I haven't been to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, by the way -- one of the museums now available on Google. I will someday. But I couldn't bear to experience it for the first time in this way. I didn't fall in love with art -- or museums -- because of "zoom levels."  That is David Franklin, director of the Cleveland Art Museum, speaking on the subject of the Google Art Project. (I actually have been to the Hermitage.) Given all the praise for GAP, I was a tad surprised to hear his views, which came out … [Read more...]

While at the groundbreaking for the downtown Whitney Museum last week, I got to thinking about the uptown building. As with most change, there are risks associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's recent deal to occupy the Whitney Museum's Madison Avenue Breuer building when it decamps for Tribeca. But there is a huge opportunity too. So forget about the knee-jerk reactions others have expressed about how putting contemporary art into the Whitney "outpost" turns it into a stepchild, or how Met will … [Read more...]

Now this is the difference between the way something is covered in Discovery News, and the way it's covered in a British tabloid, the Daily Mail. The subject is the consumption of culture -- going to museums and attending concerts, etc. -- and Discovery's headline ran: Cultured People Feel Less Stress. The Mail, on the other hand, wrote Looking for the ideal man? Try the Nearest Museum or Art Gallery, Say Health Experts. Actually, the Mail's story was a little more complete. So let me quote from it: ...men who regularly  indulge in … [Read more...]

On Sunday, the Kimbell Art Museum opens its newest special exhibition, Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912. Ho-hum, you may be thinking. What's new about that? The Museum of Modern Art, for one, mounted a landmark show on the duo, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, in 1989. It was lauded as setting the record straight on their relationship, for concluding that Braque was essential to the development of Cubism (e.g., see Michael Brenson's review in The New York Times). What more is there … [Read more...]

Just for fun, I attended today's groundbreaking for the Whitney downtown -- ok, not really, I had other business in the neighborhood and decided to include it on my itinerary to Chelsea and below. For one, I stopped in at the Gagosian gallery exhibition, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'Amour fou, which is worth the trip. I understand that some people are tired of Gagosian's rolling out of these niche Picasso exhibits. But I'm not. I agree with Jerry Saltz's review -- which concludes, "As Walter herself said, … [Read more...]

"There hasn't been an exhibition in London for Barbara [Hepworth] since 1968, says her granddaughter, the art historian Sophie Bowness. "It's shocking." And so it is. That comes from an article published in Sunday's Telegraph that argues that Hepworth deserves better. And now that she has a new museum of her own, in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, maybe she will. It complements her studio-garden museum at the Tate St. Ives in Cornwall. The  £35 million Hepworth Wakefield museum (right) opened on Saturday; it was … [Read more...]

Next month, the Milwaukee Art Museum opens its "Summer of China," featuring The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City and four smaller exhibitions. There's also a hefty schedule of lectures, art talks, a trip to Chinatown and other programs. So it was timely of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's art critic Mary Louise Schumacher to raise the outstanding pertinent question about all this the other day in a piece headlined Should the Milwaukee Art Museum Protest Ai Weiwei's Detention? This is … [Read more...]

So this week James Turrell was formally inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which gives me an occasion to post some pictures I took recently at one of his skyspace installations. Before I experienced one for myself, people suggested checking out the YouTube videos of these installations -- but I did not find any that did the Turrell piece justice. To refresh: For these pieces, Turrell creates an enclosed room with an open space through which viewers see the sky. For a period … [Read more...]

Ian Wardropper, chairman of the department of European Art and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, has just been named director of the Frick Collection. He succeeds Anne Poulet. Here's the link to the press release. In some ways, this is not unexpected. Wardropper lost the top job at the Met to his underling, Tom Campbell. And so he was eager to leave for his own place. Of course, his appointment creates the same dynamic at the Frick, where Colin Bailey, associate director and chief curator, has also been seeking a directorship. Rumor has it … [Read more...]

Can we tell if art is made by a man or a woman? That was the question the Delaware Art Museum asked of its visitors in an exhibition called Battle of the Sexes, which I wrote about here last February. The premise was this: Works by women artists were shown side by side with works by male artists of their chosing. Neither work was attributed on the wall labels, and viewers were asked to mark, on ballots, who they think made what -- female or male.  On Wednesday, a week before the exhibition closes on … [Read more...]