The Smithsonian Under Fire

Why speak again about the Smithsonian as I did briefly before? Because it represents the issues that every other museum has, i.e., the President says to toe the line. The Smithsonian represents the American People as a country.

Why do I say that? The Smithsonian includes 21 museums and galleries plus the National Zoo and, as important, 14 education and research centers. These include The National Portrait Gallery, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Museum of the American Indian and the Archives of American Art. Two more museums are in development: the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum. From the Museum of African American History and Culture, here is an exhibit from the Slavery and Freedom Gallery. A set of wrought iron leg shackles dated before 1860.

Most of these institutions are in the Capital of our country, Washington, D.C., which attracts many tourists from this country and abroad. I would venture that at some time in their lives most Americans have visited.

In March of 2025, the President, Donald J. Trump, signed an Executive Order titled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. It turns out that by which he meant just the opposite. If you doubt this, read the Executive Order for yourselves: 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/

For one thing, he wanted any DEI offices shuttered. What was he scared of? Black people, Hispanics, Native Americans, Latinos, Women? He asked for a comprehensive review of eight Smithsonian museums to ensure they align with a focus on “American Exceptionalism”. Even if you believe in American Exceptionalism, that can only be ascertained by showing all our faults as well … the massacres of Native Americans, slavery, and the denial of the right to vote to women until 1920. What about the mistreatment of the African Americans after the Civil War? I remember being told by my father when I was a small boy, and we visited Florida, that I was not allowed to go into the public toilet or drink from the fountains marked “Colored” or (“For Colored Only”). I had to use the one marked "Whites" (or "Whites Only"). I can still visualize where I was standing and the confusion I felt. How can we become exceptional if we do not understand where we came from?

With approximate statistics from the web, over 40% of this country consists of non-white ethnicities, and 50% of the people in this country are women. Why should we fear the other when the other made this country the most powerful in the world, not just militarily but by innovation and creativity? Just watch a financial channel on television and listen to CEOs of the top companies in this country and note the foreign accents you hear of immigrant Americans. Even Elon Musk, possibly the richest man in the world, is an immigrant from South Africa. No matter what you think of what he has done for good and bad, he has brought about technological innovation that can be admired.

Claiming that the past decade has cast America’s “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light,” the Executive Order proclaims that museum visitors should “not be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” It promises additional actions to remove such “improper ideologies” from federal museums, parks and monuments.

Following the Administration’s misogynistic, whitewashed narrative, Pete Hegseth is “clearing out the debris” in the military. In his purge, he denies the contributions of African Americans and women by selectively removing their names from the vetted list for one-star generals, claiming they were recommended by people who were “too woke.”

Trying to rewrite history can only do harm by building a cocoon from which everyone loses except for the very few who have created it.

Laws Paved with Good Intentions

Even well-intentioned laws are open to regulation, interpretation, and execution, and there’s the rub!

The case I wish to address limits research, education, commerce, and even history. In my career as an art dealer, I have had two opportunities to testify before Congress representing an art association. The issue was the passage of a ban on the import of works of art containing ivory. The intent was to save the African Elephant from rampant poaching, obviously a noble cause. As an art dealer, I made my living through commerce, but I also care passionately about art of all kinds and art history. Why should a 13th-century ivory figure of a Madonna not be allowed into our country? It’s been a lot of years since that elephant died!

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

A similar situation now exists as far as Native American spiritual items and works of art are concerned. Recently, I came across a long article with 8 pages of footnotes by Elizabeth Weiss, Professor Emeritus at San José State University in California, titled “The Reburial of the Southwest: Closing off Native History and Archeology”. Published by the Goldwater Institute in Tucson, Arizona, it makes the argument from an archeologist’s point of view.

NAGPRA (The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), enacted in 1990, is seemingly clear. It requires museums, universities, and federal agencies to return Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and items of cultural patrimony to their respective lineal descendants, Native American tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. At the time, there were many objections, but since the wording of the legislation did not hamper scientific study or collecting either by institutions or private parties, as long as they were not handling artifacts delineated in the law. However, in 2023, the Department of the Interior published new regulations elaborating that any new research could only be carried out with tribal consent. The regulations go so far as stating the opening of a box to find out its contents could be considered research.

