Five things I think I think

  • The MFA Houston should be embarrassed about the Met 'masterpieces' show they have on view. The works are almost uniformly second- and third-rate. The MFAH is one of America's wealthiest museums. With the second largest endowment of any US museum it should be able to provide Houston with better exhibits than this.

  • The NYT Museums section is sad. Many (most?) of the stories have already appeared in other newspapers, in magazines and on blogs. The Hilarie Sheets apparent phoner -- No dateline! Look at all those ads! The NYT's writers can't be bothered to get out of the house?! -- story on the Indianapolis Museum of Art has two quoted sources: plenty from director Max Anderson and one sentence from an IMA curator. No context, no depth, no thought. (Sheets also apparently didn't go to Seattle to write this problematic story.) Same goes for stories about -- but not from - -Dallas, Atlanta, and so on. It's bait-and-switch special-section style: The NYT wants to sell all those ads, so it does a museum section. But it won't deign to visit Indy, Dallas, Atlanta, and so on. At least Holland Cotter's essay was thought-provoking. UPDATE: See here for clarification. The NYT owes Sheets one dateline.

  • Many of the Baltimore Museum of Art's best Matisses are in Dallas for the Matisse: Painter as Sculptor show. But the museum is taking advantage of the Matisse-free wallspace to show some superb works that have been hidden for as long as I can remember: An early Klimt forest painting, a tight Albert Bloch (talk about underrated -- LACMA's Bloch is one of its best 20thC paintings, and certainly the most underappreciated), rarely-seen Matisse drawings and more.

  • Speaking of the BMA, it has a new, frustratingly collection-thin website.

  • One of the things I enjoyed about visiting museums in Germany and in the Netherlands early this month was their willingness to put on view early or atypical works by major artists, thus illuminating their audience's understanding of that artist. Typical, from the Wallraf-Richartz in Cologne: An 1898 Matisse painted in Corsica which hints at the fauvism to come years later, a 1908 divisionist Picabia, and a 1910 Bonnard of his wife apparently masturbating in the bathroom, a set of clothes serving as a literal dividing line between husband and wife.

    • March 29, 2007 8:30 AM |

    Categories:

    Blogroll

    The Lead List

    AFC
    Greg Allen
    Art History Newsletter
    Art to Go
    art:21
    Articulations
    Marshall Astor
    Bloggy
    Brief Epigrams
    C-Monster
    Conscientious
    Greg Cook
    Emvergeoning
    Exhibitionist
    The Expanded Field
    Eyeteeth
    Fallon & Rosof
    The Flog
    Grammar.police
    Hankblog
    Heart as Arena
    Indy Museum of Art
    Matthew Langley
    Looking Around
    Modern Art Obsession
    Off Center
    PORT
    Restless
    Two Coats of Paint
    James Wagner
    Edward Winkleman

    Boston & New England

    Artblog Comments
    Leslie K. Brown
    Hol Art Books
    Jason Landry
    Megan & Murray
    Modern Kicks
    Our Daily Red

    Chicago

    Art or Idiocy?
    B'wood and Holmes
    LeisureArts
    Edward Lifson
    Not If But When #2
    Sharkforum

    Denver

    Art Palaver Fort Collins
    Gallery Hopper
    Rachel Hawthorn
    Minutiae

    Great Lakes

    Art in Pittsburgh
    Cigarettes and Purity
    Culture Scout
    Digging Pitt
    Eric Gelber
    Mattress Factory
    The Thinking Eye
    Unedit my Heart
    View on Canadian Art

    Los Angeles

    art.blogging.la
    Carol Es
    Frenchy But Chic
    Dennis Hollingsworth
    I call it oranges
    Leap Into the Void
    Lightning History
    Robert Olsen
    Positive Ape Index
    SMMoA Book Club
    The OC Art Blog

    Midwest (KS --> OH)

    2buildings1blog
    MW Capacity
    Nelson-Atkins
    On the Cusp
    Shorttage

    Minneapolis

    Chron. of Artistic Failure
    Mplsart.com
    Ongoing

    New York City

    Aperture Exposures
    ArtCalZine
    ArtCritical
    ArtObserved
    Art on my Mind
    Art Vent
    Artists Unite Issue
    The Brooklyn Days
    Bureaux
    Daily Gusto
    Delicious Ghost
    Eponanonymous
    Deborah Fisher
    Amy Goodwin
    Ground Glass
    Bill Gusky
    John Haber
    Ethan Ham
    High Low and in Between
    Hungry Hyaena
    I Heart Photograph
    MTAA-RR
    Joanne Mattera
    NEWSgrist
    The Old Gold
    Oly's Musings
    Page 291
    Catherine Spaeth
    Hrag Vartanian

    Philadelphia

    Art Blog By Bob
    From This Moment
    In It for Life
    Matthews the Younger
    Romanblog II
    Zoe Strauss
    Douglas Witmer

    Portland

    DK Row
    Pencilmarks
    TJ Norris

    San Francisco

    Timothy Buckwalter
    Chez Namastenancy
    Engineer's Daughter
    Open Space (SFMOMA)

    Seattle

    Art and Politics Now
    Dangerous Chunky
    Seattle Art Blog
    Slog visual arts

    Texas

    Art Motel Radio
    ArtsHouston Blog
    B.S. Houston
    Border Art Dialogue
    'Bout What I Sees
    Amon Carter Museum
    Ezimmerman
    Glasstire blogs
    Chris Jagers
    KERA Arts & Culture
    MAMFW

    Washington, DC

    Adventures of Hoogrrl
    artPark
    Eyelevel (SAAM)
    Hatchets and Skewers
    Jumping in Art Museums

    Podcasts

    ArtsHouston
    Bad at Sports
    Dallas ArtCast

    Architecture

    BLDGBLOG
    A Daily Dose
    Dezeen
    Life Without Buildings
    Pruned
    Subtopia

    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Modern Art Notes published on March 29, 2007 8:30 AM.

    KCRW, NYT, and Goldman all get along so nicely! was the previous entry in this blog.

    Smithsonian roundup is the next entry in this blog.

    Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

    AJ Ads

    Introducing
    AJ Arts Blog Ads
    Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

    Advertise Here

    AJ Blogs

    AJBlogCentral | rss

    culture
    About Last Night
    Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
    Artful Manager
    Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
    blog riley
    rock culture approximately
    CultureGulf
    Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
    Dewey21C
    Richard Kessler on arts education
    diacritical
    Douglas McLennan's blog
    Flyover
    Art from the American Outback
    Life's a Pitch
    For immediate release: the arts are marketable
    Mind the Gap
    No genre is the new genre
    Rockwell Matters
    John Rockwell on the arts
    Straight Up |
    Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

    dance
    Foot in Mouth
    Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
    Seeing Things
    Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

    jazz
    Jazz Beyond Jazz
    Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
    ListenGood
    Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
    Rifftides
    Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

    media
    Out There
    Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
    Serious Popcorn
    Martha Bayles on Film...

    classical music
    The Future of Classical Music?
    Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
    On the Record
    Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
    Overflow
    Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
    PostClassic
    Kyle Gann on music after the fact
    Sandow
    Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
    Slipped Disc
    Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

    publishing
    book/daddy
    Jerome Weeks on Books
    Quick Study
    Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

    theatre
    Drama Queen
    Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
    lies like truth
    Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
    Stage Write
    Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms

    visual
    Aesthetic Grounds
    Public Art, Public Space
    Artopia
    John Perreault's art diary
    CultureGrrl
    Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
    Modern Art Notes
    Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
    Creative Commons License
    This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.