In today’s New York Times, Roberta Smith makes an impassioned plea for the Folk Art Museum. She says New York needs to have access to its vast and unusual collection of objects and that it creates a counterpoint to the kinds of exhibitions shown at other institutions around town.  She criticizes the board of trustees for mismanagement and worse, but praises the exhibition program and curatorial bravery of the museum.  The current plan seems to be to sell off the collection to the Smithsonian or another institution, or even give the collection to one of them so that the trustees can just close the whole operation and get out of the business of folk art all together.

When a museum fails to pay its bills, fails to attract an audience, fails in every way but the art, what is the answer? One might ask the same questions about the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, another time-honored institution with a timid and unsophisiticated board of trustees who would rather sell off the collection than pony up the funds to keep the institution alive and whole.

The Whitney's Historic Breuer Building at Madison Avenue and 75th Street

The rumor has finally been confirmed that the Metropolitan Museum will take over the Whitney Museum’s landmark Breuer building when the Whitney moves downtown to its new site at The High Line. Groundbreaking is in two weeks on the Whitney’s new building, designed by Renzo Piano, and this announcement in the New York Times reassures us that the Breuer building will continue to be a museum for at least the next ten years while the Metropolitan refurbishes its modern and contemporary wing and the Whitney establishes itself in its new home. No one is talking about long term plans for the Breuer building since Leonard Lauder’s $131 million gift stipulated that the Whitney could not sell the building for an unspecified amount of time. But the Metropolitan’s use of the building to show their holdings in contemporary art is a wonderful opportunity for art lovers in New York. Let’s hope they will do exciting projects and take some risks. Bravo to Tom Campbell and Adam Weinberg for getting the deal done.

Yesterday the Independent newspaper in London published an article with the headline “It’s Oil Money that Fuels our Museums” by Tiffany Jenkins that discusses the pros and cons of museums accepting money from oil companies and others who may not always take the high ground when it comes to the gathering of wealth. This has been a conversation in non profits as long as they have existed. In fact, it is a conversation in every situation where fund raising occurs. Think about political fund raising and how many politicians have shamefacedly had to hand back donations from crooks. Bernie Madoff was a trustee of several charitable organizations, and Enron senior executives were pillars in their communities. What’s a non profit to do?

Typically Jenkins suggests that arts organizations should take the money and run. Take it and turn lemons into lemonade. Others, including protesters at the Tate Modern and other museums around the world take a different view and believe that tainted money perverts institutions and should be avoided at all costs. What do you think?

Rembrandt's Night Watch

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Following this, are more specific genres of writing for students to explore – gallery notices for works on the wall and more general, longer exhibition introductions as well as brief catalogue descriptions of the artworks. Discussions centre around the best ways to balance facts for the visitors without being intrusively instructive or “lecturey”…

Other opportunities are for journalistic exercises, learning to be a reviewer for a national paper, or preparing and writing an academic paper, or a fully-fledged essay for an exhibition catalogue (all these are optional). So, how many yellow can you discern in the Van Gogh sunflowers?

James Malpas

Amalia Dayan and Daniella Luxembourg

Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan claim they never intended to open their new gallery to the public. According to Dorothy Spears, writing for the Huffington Post, the two young gallerists were sick of spending all of their time talking with the public and wanted to spend more time with art. Eventually, according to the article, they were forced to maintain public hours by sheer audience demand when they mounted an exhibition of Jeff Koons’s infamous porn paintings, Made In Heaven. But, they held their ground by not staying open on the most popular gallery going day, Saturday. Now, however, they do open on Saturdays in New York. What a shame.  They tell Spears that they are planning a London venue now and will try the closed- to-the-public strategy again. Good luck ladies.

The reviews are starting to come in on Armory Week in New York. Roberta Smith weighed in today with a long piece in the New York Times. Or there’s this little item at Gothamist. Or check out this short video from Vernissage TV. (I’ve posted a link through SLAMHYPE so you don’t have to log in anywhere to watch it).

My two cents–the best show in town right now is at the Park Avenue Armory. It just gets better every year.

It’s Spring Break now for our students, then the New York group starts traveling. Art Business students are going to TEFAF in Maastricht, and the Contemporary Art students are headed for the middle east to Doha, Sharjah and Art Dubai. We’ll be featuring posts, photos and full reports in a few weeks with guest blogs from students.  Stay tuned.

The BIG ART FAIR WEEK in New York kicked off last night with the ADAA Park Avenue Armory event, a lovely gala to benefit the Henry Street Settlement. As always, the event was chock full of art world muckety mucks, including museum directors Richard Armstrong (Guggenheim),  Dorothy Kosinski (Phillips Collection) and Adam Weinberg (Whitney) and those are just three I spotted. Art star curators included Harry Cooper (National Gallery of Art), John Ravenall (Virginia Museum of Fine Art), Isabel Derveaux (Morgan Library), Ann Temkin (MoMA), Stephanie Baron (LACMA), Helen Varola (Pacific Design Center). Of course the real stars of the evening were the collectors, who, rumor has it, bought out several booths within hours of the opening.