NAGPRA, however, does not cover human remains so many thousand years old that cannot be identified with a present-day tribe. Additionally, remains have been uncovered that are so many thousands of years old that those tribes no longer exist. Since it is generally accepted that at one time there was a land bridge between Asia and Alaska, there is no way to know where these human remains might truly belong. Now even that line of study has been closed off. If a tribe does reclaim human remains for reburial, scientific tests like radiocarbon dating cannot be done, making it impossible to learn part of the history of humankind.

The Return

Museums are also hindered in their role of public education as they cannot exhibit artifacts associated with burials (not referring to remains) without prior informed consent from lineal descendants. In many cases, they cannot be found.

As far as commerce is concerned, certain types of objects that are considered by one tribe or another as religious have been subject to seizure and repatriation even though the work was made for sale. One example can be found in Hopi and Zuni katsina dolls; carvings depicting spirit beings much like Christian saints have long been, and continue to be, made for sale. This has not just affected dealers and collectors but Native American artists themselves, unsure of changing prohibitions.

The original law required substantial evidence that the items claimed for repatriation were actually from that tribe, but this consideration has fallen by the wayside before complaints that it unduly slowed the process of repatriation. Activists have pursued a requirement for consultation with the tribes about what can be exhibited, and insisted on what they deem the proper way to take care of works in institutions. I find this to be understandable and positive, but it has also been carried to an extreme. According to Dr. Weiss, in some cases, even access for study purposes has been denied to scholars and scientists because they were female.

As activist pressure has led to regulations expanding way beyond NAGPRA’s original targets of grave robbing, religious items, and theft, museum officials have removed purely secular works from view and closed galleries during the lengthy process of tribal consultation. I know of situations where tribal representatives have declared a work in a museum collection is not to be shown to the public, but won’t take it back because they too are not allowed to see the object due to its religious significance.

In her conclusion, Dr. Weiss writes, “NAGPRA began as a compromise to allow scientific research and museum exhibits to be preserved, excluded works made for sale and display, and yet also enabled federally recognized tribes to obtain their most culturally valuable materials, funerary objects along with ancestral human remains.” That this is no longer a compromise is amply demonstrated by one of the examples Weiss cites: “The Navajo tribe recently sought to halt a NASA flight on the grounds that the moon is sacred to the tribe.”

July 4th Weekend

Several people asked me last week whether I had a good Independence Day weekend. My first reaction was that we didn’t do much, and then I thought for 30 seconds and realized that was not correct. In Santa Fe, they have a tradition of pancakes on the Plaza and a vintage car show. The pancakes were not on my diet, but the old cars did not add any calories. I have written about it before, but this year there were many more cars and so many more people that it was impossible to get good photos, but here is the one I did take.

The city’s fireworks display could hardly be seen from our house, but real excitement was provided a few hours earlier with the opening of the Santa Fe Playhouse’s production of “Cabaret” in the theater of the Scottish Rite Temple. On stage through July 19, it is particularly apt for this 250th anniversary of Independence.

The concept for the play originated from Christopher Isherwood’s “Good Bye to Berlin” published in 1939 and later included in his 1945 book “Berlin Stories”. This inspired a 1951 play, “I am a Camera” by John van Druten and a 1955 film. This in turn inspired the present Musical “Cabaret” with a book by Joe Masteroff and music and lyrics by Kander &Ebb. The musical opened on Broadway in 1966 and was a great success, winning awards, with a 1998 revival also winning awards. However, it is probably best known through its 1972 movie choreographed by Bob Fosse starring Liza Minnelli and Michael York, with Joel Gray, originator of the role of the Emcee on Broadway, and here is the Emcee played by Jeffrey Barba in the Santa Fe production.

The story is the thing, all based on Isherwood’s contemporary notes during his time in Berlin from 1929, when he moved to visit his friend, the poet W.H. Auden, and stayed until 1933. During that period, Isherwood enjoyed the city’s decadent cabaret scene and homosexual opportunities. In the current version of the musical, the ambience is depicted through the Kit Kat Club and its emcee. We are shown the dark before the storm in these hedonistic times at the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic. Friendships were split as Jews were beginning to be discriminated against. In 1933, students in Munich burned books that were not approved of. That was the same year my father was thrown out of University there for being Jewish.

We all know where this ended, but it did not happen from one day to the next. Hitler did establish the first Concentration Camps as soon as he became Chancellor, but they were known as work camps in 1933. The “Final Solution” started slowly with Hitler’s 1939 "euthanasia" program. The gassing of those with disabilities progressed to the mass gassings of the Jews and others by late 1941.

