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Who would have thought it would have taken this long for the state-of-the-art Metropolitan Museum of Art to install humidity controls to protect its medieval frescoes and painted wooden sculptures? According to curator-in-charge Peter Barnet, who sat next to me today at the Met's press lunch, The Cloisters are at last emerging from the dark ages of climate control---part of the … [Read more...] about Medieval Cloisters for the 21st Century

Something new, informative and enjoyable on the NY Philharmonic's website: video clips of composers, conductors and musicians involved in upcoming performances. Most poignant is the clip of the 97-year-old Elliott Carter, explaining that his "Allegro scorrevole" of 1996 was inspired by a bubble in a painting by Chardin, which "symbolizes the fragility of life...finally … [Read more...] about Philharmonic’s Bells and Whistles

Playing catch-up with all the news that occurred during my French sojourn, I've just read the latest edition of the Association of Art Museum Directors' annual survey, which is more remarkable for what it doesn't say than for what it does. The most interesting statistic is that an impressive 70% of the 129 museums responding to AAMD's survey reported "a significant increase" … [Read more...] about AAMD’s Statistical Shenanigans

News Flash: Last night, the Associated Press reported that Brent Benjamin, director of the St. Louis Art Museum, has not backed down in the face of Zahi Hawass's threat to haul his museum into an Egyptian court over the ownership of a 3,200-year-old mummy mask (see my previous post). "Nothing that we have seen to this date supports his claim," said Benjamin, who has requested … [Read more...] about St. Louis Says “Show Me”

I happened to be at the right place at the right time to overhear this telling exchange, occurring during the lunch break of the May 4 symposium on "Museums and the Collecting of Antiquities," organized by the Association of Art Museum Directors. The always provocative Tom Hoving caught up with his successor as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, … [Read more...] about De Montebello/Hoving Contretemps

Almost didn't get back yesterday from Dordogne. Had to sneak into a side entrance of Bordeaux airport, whose main access roads and entrances were blocked by a surprise strike by maintenance workers. Vive our Columbia University tour director, the well-named Jacques Charmant, who devised our stealth airport invasion on the spot! Can't write now about my art-ventures in Dordogne, … [Read more...] about Chauvet Charade

Look for my slightly contrarian appraisal of the expanded Morgan Library and Museum in the "Front Page" section of Art in America's June/July issue. One of the things I like about Art in America is that they allow me to write my own headlines: The Atrium that Ate the Morgan If you don't know by now that I'm a bit of a contrarian, you haven't been paying attention! … [Read more...] about But Before I Go…

Off to Dordogne, for a (partly) working vacation, on assignment for the Wall Street Journal. After brushing up with a French phrasebook, I happened upon an a phrase guide for art-show openings---a very atypical, hilarious page in the May issue of Art in America (where I'm contributing editor). A couple of sample translations from "a PHRASE GUIDE for the spring art season," … [Read more...] about En Vacances

Fresh from the Guggenheim Rio fiasco, French architect Jean Nouvel, apparently a glutton for punishment, may be taking his chances on yet another proposed Guggenheim Museum---this time, in Abu Dhabi. The ARTnewsletter doesn't name an architect in its May 9 report: According to an informed source, Abu Dhabi representatives have made a $2 million deposit to the [Guggenheim] … [Read more...] about A New Nouvel Guggenheim?

With all the criticism hurled at the year-old mega-MoMA, it's time to heap some praise on the Museum of Modern Art's enlightened collecting policy, as exemplified by its new show of contemporary art from the collection of Edward Broida. Unlike the Metropolitan Museum, which has allowed the flow and logic of its galleries to be disrupted by individual collectors' fiefdoms … [Read more...] about MoMA Does It Right

ANNOUNCING: A new, recurring CultureGrrl feature, highlighting those bad-taste, "what were they thinking?" moments at arts institutions that ought to know better. First up: the New-York Historical Society, in cahoots with the New York Times, offering online and in the newspaper "a special collection of limited-edition prints from the original, hand-colored engravings of … [Read more...] about A Touch of Crass

I love it when I get treated like a member of the naive public instead of like the smart-aleck I am. Here's a survey that the NY Philharmonic just e-mailed to me, to see how I liked the concert that I blogged about yesterday: How much did you expect to enjoy this performance prior to attending? Select a number from 1 to 5, where 5 means you expected the performance to be … [Read more...] about Everyone’s a Critic

While NY Times readers were getting their update on the Metropolitan Opera's Joseph Volpe-Peter Gelb transition on Page One of this Sunday's Arts & Leisure section (perused by subscribers on Saturday), I was getting the inside gossip from a longtime member of the chorus. Resting between Lohengrin and Tosca, she happened to be dining at the table next to ours in Bistro Cassis, a … [Read more...] about View from the Chorus

Every so often, an artwork speaks to you so directly that it seems to have been made just for you. Whatever I might (but won't) say about the rest of the Whitney Biennial, it displayed one piece that it did something that no other artwork has ever done: It made me cry. Most visitors overlook Hannah Greely's unprepossessing coat stand in the middle of a third-floor gallery, as … [Read more...] about Last Stand

Renzo Piano's gloriously light-filled and complexly layered atrium for the reconfigured Morgan Library and Museum is a universally admired triumph. There's just one problem: In providing the ultimate "wow" space, Piano has taken Morgan out of the Morgan. Part of the mystique of any house museum is the spirit of the master of the house. But now J.P. Morgan's outsized ego has … [Read more...] about The Atrium That Ate the Morgan