AP stories

 

Judge: Barnes Foundation may move art collection to Philadelphia

By David B. Caruso

Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA, Penn. (AP) — The stewards of one of the country’s richest troves of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art have won permission from a judge to relocate the collection from a suburban gallery loved for its intimacy, but difficult to visit because of restrictions imposed by its eccentric founder, Dr Albert Barnes.

Trustees of the Barnes Foundation had argued for two years that they should be allowed to move the collection of Renoirs, Cezannes, Matisses and Picassos to a new $100 million replica gallery to be built in the heart of Philadelphia.

Barnes had left instructions in his will that the collection be kept forever in its current home in Lower Merion, but foundation officials said decades of limited attendance and high costs at the stately limestone gallery near the city limits have left it nearly bankrupt.

Montgomery County Judge Stanley Ott said that a new facility more accessible to tourists might be the only viable way to salvage the foundation. Other possible solutions, including selling land and lesser art not now included in the foundation’s public galleries, would not raise more than $20 million, he said.

“History and the evidence presented at these hearings showed this amount would not halt the foundation’s downward financial spiral,’’ he wrote.

Traditionalists have fought the move, saying it would destroy a unique setting and violate Barnes’ wish that the collection be primarily used as a teaching tool for the foundation’s art school.

“We believe that this decision imperils a unique cultural masterpiece,’’ said Terrance A. Kline, a lawyer who represented three of the foundation’s students. “I think the students felt that the Barnes Foundation was not just the paintings. It was the galleries, the gardens, the limestone building, the school ... all carefully assembled by Dr Barnes to give a holistic approach to the study of art.’’

A millionaire who made his fortune in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, Barnes opened his 23-room gallery in 1925 to display Impressionist masterpieces and thousands of other paintings, African carvings, Navajo textiles, Greek and Roman ceramics and other pieces. He arranged the gallery rooms himself.

When he died in a 1951 car crash, Barnes had left instructions that the paintings were never to be sold or loaned. Admission was to be strictly limited. His endowment was to be invested only in conservative, low-yielding government securities.

The result was a beautiful gallery with a multibillion dollar collection that relatively few people got a chance to see.

These days, the collection is open to the public only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and no more than 400 people may visit each day. Tickets are available only by reservation and lately have been selling out months in advance. Onsite parking is limited, and Lower Merion Township has barred people from leaving their cars on the street.

Ott acknowledged that some would view permitting the gallery to move to Philadelphia as “an outrageous violation of the donor’s trust,’’ but said archival materials had convinced him that Barnes had expected the collection to have much greater public exposure than it has received to date.

“When we add this revelation to the foundation’s absolute guarantee that Dr Barnes’ primary mission — the formal education programs — will be preserved and, indeed, enhanced as a result of these changes, we can sanction this bold new venture with a clear conscience.’’

Three philanthropies promised to help raise $100 million for a new gallery near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an additional $50 million to establish an endowment if the court approved the move.

An exact site for the museum has yet to be selected.

New York City gallery execs plead guilty in $7 million fake-art

NEW YORK CITY (AP) — The owner and manager of an art gallery pleaded guilty in on December 13 to charges that they sold forgeries of paintings by artists such as Marc Chagall and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The pleas to conspiracy charges came in a case involving the sale of $7 million in forged paintings that were so intricately detailed they were almost indistinguishable from the originals.

Ely Sakhai, 52, owner of the Exclusive Art gallery in Manhattan, agreed to pay $12.5 million and to forfeit 11 paintings as part of a plea deal, according to court papers. He also agreed to be sentenced to a prison term of between three and four years. Without the deal, he could have faced up to 20 years in prison.

He and Houshi Sandjaby, 70, the gallery’s office manager, admitted their roles in a scheme that spanned at least 15 years, the government said.

Sakhai and Sandjaby were accused of defrauding art buyers by selling them forgeries of paintings by master artists representing primarily the Impressionist, post-Impres-sionist and modern periods.

Prosecutors said that in one case a fake painting and the original landed at competing auction houses for sale in the same month.

The government said the defendants bought authentic paintings, then hired artists to copy them. The paintings were doctored with special coatings to make them look decades old.

Sandjaby faces up to five years in prison. Sentencing in the case was set for July 5.

