibition Birth of a museum, which opens to the public on day 22 in the Saadiyat Island cultural district in Abu Dhabi. It is the first large-scale museum ambitious funds, the first with universal vocation of the Arab world and whose construction is based on a project by architect Jean Nouvel.

"The goal is to demonstrate the concept of universality making art objects dialogue of civilizations and eras," said Celine Hullo-Pouyat yesterday, director of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project during a previous visit to the exhibition. It is also, as stated during the presentation Emirati co-director, Hissa to Dhaheri, to "emphasize human values ​​that unite us."

Hence, the sample is divided by civilizations and historical periods, but according to anthropological concepts. This statement of intent is apparent from the first room, which is dedicated to the representation of the human figure, a taboo for some radical interpretations of Islam. In it, the Conservatives opposed the sculpture of a Bactrian princess from the late third millennium BC (one of the jewels of the collection) and a Cypriot prehistoric idol with an abstract painting by Yves Klein. The effect is amazing and encourages reflection of the visitor. To help her, also have been placed screens on which video can be put into context mute that works and pieces linked to other museums.

"The mediation effort is part of the museum's educational objective," says Hullo-Pouyat. Like the rest of the exhibitions organized in Saadiyat, Birth of a museum will be accompanied by lectures, discussions and workshops. In addition, the Louvre Abu Dhabi seeks to establish permanent links with schools in the country and become an instrument of educational support.

The exhibition is divided into six trans-chronological rooms although not a literal illustration of the future museum itself evoke their aesthetic and narrative. In the dedicated to the Ancient World, The speaker, a Roman toga first century marble, is presented alongside a pedestrian statue of a Buddha, a piece dated between the second and third centuries. It is interesting to compare the similarities and differences in the folds of their cloaks or expression. A map explaining what was happening in the rest of the world at that time. Entitled The Sacred In a Jewish Pentateuch shares from Yemen cabinet with a diptych Christian and a Koran.

Later, the eastern Image contrasts with the western look, showing a score of paintings by some of the great European artists ranging from Murillo or Jordaens to Gauguin and Picasso. The presence in these works of Venus and nymphs in the bathroom, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, whose protagonists are scantily clad, forced ago asking if conservatives found with red lines or warnings to local cultural sensitivity.

"No," he replies without hesitation Hullo-Pouyat. "We worked on a universal concept in the context of cultural and scientific program of the museum". Neither she nor the other makers reveal the total number of pieces in the collection or its value. And also refer to this program as a reference framework for the purchase of works by the Government of Abu Dhabi, the owner of both the museum and its contents. Having decided on the target must be aware of the parts that go on sale.

"This is the challenge facing all new museums because they can only access what is available in the market against centuries collections" admits Olivier Gabet, deputy conservation French Museums Agency, whose collaboration is the result of a bilateral agreement between Paris and Abu Dhabi. Gabet highlights the "exclusivity" not only of the works presented but how to present them.

For now, when it opens in late 2015, the museum also displays the permanent collection, funds borrowed from French museums. "As you increase the collection, loans will be reduced," explains the director. The organizers will be very attentive to how local audiences reacted to this exhibition, since the ultimate goal is that the museum will attract local and regional audiences, and that they get to call their own.

The announcement that the Emirate of Abu Dhabi signed an agreement with the Louvre to help him to develop his own art gallery and planned to build the largest Guggenheim in the world was met with skepticism when it was announced in early 2007. Three years after the financial crisis forced the makers to curb its ambitions. Only recently, work has resumed. Under the new timetable announced this year, the Louvre will open in two years, the National Museum signing Foster & Partners will be ready in 2016 and the Guggenheim, designed as one would expect by Frank Gehry opened in 2017. It also plans to build an auditorium designed by architect Zaha Hadid and a maritime museum by Tadao Ando draft.

Neil MacGregor (Glasgow, 1946), director of the British Museum - The George Lindemann Journal

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" @nytimes @randykennedy - The George Lindemann Journal

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.

 

His sister, Elizabeth Reich, said Mr. Reich had killed himself. His death became public only in the last week, after friends and artists who had known Mr. Reich began to inquire about his whereabouts.

