Katya Kazakina adds another wrinkle to the continuing soap opera that is LA MoCA. Shortly after the museum relented on its  vow not to hire a curator to replace Paul Schimmel, Kazakina tries to suggest growing tension between the museum’s main benefactor and a raft of trustees brought in to support the institution from around the world.

According to Bloomberg, Broad has not paid two of the regular installments of his exhibitions grant because there’s still money in the exhibition fund that has not been spent. Broad’s representative affirms the payments will resume when the fund is depleted.

Meanwhile, the strategy of bringing in new trustees who commit to paying $75,000 each year hasn’t solved the museum’s funding problems:

contributions and grants to the museum fell 21.5 percent to $14.6 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011, the most recent full year for which data are available. The museum’s operating profits have declined and matching funds have gone unmatched while expenses rose 10.7 percent to $17.5 million in the period. [...]

“There’s a resistance,” said Frederick M. Nicholas, a former chairman of the board and one of the four trustees who wrote to the L.A. Times. “People feel that Eli has taken control over the museum, over the exhibitions. Some of the people who have pledged money aren’t giving it because they are concerned about the future of the museum and how it’s being directed.”

Eli Broad Misses MOCA Payment In Museum’s Murky Finances (Bloomberg)

The Ashmolean announces its acquisition of an endangered Manet:

Following an 8 month campaign and with donations from hundreds of members of the public, the Ashmolean Museum has succeeded in raising £7.83 million to acquire Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus and keep it in the United Kingdom. The painting was purchased by a foreign buyer in 2011 for £28.35 million. Following advice from the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, the picture was judged to be of outstanding cultural importance and was placed under a temporary export bar until 7 August 2012 by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey.  Under the terms of a private treaty sale, the painting was made available to a British public institution for 27% of its market value, and it was purchased through the London Fine Art agent, Robert Holden Ltd.  It is the most significant acquisition in the Ashmolean’s history.

The campaign has received lead support of £5.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and a grant of £850,000 from The Art Fund.  The final £1,080,000 was contributed via grants and donations from trusts, foundations and private individuals.

As well as to those who wish to remain anonymous, the Ashmolean Museum is extremely grateful to the Friends of the Ashmolean Museum; the Patrons of the Ashmolean Museum; the University of Oxford; Manny & Brigitta Davidson and family; Mr and Mrs Geoffrey de Jager; Sir Harry and Lady Djanogly;  Mr Philip Mould; The Rothschild Foundation; The Dr Mortimer & Theresa Sackler Foundation; Mr and Mrs Timothy Sanderson; The Staples Trust ; Sir Adrian Swire; Mr and Mrs Bernard Taylor; Barrie and Deedee Wigmore; Mr and Mrs Brian Wilson; The JL Wine Charitable Trust and The Woodward Charitable Trust.

The Ashmolean also wishes to thank each of the 1,048 people who made a gift in response to our public appeal. The public appeal attracted gifts from across the globe, with donations ranging from £1.50 to £10,000.

The New York Times reported on Friday that museums were just learning of the government’s request that they review their collections of Indian art for works donated by Subhash Kapoor who was recently arrested for having stolen artefacts in a storage facility after an earlier raid in January also produced stolen works:

• “The only thing we own that the Freer-Sackler purchased either from Kapoor or the gallery Art of the Past is a 20th-century necklace from India, acquired in 1992,” Allison Peck, a spokeswoman, said. “Fortunately neither an antiquity nor sculpture.”

• A spokesman for the Met, Harold Holzer, said it had 81 pieces that had either beendonated by or purchased from Mr. Kapoor, starting in 1991, including several antiquities that are on display. But the bulk of the donations were a set of drawings from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that Mr. Kapoor gave to the museum in 2008 and were the subject of an exhibition in 2009, “Living Line: Selected Indian Drawings From the Subhash Kapoor Gift.”

• The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, which received a gift of 44 Indian antiquities from Mr. Kapoor in 2007, said those small terra cotta figures were not on display.

• Officials at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, where Mr. Kapoor lectured last April 2011, just months before his October arrest in Germany, said that their Asian curator was out of the office Friday but that the museum would review the provenance of any piece it had received from Mr. Kapoor.

• A spokeswoman for the Norton Simon Museum said Mr. Kapoor had donated two small terra cotta sculptures in 1997. Leslie C. Denk, the spokeswoman, said, “The museum plans to cooperate with any investigation by federal authorities.”

Museums Studying Dealer’s Artifacts (New York Times)

Art in America reports the active interest of the Dallas Museum of Art in acquiring the recently re-attributed Salvator Mundi:

A painting recently re-attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that once brought £45 at auction and now said to be priced around $200 million may soon find a new home at the Dallas Museum of Art.

