We are #4!
Rogues’ Gallery is #4 on the Bookhampton non-fiction bestseller list this week. Thanks Bookhampton and all you East End readers!
It’s good to be the director
Gripebox first revealed Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell‘s $4 million Fifth Avenue apartment — and some of the peculiarities of his living arrangements — here back in March. That’s not it above, but the floorplan shows the same apartment one floor above Campbell’s. Today’s New York Times reveals that though Campbell receives free housing across […]
A Diller of a Promise
Forty American billionaires have made moral (i.e. not binding, but public) pledges, at the urging of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to give half their fortunes to charity, instead of using them soley to spoil future generations. Among those taking the pledge plunge: Paul Allen, Mike Bloomberg, Eli and Edythe Broad, Barry Diller and Diane […]
Attention Ron Burkle: B&N on the Block??
Barnes & Noble has announced that it is considering a sale of the company in order to increase stockholder value and raise its share price.
R.I.P. Judy Peabody
Judy Peabody died yesterday after a long and difficult illness. David Patrick Columbia has written a touching remembrance of this compassionate and open-minded heroine, one of the great ladies of New York City in this or any era.
Beach Reading: Rogues’ Gallery Rising
Rogues’ Gallery has rocketed to #2 on the Book Soup paperback non-fiction bestseller list this week. Love the Soup (and I don’t mean Tom Campbell‘s) and thanks all you readers in Los Angeles!
Heavy Lifting
Maureen Dowd‘s burqua notwithstanding, no one has ever accused the New York Times op-ed page of being either fashion-conscious or fashionable. But today’s top piece, correlating the appearance of platform shoes for women with economic distress is kind of fashion-clueless. “Economic distress causes distinctions between male and female dress to widen among the fashion-conscious,” the […]
“Creative and complete”
Yesterday, the design blog UnBeige praised my suggestion for the future of Marcel Breuer’s brutalist Whitney Museum as “the most creative and complete” in a recent poll of experts by The Art Newspaper: a museum of cultural philanthropy in which archival documents concerning great contributions are stored, catalogued and displayed. Meantime, the New York Observer […]
Gaunt, but not forgotten
News flash: Super-sized model Crystal Renn has the blogosphere up in arms over a recent weight loss that shrank her from a size 12 to a size 8. The New York Post’s Mandy Stadtmiller examines this shocking story of a model and her fluctuating appetite in “A Big Fat Lie.” I comment: “Maybe Crystal Renn […]
What to do with the Whitney?
The Art Newspaper asked a panel of experts what should be done with Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum (the architect and his creation are above) when the museum moves downtown. My tongue-in-cheek thought follows those of former Whitney director David Ross and former Breuer architect Terence Riley.