Mr. Reich was among a group of young dealers who brought new energy into contemporary art in New York in the early 2000s, tacking against the trend toward a more button-down, sleek, big-money business.

He first showed emerging artists and collectives in his 200-square-foot ground-floor studio apartment on West 21st Street, where visitors had to ring the bell for No. 2A to see the shows. Mr. Reich stowed his inflatable air mattress in the tub during business hours.

“His bathroom ended up being the art storage, and there was some incident when the shower got turned on and damaged something,” said the artist Scott Reeder, whose work was in Mr. Reich’s first exhibition in the apartment, a free-form group show called “Miss World 1972,” in December 2001.

That show included many young artists who were then little known but who went on to have significant careers. Among them were Roe Ethridge, Virgil Marti, Mr. Reeder and his brother Tyson, and Eli Sudbrack, known as Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Holland Cotter of The New York Times praised the show, saying that Mr. Reich had “figured out a way to be in Chelsea without necessarily being of Chelsea.”

The gallery moved to a modest commercial space on West 23rd Street in late 2003 and made its name with shows emphasizing small-scale works that projected an intimate, sometimes melancholic, hand-wrought quality. Newcomers like Christian Holstad and Hernan Bas, along with established artists like Jack Pierson, often explored gay sexuality and gender in unexpected ways.

Mr. Reich also focused on painters, like Paul P. and Henry Taylor, who in a 2005 exhibition included a portrait of Mr. Reich “in all his bemused, bespectacled, bright-eyed intensity,” as Roberta Smith described it in The Times.

Alfred Daniel Reich was born on Dec. 8, 1973, in New York City and raised in Brooklyn Heights and Larchmont. In addition to his sister, he is survived by his parents, James and Barbara Reich.

Mr. Reich studied art history at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. After graduating in 1996, he went to work for Pat Hearn, a pioneering gallery owner in the East Village and later Chelsea; she made Mr. Reich her director.

When Ms. Hearn died at 45 in 2000, Mr. Reich struck out on his own, with so little money that his mother had to help him pay the rent on his apartment. “The bottom line,” he said in an interview, “was that I really wanted to have a gallery, and sometimes you just have to start doing something with whatever you have at your disposal.”

Despite critical success, he struggled to make the gallery work as a business, and in 2011 he closed his commercial space. In a posting on his Web site announcing the closing, he sounded more hopeful than dejected.

“In the original spirit of the gallery, which began out of my apartment in the winter after 9/11, I feel that this moment has a specificity ripe for change,” he wrote. “One of my favorite things about my gallery is that it exists close to the earth and is a gallery of its time.”

"12-Year-Old Building at MoMA Is Doomed" @nytimes - George Lindemann

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

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.

 

 

The former home of the American Folk Art Museum, acclaimed when it opened 12 years ago, is going to be demolished.

“Its heart is in the right time as well as the right place,” Herbert Muschamp wrote in his architecture review in The New York Times, calling the museum’s sculptural bronze facade “already a Midtown icon.”

Now, a mere 12 years later, the building is going to be demolished.

In its place the adjacent Museum of Modern Art, which bought the building in 2011, will put up an expansion, which will connect to a new tower with floors for the Modern on the other side of the former museum. And the folk museum building, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, will take a dubious place in history as having had one of the shortest lives of an architecturally ambitious project in Manhattan.

“It’s very rare that a building that recent comes down, especially a building that was such a major design and that got so much publicity when it opened for its design — mostly very positive,” said Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia University’s historic preservation program. “The building is so solid looking on the street, and then it becomes a disposable artifact. It’s unusual and it’s tragic because it’s a notable work of 21st century architecture by noteworthy architects who haven’t done that much work in the city, and it’s a beautiful work with the look of a handcrafted facade.”

MoMA officials said the building’s design did not fit their plans because the opaque facade is not in keeping with the glass aesthetic of the rest of the museum. The former folk museum is also set back farther than MoMA’s other properties, and the floors would not line up.

“It’s not a comment on the quality of the building or Tod and Billie’s architecture,” Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director said.

