Art Newspaper

Against gloomy media forecasts for the global art market and Britains impending EU referendum, yesterday's (21 June) Impressionist and Modern evening sale at Sothebys proved, once again, that the top end of the art market rarely reflects the state of the outside world.

The figures paint a happy picture for the auction house: a 90.7m hammer total (103.3m with fees) against an estimate of 81.8m-99m, with an 89% sell-through rate. Out of 27 lots, 11 hammered above the upper estimate and only three were bought in. Nevertheless, in June 2015, there were almost twice as many lots, and the sale fetched 178.6m with fees.

Conducting the auction was Helena Newman, Sothebys worldwide co-head of Impressionist and Modern art; this is only the second time ever that a woman has taken an evening auction, the first one being Melanie Clore, also at Sothebys, in 1990.

The sale was held together by two star portraits, both of which had been off the market for more than 30 years. Picassos portrait of his lover Fernande Olivier, Femme assise (1909), saw lengthy but slow bidding, until it sold for 38.5m (43.3 with fees), well above its estimate of more than 30m, on the phone to Adam Chinn of Art Agency Partners, the advisory firm recently bought by Sothebys. Amedeo Modiglianis Jeanne Hebuterne (au foulard) (1919) had been initially guaranteed by the house, though this was later changed to an irrevocable bid (a type of third-party guarantee). This proved unnecessary, however, as protracted bidding saw the work sell for 34.3m (38.5m with fees), again, well above its estimate of more than 28m. These two works accounted for just over 80% of the evenings total, and in fact are the two highest-selling lots in a London auction in more than five years.

We were very fortunate to be entrusted with these two works. We had no doubt that they would sell, but the question was how well. Brexit referendum or not, the market understands this kind of quality, Newman said after the sale. There were no other blockbusters up for sale, but buyers snapped almost everything up.

The only disappointment of the evening was a large, posthumous Rodin bronze, ve, grand modle - version sans rocher la base carre (conceived in 1881 and cast between 1925-1940), which failed to find a buyer. Bidding stopped at 6.2m, far below its lower estimate of 8m.

The Ruya Foundation, a Baghdad-based non-governmental body, will present an exhibition featuring both ancient and contemporary works in the Iraqi pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale next year (13 May-26 November 2017).

The show will be co-curated by Tamara Chalabi, the co-founder of Ruya, and Paolo Colombo, who organised the Istanbul Biennial in 1999. Entitled Archaic, the exhibition is the product of over two years of dialogue between Chalabi and Colombo and will feature ancient artefacts from the region alongside works of Iraqi Modernism and new commissions by Iraqi artists living both in Iraq and elsewhere, according to a project statement.

A spokeswoman for Ruya says that details of the works will be announced at a later date. The Ruya Foundation was the commissioner of the Iraqi pavilion in 2013 and 2015.
 

Thirty-five works drawn from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg are due to go on show at the 28th edition of the Biennale des Antiquaires this autumn at Pariss Grand Palais (10-18 September). The special, non-selling exhibition will include objects such as vases, clocks and candelabra in porcelain, silver and bronze dating from the 18th century. A portrait of Louis XV made by the Svres porcelain factory in 1761 is among the works.

The move marks the first year the historic jewellery, art and antiques fairwhich launched in 1962 as a biennial eventis held annually. Last summer, members of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA), the French association of antiques dealers that runs the fair, voted to make the Biennale a yearly event.

A total of 121 galleries from 13 countries will participate in the Biennale this September, with 78 dealers from France and 14 galleries from the UK. Another exhibition will include furniture and textiles drawn from Le Mobilier National, Frances national furniture collection, based in Paris.

Henri Loyrette, the former president of the Louvre, will be at the helm as fair chairman. The Old Master Fair, Paris Tableau, was folded into the Biennale des Antiquaires last autumn.

In April, I was on a panel about the 1980s East Village art scene and was asked for some images to project on the screen behind me. Instead of works of art, I took pictures of some of the reviews and reports I published in the East Village Eye newspaper, where I was art editor from 1983 to 1985. I had a great line-up of contributors then who produced some remarkable writing. None of it is remembered today. Occasional art criticism can be like that, gone as fast as a breeze on a summer day.

