"The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar" @nytimes

The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar

Eyes in Doha Are on Damien Hirsts and Warhols

Natalie Naccache for The New York Times

The Qatar Museums Authority’s Al Riwaq exhibition space in Doha is decorated as a giant Damien Hirst spot painting.

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: October 13, 2013  

DOHA, Qatar — The art-world equivalent of McDonald’s golden arches, Damien Hirst’s candy-colored spots, now covering the exterior of the exhibition space Al Riwaq, glaringly mark this Persian Gulf city as a player in the increasingly branded art world. And the exhibition inside, which includes all the touch points in the career of Mr. Hirst, 48, is just one of a constellation of openings organized to attract a who’s who in the art world (or at least a who’s afraid of being left out).

Dealers, auction house experts, museum directors, collectors and artists from around the world descended on this city last week, ostensibly to support the many artists whose exhibitions were opening here but primarily in the hopes of doing business of their own. It was as if Chelsea and Mayfair had been transplanted to this overheated city of shiny skyscrapers and waterfront promenades. There was Jeffrey Deitch, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and gallery owners like David Zwirner, who represents Adel Abdessemed, an Algerian-born artist who is having a show at Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art. Alberto Mugrabi, the New York dealer, came too, along with Aby Rosen, the Manhattan real estate developer and collector, and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate in London. (The Qatar Museums Authority sponsored a retrospective of Mr. Hirst’s work at the Tate last year.) Even the artist Jeff Koons made an appearance.

The culturally engaged and deep-pocketed Qatari royal family, along with a new generation of moneyed collectors living in this oil-rich city, are making it an increasingly frequent stop on the global art tour.

Christie’s, which holds auctions in Dubai and exhibitions in Doha, reported last year that sales in the Middle East were approaching 10 percent of its annual turnover.

“Our numbers are probably similar,” said Alexander Rotter, who runs Sotheby’s contemporary art department in New York and was in Doha last week, too. Sotheby’s opened its office here in 2008 and had its first Doha auction the next year. In April it had its first auction of contemporary art here with works by artists from the United States as well as the Middle East and Asia. “There is a new breed of collector here that didn’t exist 10 years ago,” said Mr. Rotter, who organized the sale and was its auctioneer. “And they are in it to win it.”

Last week Sotheby’s took over a gallery in the Katara Art Center — a collaborative cultural village of galleries with an open-air theater — where it showed highlights from next month’s important contemporary art auctions in New York. On view were two major Warhols: “Liz #1 (Early Colored Liz),” a 1963 image of Elizabeth Taylor on a bright-yellow background that is estimated to sell for $20 million to $30 million, and “5 Deaths on Turquoise (Turquoise Disaster),” painted the same year and expected to bring $7 million to $10 million. While the seller was not named and officials at Sotheby’s declined to comment, the paintings are part of a larger group of works, which also includes an abstract canvas by Gerhard Richter, being sold by Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire, whose company, SAC Capital Advisors, is fighting criminal charges of insider trading. Sandy Heller, an art adviser who works with Mr. Cohen, declined to comment on the sale, but art experts familiar with Mr. Cohen’s collection identified the works as his.

In Doha, seminal images of Pop Art, like the Warhols, might be familiar, but most of the public sculptures, and the new art in museums and galleries is not. For the first time Middle Eastern audiences can see the breadth of Mr. Hirst’s career on their home turf. Last Monday “The Miraculous Journey,” 14 monumental bronze sculptures by the artist were unveiled in front of the Sidra Medical and Research Center on the outskirts of Doha. Charting the gestation of a fetus inside a uterus from conception to birth, the suite of bronzes includes a 46-foot-tall anatomically correct baby boy.

Three nights later, “Relics,” Mr. Hirst’s retrospective, opened at Al Riwaq. Organized by Francesco Bonami, an independent curator who lives in New York and Milan, it includes three of the artist’s giant sharks submerged in tanks of formaldehyde; two of Mr. Hirst’s human skulls encrusted with thousands of sparkly diamonds; a room of stainless-steel medicine cabinets filled with drugs; and an array of paintings.

Weeks before the show opened, the Qatar Museums Authority was flooded with school groups requesting visits. “It is totally booked through November,” said Jean Paul Engelen, the organization’s director of public art and exhibitions, who estimates thousands of students from local schools and universities will have seen “Relics” by the time it closes on Jan. 22.

During the last three years Mr. Engelen, together with Sheikha al Mayassa Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 30, the Qatar Museums Authority chairwoman and a sister to the new emir, have overseen the installation of outdoor sculptures around the city by an international array of artists. Some have been more popular than others. Last week when a 16-foot-tall bronze sculpture by Mr. Abdessemed depicting one soccer player head-butting another was installed on the Corniche, the popular waterfront promenade, some residents called for its removal, claiming it offended their sensibilities. Other works have been embraced, including one of Louise Bourgeois’s monumental spiders at the Qatar National Convention Center and “7,” an 80-foot-tall sculpture by Richard Serra that sits on a plaza extending 250 feet into Doha Harbor at the tip of the Museum of Islamic Art Park.

The Qatar Museums Authority has also tried to open up a dialogue with the public about some of its shows. Last week it installed booths in two shopping malls where people could view images of one of Mr. Hirst’s sharks and his diamond skull and give their opinions, which can be found online; users can also express their opinions directly on a Web site. (Tweets are also encouraged.) Another exhibition inviting comment on the Web site is “The Museum of Crying Women,” in which streams of tears are added to portraits of Hollywood stars, first ladies, fashion celebrities and pop-culture figures; the creator of that show, which opened last week in Katara, is Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian artist and filmmaker.

