One of the publications to which I subscribe is The Art Newspaper. It is a serious newspaper, an informative newspaper, even a scholarly newspaper. But these days--given the art market circus--the Newspaper focuses on well, mostly on the inflated art market and other news that has to do with money. For example, on Thailand, which, after all, is still an underdeveloped country. But the government of Thailand has just made a contribution of $6 million to "to renovate a part of the Peterhof Palace, the official summer residence of the Russian tsars, outside St. Petersburg." And what does that have to do with poor people of Thailand? "The Thai government's gift is conditional on it being spent on the left wing of the palace where King Rama V stayed during a state visit in 1897. Thailand is marking 110 years since the king visited Europe, making him the first Thai monarch to do so." Oh, I see. And there's one more thing: "Since Vladimir Putin became Russia's leader in 2000, foreign governments and companies have notably increased increased their support of cultural projects in St. Petrsburg, the presidednt's hometown. Maybe Bill Clinton and George Bush will also raise money from big corporations and poor countries for kultur in Hope, Arkansas and Crawford, Texas. But here's an idea that might help relations between Moscow and Washington: Bush actually thinks of Odessa, Texas as his first hometown as an adult. There is a fundraising campaign here someplace that Putin and the president might team-up on together. The Newspaper announces on its front page that London's "National Gallery faces its worst acquisition crisis in over a century." Apparently, works that have been on loan to the Gallery for years are now up for sale by their owners. But they are worth together somewhere near 200 million pounds, which means nearly $400 million. And this is the estimated price for only three paintings, one by Rubens, one by Poussin, one by Titian. At least, they are not ones by Hirst, Koons or Warhol. A few weeks ago, I posted a Spine about Damien Hirst's $100 million skull of diamonds, "For the Love of God." Well, that haughty asking price has already had an impact on what people will pay for the hip British artist. His Spring Lullaby (an "installation," I guess, made up of shelves and 6,136 brightly colored pills) sold after a late consignment at Sothyby's (London) for the pound equivalent of $19.2 million. There's much more garish news about money and art, much more, in The Art Newspaper. And two very serious essays in the Newspaper about what all this cash for art means. One is by my friend Richard Feigen, a very learned and very much enriched dealer. I don't really know the other (although we've met.) She is Jane Kallir, co-director of Galerie St. Etienne. She and her gallery concentrate on middle European expressionism, and she has for her particular specialty Egon Schiele. Doubtless, she has made fortunes from gallery's long-standing holdings in Schiele. Feigen's article, "It's very much a bubble, but when will it burst is anybody's guess," shows all this signs of long-time reflections and current inside knowledge. His narrative is also stunning: an Andy Warhol, "Green Car Crash," sold to a Chinese collector at Christie's for nearly $72 million; another, "Turquoise Marilyn," sold privately for $80 million. Rothko's "White Center," with imprimatur of having been in David Rockefeller's collection, sold for nearly $73 million. A "poor" rich Russian apparently shelled out more than $23 million for a "second-rate Feininger." "Not long ago," writes Feigen, "one of the major contemporary collectors intimated to me, in all seriousness, that Andy Warhol was a greater artist that Leonardo Da Vinci. Warhol ... a genius he was not.'" Kallir's piece is titled "The problem with a collector-driven market." So what is the problem? It is that right now "the canon of ostensibly great artists is largely determined by market forces." The Times has an item in the weekly "Inside Art" column by Carol Vogel that is a fitting post-script to all of the above: "Hirst's Shark Moving to New Home in Met." "As soon as Damien Hirst began replacing the rotting shark in that famous work 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,' the art world began speculating where its owner, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, would show the piece." Well, he certainly would show in his living room. Or maybe his wife wouldn't allow him to do that. The Met and MOMA, which "have been courting him for years," apparently were in some competition for the shark, rotting or not. The Met won. Kallir is surely correct. Alas.