Lost and found: The missing painting will be removed from sale after it was offered for auction as part of the late American billionaire and philanthropist John W Kluge's estate. Photo: Joe Armao
A SIGNIFICANT Papunya Tula painting missing for more than 10 years has turned up at auction in Melbourne, and its journey — from hanging in a remote Northern Territory health service to yesterday’s withdrawal from sale as part of an American billionaire’s collection — is rockier than Uluru.
The work, catalogued as Old Tatump and Natuma Tjaltjarri (1915-1987), was last month identified by Melbourne-based curator John Kean, formerly arts adviser to Papunya Tula Artists and the interim administrator for Pintupi Homelands Health Service at Walungurru (or Kintore) community in the NT in the mid-80s.
Mr Kean says he commissioned the work, depicting the journey of the Pintupi and Luritja people from Papunya, where they unhappily lived from 1957 to 1981, to their homeland 530 kilometres west of Alice Springs, from artist Charlie Wartuma, a founder of Papunya.
The work was part of the late American billionaire and philanthropist John W. Kluge’s collection being sold tomorrow night through Mossgreen Auctions to benefit Columbia University, where Mr Kluge studied. It will now be repatriated to the health service for its historic, not financial, worth.
Dubious sales have plagued this important art movement, and establishing provenance remains the most challenging issue facing the indigenous Australian art market today — and this painting, despite the happy ending, is no exception.
Several weeks ago, Mr Kean was showing a slide of the large acrylic on plywood story board during a lecture at the Victorian Arts Centre, explaining it had disappeared 10 years ago, when a member of the audience told him it was in the latest Mossgreen catalogue under a different title.
Mr Kean, who believes it is the work he commissioned despite the title difference, alerted Mossgreen’s indigenous art specialist, Shaun Dennison, and Pintupi Health Service board.
Mr Dennison traced the provenance and the Pintupi Health Service board wrote to Columbia University explaining the work’s historic significance, requesting the work’s donation.
Mr Dennison says he believes the painting’s disappearance from the health service goes back further. Documentation shows it was purchased by the Mr Kluge in 1996.
Mr Dennison cites four prior owners – a ranger in the Kintore area, Peter Bartlett; Yuendumu community dealer Peter Van Groesen; Kimberly Art director Peter Harrison; and the Museum Art International Adelaide director, David Cossey.
Mr Kean said last night that discussions he had had with senior health worker at Pintupi Health Service, Marlene Nampitjinpa, and board member, Tommy Conway, indicated that the painting had been “illegally taken” from the health service.
Mrs Nampitjinpa, who still works at the health service, says “it must have been wrapped in a blanket at night time and taken away”.
Source: www.smh.com.au
California debt: What options are available? - BBC News
In May 2008, too much borrowing and too much spending tipped Vallejo over the edge and it became the largest California city ever to file for bankruptcy.
However, the budget problems of Vallejo are dwarfed by those of California as a whole.
It is a giant economy - if it stood alone, it would be the eighth-biggest economy in the world.
In Vallejo, the situation was blamed on exorbitant salaries and benefits for fire fighters and police officers, which accounted for 80% of the city's budget.
A police lieutenant earns about $200,000 (£130,000) a year before benefits, whereas the average wage for an FBI agent, who typically has to have a law degree, is about 30% less.
At the time, Mayor Osby Davis told Business Daily: "When somebody has their foot on your neck, you don't ask, 'Will I get up.' You get up and do what you can to keep it from happening again. And our city is going to get up and it is going to thrive."
The city emerged from bankruptcy in November 2011 after restructuring its debts. City councillor Marti Brown explains how the authorities have tackled some of the problems they had.
"We have cut our staffing levels and some of the services we provide," she says. "And we also introduced a 1% sales tax after it was passed in a referendum."
“Start Quote
End Quote Jerry Brown Governor of CaliforniaYou can't squeeze blood out of a turnip and I am going to make this budget balance”
California's governor Jerry Brown recently revealed that the state deficit is almost twice as big as first thought and is currently standing at $16bn (£10.3bn).
States do not have the option to file for bankruptcy as Vallejo did, so he says he is going to cut the budget and hopefully raise taxes.
"The tax, and some pretty drastic cuts, will be subject to voter approval in November," he says.
He proposes $8.3bn of cuts in public services in California to help close the deficit.
"The public sector needs more than it is currently getting. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip and I am going to make this budget balance," he asserts.
His plan is to put the measures to a referendum in order to bypass the assembly, where he has met stiff opposition and has been unable to get them through.
The governor says the new proposal for the coming fiscal year, which begins on 1 July, seeks to end the state's deficit and balance the state's budget for the next few years without borrowing money.
“Start Quote
End Quote Professor John Ellwood Berkeley UniversityOn the November ballot, there will be two measures to raise taxes and it only takes a simple majority for them to be accepted”
"It's better to take our medicine now and get the state on a balanced footing," he says.
Voters to decideProfessor John Ellwood at the University of California, Berkeley says California's main problem is that people do not want to pay higher taxes.
"The reason California taxes are so low is mostly because to raise them through the legislative process requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature and then the governor signing it," he says.
The Republican members of the legislature refuse to vote for higher taxes, while Democrats account for 60% of the members, well short of the necessary two-thirds majority.
But California has what is called the direct initiative, where citizens can create constitutional amendments and pass laws.
"On the November ballot, there will be two measures to raise taxes," Dr Ellwood explains, "and it only takes a simple majority for them to be accepted."
The motions will be for a higher personal tax and a temporary rise in the sales tax.
"If those pass, California will begin to raise its fiscal base," he says.
"If they don't pass, then we will have continued cuts," he adds.