The painting on wood panel, Christ as Salvator Mundi, circa 1499, was included in the wildly popular 2011 exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at London’s National Gallery. It is now in the hands of a group of unidentified dealers.

Jill Bernstein, the museum’s chief communications officer, confirmed to A.i.A., “We have brought Leonardo da Vinci’s recently re-discovered masterpiece Salvator Mundi(Savior of the World) to the DMA. We are actively exploring the possibility of acquiring it.” Measuring about 26 by 18 inches, the painting shows Christ holding a glass orb in his left hand, with his right hand raised in benediction.

 

Curiously, the Bella Principessa remains unpursued.

Dallas’s Maxwell Anderson Covets Rediscovered Leonardo (Art in America)

As usual, William Poundstone cuts through the cant to remind us that Paul Schimmel was as populist and controversial a curator as his supposed nemesis, Jeffrey Dietch. Where Schimmel wins, in Poundstone’s estimation, was in his ability to convert curiosity surrounding novel ideas into an engagement with art:

Schimmel did a show on psychedelic drugs, “Ecstasy: In and About Altered States,” in 2005. (Imagine the furor if Deitch announced he was doing a cannabis show!) It was Schimmel who put the Louis Vuitton boutique in “©Takashi Murakami” (2007), and he got more flak for it than Deitch did for his Mercedes product placement this spring. From 1992, when Schimmel championed Robert Williams’ hot rod culture art in “Helter Skelter,” to 2011, when he had punk bands X, the Dead Kennedies, and the Avengers perform for “Under the Big Black Sun,” Schimmel’s exhibitions have regularly explored youth culture, celebrity, sex, commercialism, the low brow, and shock value. Now obviously Schimmel and Deitch don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but it’s not like they’re Superman and Bizarro.

Paul Schimmel, The Populist Curator (Los Angeles County Museum on Fire/Artinfo)

Australia’s National Gallery Victoria is seeing its outgoing director, Gerard Vaughn, call for a new Contemporary art museum:

“We collect a lot of contemporary art, both Australian, indigenous and non-indigenous, from all around the world, but we do have limited space and I think a museum of contemporary art, under the umbrella of the NGV, as part of the organisation, would be a fantastic thing,” he said.

Dr Vaughan concedes the expansion idea is unlikely to be realised for a number of years, but says planning for the new building should begin now. ”We know we’ll have to wait, we’ll have to take our place, but it’s very important the advocacy process goes on,” Dr Vaughan said. ”So there’s a real awareness both on the part of the Government and the community as to what is really needed for the future. If this comes, it means that Melbourne is going to have a kind of visual arts museums hub, the likes of which would be very hard to find anywhere in the world.”

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing and second-guessing about Paul Schimmel’s departure from LA MoCA but Kelly Crow has the best retrospective quantifying Schimmel’s experience and legacy:

Mr. Schimmel, who is in mid-50s, has overseen the museum’s exhibition program for the past 22 years. He supervised at least 350 exhibits during his tenure and helped funnel over 5,000 works into its permanent collection. These include works by conceptual artists John Baldessari and Robert Gober, video artist Bruce Nauman, sculptor Charles Ray and photographer Diane Arbus.

A transplant from New York City, he is known for creating elaborate surveys that have elevated the international reputations of local favorites like Mr. Baldessari and Mike Kelley, an installation artist who died this year. (Mr. Schimmel serves as co-director of Mr. Kelley’s namesake foundation.)

Schimmel Leaves as Chief Curator of Major L.A. Museum (WSJ)

Minnesota Public Radio explores a new show of 80s art that is moving from Chicago to the Walker Art Center:

There is an astonishing variety of material around the Walker, with the work of more than 90 artists represented. There are photographs, sculptures, videos, drawings and paintings. They range from some of the controversial nudes of Robert Mapplethorpe’s and Jeff Koons’ stainless steel rabbit, to advertisements altered to make a political statement.

The artists of the 1980s make a point by mixing the corporate and the political. The show includes images of Ronald Reagan and street protests, Andy Warhol and the Marlboro man. [...]

The Reagan era brought new prosperity to many people, and an end to the counter culture born in the 1960s, Ryan said. The mass media took on an ever more powerful cultural importance. Early evidence of globalization began to appear. [...] The 80s were also a time of appropriation — artists taking work done by others, adapting it, sometimes only minimally, and then presenting it as their own commentary on the world. It scandalized the old guard.

And then there was identity art: the demand for recognition for people underrepresented in the media: woman, racial and ethnic minorities, the gay and lesbian community.

On top of that was a new and terrifying tide of HIV and AIDS on the rise.

“You have artists at very desperate times in their lives trying to come to terms with what was happening,” Ryan said.

Walker’s 80s art retrospective mirrors modern issues (MPR)