Archives for October 2006

Holland Cotter jumped the gun today, reviewing the Met's Americans in Paris show in the NY Times before it opens to the public next Tuesday. That's okay: Sometimes you want to be the first to weigh in. What's not okay is the visitors' information, provided along with the review: "Americans in Paris: 1860-1900" continues through Jan. 28 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It … [Read more...] about Is an Exhibition Open When the Times Says It Is?

This just in from the Harvard Crimson (via Andrew Ross Sorkin's NY Times blog): Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will join a New York-based global investment group as a part-time managing director. The D. E. Shaw Group announced today that Summers "will be involved on a part-time basis in various strategic initiatives and high-level portfolio management … [Read more...] about Summers: From Harvard to Hedge Fund

Should every pre-1911 Chinese cultural object that's still in China stay in China? That's essentially what the People's Republic of China is requesting, in its two-year-old call for the United States to impose import restrictions far more sweeping that any prior agreement forged by the U.S. under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing … [Read more...] about China’s Ironhanded Cultural Patrimony Request

CultureGrrl got herself in hot water with the Friends of the Barnes Foundation and Christopher Knight of the LA Times for suggesting yesterday that the $100-million authorization in Pennsylvania's fiscal 2002 capital budget for design and construction of a new Barnes Foundation facility was being blown out of proportion. I took this position because (to my knowledge) no state … [Read more...] about How to Save the Barnes

No one (as far as I know) has pointed up this irony about Steve Wynn's elbow-jab to his own Picasso: Back in 2002, Wynn refused to lend "Le Rêve" to the landmark "Matisse Picasso" show that appeared at the Tate Modern, the Grand Palais and the Museum of Modern Art. He believed that the proposed insurance coverage for the painting was inadequate. It turns out that it would … [Read more...] about Wynn Some, Lose Some

The Boston ICA has at last announced a firm(?) opening date for its new waterfront facility, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Dec. 10. As the Boston Globe notes, that puts it smack into a scheduling conflict with Art Basel Miami Beach, the hot artworld destination to which many luminaries already have travel plans. Let's see...where would you rather travel in the … [Read more...] about The Best Laid Plans…

So fine! There's another art blogger out there (already on my blogroll) who loves the great trashy girl group songs of the early '60s. Check out the audio clip of "I Never Dreamed" by The Cookies, courtesy of Modern Kicks. Where's Murray the K when we really need him? … [Read more...] about Mwah! to Modern Kicks

First, we learned that the Denver Art Museum's revelers get a little too celebratory, to the detriment of a William Wiley. Now, Steve Wynn's "Le Rêve" turns into his nightmare: He had planned to sell that Picasso for $139 million to the the unstoppable Steven Cohen, AP reports today. Then Wynn accidentally punched a hole in it. The ebullient eyewitness Nora Ephron, posted … [Read more...] about Annals of Damaged Artworks

Scott Gutterman, deputy director of the Neue Galerie, soothes my two worries---over why the image of the museum's star acquisition, Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," has vanished from its website, and why the Nazi-era provenance for Neue Galerie's collection has still not been posted: "Adele I" is off of our homepage so that we can post information about our next exhibition, … [Read more...] about The Case of the Vanishing Adele

While I deplore the planned move of the Barnes Foundation as much as Christopher Knight does, I find a bit misleading his LA Times report yesterday that in fiscal 2002, long before the Barnes' relocation to Philadelphia received court approval, the Pennsylvania legislature had "set aside" some $100 million for the design and construction of a new Barnes facility. CultureGrrl … [Read more...] about Pennsylvania’s $100 Million for the Barnes: Authorized, not Appropriated

In the current faltering economy, what are the prospects for the staggering amount of high-priced art about to change hands (or not) at the November sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York? One factor that stock analysts scrutinize in evaluating publicly-traded Sotheby's is its monthly sales totals, posted on its website. For … [Read more...] about The Fall Art-Market Season: Early Warning Signals

William Merritt Chase, "Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler" (1883), Cleveland Museum of Art I saw the above painting today at the press preview of a soon-to-open show at the Metropolitan Museum. (More on that later.) Does anyone else think this prefigures Klimt's 1907 "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (below)? And while we're on that subject, why is there no longer any image of "Adele I" on … [Read more...] about Out Looking: Chase-ing the Klimt

The article in the Oct. 7 issue of The Economist on the planned LMVH building in Paris, designed by Frank Gehry to house Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton's corporate art collection and temporary exhibitions, brought to mind a paradigm-shifting architectural moment, more than a decade ago in New York. Perhaps its very first built manifestation was the critically acclaimed LVMH … [Read more...] about NYC Architecture: The Journalist as Catalyst

When it's the NY Philharmonic on Saturday night: It gave a dazzlingly spunky performance of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" overture, sans baton, followed by monotonously decorous renditions of two works each by Stravinsky and Mozart, conducted by David Robertson. I can only assume that music director Lorin Maazel (or perhaps the ghost of Lenny) prepared the Bernstein, played by … [Read more...] about When Is an Orchestra Better Off Without a Conductor?

I somehow managed to post the "Sky Mirror" story (below) twice, and I can't seem to get the second one deleted. Maybe it's a sign that my running "Ben" gag is wearing thin. (If it wasn't before, it sure is now!) Or maybe it's a sign that I shouldn't be posting on midnight on Friday. Anyway, here's a slight correction and an update: "Sky Mirror" was, as I correctly said, the … [Read more...] about A Story So Nice, I Posted It Twice