Zhang Huan ash painting

Mark Glimscher (Pace)was overheard saying, “it was like candy, we sold out in a half hour and have nothing left to sell until tomorrow.” The Pace booth featured highly collectible, and apparently highly desireable small scale ash paintings by Chinese artist Zhang Huan.

For a roundup of other Armory Week events, Artnet has a useful post this week. See the listings HERE.

And of course, if you want to get inside the New York art world, it’s always useful to take one of our online or on the ground classes. Visit our website at www.sothebysinstitute.com and check out all of our offerings. Lots of classes start in March.

From Christian Marclay's "Clock" exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, NY

If you are in New York this weekend, or if you can get to New York this weekend, be sure to see Christian Marclay’s “Clock”  at Paula Cooper Gallery. The 24 hour film is one of the most compelling works of art on view right now. Shown first in London, “Clock” is rumored to be on hold for MoMA’s collection, and as an edition of 6, it is sure to be in the holdings of other museums soon.  In his new role as art critic for Tina Brown’s Daily Beast/Newsweek, Blake Gopnik calls it a “masterpiece.” Click here to read his review. The exhibition closes Saturday at 6 pm. Don’t miss it.

a drawing from Marcel Dzama's "Behind Every Curtain" at David Zwirner Gallery, NY

Marcel Dzama’s new work on view at David Zwirner Gallery also involves film and performance, but is a work created from the artist’s imagination instead of from a collage of found material. Dzama has commissioned a ballet dedicated to the game of chess. He worked with dancers and craftsmen in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the influence of the setting and culture can be felt throughout the resulting film, which on opening night was accompanied by a live Mariachi band. The installation, called “Behind Every Curtain” includes rotating sculptures made from the original costumes, as well as dioramas of the action and story boards. The work comes out of a dada tradition, melding performance, magical realism and almost kitschy staging. Dzama has developed his own distinctive vocabulary of images that are charming and haunting at the same time. This new work is delightful and some of his strongest to date.

One of Tara Donovan's early pin drawings at Pace Gallery, NY

Chelsea’s galleries are full of good stuff right now. Just opened at Pace are Tara Donovan’s exquisite push pin paintings. Abstractions made from varying the density of the pins on the surface, these works are seductively beautiful and take Donovan’s work to a different place. She has, for many years, worked with everyday materials to make site specific sculptural objects, but these works are more painterly and depart from her usual explorations, while remaining true to her core practice. I find it interesting that she and Dan Steinhilber were working in Washington DC at the same time in the 1990′s and early 2000s and both using cups, rug remnants, pins, thread and other commonly found objects in transformative ways. ArtInfo made this show one of its top picks.

Works from "Soot and Shine" at Donald Sultan's studio

Donald Sultan has some fine new works on view at Mary Ryan. The show is called “Soot and Shine” and characteristically Sultan uses tar, wax, and floor tiles to create domestic-scale objects of desire. 

From Mika Rottenberg's "Squeeze"

Walking into Mary Boone has proved extraordinary in recent months. In December, her show of Mika Rottenberg blew me away and a planned ten minute visit turned into an hour or more in front of the screen. Now, she’s showing Terence Koh and a ten foot high conical mound of salt. Koh, on his knees in a white suit, eyes closed, circumnavigates the salt pile as if in prayer. Sounds rather tame, but in fact, the work is mystical and gorgeous.  Of course, because it is Koh, the work is meditations on shades of white, while at the same time, asking us to consider pain, suffering, need, want and shame.  The gallery assistant said he will be performing in the space for eight hours every day it is open. I liked this work much better than I ever expected.

Jennifer Rubell with her sculpture of Prince William at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

And, although I’m not there, if I were in London I’d be rushing over to the Stephen Friedman Gallery on Old Burlington Street to check out Jennifer Rubell’s “Engagement” exhibition. Rubell plays with our royals obsession by commissioning a wax sculpture of Prince William with THE RING attached to his arm, inviting all who wish to grab hold and slip our fingers into the conveniently vacant slot. The result? I’m on the arm of the prince, wearing that famous ring. Beyond funny and all the rage.

Gagosian Gallery’s new exhibition by Francesco Vezzoli is a valentine to our obsession with fame, fortune and fashion and a rather hilarious send up of commerce as our modern religion. But is the work worth the trip to chelsea? how much should we care about supermodels with needlepoint tears and Vezzoli’s mother dressed as the virgin mary singing pop tunes? Are we supposed to be outraged? Is the commentary anything new? This is certainly not new territory for Vezzoli, whose work has explored the themes of fame, sex, blasphemy and sin for many years. The New York Times blog calls it “irreverent” in this post from last week. What do you think?

Join the conversation about contemporary art in New York with our new online classes starting in March. The class on Contemporary Art is taught by Sotheby’s Institute’s own Stephen Pascher.