Our Very Own Dictator

It now seems that our administration wants to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As much as I want to write just about the arts there are times when I feel I have to speak out regarding the most important issues of the day that affect all of us. My blog has several thousand readers a week. The great majority are not subscribers but that is the nature of the internet and the ease of surfing the web.

Like it or not, I have a platform, and I will use it.

Authoritarian leaders, I prefer the term Dictators, have much in common. Basically, they rule by fear and the power of the purse. At the ripe old age of 80, I finally understand how a country can just give up and surrender itself to a single individual.

I have heard that people do not think it is fair to compare Trump to Hitler because Hitler came up with the extermination of 6,000,000 individuals. Of course, that was 8 or 9 years after he became Chancellor (Dictator) in 1933. But there are many other dictators that have followed similar paths if not his “final solution”. Though we have heard that Trump is setting up camps from which to deport our undocumented immigrants and even citizens.

It all gets scarier and scarier!

I found an interview online from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs from 2019. Ece Temelkuran a Turkish novelist and political commentator had written a book, “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship”. She wanted to warn the world about people like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been “President” of Turkey since 2014. Temelkuran’s first point is that these individuals will say that they represent “real people” and not the elite. The takeover “takes a lot of silence, silent approval from ordinary people, and it takes a lot of normalization of absurdity and insanity before right-wing populism turns into a real fully formed authoritarian regime.”

Temelkuran also speaks of dismantling political institutions and the judiciary, and, towards the close of the interview, says, “The very end, which I hope doesn’t happen in this country or in the European countries, is criminalizing the opposition, stigmatizing them, and finally making them feel completely insecure and under attack so that they really literally leave the country.” Today we are learning of increasing numbers who have given up their government positions or been fired and former Trump appointees who have come out against him and are being “investigated”.

Viktor Mihály Orbán, who we have heard so much about from our President has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. Did I forget to mention Trump’s closest pal, Vlademir Putin who was President of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and then again since 2012 to the present. So why shouldn’t Trump seek a third term if all his friends have stayed in office as long as they like?

So much comes down to money and fear. The billionaires often rely on government contracts or support for their projects. The newspapers hope to keep the “free press” but knuckle under to pressure fearing the loss of access. Law firms are told they will lose clients, and their lawyers will be denied entry to government buildings if they don’t stop suing the government. They have even been extorted to do pro bono work for the administration.

As I started writing Trump has declared all truck drivers must speak English. Sounds reasonable until you realize that these are grueling, and not the best paying jobs. Those willing to take them may very well be immigrants and to what level do they need English? But this Executive Order gives the government lots of leeway to make these jobs unattainable for immigrants.

Jeff Bezos, who I always thought of as one of the best of the billionaires, started to give in first when he would not allow an endorsement for President in 2024 in his newspaper, The Washington Post. Then he gave in again when Amazon was going to post how much prices would go up because of tariffs. This will harm his company more than anyone because people will just stop buying from sticker shock without a reason for the hike in prices. But Bezos has his fingers in other areas for which he will want and need government support.

Germany had the SA (Sturmabteilung) meaning 'assault division'. They were also known as the Brownshirts, infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s leftists and Jewish population. Our Brownshirts include those pardoned for the assault on the Capitol when Trump came back into office. Our politicians are so fearful that they are doing the President’s bidding not just because they may be “Primaried”. Many have received threats of violence and fear for themselves and their families.

How long will we be ruled by fear if the courts and Congress continue to find excuses to sit on their hands? Let me conclude with the final speech from the 1940 film “The Great Dictator”. It starred Charlie Chaplin who also wrote, directed, and produced it. Please listen ...

Ruminations on a Museum

We have contributed various objects to museums across a number of states in the fields of European and, lately, Native American Art, but not enough to be worth even a single gallery in a museum. But one can fantasize!

I started to think about how I would go about building a museum. One would want it to be a destination place that people feel they must see. If you happen to live in France maybe there is a spare chateau you could renovate, or in Italy, a villa. In the United States, however, there are few pre-existing destination buildings available, so you start from scratch.

How does one call attention to a building? You could start with a striking exterior. A prime example is the Guggenheim Museum in New York, built in 1959 by Frank Lloyd Wright to exhibit the modern “non-objective” art collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim. A cylindrical building on a New York corner is certainly different and almost every New York resident wanted to look at it and some took a chance and looked at the art inside.

What about the Whitney Museum that opened a new building in 1966 to show their collection of American Art. It had to be quite different from the Guggenheim, so they hired Brutalist architect, Marcel Breuer, and if you liked it or not it became another destination building.

I use as examples the museums I knew and remember being shocked by when I first saw them. It took me a while to appreciate them. There are examples like these around the country if not necessarily as extreme.
Whether your museum is being built for one person’s collection or for a community, in a single field such as African art or a collection with the broader purpose of showing the history of man, there needs to be a clear concept. Once you have defined your concept, then you need to find an architect.