The musical, however, does not go into all this horror but rather depicts what led up to it. Certain actions and phrases hit my wife and me very hard. The landlady in the show plans to marry the local fruit vendor, and she is warned that it “wouldn’t be wise”. The transition from the Weimar Republic to full throated Naziism is demonstrated when one of the characters throws off his jacket, revealing the swastika on his armband. As the play is coming to an end, the emcee pretends to have fallen for one of the girls in the Kit Kat Klub and sings a love song ending with the poignant line, “if you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all”.

A personal story about people’s defense or excuses: In the late 1970’s I went with my wife, who was then a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, to see a private art collection outside Berlin. The collector was old and bedridden, so her caretaker led us upstairs. When she brought us down to leave, she must have recognized me as Jewish, and to my astonishment she grabbed my arm with both her hands and said, “We didn’t know, we didn’t know”!

Leaving the theater on July 4, 2026, we were haunted by the relevance of the final line of the play:  “We were asleep”.

A Gallery Model Has Failed

Many of you know that my family gallery, known in the U.S. as Rosenberg & Stiebel, later Stiebel, Ltd., was founded around 1870 in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1939, when it became established in the U.S., it was run out of a one-bedroom apartment in New York and in 1944 moved to 32 East 57th Street. There were many galleries in the neighborhood, but in 1968 a contemporary gallery moved into “our” building.  I always teased the owner, Arne (pronounced Arnie) Glimcher, that we were there first😊. They were very nice and very generous in that when we celebrated our opening of a small contemporary section of our gallery, an artist represented by their gallery, Chuck Close, came to our opening luncheon.

Our venture (Stiebel Modern) into contemporary was brief, and as the years passed, the interest in European Old Master painting, drawings, and decorative arts also waned, and we closed our gallery in 2014. Meanwhile, the contemporary art field flourished, growing bigger and bigger all the time. Contemporary galleries added satellite galleries all over the world. Guess what? Nothing lasts forever, and that model also began to become shaky in the early 2020’s.

A few weeks ago, an article by Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times announced, “A challenging art market is forcing even an established player to contract.” The focus was on Arne Glimcher’s son Marc, who has been running Pace since 2010, saying that the current model for galleries (meaning contemporary ones) was not working anymore.

Pace was therefore cutting 50 artists from their roster (30% of their representation) and 50 people from staff (representing 20%). Continued expansions with less foot traffic and fewer mega sales were not supporting the outlay. For instance, Pace moved to their new flagship location in 2019 on West 25th Street in Chelsea. They had renovated the 8-story building at a cost of $100 million, which the developer shared, but they must also pay an annual rent of $9 million on a 20-year lease. They are not giving up that space but contracting in other ways. Those are sums that I can hardly comprehend and certainly not compare with my former gallery.

We read how the art market is crashing, but that is based on the figures we get from the mega sales at a couple of auction houses and what is released by the few galleries that are asked and respond to journalists. According to an analysis by Julien Delagrange, a Belgian artist and art critic as well as Director of CAI Magazine (contemporaryartissue.com), the number of purchases of art has actually increased in the last few years but not their total dollar value. Much like a bubble, for a number of reasons including Covid, high-end sales above $10 million have diminished.

Needless to say, Pace is not alone. After 30 years, Tim Blum of the Blum gallery permanently shut down his public spaces, which included galleries in Los Angeles and Tokyo in addition to New York. Blum also pointed out that there were systemic issues such as the relentless pace of continuous exhibitions and fairs. Going with your inventory from art fair to art fair is obviously exhausting, no matter how large the staff. Note that his giving up public spaces does not mean that he is giving up on the art business, as he will continue to work privately. I know that he is not alone and have heard this from others in the world of old art as well.

I have just scratched the surface, as I always do. If it is of interest, I encourage you to read more online to properly understand what is behind all the hype about the “demise” of the art world. If you enjoy art world gossip, you can gain access by going to the online art magazine Hyperallergic, where you will find an article from June 23 by Valentina Di Liscia and Rebecca Schiffman titled “Pace Gallery’s Hall of Mirrors,” which goes into what artists and employees have to say about Pace’s downsizing.

Viewing Two Paths to Power Through Art

I am always looking for subject matter and inspiration for my Missives. This week I saw an announcement for a new wing at the New York Historical Museum (formerly known as the New-York Historical Society). It is the oldest museum in the city founded in 1804 by private individuals concerned with preserving the past. The title of the institution’s new wing, The Tang Wing for American Democracy, made me think of art created to stir in emotions to the cause of democracy and despotism.

