In U.S. District Court last week, the Seattle Art Museum was told they have no right to sue a gallery that fraudulently sold a looted Matisse painting to SAM patrons the Bloedel family. The painting, a very good Odalisque, was subsequently donated to SAM, which this year returned the painting to the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, the Jewish dealer who lost the painting to Nazi looters.
Knoedler Gallery, which sold the painting to Prentice and Virginia Bloedel in 1954, had information that the painting was part of Rosenberg's collection, but failed to tell the Bloedels, despite requests from the family for more information about the painting's provenance. Judge Robert Lasnik ruled that the Bloedels' donation to SAM did not confer the right for SAM to sue on behalf of the Bloedels. The museum's open options, according to publicist Linda Williams, include asking the judge to revisit his decision, appealing it to a higher court, or getting Bloedel heir Virginia Wright, who presumably would have legal standing to sue Knoedler Gallery, to do so.
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In happier news for SAM, the board of directors has decided the museum should expand its main building, less than 10 years after moving in. The empire-building museum owns the entire block between University and Union Streets and First and Second Avenues, but the museum takes up only a third of the block; the other two thirds are occupied by a small parking lot and the dowdy, non-landmarked Museum Plaza building. The expansion would address a variety of needs, with more space for everything: the cafe, store, offices, storage, and -- oh yes -- more exhibition space. Ah, the joys of a boom economy (as long as you're not an impoverished young artist whose live/work space is getting turned into high-end condos).
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In the wake of this year's upheaval at On the Boards, a very positive repercussion is -- oh, I don't want to mix my metaphors -- percussing? As you no doubt remember, On the Boards fired Artistic Director Mark Murphy and Managing Director Sara Pasti this spring, then rehired Murphy in the wake of massive protests from the performance space's artists and patrons. The dancers and performers who spearheaded the campaign on Murphy's behalf have continued to work toward the creation of a permanent artist advisory council for the organization, and last week circulated a draft set of guidelines for the council.
The proposed eight- to 10-member council would hold open quarterly meetings, and would also nominate two members to serve as full voting members of OTB's board of directors, which currently has no performing artists serving on it. Unfortunately, those two will have to sign a "conflict of interest release form," which probably means they will be barred from performing at On the Boards during their terms. This would be a pointless restriction -- at OTB, the board of directors isn't in charge of programming, so there shouldn't be a conflict of interest for performing artists. And in a town with as few venues for contemporary dance and performance as Seattle, such a restrictive clause would make it difficult to recruit qualified performing artists for the board.
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