Asking for public opinion is a novelty in this absolute monarchy. But the Qatar Museums Authority seems to be drumming up feedback even more aggressively than most American museums do.

“We try to learn who our audience is,” Mr. Engelen said, “where we can do better, and how we can reach even more people.”

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A version of this article appears in print on October 14, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Gang’s All There, Talking Art in Qatar.

"An Art Fair Tones It Down" @wsj

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Balance the buzz and the business: That seems to be the motto of the 11th Frieze London art fair. Concerned that the crowds and parties were starting to elbow out sales, organizers are aiming for a smaller, more focused event.

They have cut by 20% the number of available tickets, including those for VIPs, and reduced the number of galleries presenting their works to 152 from 175 last year. Meanwhile, some galleries that formerly brought in a range of artists are turning to one-artist booths to boost the profiles of lower-priced new or middle-market artists.

The vaunted party scene, second only to Art Basel Miami Beach on the art-fair circuit, is a double-edged sword, some galleries say. "A lot of people don't realize that dealers aren't there just to hang out. This is a huge part of our business," says Cuban-American dealer Javier Peres, who has shown at Frieze London since 2004. He sat out last year—a move prompted by uneven sales and the fact that many of the fair's 55,000 visitors were only window-shopping—but his gallery will be back on Wednesday, when the five-day fair begins.

The cutbacks are meant to "make the fair more luxurious," says Frieze London's co-founder and director Amanda Sharp.

Some things will be the same: Large galleries with stables of high-profile artists typically opt to show a sampling of fresh work at Frieze. U.S.-based Bloom & Poe will offer a $400,000 painting by Takashi Murakami, while Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac is bringing a $1.8 million abstract sculpture by Georg Baselitz.

In previous years, many dealers say, visitors ended up suffering from "fair fatigue"—overwhelmed by the number of galleries and artists represented. To counter this, the New York-based Marianne Boesky gallery is focusing on just one artist: 11 works on paper and oil paintings by Russian-born artist Kon Trubkovich. His eerie, blurry images, often preoccupied with incarceration, range from $9,000 to $65,000.

Gerd Harry Lybke, whose Leipzig, Germany, gallery Eigen + Art represents Neo Rauch, says a safe bet would be bringing to Frieze the superstar painter's works, which range from about $160,000 to $950,000 on the primary market. But many Frieze visitors already know Mr. Rauch's work, and it is a better long-term strategy to introduce them to a less familiar figure, Mr. Lybke says. He says he hopes to raise the profile of Mr. Rauch's contemporary Uwe Kowski, whose works, often hovering somewhere between representation and abstraction, range from $2,700 to $80,000.

It is a risky move at a fair where an average-size booth costs around $35,000—not including thousands more for art transport and lodging. "If you go to a fair like Frieze and don't earn money, you're screwed," says Mr. Lybke. "I'm bringing two people whose sole jobs are to concern themselves with Uwe's work and explain it to you in a few sentences."

Lisson Gallery is hosting a solo booth of only one work, asking around $600,000 for an installation by Dan Graham, an American artist in his 70s.

While Frieze London cuts back, Frieze Masters is adding 30 galleries for 131 overall. The sister fair, which runs simultaneously, launched last year to show works created before 2000 and racked up strong sales figures, including Van de Weghe Fine Art's sale of an $8.5 million Pablo Picasso painting and a 1968 Joan Miró sold by Helly Nahmad for around $20 million.

Simon Dickinson is one of a handful of galleries leaving the smaller Pavilion of Art and Design, another London-based autumn fair, for Frieze Masters. Director Emma Ward says her gallery will be bringing 30 works including "Study for Discs," a 1919 oil painting by Fernand Léger priced at around $9.6 million.

Meanwhile, Acquavella Galleries is upping the ante with Picasso's 1949 "Woman Sitting," offered for around $20 million, and a 1950 Francis Bacon for around $11 million. Zurich-based David Koetser will be bringing a $6.2 million oil on copper by Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Many of the new galleries are major players who held back last autumn to see if the fair took root. "We had nothing to base the caliber of the fair on," says Sukanya Rajaratnam, a partner at Manhattan's Mnuchin Gallery and a 2012 holdout. But she was "blown away" by last year's "boutique atmosphere" and is bringing a dozen works on paper, bronzes and oil paintings by Willem de Kooning, including a 1983 painting selling for $8 million and a 1973 sculpture for $8.5 million.

Write to Mary M. Lane at mary.lane@wsj.com

"Barbarians at Sotheby’s Gate?: Activist Investor Daniel Loeb Is Shaking Up the Centuries-Old Auction House" @adamlindemann

Loeb Courtesy PMC

Loeb. (Courtesy PMC)

Last week, Daniel Loeb’s activist hedge fund, Third Point Partners, which weighs in at a hefty $15 billion, increased to 9.3 percent its share in Sotheby’s (aka BID) stock. Another activist fund, Marcato Capital Management, owns about 6 percent of the auction house, and billionaire Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management owns another 3, putting about 19 percent of the company shares in “hostile” hands.

Right on cue, Mr. Loeb wrote one of his classic letters excoriating BID Chairman Bill Ruprecht for his extravagant perks and salary while demanding that he step down in favor of a new management team and a few Third Point appointed directors.

By Friday morning, Mr. Ruprecht had dug in his heels, announcing that the company he chairs had taken a “poison pill.” This is not an uncommon defense mechanism for public companies; poison pills are intended to dilute the value of the stock by flooding the market with additional shares if a hostile buyer goes over 10 percent. But one can’t help but savor the irony, in Sotheby’s case, that a company that specializes in making or faking bidding wars for art should create obstacles for professional investors who want to bid up the company’s shares. BID is currently up to more than $50 per share, a nearly 47 percent increase over its share price at the beginning of this year, so even if this is all smoke and mirrors, the sizzle is working on the street.

