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MoMA Gets a Free Pass

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MoMA slipped a major announcement about its central mission into yesterday's press preview for the museum's new $50m renovations and the unveiling of the final $400m expansion. What's so interesting about the announcement isn't really the museum's new but vaguely described mission but the fact that the museum and its leadership has received very little scrutiny at a time when the city's other major cultural institutions have been through significant upheaval.

It's true that the New York Times didn't go after Met director Tom Campbell's scalp until after the museum admitted it was unable to fund its aggressive expansion ambitions and was running a deficit. That gave the newspaper the opening to question the museum's leadership first the director—though the newspaper missed and had to double back upon the most eye-catching example of Campbell's management failure—and then the board.

MoMA may be getting a free pass on scrutiny because the museum's finances seem to rock solid. Though the press announcement would have been a good moment to examine how MoMA has financed its expansion. The museum says it has already raised the money for the $450m expansion.

The New York Times says that fundraising was helped along by David Geffen's $100m gift to the museum. But its own report in 2016 said that Geffen's gift would mean that his name would go on the galleries being built in the super-tall Jean Nouvel condo tower that is part of the expanded complex (and surely contributed substantially to the museum's ability to quickly meet the fundraising objectives.) The  Times, which usually abhors any suggestion that commercial interests might benefit from cultural institutions, was silent on this aspect of the story. (Though this residential tower is not the first time that MoMA has funded its expansion through the luxury real estate market.)

Having said that, there are two other important questions about MoMA, its future and leadership, raised by the announcement that are worth exploring further.

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MoMA Makes Major Break with Its Past, Quietly

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MoMA seems to feel stung by the criticism launched at the museum when its expansion plans (and demolition of the adjacent Folk Art Museum) created controversy. The museum has launched a PR assault by coopting the New York Times with an early release of the next set of plans which seem to include a massive re-orientation of the museum’s philosophy and approach to the idea of whatis “modern.”

Both the museum and the Times are downplaying the shift in favor of playing up the idea of inclusiveness:Continue Reading

How Robert Scull (then MoMA) Landed Rosenquist’s F-111

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f111

The Master, Judd Tully, reminds us of his tenure in the art market with this post on his personal website recalling the sale of James Rosenquist’s F-111 during the second Scull sale in 1986. There he spoke with Rosenquist’s dealer, Leo Castelli who gave some of the details of the original sale:

“I didn’t expect it to get that much. It is a very cumbersome painting.” Recalling his showing of the work in 1965, he said, “It went all around the gallery. Sixty thousand was the asking price, but Scull paid $ 45,000 [with a discount]. It was a very brave thing for Scull to do. He almost deserved to have it for nothing.”

If you’re wondering why Scull got a discount, Tully has some answers:Continue Reading

Page Six: MoMA Wants New Trustee to Guide Expansion

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Page Six stirs the pot on the controversy surrounding MoMA’s proposed expansion. After the ruckus caused by the unveiling of the museum’s new plans, the New York Post’s gossip page suggests there’s a new heavy-hitter joining the board:

According to sources close to the museum, MoMA’s board — which already includes heavy hitters Ronald S. Lauder, Agnes Gund, Ron Perelman, Michael Ovitz, Richard Parsons and Sid Bass — will name at the meeting a new trustee to help guide them through the controversy.

Sources told us the possible new addition could be Michael Bloomberg, but a MoMA rep said, “The information you heard is incorrect.”

Is MOMA naming new trustee to board? (Page Six)

MoMA Tells a Story but the New Expansion Doesn’t Give Any More Room to Do That with the Permanent Collection

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08-moma-rendering-2.jpg.r.nocrop.w610.h610Forget the demise of the American Folk Art Museum building or the new performance spaces or even the high-end real estate development, Jerry Saltz says. MoMA’s expansion revealed today has a fundamental problem for a museum that has the unique mission of telling a specific story about Modern art:

All this avoids MoMA’s basic problem, which I’ve written about before: that the museum needs to triple the amount of space for showing its permanent collection of art made before 1980. It didn’t in 2004, and it isn’t now.

Saltz: The New MoMA Expansion Is a Mess (NY Mag)

Gagosian’s New Top Customer: MoMA

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Richter, Tote 1963

Carol Vogel reveals the details of MoMA’s two recent acquisitions, both of which were held until recently by Gagosian Gallery. One is an important work by Robert Rauschenberg:

Rauschenberg’s “Overdrive,” a silk-screen incorporating images of a bird, a stop sign, a one-way-street sign, the Statue of Liberty and other objects, is a promised gift from Glenn Dubin, the Manhattan financier who is a MoMA trustee, and his wife, Eva. Sotheby’s had sold the painting at auction in New York five years ago, to Larry Gagosian, the super dealer, for $14.6 million. He recently sold it to the Dubins for an undisclosed price.

