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When David A. Ross succeeded Thomas Armstrong as the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in January, the art world wondered whether the Whitney would try to overcome the criticism that its exhibitions seemed to be guided by trendiness more than scholarly pursuits.
What is the first major retrospective Mr. Ross is planning? A two-floor blockbuster show of the fashion photographer Richard Avedon's work scheduled for 1994.
Insiders at the museum say even the trend-conscious curators are surprised by how big the show is expected to be. Indeed, the only other times the museum has used two floors for a single exhibition were for Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning.
"I don't think we should equate architecture and space to relative judgments of greatness," Mr. Ross said the other day. "They're kind of irrelevant. An artist doesn't have to be long dead or a painter to be serious. Avedon is an important artist and we're planning to approach this in a serious manner. Besides, this is the kind of exhibition that needs space."
The Avedon show, whose curator is Jane Livingston, formerly of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, will be even more ambitious than the 2,100 pictures the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited in its Avedon exhibition 13 years ago. "There will be far less about fashion, which the Met show emphasized," Ms. Livingston said. What the Whitney will be showing are many early works, dating from the 1940's, that he hasn't printed until recently, as well as several series that have never been publicly exhibited before. "The installation will be elaborate, too," Ms. Livingston said. "We're planning to show pictures on enormous scales." She and Mr. Avedon also plan to work with Anita Stewart, a lighting designer, who will program a computerized system to exhibit the works dramatically.
"The show is still in the planning stages," Mr. Ross said. "We're not ready to announce corporate sponsorship yet, but we are hoping it will go on a tour to London, Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles."
Mr. Ross is also hoping Mr. Avedon will photograph Adelaide, his wheaten terrier. "I brought her over to Dick's studio hoping they'd fall in love," he said. "But Dick is used to seeing a lot of beautiful women. And I guess Addie's just another pretty face." Return of 2 Nudes
Here is one of the few art world tales with a happy ending:
On Dec. 2, two nude figures, one of a woman and the other a baby girl, were removed from "The New World," a work by the New York sculptor Tom Otterness in the plaza of a new Federal court building in downtown Los Angeles. A spokesman at the General Services Administration said from San Francisco that Edwin Thomas, regional director of the agency, which manages Federal buildings, ordered the pieces removed. He had received a complaint from Representative Edward R. Roybal, a 75-year-old Los Angeles Democrat who heads the Congressional subcommittee that oversees the agency, and for whom the building is to be named when it opens at the end of January. Mr. Roybal said the nude sculptures were not appropriate for a Federal building.
"The New World" features a 300-foot-long colonnade topped with friezes portraying a revolution that gives birth to a New World, as symbolized by a baby holding up a globe in a fountain of mist. The work also includes a figure of a woman.
The figures were removed without Mr. Otterness's knowledge or consent. He said in a recent telephone interview that he was in Frankfurt at the time installing another work and was awakened in the middle of the night by a reporter from The Los Angeles Times who told him of the missing pieces. "I had no warning," Mr. Otterness said. "Certainly I was taken aback." The work was three years in the making, he said, and the General Services Administration reviewed sketches of the sculpture.
When the word got out that the two nude figures had been removed, it resulted in a chorus of protests from the art world on both coasts. Others denouncing the move included the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles.
For a while it looked as though the incident would end up in court as a test case of the 1990 Visual Artists' Rights Act, a law designed to protect artists against mutilation or unauthorized alteration of their work. But both Mr. Otterness and the General Services Administration seemed eager to find a solution. "The General Services Administration claimed to be concerned about the security of the pieces," said Henry Welt, a partner in the New York firm of Kronish, Lieb, Weiner & Hellman, which represents Mr. Otterness. "So we focused on the issue of vandalism as a means of negotiating."
And negotiate they did. Indeed, the General Services Administration has agreed to put back the two nude figure, Mr. Welt said, and Mr. Otterness is designing a 30-inch-high bronze railing at the agency's request to protect the work. The sculptor said he expected everything to be in place in time for the opening. Mr. Roybal's office said yesterday that he was traveling and could not be reached for his reaction to the agreement.
"We don't have many victories in the public art scene," Mr. Otterness said. "I'm happy if there is debate and discussion about the piece. That's the purpose of public art." An Expert Indeed
Last week at Knightsbridge Crown Court in London, James Hodges, a former Sotheby's antiquities expert, was convicted of stealing a first century B.C. bronze helmet and a sixth-century B.C. terra-cotta bowl. Together the items are worth about $85,000. Mr. Hodges was also convicted of false accounting and of forging a document that gave him the authority to take the artworks. He was acquitted of 18 other charges, however, that included theft, forgery, false accounting and obtaining property by deception. On Dec. 18, he was sentenced to nine months in jail.
During the five-and-a-half-week trial, the 34-year-old expert spun tawdry tales of auction-house intrigue involving Sotheby's foreign clients. Mr. Hodges testified that he set up English bank accounts, evaded taxes and hid smuggled goods. He also said that for years he had "acted as a bank" for overseas clients, keeping about $200,000 cash for foreign customers in a special gold cupboard at Sotheby's Bond Street office in London. Mr. Hodges also testified that he kept a ledger of his dealings with Italian, French, Indian and Swiss-based smugglers, but that he had destroyed it after a Frenchman and an Italian entered his home and threatened to arrange "an accident" for his younger daughter if the information in the ledger was made public. He was so frightened, he told the court, that he sent his wife and daughter to the United States. He also said Sotheby's officials "shut their eyes to the smuggling" he saw go on for the 11 years he worked there.
The auction house denies Mr. Hodges's allegations. "We knew during the lengthy investigation he would make some unattractive and untrue allegations against Sotheby's to make his case," Timothy Llewellyn, Sotheby's chief executive officer for Europe and Asia, said in a recent telephone interview. "Sotheby's did not authorize any member of the company to set up bank accounts of any kind. We vehemently deny that charge."
Mr. Llewellyn did say that the auction house was fully justified in offering its clients anonymity through the use of pseudonyms. "That's not to say if the proper authority were to inquire about an individual we wouldn't give them the information," he added.
Mr. Llewellyn also was quick to point out that antiquities are a particularly sticky area of collecting. "We are aware of the difficulties caused by a significant number of objects illicitly exported and illicitly excavated," he said. "This affects everyone in the antiquities market. People bring antiquities to us all the time and it's difficult for our experts to sort things out. We do the best we can."
Experts at Sotheby's think Mr. Hodges took the pieces in 1987, Mr. Llewellyn said, but the theft was not discovered for two years. When the antiquities department moved its offices, the identifying tags on the pieces were inadvertently lost and they were put on a shelf with other works whose owners were unknown. When Sotheby's realized the pieces had vanished, it reported the missing property to the police.
During the trial it was learned that the police found the pieces after Mr. Hodges left an anonymous note and key on the collection plate at Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge addressed to the investigating police officer. The note told him to look in a luggage locker at the St. Marylebone railway station. The pieces were there, wrapped in a copy of The Racing Post. Mr. Hodges later admitted he had left the note, and the police arrested him.
The antiquities belonged to Xoilan, a London concern, which gave them and other property to Sotheby's for safekeeping. The items now are back in Sotheby's possession.
"This all happened quite a long time ago," Mr. Llewellyn said. "Over the years, we've developed a far more sophisticated inventory and computer tracking system. It would be more difficult to commit such a crime now."