The texts I selected for the panel included Carlo McCormicks article about the police busting up a legendary guerrilla art show on the Hudson River piers, Yasmin Ramirezs interview with the singular oddball painter Martin Wong, and an acutely thoughtful piece by Jack Bankowsky, who, prior to his long tenure as editor of the super-hip art journal Artforum, was writing for me about the very emblem of art world anti-status, Mark Kostabi. I included a review I wrote, under the pen name Walter Windshield, of Spiritual America, that scandalous first-time-ever exhibition of Richard Princes rephotographed sexploitation picture of a prepubescent Brooke Shields posing stark naked in the bathtub.

Growing trend

My passing notion that writing deserves equal time with pictures, it turns out, is not that uncommon. Several writers are getting their moments at art venues this summer. Hilton Als, the multi-
talented theatre critic for the New

Yorker magazine, is having an exhibition at the Artists Institute in New York. Across the way, poets like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs are at the centre of an exhibiton called Beat Generation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. And last but not least, theres a show by Michel Houellebecqa scenario leading visitors through the writers obsessions, according to the museumat the Palais de Tokyo, also in Paris. (His book The Map and the Territory from 2010 includes a character who paints a picture called Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst Dividing Up the Art Market.)

The museum model has become so fantastically successful in our culture that it is now coveted by all the other disciplines. As the gateway to high art, it remains the ultimate arbiter of cosmopolitan influence. And the museum is more welcoming and open than ever before. Its been more than half a century since Allan Kaprow announced that anything could be art and everybody could be an artist. Museums have now extended that courtesy to writers.

Still, reading a book is fundamentally different from what typically happens when we go to museums. For one thing, looking at art is a companionable activity. You can talk to people while you look at art, but its not so easy to do that when you are reading. In fact, if you go to a reading and talk, someone is likely to shush you. And of course, we dont have museums of books. We have libraries.

The author returns

Whatever the case, the entry of the author into the museum will certainly bring back biography as a central subject after it was banished by Postmodern theory in the 1980s. So it seems all too appropriate that nearly 50 years after Roland Barthes declared the death of the author, he (no shes, so far) shows up to haunt art venues. Might not the author as artist paradoxically push the pendulum back the other way, towards abstraction, towards everything that is beyond language? Thats what art has always had going for it. Even though you can discuss art with words, it is not necessarily something you have to engage linguistically.


Walter Robinsons exhibition Paintings and Other Indulgences opens at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, in September

Hilton Als, Artists Institute, New York, until 7 August

Beat Generation, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 22 June-3 October

Michel Houellebecq: Stay Alive, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 23 June-11 September

If the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is any indication, a move downtown can do big things for a museums brand and audience. The International Center of Photography (ICP) is certainly betting on it. The centre, which has been closed for a year and a half, is due to reopen on the Bowery on 23 June in a ground-floor space it bought for $23.5m.

The new venue has roughly the same exhibition space as the museums former midtown site (where its photography school will stay until at least 2018). But it offers easier public access in a more art-friendly location. It is across the street from the New Museum (with which it will have joint ticketing) and near the Tenement Museum and dozens of galleries. Charlotte Cotton, the ICPs curator-in-residence, expects lots of cross-trafficking.

Photography has come a long way since Cornell Capa, the brother of the war photographer Robert Capa, founded the ICP in 1974 to bring attention to the kind of socially aware photography often overlooked by museums. The ICPs inaugural show, Public, Private, Secret (until January 2017), tackles sharing and surveillance in the digital age. The show includes historic works such as early mugshots and the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truths carte de visite as well as videos by the contemporary artists Martine Syms and Jon Rafman and photos posted in real time on social media.

New Yorks Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has launched a three-part film series on the greats of post-war design and architecture. The programme kicked off on 16 June with the short digital projection Harry Bertoias Sculpture by Clifford West (1965), and a longer look at midcentury designs most dynamic duo, husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames in a 2011 documentary by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey. The two other treats in store are The World of Buckminster Fuller (23 June) and The New World of Lina Bo Bardi (30 June). The latter may only be four minutes long but it is "set to an original soundtrack arranged by DJ Total Freedom that repurposes parts of the architects 1951 essay on Bela Criana", says a press statement. For the full programme, visit http://madmuseum.org/series/midcentury-masters.

 


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Marie Lavandier has been appointed director of Louvre-Lens, the outpost of the Paris museum based in northern France which opened in December 2012. Lavandier replaces Xavier Dectot, who stepped down earlier this year to head the department of art and design at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Lavandier is a specialist in 20th-century art, while Dectot is a medieval art expert; her contract runs for five years and can be renewed thereafter for three-year periods.

In 2014, Lavandier was named director of Nice museums, a city-run network of 12 sites and organisations including the Muse des Beaux-Arts and the Muse dart moderne et dart contemporain.

