I read a lot of the NY Times on my tablet these days, but I still subscribe to the print edition and somewhat sleepily pulled it out of its plastic bag late this morning—off to a slow start after having spent yesterday evening in an energetic give-and-take with a lively New York University class of aspiring visual arts administrators (almost all young women).
Startled, I rubbed my bleary eyes when I saw this:
Why was a gun-toting (below the fold) Elvis holding the Gray Lady hostage?
It wasn’t until I fully opened the eight-page spread, which included full-page images of works by Warhol, Manet and Zeng Fanzhi, that my suspicions were confirmed about this obstacle between me and today’s front-page news: The last page of the Times’ eye-popping new front section was a full-page promotion for Christie’s upcoming evening Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary sales in New York and Asian Contemporary sale in Hong Kong.
Just in case we had somehow missed the point, Christie’s also bought some prominent placement on Times’ the real front page:
I can’t blame an auction house for trumpeting its sales: That’s its business. But I do have to wonder about the Times’ judgment in folding its editorial product into an advertising supplement for luxury goods. (Apparently Harry Winston, the jeweler, previously did something similar.)
I also had a surprise yesterday at NYU, where Sandra Lang, director of the M.A. program in Visual Arts Administration, introduced me, in part, by telling the class that I had grilled her with surprisingly tough questions back when she was director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Art Advisory Service. This was decades ago and I didn’t remember the interview. But it clearly made a lasting (if not entirely agreeable) impression on her.
NYU’s program for visual arts administrators, who hope one day to be interviewed by people like me (or probably not), touts itself as “the first in the nation [founded in 1971] to focus specifically on management careers in the visual arts, in both traditional and alternative contexts.” The approximately 50 students (a bumper class this year) were attentive thoughout my hour-long illustrated oration (with juicy anecdotes) about the dance between art writers and the institutions they cover. Then we engaged in an energetic, freewheeling discussion about the practice of art criticism.
My final surprise was the warm applause that enveloped me at the end of the class.
Maybe they enjoyed it almost as much as I did!