However, he thinks that many Americans believe there is so much waste, fraud and abuse in the public sector that there is no need to raise taxes, so it will be interesting to see how the citizens of California respond.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
California’s Everybody-Into-the-Pool Primary Faces Test - Bloomberg
When Californians go to the polls tomorrow for the state primary election, they won’t find three- term Senator Dianne Feinstein running against just fellow Democrats.
New rules that may alter the political landscape put Feinstein head-to-head with 23 challengers of all stripes -- Republican, Libertarian, American Independent, Peace and Freedom. The two who get the most votes, regardless of party, will move on to the general election in November.
The so-called top-two system is intended to fight partisan gridlock that has paralyzed lawmakers from Sacramento to Washington. In theory, politicians will no longer be forced to stick to party dogma to avoid being ousted in the primary, allowing voters more choices.
“The rules of the game have changed,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a Sacramento-based nonpartisan group that has advocated for open democracy. “Democrats and Republicans no longer have a lock on the process.”
The new procedure, passed in 2009 by the California Legislature and approved by 54 percent of voters a year later, was backed by a strange-bedfellow coalition that included then- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Democrat Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor who was speaker of the Assembly for 15 years.
Similar systems are in place in Louisiana and the state of Washington, and there are efforts to make it law in Arizona. California’s new rules apply to the candidates for the Legislature, Congress and statewide elected offices.
Democrats Against Democrats
The top-two primary may mean that in heavily Democratic or Republican districts, two candidates from the same party could advance to the general election. That may be influenced by independent voters, who make up 20 percent of the electorate, and will be new to the system.
That may force Democrats and Republicans toward more moderate positions, Alexander said.
“Up until now, they have had no say in the primaries,” she said of the independents. “If some of those folks get elected we could see an impact in the power struggle in the Statehouse.”
With the primary looming, California lawmakers have withheld action on the state’s resurgent $15.7 billion budget deficit. Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, blamed legislators for making the deficit larger by failing to pass some budget cuts he sought in March.
‘Just Paralyzes Them’
“They won’t make a budget decision until after June 6,” the day after the election, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, said in an interview. “This is a bad idea. The know they have to make cuts and the cuts are unpopular and if you are Democrats, who have to write the budget, this just paralyzes them.”
Voters will also be asked whether to add $1 to the tax on a pack of cigarettes, raising the levy to $1.87, and steer the extra revenue toward cancer research and stop-smoking programs.
Opponents led by Altria Group Inc. (MO) and Reynolds American Inc. (RAI), the parent of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the two biggest sellers in the U.S., raised more than $40.7 million to fight the measure, compared with about $10 million from supporters including the American Cancer Society and cycling champion Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor.
The cigarette-tax measure, known as Proposition 29, was supported by 50 percent to 42 percent, with 8 percent undecided, in a Field Poll released May 31. The telephone survey of 608 likely voters, conducted May 21-29, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Voters also will be asked to reduce the total number of years a lawmaker can serve, from 14 to 12, in either the Senate or the Assembly. Currently, a legislator can serve a maximum of six years in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate. The proposition would permit all 12 years to be served in either chamber.
The term-limit proposition was favored 50 percent to 28 percent, with 22 percent undecided, in the same Field Poll.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael B. Marois in Sacramento at mmarois@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, talks with reporters before heading to the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, talks with reporters before heading to the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol. Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Source: www.bloomberg.com
Buyers' remorse for California's 'bullet train to nowhere' - Daily Telegraph
A new poll shows almost three fifths would oppose the bullet train and halt public borrowing if given another chance to vote.
Almost seven in 10 said that, if the train ever does run between Los Angeles and San Francisco, they would "never or hardly ever" use it.
Not a single person said they would use it more than once a week, and only 33 per cent said they would prefer the bullet train over a one hour plane journey or seven hour drive. The cost of a ticket, estimated at $123 each way, also put many off. Jerry Brown, California's Democrat governor, has championed the project as a way to create jobs and is backed by unions. The 74-year-old governor has been personally committed to a high speed rail link since the 1970s.
But he is trying to convince voters to spend billions on a train while at the same time proposing tax increases and austere public spending cuts, including a five per cent pay cut for state workers, to deal with a budget deficit that has ballooned to $16 billion.
California's politicians have until Aug 31 to give a final green light to an initial $6 billion, 130-mile section of track in the Central Valley, and they are expected to approve it. Only a simple majority vote is needed in the Democrat controlled legislature.
Jim Nielsen, the Republican vice chairman of the state's Assembly Budget Committee, who opposes the project, called it "an idea that gets worse the more information we get about it." In April the state's own Legislative Analyst's Office called the funding plan vague and speculative.
Supporters say the California economy, the world's ninth largest, will recover in the long run and the remaining money will be found from private investors, the federal government and fees from the state's cap-and-trade programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
They say the rail line will prove crucial to the state's economic future, linking north and south as airports and freeways reach capacity. But critics suggest the money will dry up and the state will instead be left with an "orphan track" linked to neither major city.
Dan Schnur, Director of the Unruh Institute of Politics, who carried out the recent poll, said: "The growing budget deficit is making Californians hesitant about spending so much money on a project like this one when they're seeing cuts to public education and law enforcement."
There was also disillusion with the handling of the project so far. It was initially projected to cost $45 billion and deliver passengers between the two major cities in a few hours by 2020.
Last autumn the state-run California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is overseeing it, disclosed the cost had more than doubled to $98.5 billion with a finish date of 2033.
After an outcry $30 billion was shaved off that estimate, but only by reducing the speed of the trains and using sections of existing slow track.
The authority is also facing legal challenges from those whose land the track will have to cross.
Last week agricultural groups filed a major environmental lawsuit asking for a preliminary injunction to block construction.
Unless building begins shortly there is also a risk of losing federal funds. The federal government has set a deadline of September 2017 for finishing the first section of track.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment