CultureGrrl

Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary

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Curators of the World Unite!

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Here's a cause for the Association of Art Museum Curators: I have long believed that curators should get credit, by name, on the introductory wall text of exhibitions they organize. I wouldn't produce work without a byline. Why should they? This thought occurred to me again, as it has many times before, at the revelatory Pollock drawings show at the Guggenheim Museum … [Read more...] about Curators of the World Unite!

Now at the Guggenheim: MoMA’s Dumped Pollock

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Probably the most regrettable of the Museum of Modern Art's misguided auction disposals of nine paintings in 2004 was its casting off of Jackson Pollock's "Number 12, 1949." Retired dealer Eugene Thaw, an honorary trustee of MoMA and co-editor of Pollock's catalogue raisonné (quoted in my May 13, 2004 Wall Street Journal article, The Lost Museum: MoMA's Distressing Disposals) … [Read more...] about Now at the Guggenheim: MoMA’s Dumped Pollock

The Grrl Returns

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Yes, CultureGrrl groupies, I'm back. Elgar was indeed played and my daughter did graduate Cornell, on the only gloriously sunny day of the weekend---a major accomplishment in famously weather-challenged Ithaca. Between celebratory events, the incorrigible Grrl also managed to pop in on several worthwhile exhibitions on campus---at the I.M. Pei-designed Johnson Museum and at … [Read more...] about The Grrl Returns

Rethinking Antiquities (again)

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Last Friday, I promised to revisit the subject of collecting antiquities this week. (Here, here and here are my other related posts.) I have only this to add: Museums' assertions that they are now revising their policies because the times and the standards have changed are more than a little disingenuous. It seems clear that museums were always aware of (or at least suspected) … [Read more...] about Rethinking Antiquities (again)

Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part II)

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If you missed the first installment of this two-part series, please click here. 5) The Sleeping Giants---Serra, Kelly, Rosenquist: I had always thought (mistakenly, it seems) that one of the reasons for MoMA's vast new contemporary space was to provide room for semi-permanent display of the museum's three enormous, iconic works: James Rosenquist's "F-111," Ellsworth Kelly's … [Read more...] about Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part II)

Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part I)

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And now, as promised in Friday's post, here's what irks me about the bigger, but not necessarily better, Museum of Modern Art. I'll skip the things you've already heard from the critical chorus: It's too corporate (it is). The admission fee is too high (ditto). But let me preface this by saying that I think Glenn Lowry is an excellent, conscientious, diligent museum … [Read more...] about Top 10 List: What’s Not to Like About Mega-MoMA (Part I)

From Ferdinand to Big Bird

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Apparently I'm not the only one who wants to tell Maxim Vengerov how to get to Sesame Street. No Scoop After All Michael Reingold, assistant director of the JCC on the Palisades' Thurnauer School of Music, just e-mailed a love note to CultureGrrl, and included this news flash: I thought you'd want to know that Bob McGrath and Dave Connor from Sesame Street were in the … [Read more...] about From Ferdinand to Big Bird

No Scoop After All

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In a previous post, I bragged that only CultureGrrl could tell you how my fellow Bronx Science-ite, Daniel Liebskind, got his start. Then, yesterday, I started leafing through his memoir, Breaking Ground, and saw that this was old news: When we moved to New York, I took a technical drawing course at the Bronx High School of Science, and I loved it. On the days I had class, I … [Read more...] about No Scoop After All

Blockbusters, Schlockbusters

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[For those of you who just arrived here today, July 19, from the link in Tyler Green's blog, here's my more recent post on the phenomenon of renting exhibitions for big bucks---the Metropolitan Museum's 19th-century European paintings show, traveling next year to Houston and Berlin.] Yesterday, I raised some questions about Renzo Piano's architecture for the expanded High … [Read more...] about Blockbusters, Schlockbusters

Vengerov: Full of Bull

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If, like me, you regard the 31-year-old Maxim Vengerov as one of the greatest musicians ever to wield a bow, I've got news for you: As much as you may admire his Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, you don't know Maxim to the max until you've experienced his hilarious narration and musical portrayal of the beloved children's classic, "Ferdinand the Bull"---the story by Munro Leaf … [Read more...] about Vengerov: Full of Bull

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