If Mr. Loeb’s track record outside the art world is any indication, we may well see BID achieve $60 or even $70 per share, a market capitalization of $4.5 billion to $5 billion. Third Point has delivered outstanding results for its investors since Mr. Loeb founded the firm in 1995. Mr. Loeb has made a habit of tilting at large companies, most recently his 7 percent position in Sony and his subsequent demand that it split the entertainment business from the rest of the company: The split did not occur, but the stock did go up handsomely. In the case of Third Point’s investment in Yahoo, Mr. Loeb was successful in bringing in a new CEO and literally doubling the stock price, a big win for both shareholders and investors in his fund.

But is BID really worth it? Is the company as old-fashioned and stodgy as Mr. Loeb and his co-investors believe—in his own words, an “Old Master painting” badly in need of restoration? As Mr. Loeb pointed out in his scathing letter, BID has lagged behind its archrival, Christie’s, in both market share and the hunt for top lots to feature in major biannual evening sales. Christie’s has set more records recently for blue-chip artists like Calder, Yves Klein and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Meanwhile, Sotheby’s achieved lackluster results for a large Barnett Newman painting featured last season. Consigners have responded to Christie’s momentum by bringing valuable artworks to the block, like Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog, estimated to sell for $35 million to $55 million in a Christie’s sale next month. Sotheby’s has parried with a major Warhol disaster diptych in its corresponding November sale, but silver paintings from the ’60s don’t have the same spark.

Would that Newman painting have done better at Christie’s? There is one macro difference between the two companies, from which many other differences stem. Sotheby’s is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Christie’s is a private company controlled by the French art collecting luxury goods tycoon Francois Pinault. In 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, Christie’s continued offering consignors juicy guarantees for major evening sale lots, even if it then tried to lay them off on third parties, locking in profits for the house. Mr. Ruprecht, wanting to sound more prudent, told the stock market that Sotheby’s would no longer offer guarantees, because the company had been so badly burned in evening sales of November 2008.

Mr. Ruprecht’s approach might have sounded good to myopic Wall Street types who see the art market as fraught with risk and view the art business as narrowly as any other business, but the strategy was wrong.

Art is a fashion-driven business prone to either feast or famine, and star lots and market share are critical in maintaining the appearance of success, even when fierce competition leads to side deals where house premiums sometimes get cut to the bone. Though art collecting has grown globally, and prices have risen overall, every artwork, and each artist’s individual market, tells a different story; the line between a world record sale and a flop is all too often razor-thin. In order to remain at the top of their game, the auction houses must charge after those few lots in a season that have the potential to make headlines. Having no one to report to but Mr. Pinault, Christie’s was able to be more nimble, despite an uncertain world economy.

Since the epic disaster of the painfully absurd “price fixing” scandal back in 2000, Sotheby’s and Christie’s have developed very different styles of doing business. Sotheby’s acts like a European academic institution where department heads are virtually tenured and there is limited incentive or leeway for underlings to go hunting for deals. This feeling is palpable as one walks into the building; behind the information desk are tight-suited staffers who insist on asking where you are going before they let you up the elevator. There is a British, clubby feeling of privilege and stuffy pedigree; it’s a place where you, the nouveau riche, have come to ogle the dusty treasures of the refined Old World while the natty experts stand aloof as if you have interrupted their rereading of Proust.

Christie’s is considerably warmer. Until recently, a genial, mustachioed doorman, Gil Perez, welcomed you. (Sadly he retired last year.) You walk into a labyrinth of art for sale. Sometimes, large pieces are plopped awkwardly in front of the building. One is never really sure which of the experts is the department head, but they are always in a rush, as if you are talking to them in an airport and they have just a few minutes between flights.

Fine art has traditionally been marketed in the buttoned-up, European manner, and Christie’s lack of hierarchy and more democratic approach has made some new buyers feel less like they are trying to get into a club where they know they are not welcome. I happen to favor the snottier style—as Groucho said, I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member—but times have changed, and the social dynamic of collecting is more powerful than ever. Sales are not just about the quality of the works or an elegant, sophisticated presentation. Aggressive marketing, over-the-top parties and elaborate catalogs have raised the stakes of this expensive battle.

Still, Sotheby’s is the premier name in art. It has been around since 1744. I would guess that the name alone is worth at least $1 billion, or about $14 per share. For the value of Sotheby’s to be maximized—and for it to exist on a level playing field with Christie’s—it would likely have to go private or be merged into a larger entity. Look at eBay, which has a market cap of $72 billion; sources tell me it is looking to expand its presence in art. It could easily swallow up Sotheby’s and instantly change the value and global reach of the company. Far-fetched? I don’t think so. EBay certainly knows how to build efficient online selling platforms. Then there’s the more natural and obvious fit with Bernard Arnault’s LVMH luxury conglomerate, which sports a market cap of $72.66 billion. Here’s a company that knows how to maximize brands globally and is not afraid to take on fixer-uppers with great brand strength and identity. Mr. Arnault gave auction house ownership a go when LVMH financed Phillips from 1999 to 2002—maybe he has learned from that lesson and is ready for another round. And perhaps Mr. Arnault would enjoy challenging Christie’s and the Pinault family, his archrivals in luxury retail.

Every system benefits from being challenged, and I believe the present firefight will benefit Sotheby’s and in fact already has. But don’t expect it to last long: The art world is a lot smaller than outsiders believe. Don’t be surprised if New Canaan’s own Mr. Ruprecht and the Upper West Side’s influential Mr. Loeb kiss and make up. Yesterday’s archenemies can be tomorrow’s BFFs when there is money to be made.