Athens is regarded as the cradle of democracy and the Parthenon on the Acropolis its greatest architectural representation. It was commissioned by the statesman Pericles between 447 and 438 BC as a tribute to Athenian Democracy and its triumph over Persian invaders. The city’s radical experiment with rule by the people is represented in the Parthenon frieze with images of common people together with the gods as had never before been depicted in a major temple.

Two great cultures the Roman and Greek existed side by side for a time. In In times of crisis citizens of the Roman Republic elected a dictator giving him ultimate power, but only for a term of 6 months. Julius Caesar, however, had himself named dictator for life, which, of course, ended with his assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC. In 2007 a life size bust was discovered in the Rhone River near Arles. Dating it between 49 and 46 BC, researchers believe it to be the only surviving portrait of Julius Caesar sculpted during his lifetime. Subsequent Roman emperors continued to disseminate multiple copies of their portrait busts as propaganda throughout the Empire.

Centuries later another experiment in democracy was founded in the United States, and it did not start smoothly, especially on the frontier of this country. A good example of this in action is an 1854 in a painting by George Caleb Bingham, "The County Election", now in the St. Louis Art Museum. Bingham did a series of these paintings. You can see that the people did not vote in voting booths but out in the open where they had to declare their vote publicly.

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gerasimov (Russian, 1861-1963) painted Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) as an orator in “Lenin on the Tribune”. Lenin only ruled after the Russian Revolution in1917 until his death in 1924 but during that time He established a one-party state, dismantled democratic institutions, and used secret police to violently suppress political opponents.

Eugène Delacroix painted, probably his most famous painting, “Liberty Leading the People” aka “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” in 1830. The July Revolution toppled the despotic King Charles X. You can see the aristocrat with his top hat on the left of Liberty and the commoner youth on the right fighting together for the same cause.

I remember as a young boy watching military parades during and after the Korean war. They were exciting and even as a 10-year-old I felt great civic pride. Needless to say, dictators use parades to stir that feeling in the people. Here is the image by poster artist Ludwig Hohlwein (1874–1949) showing Hitler leading a parade disseminated by the German postal service as the cover of a telegram folder.

Why not end with the ultimate symbol of Democracy the Statue of liberty. It was created in the Greco-Roman style by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi as a gift from France in 1886. It was not only a symbol of friendship but also to celebrate the centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The idea was conceived in 1865 but fund raising in France was delayed by the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and then the Americans who were to build the pedestal struggled to raise those funds. Creating an icon takes time!

 

David Hockney

I often need to use the search engine of my Missives (upper left) to check what I have written about before. I did so as I thought of writing about David Hockney (1937-2026). I have mentioned him often, but never written solely about the artist himself. Hockney died earlier this month, and as always happens, a slew of articles have been written about him and his work now that he is gone.

Hockney was born in Yorkshire, England, and studied, lived, and worked there until he was in his forties. In the 1960’s, he visited the United States often and even came over to teach. Then in 1978, he moved to Los Angeles. He also acquired a studio in Normandy during the last years of his life, but always kept a home in England, and that is where he died. In 1994, Prince and now King Charles III, referred to Hockney as a dear friend, and when the artist died, the BBC headline read “King leads tributes to ‘giant of the art world’ David Hockney”.

What particularly captured my attention was the headline in the New York Times in an article by Alex Marshall, “With iPhones and Faxes, David Hockney Embraced Tech”. I have dwelled on the issue of keeping up with the advances in technology, particularly in the area of the arts. This article cited Hockney’s referring back to the 19th century, when the metal paint tube suddenly allowed artists to take their paints wherever they wished to work.

While others bemoaned and feared all the advances, Hockney embraced them. He created art with the Polaroid Camera, the fax machine, photocopiers, iPads, and iPhones. I wonder how he felt about AI and how it affected his interests?

I was surprised to learn how he used faxes in his art. Apparently, he did not consider the fax the end product, but rather a vehicle to disseminate his art, sending friends images of drawings he had done. When he found that some of his faxes were in an auction sale, he objected, stating that they were made to be given away, adding, “How would I be paid?” They were sold anyway, and some have found their way into museums. The Met, for instance, has about 25 of these faxes in its collection. Here is an example that was sold in Los Angeles.