From 2006 to 2010, she was the deputy director of heritage and collections at the ethnographic art museum, Muse du Quai Branly, in Paris. Since 2013, she has been president of the council at Iccrom (the Rome-based International centre for the study of the preservation and restoration of cultural property).

Located on a former mining site, Louvre-Lens has welcomed more than two million visitors since its launch. The satellite branch drew 900,000 visitors in its first year compared to 400,000 in 2015.

Julia Peyton-Jones, the co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, has a reputation for making spectacular things happen. So nobody was surprised that, just before her farewell shindig in the Serpentines pavilion, yesterdays (20 June) monsoon-like deluge ceased and the evening was bathed in a balmy summer weather and later a rare, strawberry full moon.  

It was very much a family affair, as Serpentine-loving artistsAnish Kapoor, Wolfgang Tillmans, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, Yinka Shonibare, Gustav Metzger and Richard Wentworthto name but a few, were joined by museum directorsNicholas Serota and Ralph Rugoffand former Serpentine employeesthe Whitneys Donna De Salvo was flown in specially for the occasion. All gathered to salute the 25 years of JPJ's directorship, which saw the transformation of what was a potting shedas described by the gallerys co-vice chair Felicity Waley-Cohen in her celebratory speechto the formidable art venue it is today.

Other fond words were spoken by co-director Hans-Ulrich Obrist, who recalled the instant spark he felt when first introduced to Peyton-Jones by Richard Wentworth in 1991 and who also revealed that she was now going to be resuming her interrupted practice as a painter ofapparently very goodabstract paintings. The grand dame herself (her status made official in the Queens Birthday Honours) then bade a fond and dignified farewell to all, before everyone got stuck in to magnums of Laurent Perrier champagne and queued up to substitute their facesfairground stylefor that of Peyton-Joness beloved terrier Charlie in a life-sized cutout of a JPJ plus her pooch, taken by Wolfgang Tillmans. Later everyone, and especially Dame Julia, hit the dance floor with a vengeance, proving that, even on a Monday night, the art world can still party like its 1991: the year that ushered in the legendary JPJ era 

In a sign that the market for African art is going from strength to strength, Sothebys announced on Monday, 20 June, that it is launching sales dedicated to art from the continent in London early next year.

The auction house has appointed Hannah OLeary as its head of Modern and contemporary African art, a new department based in London. OLeary comes from Bonhams, where she held the same position as her new role since 2010. Her first auction as head of the department at Bonhams in March 2011 fetched more than 8.7m and remains the highest total ever for a sale of South African art. Before that, OLeary helped pioneer the early sales of African art at Bonhams, which began in 2008.

Maarten Ten Holder, the managing director of Sothebys Europe, describes the African art scene as thriving. He adds: As our sales develop in 2017, we anticipate that we will establish a significant profile in this field, while also looking to enhance our presence on the African continent. In an indication of the direction her first sales at Sothebys will take, OLeary will be holding appraisals in Cape Town and Johannesburg in June and July.

OLeary says the Sothebys auctions will provide an unprecedented platform for Modern and contemporary African art. Of the market, she says there is enormous untapped potential. Together we are perfectly poised to explore it to the full, she says.

Until now, Bonhams has been the only major auction house in the West to hold sales dedicated to Modern and contemporary African art. Last year, to coincide with Frieze London and 1:54 African art fair, Bonhams launched an October sale dedicated solely to contemporary art from Africa. Its May sale is now focused on Modern African art. There are plans to hold a contemporary sale again in October this year.

Whether to transport live snails from a Roman governor's estate in Campania to his residence in Egypt, or to move carved marble columns and pulpits to one of the many churches built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (reign AD527-AD565), in the ancient Mediterranean world, the sea was often the quickest route by which to move goods around. But disasters were part of the game, and not every ship reached its destination.

A selection of 200 objects plucked from the waters around Sicily, which is at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, forms the exhibition Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, which opens this month at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford.

Although it will complement the British Museums current show on Sicily (Sicily: culture and conquest, until 14 August), the Oxford exhibition differs in that it is all about underwater archaeology and looking at Sicilys history from the perspective of the sea", says its curator Alexandra Sofroniew.

It will contain a mix of beautiful and quirky objects such as four bronze battering rams from warships sunk at the decisive battle at Egadi Islands (241BC), off western Sicily, where the Romans trounced the mighty Carthaginians to bring an end to the First Punic War. They will be displayed alongside a scene from the video game Total War, which includes scenes based on the conflict.