"One Queens Painter Created Forgeries That Sold for Millions, U.S. Says" @nytimes

“Untitled” by Jackson Pollock was one of the forged works. How imitations of the most heralded Abstract Expressionists by a complete unknown could have fooled connoisseurs and clients remains a mystery.

By PATRICIA COHEN and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Published: August 15, 2013

For 15 years, some of the art world’s most established dealers and experts rhapsodized about dozens of newly discovered masterworks by titans of Modernism. Elite buyers paid up to $17 million to own just one of these canvases, said to have been created by the hands of artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell.

But federal prosecutors say that most, if not all, of the 63 ballyhooed works — which fetched more than $80 million in sales — were painted in a home and garage in Queens by one unusually talented but unknown artist who was paid only a few thousand dollars apiece for his handiworks.

Authorities did not name or charge the painter and provided few identifying details except to say he had trained at a Manhattan art school in a variety of disciplines including painting, drawing and lithography. He was selling his work on the streets of New York in the early 1990s, they said, when he was spotted by a Chelsea art dealer who helped convert his work into one of the most audacious art frauds in recent memory.

The new details about the man said to have created the fakes were contained in a superseding indictment, handed up Wednesday against one of the co-conspirators, Glafira Rosales, an obscure dealer from Long Island who was arrested after a lengthy Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry. She has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering in connection to what authorities have called a scam, but her boyfriend, alleged to be the other co-conspirator who discovered the painter, has not been charged.

Investigators say Ms. Rosales sold 40 of the counterfeit works through Knoedler & Company, a venerable Upper East Side gallery that took in about $63 million from their sale. The gallery, which abruptly closed in November 2011, kept $43 million of that sum, and paid Ms. Rosales $20 million. Fakes sold through a second Manhattan dealer, Julian Weissman, brought in another $17 million, according to the indictment.

Meanwhile, the painter earned $5,400 for a painting in December 2005 and $7,000 for another in February 2008, the indictment said.

Ms. Rosales has pleaded not guilty and was released on bail earlier this week. Knoedler, its former president Ann Freedman, and Mr. Weissman have repeatedly said they believed the works they sold had been authentic.

How imitations of the most heralded Abstract Expressionists by a complete unknown could have fooled connoisseurs and clients remains a mystery.

“It’s impressive,” said Jack Flam, president of the Dedalus Foundation, the nonprofit organization that authenticates Motherwell’s work. “Whoever did these paintings was very well-informed of the practices of the artists.”

One of the first experts to publicly identify some of these paintings as forgeries, Mr. Flam noted that not only the works themselves, but also the backs of the paintings and the way the canvases were treated and the frames constructed aped the styles of the artists.

But he said “the way we look at reality is highly influenced by the context it’s presented to us.” The fact that they were sold by Knoedler, a respected gallery, influenced people’s opinions, he said.

Ms. Rosales’s boyfriend and business partner, who was not named in the indictment but has previously been identified in court papers as Jose Carlos Bergantiños-Diaz, processed the freshly painted fakes, “heating them, cooling them, and exposing them to the elements outdoors, in an attempt to make the fake works seem older than, in fact, they were,” the indictment said.

Ms. Rosales concocted various stories about the sudden appearance of so many never-seen-before works, telling Knoedler and Mr. Weissman that a majority came from a family friend who had inherited them from his father and insisted on remaining anonymous. The works, she said, were acquired in the 1950s and kept stashed in a sealed container.

Eight lawsuits have been brought by customers who say they were duped into buying forgeries. Many of the works were subjected to forensic testing that concluded they were forgeries.

Two of those suits were settled, including one involving a Pollock bought by a London hedge fund director for $17 million.

Ms. Freedman’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante Jr., said: “Rosales’s confession confirms that Ann Freedman was the central victim of this criminal scheme.” Knoedler’s lawyer, Charles D. Schmerler, said in a statement: “If proven true, the new allegations against Rosales are a sad development for the entire art world.” But he said claims that Knoedler knowingly sold inauthentic paintings were baseless.

A lawyer for Ms. Rosales, Steven R. Kartagener, declined to comment on the new charges.

John Howard, a Wall Street executive who has sued Knoedler, Ms. Freedman and Ms. Rosales after paying $4 million for a painting attributed to Willem de Kooning, said that after he purchased the work in 2007, he asked Ms. Freedman to be on the lookout for a rare item — a small Motherwell from the artist’s acclaimed “Spanish Elegy” series.

“I doubt you’ll ever see one,” he remembered her saying.

Then six months later, he said, he got a call from the gallery saying one had surprisingly turned up. He decided not to buy it, he said. He noted that the work remained in an inventory of works unsold when the gallery shut its doors.                       

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

"Invitation to a Dialogue: Art in Hard Times" @nytimes - The George Lindemann Journal

To the Editor:

The choice being debated in Detroit — whether to sell works from the Detroit Institute of Arts to help pay the city’s debts — is agonizing. How can we equate a few pieces of canvas with paint on them with the pensions of thousands of firefighters, nurses, police officers, teachers and other civil servants?

The same choice is being played out in many other communities across the country. In a sense, we have always had this dilemma, but this time, there are several special factors. One is that cities and towns are going bankrupt, and they can’t continue to provide basic services, let alone support for art museums. Another factor is the stunning rise in prices for works of art. Thousands of works go for over a million dollars every year; eight- and even nine-figure prices are common.

Mixed into this is the fact that museums have become dependent on support from federal, state and local government in the form of tax subsidies, tax exemptions, especially from real estate tax, and, most important, tax deductions. At the same time, private donors are being asked to give more and more; how long will the 1 percent agree to subsidize a service for the 99 percent? There are more than 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations in this country, all with their hands out.

