With 2006 coming to a close, it's tempting to look back at the year's most memorable encounters with art.  In April, a large crowd of journalists gathered inside a plastic tent in the courtyard of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It was raining cats and dogs but Michael Govan, the recently appointed museum director, was resolutely upbeat.  Five famous paintings by Gustav Klimt, that were considered to be Austrian national treasures, were returned to Maria Altmann, a Los Angeles resident and niece of the previous owners.  Over the next few months long lines of bewitched visitors formed in front of the Museum gallery to see these paintings, among them two mesmerizing portraits of Maria Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer...

One of the best kept secrets of American cultural life, the ascendance of Los Angeles to the enviable position of one of the most important art cities in the world, is not a secret any longer. The recent exhibition devoted to LA art at the Pompidou Center in Paris underscored the prominence of Los Angeles as one of the four major international centers, along with London, Berlin and New York, where cutting edge contemporary art is produced. A decade ago, The New York Times would rarely mention the LA art scene in its art coverage, but this is no longer the case...

In a surprise, but nevertheless highly anticipated announcement, the Getty Trust revealed its choice for the new president to replace Barry Munitz who hastily resigned or--to put it more precisely--was shown the door last February. After a nine month hunt and--one would hope--a lot of soul searching, the Getty trustees did something rather revolutionary: they summoned up the courage to overcome the corporate mentality that currently prevails in American museum board rooms across the country...

My first trip to Mexico City was an eye opener. I knew that it was huge but still I was overwhelmed by its scale, its crowds, and its traffic. However, it was impossible not to be seduced by the operatic grandeur of the Palace of Fine Arts with its Art Deco interiors and frescoes by Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo...

These have been heady days. And I'm not even talking about politics. Only a few weeks ago the art market reached a seemingly insane high with the sale by David Geffen of two post-World War II paintings: the de Kooning for $63.5 million and the Jasper Johns for $80 million. But if you think that that's a lot of dough, how about the $140 million that Mexican financier, David Martinez, handed to David Geffen for an iconic drip-painting by Jackson Pollock, the costliest art sale ever made. So, let's do the numbers. In one month Mr. Geffen sold three paintings from his collection for $283.5 million. Considering that his net worth is estimated to be $4.6 billion and his passion for art collecting has never been in doubt, the question arises: why is he parting with such stellar examples from his collection?...

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Southern California--one in San Diego and the other in Los Angeles--both speaking volumes about the ways savvy museum directors and curators develop relationships with private collectors. In building their art collections, American museums have always depended on the "kindness of strangers" or, to put it more precisely, on the generosity of private collectors, while their European counterparts could count on royal patronage or government support...

Being an art critic means being open to an endless stream of visual information.  I guess it's a professional hazard to respond to every picture, to every image -- the good, the great, and the ugly -- and to judge it in terms of its aesthetics.  While reading this morning's L.A. Times dance review, I was struck by the ugliest possible photograph of classical ballet dancers -- undeniably God's most graceful creatures --captured in a performance of "Swan Lake" by the Kirov Ballet.  While the dance critic raves about the beauty and elegance of their performance, the accompanying photograph tells a totally different story, reducing this timeless classic to an unappealing, difficult-to-read image of swans with drooping necks and broken wings.  I wonder whether the editor is aesthetically challenged or just fell asleep at the wheel?...

By my nature I'm not a pessimist but last week, reading about the sale of mid-century paintings--one by Jasper Johns and the other by Willem de Kooning--for $143.5 million made me rather sad; not for David Geffen who sold them for an astonishing profit and definitely not for the two hedge fund billionaires who bought them. It made me sad because of the insanity of this whole transaction...

Since World War II the number of new museums in the United States and Europe has multiplied and it seems that no museum--either old or new--is safe from the seemingly never-ending expansion with the name of a famous architect attached to the project. If you believe that with tens of thousands of artists being churned out of art schools every year there should be enough good art to fill all of these museums, in that case, you have no reason to be skeptical. For myself, I believe that no matter how many schools and museums we have, the number of great artists is limited. Gods and muses are very undemocratic in distributing talent among mortals. ..

After an unprecedented fourteen month investigation by the California Attorney General's office, here comes the conclusion that surprises no one: the trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, one of the richest non-profit foundations in the world, slept at the wheel for almost a decade, while Barry Munitz, its former chief executive, was left to do as he pleased...