The Roman victory is also represented by a life-size bronze relief of the foot of an elephantthe Carthaginians war animal of choice. Sofroniew says it was probably part of a victory monument. Legend has it that the rest of elephant is still down there, she says.

The show is a collaboration between the Sicilian Soprintendenza del Mare and a consortium of institutions in Copenhagen, Bonn and Amsterdam. The Oxford leg is sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute in London and a foundation named after Honor Frost (1917-2010), a pioneer in the field of underwater archeology.

Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, 21 June-25 September

The Muse du Quai Branly, Pariss museum of non-Western arts and civilisations, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month. To mark the occasion, the museum has organised an exhibition opening today on the former French president Jacques Chirac, who was the driving force behind this ambitious institution on the south bank of the Seine (Jacques Chirac and the Dialogue of Cultures,  until 9 October). Chirac, who has a personal interest in Japanese and Pre-Columbian art, was deeply committed to establishing what has become the worlds greatest museum of non-Western art.

Origin story
Chiracs grand plan was to bring together two Parisian collections: those of the Muse National des Arts dAfrique et Ocanie and the ethnographic section of the Muse de lHomme. The highlights include African masks, Peruvian pottery figures and Asian textiles. At the time, some criticised the decision to take work from existing institutions to build a new one. But Steven Engelsman, the director of Viennas Weltmuseum, says that the Quai Branly has worked miracles to increase the public appreciation of ethnographic collections and museums.

The museum has held 97 showsalmost ten a year. Its ambitious exhibition programme focuses on specific non-Western cultures (such as Matahoata: Arts and Society in the Marquesas Islands, until 24 July) and cross-cultural themes (such as Persona, Strangely Human, until 13 November).    

Looking to the future, the museums founding president, Stphane Martin, feels that more emphasis should be placed on the permanent collection, which occupies just 60% of its display space, and slightly less on exhibitions. There could well be a redisplay during the coming decade to present the collection in a fresh way.

Spotlight on the display
Since the museum opened in 2006, the installation of its collection has been controversial. The objects are under spotlights in a darkened gallery, raising questions about whether they should be regarded as works of art or ethnography. The impact is certainly dramatic, but many visitors end up understanding little about the cultures that created these objects.

Moving forward, the Quai Branly must also consider how to deal with acquisitions. Nicholas Thomas, the director of Cambridges Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (and a member of the Quai Branlys council), believes that the Parisian museum should put more resources into collecting contemporary art. How to renew collections, and create collections for the future, is among the greatest challenges for museums of ethnography, he says.

Despite the controversies, the museums global ambition is even more important today than it was a decade ago. As Martin explains: In these troubled times, the Muse du Quai Branly must remain, more than ever, a place of dialogue and openness to others.

Inside the Muse du Quai Branly
The collection of the Quai Branly comprises around 300,000 items (plus photographs and documents), many of them from former French colonial territories. At the heart of the Jean Nouvel-designed building is a 200m-long gallery, raised above the ground on huge stilts. This meandering structure houses 3,500 objects from the permanent collection, with sections on Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The museum attracted 1.3 million visitors last year, making it the fourth most popular in Paris; 83% of its visitors are French, a high proportion for a major museum in a tourist capital. Most of its budget (a total of more than 50m a year) comes from the government.

Whats in a name?

The Muse du Quai Branly, which opened in June 2006, avoided the tricky issue of finding the right word for non-Western art by taking a street name for its title. It is on Quai Branly, named after Edouard Branly, an inventor of wireless telegraphy in the 1890s. As the museums tenth anniversary approaches, there has been speculation that Frances former president, Jacques Chirac, may be added to the museums name (Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac). But it seems curious to name a museum devoted to the non-Western world after two Frenchmenan inventor and a politician.

After seven years of holding off the sea to keep the building site of the Louvre Abu Dhabi dry, the temporary sea protection walls have now been removed allowing water to surround the building. The museum is being built on Saadiyat Island and the return of the water fulfils the architect Jean Nouvels vision of the space as a "museum city on the sea". The opening date is yet to be announced.

It was very much a family affair at Camden Arts Centre on Saturday (18 June) when the celebrated London-based fashion designer Duro Olowu was interviewed by his wife, Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, about the exhibition he has just organised at Camden. Joking that we dont see enough of each other, Golden revealed that the busy transatlantic couple had barely discussed the exhibition. She was as curious as the rest of us to understand his thinking behind the show.

