Archives for May 2006

Welcome to all you new CultureGrrl readers who have responded "yes" to the question posed tonight in the news section of Artnet magazine: "Ready for a little 'grr' with your culture?" Now I've got to try to live up to my new billing---"Fearless Art Reporter Lee Rosenbaum." Calling Clark Kent! … [Read more...] about The Hits Just Keep On Coming

[For those of you who just arrived here today, July 19, from the link in Tyler Green's blog, here's my more recent post on the phenomenon of renting exhibitions for big bucks---the Metropolitan Museum's 19th-century European paintings show, traveling next year to Houston and Berlin.] Yesterday, I raised some questions about Renzo Piano's architecture for the expanded High … [Read more...] about Blockbusters, Schlockbusters

If, like me, you regard the 31-year-old Maxim Vengerov as one of the greatest musicians ever to wield a bow, I've got news for you: As much as you may admire his Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, you don't know Maxim to the max until you've experienced his hilarious narration and musical portrayal of the beloved children's classic, "Ferdinand the Bull"---the story by Munro Leaf … [Read more...] about Vengerov: Full of Bull

A month after the opening, The New Yorker's architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, finally says his piece, in the May 29 issue, on Renzo Piano's addition to the Morgan Library and Museum. Shouldn't a weekly magazine be right on the news? And shouldn't he have included Columbia University's 18-acre, mega-expansion in Harlem on his list of the New York City projects that Piano is … [Read more...] about Pianissimo

I don't want to scare you, but I can't help noticing some striking similarities between the state of the art market in Spring 2006 and the situation in Spring 1990, after which prices went into freefall. In 1974, the art market collapsed. Sixteen years later, in 1990, it collapsed again. Now, 16 years from that freefall, here are the eerie echoes: ---May 1990: The … [Read more...] about Is 2006 the New 1990?

Speaking of art in France, I've got to spend the rest of today working on my piece about that country for the "Leisure & Arts" page of the Wall Street Journal. (No, I did not retrace the path of The Da Vinci Code!) Here's what CultureGrrl has in store for you next week: ---The Louvre annexes Atlanta ---More thoughts on antiquities ---My Top-Ten List of things not to like about … [Read more...] about Coming Next Week

Didn't read the book. Not going to the movie. I had planned to pay the price of admission to get myself up-to-speed with a pop cultural phenomenon that had completely eluded me. But the review of "The Da Vinci Code" by my favorite movie critic, the Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer-winning Joe Morgenstern, was the deal-killer: Glazes the eye, muddles the mind and slows the … [Read more...] about Duh Vinci

Every once in a while, I do take the "Grrrr" out of CultureGrrl and try to say something nice. Kudos, then, to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., for touring 12 of its most important Impressionist masterpieces to small regional museums around the country---not as a money-maker but simply as a collegial collection-sharing initiative. Having just come back from the … [Read more...] about The Clark Does It Right

Thanks to that most prolific polymath of critics, Terry Teachout, for his blogged love-note to CultureGrrl this morning. (See blurb on my masthead, top.) Terry, baby, let's do lunch! … [Read more...] about Shoutout to Teachout

Right again, artlings. The answer to yesterday's question is: D) None of the above. According to the marketers of the Libeskind apartments, "neither article is correct": 12 of the 56 residences, ready for August occupancy, remain unsold. The economics of the commercial building are completely separate from the museum's (unlike MoMA's neighboring Museum Tower, which generated … [Read more...] about Mondo Condo

Okay, artlings, here's the second CultureGrrl quiz (and here was the first one): Which of the following statements is true about architect Daniel Libeskind's Museum Residences---luxury condos adjacent to his expansion of the Denver Art Museum (which opens Oct. 17)? A) "There hasn't been a sale since September," as reported in the Wall Street Journal on March 31. B) "It sold … [Read more...] about Question of the Day

I promised in a previous post to say more about Philippe de Montebello's "brilliantly persuasive presentation" at the Association of Art Museum Directors' recent symposium on antiquities collecting. I had asserted in a Feb. 28 Wall Street Journal piece that "the Met should rethink its stated willingness to continue buying antiquities of uncertain provenance." Here's part of … [Read more...] about Rethinking Antiquities

Let's talk about a deplorable pop-cultural phenomenon for a moment, shall we? We are almost at the one-year anniversary of the demise of a very important New York City cultural resource---a particularly great loss to those of my blog readers who are also Baby Boomers. (You two know who you are.) Tell me why it is that New York City cannot support even one oldies station? … [Read more...] about Boomer Bust

When it comes to deaccessioning---British museums, by law, can't. That helps bolster the British Museum's argument that it can't ship the Parthenon marbles back to Greece. But it also prevents the return of Nazi-expropriated works to their rightful owners or heirs. Recently, heirs of Nazi victim Arthur Feldmann contented themselves with a $329,000 payout from the government, in … [Read more...] about Brits Can’t Return Nazi Loot

It doesn't rank up there with the "Opal Mehta" brouhaha, but let's compare a passage from my Nov. 2 NY Times Op-Ed piece, For Sale: Our Permanent Collection with Hilton Kramer's Deaccession Roulette in the December issue of The New Criterion: Kramer: The Los Angeles County Museum used to have a triad of bronze sculptures of women by Alberto Giacometti in its "permanent" … [Read more...] about How Hilton Kramer Got Wild