Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary

In my 2008 tribute to the late Sherman Lee, long-time director of the Cleveland Museum, I had stated: He was my go-to person (along with Thomas Messer of the Guggenheim Museum) for brilliantly expressed, cogent and thoughtful quotes defending museum standards and ethics. He was always available, always unafraid to speak forcefully, and always generous with his insights. Now my other go-to person from that earlier era has died at the age of 93. Tom Messer, director of the Guggenheim from 1961 to 1988, was unfailingly available to share his … [Read more...]

A few of my devoted art-lings may have been wondering about my utter disappearance from CultureGrrl and @CultureGrrl during the past few days. Here's why I've abandoned the keyboard, even though I had a lot of posts in mind: The only works of art I've been seeing since Monday evening are the Sol LeWitt mural, above, at New York-Presbyterian Children's Hospital and my fabulous first grandchild, who was born there Monday evening. Already precocious, he arrived almost a month earlier than expected, but in full cry and perfect condition, at a … [Read more...]

The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, has just announced that it will discontinue its relationship with the architectural firm of Rick Mather, whose death on Apr. 20 threw the museum's well planned expansion project into disarray. This just in from the PEM: “We are deeply saddened by Rick Mather’s passing. It was a privilege and an honor to work with Rick and his team. He was a gifted architect,” said Dan Monroe, PEM's...director and CEO. “After careful consideration, we have determined the best way forward to complete our … [Read more...]

There is a capsule review in today's NY Times that merits wider attention and museum follow-up---Holland Cotter's very belated praise for Michael Rosenfeld Gallery's Benny Andrews show (closing May 18). It's the artist's first (also belated) retrospective since his death in 2006. As I felt when I visited this show several weeks ago (tweeting appreciatively, here and here), Cotter believes Rosenfeld's show gives Andrews' oeuvre "the visibility it deserves. An institutional survey, accompanied by an edition of Andrews’s invaluable and … [Read more...]

Robin Pogrebin was given the story before the Museum of Modern Art sent it to the rest of us: It now appears there's a chance that the fierce opponents to the demolition of Tod Williams' and Billie Tsien's American Folk Art Museum building may actually have their way. This memo from MoMA's director, Glenn Lowry, to the museum's board and staff has just hit my inbox: The highly respected New York-based architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been retained by the museum to develop the West End expansion project, including a detailed … [Read more...]

"This is the most important Fauve portrait to come to market, bar none," you can hear Brooke Lampley, Christie's Impressionist/modern department head, assert to the press in this CultureGrrl Video. Expounding upon Derain's “Madame Matisse in a Kimono,” 1905, the second-highest estimated work in the sale at $15-20 million, Lampley added: I try not to use the words 'museum quality' too lightly. We're tempted to, in our field. This is truly a museum quality work. The synergy and synthesis of aesthetics and narrative here are relatively … [Read more...]

In deciding to repatriate two important 10th-century Koh Ker stone statues of “Kneeling Attendants,” on public display in its permanent collection galleries for almost 20 years, the Metropolitan Museum has set a gold standard for museums' cultural-property policy, going far beyond what the Association of Art Museum Directors mandates. (AAMD's antiquities guideslines refer to future acquisitions, not to dicey objects that are already in museum collections.) But the Met's salutary influence on future practice could be even more powerful if … [Read more...]

You know it's a boring evening when the most exciting aspect of the just concluded Sotheby's Impressionist/modern sale (which I previewed here) was the first-time use of multiple cameras, allowing those of us viewing the sale online to see not only the auctioneer but also the auction-house officials fielding phone bids. This not only provides a livelier viewing experience for armchair auctiongoers, but also shows that bids were real, not "chandelier." It's not that the sale didn't do reasonably well. It's just that the offerings were … [Read more...]

It's the auction houses' job, during the run-up to the big spring sales, to hype the robust state of the art market and the importance of works being offered. But while there are some notable highlights, there's nothing to "Scream" about in this spring's major Impressionist/modern sales at Sotheby's and Christie's, scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night, respectively. Brett Gorvy, chairman for postwar and contemporary art at Christie's, described the offerings in his firm's spring Impressionist/modern and contemporary sales as "very … [Read more...]

In a series of tweets (with photos) that I posted @CultureGrrl earlier today, I essentially said all I'm going to say about the Metropolitan Museum's disheveled, disjointed, dismaying Punk: Chaos to Couture (May 9-Aug. 14). Here's my first of several salvos against a show that I put down as "theatrics without substance": My photo, taken near the entrance to the exhibition, shows the Met's recreation of the bathroom at the punk rock mecca, CBGB---an installation inspiration that, as one of my Twitter followers later informed me, was … [Read more...]