How can museums justify this kind of support? We claim to be moral institutions, open to all, providing the best to the most, and we all work hard to do just that. But is that really our audience? Don’t we, for the most part, serve the affluent, the educated, the converted, those who are on our side of the income and education gap?

Museums make a determined effort to widen their audience — the Detroit Institute of Arts is a leader in that effort — but we are still falling short. The shortfall is where that agonizing question arises: How many lives is a Rembrandt worth?

FRANK ROBINSON
Ithaca, N.Y., Aug. 5, 2013

The writer was a museum director for 35 years, at Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design and Cornell University.

Editors’ Note: We invite readers to respond by Thursday for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Robinson’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com

"The Death of a Museum" @nytimes - The George Lindemann Journal

Fresno Met’s Closing Could Hold a Lesson for Detroit

By ROBIN POGREBIN

How does a museum decide to dissolve?

That question could ultimately face two cultural institutions: the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose artwork may be sold off because the city has declared bankruptcy, and the South Street Seaport Museum, which is desperately trying to stay afloat.

Museums don’t often go out of business. They cut back, they pare down, but they tend to persevere as cultural anchors of their communities. And neither of these institutions has announced plans to close; both are hoping to weather their current storms.

But both are arguably in jeopardy — the Detroit Institute because a sale would denude its prestigious collection of its most valuable artworks and compromise its integrity, since nonprofit museums, founded in the public trust, are ethically obligated not to sell pieces except to acquire others; the Seaport because it has struggled for years to pay its bills and recently lost its white knight when the Museum of the City of New York said it could no longer afford to run the museum, which was damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Should these institutions find themselves forced to close, they could look to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science, which shut down in 2010, as an object lesson in the complex, painful process of dissolution.

Although vastly different in scale and reputation from the august Detroit Institute and the endearing Seaport Museum, the Fresno Met had certain key things in common with those institutions. It was a nonprofit whose building was in the end owned by the city. (The City of Detroit owns the Institute and much of its collection, and the Seaport Museum leases its building from the city’s Economic Development Corporation.) Also like the Detroit Institute and the Seaport Museum, the Fresno Met was a flagship attraction and a local point of pride.

“It was extremely difficult,” said Dana Thorpe, the Fresno Met’s last executive director. “For many people in the community, this was their Disneyland.”

The Fresno Met was one of nearly 30 museums that decided to close in 2009, the last year statistics were compiled, according to the American Alliance of Museums, a national association. The alliance no longer tries to calculate the number of closings, said a spokesman, Dewey Blanton, because many go unreported.

The Fresno Met didn’t have a lot of history behind it. It was created in 1984 in the former home of The Fresno Bee newspaper, a 1922 Renaissance Revival building on the National Register that the Bee’s owner donated. Among the largest arts institutions in California’s Central Valley, the museum had a few gems in its collection like American Indian baskets and a cache of Ansel Adams photographs.

For a while, the Fresno Met thrived as a center for programs in art and science. But by the time Ms. Thorpe became director in June 2008, the museum was foundering. A $28 million renovation project was $15 million over budget and three years behind schedule, closing the museum during construction.

Although the Met finally managed to reopen in November 2008, and attendance reached a record 110,000 over the ensuing year, contributions diminished as the recession hit donors’ stock portfolios. In 2009, carrying more than $4 million in debt, the museum cut its operating budget by 45 percent, went through two rounds of layoffs and closed its Chagall exhibition early.

“It was a Taj Mahal and a beautiful museum, but the demographics were not there to support it,” said Stewart Randall, the former board president.

The museum sought help from the City of Fresno, which agreed to guarantee a $15 million loan. But the economic downturn left the museum unable to raise money to refinance the loan, so the city took over the building. And the writing was on the wall.

“We were spending $300,000 a month and had income of $200,000 a month,” Mr. Randall said. “That’s when it became evident to me that there was no way this was going to survive.”

Staff members were let go. The collection had to be sold. Debts had to be paid. “We were now talking about closing the museum with dignity and grace,” Ms. Thorpe said.

To deal with all this, the museum hired Riley C. Walter, a Fresno bankruptcy lawyer.

The museum considered filing for Chapter 11 protection. But, after calculating the potential costs and delays, it instead pursued an insolvency proceeding to benefit creditors that is governed by state law rather than federal bankruptcy law.

The procedure turns the museum’s assets over to an assignee — in this case, O. James Woodward III, a prominent local lawyer and art collector — who then oversees their disposal.

“It was far less expensive and far faster than a Chapter 11,” Mr. Walter said. “In Chapter 11, you would have to go through elaborate notice procedures and give a lot more opportunity for people to object.”

The museum notified creditors of its liquidation, so that they could file claims, then auctioned off non-art items like pedestals and display cases. Sotheby’s handled the sale of the most valuable art works, which brought about $2 million; other auction houses sold the rest.

The unsecured creditors received 80 cents on the dollar.

At the beginning of the process, a group of local patrons lent the museum $675,000 and took a lien against its assets. That money was used in the liquidation for payroll while the museum was obtaining valuations from auction houses. This loan was paid off through the Fresno Met’s first sale of assets.

The liquidation prompted only one lawsuit: The family of Ansel Adams said the photographs were meant to stay in a museum. So the family traded other pieces it had for those in the collection, based on a fair market value price determined by an auction house.

Note to institutions contemplating a similar move: The aftermath wasn’t all grim. A science and math exhibition for children was bought by a children’s museum in north-central California; a large collection of original boxed puzzles went to a toy museum. The museum’s building is now rented out by the city as commercial space. And some of the staff members and trustees landed at the Fresno Art Museum, an older institution that focuses on contemporary American art.

