Me (and my big mouth)
Blogger Father Tony from Queer New York was at my talk at Books & Books in Bal Harbour last week, and just posted the video above, introducing it this way: “In the video snippet… he is talking about a lady of mysterious pedigree [Jane Mannheimer, the future Jane Engelhard] but listen through to the end […]
A note of explanation
Janet M. Schrock, Ph.D., a docent at the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, wrote to say her docents’ book club had read Rogues’ Gallery, and were concerned about a passage on page 54, that describes Ringling’s purchase of antiquities of questionable authenticity from the Luigi Palma di Cesnola collection at […]
Un-trust-worthy, perhaps (but refreshingly honest , too)
“The secret to a long and happy run on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board of trustees is MYOB,” — mind your own business — Staten Island’s outgoing borough representative on the cultural giant’s board, Allan Weissglass, told the Staten Island Advance last week in an astonishing but revealing burst of candor. “We try hard […]
Snow Days
Gripebox will be back next week. Bon blizzard.
Shiny Happy People
Shannon Donnelly, social columnist of The Palm Beach Daily News, aka the famous Shiny Sheet, heralded the Rogues’ Gallery tour’s coming circuit of south Florida in yesterday’s paper. “Certain PB folks with bones rattling in their closets are feeling skittish since hearing author Michael Gross is visiting,” she writes, before assuring them I’m not coming […]
You’ve got to get up early…
… to be director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell, the latest man in that job, tells the Wall Street Journal today, explaining that his toughest challenge has been starting work at 8 AM daily and not stopping until evening. Phew. The museum’s uphill PR campaign to make Campbell a compelling public […]
Those eyes! Those lips!
One of my favorite profile subjects, the eternally boyish, though now-retired, fashion designer Calvin Klein, may not be working but seems to have had some boyish-making work done, says Cityfile.
Bad Times
In its latest genuflection before the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Arts section of The New York Times has ignored the newspaper’s history as well as the museum’s. In today’s lead article on repairs to damaged art, reporter Randy Kennedy writes that such restorations are conducted in “a kind of seclusion unusual for the museum.” […]
Who’s Next?
Last night, I attended a Fifth Avenue book club that had read Rogues’ Gallery, and I was asked about the future leadership of the Metropolitan Museum. A good question. Jamie Houghton, the museum’s chairman, shed his second most important title last month when the 74-year old confirmed he would step down as the senior fellow […]
Fifth on Fifth
While Gripebox was taking its recent break, Judith Dobrzynski‘s Real Clear Arts blog reported the likelihood that the Metropolitan Museum of Art will rank only fifth among the world’s top museums in total visitors in 2009 with 4.8 million art-lovers passing through its turnstiles compared to 8.5 million at the Louvre in Paris, 5.6 million […]