The other is an early Gerhard Richter:

The 1963 painting by Mr. Richter, which the museum bought from Mr. Gagosian, is “Tote” (the German word for dead). “It’s a man who has washed ashore underneath what appears to be an iceberg,” Ms. Temkin said. It is one of the earliest examples of the artist’s photo-paintings, based on a photograph of a shipwreck taken in March 1963 that he discovered in Quick, a German magazine.

The painting also has an auction history. Sotheby’s sold it in London 10 years ago for about $5.6 million to an unidentified buyer. Experts say it is now worth about $6 million. It is the museum’s earliest work by Mr. Richter and was included in his retrospective there in 2002.

There’s a slight error in the story. Vogel meant to write that the work sold in 2003 for slightly less than $1m and is now estimated to be worth about $6m. Whether Gagosian sold it for $5.6m or the number is simply a typographical error is not known.

Inside Art: Adding Rauschenberg and Richter to MoMA (New York Times)

The Eagle Lands at MoMA; Sonnabend Heirs Save $51m

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Although their lawyer says the Sonnabend heirs don’t really care about such things, the long-running dispute between the IRS and the family over the monetary value of ‘Canyon,’ the combine with the stuffed eagle at the center that cannot be sold due to restrictions on trafficking in endangered species but the IRS says has a value of $65m, has been resolved by a donation of the work to MoMA in exchange for including Ms. Sonnabend’s name on the museum’s wall of founders.

MoMA bested the Metropolitan museum in the battle to acquire the work simply because of it focus on 20th Century art and the presence of other classic Rauschenberg works like ‘Bed’ and ‘Rebus.’ Here’s the New York Times on the decision which has director Glenn Lowry very chuffed:

On Tuesday, Ann Temkin, the Modern’s curator of painting and sculpture, took a break from overseeing the hanging of the work to summarize the argument she had made to the family. She told them the Modern already owned five other Rauschenberg combines, including “Bed” and “Rebus,” from the same period, as well as several works by his contemporaries and other artists like Willem de Kooning and Joseph Cornell who influenced him. Seeing an artist in context, she said, gives viewers an insight into his work that is impossible to get from seeing the work in isolation.

Mr. Lowry said, “If you were going to sit down and close your eyes and dream of an installation, you would envision ‘Rebus,’ ‘Bed’ and ‘Canyon’ in conversation with each other.”

As a side note, the work holds a special place in the debate around the role of the art market in determining the value of art. Given the restrictions surrounding the stuffed eagle, there was never a question about the work being sold. Its market value had been null from the very beginning. You could even say that ‘Canyon’ had a negative market value considering the legal liabilities that any purchase would trigger.

However, the family determined that the work’s art historical value would be enhanced greatly by its presence at MoMA, a reminder that real value in art history doesn’t come in market denominations.

VW Steers Into MoMA

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I am intrinsically skeptical of any events which merge automobiles and art – since the art usually takes a backseat while the cars manage  to amuse only one sex in the room.  Last Monday, the Museum of Modern Art managed to avoid those pitfalls and held a grand celebration for its new partnership with Volkswagen – a two year sponsorship deal surely worth millions.  The aim of the collaboration is to foster innovation and contribute to “the development of an international contemporary art exhibitions” as the expansion of online education new installations at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.  This deal with Volkswagen is the first partnership of this scale between the New York cultural institution and a public corporation and is done in part with the VW ‘Think Blue’ initiative. The event spared little expense and brought out the highest order of celebrities and museum supporters including queen of pop Madonna herself, who paired down her usual D&G attire to a very sleek ‘gallery look’ complete with thick-rimmed glasses and a curator on her arm.

This event comes right on the heels of the annual Party in the Garden spectacle – tonight, however, sans Kanye and Jay-Z. Whoever is in charge of booking musical acts for MoMA deserves major praise for this year’s line up and did not dissapoint that evening, with performances by Martha Wainwright followed by the LCD Soundsystem DJing the afterparty. Rain broke out at several points of the night, which hampered the guests from filling the garden completely. A row of white-umbrella clad attendants greeted the visitors all along the extended path into the garden, evoking allusions to a Terence Koh piece in its precise measure and execution; incidentally the artist was in attendance, also dressed head-to-toe in white.

