Department of Missing Departments: Brooklyn's European Paintings Vanish

I spent an enjoyable afternoon last week wandering around the Brooklyn Museum with CultureDaughter and her visiting boyfriend, Lee, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate and part-time artist, who specifically asked to see what Brooklyn had to offer.

Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the museum's expansive Beaux-Arts Court, which should be lined with European paintings, and came upon this:

What, no art?

Turns out that the walls had just been stripped bare (except for some residual labels and picture hooks) for a major renovation of the court's 100-year-old floor.

The already outdated January press release tells us:

The floor of the Court will be replaced with new terrazzo and structural glass that will provide visual access to the original glass block, which also serves as the ceiling of the Hall of the Americas on the floor below. The block allows radiant light from the Hall to suffuse the floor of the Beaux-Arts Court, while at the same time permitting light from the Court to filter through to the first floor....

The project...will begin in January and conclude in the early fall of 2008.

Not really.

Sally Williams, head of Brooklyn's press office, informed me that opening in early fall is impossible, and even winter "is aspirational. We have to see how the floor project goes."

Still, there are no current plans to install a selection of European paintings anywhere else in the building. Brooklyn's collection of that material, unlike its Egyptian trove, is far from world class. But deleting all the old masters, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists leaves a big gap in art history. Do we really need to devote so much space on the fourth floor to the Sisterhood is Dispiriting installation? (That very uneven show, mercifully, will give way next month to a Ghada Amer show.)

There still is some "art" in the Beaux-Arts Court. But it's not very beau:

I think Brooklyn might do better to let its Egyptian collection speak for itself.