London Museums
We spent a week in London, reminding ourselves of the masterpieces in the public collections. Monday we strolled along Oxford Street, to and from the Wallace Collection. The furniture with gold marquetry by A.C. Boulle was our discovery. On the lookout for Gainsboroughs as we prepared for our Frick exhibition, I was delighted to not […]
LACMA
It’s not fair to judge the new building and displays at LACMA based on a mere two-hour walkthrough, but that’s what a first impression is all about. So cutting to the chase, as they say, I give the architecture an A, the art a C. From the outside, the building is light, sinuous and strikingly […]
Divine Egypt
Two quick reactions from a quick first visit to the Met’s blockbuster fall show, “Divine Egypt.” First is the extraordinary amount of Egyptian material in the Met’s collection. One almost feels that an impetus for the show was the Met’s desire to bring out of storage scores of objects that probably haven’t been displayed for […]
The Rockefeller Wing
The big excitement at the Met this spring has been the long-awaited opening of the Rockefeller Wing, housing the collections of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art, designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture. It has received glowing reviews. I don’t like it, and, as I’m trying to do with my negative reaction to the Sargent […]
Caspar David Friedrich
The Met’s retrospective of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) ) did just what a museum retrospective should do: it presented key major works in historical context and gave an overall view of the artist’s development from his early work to his finish. It’s a show unlikely to be replicated, as most works are held by German […]