The Menil in Houston was built by Renzo Piano and opened to the public in 1987 to house the collection of John and Dominique de Menil . Dominique knew what she wanted so had a major role in forming their museum, which, by the way has the most unprepossessing exterior.

It is more often the case that there is a board of trustees with a committee that will go over portfolios of many architects and interview them to see if they will be compatible with what the board has in mind.
Of course, you want your public impressed when they come into the building. One device to accomplish this is by the atrium as you come into the building. A very large, high, open space which is not only impressive but has enough room for the large groups of people you are hoping to draw in, as well as for social events. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts went through a major renovation and the architect chosen was the Studio Gang from Chicago and it opened in 2023. This architectural fact sheet will give you a great deal of detail. 

https://arkmfa.org/site/assets/files/5504/amfa_architectural_fact_sheet_-_06_03_24.pdf 
 

Here is an image of their atrium ...

There is another professional that the board and architect should introduce into the process, and that is the museum designer. Small exhibition spaces may be appropriate for some collections but will severely limit what art can be shown at the time or in the future. Decisions must be made on the variety of spaces you want based on what kind of art are you going to show. A large bright gallery, maybe even with a skylight is fine to show sculpture but would destroy a collection of works on paper. If you are showing decorative arts a gallery scaled to invoke a large size living room might be good. Galleries for temporary exhibitions will need to have flexibility, preferably with movable walls.

If you have an already established museum and are enlarging it, you must not overlook input from your museum team who have had to deal with where they have been working and what issues you and they are trying to solve beyond just creating more space. Practical considerations include more storage space if you plan to grow the collection.

Needless to say, in order to get a grip on costs, construction and engineers etc. need to be in the mix. Only in an imaginary museum can you skip the practical details😊 like temperature and humidity control and don’t forget the plumbing!

After considering everything I have mentioned above one should address the question of whether one’s collection is worthy of becoming a destination museum. With that criteria in mind my museum will have to remain a fantasy.  

Will The Bayeux Tapestry Get Longer?

Many years ago, on a trip through Normandy, France, my wife was intent on seeing the Bayeux Tapestry, which can be found in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, France.

It is a major historical document of history illustrating a turning point in what would be the future of England, but at that time, so long ago, I did not properly appreciate it. The Bayeux Tapestry as it is known, is not a tapestry at all. It is not woven but embroidered and measuring nearly 70 meters (230 feet) long, I facetiously termed it the longest dish cloth in the world!

The embroidery depicts events leading up to and including the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, led by William the Conqueror. It tells the story from the Norman perspective, focusing on William's claim to the English throne and the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings and the defeat and death of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II. Here is the scene with the Death of Harold.

The style and workmanship suggest that it was made in England, commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux who was William the Conqueror’s half-brother. He participated in the Battle of Hastings and was subsequently made Earl of Kent, given the task of guarding southeastern England. He also served as William the Conqueror's administrator and regent during the king's frequent absences. The embroidery is thought to have been made to adorn the cathedral being built in Odo’s bishopric of Bayeux and sent there around 1077. The first dated record of it in Bayeux is 1476 and it has not left France since.

Last month a missing piece of the textile with no embroidery, was found in the State Archive of Schleswig-Holstein. It had been in the estate of the textile archeologist Karl Schlabow (1891-1984) who worked for the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritage (Das Arnenerbe) founded by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to promote archaeological investigation of sites associated with early Germanic settlement. The goal was to trace a coherent history of superior Aryan culture. There was particular interest in the Bayeux Tapestry as it was thought, it might prove that the Normans had Viking heritage and therefore were of Germanic origin.

After the fall of France in 1940 the Nazis sent a team of experts in to examine the tapestry and Dr. Karl Schlabow, a member of the team, removed a small piece for his own study.

Now that it has been rediscovered, after a brief tour in Germany, the fragment will be returned to France, and the tapestry will get longer? Though there is speculation that it may have originally been even longer!

Do watch this entertaining 6-minute video to hear more from the curator of the Bayeux Museum and her amusing interlocutor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Nu79DDw03LM

Don’t, however plan a trip to see the tapestry too soon because the Museum is closing for a major renovation and will only open again in 2027.

Money, Money, Money!

Even before the lyrics from the musical Cabaret became familiar, we all knew “Money makes the world go round”. But these days and particularly in this country it has gone to such an extreme that it no longer makes any cents … no … sense!

The large auction houses do not represent the art market only one aspect of it. People in general do not want to read about aspects of everyone else’s day-to-day life, they are already living it. Therefore, the press writes headlines that everything is fabulous or, going to hell in a handbasket, whatever the extreme.