What then unfolded was a rich and revealing account of Making and Unmaking (until 18 September), Olowus show of paintings, photographs, sculpture, ceramics, tapestries and fabrics by more than 60 artists. Those featured range from Anni Albers and Fernand Lger to Claude Cahun and Lynette Yiadom-Boakyewhose remark to artist Glenn Ligon apparently gave the show its title.

Although it takes fabric and textiles as its starting point, the exhibition addresses a multitude of themes, including portraiture, gender and sexuality. Olowu was keen to stress it was not just about artists who use textiles; its about seeing an artists process.

At the same time Olowu spoke of his deep love of textiles and the profound possibilities of clothes from baroque to Yoruba to haute couture. He revealed that from childhood he had always insisted on wearing things with an interesting pattern and continued to revel in seeing something flat come to life.

We also learned something of the Olowu-Golden mnage. Olowus Im not a hoarder but I cant resist a good thing! approach contrasted with his wifes more minimal tastes: Im not a collectorOlowu was surprised at my apartments bare white walls! Judging by the warmth and animation of the conversation, these contrasting characteristics evidently co-exist in lively harmony.

Once the talk was over, the tantalised audience got its first view of the exhibition. The consensus was that all of its often very different componentsfrom the steely formality of Meredith Framptons 1920s oil portrait of Winifred Frampton to Wangechi Mutus blooming sculpture made from bunched red knickersalso converse and combine in ways that are dramatically, thought-provokingly and sometimes unexpectedly complementary.

Artsy continues its domination of the online art marketplace with the launch of new software that will allow collectors to bid in live sales at Phillips and Koller auction houses from June. It is the first time the technology start-up, founded in 2009 and backed by investors including the US dealer Larry Gagosian and the Russian collector Dasha Zhukova, will offer users the opportunity to bid in real time from anywhere in the world.

Sebastian Cwilich, the president and chief operating officer at Artsy, describes the move as an important step in our mission to make all the world's art accessible to anyone with an internet connection, noting that the best works are often saved for live auctions. Collectors will be able to bid live in Phillipss 20th-century and contemporary art day sale on 28 June and Kollers post-war and contemporary sale on 25 June.

Ed Dolman, the chairman and chief executive of Phillips, which has been beefing up its online operation in recent months, says it is essential to engage with tech-savvy clients with as much ease and efficiency as possible.

Artsy has previously partnered with auction houses to offer online-only sales. In October last year, the company collaborated with Sothebys on a virtual auction of 23 lots, mostly valued at less than $50,000 each. A spokesman for Artsy says the company is happy to offer the new live technology to its growing list of auction house partners.

As the online art market continues to flourish (it jumped 24% to $3.27bn in 2015, according to Hiscox fine art insurers), more firms are entering the fray. On 6 June, Artstackdubbed Pinterest for artlaunched its first sale via its social media platform. The five-day sale featured photographs by Magnum photographers, priced at $100 each.

The theme for the joint conference of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property (CAC) couldnt have been more spot on. As 1,400 conservators, archivists and museum professionals met in Montreal to discuss preparing for disasters and the unexpected in conservation, a massive wildfire raged 3,800km away in Alberta. Early estimates suggest that the blaze, which was still active as we went to press, has so far caused between $5bn and $10bn worth of damage, surpassing the $5bn caused by the devastating floods in the same region in 2013.

The conference was timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Florence Flood of 1966a revolutionary moment in the history of conservation, not only because of the lessons learned and the development of new technologies and methods, but also because it attracted a new generation of conservators to the field. And while the conference did include several brilliant talks related to the 1966 flood, there were also discussions related to other natural and man-made disasters, as well as ones on innovative treatments using cutting-edge technology, revamping disaster preparedness plans and race and diversity within the field.

Here are some top tips and a sampling of the topics discussed at the conference.

Floods
Being a mud angelone of the thousands of Italian and foreign volunteers who aided in the recovery of thousands of works of art and books that were damaged after the Arno River burst its banks in Florence in November 1966was a defining moment in many peoples lives. It certainly was for the conferences keynote speaker, Anne-Imelda Radice, the former director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and
current director of the American Folk Art Museum in New York. She was an 18-year-old student struggling with her studies when the disaster happened. At her fathers suggestion, she travelled to Florence and helped to pass rare books down the line. It really changed me, made me become more serious, she said. It really motivated me for my entire career. She has made preservation initiatives a priority in her various roles over the years. In her closing remarks to the packed audience of conservators and heritage professionals, she said: Youll always have my heart, my commitment and Ill always campaign for you.


