According to the Associated Press, the executive director
of the C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, Mont., has been
fired. The board of trustees made the announcement on
March 26. Director Inez Wolins served just two years. In
three years, the museum has gone through two executive directors,
settled out of court a wrongful discharge lawsuit with its former
longtime Curator of Art Elizabeth Dear and turned over virtually
its entire staff because of resignations. The museum, which
celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2003, is one of the world's
leading Western art museums, home to a permanent collection of
art spanning the creative life of Charlie Russell. Wolins'
credibility was questioned when it was reported she had resigned
under pressure from a previous position as director of the Harn
Museum at the University of Florida. The Gainesville Sun
newspaper reported Wolins had been asked to resign after
university officials discovered she did not have the doctorate
from New York University that was listed on her resume.
In Mineola, N.Y., Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon and
Nassau County Department of Recreation, Parks and Museums
Commissioner Doreen Banks have announced that a former Nassau
County museum employee, charged last year in the theft of
more than 100 items from the museum, has now been indicted
for the theft and fraudulent sale of a model of the
Wright Brothers airplane, which was ultimately purchased by
the principal owner of the New York Jets. According to
Dillon, "The defendant, Richard Kappeler, 56, is accused
of stealing the model airplane, which museum representatives date
as having been made in the early 1900s. He consigned it to
Christie's London, which then sold it to an agent for New
York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson for $100,642.72. In
consigning the model to Christie's, the defendant presented
forged documents purporting to show that the model had been made
by a mechanic for the Wright Brothers using material from the
original plane."
A hand-blown, Dale Chihuly glass sculpture valued
at $50,000 was stolen from the Mockingbird Art
Gallery, Bend, Ore., in mid-April, the third piece to vanish
from the Bend gallery since November, AP reports. Titled
"Moccasin Brown Desert Basket Set with Turquoise Blue Lip Wrap,''
the work was taken by "an unkown suspect," gallery owner Pamela
Claflin told police.
New York City's Gary Snyder has moved from Chelsea to an
eastside townhouse where he will work as a private art
dealer and be open by appointment only. Snyder opened Gary
Snyder Fine Art in Chelsea in the spring of 2001. The gallery was
formerly located on 57th Street and before that in Soho. Snyder
is best known for his focus on modern American art rooted in the
1920s through the 1960s and for his championing of American
artists less examined by conventional art history.
Muriel Mallin Berman, a prominent art collector and
philanthropist known for commissioning and donating striking
modern sculptures to hospitals, colleges and parks, died April 13
in her Allentown, Pa. home, AP reports. She was 89. The
Pittsburgh native was the widow of Philip I. Berman, with whom
she collaborated on many projects before his death in 1997 at age
82. The couple lent works from their art collection to US
embassies and funded a workshop on making monumental sculpture.
