Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary

This is the full text of a letter that was sent today by Arnold Lehman, former director of the Baltimore Museum, to Maryland’s Attorney General Brian Frosh and Secretary of State John Wobensmith [emphasis is his]. It speaks (eloquently) for itself: Dear General Frosh and Secretary Wobensmith: My name is Arnold Lehman and I was the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art … [Read more...] about “Central to the Museum’s Collection”: Arnold Lehman Blasts the Baltimore Deaccessions

The list of opponents to the Baltimore Museum of Art's (BMA's) deplorable deaccessions keeps growing (now some 150 strong). One particularly notable addition is very well known to CultureGrrl readers---Arnold Lehman, former director of the BMA and, subsequently, of the Brooklyn Museum. Here's his recent photo, as found on the current website for Phillips Auction House, … [Read more...] about Baltimore Museum Gets a Formal Letter Calling for a Halt to Planned Sales; Ex-Director Lehman Piles On

Any museum official tempted to exploit the (so-called) permanent collection as a fungible commodity for bankrolling pet projects (however worthy) and bolstering the payroll should read and take heed of this six-page letter deploring the Baltimore Museum of Art's (BMA's) planned disposals. Signed and dispatched yesterday by former trustees and advisory committee members of … [Read more...] about The Battle of Baltimore: Former Museum Trustees Strike Back in the Deaccession Wars

More on this here. Call me Cassandra. The "slippery slope" of monetizing museum collections, which I previously prophesied would get more dangerous under the Association of Art Museum Directors' temporarily relaxed guidelines, has just been greased. As the planned disposals by the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) make clear, some institutions … [Read more...] about Deplorable in Baltimore: Careening Down the Slippery Slope of Collection Monetization

Knowing that I'm sticking my head into a lion's mouth, I feel compelled to strongly disagree with sanctimonious art critics, artists and scholars who have piled on (here, here, here, here and here) against what to my mind was a regrettable-but-necessary decision by four seasoned art museum directors to postpone (not to cancel) their jointly planned Philip Guston Now … [Read more...] about Philip Guston Bluster: Why It’s Wise to Postpone a Show Depicting Cartoonish Ku Klux Klan Figures

Three months ago, a CultureGrrl tipster wrote to me that the Brooklyn Museum's board was about to vote on proposed deaccessions of seven works (which he identified by type, but not by specific objects), for a "combined total value of $50 million." (The tipster never identified himself to me, and I did not report his unconfirmed information at that time.) Now, the Brooklyn … [Read more...] about $40-Million Collection-Care Goal: Brooklyn Museum’s 1st Round of Art Sales Under AAMD’s Relaxed Rules

POIGNANT?!? "Horrific," "Profoundly Disturbing," "Jolting"...but surely not "Poignant." That mild adjective was used by the Metropolitan Museum's communications office in its headline (below) for the press release announcing the display (to Jan. 18) of Gerhard Richter's four paintings from his "landmark 'Birkenau' series" of 2014, in which black-and-white photographic … [Read more...] about “Birkenau” Blunder: Metropolitan Museum Says Richter’s Riffs on the Holocaust are “Poignant”

I've been planning to call out the lamentable decision of the Everson Museum, announced on Sept. 3, to jettison its only Jackson Pollock painting "in order to refine, diversify, and build the museum’s collection for the future" (in the words of the Syracuse, NY, museum's self-justification). Christopher Knight's scathing critique of this "inexcusable move" (his words) in … [Read more...] about Syracuse Refuse: Everson Museum Discards its Pollock to “Address Inequality” & Pursue the New

In previous posts, I suggested that the Metropolitan Museum's radical downsizing of staff through layoffs and retirements (necessitated by the financial hit from the Virus Crisis) might give its current leaders an opportunity to install their own hand-picked team "sooner and less controversially than would have otherwise been possible" [emphasis added]. "Sooner" turns out to … [Read more...] about Quick About-Face: Metropolitan Museum Follows Drastic Staff Reductions with Strategic Additions

Here we go again... The above headline echos my title for a June 2009 post, reporting on the Metropolitan Museum's staff purge during the Great Recession. So it's with dejected déjà vu that I now regretfully report the imminent departure of some 90 Metropolitan Museum staffers, from departments including security, facilities management, retail, education, conservation, … [Read more...] about Who’s Leaving the Metropolitan Museum? A Partial List of Retirees

It's easy to say that art museums ought to be hiring more minority candidates, and it's also easy to get museums to agree that they should do so. Nevertheless, NYC's cultural institutions have been slow to fulfill those good intentions, according to the NY Times' pesky assessment by Sarah Bahr---Is New York’s Arts Diversity Plan Working? It’s Hard to Tell. Bahr examines the … [Read more...] about Diversity Diversion: Plumbing Museums’ “Pipeline” Problem in Hiring Minorities

Either Max Hollein and Daniel Weiss, the director and president of the Metropolitan Museum, were knowing participants in Yoko Ono's mischievous potshot at their august institution, or they fell for her prank. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the only explanation I can come up with for Max's and Dan's absurdly effusive praise for the conceptual/performance artist's "bold and … [Read more...] about Yoko’s Joke: Signs of the Times for the Metropolitan Museum’s Impending Reopening

As the Metropolitan Museum prepares to reopen to the public on Aug. 29 (with many other major NYC museums expecting to welcome visitors beginning in late August-early September), the experience of the the first major U.S. art museum out of the re-starting gate---the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which intrepidly invited its public back three months ago---is an object lesson on … [Read more...] about Mask Tasks: How Texas Tinterow Pulled Off the Early Reopening of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

I have to hand it to Holland Cotter: For better or worse, the NY Times' co-chief art critic was right. I was wrong. In criticizing as "shockingly tone-deaf" Cotter's 3,000-word think piece published almost five months ago, I had opined that his sweeping plan for reinventing museums during their pandemic-related closures was a non-starter at a time when "museums have to … [Read more...] about Consciousness Raised, Budgets Cut: Irreconcilable Imperatives at Metropolitan (& other museums)

The Twitterati collectively rubbed their eyes and raised their eyebrows yesterday when the NY Times' Opinion page tweeted a hoot that couldn't be blamed on the social-media staff: The mistaken posting accurately reproduced an astonishing error that appeared online yesterday (Saturday) in an Op-Ed column by Maureen Dowd, and was published in the "Sunday Review" section of … [Read more...] about NY Times Department of Corrections—Hillary Clinton/Maureen Dowd Edition UPDATED