CLIENT 9 INSPIRES PERFORMANCE ART

The silver lining in political sex scandals is the fodder they provide — to witty columnists, late-night television show hosts, and, more rarely, performance artists. On May 22, the artist Karen Finley will preview her new work based on the resignation of Governor Spitzer, “Impulse to Suck: The performance of the apology and the separation between sex and state.” Ms. Finley, who teaches at New York University, is performing the work in New York as part of the sixth annual meeting of the Cultural Studies Association. According to a press release, Ms. Finley’s work will examine Governor Spitzer’s apology; the imagining of the sexual encounter; the trip undertaken by the escort, “Kristen”; the immigrant father’s plan for his son to succeed, and Governor Spitzer and Silda Wall Spitzer’s imagined therapy sessions.

Ms. Finley’s previous works include “The Truth is Hard to Swallow” and “The Dreams of Laura Bush/The Passion of Terri Schiavo.”

In 1990, she was one of the so-called “NEA Four” — four performance artists who, after having passed through the peer review process, were denied grants from the National Endowment for the Arts on the basis of their work’s subject matter. Ms. Finley had done performances in which she smeared chocolate on her partially nude body.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

CHRISTIE’S STAGES RECORD JEWELRY SALE

When bankruptcy proceedings disrupted Christie’s “Rare Jewels and Gemstones Auction,” originally scheduled for April 15, the auction house went out and staged another sale — a record-setting one.

Sales at Wednesday’s New York jewelry auction reached $50 million, making it the highest-grossing sale of jewelry in American history. Ten different jewels sold for more than $1 million each; the top lot was a cushion-cut 39.34 carat diamond, which sold for $6.87 million, or $175,000 per carat.

Earlier in the day, an agreement reached between jeweler Ralph O. Esmerian and Merrill Lynch during a hearing in federal bankruptcy court stalled for a second time a sale of what Christie’s has been calling one of the world’s greatest jewelry collections.

Mr. Esmerian had taken out a $178 million loan from the bank to buy the retailer Fred Leighton, Inc., and hoped to sell his own family collection through the company; Merrill declared the loan in default this past October, and proceeded to organize a sale of the jewels Mr. Esmerian had put up as collateral. The 115 lots included a 14.23-carat pink diamond ring, estimated at between $10 million and $15 million. Mr. Esmerian is contending that it is reckless to sell his jewels at auction, rather than through private sales, where he said they would bring in more money.

The fight over the Esmerian family jewels was conducted in three different courtrooms over a 48-hour period earlier this week. The April 15 auction was called off at the last minute, while collectors were already gathering at the auction house for the sale.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

ITALY LENDS BERNINI BUSTS TO GETTY

Having resolved their battle over antiquities, Italy and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles are now on good terms. In fact, Italy is lending a third of the works in the Getty’s upcoming exhibition of Bernini busts, “Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.” Several of the works have never been seen in North America, including two busts of Pope Urban VIII Barberini that are held in the private collections of descendents of the pope. The exhibition will be at the Getty from August 5 to October 26. Afterward, it is traveling to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, from November 25 to March 8.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

GUGGENHEIM BILBAO FUNDS EMBEZZLED

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao said it fired its finance director after he admitted to embezzling about $775,000 since 1998. In a press release published yesterday on its Web site, the museum, which is based in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, said Roberto Cearsolo Barrenetxea confessed to taking the funds from two companies that manage the Guggenheim Bilbao building and its art collection. He has returned more than half the total and pledged to give back the rest within three months, the museum said.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao said in the release that it is taking legal action against Mr. Cearsolo for “financial and accounting irregularities,” and has ordered an external audit of the two companies’ accounts.

Bloomberg News