Valentin de Boulogne
The Met’s second big fall show opened last week, and as usual it is big: something like 40 of the 60 known paintings by Valentin de Boulogne – from the Louvre, above all, plus the Vatican, Indianapolis and several venues in Rome and Florence – have been gathered and, unfortunately, hung together. Unfortunate, because so […]
Jerusalem
A quick but labored walk through the Met’s newest blockbuster exhibition, Jerusalem (1000-1400), made me wonder if I was ‘arted out,’ if I was going to museums out of habit or sense of duty and no longer able to truly enjoy myself. Yes, there were a few things that caught my eye, but for the […]
What Is Art?
The age-old, unanswerable question came to mind as I pondered two equally compelling objects on back-to-back days in San Francisco (8/13-14/16). The first was the “strandbeest” at the Exploratorium in an exhibit titled “The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen.” There were actually several on display, including one that was operational. Contraptions made largely of PVC […]
SFMOMA
We saw two new modern-art museums this summer: the Broad in Los Angeles and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Both feature spectacular buildings and predictable art; both are worth the trip. The Broad, for obvious reasons, is much the smaller: it houses one couple’s collection; whereas SFMOMA has history and a whole, very rich, city supporting […]
NY Museum Shorts
George Schastey The Met built a small show, Furniture in New York’s Gilded Age, around their “discovery” of furniture designer George Schastey, responsible for the Met’s newest period room, the dressing room from 4 West 54th Street completed in 1890 for Arabella Worsham, mistress and later wife of Colles Huntington. Period photographs allowed the Met […]