Today’s announcement of a new head of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its in-house newsletter, er, sorry, the Arts section of the New York Times, was heavy on hand-fed detail but sorely lacking in context. The Met’s relationship to contemporary art has been contentious almost from the day the museum opened, and is an unlikely foundation for its emergence as “a Major Player,” as the C1 headline has it, yet art-world reporter Carol Vogel (who has gone far since her days as an assistant to caricature-quality fashion editor Carrie Donovan at the Times’ magazine) chose to concentrate on the Euro-centric board’s and (British) museum director Thomas Campbell‘s hiring of a (British) curator, Sheena Wagstaff, rather than the more serious and complex business of the museum’s highly fraught, century-plus hide-and-go-seek non-relationship with living artists. For more on that, I humbly suggest a look at my Rogues’ Gallery. Check the index for mentions of George Hearn, his Hearn Fund, the egregiously unsung Robert Beverly Hale, the extraordinary Henry Geldzhaler (pictured, who does rate a name-check from Vogel), and William S. Lieberman, to name but a few, for the context Vogel’s pals at the museum would probably prefer you forget. It’s a jungle at 1000 Fifth, Sheena. Make sure you bring your bug repellant.

Today’s Galleycat sent me racing to Fyrefly’s new Book Blogs Search Engine which revealed a review of Rogues’ Gallery I’d never seen before by the blogger Largehearted Boy. Read it here. But if clicking is too much for you, here are the two lines that made me ROLF: “Haven’t heard about this book despite a number of great reviews? We’re sure that has nothing to do with the people featured in the book being friends with people who run newspapers and magazines.”

Last week, the New York press predictably annnounced the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s abrupt 25% bump of its “suggested” admission price to $25 (that’s the old price displayed above) without much historical context or critical commentary. Only Louise Blouin‘s feisty artinfo.com hinted that to some, this might spell heartbreak or outrage. This morning, Judith H. Dobrzynski‘s RealClearArts took a stab at the plan, too, reviewing some of the recent history of the entry tariff and wondering why the museum doesn’t institute variable pricing. “Airlines, theater, and many other places have succeeded in using variable pricing, with few or no complaints from the public,” she notes. A bit more historic context might aid this discussion, even though the museum’s history is a topic that seems off limits to the sort of folk who are generally invited into it for free. (“I get invited to previews,” NPR’s Leonard Lopate warned me seconds before we went on the air to discuss my unauthorized history of the Met, Rogues’ Gallery. “Don’t screw that up for me.”)

According to research done by the Metropolitan Museum Historic District Coalition, the December 24, 1878, lease between the City of New York, which owns both the museum’s buildings and the land they occupy, and the Metropolitan, as amended by city law in 1892, still requires that the museum be open to the general public free of charge five days a week, with one being Sunday afternoons, throughout the year; be open to the general public free of charge two evenings a week; is foreclosed from being open Sunday mornings; must make up to the general public any holiday it chooses to close; and must be “open and accessible to art students, copyists and schools” during all operating hours.

“Museum officials use ambivalent and misleading verbiage like the word ‘Recommended’ to claim that a visitor’s admission is ‘voluntary,’ accordingly constitutes a ‘contribution’ not an ‘admission,’” the Coalition has said. The story of the museum’s “Pay What You Wish But You Must Pay Something,” admission policy is told in Rogues’ Gallery. Click a Rogues’ link to buy a copy.

Judith Dobrzynski‘s Real Clear Arts blog breaks the news that chairman of the department of European Art and Sculpture Ian Wardropper, who lost the top spot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to his own underling, Tom Campbell, is decamping for the Frick Collection, where he, too, will be a museum director. Congratulations!

Yesterday’s announcement that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is likely to take over the Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist building that now houses the Whitney Museum of American Art was expected. What it left out, however, was unexpected. The Soviet-style desire of the Met’s administration (and their friends and toadies in the New York cultural elite) to suppress its own fascinating and often impure history is well known, but that history is not entirely forgotten, even if you couldn’t read it yesterday. The decades-long enmity between the two museums and between the Met and contemporary art and artists is told at great length and in hilarious detail in Rogues’ Gallery. You can order a copy here.