A line in a recent Art Net article reads, “According to Artnet’s data, last year there was a steep decline—44.2 percent year over year—in sales of trophy works at auction, or those sold for over $10 million.” A few sentences further on, “Still, sales in the $100,000-to-$1 million range remained resilient amid last year’s downturn, suggesting that profit-driven speculators are sitting back, and a broader collector base is interested in buying more affordable works they are passionate about…. That’s exactly the price bracket where younger collectors can participate much more actively.”

When I was a boy in the 1950’s my ambition (if I was old enough to have ambition yet) was to be a millionaire, in line TV shows like How to Marry a Millionaire. I just checked, and that would be the equivalent of 13 million dollars today. I presume kids now think that they want to be Billionaires. Well, that is about 77 times 13 million.

More statistics from the web: Currently it is calculated that there are only 3,028 Billionaires worldwide while there are 17 million professional artists. The United States account for 2.7 million artists, representing 1.6 % of all U.S. workers.

Now I know that to a great extent I am equating apples and pears because the art market consists of art through the ages, but today do you, reader, have enough money to spend more than a million dollars on a work of art or even $100,000? Probably a fraction of one percent of the world’s population would feel comfortable paying anywhere near that much.

Since most art dealers (there are over 21,500 listed in this country) and collectors do not speak of their sales or purchases except on the rare occasion of a specific example. The statistics all come from the best-known auction houses where the super-rich go to show off, competing with each other, hoping to hedge their risk from the stock market or filling in that one work missing from their collection. There are, of course, hundreds of auction houses in this country and thousands around the world that sell art. Yet when you look online you will probably find less than a dozen listed.

I have many friends who are artists and sell from hundreds of dollars to a few thousand. There are also many artists who are known by name and recognized in the press and sell in the same range and, yes, there are also some who sell for astronomical sums. I bought this small sculpture just because I found it satisfying and calming and I feel the same way years later. I bought it at a gallery in Santa Fe and it is by Jason R. Brown, he called it The Eye and it cost just under $750.

My point is that though in a recession or a time of uncertainty people have less discretionary income so all artists, like everybody else, will suffer. Obviously, there are very serious issues that we should be aware of and prepare for accordingly, but that the big auction houses are reported to have lost business should not be of concern. If you buy art that you love and can afford, the market headlines have no significance.

Return of The Gothic

No, this is not about politics, but about art. I keep telling my wife that we must accept change and that all the new features we have such as cell phones and computer programs that cause so much frustration, for everybody, also offer us advantages that we did not have previously. On the other hand, much that is new draws from the past.

An exhibition at the National Gallery in Oslo called “Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light” delves into this concept. The show will be on there until June 15 before moving to its last venue, the Albertina in Viena. I learned about it from an article on Artnet written by Jo Lawson-Tancred called “How Art from the Middle Ages Inspired Modern Artists”.

Though I had not thought about this before, when some of the late 19th and early 20thcentury artists, like Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) were cited, it seemed obvious. For instance Kollwitz’ etching depicting workers mourning the German Communist Karl Liebknecht who was murdered by state forces in 1919.

The press release from Oslo says, “The Gothic is often associated with elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.” It’s hard to deny when you think of Edvard Munch and images like “The Scream”. Even more to the point might be “Ashes”, a vision of despair as two lovers separate after an amorous encounter. Furthermore, it is known that Munch made studies of Gothic cathedrals and their rose windows through which light penetrates darkness.

When the exhibition opened in October of 2024 the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine called it “the most daring exhibition of the year”. The show originated from the research of its guest curator, Juliet Simpson, of Coventry University, that had led to an international research project.

Quoting from the Coventry University Press Release, “… Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Vincent Van Gogh and Marianne Stokes pushed the boundaries of art and society by drawing inspiration from Gothic art.” Marianne Stokes (1855-1927) was an Austrian artist who emigrated to England. Her painting of 1908, “Death and the Maiden”, from the Musée d’Orsay certainly evokes all the features mentioned above about the Gothic, elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.

A painting of an earlier date is included in the show and it is obvious why. It is an 1872 Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), lent by the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. It looks directly back to images by Hans Holbein the Younger (circa 1497-1543).

As mentioned earlier there is a continuum but still, the artist that surprised me the most was van Gogh (1853-1890), who we usually associate with “Starry Night” and vibrant colors. The painting that was featured is his 1886 monochrome “Skeleton with Burning Cigarette” from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We are quite sure that van Gogh suffered from mental illness and his later work illustrates his fascination with mortality and the dark side.

Following its Gothic theme the show associates the morbid subjects in early 20th century art with examples in medieval art. Granted many of these themes have been repeated through time. As we all know, “there is nothing new under the sun”. Still, I like to look at and think about art from different angles and not be subject to doctrine. When we are guided by others, we can often make our own leaps to find personal insights.

An Art Prescription

Our local newspaper, The New Mexican, published an article from the Associated Press by Jamey Keaten. The headline reads, “Town lets Doctors Prescribe Free Museums as Therapy”.

