Meet the New Year. Same as the Old Year.
My riff on “Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss”—the cynical sign-off of The Who’s counterculture anthem, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”—is my summation of our situation at the end of 2021, with our lives still on hold at year’s end, as they were at the beginning, and with pestilence having taken its grim toll. Those of us who were afflicted mainly with boredom were the lucky ones. The unfortunate were brought down by Covid, triggering gut-wrenching inner screams worthy of Roger Daltrey‘s strident howl (at 7:45, here) that immediately precedes The Who’s tag line about “the new boss.”
As someone who, as a senior, is characterized (or caricatured) as “vulnerable,” I have mostly hunkered in at home, trying to tease out whatever artworld issues I could analyze and expound upon from the safety of my perch atop the Palisades, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. For aesthetic sustenance, I relied mostly on the familiar art on my own walls and on the ever-changing vistas out my window—images that have attracted more traffic to my Twitter feed than any words that I’ve posted:
Chrysler Building, left; Empire State Building, center
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Only rarely did I timidly venture into museum galleries (as you will see in the recap links, at the end of this post). One press preview that I felt I shouldn’t miss was Keith Christiansen‘s swansong (with CultureGrrl Video) as the Met’s chairman of European paintings:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
My one great self-indulgence (and greatest risk) this year was regularly visiting my two too-young-to-be-vaccinated grandchildren in NJ (who, happily for my husband and me, moved back here from CA) and my three grandchildren (one unvaccinated) on Long Island. So far, all is well. But I keep hearing of new cases among our friends and relatives, including a new one just yesterday, who caught Covid while in a hospital for other medical issues.
I’ve been deeply thankful for you, art-lings, most notably for those readers who, by their kind words and/or monetary support, have encouraged me to believe that this blog is more than a mere vanity project.
I was particularly heartened by two comments that lit up my inbox this week. This from a major museum curator…
Since travel is (and has been since my last NY trip in November) curtailed, I’m living vicariously through your experience!
(My “experience!” has mostly consisted of composing posts at my computer, but I did manage to cover—mostly at a distance—a number of compelling stories.)
…and this from a nationally known benefactor:
I enjoy your insightful and intelligent arts criticism and analysis. While I don’t always agree, I am always challenged by your writing to think more deeply about our culture.
“Reasonable people can disagree” is one of my favorite taglines.
Without further ado (or more self-serving asides), let me extend to my always reasonable, unfailingly civil and highly sophisticated readers my Best Wishes for an Art-Full, Virus-Free 2022 (re-upping the same wish that I had futilely extended to you a year ago), along with CultureGrrl’s Top 20 Stories for 2021, with an emphasis, as always, on the controversies that I’ve somehow managed to keep an eye on, in the midst of pandemic pandemonium—dicey deaccessions, leadership challenges, problematic donors, diversity perversity. A new, disturbing theme has dominated museum news this year—the harmful effect that the Covid Crisis has had on museums’ attendance, finances and programing, with no end yet in sight.
Here’s this year’s Top-20 Rundown, in chronological order:
Can a New LACMA Rise from the Rubble? Quaffing Michael Govan’s Kool-Aid
Pandemic Polemics: Metropolitan Museum’s Off-Key NPR Message vs. Cleveland’s Harmonious Storage Show
AAMD’s Deaccession Dilemma (& the Met’s Equivocations)
Screenshot from the museum’s March 9 Press Briefing
CultureGrrl, the Metropolitan Museum & the Bomb Scare
The Late Eli Broad: My Talk with the Under-Appreciated Overachiever Who Energized LA’s Cultural Life
Newark’s Old Works Offloaded: NJ’s Most Prominent Art Museum Sells “Outdated” Outcasts Tomorrow
Cole Toll: Newark Museum Loses Out While Cashing In
Mehretu’s To-Do, “Day’s End” & Diller-Dally: Inside & Outside the Reopened Whitney
From the Seine to the Hudson: The “Jersey City Pompidou”? Incroyable!
Meddling With Medici at the Met: Provocations & Proclamations (Part I & Part II)
Departing Philly: Timothy Rub Joins the Exodus of Major Museum Officials
The Medici as “Influencers,” The Metropolitan Museum as Clickbait
The Late Joseph Rishel, 80: Witty, Erudite Curator Extraordinaire
The Brooklyn Museum’s $50-Million Windfall & Its Diversity Deficiency
Metropolitan Museum’s Rockefeller Wing Keeps Its Name, Refreshes Its Approach
A NOTE TO MY READERS: If you appreciate my coverage and have some money remaining after distributing your end-of-year charitable contributions, please consider supporting CultureGrrl with a non-tax deductible gift by clicking the PayPal “Donate” button in the righthand column of the desktop version or by scrolling down to the “DONATE” link in the mobile version. Contributors of $15 or more are added to my email blast for immediate notification of new posts.
Have a HAPPY & HEALTHY NEW YEAR!