Fire
The Glasgow School of Arts beloved Mackintosh building, named after its illustrious designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, caught fire in May 2014. One of the greatest casualties was its librarythe epitome of the concept of total architecture in that its structure, furniture and lighting were all designed by Mackintoshand the collection it housed. Polly Christie, the archives and collections recovery project lead, described how the archive, with its 435 linear metres of architectural records and 12 linear metres of photographs, is taking centre stage in the restoration efforts. Digital scans of the building, taken before and after the disaster, are providing an amazing point of reference to see how the structure has moved and settled down, said Sarah Mackinnon, the project manager for the Mackintosh buildings restoration. The librarys original lights will be reconstructed using pieces found during a forensic-archaeological excavation. Because they blur the boundary between what is part of the collection and the buildings fabric, Mackinnon advised to carefully examine your insurance policy to make sure things cannot fall between collection and fabric coverage.


Hurricanes and superstorms
Nearly four years on, Superstorm Sandy is still very much on the minds of witnesses to the deadly Franken-storm that submerged areas of lower Manhattan. Among the many arts institutions affected by the flooding was Eyebeam, a non-profit arts and technology studio, then located in Chelsea. Around half of its 3,000-strong collection of analogue and digital media works was submerged in around three feet of salt water, and $250,000 worth of equipment was damaged. Kara Van Malssen, a senior consultant with the data management consulting firm AVPreserve, who helped with the recovery efforts, offered advice she gleaned from the project: maintain contacts of local resources and get to know them; make the hard decisions, such as which pieces to prioritise, in advance; and anchor disaster preparedness into the organisations culture. She also stressed the need to migrate audio-visual media, and said that disaster preparedness is a motivating factor for this process.


Bankruptcy
The experience of treating Florences treasures after the Great Flood of 1966 and later disaster mitigation training left Barbara Heller, the director and conservator of special projects at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), feeling as if she was suitably prepared for most conservation-related crises. But nothing could have prepared Heller and her colleagues for the stress and uncertainty caused when the museums owner, the City of Detroit, $7bn in debt, filed for bankruptcy in 2013. The citys governor-appointed bankruptcy manager asked Christies to evaluate the DIAs collection to see how much could be raised by selling off some of it. Heller researched the collection to confirm which works were donated to the museum and therefore could not be sold. While a deal was eventually struck that transferred the museums ownership to a non-profit corporation and thus moved the collection beyond the reach of the city, Heller stressed that access to a searchable archive was essential to her work. She discovered discrepancies in regards to ownership that were not noted in the collections database.


Earthquakes
Two presenters discussed the recovery efforts in Nepal after the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake in April 2015. Political instability, bureaucracy and a lack of capacity to implement some of the recovery projects were listed as challenges. Aparna Tandon, a project specialist from Iccrom, suggested tying cultural heritage first aid to humanitarian relief projects to make the most of fundingfor example, training programmes for stonemasons. Gina Irish, a registrar at New Zealands Christchurch Art Gallery, provided a museums perspective on earthquake recovery. In February 2011, a 6.3-magnitude quake rocked Christchurch, killing 185 people and levelling parts of the city. Irish showed CCTV footage from the gallery that showed a sculpture crash to the floor, boxes shaking in a storage area and children, schooled in earthquake preparedness, dropping to the floor. The experience taught her, among other things, that solutions to problems such as how to brace items in racks can be found in unexpected places, including big warehouse supermarkets. The gallery reopened in late 2015.


War
In recent years, we have become all too aware that man-made disasters, especially armed conflict, also threaten the worlds heritage. Brian Daniels from the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania Museum discussed the concept of community archaeology and the need to engage with heritage advocates on the ground. The Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq (Shosi) initiative was born from this idea and involves, among other things, training local museum staff to prepare artefacts for transport and how to protect immovable artefacts. Shosi helped with the latter at Syrias Maarra Mosaic Museum, which has many large mosaics encased in concrete. A layer of water-soluble glue was applied to the face of the mosaics and then covered with a piece of fabric. Sandbags were then placed in front. In June 2015, when a barrel bomb struck the museum, the mosaics remained largely intact. The museum was bombed again days before the conference and Daniels said the measures appear to have offered some level of protection. Geopolitics also can sometimes impede site protection, as was the case of the Church of St Simeon Stylites, Syria, that was bombed in May.

