A COVETED STATUETTE
Unveiled at the Met
Not all the antiquities that the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo sold at Sotheby’s recently have disappeared from public view. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought a copper figure of a horned hero or demon.
The piece, from 3000 to 2800 B.C., is of a bearded man with the mighty horns of an ibex, horn-shaped boots, a cape in the form of wings and the tail of a vulture. It stands nearly seven inches high.
Curators at the Met knew the figure well. They had included it in their 2003 show “Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C., From the Mediterranean to the Indus” along with its nearly identical twin, which is on long-term loan to the Brooklyn Museum from the Guennol Collection in New York.
The Met wanted the piece badly. It paid $3.1 million for it, more than 12 times the $250,000 that Sotheby’s had estimated it would fetch.
“It’s important that objects of this significance stay in public view,” said Joan Aruz, the Met’s curator in charge of Ancient Near Eastern Art. “This is really the beginning of things. The emphasis of the human form marks a milestone in the history of art.”
The figure, she added, combines two traditions: the vocabulary of royal iconography as seen in the power of a man’s body and beard, as well as the tradition of the highlands, with the upturned boots and the horns of the ibex. “It’s evoking the supernatural world by combing human and animal features,” she said.
The Albright-Knox offered the figure, from the Near East, along with other antiquities, medieval and Renaissance artworks in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s this spring. Its goal was to raise money to increase its endowment for buying contemporary art, a decision met with protests from museum patrons who said they thought the Albright-Knox was selling off masterpieces that formed part of its history.
The piece goes on view in the Met’s Ancient Near-Eastern galleries today.
DEAR ÉMILE (YOURS, VINCENT)
Two years ago Eugene V. Thaw, a dealer, collector and longtime member of the Morgan Library & Museum’s board, promised the Morgan 20 letters written by Vincent van Gogh to his younger colleague, the artist and poet Émile Bernard. Chronicling van Gogh’s life from early 1887 until the winter of 1889, they include 13 sketches that relate to paintings he was working on during those years.
Ever since she learned of the promised gift, Jennifer Tonkovich, the Morgan’s curator of drawings and prints, has been working on an exhibition based on the letters. But since showing letters often makes a ponderous museum show, “Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh’s Letters to Émile Bernard,” will also include more than 20 paintings, drawings and watercolors that the two artists discussed or exchanged.
“The letters themselves are a great read,” Ms. Tonkovich said. “They depict thoughts van Gogh had about his work and the relationships he had with his contemporaries in Paris while he was living in Arles.”
Museums and collections around the world plan to loan pieces for the exhibition. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for example, has agreed to lend seven works.
The show, which runs from Sept. 28 through Jan. 6, will underscore the influence the men had on each other’s work. A 1888 painting by Bernard, “Breton Women in a Meadow,” which Gauguin took with him to Arles when he visited van Gogh, will be in the shown along with “Breton Women in the Plain of Pont-Aven,” a watercolor van Gogh made based on it. “Although he copied it, van Gogh made slight changes,” Ms. Tonkovich said.
Since the letters are in French, the Morgan plans to have translations for visitors to read. It will also have listening stations where visitors can hear the letters being read, although Ms. Tonkovich said the reader has not been selected.
“We want to give the public a better idea of van Gogh’s voice,” she added. “And his personality.”
GIFTS TO JEWISH MUSEUM
The Jewish Museum has surpassed its $75 million Centennial Endowment campaign, and its two largest gifts — $10 million each — have come from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Robert J. Hurst, a longtime trustee.
“Before he became mayor, Bloomberg was on our board,” Joan Rosenbaum, the museum director, said. When the campaign started in 1999, the museum had a $23 million endowment. That figure has grown to $88 million, she said. The money from the campaign will be used for programming and operations, including more school programs and an enhanced Web site.
In addition to the campaign the museum has received $1 million from the Croll Charitable Trust, which will make free Saturday admission possible for the next three years.
As with many institutions these days, the makeup of Jewish Museum’s board members is becoming younger and the museum leaders tend to be involved in finance. Its new president, Robert A. Pruzan, is an investment banker, and its new chairman, Joshua Nash, runs Ulysses Management, a hedge fund. Both men are under 40.
ORDWAY PRIZE PARTNERS
The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York will join with Creative Link for the Arts (formerly the Penny McCall Foundation) to administer the Ordway Prize, one of the largest international awards for a midcareer artist and a midcareer arts writer or curator in the contemporary-art field.
Named in honor of Katharine Ordway, the great-great aunt of Jennifer McSweeney, director of Creative Link, the prize is conceived as the American equivalent to the Turner Prize in Britain and is bestowed every two years. Winners receive $100,000 each, and four others receive $7,500 apiece.
The first Ordway Prize was awarded in 2005 to the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo and the curator and arts writer Ralph Rugoff.
“We will be suggesting the jury, but not serving on it,” said Lisa Phillips, the New Museum’s director. “The New Museum will also be promoting it properly. We want this prize to be as well known as the Turner or the Pritzker.”
