Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

The Getty board has awakened from a long slumber and has appointed a committee to examine, uh, well, to examine the kinds of things the board should examine without having to announce they’re examining something.

First, I can’t help but notice that the committee is stocked with allies of Getty boss Barry Munitz. The LAT noted the incestuous mix:

In addition to Biggs and Bryson, the committee members will be Lloyd Cotsen, Jay Wintrob and Luis Nogales. Cotsen, Wintrob and Nogales have links to Munitz.

Cotsen is a philanthropist, archeologist and former chief executive of Neutrogena Corp. Munitz sits on the board of Cotsen’s family foundation.

Nogales, the former president of Univision, sits with Munitz on the boards of AIG SunAmerica and KB Home. Wintrob is chief executive of AIG SunAmerica. Both companies were founded by billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a close friend of Munitz.

In December, The Times reported that Broad purchased a Brentwood property from the Getty for $700,000 less than its appraised value. Records show that Munitz directed his aides to delay listing the property publicly so he could discuss a transaction directly with Broad. Munitz has acknowledged that his involvement with the deal would have posed a conflict of interest, given his friendship with Broad, but has denied being directly engaged in the land sale.

Yeah, that sounds like a real neutral bunch.

Here is a list of just a few of the questions that this committee (and anyone who investigates the Getty — you listening Bill and Chuck?) must consider:

• Why is it Munitz knew about Marion True’s ethically questionable dealings for three years before acting earlier this month?
• Are Munitz’ expenses out of line with his peers at other foundations? (Hint: Compare to Gates, Ford and Pew.)
• Has the Getty board itself been too lax in its oversight? And if so (ahem), why?
• Is it proper for the Trust to give grants to Los Angeles organizations so that those organizations can give awards to… Trust leaders?
• It’s clear that the Getty has in its collection some antiquities with murky pasts. There are ethical questions, legal questions and geo-political questions here, all in equal parts. Are these Getty problems or are they problems for American museums in general? Maybe this problem shouldn’t be solved by the Getty alone.

To recap the weekend in antiquities:

• The LA Times reported that the Italians say they have photographs that prove that six more pieces in the Met’s collection were looted;
• The LA Times reported that the Getty has appointed a board panel to examine, er, the mess that the board has almost entirely ignored;
• The LA Times reported that former Getty curator Marion True’s colleagues can’t understand why she apparently participated in so many shenanigans.

The LAT now owns two stories: The re-emergence of problems with antiquities at US museums, and the ongoing scandals at the Getty. (The NYT owns the following stories: Auctions and the rich people who play at them are gee-whiz cool. That’s it.)

I don’t want to do one mega-post on all of this because these three stories are pretty different. So I’ll kick-off the day with this post, and then follow-up throughout the day.

Yet another bit of interconnectedness from the Getty board’s super-board of evaluators: Getty vice-chair Louise Bryson’s husband is John Bryson. John is the CEO/Chairman of Edison International, a large energy company.

What attorney represented Edison during the California energy crisis? Ronald L. Olson, the attorney hired to help guide the Getty board’s “independent” review. John Bryson has also served as a member of the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth. The co-chairman of that commission is… Ronald L. Olson.

Can’t imagine that Olson will help find the Getty board partially to blame in the mess over there, can you? 

Apparently Marcel Dzama thought this was a good idea. Or maybe I’m just being a bit of a this.

UPDATE: Reader JA sends more and even more. (That last one’s guaranteed to get your butt kicked by one of these dudes.)

If you get a chance, pick up the Weekend Journal. I’m in it on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. It will be the Masterpieces column.

For a couple of weeks now I’ve been chronicling ArtForum’s abundant conflict-of-interest problems. So far I’ve wondered about why Brian Sholis is writing about D’Amelio Terras shows, and why Jack Bankowsky was allowed to write about art fairs. (Aside: If the fair in London is called Frieze, why not now call the Armory Show the ArtForum Show?)

Two readers wrote in and pointed out the latest missed-by-me ArtForum conflict-of-interest. Why did ArtForum allow Linda Yablonsky to write about MoMA, for whom she recently ran a program? (Yablonsky was the program director of WPS1.org. Update: Would Fortune allow a Kellogg, Brown & Root VP cover Halliburton? No.)

I’ll add that the blame doesn’t necessarily rest with Yablonsky and Sholis. Writers pitch and writers write what they’re allowed to write. It’s up to editors to say no and to establish standards. ArtForum loves its incestuous cabal more than it loves credibility — or art.

Related (kinda): abLA has the scoop on how European art mags (kinda) are moving into LA.

Today, the LAT team of Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino report that Italy has what it considers proof that the Euphronios krater, one of the finest antiquities in the Met’s collection was looted. This is dynamite stuff.

