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Having just returned from two days of panel discussions by artworld lawyers and museum administrators, I am amazed by how fixated some are on "managing" the press. So, here's my advice: The best way to manage the press is not to manage us. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I usually know the difference between someone trying to spin me and someone trying to inform me. If I … [Read more...] about How to Manage the Press: Don’t!

Today's NY Times has a piece by a woman, Patricia Cohen (editor of the newspaper's late, lamented "Arts & Ideas" page), reporting on an effort by an activist-author to train more women to write Op-Ed pieces for newspapers. (I've published six Op-Eds in the NY Times and one in the LA Times.) The article indicates that "65 or 75 percent of unsolicited [Op-Ed] manuscripts, or … [Read more...] about Why Are There No Great Women Op-Ed Columnists?

What are this foot and that hand doing beside Dr. Gross? I now believe it's a good thing, for more than financial reasons, that the Philadelphia Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are sharing ownership of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic." That's because of the thoroughly unconventional but provocatively engaging installation it has received at PAFA, where I viewed … [Read more...] about PAFA’s Lively Installation of “The Gross Clinic”

The buzz here in the City of Brotherly Love is that the Philadelphia Museum is likely to sell art from its collection in order to help fund the $68-million purchase of "The Gross Clinic." This was touched upon in today's WHYY radio report, which used a one-sentence anti-deaccessioning soundbite from me as well as comments from representatives of the Philadelphia Museum and its … [Read more...] about Will the Philadelphia Museum Sell an Eakins?

AJ Blogger Drew McManus, speaking yesterday on New York Public Radio's (WNYC's) Soundcheck (scroll to the final segment), could not answer host John Schaefer's key question about the impact of the 30 rare string instruments that the New Jersey Symphony bought four years ago and is now planning to sell: Did the sound improve? Unlike Drew, I'm from Jersey, and I can answer from … [Read more...] about Deaccessioning, Symphony-Style

UPDATE: The Buffalo News reported later today that Albright-Knox members opposed a motion to stop the planned sale of some of the museum's art by a vote of 1,224-428 (including proxies). A meeting last night of about 600 members of the Albright-Knox Gallery to discuss its planned deaccession of 207 non-contemporary objects was "fairly evenly divided," according to today's … [Read more...] about Albright-Knox Members Debate the Sales

We are all well accustomed to tacky museum gift shop items, but "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," now at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (to Sept. 30), takes schlock to a whole new level of outrageous tastelessness. Here are a couple of choice items to add to your Museum of Kitsch: "Ancient Egyptian Dog Collar": $85 Tut Tissue Box Cover: … [Read more...] about Sales from the Crypt: Tut Shop Must-Haves

I'm off today to the land of the Boy King. That could be one of two places: Cairo, or the city where they hand out these ancient artifacts: Some art scribes go to Maastricht, "on a press trip funded by the Dutch." I'm going dutch treat (on my own dime) to do some digging in Philly, where I'm bound to get myself in dutch. If all goes according to plan, you can hear me briefly … [Read more...] about Where in the World Is Lee Going? And Why is She Yapping on WHYY-FM Again?

The moral quandary posed in yesterday's The Ethicist column in the NY Times Sunday Magazine was the flip side of my own recent experience as an interviewer of applicants to my alma mater, Cornell University. Cornell's been good to my entire family, so I felt I owed it some small service. Interviewing seemed like a natural, since it's something that I know more than a little … [Read more...] about Some Interviewers Google College Applicants; This Cornell Interviewer Gets Googled

In yesterday's post for his ArtsJournal blog, On the Record, Henry Fogel commented critically on the taboo against applauding between movements at a classical concert. I disagree with him...up to a point. I've recently had two experiences at the NY Philharmonic where a group of people sitting in the back of the orchestra broke the taboo. I wrote about the first one in my post, … [Read more...] about Riffing on “The Applause Issue”

Latest Design for Parrish Art Museum, View from Montauk Highway © Herzog & de Meuron 2007 As a cost-cutting measure, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY, intends to opt for less expensive building materials (i.e., concrete floors, rather than wood) than initially planned for its new facility designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Construction estimates had risen to "close to … [Read more...] about Parrish’s Herzog & de Meuron Building Plans Face Economic Detours

Maybe the Getty's appointment of Malcolm Bell III to its panel assessing Italy's claim to the museum's so-called "Aphrodite" or "Morgantina Venus" is not as gutsy as it appeared to me when I wrote yesterday's post. According to a Nov. 9, 2006 article in the NY Times, "Malcolm Bell III, an archaeologist who has directed a dig at Morgantina for many years, says there is no … [Read more...] about More on the Getty’s “Aphrodite” Acolytes

If they have enough disposable income to buy a few things, how can they not? If you love art, you need to gaze at some of it on your own walls. But kudos to Jen Graves of the Seattle's alternative newspaper, The Stranger, for having the courage to explore in depth an ethical quagmire that may discomfit some writing colleagues, but that needs to be discussed. She got into the … [Read more...] about Should Art Critics Collect?

They must have done this just to prove they're serious about doing the right thing: The Getty Museum has bravely put one of the most outspoken critics of museums' antiquities-collecting practices, Malcolm Bell III, on its just-announced panel of scientists, archaeologists and art historians who will "research the origins of the Cult Statue of a Goddess, an object in the … [Read more...] about Getty Appoints Panel to Determine Whether Italy Should Get “Goddess”

The I. Lewis Libby verdict and Anthony Lewis' Op-Ed piece about it in yesterday's NY Times brought to mind my own uneasy relationships with confidential sources. Clearly, no national security is at risk in the course of my non-earthshattering artworld investigations: The only WMDs I write about are White Male Dominance in museum and gallery shows. (No, wait a minute. That's … [Read more...] about Lewis Libby, Anthony Lewis and CultureGrrl