Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary

Christopher Knight, art critic for the LA Times, responds to Online Now: My WSJ Piece on the Future of Art Bibliography: The Getty announced in April 2009 that its role as sole funder of the BHA would end in a year and began to search for help. Thomas Gaehtgens, the director of the Getty Research Institute, recently told the Los Angeles Times that attempts to find assistance to … [Read more...] about BlogBack: Christopher Knight on Art Bibliography Controversy

An Italian court yesterday turned down an appeal by the Getty Museum of a lower court ruling that called for the so-called Getty Bronze be immediately relinquished to Italy. But a report [via] by ANSA, the Italian news agency, indicates that the Italians may be open to another of their object-swapping deals to help settle the matter. That makes this a good time to take a … [Read more...] about Italian Silver Swap: The Met Didn’t Get What It Bargained For

[NOTE: This post was written in a rush, earlier today. I've since fleshed it out a bit, with a few more images, links and one correction.] I've seen a number of profound landmark Picasso shows in my lifetime. Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a recession exhibition opening next Tuesday, which exposes most of the Met's works by that artist, is not one of them. Put … [Read more...] about MeTube: Infrared Insights at the Met’s So-So Picasso Show UPDATED

Do we really need the Bibliography of the History of Art? Or is it a dinosaur?Below are some some more thoughts on that question, taken from interview excerpts that didn't make it into my article about the Getty Research Institute's (GRI's) withdrawal of support for the BHA, which appears on the "Leisure & Arts" page of today's Wall Street Journal (p. D7).The chief argument … [Read more...] about More on BHA: Arguing Over Alternatives; Avery Index Rescued by Columbia

You can read me now: A Biblio-File Brouhaha---my piece that will appear on the "Leisure & Arts" page of tomorrow's (Tuesday's) Wall Street Journal. But the early word on my analysis is not good: "Outside LA, art folks commonly (& mistakenly) assume the Getty can & should pick up the tab for everything. Get over it," tweets Christopher Knight, the LA Times' art … [Read more...] about Online Now: My WSJ Piece on the Future of Art Bibliography

Have my CultureGrrl posts seemed a little light lately? That's because I was struggling with a tight deadline for a recondite piece that only my Wall Street Journal editor could have loved. (That's why he and I click!)Everyone whom I called for an interview: a) marveled that a mainstream-media publication was actually interested in a serious exploration of this esoteric topic; … [Read more...] about My WSJ Piece Tomorrow on the Frozen BHA and Future of Art Bibliography

NYU Professor Philippe de Montebello, left; Mariët Westermann, provost, NYU Abu Dhabi, at podiumEdited photo: Max Anderson's TwitPic pageNYU Abu Dhabi, which is inaugurating its academic course offerings this September, is emphasizing its connections to the museum world with a two-day conference, yesterday and today, on Art Museums Here and Now. Capitalizing on NYU Professor … [Read more...] about Abu Dhabi Museum Conference: Philippe on Met’s “Parthenogenesis”

Rocco Landesman, the NEA's chairman, addressing U.S. mayors and New York's cultural and governmental officials yesterdayThe Rocco Show, fresh from its Congressional gig and its Idaho run, arrived at New York's Five Angels Theater yesterday for the 46th national session of the Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD). The National Endowment for the Arts' chairman addressed the … [Read more...] about MeTube from the Mayors’ Institute: Rocco Speaks His Mind, Patti Harris Speaks for Bloomberg CORRECTED

Would you like to see, in rapid successsion, every painting from the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection now on display on the fourth and fifth floors? Now you can, in a two-minute tour posted to YouTube, which MoMA itself recognizes (on its Twitter page) as a complete record of its current installation. (This is a test: How many of the artists can you name?): … [Read more...] about YouTube Presents: The Two-Minute MoMA

Rediscovered Michelangelo? "Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness," oil and gold on wood, 29 3/4 x 82 1/2 in., Metropolitan Museum of ArtHaving recently mounted Velázquez Rediscovered, a show that convincingly proposed that a painting by that master had been hiding for years in plain sight in the permanent collection, will the Metropolitan Museum soon be presenting … [Read more...] about Michelangelo Rediscovered: Another Met Attribution Upgrade? UPDATED

Rocco Landesman, NEA's chairman, speaking in Boise, IdahoPhoto: NEA staffWant to make a charitable donation to the federal government? You can! Long a part of the National Endowment for the Arts' website, the Donate page solicits various forms of personal and corporate largesse to this federal agency---from one-shot benefactions to annual giving to post-mortem support:You may … [Read more...] about Landesman’s Congressional Testimony: “American Masterpieces” Axed for “Our Town”

Painting the Golden Theatre "Red"In John Logan's play Red, which I saw a little over a week ago, Mark Rothko (played by Alfred Molina, who formerly channeled Diego Rivera) comes across as an intensely committed, brilliant artist, but one given to verbiage that's frequently tendentious and pretentious. This makes for a night of theater that is sometimes exhilarating but often a … [Read more...] about Rothko on Broadway: Words Fail, Art Speaks

SFMOMA trustee Bob Fisher, son of Doris and Donald Fisher, who are pictured on screen behind him After Neal Benezra, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the second happiest person about the relocation of the 1,100-work Donald and Doris Fisher Collection to SFMOMA may be one of the Fishers' sons, Bob. That's because the creation of a trust to lend the blue-chip … [Read more...] about Fisher Collection’s Saga Demonstrates Perils of Single-Collector Museum

Carol Vogel, in tomorrow's  NY Times "Inside Art" column (online tonight), finally got around to reporting about the very X-rated Picasso painting soon to be shown at the Metropolitan Museum (which owns it). Candace Jackson of the Wall Street Journal reported on it last January, followed by CultureGrrl. The Met's getting a lot of publicity mileage out of this very … [Read more...] about NY Times Timing: Last on Picasso, First on Panza

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage MuseumMegan Stack of the LA Times has reported that an audit of Russian museums, ordered by then President Vladimir Putin after the 2006 discovery of the theft (which was an inside job) of about 226 objects from the State Hermitage Museum, revealed that "at least 87,000 pieces have vanished. Hundreds of those … [Read more...] about Russian Museums Audit: Some 87,000 Objects Missing