Today the Post picks up the Atlantic‘s story about the end of the Brooklyn Museum’s New York architectural collection. In the magazine’s June issue, John Freeman Gill had reported that the museum was quietly selling off the turn-of-the-century ornaments that art dealer Ivan Karp had salvaged in the 50s and 60s:
Over the Read More
In 1978, as crowds packed the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s blockbuster “King Tut,” Steve Martin had a hit with the novelty song about the doomed pharaoh. “Now, if I’d known they’d line up just to see him, I’d trade in all my money and bought me a museum.” Thirty years later, the boy king, his Read More
Before they became entertainment centers, museums were meant to be encyclopedias of cultural heritage where objects were kept in the public trust.
It is in this spirit that the Brooklyn Museum’s reinstallation of its Islamic art collection puts on view an exhibition within an exhibition: the small, pitch-perfect “Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Read More
Tonight’s the night! Opponents of the Atlantic Yards project plan to protest outside of the Brooklyn Museum of Art because the museum’s honoring developer Bruce Ratner. Black tie is optional (it’s not inside the museum) but, please, according to organizer Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, bring your own pickets!
DDDB has called the museum board’s Read More
Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is inviting Atlantic Yards opponents to grab their pickets (and don formal dress if they so desire) to protest the Brooklyn Museum’s decision to honor the developer Bruce Ratner at its annual $1,000-a-plate Brooklyn Ball, which DDDB calls an “affront to Brooklyn communities.”
Kayne West will perform at the Read More
How much pleasure you derive from Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005, a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, will depend on whether you think art should simply confirm what we know or expand and deepen our knowledge.
Anyone conversant with Ms. Smith’s sculptures, drawings and installations will recognize that the word “pleasure” Read More
As Rudy Giuliani ramps up his presidential operation, he’ll presumably be engaging in more and more retail politicking in the early primary states to win over donors and rank-and-filers who’ve never seen him up close. What’ll that be like?
Dipping back into the book Giuliani: Flawed or Flawless?, I came across some Read More
Frank Gehry’s proposed stoop at Atlantic Yards is being called the “biggest stoop in Brooklyn.” But back when the Brooklyn Museum was completing its new facade, Director Arnold Lehman bragged about building “Brooklyn’s newest and largest ‘front stoop.’” (PDF) It was designed by Polshek Partnership.
Remember: Size doesn’t Read More
Daily News takes a look at State Senator Carl Andrews, who asks “How bad could I be,” in light of his connections to Clarence Norman and Eliot Spitzer.
In their headline, The New York Sun notes Weld Fought Giuliani in Brooklyn Museum Battle. How bad can that be?
To round out the uncertainty, Read More
Before Norman Rockwell, before Giorgio Armani, before Harley Davidson, Matthew Barney and his umpteen gallons of Vaseline, the Solomon R. Guggenheim was known, in its initial incarnation, as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Established in 1939, the institution dedicated itself to a mystical brand of abstraction favored by Hilla Rebay (1890-1967), a baroness who served Read More
