Archives for September 2006

Fascinating story in Saturday's Guardian of London, about the Mona Lisa copy belonging to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, to be displayed there Oct. 10 to Feb. 11. Scholars believe this skillful copy may provide some indication of Leonardo's original hues. But the web version of the story is accompanied by a cut-down illustration, particularly unfortunate since the article … [Read more...] about The Other Mona Lisa

Here's my brief piece for the "Front Page" section of the October Art in America magazine, about the long overdue efforts by the recently reopened Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery to beef up their contemporary art collections. For my previous piece in the WSJ about the expensive and protracted renovation of the Patent Office Building that houses … [Read more...] about My Article in Art in America

If you simply must see a report on the results of today's auction sale of art controversially attributed to Hitler, go here. And if you want to see images of the dubious daubs, so appealing to some that they more than doubled their presale estimates, go here. (I don't know how much longer the auction house will keep links to those images on its homepage). If you ask me, Aaron … [Read more...] about Doing Hitler’s Bidding

Tomorrow through Sunday, Munch's stolen and recovered "The Scream" and "Madonna" will be publicly displayed at the Munch Museum, before repairs of theft-related damage are performed, For those of you who are curious to see how they weathered their ordeal, but who can't make the trip to Oslo, here are the photos of the two paintings, in their current damaged state. … [Read more...] about Recovered (but Unrepaired) Munchs on View

Apparently Jen Graves still can't get anything she wants at Mimi Gates' Restaurant. Graves, a writer for The Stranger, Seattle's alternative weekly, triumphantly reported last week that the director of the Seattle Art Museum had acceded to her CultureGrrl-inspired request to "make public the artworks it plans to sell before they go to auction." But now, Graves reports, that is … [Read more...] about Deaccession Disclosures (or Not)

In his public discussion with the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry, last Tuesday at the museum, architect Jacques Herzog insisted that Artist's Choice: Herzog & de Meuron, Perception Restrained, the MoMA exhibition (closed yesterday) that he organized with his partner, Pierre de Meuron, was not intended as a critique of the museum that had hosted it, as has been … [Read more...] about Herzog Takes on MoMA

… [Read more...] about COMING TOMORROW: JACQUES HERZOG TAKES ON MOMA

Speaking of snubs from the NY Times, how is it that the city's paper-of-record has still failed to publish an article or review mentioning that Anish Kapoor's dazzling Sky Mirror has been conspicuously in our midst since last Tuesday? … [Read more...] about News Blackout for Silvery “Sky Mirror”

RENDERING OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY'S LIFE SCIENCES TECHNOLOGY BUILDING, NOW UNDER CONSTRUCTION Richard Meier don't get no respect. First, the High Museum in Atlanta snubs him, choosing Renzo Piano to do the add-on to Meier's masterpiece. The result was a big, bland structure that CultureGrrl called "an architectural flop". Now, in today's NY Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff calls Meier's … [Read more...] about Poor Richard Meier

Here's a radical idea from the blog of the conservative New Criterion: Just get rid of the Met's entire 20th-century collection and acquire nothing made in the last 100 years. James Panero, you were just kidding, right? [UPDATE: Panero answers CultureGrrl in this afternoon's post, same website as above.] … [Read more...] about Bye-Bye Picasso

While the Museum of Modern Art and other museums diligently compile dubious statistics that "prove" the enormous economic value of their activities to their cities, the Village Voice's indispensable art critic, Jerry Saltz, has been busy gathering more telling statistics: The percentage of women exhibiting in New York galleries and museums is grievously low. According to the … [Read more...] about Why Are There So Few Great Women Artists?

I like this quote from one of my favorite writers on architecture, James Russell of Bloomberg, who gives another early review (more favorable than that of The New Yorker's Paul Goldberger), of Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Denver Art Museum, opening to the public on Oct. 7: In Denver, it's tragically clear just what New York has given up in trashing just about every … [Read more...] about Ground Zero’s Loss, Denver’s Gain

CultureGrrl to Tyler: MWAH! (I once had to translate that for my WSJ editor, who must never have watched Dinah Shore on TV in the '50s or heard that great '60s trashy girl-groups song, "Give Him a Great Big Kiss.") Uh-oh. Now I'm in trouble with Eric! … [Read more...] about Kiss and Make Up

Tyler Green in mad at CultureGrrl, and she's been banished from his blogroll. I assume it's because of his pique over this. The formidable Michael Kimmelman certainly had no need for Little Lee to defend him against Tyrannical Tyler, so I'm sorry I ever started this. Although we saw many issues differently, Tyler was (and still is) a valued colleague. If you used to link to me … [Read more...] about Bloggers at Loggerheads

No fair! Chicago gets to keep its bean, but New York can't keep its "Sky Mirror"? Where's Mike Bloomberg, the art collector-mayor, when we really need him? Anish Kapoor's literally and metaphysically dazzling 35-foot heaven-and-earth mirrored microcosm is up for grabs when it leaves Rockefeller Center on Oct. 28. A cool $5 million, more or less, will buy it, according to the … [Read more...] about Keep the Big Mirror in the Big Apple!