Archives for 2009

From the Museum of the Unbuilt: Toyo Ito's scrapped model for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Lawrence Rinder, fresh from conversing on Oct. 27 with his former Whitney Museum mentor, Max Anderson (who now directs the Indianapolis Museum of Art), announced on Wednesday a disappointing development that must have given Max traumatic flashbacks: The Berkeley Art … [Read more...] about Architectural Trauma: Downsized Berkeley Art Museum Plans May Not Include Toyo Ito

Mies van der Rohe's Test Cell building at Illinois Institute of TechnologyPhoto by Edward LifsonA minor work of Mies van der Rohe, who is being celebrated in the Museum of Modern Art's current Bauhaus show, is being demolished in Chicago, a city very closely tied to his architecture.For months, my blogging buddy, Ed Lifson, has been waging a relentless but futile campaign to … [Read more...] about Mies van der Rohe: Celebrated at MoMA, Destroyed in Chicago

The poignant image now on Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's homepageI got a chance to talk at length with Jeanne-Claude, who died last night at the age of 74, back in 2005 when "The Gates" captured the imagination of all New Yorkers, not to mention visitors from around the world. This glorious transformation made me see my childhood haunt, Central Park, with fresh, enlivened eyes, … [Read more...] about Jeanne-Claude, 74, Gatekeeper of the Christo/Jeanne-Claude Artistic Partnership

Knox Martin's protest art: what remains of his "Venus" mural (with his recently added signature)Last month, CultureGrrl. This week, the New Yorker!The Knox Notch (scroll down) hit the Big Time in the magazine's Nov. 23 issue (which landed in my snail-mailbox yesterday), with its appearance in a full-page photo of Jean Nouvel's in-construction 100 Eleventh Avenue.You can see the … [Read more...] about Knox-ious Notoriety (and the MoMA Monster mash): “Knox Notch” in the New Yorker

Since we just ended our previous post about cultural-property issues with the photograph I took in St. Louis of the Mummy Mask of the Lady Ka-nefer-nefer, let's go to the video tape!This is a CultureGrrl First---a video where this reporter (not some museum honcho) is the speaker. Let's wander around the St. Louis Art Museum's Egyptian galleries and then repair to the grand … [Read more...] about MeTube: Meet Me in St. Louis (with Ka-nefer-nefer and David Chipperfield)

At its meeting on Friday, the U.S. State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee heard testimony from museum directors, archaeologists and representatives of dealers and collectors as part of its interim review of this country's Memorandum of Understanding with Italy. The best summary I've found of these proceedings is on the Cultural Property Observer blog of Peter … [Read more...] about Cultural Property News: CPAC Reviews U.S. Agreement with Italy; NY Times vs. Hawass, Continued

You win, art-lings!I still have to write my paid piece, but three donations had already hit my PayPal account by early this morning, so I'm going to have to keep my promise and keep on blogging. You've already had my post for today, but I have several things in mind for later this week.Flush with your contributions, I headed to my local Borders bookstore, looking for Terry … [Read more...] about Paying It Forward: You Donated to Me, I Bought Teachout’s “Pops”

Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, under construction adjacent to the Indianapolis Museum of Art As I mentioned here, I was in Indianapolis last week---part of my week-long, three-city Midwestern journey. You know who I saw in windy Indy---Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It was only hours after he had returned home from this trip, but he was … [Read more...] about MeTube: Max Anderson at Indianapolis Museum’s Nascent Art & Nature Park

No one chose to encourage me (as I had hoped) to resume posting upon my return from my weeklong Midwest trip. And now that I'm back, I've got a paid article I need to write. I'm going to post one CultureGrrl Video (starring a native New Yorker relocated to the heartland) in the very near future. After that, silence for the rest of the week, unless three readers feel moved to … [Read more...] about CultureGrrl’s Pay-to-Play: No Donors, No Posts

You can hear me now, discussing with Kerry Nolan the serendipitous synergy among three shows now on view at three major NY museums. Listen on WQXR's website, here (scroll down).What a kick it was to hear my long-time radio hero, the station's witty morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, intoning: "CultureGrrrrrl. Did I say that right? CultureGrrrrrl" in his lead-in to my three-minute, … [Read more...] about My WQXR Museum Commentary: Abstraction Interaction

UPDATE: Yes! Just taped it. Will be aired momentarily.I've written that headline twice before. This morning WQXR is having trouble getting a telephone hookup to work, and so far I haven't been able to hear my gracious host, Kerry Nolan. I'm still on standby, hoping that the tech gremlins that always seem to bedevil me will yet be vanquished. Stay tuned (or maybe not). … [Read more...] about Due to Technical Difficulties…I May or May Not Be on Radio Today UPDATED

If all goes according to plan, I'll be the second weekly contributor tomorrow morning to the new Arts Report feature on WQXR, New York's classical music station. That's the public radio station sold not long ago by the NY Times to WNYC (New York Public Radio). About three weeks ago, I contributed to member-supported WQXR in a different way. (No, art-lings, this was NOT … [Read more...] about Coming Tomorrow: My WQXR Radio Report on NYC Museum Exhibitions

"Guilty," the yacht embellished by Jeff Koons for collector Dakis Joannou When does a single-collector show at a nonprofit museum cross the ethical line from inadvisable to unacceptable? When it involves pay-to-play. I'm not saying that's the case with the New Museum's much criticized future exhibition of works from the collection of Greek Cypriot industrialist Dakis … [Read more...] about The New Museum’s Dakis Fracas: Is It Pay-to-Play?

Rocco Landesman with the cast of "Rent" from Peoria's Eastlight Theatre; Kathy Chitwood, the company's executive director, shoulders Rocco.Photo by Adam GerikIt must have been quite a scene in Peoria last Friday, as important arts critics, including Bloomberg's Jeremy Gerard and the Washington Post's Peter Marks, trailed Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National … [Read more...] about Rocco Does Peoria; Congress Does a Number on the NEA