We have all read how art can help people, but I have never seen a government move to recommend and subsidize it. This has occurred in a small-town called Neuchatel, beneath a medieval castle and a lake by that same name in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I like the way the article starts: “The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery?” … Neuchatel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.”

This pilot project is based on a 2019 WHO report that “found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and ‘premature mortality’.” So far, just 500 such prescriptions have been given out in this town, with a population of just under 45,000. If art can do that, it is worth the price … but here it is free. Think what it would save the government on medical aid. 

I thought that could never happen in this country, but I was wrong. The prestigious Stanford University also has a program for its community. It has teamed up with Art Pharmacy, an organization which according to its website, “enables personalized social prescribing services with healthcare, university, corporate, and government partners.”

https://www.artpharmacy.co

The Stanford program offers an arts prescription which is a set of engagements in the arts customized to your personal interest. Each engagement is called a dose. You are assigned to an Art Pharmacy Navigator who will get you free tickets or whatever other access you may need. After you have fulfilled your prescription, you can apply for a renewal. To me it sounds like a good way for student and teacher alike to cope with the stress of campus life.

There is a different program called CultureRx out of Massachusetts which has brought together 12 cultural organizations with 20 healthcare providers across the state allowing the latter to write prescriptions that might benefit their patients. The medical practitioners welcomed the plan as they saw the pleasure their patients got from enjoying the arts without the expense. I am guessing that most who are reading “Missives from the Art World” have the where with all to not have to worry about this expense but how many in the general population can afford the high entry costs for many museums or the price of theater tickets?
Another organization I never would have thought existed is Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts+Mind Lab (IAM Lab) an “interdisciplinary research-to-practice initiative accelerating the field of neuroaesthetics”. Their work focuses on “social prescribing” which includes art, music culture, nature, and social connections. All these have been shown to have important health benefits.

This concept is widespread if currently available only in small doses (pun intended). Arts on Prescription is a concept that has already been tested in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Germany, if on a small scale. There was an article a couple of months ago in The Atlantic magazine called “The Anti-Social Century”. Written by Derek Thompson the opening line was “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics and even our relationship to reality”. The article stresses how we need to interact with others and how the absence of this leads to so many problems. Art prescriptions can help individuals, and, as a result, our society by encouraging them to engage in a shared experience of visual or performing arts.

In a world that has been found to be fraught with more and more stress, it is heartening to learn that the healthcare community is beginning to explore the relief that can be brought through exposure to art.

Unusual Heists

I read about a very unusual heist on Artnet recently. It was an update on a 2019 story. But I could not let it slide since it involves a golden toilet. In this case, as far as we know, no secrets were flushed down it but rather it was just absconded with. Apparently, this toilet was not just gilded but cast in solid gold by the conceptual artist, Maurizio Cattelan. Remember him more recently of Banana fame?

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2024/12/hard-to-believe.html

The work was part of an exhibition at the 18th-century Blenheim Palace in England where Winston Churchill was born.

The working Loo (known in this country as a toilet) weighed in at 98kg (216 pounds) and was attached to Blenheim’s existing plumbing. After just two days on exhibit five men broke into the Palace and ripped out the toilet which had been insured at the U.S. equivalent of six million dollars! This extraordinary event took the perpetrators just 5 minutes to enter and then leave with their booty in a Volkswagen which I presume was not a VW Bug!!

Blenheim staff brilliantly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They left the gaping hole in the bathroom cubicle and put back the police tape so when they reopened the exhibition visitors multiplied as people came to see the scene of the crime!

This story made me think of what other unusual heists there have been. Of course, there are the very well-known thefts like that of the Mona Lisa, or Edvard Munch’s The Scream and the group of paintings from the Isabella Gardner Museum. I am intrigued by some less celebrated stories.

According to fodors.com the earliest art theft in recorded history was in 1473. Hans Memling’s, The Last Judgment. Paul Beneke, a privateer ie pirate boarded a ship bound for Florence stole the painting and headed back to his native Poland. It was displayed in the Basilica of the Assumption in Gdańsk, Though Italy kept trying to get it back, it remains in that city’s museum.

Xiao Yuan is a thief you have to admire since he, himself, is an artist. He was also a librarian at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in China. He replaced 143 artworks with his own forgeries and said to have made 6 million dollars selling 125 of the works at auction. He further claimed that thefts from this museum were not unusual and that some of his paintings had been taken and substituted for inferior copies. Yes, there are thieves, as well as politicians, with extraordinary egos!

Everyone has something they think no one would, or ever could steal. We had a scrap metal sculpture that was a caricature of a dog holding a rifle. It was basically worthless, but I called it Wyatt for Wyatt Earp and put him on our portal near the front door to guard our home. Well, someone else liked it as well and it disappeared! A two-ton sculpture, however, is in a totally different category. Who can cart away a 4,000-pound piece of bronze. It turns out that in 2005 thieves stole Henry Moore’s sculpture called “Reclining Figure” from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, England, and, after cutting it up, sold this 18-million-dollar piece of sculpture for scrap metal for a whopping 2,000 dollars! Wonder what the equipment they used to cart away and chop up the sculpture cost them.

