Can one be at once dignified and scandalously wicked?
Jesse Kornbluth‘s Headbutler.com says Rogues Gallery “begins gently, presenting a dignified, to-my-eye authoritative history of the museum… Once you get to Thomas Hoving, the showman who brought the Met into the Modern Age, the book becomes fascinating. Scandalously so, for we’re no longer dealing with New York’s sedate “Old Money” crowd… Michael Gross wields a […]
The sun’s not yellow, it’s poulet
Fashion Week Daily has all the hot skinny here and here on who is sitting with who at the Metropolitan Museum’s downsized (“tables sales are significantly down this year,” FWD says) Party of the Year next week. “Keeping with this year’s focus on economic sensitivity,” they conclude, “all guests (including well-documented red meat aficionado Anna […]
“… curatorial excellence, social climbing, and skulduggery… “
The latest pre-publication review of Rogues’ Gallery is in from Booklist’s May 15th issue. “A big tell-all book about a big museum,” it says. “Art has always inspired obsession and crime, and the movers and shakers at the helm of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art couldn’t have amassed its extraordinary collections without the shenanigans […]
All Quiet on the Eastern Front
I scan the real estate sections and the realty blogs daily, hoping for news of more sales, births, deaths, scandals or moments of joy at 740 Park, but here in the Great Recession there are none. So with the publications date of Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made […]
Astorgate: The Back Story
Opening arguments in the criminal trial over longtime Metropolitan Museum trustee and benefactor Brooke Astor’s estate begin tomorrow. Today’s New York Times covers an earlier Astor estate case, in which “John Jacob Astor VI accused Brooke Russell Astor of using ‘improper conduct and undue influence’ to persuade her husband, Vincent Astor, who had died from […]
In Style-dot-com
Style.com says that the Rogues Gallery “has all of New York talking.”
Wowowow
The Queen of Gossip, Liz Smith, had this to say yesterday on wowowow.com about Rogues’ Gallery: “This book, like all of Michael’s works, will make a lot of rich and prominent people very unhappy.” Aw, c’mon, Liz. The truth will set you free! And some of them are not as rich (or as admired) as […]
In Kaplan We Trust
The announcement that Peter Kaplan, its long-time editor, will leave the New York Observer next month, came as a shock even in a shaken media universe that seems inured to them. The coverage of his departure is deservedly wall-to-wall. It wasn’t long ago that I presided over a conversation about print journalism with Kaplan and […]
The Cat in the Hat
Jonathan van Meter profiles the fashion photographer Steven Meisel in the new issue of Vogue. I did the same thing, only different, back in 1992, when Meisel had just finished shooting Madonna‘s book, Sex. Van Meter got great stuff from Meisel about his early years. I got some pretty great stuff from others, since Madonna’s […]
Good News
“Michael Gross is about to come out with his Rogue’s Gallery,” write Rush & Molloy in today’s Daily News, “his tale of how the wealthy vie for power at the Metropolitan Museum of Art… It’s a must-read.”