Archives for May 2006

It's the most anticipated art journalists' eating opportunity since the Maltz Museum at Per Se: Director Michael Brand of the Getty Museum hosts a 9 a.m. press breakfast tomorrow at the hot new Le Cirque. Does Sirio Maccioni get up this early? The ostensible purpose of the repast is to discuss an exhibition opening at the Getty in November, "Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons … [Read more...] about Press Feeding Frenzy

It's the worst-case abuses (think Enron) that often wind up causing reforms that change the rules for everyone, even those who are relatively blameless. This dynamic is at work in the new self-imposed strictures that museums are applying to their acquisitions of unprovenanced antiquities. But a new antiquities-related scandal, reported yesterday in the New York Times, could … [Read more...] about The Tainted Source

I've been pretty low on the High (here and here), so lets give some overdue credit to what the recently expanded museum in Atlanta has done well: reinstalling its permanent collection. As its own director, Michael Shapiro, has conceded, the High Museum of Art will never have a collection comparable to the great American museums that had a head start collecting on a grand scale. … [Read more...] about The High Does It Right

Better late than never, you can now read my take on Renzo Piano's expansion of the Morgan Library and Museum on the second page of the Front Page section of the June issue of Art in America. If you have the hard copy of the magazine, look on Page 45. The title of the piece, above, gives you some notion of my reliably contrarian view. … [Read more...] about The Atrium That Ate the Morgan

Oh my! CultureGrrl has an ardent suitor---a major, popular purveyor of blogs. Should I duck under an umbrella? Decisions, decisions. … [Read more...] about Flirting with CultureGrrl

Here's a cause for the Association of Art Museum Curators: I have long believed that curators should get credit, by name, on the introductory wall text of exhibitions they organize. I wouldn't produce work without a byline. Why should they? This thought occurred to me again, as it has many times before, at the revelatory Pollock drawings show at the Guggenheim Museum … [Read more...] about Curators of the World Unite!

Probably the most regrettable of the Museum of Modern Art's misguided auction disposals of nine paintings in 2004 was its casting off of Jackson Pollock's "Number 12, 1949." Retired dealer Eugene Thaw, an honorary trustee of MoMA and co-editor of Pollock's catalogue raisonné (quoted in my May 13, 2004 Wall Street Journal article, The Lost Museum: MoMA's Distressing Disposals) … [Read more...] about Now at the Guggenheim: MoMA’s Dumped Pollock

Yes, CultureGrrl groupies, I'm back. Elgar was indeed played and my daughter did graduate Cornell, on the only gloriously sunny day of the weekend---a major accomplishment in famously weather-challenged Ithaca. Between celebratory events, the incorrigible Grrl also managed to pop in on several worthwhile exhibitions on campus---at the I.M. Pei-designed Johnson Museum and at … [Read more...] about The Grrl Returns

It's "Pomp and Circumstances" for me this weekend. I'll be back to the keyboard on Tuesday, upon my return from my daughter's Cornell graduation! … [Read more...] about Strike up the Elgar

Last Friday, I promised to revisit the subject of collecting antiquities this week. (Here, here and here are my other related posts.) I have only this to add: Museums' assertions that they are now revising their policies because the times and the standards have changed are more than a little disingenuous. It seems clear that museums were always aware of (or at least suspected) … [Read more...] about Rethinking Antiquities (again)

CultureGrrl makes her debut today on that must-read compilation of arts press clips, ArtsJournal. Welcome all you cultural journalism buffs (and buff cultural journalists!). … [Read more...] about New Link-up for the Grrl

If you missed the first installment of this two-part series, please click here. 5) The Sleeping Giants---Serra, Kelly, Rosenquist: I had always thought (mistakenly, it seems) that one of the reasons for MoMA's vast new contemporary space was to provide room for semi-permanent display of the museum's three enormous, iconic works: James Rosenquist's "F-111," Ellsworth Kelly's … [Read more...] about Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part II)

And now, as promised in Friday's post, here's what irks me about the bigger, but not necessarily better, Museum of Modern Art. I'll skip the things you've already heard from the critical chorus: It's too corporate (it is). The admission fee is too high (ditto). But let me preface this by saying that I think Glenn Lowry is an excellent, conscientious, diligent museum … [Read more...] about Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part I)

Apparently I'm not the only one who wants to tell Maxim Vengerov how to get to Sesame Street. No Scoop After All Michael Reingold, assistant director of the JCC on the Palisades' Thurnauer School of Music, just e-mailed a love note to CultureGrrl, and included this news flash: I thought you'd want to know that Bob McGrath and Dave Connor from Sesame Street were in the … [Read more...] about From Ferdinand to Big Bird

In a previous post, I bragged that only CultureGrrl could tell you how my fellow Bronx Science-ite, Daniel Liebskind, got his start. Then, yesterday, I started leafing through his memoir, Breaking Ground, and saw that this was old news: When we moved to New York, I took a technical drawing course at the Bronx High School of Science, and I loved it. On the days I had class, I … [Read more...] about No Scoop After All