Anna Wintour (that’s not her above) got her reward for tireless service to Si New — , oops, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday when she was promoted from powerless non-voting honorary trustee of the museum to only slightly less powerless “elective” trustee. On the same day, James Houghton, the museum’s aging chairman, stepped down and was replaced by real estate owner and operator Daniel Brodsky, who is slightly younger. Women’s Wear Daily got the scoop on Wintour’s ascension to the socio-cultural Pantheon that is the museum’s board, but not Brodsky’s promotion. The New York Times wrote up Brodsky, but not Wintour. I wonder if either of them wishes it had been the other way around? I know which one looks better in Chanel.

This gripepad and pen are familiar with the ins and outs of telling the emperor he’s starkers. But at a certain point, it can get repetitive, so I’ve mostly spared the Metropolitan Museum in recent months. I almost felt bad when Obama-Gets-Osama kept Anna Wintour‘s fashion promo party from dominating the news cycle this week. But the blog Scallywag & Vagabond has written about the Party of Last Monday in a very entertaining way. Suffice to say the post is called “Jerking off with the Metropolitan Museum Gala Propaganda Committee.” NSFW, kids! The image of Yoko and Karl is from racked.com‘s extensive wardrobe coverage. Christopher London has more on the ball here. He calls his post “Let Them Eat Cake.”

Caravaggio at K-Mart prices? Value-priced Velazquez? Metropolitan Museum of Art memberships have just gone on sale… and you can get fifteen months for the price of twelve. Boasts the Met: “You’ll enjoy outstanding benefits including unlimited free admission,” which is guaranteed to all by the museum’s lease, but never mind, “Members-only events, discounts in The Met Store, access to the exclusive Members Dining Room overlooking Central Park, and more.” You still can’t get Rogues’ Gallery there, but again, never mind. Click here for details.

Those who criticize should also praise when it’s deserved. Good things come to those who wait. And what follows also proves the unstated contention in Rogues’ Gallery that great institutions aren’t the same as the sometimes-flawed transients who run them. Twenty-eight months ago, after I finished writing that book, I gave a copy of a privately-printed memoir, Remembrances by the late Arthur Amory Houghton, as a gift to the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as they did not have a copy of the book by the Museum’s former chairman, and the Houghton family member who gave it to me had suggested I donate it once I was through with it. Today, that gift has finally appeared in the museum’s WatsonOnline catalog, which even notes who donated it. And, it turns out, Rogues’ Gallery is now available in the museum’s library, too. Shhhh. Don’t tell the trustees.

In his media column today, “At Media Companies, A Nation of Serfs,” David Carr comes down on the side of those who think professional writers shouldn’t write for free for the Huffington Post and ought to consider same before posting on Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps because he has a ready-made megaphone, that local community newspaper he writes for, Carr doesn’t get the benefits HuffPo and Facebook offer those of us who lack his significant advantage. Two years ago, when Rogues’ Gallery was published — and effectively ignored by the mainstream media after a stealth suppression campaign by truth-averse Metropolitan Museum trustees and administrators and open threats from the hired gunsels at the law firm of Cravath Swine and Moore, it was the no-paying Huffington Post (channeling Jesse Kornbluth’s Head Butler blog) that first revealed the chilling, empty threats made against the book, Richard Curtis’ E-Reads blog that revealed the book’s altogether curious non-appearance at the New York Public Library, my Facebook friends who kept it from suffering the crib death the museum and its supporters (some of them in the press) wished on it, and the low-paying New York Observer that kept the drumbeat going, ensuring the book’s survival. Tens of thousands of book sales later, none of those paid slaves of the culture Mafia has yet mentioned the way they all crumbled in the face of a campaign by the powerful to keep the book from its intended public. But I can say without qualification that HuffPo and Facebook made money for my publisher and I. Thank God there’s still a free press.