A Special Providence
Sunday’s Providence Journal will name Rogues’ Gallery one of the “best reads” of 2009.
Patience and Fortitude
Over 150 people, only one a friend, came to the mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library the other night to hear the story of Rogues’ Gallery — so many that doors had to be opened to a second conference room to fit them all in. Readers of this blog will understand why it […]
Happy Birthday, Annette de la Renta!
Seventy years ago today, Anne France Mannheimer later Anne Engelhard, then Annette Reed and today better known as Metropolitan Museum of Art Vice Chairman Annette de la Renta, was born in the south of France. Joyeux anniversaire et Joyeux Noël from Rogues’ Gallery, Mrs. de la! (photo of Annette, her first husband Samuel Pryor Reed […]
“Riveting,” says the New York Press
In “Who’s Been Naughty and Nice in 2009,” the staff of The New York Press calls Rogues’ Gallery “riveting” on the subject of the “unusual decisions” and “dubious intentions” of generations of museum directors. In related news, Florida’s Naples News says that the museum’s just-retired director Philippe do Montebello will be speaking there in February […]
Trial by Tabloid
Yesterday’s sentencing of former Metropolitan Museum trustee Anthony Marshall to one to three years in prison (which I am told will likely mean eight months with time off for good behavior) for plundering his mother Brooke Astor’s estate is likely still not the end of the saga; there will be an appeal and Marshall may […]
Mourning Becomes Montebello
Phillipe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has outdone himself in this Sunday Arts featurette from Public Television’s Channel Thirteen website. Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate defines hypocrisy as the act of playing a part on a stage, feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not, […]
Campbell in the Soup III
Judith Dobrzynski’s Real Clear Arts, the new (and IMHO journalistically best) arts journal blog, comments on newish Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Campbell’s appearance last week at what sounds like a pretty bland Alliance for the Arts forum. “Mostly, Campbell repeated things he has said before: the Met will have fewer exhibitions, more drawn […]
Beasty Fest
The Daily Beast has just named Rogues Gallery one of the best art books of the year. Writer Rachel Wolff calls it “a compelling tale of the money, greed, egotism, and less than kosher acquisitions that have made the Met the megainstitution that it is today. It’s high culture meets lowlife behavior. And Gross has […]
Chicago Rules
Chicagoan Claire Zulkey’s Zulkey.com (“kind of a humor site, kind of a blog, kind of a repository for my writings, kind of an after-dinner mint for the brain”) has just added a chat with me about Rogues’ Gallery and more to her impressive collection of author interviews. I must have been in quite a mood […]
Museum on Museum II
Further proof that you can’t keep a good book down (and that some museums have both guts and good taste). A new history book club at The Fairfield Museum and History Center at 370 Beach Road in Fairfield, CT. will be reading and discussing Rogues’ Gallery in its third session on March 24, 2010. For […]