The controlling shareholders of Bonhams recently sold their stake in the auction house to Epiris, a British private equity firm, which quickly brought on additional management. As a former director, I am encouraged by this new infusion of financial support and executive leadership. However, I believe the challenges in expanding market share for any auction house are structurally endemic to the industry and are not easily overturned by a fresh infusion of capital and personnel alone.
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In the New York Times (“The Art World’s Elephant in the Room” 9/21/2018), Scott Reyburn recently suggests that Bonhams is an auction house “whose business model has (so far) relied on traditional lower and middle range art and antiques.”  In Reyburn’s view, this market is languishing as an effect of growing income inequality, as the wealthy seek ever more expensive prizes, leaving the sub-$50,000 marketplace bereft of buyers and liquidity.

After 5 years at the helm of the Museum Trustee Association (MTA) Mary Baily Wieler has announced her intention to step down as the organization's President in Spring 2019 and will assist in this transition of leadership. MTA's Board of Directors has retained Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc. (MCA) to initiate a national search for Wieler's replacement. 

MTA's mission of enhancing museum trustee effectiveness and its programmatic offerings have expanded under Wieler's leadership. Since 2013 membership has tripled and industry partnerships have increased. Semi-annual Forums where trustees gather to exchange information and best practices have achieved record attendance and MTA’s website is a recognized source of free content for trustees everywhere. The Association is well-positioned to build on its momentum. 

Wieler states, "For the last decade I've lived MTA's good governance mission as a board member, chair, and more recently as President. I am truly proud of our accomplishments working together as a team, including the Association's growth across the Americas, our commitment to building engaged, informed, and responsible museum boards, as well as the launch of MTA's template series utilizing cloud-based software making best practices accessible and affordable to the museum field." 

MTA Board Chairman Lee Peterson comments, "I am confident in expressing our Board's collective appreciation for the leadership Mary has provided internally to MTA, as well as representing our trustee leadership in regional and national organizations. Thanks to Mary's passionate guidance, MTA is positioned for continued growth in membership and trustee influence nationally. The Board will celebrate Mary at our Spring Forum in Phoenix.” 

​Please direct all inquiries to Bill Appleton (MCA) at mcaappleton@gmail.com. 

A corkscrewing creation in the Arizona desert, the David and Gladys Wright House boasts an impressive pedigree. Built in 1952, this three-bedroom nautilus of a home, designed by architecture icon Frank Lloyd Wright for his son, is one of a handful of rounded designs that foreshadows the contours of the Guggenheim Museum.

It seemed like a shoo-in for preservation, especially after local lawyer Zach Rawling purchased the home for $2.4 million in 2012, saving it from the wrecking ball. Rawling had grand plans to create a museum and wedding venue, and despite neighborhood resistance to having a new cultural institution down the block, he seemed on the verge of success.

There were even plans announced last summer to donate the home to the School of Architecture at Taliesin, which Wright founded, turning the residence into a “living laboratory” and reconnecting it with the architect’s legacy.

That plan fell through last month. Rawling and Taliesin struggled with fundraising—Rawling needed to raise $7 million by 2020 for the agreement to work—and without financial support, the home again returned to the open market, asking $12.9 million.
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“I think it’s highly emblematic of the challenges any historic house faces,” says Liz Waytkus, executive director of Docomomo, a preservation organization focused on modern architecture. “The suggestion that a nonprofit would be able to come up with $7 million dollars ... it’s incredibly difficult, especially in the U.S., where nonprofits receive very little, if any government support.”

Earlier this month, presiding over his first press conference as the newly installed director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Max Hollein stood at the spotlit entrance to tenebrous galleries and spoke about the artist being surveyed within. “Delacroix is a defining figure in European art in the 19th century,” he said. “He is one of the great colorists in art history. But his work is always about human nature in all its complexities.”
Such a trajectory of thinking—to begin with the wide-angle historical view, take in the surface allure, and then drill down into the more philosophical implications—is a hallmark of the Austrian-born museum prodigy’s approach to art, and one of the reasons why his arrival at the institution widely viewed as the greatest encyclopedic museum in the world has been cause for such excitement among those in the field.

Last Friday, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it was planning to vacate the so-called Met Breuer three years early, handing the Brutalist building over the the Frick in 2020, it was clear that a decision was finally taking shape around one of the most vexing quandaries facing the Met: How can the venerable encyclopedic institution, with works stretching back to the earliest recorded human creations, meaningfully embrace contemporary art without giving off the vibe of a graying relative desperately trying to act cool?
The answer to that question comes in the shape of the museum’s 49-years-young new director, Max Hollein, whose vision for the Met’s embrace of the recent and the now ranges far beyond headline-grabbing shows of evening-sale artists, or even the more sensitive hybrid exhibitions that have been piloted at the Met Breuer since the experiment began in 2016. “Holistic” is a word for his path forward for the museum, and it’s one Hollein uses frequently.

​PITTSFIELD, MASS.- The Board of Trustees of the Berkshire Museum will work with the executive search firm Brent D. Glass, LLC, to identify candidates for Executive Director of the Museum. 

The firm, led by Dr. Brent D. Glass, provides management consulting to museums, historic sites, and other cultural organizations, working with more than 60 cultural, historical, and educational organizations around the world. Dr. Glass is Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which he led for nearly a decade. He is an author, television presence, and international speaker on cultural diplomacy and museum management. 

As a child growing up in Alabama in the 1950s and ‘60s, Jack Whitten was not permitted inside his segregated local museum in Birmingham. Now, the late artist is the subject of a major exhibition at the Met Breuer in New York. Its title, aptly, is “Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963–2017” (on view through December 2).

As recently as 1992, a proposed tour of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective was canceled when no other museums came forward to take it. Last spring, one of Basquiat’s paintings sold for $110.5 million, becoming the most expensive work by an American artist ever sold at auction.


 

​For many native San Diegans, class field trips to museums such as the Museum of Man or the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park often meant listening to heroic tales about Spanish explorers and friars who established the state’s first mission. The brutal treatment of indigenous peoples, however, was hardly touched upon.
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In recent years, however, a number of museums around the country, as well as in Balboa Park, have embarked upon journeys to “decolonize” both their collections and their messaging. Locally, this means changing not only how the story of San Diego’s past is told, but also who tells it. The San Diego Museum of Man in particular has been at the fore. Last year, it established the position of Director of Decolonizing Initiatives, which is currently held by Jaclyn Roessel. These actions and hires aim to identify colonizing practices in each of its departments and create a strategic plan for museum-wide decolonization. 

​The first Friday of each month is a special day for the arts in Phoenix.  Art galleries remain open late into the night, and city streets give way to artisans, food trucks, and performers.  Thousands of people – young and old – gather to enjoy, support, and appreciate the arts.  As we do most First Fridays, my daughter and I are on the Artlink Trolley, which connects the arts districts of Phoenix. We arrive at the Heard Museum and it has never been more evident that the mission we set out to achieve nearly three years ago with the museum – to engage new audiences and celebrate contemporary Native American artwork – has been accomplished.  The entry court is packed with visitors who’ve come to see the new exhibit Dear Listener by Nicholas Galanin, an artist the New York Times called a “standout,” while the music of experimental hip-hop group Shabazz Palaces echoes from inside.  The vibrant, celebratory spirit of First Friday and the Heard Museum are in full harmony.