Still, “it was really unfortunate,” Mr. Walter said. “And it’s led to there being one fewer cultural amenity in the whole region.”

Ms. Thorpe said she had received calls for advice from other museum directors whose institutions were in similar straits on how to avoid the same fate.

“I share the story of the Fresno Met,” she said. “I never want to see another museum close, even though I know it continues to happen.”

"By Design | Josef Albers’s ‘Interaction of Color’ Goes Interactive" @nytimes

By Design | Josef Albers’s ‘Interaction of Color’ Goes Interactive

Design
By PILAR VILADAS
July 23, 2013, 4:28 pm 1 Comment

A color plate from Josef Alberss Interaction of ColorrdquoCopyright Yale UniversityA color plate from Josef Albers’s “Interaction of Color.”

“Interaction of Color,” the landmark 1963 book by Josef Albers — the German-born artist and educator who taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University over the course of his storied career — isn’t just for aspiring artists. Its mesmerizing illustrations are a revelation for anyone interested in color theory and human perception. On Thursday, to mark the book’s 50th anniversary, Yale University Press, the publisher of the original edition, will offer a fresh way to engage with Albers’s lessons by releasing the “Interaction of Color” App for the iPad. The $9.99 app bundles the book’s full text and more than 125 of its original color studies with more than 60 new interactive plates that allow users to perform their own experiments with color, along with a new color palette tool and video commentary that explains Albers’s principles. There are also interviews with the graphic designer Peter Mendelsund; the artists Brice Marden and Anoka Faruquee; the architect Annabelle Selldorf; the textile designers Denyse Schmidt and Christopher Farr; and the director of sourcing and product development of Fab.com, Brian Mullan, all of whom talk about the use of color in their professional practices; as well as Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of the Albers Foundation. In addition to the app, a 50th anniversary edition of the book is available in paperback for $18.

In the video below, the designers involved in the project talk about the importance of color and the influence of Albers.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 24, 2013

A previous version of this post incorrectly described Brian Mullan, one of the people interviewed on the "Interaction of Color" app. He is the director of sourcing and product development for Fab.com, not the design director.

"Announcement of Jeffrey Deitch's departure from MOCA is expected" @latimes - The George Lindemann Journal

Eli Broad and Jeffrey Deitch

Eli Broad and Jeffrey Deitch at the announcement of his appointment as MOCA director in January 2010. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times / July 23, 2013)                                        

By Mike Boehm

July 23, 2013, 11:05 a.m.

Jeffrey Deitch is expected to resign as director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art imminently, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

One person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Deitch was "choosing to step down." Another person who has spoken to Deitch said that MOCA is expected to announce Deitch's exit along with the news that the museum is nearing completion of a fundraising campaign it announced in March to boost its endowment from about $20 million to $100 million.

The person who spoke with Deitch, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the fundraising success would enable Deitch to exit with a parting accomplishment. Deitch had a five-year contract to lead MOCA and has served slightly more than three years.

TIMELINE: MOCA in flux

A MOCA staff member who was not authorized to speak publicly said that “major news” is anticipated from a museum board meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Neither Deitch nor a MOCA spokesperson immediately returned calls for comment.

Citing unnamed sources, Tom Christie of the arts blog B.L.A.T.C. posted an item Monday saying MOCA has formed a search committee to replace Deitch, who, Christie said, was hunting for an apartment and a new gallery space on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

Deitch rose to prominence in the contemporary art world as an art dealer and head of Deitch Projects, a Manhattan gallery in which he focused not only on established artists who commanded big prices but emerging figures who explored intersections between visual art and popular culture.

Deitch earned $917,377 in 2011, his second year at MOCA and the most recent one publicly reported in the museum’s tax filings. That included a delayed $300,000 signing and relocation bonus that boosted his second-year earnings past the salary in the $600,000s he had earned his first year.

In an interview with The Times last year, Deitch acknowledged that his tenure at MOCA had been rocky amid disputes with curators and a struggle to raise money. But he defended MOCA’s exhibitions program: “What we’re doing here now, it’s on the most serious level. It’s as good as any museum in the country.” 

"Qatari Riches Are Buying Art World Influence" @nytimes - The George Lindemann Journal

Qatari Riches Are Buying Art World Influence

By ROBIN POGREBIN 

The prices have been record breaking, and startling.

More than $70 million for Rothko’s “White Center” in 2007, a high-water mark for that artist.

More than $20 million later that year for a Damien Hirst pill cabinet, then a record for a living artist.

And $250 million for Cézanne’s “Card Players” in 2011, the highest known price ever paid for a painting.

Given the secrecy of the art market, few knew at the time who had laid out such unprecedented sums.

But it has become increasingly clear that those masterpieces and many more have been purchased by Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country with enormous wealth and cultural ambitions to match: it is buying art at a level never seen before.

“They’re the most important buyers of art in the market today,” said Patricia G. Hambrecht, the chief business development officer for Phillips auction house. “The amount of money being spent is mind-boggling.”

The purchasing is directed through intermediaries by Sheika al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority and a sister to Qatar’s new emir. At age 30 she has become one of the most influential players in the art world.

No one knows exactly how much Sheika al Mayassa has spent on behalf of her family or the museum authority since she was named chairwoman by her father, the former emir, in 2006. But experts estimate the acquisition budget reaches $1 billion a year and say the Qataris have used it to secure a host of undisputed modern and contemporary masterpieces by Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.

Where all this art will eventually end up remains something of a mystery. But it seems clear that, just as Qatar has used its oil riches to boost its influence in the Middle East with ventures like arming Syrian rebels, its wealth is also being deployed to help the country become a force in the world of culture.

