by Jon Lackman | 1 February 2010 | Modern
Lee Rosenbaum recently noted the rising popularity of exhibitions about attribution mysteries: “One side-effect of museums’ efforts to cut costs may be a proliferation of this subset of the ‘dossier exhibition’—the attribution exhibition. If museums must curtail sprawling (and expensive) blockbusters, they’re going to need a hook to attract visitors to smaller shows.”
In ARTnews, William D. Cohan reports at length on “the authenticity of 74 ‘recently discovered’ plaster casts of Degas sculptures”:
Those who remain unconvinced that a previously unknown plaster of the Little Dancer was made during Degas’s lifetime have started mobilizing in opposition. A meeting was held at an undisclosed location in New York on January 19 [including Gary Tinterow, Richard Kendall, Theodore Reff, Patricia Failing, Shelley Sturman, Daphne Barbour, and Arthur Beale]. For now, the curators and art historians who met in New York are remaining silent, fearful of the lawsuits that might result from any public challenge to the validity of the so–called lifetime plasters … [B]ecause of the increasing threat of litigation against them, art historians have opted to remain silent lately in a number of cases … [Dealer Gregory] Hedberg has a long list of “sculpture experts and art historians who have carefully studied the actual plasters themselves and who basically concur that these plasters must be lifetime casts” … The dispute erupted late last year, when the little–known Herakleidon Museum published a glossy catalogue in three languages to accompany a show of 74 bronzes cast from the “recently discovered” plasters … [curator Walter] Maibaum said he would welcome a symposium where the evidence could be presented and opposing views aired. “A great art discovery such as this one is truly hard to accept unless it’s associated with a major institution,” he said. “This is not associated with an institution, so it’s troubling to some.”