That the Euphronios is of dubious provenance is no secret. The LAT reports that the Italian government can says it can finally prove that the krater was looted. The first published accounts about the likely looting of the krater were in 1972-73, when the NYT ran almost 20 stories about the krater, pointing to a place near Rome from which the Times said the krater was taken. As I recall, however, the Times’ sourcing was shady and thin and anonymous. (Oh! Kind of like the krater’s provenance!) I’d read the stories myself, but that’d get mighty pricey. Any journos who want to volunteer some Nexis work, please email me.

The Euphronios krater was purchased for the Met by former director Tom Hoving, and it was the subject of much discussion in his memoir. (The relevant portions on The Hot Pot are posted on Artnet.)

Uh, remember when Tom Hoving claimed to have seen the light on antiquities theft, and then offered to advise the Getty? MAN put together a short, tidy timeline pointing out that Hoving was, er, maybe not so reformed. And there’s this in his account:

Should it go back to Italy? Hell, no. Despite our suspicions, we bought it in good faith and it arrived legally to U.S. customs. There’s nothing the Italians can do about it or should.

A week or two ago here on MAN we said that the next parts of the Getty antiquities story would not be about the Getty, they’d be about other museums. Clearly that stage of the story has begun.

(People pretty embarrassed right now: Hoving, Met curator Dietrich von Bothmer, and the LAT op-ed editor who ran this even-more-totally-hilarious op-ed. It is no longer online — hah! Yo, LAT folk, we know you read: Make it visible again, outside the archive.)

Related: Modern Kicks.

A week-ish-long series. Part one here, part two here, I skipped yesterday because five posts seemed like plenty.

MoMA could have had Rebus for a heckuva lot less than $30M — and almost did. From Calvin Tomkins’ account of the impact of the Jewish Museum’s 1963 Rauschenberg survey:

Victor Ganz, probably the leading American collector of Picasso, stood for forty minutes in front of Odalisk, scrutinizing the collaged images (nudists, comic strips, old family photos), walking around it, “seeing” Rauschenberg for the first time; the next day he went to [Leo] Castelli’s and bought Winter Pool, the first of his many Rauschenberg purchases. Alfred Barr, coming upon Jasper Johns in one of the crowded galleries… asked for help in understanding the work. Barr said he knew Rauschenberg was important but that he still could not respond to him. Which of the works would Johns suggest the museum buy? Johns recommended Rebus. The museum did not get Rebus (Victor Ganz did, several years later), but in 1964 Barr prevailed on Philip Johnson to buy First Landing Jump… and donate it.

Last night MoMA boss Glenn Lowry spoke at the Hirshhorn. (It was a typical MoMA Expansion is Great speech.) During the Q&A, WPer Jessica Dawson asked Lowry if, given how he’d spent much of his talk discussing how MoMA had a mission to popularize modern art and to educate the public, a $20 admissions charge wasn’t just totally insane?

(OK, Dawson didn’t quite put it that way. She put it more calmly and more effectively.)

Lowry quickly rose to peeved. He’s obviously tired of answering this question. That people are still asking it, 11 months into the new M$20MA, should be a sign to him and his trustees that they screwed up. His answer was unfortunate.

First, he made it sound like M$20MA was forced to charge $20. We don’t have the benefit of free federal money, he said, referring to the Smithsonian. Well, no one was suggesting that the only two options were $0 and $20.

Next he made a good point: Admission is free to children 16 and under and to most NYC collegians. True and bravo to that. Wouldn’t have helped me when I was a young, just-out-of-college journalist making about $20K a year, but it’s a start.

But then Lowry veered off into an unfortunate metaphor: “If you want to go to Harvard, you’d better be ready to pay $40K a year,” he said. “Culture is not free.”

The Harvard analogy is the wrong one and it reveals that Lowry and his trustees are sadly out of touch with their audience and with their peers. Harvard has need-blind admissions. Anyone who applies to Harvard, is admitted, and wants to attend school there, may do so regardless of their financial situation.

MoMA’s lack of commitment to access for the non-upper middle class continues to be an embarrassment. By comparing MoMA’s situation to Harvard’s, Lowry shows that he and his trustees do not adequately understand the impact of their admissions policy.

My favorite alt-weekly, LA Weekly, is out with an all-art issue, online now. I’m just starting in on it now, but it looks quite substantive. Lots of Doug Harvey, features on Annie Philbin and curator-of-the-moment Paul Schimmel, LACE’s new director Carol Stakenas, a thick list of prominent Angelenos, an article on artist-collectors, an essay on the over-education of young artists (that should hit ‘em in LA, where they have eight art schools)… looks like fun to me.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more about it tomorrow and on Monday — and I bet lots of other blogs will too. Buzz is that ArtForum thinks it’s youthful and hip. (Tee hee.)