Last Week's Biggest Development in Blogdom

No it's not Six Art Bloggers in Search of an Author, the e-mailed roundtable, moderated by critic Peter Plagens in the November issue of Art in America. (The actual title of the piece is: "Report from the Blogosphere: The New Grass Roots." A.i.A.'s barebones website never links to its articles.) This five-page compilation of answers to such questions as "What's the purpose of your blog?", "What are the boundaries of your blog?" and "Where will your blog be in three to five years?" fails to include...(sob)...me. Unlike the participants, I'm a contributing editor of A.i.A., making me feel even more like the wallflower not asked to dance. Still, I'm willing to bet that none of those other bloggers has ever been the subject of an Arkansas newspaper editorial.

Nor is the big news the recent return of the NY Times' irregular ArtsBeat blog, which has flooded the zone with five pop music critics at the CMJ Music Marathon. This must indeed be a very important event. It is here that we can learn about such future musical classics as "'Enjoying Myself,' a party song with lyrics that mischievously imitate the moronic conversations that partiers often have. ('I like enjoying myself at parties/So do you/We like enjoying ourselves.')"

No, the big event (and I mean this sincerely) is the inauguration of The Board, a blog by the 19 members of the NY Times editorial board. These prolific pundits have more opinions than they know what to do with, and now they let them rip in a blog that has has tallied 17 posts in its first five days. Their sharply pointed commentary makes for lively reading. But in their last post on Friday, The New Jersey Blues, they diss my home state. They do concede, however, that the state best known for its turnpike has somehow mananged to produce "a steady stream of great Americans, such as Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Frank Sinatra, and Bruce Springsteen." The Times must like Brennan because he wrote the opinion in the landmark libel-law case that the newspaper won, "New York Times v. Sullivan."

The Judge, the Chairman of the Board, the Boss...and, of course, the Sopranos. Not to mention novelist Philip Roth, sculptor George Segal and poets Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams. What a state I'm in!

October 22, 2007 12:10 AM | | | Comments (0)

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CULTUREGRRL , the art blog, is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers. Bringing wit and wisdom to informed, informative reviews of artworld events and issues, CultureGrrl (aka Lee Rosenbaum) is avidly read for her influential critiques of best and worst practices in the field.

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LEE ROSENBAUM LeeAcrop.jpg I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University.

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Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on October 22, 2007 12:10 AM.

Not Funny: Indianapolis Museum's Padlocked Caravaggio was the previous entry in this blog.

Mona Lisa Revealed? is the next entry in this blog.

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