Women Gain Power in New York Arts, Report Says

NEW YORK—Between leading boards, helming multimillion-dollar fundraising campaigns, chairing galas, and handing over six- and seven-figure checks themselves, women are stepping up and taking a greater role in running New York City's cultural institutions, according to Crain's New York Business.

“Whether boards are accepting women in more powerful positions or whether women have control over more money than they used to, they are definitely becoming more prominent, particularly in the arts,” fundraising consultant Toni Goodale told Crain's.

The report looks at women who sit on the boards of prestigious New York institutions and/or have ponied up huge gifts to them, such as Museum of Modern Art President Marie-Josée Kravis; Agnes Varis, managing director of the Metropolitan Opera and vice chairman of the Jazz Foundation of America; New York Public Library Chair Catherine Marron; and Laurie Tisch, who sits on the executive committee of Lincoln Center.

"I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life."- Frank Stella

Frank Stella,(American, b.1936) American printmaker and painter Frank Stella was born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts. Stella attended Princeton University, graduated in 1958 and moved to New York City.
Influenced by Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and frequent visits to the New York art galleries, Stella began to paint. He developed the firm belief that a painting was a "flat surface with paint on it - nothing more" and created a technique of planes of color and lines in collage-like compositions which quickly gained him recognition in the art world at the early age of 25. Stella married art critic Barbara Rose in 1961. They would remain together for eight years before separating in 1969.
By the mid-1960's Stella began working with print making as a medium, utilizing screen printing, etching and lithography. By 1970 he received a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the youngest artist to ever receive such an honor. Many of his prints incorporated several different techniques to create one unique effect. In 1973 he had a print shop installed in his home in New York. Stella is still an active artist living in New York.

Annie Leibovitz Woes Shed Light On Art Loans

By Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK — Photographer Annie Leibovitz has won an extension on a $24 million loan in a financial dispute that threatened her rights to her famous images.
Leibovitz and Art Capital Group announced Friday that the 59-year-old photographer had been given more time to repay the loan. The two sides didn't say how long the extension would last.

The loan's deadline passed on Tuesday. Leibovitz would have had to repay it or lose the rights to photographs that she had put up as collateral.

Art Capital had sued for repayment in July but said Friday that it had withdrawn the lawsuit and that Leibovitz could retain the copyright to her work.

Last year, Leibovitz put up as collateral three Manhattan townhouses, an upstate New York property and the copyright to every picture she has ever taken — or will take — to secure the loan.

Leibovitz portraits have graced the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Rolling Stone.

Art Capital is a Manhattan-based company that issues short-term loans against fine and decorative arts and real estate.

Art Capital consolidated all Leibovitz's loans in September 2008. The company said Leibovitz needed the money to deal with a "dire financial condition arising from her mortgage obligations, tax liens and unpaid bills to service providers and other creditors."

Its lawsuit charged she had breached a December sales agreement with the company, granting Art Capital the right to sell the collateral before the loan came due. The lawsuit claimed the photographer refused to allow real estate experts into her homes to appraise their value and blocked the company from selling her photographs.

Art Capital has estimated the value of the Leibovitz portfolio at $40 million, and real estate brokers say her New York properties are worth about $40 million.

Pace Law School Professor and intellectual property lawyer Horace Anderson said the "messiness" of the Leibovitz case may make other lenders think twice before making loans in similar situations.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Austrian Family Seeks Return of Vermeer Sold to Hitler

The heirs of a prominent Austrian family want the government to return a famous seventeenth-century painting that they say was sold by force to Adolf Hitler in 1940, reports Agence France-Presse via Der Standard. Count Jaromir Czernin had sold Flemish painter Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece to the Nazi dictator “to protect the life of his family,” states his descendants’ attorney, Andreas Theiss.

Czernin’s wife was of Jewish origin and he was also the son-in-law of Austrian leader Kurt von Schuschnigg, who was toppled by the Nazis. Hitler acquired the painting for 1.65 million reichsmarks, Der Standard said. But the family’s attorney said a new expert appraisal found that the painting was sold for no more than one million reichsmarks, or “a fraction of its value.” The Art of Painting, which Vermeer created in 1665, has been on the walls of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1946. It is the Flemish master’s largest painting.

“We are convinced that the Austrain republic will treat this case in an open and honest manner,” Theiss said, adding that he had filed the request on August 31. The culture ministry confirmed Saturday that it had received Theiss’s request and would transmit it to a committee tasked with issuing opinions on restitutions. The painting has been owned by the Czernin family since the nineteenth century. The family had already asked for the painting to be returned in the 1960s, but their requests were rejected on the basis that it had been sold voluntarily and at an appropriate price. Jaromir Czernin had tried to sell the painting in 1938 for one million dollars to an American collector, but his plan was thwarted by the German invasion of Austria and Hitler’s opposition, Theiss said. Hitler had expressed interest in acquiring the painting as early as 1935 to put it in the Führer Museum which he planned to build in the Austrian city of Linz.