“All the news that important people let us print.”
An item worth reading on The Wire at businessinsider.com: “We don’t mean to be overly critical here, but we get tired of holier-than-thou mainstream media bellyaching about how only mainstream media can be trusted — when so much of the mainstream media game is granting control over coverage in exchange for access. Which certainly seems […]
In the matter of looting
Looting Matters, a blog about archaeology and ethics by the distinguished scholar David Gill of Swansea University, name-checks Rogues’ Gallery today in a post about the famously looted Morgantina Silver, returned to Italy by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008 and currently on display at the Palazzo Massimo of the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome […]
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Today’s local community newspaper quotes my 1997 profile of Patrick McCarthy, outgoing editorial director of W and WWD. “Bite the hand that feeds you,” he told me. “Never stop biting it. And you know what? It will feed you more.” Protege of the legendary editor-publisher John Fairchild, McCarthy was famous for following that dictum, but […]
Guts & Glory
The Fairfield Museum and History Center has a lot of nerve. Rogues Gallery will be the featured book tonight at its History Book Club. Join the discussion at 7 PM at 370 Beach Road, Fairfield, CT.
A Modest Madoff Money Proposal
It’s been just over a year since Vos Iz Neias, an Orthodox Jewish blog, took umbrage at the presence of plaques on several Central Park benches celebrating convicted Ponzi thief Bernie Madoff’s parents and in-laws. Though it speculated that Madoff’s “adopted” benches, just inside the East 67th Street entrance to the park, would be vandalized, […]
Yes, that’s $1.25 per room
My post yesterday on Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Campbell‘s $10.00 (yes, ten dollars, it’s no typo) Fifth Avenue apartment didn’t include a description or floor plan because I didn’t have one. The apartment floorplan above found by a Gripebox reader is not Campbell’s, but it’s the same line — one floor up. It […]
I’ll take one of those…
Back in 1991, William Luers, then president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, moved into an apartment on the second floor of 993 Fifth Avenue, a distinguished limestone building by architect Emery Roth, right across the street from the museum. It had previously sheltered Luers’ predecessor William Macomber, and would subsequently be passed to his […]
Giving Museums Characters
On New York Social Diary today, David Patrick Columbia unveils the all-new paperback jacket of Rogues’ Gallery, starring Henry Kissinger, Brooke Astor, J. Pierpont Morgan, Andy Warhol and Anna Wintour (click here to see it) and generously adds, “Michael Gross loves research and loves details but mostly he loves the characters in his books. They’re […]
From the Vault: A Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Cherry Bomb!
The new movie The Runaways reminded me that back in the day, I saw them from the front row of a place called Santa Monica Civic. I knew their manager and Pygmalion, Kim Fowley, because in fall 1974 as a fledgling freelance writer, I’d interviewed him for a story on the Hollywood scene that Joan […]
Rogues, blogged
Ten months after publication, Rogues’ Gallery continues to draw readers and praise around the world. This week, three blogs cited the book. Pravdakino, by Indonesian film and video student Veronika Kusumaryati calls it “worthy reading but in some parts, regrettable due to its writer’s love of gossip and drama. But I still think it should […]