Art Gets the Fashion Treatment (again) in NY Times Magazine

Celant.jpg
Germano Celant: Fashion phobic?

Tomorrow's NY Times Magazine is The Art Issue.

Yeah, right.

Except for one serious piece by the estimable Arthur Lubow about Latin American art in U.S. museums (focusing chiefly on curator Mari Carmen Ramirez of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts), it's all about art-and-catering ("Affairs of the Art World," complete with recipes) and art-and-fashion (including not one but two spreads foisting designer clothes on non-major artworld figures, the second of which seems to suggest that artsy women have a thing about black lipstick).

I particularly had to laugh at one line from Michael Kimmelman's piece on Miuccia Prada's artworld peregrinations. Writing about how the director of the Prada Foundation, Italian curator Germano Celant, first got involved with that art-commissioning and art-presenting entity, the Times' expatriate art critic quotes Celant saying:

They were suspicious of me, and I was suspicious of fashion.
Come again? Wasn't Celant the co-curator of the Guggenheim's infamous Armani show? I guess he must have been suspicious about that one too.
March 22, 2008 10:45 AM |

About

CULTUREGRRL 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 contributing editor of Art in America magazine and 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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Archives: 1458 entries and counting

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:
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)

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:
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 the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
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

more of me elsewhere

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on March 22, 2008 10:45 AM.

Barnes Foundation Case Back in Court Monday was the previous entry in this blog.

New Acropolis Museum: Marring the Marbles is the next entry in this blog.

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