I will end with this story from the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts: In 2006, Guinness World Records awarded Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III the title of “Most Stolen Painting.” The painting earned the award, as well as the nickname “Takeaway Rembrandt,” “after being stolen four times in the last 53 years: the first time in 1966, three more thefts occurred in 1973, 1981, and 1983. The painting has been found in a luggage rack, on the back of a bicycle, and underneath a bench in a graveyard. Today, the Takeaway Rembrandt can be found hanging in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, hopefully with better security…”

Keeping Track of Your Collection

Many years ago, my wife and I met Mary Anne Goley, director of the Fine Arts Program of the Federal Reserve Board from its creation in 1975 until 2006. Besides caring for and displaying works owned by the Fed, Goley decided early in her career to create exhibitions showcasing the collections of the employees. I would guess there may have been some hesitancy at first but once one or two staff members agreed there were a flood of requests to have their collections shown. She found she had to come up with a prerequisite that I have found to be a useful definition of a collection … at least 20 items in the same category or area.

Once you have 20 to 30 works in your collection, be they old masters, stamps or fountain pens you find you need to organize them and identify each item. With my fountain pen collection this has proved quite an exercise since some pens are unmarked and for some, I need a magnifying glass to read where it might be identified somewhere on the pen. Even if you have your works of art on your walls there may be some in the closet or in a bank vault. At some point you will find yourself asking … Now where did I put that object? What was the name of that artist? Oh, the museum wants that for an exhibition, and I have no idea how the artist titled it?

You need a list, possibly with classifications. In the case of our Native American collection, we started out with albums neatly put together with photos and invoices. As the collection grew, we had to create separate albums for paintings, katsinas, pottery etc.

There are a number of programs out there for doing this. I found one online with a free version with which “to get started” but the subscriptions went up to $147/month! As an art dealer I was paying $99/month for a gallery inventory program but I was certainly not making use of all the possibilities it offered.

You must determine what you actually want to get out of such a program without it being overwhelming. What information do you think you will need to retrieve over time. Now here is a warning: I learned the hard way. With the gallery program I had been using I could have been stuck with it. Why? Because if you cancel you subscription your content disappears at the same time. So theoretically your heirs would also be tied to the program. Then there is always the danger that the company that has come up with the program goes out of business. Buyer beware!

Turns out that there is a very simple answer for most collectors, if not art dealers or museums, and that is to develop a spread sheet. I am not going to tell you that it can do all a software program can do for you, but if you find you need more than the basics you can always add another category column later. The only issue is how to create a spread sheet. I had an associate who was adept at that, but I am sure many of you can accomplish this on your own, and if not, it is not difficult to find someone to set it up for you. I learned to my surprise that you can even add images. After the spread sheet has been created you only have to fill in the blanks but don’t forget to hit “save”. Then you can pick the column, such as artist or location, to get the information you need ... as long, of course, that you entered it in the first place.

By the way, should you be interested, Mary Ann Goley published a book in 2020 called, “Democracy’s Medici: The Federal Reserve and the Art of Collecting”.  I might just order that!

What is Wrong with AI Art?

Today I will probably upset all my artist friends, but I am not sure what is wrong with AI art!

What is art? I might as well ask, what is life? In other words, it is a question with infinite answers. I believe creativity comes from the imagination or maybe a simpler idea would be thought. There is no imagination without thinking and from there extrapolation of that thought.

How do we express art. I watch children draw pictures and as soon as they are able, they draw or paint objects that they see i.e. people, objects, fruits and vegetables. Then they draw what they believe is funny such as a doll riding on a cat. That is the beginning of creativity.

As I understand it AI art is created in various steps. Here is one formula:

An artist enters a prompt into an AI art generator. The generator analyzes data to find patterns and examples of what the prompt describes. The generator uses the data to create an image or video. The artist can refine the image with additional prompts.

When Christies, this month, had the “first-ever auction dedicated to artificial intelligence generated art” 5,600 artists signed an open letter asking them to cancel the sale. They wrote:

"Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license ... "These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work."

What I don’t understand is that as long as they are not making exact reproductions why this is any different than one artist learning from another. Even a copy of a known artist’s work by their student can have value. It is not unusual to find several versions of the same painting from earlier centuries. The owner of these works, often museums, fight, metaphorically speaking, over who has the original.

It seems to me that using information about works of art to create something different is still the creative process. It all reminds me of the objections to photography. Photography, in the 19th and into the 20th century was thought of as just a mechanical process that lacked the intuitive mind of a true artist. Further there was concern that when color photography was perfected it would take the place of painting.

Neither ever happened because it is what we call the “eye” of the photographer and the painter and the way they see the world that is the creative process.