This effort to create a first-class contemporary art collection, essentially from scratch, has buoyed the international art market, experts say, and contributed to some of the escalation in prices.

Until Qatar’s 2007 purchase, for example, the most expensive Rothko ever sold at auction (“Homage to Matisse”) had drawn $22 million in 2005, less than one-third of the price Qatar paid. In 2011 the $250 million spent for “Card Players” was four times the highest public price ever paid for a work by that artist.

“When they finish their buying program and withdraw from the market,” said David Nash, a New York dealer who spent 35 years as a top executive with Sotheby’s, “they will leave a big hole which I don’t see anyone else ready to fill at their level.”

In recent years the Qatar Museums Authority has created three high-profile museums in the capital, Doha, by the architects Jean Nouvel, I. M. Pei and Jean-François Bodin. But each of these projects — a new home for the National Museum of Qatar now under construction; the Museum of Islamic Art; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art — is focused on regional art and artists. So experts expect that a good portion of the Western collection being amassed will become part of a new contemporary art institution in the country, though officials have yet to announce that.

The annual acquisition budgets of major museums typically amount to just a small fraction of what Qatar is spending. The Museum of Modern Art, for example, spent $32 million to acquire art for the fiscal year that ended in June 2012; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $39 million.

While other gulf states like Abu Dhabi and Dubai are also trying to become cultural capitals, those two members of the United Arab Emirates have teamed up with existing institutions — namely the Louvre and the Guggenheim — to establish themselves. Qatar, meanwhile, is going it alone.

“They see themselves as an international center for many cultures,” said Allen L. Keiswetter, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “It establishes them as another reason to be a destination for travel, for business. If you want to attract people, you need to have a reason to go there.”

Sheika al Mayassa declined to be interviewed for this article, but she has made limited remarks about the role art will play in Qatar’s future.

“We are revising ourselves through our cultural institutions and cultural development,” she said in a 2010 TED Talk. “Art becomes a very important part of our national identity.”

In an interview that year with The New York Times, the sheika suggested that establishing art institutions might challenge Western preconceptions about Muslim societies.

“My father often says, in order to have peace, we need to first respect each other’s cultures,” she said. “And people in the West don’t understand the Middle East. They come with Bin Laden in their heads.”

Sheika al Mayassa appears to combine Western and Muslim influences. Sometimes she dresses like a stylish business executive; sometimes she wears a traditional black abaya, which covers everything but her round face. She speaks French and English as well as Arabic.

The sheika does not have a formal background in art history, having studied political science and literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Both she and her husband, Sheik Jassim bin Abdulaziz al-Thani, also did postgraduate work at Columbia University before returning to Qatar.

“The sheika has a very grand vision and is a very educated woman,” said Leila Heller, a New York dealer with many Middle Eastern artists. “She wants to make Doha a hub for art in the region, where people don’t necessarily have to fly to New York and to Paris and to L.A. to see great shows. Doha has an ambitious plan of opening close to 20 museums of different kinds.”

As to the guiding principle behind the buying, art experts say the sheika is simply trying to amass the best of the best, whatever the price. The pace of her purchasing during the past three or four years has vaulted her, many say, to a place among the art world’s most powerful figures. She has been written about by publications like Forbes and Vanity Fair; The Economist recently pronounced her “the art world’s most powerful woman.”

And yet her profile within the places where art is bought and sold is all but nonexistent. The sheika does not visit art galleries. She won’t be found in the auction room on sale nights among the other major collectors for whom the business is something of a high-society fraternity.

Auction houses and galleries will often wine and dine these collectors before a big sale. Significant works will be flown to their homes. The Qataris don’t take part in this. They delegate their purchasing to a handful of experienced art advisers who do it for them — initially the dealers Philippe Ségalot and Franck Giraud and now Guy Bennett.

Mr. Bennett, a former co-head of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art department worldwide, is known as a master dealmaker. He is just one of a number of Christie’s alumni who have taken on roles with Qatar. In June 2011 Edward Dolman, the auction house’s former chairman, was named executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority. Jean-Paul Engelen, the director of public art programs for the authority, is also a Christie’s veteran.

The Qatar team typically buys from dealers, though some of its most major purchases have been at auction. Experts said that another intermediary may act on Mr. Bennett’s behalf so that the sales cannot be traced to the Qataris, who want to keep their buying private to prevent driving up the market and fueling speculation about their plans.

“They are very secretive about their purchases and activities in the art market and I am not quite sure why,” Mr. Nash said.

American art institutions could be expected to be frustrated to see so many important pieces leaving the United States. But some museum executives say that’s just how it goes.

“Sure, there are lots of works of art that we have absolutely wanted,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art. “But if Rothko and de Kooning and Kline, among others, end up circulating in Moscow, Qatar and Shanghai, that’s not so bad — it’s a projection of American culture and importance that is meaningful.”

"Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr will cook for Pèrez Art Museum Miami" @miamiherald - The George Lindemann Journal

Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr will cook for Pèrez Art Museum Miami

By Evan S. Benn The Miami Herald

                 

An artist's rendering of an outdoor terrace facing Biscayne Bay at the new Perez Art Museum Miami, opening in December. Perez Art Museum Miami

A view from Watson Island of the under-construction Perez Art Museum Miami. The 200,000-square-foot space is set to open in December. Daniel Azoulay / Perez Art Museum Miami

An artist's rendering shows the bar area of the restaurant at the new Perez Art Museum Miami. Philadelphia-based restaurateur and caterer Stephen Starr will run the museum's food services. Perez Art Museum Miami

An artist's rendering shows the outside dining area of the restaurant at the new Perez Art Museum Miami. Perez Art Museum Miami

An artist's rendering shows the indoor dining space at the restaurant at the Perez Art Museum Miami, which will be run by Philadelphia-based restaurateur and caterer Stephen Starr. Perez Art Museum Miami

Restaurateur Stephen Starr Starr Restaurants

 

More information

STEPHEN STARR

•  Oversees 31 restaurants in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Washington, D.C.

