Lee Rosenbaum's cultural commentary

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

He didn't trade wisecracks, but last night Tom Campbell, the Metropolitan Museum's director, good humoredly tried to reason with that self-described "blue-collar Joe Six Pack," Stephen Colbert. Our host asked the dumbest imaginable questions about art and let Tom gamely parlay them with intelligence. The director (shall we stop calling him "new"?) was no comedian, but he showed … [Read more...] about Tom Campbell’s Star Turn on the Colbert Report

James Draper with the purported MichelangeloAt the Metropolitan Museum's recent press preview unveiling The Young Archer, James Draper, the museum's curator of European sculpture and decorative arts, made it clear that he thoroughly believes that the waif, labeled as "attributed to" Michelangelo, is in fact the real deal---a very early Michelangelo owned by Jacopo Galli in … [Read more...] about The Met’s “Michelangelo” Show: A Truth-in-Advertising Alert

Judith DolkartI told you last month that the Barnes Foundation had chosen a chief curator. Now the name has been announced. Nothing is up on the Barnes' website at this writing, but Stephan Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the designee is Judith Dolkart, associate curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum. You can read more about her here, while her bio … [Read more...] about Barnes Names Brooklyn’s Judith Dolkart as Chief Curator

Jim Bondelid, a CultureGrrl reader from Oreland, PA (a Philadelphia suburb), who volunteers at the Curtis Institute of Music, responds to my Cultural Conversation with Rocco Landesman that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:As a fanatical lover of classical music, a sometime lover of modern dance, and a middle-brow theater consumer, I doubt that I would prefer Rocco … [Read more...] about BlogBack: Reader Calls for an NEA Voucher System

I'm still traveling and time-pressed, but I had to share with you this press release (not online at this writing) about the Dia Art Foundation's plans to build a new facility in New York City, where it surely belongs: DIA ART FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES PLAN TO OPEN A NEW SPACE IN CHELSEA New building will house artists' commissions and installations and serve as site for innovative … [Read more...] about News Flash: Dia to Build New Facility in Chelsea