In summation, to me AI is just another tool of the trade.

The Arts Under a Dictator

For most of the past 15 years I have written an Art Blog purely focused on the art world. In good conscience I have to continue to speak to the attempt to stifle artistic expression as that is what the man or men in the White House are doing their best to achieve.

An article in Hyperallergic by Ed Simon dated February 20, 2025 is titled, “Donald Trump Brings Back, “Degenerate Art”. For those who do not recall the history, Hitler held two exhibitions in 1937. The first was “The Great Art Exhibition” showing art that Hitler approved with depictions of statuesque blond nudes, idealized soldiers and landscapes. The second was “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art, an exhibition that Hitler curated to illustrate what he considered bad art. It included modern non-representational art and particularly that by German Jews. Some of those artists were Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Marc Chagall, Franz Marc, Lyonel Feininger, George Grosz, and Emil Nolde.

Simon’s article continues, “The president’s obsession with cultural control is evidence of a continued fascist creep not just another joke exercise in narcissism”. I for one have not been laughing. Before the press would acknowledge it, I was predicting what was coming. Not because I was prescient but because I knew the playbook… my parents had to leave Germany. My father was thrown out of University in Munich when the book burnings started in the same town in 1933. If you want to know more you will find it in histories of Germany in the 1930’s when Hitler rose to power.

Hitler had a vision of architecture for what he called “Germania”. He said in 1942 that, "Berlin will be comparable as a world capital only to Egypt, Babylon or Rome." a city full of bloated marble architecture and grandiose boulevards broader than the Champs Elysee reflected his idea that Berlin would become the center of his global Third Reich.

Model for Germania

On the first day of his second Presidency Trump signed an executive order on how Federal architecture should look. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/promoting-beautiful-federal-civic-architecture/ Already in 2020 he had mandated that all future federal projects conform to Neoclassical architectural styles.

Exactly one week ago, the Los Angeles Times published an article on Trump and the arts. The article mentions that because of the latter’s DEI directive, there followed the cancellation of both a U.S. Marine Band performance featuring high school students of color and an exhibit featuring Black and LGBTQ+ artists at the Art Museum of the Americas. Under a dictatorship, it is not necessary to forbid actions directly but to let those in charge fear retribution. Unfortunately, it works!

Tracing the current editing of cultural history Adam Schrader wrote on Artnet on February 27, Following Trump’s January executive order announcing that the U.S. will only recognize two sexes, the National Park Service has deleted transgender and queer references on the Stonewall National Monument website. All mentions of “LGBTQ+” (seen on an archived version of the site from February 12) now read “LGB.”

Further, funding for a planned exhibition on physician-scientist Anthony Fauci at the National Museum of Health and Medicine has been canceled by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). I am sure that action would reduce the National Debt by some thousands of dollars, but it will also deny people the opportunity to learn about a man who staunched the epidemic that took more lives than America lost in the Civil War and World Wars I & II combined!

Hugo Crosthwaite’s portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci

The arts bring people together, be it in a gallery or theater, to share emotions and broaden understanding. It is fundamental to our lives though we may not always realize it. That is why every dictator throughout history tries to control the culture of their society telling the people what is good and what is bad. Our president joins a line of infamous leaders in addition to the one mentioned above. This from the Human Rights Foundation, “In both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, art was simultaneously silenced and weaponized to reinforce propaganda. Both authoritarian regimes understood the threat art posed to them; their totalitarian systems were built on specific narratives, which art could question, critique, and probe. Today, these are truths authoritarian leaders in countries around the globe still know. The fight to protect art continues, and with each passing day, it becomes more necessary.”

Is the Reproduction Legitimate?

Given: A work of art is an expression of creativity and imagination which, in visual form, is usually an image or sculpture, to be appreciated primarily for its beauty and/or emotional power. Further, I think we can agree that it is better to own or view an original work of art than a reproduction and a reproduction is not a forgery unless it is presented as the original.

In last week’s Missive https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2025/02/exhibitions-for-2025.html I wrote about an exhibition of many replicas of Michelangelo’s sculptures, coming to Copenhagen based on the reasoning that the vast majority of the originals cannot travel. I would think that such a show would be a great educational tool affording the public, which would not have the opportunity to travel to all the locations, the ability to see what an important artist Michelangelo was. A museum might be able to acquire a number of Rembrandts or put together an exhibition of most of Vermeer’s known work, as the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam did a couple of years ago, but this is not possible with Michelangelo’s monumental sculptures.

If, however, a museum owns a work of art, is it legitimate for it to exhibit a replica? Noah Charney, a best-selling author of books on art and a professor of art history at a number of universities wrote an article called, “A Fake of Art” in which he explores the subject. He uses as a prime example the Albertina in Vienna with its world-renowned collection of works on paper. The “rule” is that a work on paper, particularly by the Old Masters like Albrecht Dürer, should not be on view for more than 3 months at a time. Therefore, if an exhibition lasts longer, the work of art is replaced by a replica. I ask, is it better to leave a gap of a major work of art in a show or leave a facsimile in to complete the story; if you identify it as a replica?