Buyer shells out record $3.5 million for Turkish painting ‘The Turtle Trainer’

ISTANBUL, Turkey — A Turkish foundation has bought a 1906 Ottoman oil painting for $3.5 million, the highest ever price for a piece by a Turkish painter, newspapers reported Monday, December 13.

“The Turtle Trainer’’ by Osman Hamdi shows a bearded man in a turban with a flute in his hands and five turtles at his feet.

The painting was part of an art collection that was auctioned to pay the debts of an insolvent Turkish bank, the daily Radikal and other newspapers reported. The Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation purchased the painting and plans to show it in a new museum.

In 1992, the same painting was sold for $700,000, the highest price for a Turkish painting until this sale, the newspapers said.

police have surveillance tape of theft at Taos museum

TAOS, N.M. (AP) — Two people who stole a rare kachina doll from the Millicent Rogers Museum last week were caught on tape, the museum’s executive director said.

Shelby Tisdale said state police investigators were reviewing the tape in the hopes of identifying the culprits. Museum officials discovered the Zuni kachina missing Friday, December 10. It had been stolen the previous Tuesday afternoon from a glass case that had been pried open, Tisdale said.

“What’s interesting is that there were other kachinas in there, but it was clear they were going for this specific one,’’ she said. Although she declined to reveal the item’s value, Tisdale said it was a special piece. The 17-inch-tall kachina dates back to about 1880 and was of a type used primarily for educational purposes, not to sell. As a result, not many were made.

A distinctive feature of the kachina is its cow mask with long horns. “It’s extremely rare,’’ she said.

Philanthropists make big donation to Portland Art Museum

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Portland philanthropists Arlene and Harold Schnitzer have donated $3.5 million to the Portland Art Museum, the largest single donation to the museum’s endowment in its history.

The gift will be used for the stewardship of Northwest art.

About $1.5 million of the gift will create a permanent Northwest curator position; another $1.5 million will support the production and documentation of Northwest-themed exhibitions and the remaining $500,000 will be used to acquire Northwest art and conserve artwork donated to the museum by the Schnitzers.

The museum’s executive director John Buchanan said the museum will conduct a national search for a curator.

In the past ten years, for example, only one major scholarly exhibition of a Northwest artist — a 1995 career survey of abstract painter Lucinda Parker — has been produced at the Portland Art Museum.

Arlene Schnitzer said she hopes the museum’s renewed devotion to Northwest art will inspire the entire community to take greater interest in art.

For the museum, the Schnitzer gift crowns a year of large donations from supporters, including a $1 million gift from Corvallis art collector and museum board member Sarah Miller Meigs to support the museum’s curatorial programming and a $500,000 gift from the Louisiana-Pacific Foundation for the museum’s North Building renovation.

The $40 million makeover of the former Masonic Temple will provide new administrative offices for museum staff, and 28,000 square feet of new exhibition space that will be called the Center for Modern and Contemporary Art.

FBI and police recover some of art collection valued at more than $2 million

By Cheryl Wittenauer

Associated Press Writer

ST LOUIS, MO. (AP) — Some pieces of a missing multimillion-dollar art collection that includes works by Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning have been recovered, authorities said.

FBI special agent Peter Krusing said that investigators recovered some paintings, prints and sculptures stolen from a storage facility in the St Louis suburb of Bridgeton. But over half of the more than 100 works remain missing.

The works had been placed in storage there by an out-of-state owner, whom officials declined to identify. The works had been appraised at more than $2 million in 1991, the FBI said.

The theft was reported October 13 after an inventory showed the items were missing, officials said.

The stolen items included works by Picasso; abstract ex-pressionist painters de Kooning and Mark Rothko; Milton Avery, dubbed the “American Matisse’’; and Ukrainian cubist sculptor Alexander Archipenko, the FBI said.

FBI and police would not comment on how the works were recovered last month. No arrests have been made and no charges filed.

Attorney Arthur Margulis said he and his son, also an attorney, helped broker a deal to have the works returned.

Margulis told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that they “learned from a client that certain artwork may have come from a questionable source.’’ They then arranged for the return, he said.

Officials did not say which works were returned or how much of the total value the recovered art represented.