Mr. Lowry personally went to the architects’ offices to inform them of the museum’s decision, a gesture that Ms. Tsien said she appreciated.

“We feel really disappointed,” she said in an interview. “There are of course the personal feelings — your buildings are like your children, and this is a particular, for us, beloved small child. But there is also the feeling that it’s a kind of loss for architecture, because it’s a special building, a kind of small building that’s crafted, that’s particular and thoughtful at a time when so many buildings are about bigness.”

The folk art museum, which had once envisioned the building as a stimulus for its growth, ended up selling the property, at 45 West 53d Street, to pay off the $32 million it had borrowed to finance an expansion. It now operates at a smaller site on Lincoln Square, at West 66th Street.

Mr. Lowry said the expansion would complete the MoMA campus, which will ultimately consist of five buildings, four of them on West 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.

Still to be built is an 82-story tower just west of the folk museum that is being developed by Hines, a Houston company, and was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. It will include apartments as well as exhibition space for the museum.

When the projects are finished the museum will gain about 10,000 square feet of gallery space at the former folk art site and about 40,000 in the Nouvel building, officials said. The Modern’s second, fourth and fifth floors will line up with those in both buildings. (The second-floor galleries are double height.)

“We’ll have a completely integrated west end to the museum,” Mr. Lowry said. “Floor plates will extend seamlessly.”

Precisely what will be displayed in the new galleries has yet to be determined, but Mr. Lowry said they would include work from the Modern’s “midcentury collections, early Modern collections and temporary exhibitions.”

The cost for the project has not been announced, he said, and fund-raising has yet to begin.

MoMA’s 2004 renovation, designed by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, increased the museum’s gallery space to 125,000 square feet, from 85,000 (and the overall size to 630,000 square feet, from 378,000). But the museum still needs more room for exhibitions.

“We have a lot of art that we own that we would like to show,” said Jerry I. Speyer, the real estate developer who is the museum’s chairman. “When we built what exists today we didn’t get as much exhibition space as we really need.”

Ms. Tsien said she and Mr. Williams, her husband, wished the Modern had found a way to reuse what they designed and to realize its value.

“It’s a building that kids study in architecture school,” she said. “They study it as a kind of precedent to understand how buildings are made and to understand the kind of space it is because it is a complex and interesting building in a very small site.”

But, she added, “it doesn’t seem to make sense to second-guess how they might have used it.”

The Modern will interview architects to design the new addition, Mr. Lowry said, and hopes to select one by the end of this year. It expects to have the building demolished by then.

Construction of the Nouvel project is expected to start in 2014, with both new buildings being completed simultaneously in 2017 or 2018, Mr. Lowry said.

The museum has been aggressive about expansion. In 1996 it bought the Dorset Hotel, a 1920s building on West 54th Street, and two adjacent brownstones, using much of the sites for its extensive renovation in 2004.

In 2007 the museum sold its last vacant parcel of land for $125 million to Hines, which decided to develop the Nouvel building and include space for the museum.

Mr. Nouvel originally designed the tower, at 53 West 53d Street, with a spire rising 1,250 feet — matching the top floor of the Empire State Building — and Nicolai Ouroussoff predicted in The Times that it would be “the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation.”

But residents protested the height and the Department of City Planning demanded that Mr. Nouvel cut 200 feet from the top. He did so, and in 2009 the City Council approved plans for a tower that is to rise 1,050 feet.

The museum is deciding what to put at ground level at the former folk art building site — perhaps additional retail or another restaurant, Mr. Lowry said. (Its upscale restaurant, the Dining Room at the Modern, received three stars from Pete Wells in The Times last month.)

“We bought the site,” Mr. Lowry said, “and our responsibility is to use the site intelligently.”

Ms. Tsien said she could not recall another example of such a high-profile architectural project being demolished so soon after it was built. “Museums have opened and closed and buildings have shifted,” she said, “but I don’t know about being torn down.”

"A Billion-Dollar Gift Gives the Met a New Perspective (Cubist)" @nytimes

 

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.”

"Family Seeks Return of a Matisse Seized by the Nazis" @NYtimes

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