One of the longest running art stories is whether the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum should be returned to the Parthenon in Greece. In the current climate it seems quite possible that they will be, and one current solution in the form of reproductions is being promoted. In a December 10, 2024 article in the London News Paper, the Telegraph, a headline, “Oxford-based Roger Michel is offering to replace the original sculptures with replicas that are accurate to a fraction of a millimetre”. Roger L. Michel, Jr. is founder and executive director of the Institute for Digital Archeology (IDA). Here is a brief biography of Mr. Michel and his organization. https://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/people

Already in 2022, The New York Times published an article by Franz Lidz saying, that, “Roger Michel… believes the long-running dust-up can be resolved with the help of 3-D machining. His University of Oxford-based research consortium has developed a robot with the ability to create faithful copies of large historical objects.”

In an article for an Australian publication last June Georgia Hitch and Marc Fennell wrote “Using state-of-the-art technology in a warehouse-like workshop, digital archaeologist Roger Michel and his team are recreating the hotly contested Parthenon marbles. The idea behind it is simple — make exact 3D replicas of the marbles and donate them to the British Museum in exchange for the return of the original sculptures to Greece.” The behind the scenes story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-17/parthenon-elgin-marbles-greece-british-museum/103969352

My wife who was formerly a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, reminded me that the Met was one of many Western institutions that formed collections of plaster casts of the world’s great sculptures and architectural elements for educational purposes. She recalls when over 40 years ago a Met colleague was sent to identify what survived in storage under the West Side Highway and many were in a decayed state. In 2004 the restored remains of that collection that had numbered over 2,000 objects were gifted to the Institute of Classical Art and Architecture (ICAA) where they are exhibited in the Cast Hall at the organization’s Manhattan headquarters. Here is a plaster cast of Lorenzo de’Medici (1526-1534), Duke of Urbino by Michelangelo.

I came across an article from the New York Times in 1997 by Lisa W. Foderaro titled “The Met Pioneered with Reproductions”. In a brief article she calls attention to the fact that even before the Met was built, they used reproductions to publicize their collection. As opposed to the longer articles I have given links to this one is very short tracing their use of reproductions. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/18/nyregion/the-met-pioneered-with-reproductions.html

The Victoria and Albert Museum still proudly displays the finest examples from its plaster cast collection in the original galleries that were designed for it in 1873. The Cast Halls, featuring a replica of Michelangelo’s David, are currently touted as a “must-see” for visitors.

I hope I have given you something to ponder and decide for yourselves how you feel about the issue, and I have not mentioned AI once!

Exhibitions for 2025

I was curious what exhibitions we could expect from museums for the coming year. All the lists online, as is mine, are brief and subjective. To find them all one would need to research the museums town by town. Here are some of my choices.

For the contemporary world I did find that Amsterdam’s Stedelijk and Van Gogh Museums were planning an Anselm Kiefer (1945-) exhibition. The Stedelijk has been collecting his work since 1960 and Kiefer has said that van Gogh has been one of his great inspirations. The show is to be called “Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind” (“Tell me where the flowers are”), which will be exhibited in two parts in those museums. Here is Kiefer’s interpretation of “The Starry Night” (2019). (March 7–June 9)

I have written often about how art is a great vehicle for protest and shining a light on injustice. The Centre Pompidou in Paris is about to close for 5 years for renovations but before they do their last exhibition will celebrate Black artists who have worked in Paris between 1950 and 2000. Paris is one of the most ethnically diverse cities. Just think of all the great artists who have lived there. “Paris Noir” will offer a visual survey of how Black artists have challenged dominant narratives and reflected political shifts, from African independence to the fall of apartheid.” Here is “The Struggle” (1963) by Bob Thomson (1937-1966) lent by the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. (March 19-June 30)

“Turner and Constable” and their great artistic rivalry will be at the Tate Britain in London. J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837) competed in the same genre of landscape painting and were an inspiration to many others. From the Tate’s Press Release, “vying for success through very different but equally bold approaches the scene was soon set for a heady rivalry. Turner painted blazing sunsets and sublime scenes from his travels, while Constable often returned to depictions of a handful of beloved places, striving for freshness and authenticity in his portrayal of nature. The art critics compared their paintings to a clash of ‘fire and water’”. (November 27, 2025 to April 12, 2026).

John Constable, “The White Horse, Frick Collection

“Myth and Marble” is a rare chance to see a selection from today’s greatest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures. The collection was formed in the 19th century by the Torlonia family from excavations on their lands in Italy and also by purchase of other collections. The show has been seen in Rome, Milan and Paris and is crossing the pond this year to be seen in March at the Art Institute of Chicago then at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

I have already written about Caspar David Friedrich: “The Soul of Nature” https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2023/12/caspar-david-friedrich.html

when it was in Germany. It has now arrived at New York’s Metropolitan Museum and is on until May 11.

