The Guggenheim Museum has reached an agreement with New York City on the site for its new $678 million 520,000-square-foot Frank Gehry-designed museum complex in Lower Manhattan. The project includes 279,000 square feet of public parkland, an outdoor sculpture garden and a 1,200-seat performing arts center. NY mayor Rudolph Giuliani is “also expected to announce that the city will provide the museum with $67.8 million — 10% of its total cost — in capital funds.” – New York Daily News
Author: Douglas McLennan
CAN’T BE MADE TO SELL
Earlier this year the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art sued heirs to a $44 million Picasso, claiming that the trust that owns the painting reneged on a commitment to sell Picasso’s 1932 masterpiece “Nu au fauteuil noir” to the museum for $44 million. Last week, a San Francisco judge threw out the case. – San Francisco Chronicle
ATTENTION COUPON CLIPPERS
Sotheby’s and Christie’s have asked a judge to allow them to pay $100 million of the $512 million settlement against them with certificates good for buying art in the future. “Sellers, they said, could have up to five years to use their coupons and could transfer them through a jointly appointed certificate administrator, which they said would create a secondary market.” – New York Times
EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME?
Controversy precedes the awarding of this year’s Turner Prize as it turns out one of the favorites – Glenn Brown’s canvas, “The Loves of Shepherds 2000,” appears to be “a stroke-by-stroke copy of Anthony Roberts’s jacket illustration for the 1974 Pan paperback edition of a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel.” – The Times (UK)
AN EXPENSIVE CHANGE OF HEART
An Australian art collector puts up a painting valued at $1 million for auction, but then has a change of mind and decides to donate the work, by an important Aussie artist, to the National Gallery. The change of heart may cost him though – he’s still liable for Sotheby’s seller’s commission, estimated to be as mush as $200,000. – The Age (Melbourne)
LEONARDO’S TOPLESS MONA LISA
Did Leonardo paint a saucy topless Mona Lisa? The Italian press has been hailing “the topless Gioconda”, a nude pastiche of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa that art historians now claim was copied from an original by the Florentine master himself. The painting is known as Monna Vanna, and experts argue that “Leonardo painted a lost saucy parody of the Mona Lisa for his patron Giuliano de Medici. – The Guardian
AS BAD AS ALL THAT?
Is American culture going to the dogs? Morris Berman thinks so: His book “Twilight of American Culture” paints “a copious chamber of cultural horrors: corporate publishing and the death of small bookstores, New Age platitudes and spiritual nostrums, ignorant college students and their jargon-ridden post-modernist mentors … you get the idea. For blame, Berman trots out The Usual Suspects: globalization, corporate domination, endless greed, insidious marketing, the media circus, and of course, the stupidity and gullibility of the American public.” Really? – The Idler 11/27/00
THE NEW CAPITALISM
“With Russia’s government strapped for cash, the country’s sprawling network of great arts institutions is being forced into the unfamiliar world of commerce. The Russia Museum is one of the winners, organising an ever-expanding network of souvenir shops, a web site, and this year a record 15 foreign exhibitions. None of this has come easy to Russia’s museums and theatres. For 70 years the former Communist regime paid their entire budget, and also taught that private enterprise was a sin.” – The Scotsman 11/27/00
BOOK SALES UP
Total revenues for America’s four largest bookstore chains rose 6.3%, to $1.59 billion, for the third quarter ended October 28, 2000. – Publishers Weekly
THE PROBLEM WITH PUBLISHING
“The real problem is not books but publishing, or publishing as we have known it. Free trade, globalization and the Internet are having their disruptive way with what once was a profession that operated like a gentleman’s intellectual club. Ironically, the country that appears to be suffering the most from consolidation of the publishing industry is the United States. Even more ironic, the country best equipped to withstand the global behemoths may be Canada.” – The Globe & Mail (Canada)