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Cleveland Museum Beats High Estimate in Old Master Sales

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Steven Litt of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer does a follow up on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s deaccessioning of 32 Old Master works including two paintings bought as Tiepolos some time ago and now believed to be the work of his followers. The total sale was for $1.47m against estimates of $706k to $1.022m, approximately $450,000 more than the high-end estimate which would have netted the museum around $1.2m earmarked for new acquisitions (which one hopes are not in the Old Master field because the prices seem to be rising):

“We were pleased to be swept along by a generally enthusiastic group of buyers and stronger than expected sales across many lots,” C. Griffith Mann, the museum’s chief curator, said in an email. “Things went within or beyond the estimates.”Continue Reading

Cleveland MoA Sells 32 Old Masters

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Steven Litt explains that the Cleveland Museum is selling 32 works through Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York later this month:

Sotheby’s estimates the total value of the Cleveland works to range from $706,000 to $1,022,000. The auction could attract bargain hunters; out of the 30 lots, 21 are priced with low-end estimates of $10,000 or less. […] More than three quarters of the works to be sold were gifts. Of the six bought by the museum, all are considered less than important, and two have been downgraded in their attributions, or authorship.

In 1949 the museum bought a pair of paintings it believed were by the important 18th century Italian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, depicting an ancient Roman battle. Experts have since concluded that the works were by a follower of Tiepolo, not the master himself. The pair, last exhibited in 2005, are expected to bring $200,000 to $300,000 at the auction. They’re the two most valuable paintings in the sale.

Cleveland Museum of Art to auction 32 old master paintings at Sotheby’s (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Cleveland MoA Reaches Expansion Homestretch

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The Cleveland Museum’s trustees voted unanimously this week to begin the final phase of the museum’s massive expansion, according to Steven Litt in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Michael Horvitz, co-chair of the museum’s board, said the impending completion of the project will enable the museum’s staff to resume the energetic programming — particularly in the area of exhibitions — which the museum experienced in the 1980s and ’90s.

During those decades, under former Directors Evan Turner and Robert Bergman, the museum mounted as many as 25 shows a year ranging from intimate solo shows to massive blockbusters.

Attendance soared as high as 719,000 in 1987 and stayed well over 500,000 from 1996 to 2001, only to drop during the run-up to the big project and the construction, which required entirely closing galleries for most of 2006. […]Continue Reading

Cleveland's New Curator

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Steven Litt announces the appointment of Seunghye Sun as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s new curator of Japanese and Korean Art:

Seunghye Sun (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Seunghye Sun (Cleveland Museum of Art)

Seunghye Sun, a rising scholar of Japanese and Korean art, has spent much of her career building understandings among two countries with a history of sometimes-bitter tension.

Starting in July, she’ll employ her cultural skills at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she has been appointed curator of Japanese and Korean art. […]

The appointment of Sun fills a major gap at the museum, which has been without a curator of Japanese and Korean art since 2003, when former director Katharine Reid eliminated the position, held by Michael Cunningham since 1977. […]

Sun’s position is funded for three years by a $450,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation in New York, but is expected to continue, Mann said.

Sun’s major responsibility will be shaping the installation of a large part of the museum’s world-famous Asian collection in its new West Wing, scheduled to open in 2013.

She may also organize temporary exhibitions from the permanent collection before the West Wing opens, Mann said.

Since 2005, the Asian collection has been in storage, with the exception of an exhibition in the summer devoted to the late Sherman Lee, a world-famous authority on Asian art, who directed the museum from 1958 to 1983.

Seunghye Sun appointed curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Meet the Cleveland Museum's Interim Director

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Deborah GribbonThe Cleveland Plain Dealer gives the background on Deborah Gribbon, a former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, who has been named Interim Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art:

Gribbon holds doctoral and master’s degrees in art history from Harvard University. After working as a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, she joined the Getty in 1984.Continue Reading

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