Chapter 3 (Part 3): Alice Walton & Crystal Bridges

“I’m Alice Walton, bitch.”[i] – Alice Walton, 2007

“There is a lot that horses and art share in common.”

Alice Walton is the youngest daughter of Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart.  She was raised in Bentonville, Arkansas—also the location of the first Wal-Mart, and where Wal-Mart corporate headquarters is located.  In the past decade Walton has been on a shopping spree of American art, from colonial to contemporary.[ii]  The spree was fueled by her philanthropic project, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (she chose the name), also in Bentonville, a city with a population of 35,000.  The cost for the project is unknown, but art blogger Lee Rosenbaum (CultureGrrl) investigated the museum’s 990s and revealed that between 2005 and 2010, the museum spent $508.57 million in “expenses for charitable activities”[iii]—an intentionally vague category.  These activities most like are the acquisition of art but also the design and construction of the museum by architect Moshe Safdie.

Chapter 1 (Part 3): MOCA’s White Knight

“I had no intention of getting involved in MOCA, until it got into trouble”[i]
– Eli Broad

In fall 2008, a long-term beneficiary of Eli Broad’s largesse was in alarming financial trouble; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) could no longer hide its vertiginous financial mess.  In an article titled “L.a.’s Moca In Deep Financial Trouble,” the Los Angeles Times reported MOCA had mismanaged its finances for more than a decade.[ii]  The board of trustees had almost completely drained the $200 million endowment by regularly dipping into it to cover costs of expensive exhibitions and operating overhead; overspending an average $1 million a year since 2000.[iii]  The public was shocked and enraged; consequently, there was a rapid exodus of board members.[iv] MOCA needed a hero with a rescue plan.

LACMA’s Michael Govan proposed one rescue plan: a partnership in which MOCA would maintain its independence and retain at least one of its venues (the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo) and in exchange MOCA would share its collection with LACMA.[v]  Details of the offer were never fully disclosed, but it seemed to be Govan’s attempt to secure a large and well-regarded contemporary art collection for LACMA, and a way to reduce (if not eliminate) LACMA’s need of the Broad collections.

Govan’s offer seemed to be the final straw in the already strained relationship between him and Broad.  Broad openly chastised Govan in the Los Angeles Times for his proposed merger plan, and curiously quoted the film Jerry McGuire to demand, “Show me the money.”[vi] Broad had proposed his own rescue plan and was offering a $30 million lifeline to MOCA.  Govan was meddling in his plans.

Eli Broad in the first museum he founded on Grand Avenue.

Chupícuaro “Large Figurine” Type

Barbier-Mueller Collection at Sotheby’s Paris

In March, Sotheby’s held an auction in Paris of the Barbier-Mueller collection that was a flop.  Gleeful announcements of new auction records and shattered high estimates have become customary in the high end art market; so what went wrong in this case?  The Barbier-Mueller trove of Pre-Columbian art was created over two generations, was widely-published, and had been on public display at the Barbier-Mueller Museum of Pre-Columbian Art in Barcelona.  When an arrangement with the Spanish Government to put the collection on permanent display fell through,[i] the owner, Jean Paul Barbier, decided to sell.

“Grande Vénus Callipyge” at a preview in London.

The two-day auction brought in $13,375,000—a pittance compared to the $19-24 million estimate—and fewer than half of the 313 lots found buyers.  The PR spin-doctors of Sotheby’s focused on the fact that the sale had set a new record for Pre-Columbian Art.  In the post-sale press release,[ii] president of Sotheby’s France, Guillaume Cerutti, said:  “Despite having achieved less than expected, these results are good considering the context in which the sale unfolded.”

Girl with a Pearl Earring – Exhibition Website

de Young Museum

I have not seen this exhibition (because I have neither renewed my FAMSF membership, nor managed to convince the bitchy membership counter boys to let me in for free), so I’m just going to judge the exhibition website for the de Young’s latest touring celebrity, Girl With a Pearl Earring.

Lazy eye, or unfortunate screengrab?

That’s right, SHE WINKS.  Oh this is painful.  Vermeer’s iconic masterpiece (reduced to a not-even-clever gif) and other treasures from the Mauritshuis are currently touring the globe (or parts of it) while the Dutch museum undergoes extensive renovations.  Good for the Mauritshuis for making some buckets of ducats while closed, but one wonders how much the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco are shelling out for the traveling show.

Warhol Inspiration @ Dior, Golden Slippers

Christian Dior, Fall 2013 Collection

Fashion weeks are winding down, and once again many designers turned to art and art history for divine inspiration.  At Christian Dior, Raf Simon recently partnered with the Andy Warhol Foundation to incorporate some of Warhol’s sketches from the 1950s into the house’s fall 2013 collection.  Vogue’s Editor-at-Large, Hamish Bowles was charmed by the dainty flowers, pesky-looking birds, and glamorous beauty profiles that accented some of the looks that came sashaying down the runway.  The Warhol Foundation is doing a very low-to-high-end job of licensing Warhol’s work into tons of contemporary products, from fragrances and skateboards to champagne, and now the Parisian runway.

Andy Warhol for Christian Dior. Or is it Christian Dior for Andy Warhol?