Archives for October 2006

I've given Benjamin Genocchio of the NY Times some hard ribbing (here, here and here). But although he never found the Bronx, he did (three weeks late) manage to find Anish Kapoor's sublime Sky Mirror. And there are still two weeks remaining to see it! True, it's not a stand-alone review---only the lead item under Museum and Gallery Listings. But CultureGrrl nevertheless … [Read more...] about Ben Sees Himself in Sky Mirror. All is Forgiven!

What's this world coming to? Is this what Minnie and the gang do after hours? (Yes, it's on YouTube, but I'll let you find it, if you must. When I first viewed it, anyone could access it. Now, mercifully, it's behind the 18-or-over firewall.) We can only wonder what constituted the "appropriate action" that the Walt Disney Co. took against Goofy, Chip or Dale, the giant snowman … [Read more...] about The Minnie Mouse Sex Tapes

Here's the report from today's Philadelphia Daily News on Rep. Jim Gerlach's Barnes-storming press conference, previewed by CultureGrrl yesterday. … [Read more...] about Barnes Update

Kudos to Wildenstein & Co., the bluechip New York gallery, for mounting a benefit exhibition for the hurricane-ravaged New Orleans Museum of Art. Comprised of 86 works from NOMA's European and American collections (14th-21st century), plus 9 additional pieces from private New Orleans collections, the show runs from Nov. 17 to Feb. 9. The admission fee ($10 adults, $5 seniors … [Read more...] about Katrina Aid from Wildenstein & Co.

Remember when Lisa Dennison, director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, vowed to adopt CultureGrrl's suggestion that curators get credit, by name, on the introductory wall text of exhibitions they organize? Well, no such credit was given to Luca Massimo Barbero, associate curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, for the just-opened Lucio Fontana show. Then again, given … [Read more...] about Curators STILL Don’t Get No Respect

If you're going to mount a show revisiting an artist who has fallen off the artworld's radar screen, the viewer had better come away convinced that the obscurity was undeserved. This was emphatically not the case with Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, which opened Tuesday at the Guggenheim, New York. The idea must have sounded good on paper: an array of works created by the … [Read more...] about Lucio Fontana: Slashing the Slasher

I can't judge Nicolai Ouroussoff's very mixed review to appear in tomorrow's (Thursday's) NY Times, of Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Denver Art Museum, because I last saw the building more than a year ago, while it was under construction. But I can comment on his negative personal appraisal of Libeskind in the lead paragraph: He has suffered humiliation in his role as … [Read more...] about Ouroussoff Hits Libeskind Below the Belt

This just in from the office of U.S. Congressman Jim Gerlach: Congressman Gerlach will be joined by members of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2:00 pm., at 275 North Latch Lane, [across the street from the Barnes] in Merion, to discuss what he plans to do to help block the efforts by the Barnes Foundation trustees to move the museum to … [Read more...] about Dr. Barnes Goes to Congress

For those of you who can't make the trip across the pond to experience Carsten Höller's enormous slide in the the Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall in London, there's still time to see MASS MoCA's comparably huge Höller installation, Amusement Park (scroll down), to Oct. 30. This one has more rides but is strictly non-participatory: You can look but not touch. I found the whole … [Read more...] about The Art Museum as Amusement Park

Maybe contemporary collector and art-museum philanthropist Eli Broad thought he was sufficiently out of earshot from his neighbors in Los Angeles when he chatted in London with Bloomberg's Linda Sandler: Asked whether his collection would wind up in a museum, Broad said it would be divided and doled out to institutions that needed the specific works. The risk of donating an … [Read more...] about Eli Broad Plays the Field

A report yesterday by the CBC says that the $182-million Acropolis Museum, under construction in Athens to house the Parthenon marbles, "will be ready 'in the first half of 2007,'" according to Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis, who visited the site on Monday. Don't bet on it. The Athens News Agency puts it a little differently: It says that construction is "slated for … [Read more...] about Acropolis Museum: Power of Wishful Thinking

Back in July, CultureGrrl complained about the unwelcoming character of Jean Nouvel's new facility for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis: Instead of feeling the anticipatory glow of a joyous night at the theater, you prowl the dark lobbies and corridors (with slit-like or oddly tinted windows interfering with your view) feeling like you've been conscripted as an extra in a … [Read more...] about Great Critics (Sometimes) Think Alike

Yesterday, my husband, son and I were appropriately observing the holiday by driving home on the Christopher Columbus Highway (aka Route 80), after visiting daughter Joyce at Penn State. She is the only woman among 15 newly initiated graduate students in that university's highly regarded acoustics engineering department. (Calling Lawrence Summers!) CultureGrrl being … [Read more...] about Where in the World Was Lee?

Okay, it's time to set the record straight, once and for all. If you've ever Googled CultureGrrl, you know that the first thing you see is the highly insulting insinuation that you really wanted to ditch the seasoned Grrl for some 26-year-old grrrl: Did you mean: ultragrrl Well, we all know that half the time Google doesn't know what it's doing. After all, it just agreed to buy … [Read more...] about Googling CultureGrrl, Ogling Ultragrrrl

Columbus Day is a holiday for emerging-market bond traders (like my son, with whom we're visiting our daughter at grad school) and emerging-blogger barb traders (like CultureGrrl). Back at you tomorrow! … [Read more...] about Discovering America