Just When I Thought It Was Safe to Go Back to the Met…

…I discover that NY Times art critic Roberta Smith swooped in there ahead of me, to get the first look at Damien Hirst‘s newly installed shark, lying in wait somewhere on the Metropolitan Museum’s second floor.
I should have received the announcement of this debut from the Met, not from Roberta: I gave you the first heads-up, before the Times, that the shark was coming to the Met, and I repeatedly requested to be told as soon as it was available for viewing. A week ago, Harold Holzer, the Met’s senior vice president for external affairs, told me that it would be displayed in “a few weeks, probably.” But even this morning, there’s no announcement in my inbox.
Roberta doesn’t say where the shark is lurking, but it sounds like it’s not in the contemporary galleries, since she lets on that it’s not “seen in like-minded company.” Or maybe curator Gary Tinterow just imported the Copley copy and the Homer into the contemporary wing for this display. I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there.
Roberta was ushered in, she tells us, after dusk. And under cover of darkness, she took the opportunity to harpoon her own newpaper’s editorial writers, who in July had opined:
It may appear as if Mr. Cohen is doing the Met a favor by lending this work. In fact, it is the other way around. The billionaire…is being courted by museums in the way that prodigiously wealthy collectors have always been courted. Part of that courtship is, of course, endorsing and validating the quality of the collector’s eye.
Without naming them, Smith takes issue with the argument of her paper’s editorial writers. She writes:
Some have argued that Steven A. Cohen, the owner of the Hirst shark, is using the Met to increase the work’s value and fame, but it seems more like the other way around.
Let’s see…where have I heard something like that before? (…senior moment…) Oh right! That would be me, in a previous CultureGrrl post that took issue with the Times editorial:
Mega-collectors simply don’t need museums as much as they used to. Their art-market clout derives from their overwhelming purchasing power, not their curatorial connections….What the Times editorial board hasn’t caught onto yet is that today’s ultimate validator of artistic worth is not the high regard of a museum curator but the high price paid through a dealer or an auction house….Not only don’t collectors feel beholden to curators, but many are starting to feel the curatorial urge themselves. Cohen is reportedly thinking of establishing his own museum as the ultimate repository for his holdings, as several other collectors have recently done.
Will New York cultural institutions ever acknowledge that all responsible, information-seeking journalists deserve equal treatment, especially when they specifically ask for certain information ahead of, or concurrently with, the Times?