•  Flagship restaurants include Buddakan (Philadelphia, New York, Atlantic City) and Morimoto (Philadelphia, New York); also owns Steak 954 in Fort Lauderdale and Makoto in Bal Harbour.

•  Has eight catering contracts at cultural institutions, including Pérez Art Museum Miami, New York Botanical Gardens and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

•  His new restaurant at Pérez Art Museum Miami, name to be announced, will be open Tuesday through Sunday.

By Evan S. Benn

ebenn@MiamiHerald.com

With a small army of workers painting gallery walls and installing lighting fixtures this month, the new Pérez Art Museum Miami is getting ready to welcome thousands of visitors into its 200,000 square feet of bayfront space when it opens in December, in time for Art Basel.

And now, the museum has tapped a chef to feed all those hungry art aficionados:

Stephen Starr, the Philadelphia-based restaurateur whose empire includes 31 dining destinations and exclusive catering contracts at seven cultural institutions, will lead the still-unnamed restaurant at Pérez Art Museum. The catering arm of Starr’s organization also will handle food and drinks for all of the museum’s banquets and private events. Starr's contract with the museum runs for seven years.

“Stephen really appealed to us because of his experience at other institutions as well as with his restaurants,” said Hollie Altman, the museum’s director of special events and sales. “We met with a lot of groups who were either very good at catering or had successful restaurants. But Stephen really has this young, dynamic team that’s able to come to Miami and bring its culinary experiences from both aspects.”

Starr’s restaurant in the new Herzon & de Meuron-designed museum will be open during museum hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, in addition to extended evening hours, until 10 p.m., on Thursday. It will seat about 70 people inside, under a slanted ceiling, and about 30 outside; both dining areas feature views of Biscayne Bay.

The restaurant’s aim is to “lengthen the stay of museum guests, but also of course to raise their overall satisfaction,” said Simon Powles, president of Starr Restaurants Catering Group.

“We hope to provide everything visitors could want during regular museum hours, which primarily will focus on a lot of great lunch dishes and snack items,” Powles said. “We’ll also be open one night a week, and we’d love to take advantage of that by offering beer dinners, wine dinners, cooking demos. And I really hope we can make Sunday brunch a destination opportunity: Come have brunch down by the waterfront; spend the morning with us.”

The restaurant’s menu, like its name, is still a work in progress – Powles said his team has a team trip planned to Miami in early August to hammer out those details – but expect at least some influence from Starr’s flagship restaurants, Buddakan and Morimoto.

“We’ll definitely incorporate some signature Starr dishes, like dim sum from Buddakan and sushi from the Morimoto and Makoto menus,” Powles said, adding that the fare and price points will be family friendly.

In addition to serving the restaurant, Starr’s kitchen will have the capability to handle on-site banquets of up to 400 people at the museum.

“We pride ourselves on delivering restaurant-level cuisine at all of our private functions,” Powles said. “The best feedback we get from clients is when they tell us their food didn’t taste like a mass-produced, catered dinner.”

Museum leaders also have talked with Starr about rotating in seasonal dishes based on the background of exhibiting artists. Starr and his Asian-leaning cuisine should have no problem finding food to fit with the works of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who will be featured at the museum from December through March. But what about when the spring-summer “Caribbean: Crossworlds of the World” installation comes to town? Does he have recipes in his repertoire to complement Brazilian painter Beatriz Milhazes’ fall exhibit?

Leann Standish, the museum’s deputy director of external affairs, smiled.

“Something we love about Stephen was how creative he is,” Standish said. “He’s very flexible and able to respond to what Miami wants.”

The three-level Pérez Art Museum is located in downtown Miami’s Museum Park, the new name for Bicentennial Park. The space is about three times larger than the Miami Art Museum’s former Flagler Street home and will face the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, set to open in 2015.

The $220 million museum project is being paid for with about $100 million in public money, which Miami-Dade voters approved with a 2004 general obligation bond, and about $120 million in private donations (including $40 million in cash and art from developer Jorge Pérez, the naming donor, and $1 million from Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross).

Starr’s restaurant at Pérez Art Museum will be his third in South Florida; he opened Steak 954 at the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale in 2009 and Makoto at the Bal Harbour Shops in 2011. Having been named Bon Appétit magazine’s 2005 Restaurateur of the Year, Starr’s reach includes 20 restaurants in Philadelphia as well as others in New York, Atlantic City and Washington, D.C. His permanent catering gigs include New York Botanical Gardens, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Pérez Art Museum restaurant will be Starr’s first partnership with a Florida cultural institution – bringing his number of exclusive contracts nationwide to eight – and will mark his foray into the region’s catering and special-events market.

Powles said the catering group is looking at two or three potential spaces for a commissary kitchen in Miami to prepare food for non-museum jobs. Starr will have a staff of seven managers at the museum, plus another team for off-site catering.

“We’re very excited about taking our catering brand into the Miami market,” said Powles, who formerly led Wolfgang Puck’s catering business. “We’ve had great success with Steak 954 and Makoto, and obviously we think the Pérez Art Museum is going to be a spectacular venue. Stephen is very committed to South Florida and building our name there.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/22/v-fullstory/3514733/philadelphia-restaurateur-stephen.html#storylink=cpy