Defining Hockney’s style is not simple. Cubism had an influence, while flattened images and bright colors became staples of his work. He was certainly drawn to the bright sunlight of Southern California. Another article in the N.Y. Times by Jori Finkel is titled, “How David Hockney Taught Los Angeles to See Itself”. “A Brit, he became a symbol of the city’s culture, stylish and alienating, with his vivid swimming pool paintings and embrace of the SoCal (Southern California) light, hedonism and gay liberation.” Here are two illustrations: a photomontage Nude, 17th June 1984, and a painting, Mulholand Drive.

Finkel tells us that Hockney did not only use high tech. In 1988, he also used a broom. No, not to paint with but to put a brush on so that he could reach the bottom of a pool. The device allowed him to paint swooshes of bright blue on the bottom of the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This reminded me of half a century ago, my wife and I being stopped in the halls of the Metropolitan Museum by the head of the 20th century art department, Henry Geldzahler, who pulled out a Kodak envelope with prints from an entire roll of photographs Hockney had taken of Henry floating in a pool and Christopher, his life partner, diving in and swimming. Henry was so proud of those photos that he wanted us to see every last one of them.

Geldzahler became pivotal to the contemporary art world, having nearly daily phone calls with Andy Warhol. He also brought artists like Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning to the fore. But he was a close friend of Hockney for many years.  Henry and Christopher were the subject of one of his greatest paintings from 1969, which brought $49.5 million in 2019 at a Christie’s London sale.

In summing up, one might say that Hockney wore a coat of many colors. He did not concern himself with the tenets of an artist’s traditional tools and methods. Instead, he enjoyed exploring all the possibilities that technology offered him.

Buying with One’s Ears

We all do it, though we don’t always realize it… buy with our ears rather than our eyes, and sometimes without thinking. In our everyday lives, if we see the word “Sale,” we pay attention immediately. Another word that grabs our attention and the most magical word of all, or so it was explained to me by my advertising agent many years ago, is “Free”.

We don’t necessarily buy right away, but if we think we want it at some time or think maybe we can use it in the future, and it's on sale ... Do we want to go to that museum or exhibition, and if it is free admission today? Maybe this is an opportunity to take advantage of it being free.

Buying with our ears is also something we do as art collectors, though we have to be wary of it. You wouldn’t see the word “free” at an art gallery or auction house, but “sale” sometimes occurs in a gallery ad. That usually worries me, thinking there must be something wrong with the work of art or that the artist is surely not selling well. That is just my suspicious mind. It is quite possible that the gallery just wants to expose the artist more to the general public, or maybe, just maybe, the gallery can get a well-known but tight-fisted collector to buy it. Then the gallery can say, “You know the CEO of a major company bought one recently.”

The idea, of course, is to grab your attention but also to intrigue a potential buyer. I recently saw an ad announcing a “Newly Confirmed Lucien Freud Debuts in London”. If it was newly confirmed, it was either doubted before or found in someone’s attic. I prefer the latter to the former. Debates over authenticity always existed, but a consistent attribution is always preferable. Otherwise, one has to worry about what the next expert has to say.

Here is another one: “Rediscovered Constable Goes on View for First Time in Decades”. That is enticing, we love to learn about discoveries, kind of like unearthing a treasure, even if you did not do it personally.

A provenance from a well-known collector or personage is exciting because you can feel you have a relationship with that individual. Or in the case of a painting by Winston Churchill, you have touched a piece of history.

In the auction room or gallery, people want to hear why they should buy the work of art. Some people like scandal, and I heard of someone being proud they owned something that had belonged to Jeffrey Epstein … chacun à son goût.

Better, of course, if you can say it compares with this other important work. Even better if you can tell a story, a true one like this…. We had a good friend and client, Baroness Clarice de Rothschild, of the Vienna Rothschilds. After WWII, she went into the salt mine at Altaussee, Austria, where Hitler’s art squad had neatly placed her treasures all together. She didn’t get everything from their five palaces, but more than enough to furnish her Park Avenue apartment in New York. She sold much of the rest through our gallery, Rosenberg & Stiebel. I could have also added that she crashed my first wedding at the Plaza Hotel! My parents would not have dared to ask a Rothschild for a personal event. I mention this last part because if you tell the human story around a work of art, it brings the piece closer to the collector.

If you read my Missives regularly, you are probably tired of my repeating this, but I will continue to remind my readers to buy a work of art because you want to live with it or simply feel you can’t live without it!