Here's the announcement that the art scribe tribe has been eagerly awaiting: Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the appointment of Cynthia Round to the newly created position of senior vice president, marketing and external relations.  Ms. Round will join the museum on June 3....Reporting to her will be communications and advertising, which will remain under the direction of Elyse Topalian, vice president for communications [who supervises relations with the press, including pesky people … [Read more...]

Once again, it's "in with the new, out with the old" today at the Barnes Foundation, which reopened almost a year ago in its new digs in Philadelphia. As I write this, the scribe tribe is gathering (without me) at the Barnes for the press preview of what the foundation bills as its "first contemporary art exhibition in 90 years" (a year after the Barnes was founded). Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture on the Wall (May 4-Sept. 2) consists of five works by the artist, who himself turns 90 in May and is attending today's press preview. The "out with … [Read more...]

The Metropolitan didn't only (partially) acquire the Mishneh Torah from the Michael and Judy Steinhardt collection of Judaica today. It later scooped up two lots from Sotheby's auction of the Steinhardt trove (as reported in the auction house's post-sale press release): ---Large (13" diameter) Italian parcel-gilt silver Torah crown, Venice, c. 1740-50, $857,000 (with buyer's premium); presale estimate: $300,000-500,000 (without premium) ---Pair of Russian parcel-gilt silver Torah finials, Georgia, c. 1896, $43,750; estimate: … [Read more...]

Was it all just a charade? It seems clear to me now, from my revelatory discussion on Friday with Michael Steinhardt, that Sotheby's must have had more than an inkling that the Frankfurt Mishneh Torah was going to be withdrawn from this morning's Steinhardt Judaica auction, even as its experts were touting to the press and prospective bidders the sale's purported star lot. The c. 1457 illustrated copy of Maimonides' magnum opus, which he completed in 1180, bore the highest estimate ($4.5-6 million) in a sale packed with many modest objects … [Read more...]

My informed guess proved correct. This just in from the Israel Museum and Metropolitan Museum: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the joint acquisition of one of the finest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts ever created, a rare handwritten copy of the Mishneh Torah by Maimonides, one of the most important rabbinical figures of the Middle Ages. The manuscript was previously in the collection of Judy and Michael Steinhardt, New York, and will be shared by the two museums on a rotating basis. The … [Read more...]

I was surprised and irked Wednesday when I learned that the star offering in this Monday's New York auction of the Michael and Judy Steinhardt's Judaica collection---the 15th-century illustrated Frankfurt Mishneh Torah (presale estimate: $4.5-6 million) had not only been proudly displayed on "extended loan" for the past three years in the permanent-collection galleries of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, but had first been restored to exhibition-worthy condition by the museum, which had unbound, painstakingly conserved and reassembled … [Read more...]

Proving that the best-laid plans sometimes go dismayingly astray, the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, has suddenly found itself in the stricken position of mourning the death of architect Rick Mather, who was chosen in 2011 to design PEM's 175,000-square-foot expansion, scheduled for completion in 2017. Here's all that a spokesperson for the PEM's understandably dumbstruck director, Dan Monroe, could tell me yesterday about the status of the project, in light of this unforseen development: Dan relays that everyone is still in shock at … [Read more...]

As reported on Rick Mather's website, the London-based architect died Saturday after a short illness. He was 75. Not as renowned as some starchitects, but admired for his tasteful expansions of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford and the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, as well as his masterplan for London's Southbank Centre arts complex, he was just beginning to have an impact in his native country, the U.S., with his 2010 McGlothlin Wing for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. His next big U.S. museum project was … [Read more...]

The description of LA MOCA's benefit gala last night, contained in a press release from the museum that just landed in my inbox, requires little comment. It operates as its own parody. In her raised-eyebrow recap of last night's festivities, Jori Finkel of the LA Times called the extravaganza, "one weird night." Particularly strange, she said, was "a fake appearance by museum director Jeffrey Deitch, who was in attendance but didn't take the microphone himself. Instead, an actor wearing a patch over his left eye was introduced as Deitch and … [Read more...]

This year has been designated The Year of Italian Culture, bringing to our shores important loans from Italian museums. One of those, Velázquez's "Portrait of Francesco I d'Este," 1639, has just been accorded a room of its own at the Metropolitan Museum (to July 14), on loan from Modena's Galleria Estense. The lending museum has been closed due to extensive damage (not, fortunately, to the artworks) since the severe May 2012 earthquake in that region. Another perhaps more spectacular loan, not yet announced by the Met (but already announced … [Read more...]