Top Disaster Preparedness Tips
Its not the plan, but the planning that is key

Dont just have a list of support networksget to know them  

Accept that its not going to be 100% perfect

Many in the field were surprised when three of New Yorks top museumsthe Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Brooklyn Museumannounced that they would seek to reduce staff in the coming months. On Friday, 17 June, the Met revealed the first of such cutbacks among some of its highest paid staff: Cynthia Round, the senior vice president for marketing and external relations; Sree Sreenivasan, the chief digital officer, who is leaving after three years in the newly created post; and Susan Sellers, the head of design, who was involved in the museum's rebranding campaign. The departures come in the "context of the recentering of the museums work and our current financial restructuring", the Met's director Thomas Campbell said in a letter to staff, shared by Sreenivasan.

The three museum's plans, all announced within four weeks of each other, illustrate a growing problem in cultural fundraising today. While there seems to be ample money to finance expansionsa recent survey by The Art Newspaper found that US museums spent $5bn on building projects between 2007 and 2014there is less money available to pay staff.

None of these institutions is in dire straits. The Met, which recently expanded into the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said that its 24-month restructuring effort was spurred by a $10m deficit this year. Meanwhile, the museums endowment at the end of 2015 was $2.7bn.

Weve been investing in various programmes that we think are interesting and important, and weve probably done that a bit faster than we should have, says Daniel Weiss, the museums president. In addition to soliciting buyouts and potentially laying off staff, the Mets belt-tightening will include extending exhibitions and delaying work on its planned David Chipperfield-designed Modern and contemporary wing.

MoMA, which began a $440m renovation and expansion earlier this year, is also not lacking in funds. News that the museums voluntary buyout programme would begin in July came on the heels of a $100m donation from the music mogul David Geffen. A spokeswoman says that the museums operations will be reduced during construction and that the programme is intended for staff nearing retirement.

The Brooklyn Museum, which recently unveiled a reinstallation of its collection, said its voluntary buyouts are part of an effort to reduce a projected $3m deficit. The Brooklyn Museum has seen tremendous growth over the past few years, but like many other prominent cultural organisations in New York, the cost of running the museum has substantially grown, says its director Anne Pasternak.

Susan Talbott, the former director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut, says that failing to account for the cost of operations is one of the very common pitfalls of expansionYou have this big new building but you dont have the staff to staff it, you dont have the security to monitor it. During her tenure, she declined to expand the Wadsworth into the nearby Hartford City Hall to avoid putting the museum in a tough financial spot. The problem is big enough that successful development administrators are frequently poached from one institution to another, she says.

Its true today and it was true 30 years ago, says Tom Freudenheim, the former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was easier to raise money for naming somebodys building than paying someones staff.

Both the Met and MoMA spend the majority of their annual budgets on staff, according to spokespeople. Salaries at major US museums, especially for top curators, can be two or three times those in the UK. In 2013, the Met spent $200m (70% of its annual operating costs) on salaries and benefits for its 2,300 employees, according to tax documents. MoMA spent $87m (50% of its annual operating costs) to pay 800 employees.

In the wake of the financial crisis in 2009, the Met made 74 employees redundant and gave voluntary retirement packages to 95 more. MoMA faced a strike in 2015 from Local 2110, a union that represents 280 employees, over attempts to weaken its healthcare benefits, but reached an agreement in the 11th hour. It suffered a four-month strike in 2000 over similar issues.

Outside certain endowed curatorships, there is no obvious solution beyond convincing donors that staff and operations are worth paying for. MoMAs tactics to raise money for staffing, according to a spokeswoman, include its membership programme and specialised councils.

Weiss says that overspending on expansion is inevitable for any institution that wants to generate donations. Here at the Met that problem dates back to 1870, since we opened, he says. One wants to be at an institution thats aspirational, thats pushing boundaries, so theres always going to be recalibration.

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All this conceptual contemporary art at Art Basel may well tire out some fairgoers; those feeling a little jaded by the Richters and the Kiefers, can head down a side street to the emporium of dealer Dr Jrn Gnther, who is hosting an open house exhibition at his Basel base which overfloweth with illuminated manuscripts, miniatures and early printed books. Visitors to this kunstkammer can ponder over the first account of the New World after its discovery in 1493 written by Christopher Columbus (this rare edition of the text was published in Basel in 1494). A book of hours written in 1474 by Francesco Borromeo, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, is another treat for medieval-mad connoisseurs eschewing the Modern art treats on the Messeplatz.

The boundary-pushing, trend-setting Shanghai gallery Bank is being forced to shut on Sunday, 19 June, after only six days notice, due to a recent policy that bans private entities from renting state-owned properties.