Klaus Biesenbach, Director The MoMA PS1, whose program will also receive a generous boost through this incentive was a lively host, catching up to exchange some words with James Franco and pose for a photo-op with the cars.   Other attendees included: Lucy Liu, Yoko Ono, Penn Badgley and Kim Cattrall.  Glenn Lowry chatted with the car compary execs most of the night – after posing with Dr. Martin Winterkorn, the Chairman of Volkswagen AG in front (and inside of) some of automobiles. Winterkorn commented on the cultural partnership citing that “Artists give us food for thought and let us look at the world from new angles…this partnership expresses our corporate commitment to take responsibility for the environment and for society.”

The gracious sponsor had a visible but not overstated presence, with a sports model at the front and a vintage VW in the MoMA lobby reminding the guests what the festivities were about. Overall, I was greatly impressed with both MoMA and VW for keeping the affair from feeling too much like a giant marketing ploy – with no promotional videos, logoed napkins or car pamphlets in sight.  Everyone was there in appreciation of the institution, newly excited by the plans of expansion and development as they take over the Folk Art Museum.

MoMA's Price for Folk Art Museum Revealed

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Kate Taylor comes up with the price MoMA paid for the Folk Art Museum: a convenient $31.2m that neatly retires the debt taken on to build the structure that has now been sold to MoMA.

The folk art museum took on $32 million of debt to construct the building on West 53rd Street, but attendance never met expectations, and after sustaining investment losses in the financial crisis, the museum defaulted on its debt. The folk art museum had said that the sale would allow it to retire its debt, as well as pay fees to lawyers and consultants. The numbers are close: As of June 30, 2009, the museum owed a principle of $29,945,000 on the bonds.

MoMA to Pay $31.2m for Folk Art Museum Building (Arts Beat/NYTimes)

Kanye & Jay-Z Run This Town, MoMA Edition

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The event was sold-out weeks ahead of time, the line up to get inside queued all the way around to 54th Street and the night’s star performer Kanye West attracted both of the men who run New York –  Jay-Z and Mayor Bloomberg. This was last Tuesday’s MoMA Party in the Garden, an annual benefit gala that raised over $4 million this year and honored MoMa trustees, bringing the spotlight of the city to the sculpture courtyard of the museum.

Though the cocktails and dinner earlier that evening drew Leelee Sobieski, David Rockefeller, Jeff Koons, Terence Koh, Klaus Biesenbach and Marina Abramovic to the mingle and feast with the MoMA philanthropists who paid $1500 a ticket, it was the afterparty which was the draw of the night. In fact the garden party was much more of a garden concert – but a phenomenal one at that.  By the time most guest were wrist-banded and finally inside, crowds were starting to form around the elevated stage erected in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden.  Kanye came on at around 11pm with the performance lasting over an hour, at which point the security began ushering everyone out of the building.  The atmosphere of a thousand attractive guests in suits, cocktail frocks and stiletto heels, bobbing on the marble levels of the outdoor terrace to a soul-searing rhymes of Kanye was an exultant sight.

Kanye West, whose infamous egocentrism and televised award-show rants have disgraced him times before, made a public comeback this fall with the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – an innovative album with musical virtuosity and poignant lyrics.  A well-known art connoisseur, his latest album cover featured George Condo’s work, a collaboration that has just recently extended to a series of Kanye-Condo printed scarves.

Dressed in jeans and a grey hoody, Kanye began the performance with a smoke filled stage and a rendition of Stevie Wonder‘s They Won’t Go When I Go, a pained and soulful melody reprised in Autotune. The tormented emotions of the lyrics set the tone for much of the evening.  Seamlessly moving through his innumerable hits like Run This Town Tonight, Jesus Walks, Stronger and All of the Lights – Kanye enchanted the audience and gave them a performance of a caliber not seen in the halls of MoMA since that of Abramovic.  Filled with angst, hurt and diatribal tirades, all staples of the Kanye allure, he thanked the audience for “loving me when they told you not to love me.”  As the smoke continued to billow and he dropped hit after hit, I was witness to a sea of smartphones, which were flooding all of the social media channels with up-to-the-second updates of his soul-searching antics.

The energy built and the mood finally ascended from frustration to energy – with Kanye even making a joke that the people in the surrounding buildings were “getting a free show.”  His rendition of Gold Digger had everyone in elation, which was only topped by the surprise appearance of Jay-Z who thrilled the audience.  The duo jointly serenaded the crowd with the city’s anthem, Empire State of Mind, and drove the well-heeled and coiffed masses to toss up their be-clutcheted hands into the air.  The night was a spectacular achievement for the MoMA and a sure highlight of the season. Since the focus of the evening was so heavily laden on Kanye, it left little time to mingle, however that did not dampen the spirits and as the crowds spilled onto 53rd Street, all seemed overcome by a bout of the ‘good life.’

 

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