Archives for February 2008

I'm a stickler for spelling. So when I visited the website for Phillips Oppenheim, the New York search firm that the Metropolitan Museum has just retained "to help organize and staff the international search for the institution's next director," I did not get a good feeling when I saw that the chosen headhunters had spelled the name of one of their cultural clients as … [Read more...] about Memo to the Met’s Search Firm: How Do You Spell “Hirschhorn”?

Detail from a Morgan exhibition label, showing Bronzino's "Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua," Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio The illustration, above, on a label in the Morgan Library and Museum's engrossing new show, Michelangelo, Vasari, and Their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi, shows the Bronzino fresco for which the artist's … [Read more...] about Roman Omen? Italy Nixes Reproduction for Morgan Show

In yet another case of art-related investigatory mayhem, the feds on Thursday swooped down upon Kass/Meridian, a Chicago contemporary gallery, as part of what the Chicago Sun-Times reported was "an investigation into an alleged scam involving galleries in Chicago and other cities." For more details, read the above-linked article. But also take a look at this photo, accompanying … [Read more...] about Feds Manhandle Art in Chicago

Okay, now that we've just viewed the greatest football game ever played---by my New Jersey Giants---we'll view another kind of offense after I finish jumping up and down. (I admit that I haven't watched that many games, but still...) Tackle that artwork! (COMING SOON) … [Read more...] about The Greatest Exhibition of Football Artistry Ever Seen!

WHD Koerner, "A Charge to Keep," 1916 Being admired by President Bush, apparently.. Jonathan Jones in the British Guardian today enlists a variety of experts to debunk W's enthusiasm for WHD Koerner's 1916 cowboy action painting, "A Charge to Keep." The painting itself is knocked for its "exhausted cliché of masculinity" and for its being "fairly dull." But the experts have the … [Read more...] about What’s the Worst Thing that Can Happen to an Artist’s Reputation?

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. has given support---in the form of a memorandum filed this week in Davidson County Chancery Court---for serious consideration of an improbable plan to put some of Fisk University's Stieglitz Collection under the care of the as yet nonexistent Museum of African American Music, Art and Culture in Nashville, where Fisk is located. To … [Read more...] about Tennessee AG Likes New Proposal for Fisk’s Stieglitz Collection UPDATED