Opened in September 2013 by the Shanghai-based American curator Mathieu Borysevicz, the gallery occupied the first floor of the charmingly decrepit 1925 Bank Union Building, located near the landmark Bund. The space kept the original peeling paint and wood floors worn to a rich sheen. An oddly placed old stage in the middle of the room was used for the performances that were part of Banks varied, highly conceptual and often provocative exhibitions, which presented young talents like Geng Yini, Double Fly and Chen Tianzhuo as well as established figures like Xu Bing, Ai Weiwei, Zhang Enli, Paul McCarthy and Isaac Julien.

I feel that together with our artists we breathed new life into this amazing carcass of a building on Xianggang Lu and contributed to Shanghais rise on the international art map, Borysevicz says. We proved that a successful art space neednt be a glossy, industrial, white cube but could retain some messy character of its own.

Banks closure follows those of the Shanghai branch of James Cohen gallery and local jazz institution JZ Club, which shut last year and last month respectively, purportedly due to the same policy, part of Chinese President Xi Jinpings anti-corruption measures. Video Bureau in Guangzhou, who were holding a lease until 2018, were recently evicted as well, Borysevicz adds. Earlier concerns with Banks lease had been ironed out by a sympathetic landlord, the chair of the state enterprise that holds the building, but this time its blitzkriegsudden and harsh. It seems its a city- or countrywide ordinance and this time theyre adamant to enforce it, Borysevicz says.

Besides planning a blowout closing party on Sunday, Borysevicz is now frantically looking for a new location where, we will still be as anti-bling-bling and alternative as possible, he says. The problem is that much of Shanghais rich character comes from the combination of interesting spaces and their programmes. If its all going to be a bunch of skyscrapers and shopping malls, itll suck big time.

As the art markets taste turns towards history, it is not just curators and scholars who are keeping the legacy of dead artists alive. At Art Basel, galleries with big stables of contemporary artists are devoting valuable space to works by artists including the late Mike Kelley, Josef Albers and Joan Mitchell. Such displays are paying off and reflect the increased competition among dealers to represent artists estates.

The hot young artist dynamic has given way to history over the past five years, says Marc Glimcher, the president of Pace Gallery, whose estate artists include Agnes Martin and Robert Rauschenberg.

Generally, artists estates include works that they chose not to sell (often their best pieces). So dealers who represent estates can offer works of historical importance that are fresh to the market.

There is no standard relationship between an artists estate and a gallery. Some estates work with more than one gallery, some set up charitable foundations, and there are often legal issues to overcome before a commercial agreement is in place. It should be a round-table conversation about what is in the best interest of the work. Estates ask galleries to be the barometer of the market; we lean on them for questions of legacy, says Adam Sheffer of Cheim & Read.

When it works, a commercial gallery can be instrumental in revising an artists reputation. In 2007, Cheim & Read staged a show of Joan Mitchells works on paper, with institutional loans and a scholarly catalogue. These misunderstood and underappreciated pieces were presented not as studies, but as fully realised works, for the first time, Sheffer says. As a result, their market exploded. At Art Basel, the gallery sold three of Mitchells 1991 pastels on paper for $200,000 each. A US museum is mulling over the artists painting Untitled (1958, priced at $5.5m).

The phenomenon is not new; Pace began working with Mark Rothkos family in 1978, for example. But Glimcher says that estates tend to be bigger now that artists are generally more prolific.

Galleries have their work cut out. Its tough keeping a legacy alive once an artist is dead, says Iwan Wirth, the president of Hauser & Wirth. He says that art fairs are one way to reintroduce and reposition artists. The gallery has brought works by Lygia Pape, David Smith, Philip Guston and Fausto Melotti to Art Basel, having taken on each of these artists estates during the past year. If an artist isnt seen by a younger generation of collectors, their art can languish, says Mary Sabbatino, vice-president of Galerie Lelong. She adds that the institutional exhibition schedule for Ana Mendieta, who died in 1985, is as intense as for some of our living artists.

Meanwhile, living artists are being encouraged to plan their own legacies. In March, the lawyer and collector Loretta Wrtenberger co-founded the Institute for Artists Estates to offer support to living artists and heirs. One aim is to try to get artists to think of their estate as the last work of art they make, she says.

Art Basel Salon: Artists Estates Today and Tomorrow, moderated by Javier Pes, editor of The Art Newspaper, Friday 17 June, 3pm-4pm, Auditorium, Hall 1