"It's heaven when you/ Find Cézanne on
the menu." The merchandise mavens at
London's Tate Gallery may have been
singing this variant on the old lyrics
while slapping together the world's
first "Cézannewich," a Provencal-style
melange of mozzarella, avocado, pine
nuts, basil and Mediterranean bread
with sun-dried tomatoes, dished out in
connection with the blockbuster
Cézanne retrospective that originated
at Paris's Grand Palais. The show
(not the sandwich) moves to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art on May 30.
Not to be outdone, Philadelphia has
come up with its own commercial concept
(still tentative at this writing):
Are you ready for the "Bathers" shower
curtain? When Degas' "Toilette"
appears on toilet paper, we'll know
that museum merchandisers have touched
bottom.
FAQ's
What strange synergy has caused the
boards of three major New York museums
(Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim,
Whitney) to be headed by executives
(Ronald Lauder, Ronald Perelman and
Leonard Lauder, respectively) of
cosmetics conglomerates, Estee Lauder
and Revlon, both of which have
recently been taken public on the New
York Stock Exchange?
Who is Graham W.J. Beal and how long
will he last at the director-devouring
Los Angeles County Museum of Art?
Will anyone ever update the
Metropolitan Museum's stale "news"
page on the Web?
Did the tennis-loving editor/publisher
of ARTnews, Milton Esterow, agree to
interview John McEnroe and put him on
the magazine's April cover in exchange
for drop-shot lessons?
If Disney acquires Sotheby's (via Sid
Bass's stock grab), will the world's
newest, scariest ride be
"Auctionland"? (Jeffrey Hogrefe
reported in the April 1 New York
Observer that Bass, a large
stockholder in Disney as well as a
personal friend of Sotheby's chairman,
A. Alfred Taubman, recently acquired 5
percent of Sotheby's and has proposed
that Disney's Michael Eisner be named
to Sotheby's board.)
Speaking of rollercoasters, do some
dealers secretly wish that Ryoei
Saito, the recently deceased owner of
the world's two most expensive
paintings at auction, had precluded
the possible return to the market of
his inflated van Gogh (Portrait of Dr.
Gachet, $82.5 million) and Renoir (Au
Moulin de la Galette, $78.1 million)
by fulfilling his previously stated
desire to be buried with his booty?
(Correct answers to be published in
next Friday's New York Times, in Carol
Vogel's "Inside Art" column. Winners
eligible for trips to Disney World or
Art Chicago 1996.)
NEWS FLASH:
Fresh off the plane from Paris, where
the Louvre's sculpture curator, Jean-
Rene Gaborit, expressed strong doubts
about Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt's
recent Michelangelo attribution,
Philippe de Montebello, director of
the Metropolitan Museum, now says
that the joint Louvre-Met Michelangelo
exhibition, if any, will occur three to
four years from now and will be a
"dispassionate display...not the
consecration of an attribution." In a
March 22 article about Brandt's
recent address to an audience of art
historians at the Louvre, Agence
France-Presse reported Gaborit's
opinion that "the sculpture might be a
work of a late Florentine mannerist."
Two other French scholars, Francoise
de la Moureyre and Gabriella Raci-
Courtois, also gave thumbs-down to the
Michelangelo attribution, according to
the article. De Montebello and his
counterpart at the Louvre, Pierre
Rosenberg, were to continue their
transatlantic exhibition talks in New
York this month (see original story in
Visual Reality, 3/22/96).
LEE ROSENBAUM has written on the art world
for 24 years and is author of The Complete
Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf). She is
contributing editor of ARTnews magazine and
writes frequently for the Wall Street
Journal "Leisure & Arts" page and Art in
America magazine. Her articles have also
appeared in the New York Times, London
Daily Telegraph, Barron's, Money, and New
York, among others.
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