The latest casualties of the Covid-19 Pandemic are 80 staffers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which announced layoffs and pay cuts yesterday. The museum also warned that its budget shortfall for 2020 might reach $150 million. “While we are not immune from the impact of this pandemic, the Met is a strong and enduring institution and will remain one,” Daniel Weiss, president and chief executive of the museum, said in a statement. It won’t make those staffers feel better to know that the museum has survived worse situations since it was created 150 years ago. But this is surely … Continue reading →

Peter Beard, whose death at age 82 was confirmed yesterday, was an iconoclast as well as a photographer, artist, adventurer, and nightlife iron man. These two brief excerpts from Model and Focus illustrate the same bracing candor, humor and unchecked honesty he brought to both his life and his work. Click to magnify.

Two weeks shy of its 11th birthday, a reader’s review of Rogues’ Gallery, just posted on amazon, is one of the best it ever received. The reviewer, a longtime museum official, writes, “Having been in the museum field in various director and curatorial positions for fifty years, I can attest to the honesty and quality of this inside look at how these cultural institutions are governed and lead. The author has done impressive research into a realm rarely known or understood by the general public much less many in the museum profession. Museums have an aura and reputation that is … Continue reading →

My 1995 book Model came up on today’s episode of No Filter With Naomi, model Naomi Campbell‘s streaming YouTube “chat” show, an hour-long talk with one of her fellow members of the supermodel Trinity, Christy Turlington, both of whom are characters in the book. Some back story. In early 1992, I was asked to write a feature profile for New York magazine on one of the supes. Not long before, late one night at Azzedine Alaia’s atelier, Naomi had wrapped a leg around me and asked, “Why don’t you write a story about me?” So I started with her but … Continue reading →

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