For the first time in the U.S. there will be a solo exhibition of the work of the Dutch still-life artist Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750). Typically, she has been far less studied than her male counterparts of the period. The show “Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art” will be at the Toledo Museum of Art which was the first American Institution to acquire a work by her, back in 1956! (April 12 -July 27)

If you have been reading my Missives for a while you already know about my interest in photography and the Native American world. The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, dedicated to Indian Art, has combined the two. It is presenting an exhibition called “Storyteller: The Photography of Jerry Jacka”. Last year Jacka’s (1934-2017) archive was donated to the Heard. Jacka, a widely published Anglo photographer born and raised in Arizona is known for his images of the Southwest and documentation of Native American culture . The Heard exhibition will show his portraits of Native artists paired with examples of their work. (February 7 – October 12, 2025)

I will end with a most unusual exhibition at the Copenhagen National Museum of Art. It will be the largest and most “comprehensive presentation of Michelangelo's sculptural work the world has seen in 150 years! It is called “Michelangelo Imperfect”. Why? Because the show consists of the museum’s collection of “historical casts of Michelangelo’s sculptures alongside brand-new reproductions, original drawings and sculptural models.” The Museum asserts “This way, you can experience the majority of all Michelangelo’s sculpture in one place.”

That obviously would not be possible with the originals. (March 29-August 31, 2025)

Reproduction Figure of Day, Giuliano Medici tomb

The Michelangelo exhibition presents a dilemma: the issue of illegitimacy of the reproduction as a substitute for the original vs. the opportunity of seeing the scope of an artist’s entire body of work - an idea worthy of further exploration ...

It’s Not Just Tariffs

Last week I wrote about how the Administration’s proposed tariffs would affect the art world, but there is more according to an article from February 6 on Artnet titled “A Running List of How the Trump Administration in Impacting the Arts”.

Trump has again disbanded the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH). He did this during his first administration, and it was reinstated under Biden. This committee was introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1982. It worked with the White House, National Endowment for the Arts, the Humanities, Museums and Library Sciences and others. It had a positive impact in advising economic development public health, education and climate change among other matters.

A meeting of the PCAH with a rare visit from the President

The members of Presidential committees receive no compensation. The only cost to the government is member expenses of travel to meetings and lodging. I served on two presidential committees under Presidents Reagan and Clinton. The former was a committee that advised the IRS on art matters. Expert advice was wanted as to whether works of art were being undervalued for estates or overvalued for donation purposes.

Rather than a cost to the government, the advice of the IRS art panel saved money. As evidence of the “vast” cost savings that shutting down the Arts & Humanities committee will bring, look at its budget of a mere $334,947, most of which would be for the administrators.

Trump may believe that he knows better how to advise the arts and humanities communities ... or does he just want to do away with any advocacy for the arts?

If you think I exaggerate, The Los Angeles Times of February 10 reported “shock waves through the world of arts and culture” when he announced that he intends to appoint himself as Chairman of the Kennedy Center! As I have learned while editing this Missive, after firing several members of the board, he has been “elected” Chairman!

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has become a cudgel. Whatever someone in the new administration doesn’t like can be done away with based on this concept of equality and fairness being bad. It is, of course, most potent against the arts which by its nature includes many minorities. The Smithsonian immediately knuckled under and closed its office of diversity. The administration’s order also encourages employees to report any DEI related activities, just as in any totalitarian country. From the movie “After Yang” ...

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency that provides grants to artists, cultural organizations, universities, and more. The NEA's mission is to promote the arts and strengthen communities' creative capacity. It is now in the process of changing its rules so as not to give funds to arts organizations that practice DEI. The impact is great as the arts provide an important vehicle for addressing social issues. Will this, de facto, end up censoring theater and film? How will this affect obtaining visas for performing artists from abroad?

The White House has ordered a freeze on billions of dollars of Federal Grants. That would be devastating to the arts organizations that depend on grants including NEA grants. Small organizations are concerned as to whether they can survive. I know it is making arts organizations in Santa Fe very nervous. The federal funding freeze is being challenged in the courts, but the administration has taken the position that the Executive branch is more powerful than the Judicial, and hence can ignore the courts.

Donations are often made to what people feel are the most important causes. Medicine has understandably been the leading beneficiary, but even in that light the arts are important for mental health. They have been around since man could express her/himself and have had some form of public support in every culture.

Allow me to conclude from a paragraph in that Los Angeles Times article commenting on the damage being done by the President’s Executive Orders:

“As a tool for dissent the arts are unrivaled.” Perhaps this is what the current administration fears. The paragraph continues that the arts “also build empathy, encourage creative problem-solving and build strong communities. None of these values appear to currently have a place in Washington”.