When you first arrive at the new Zumthor-designed LACMA you are struck in wonder by the white amoeba shape floating over Wilshire Boulevard, but when you climb the stairs and go inside you wonder, where is the art, where is the museum? Initial doubts creep in as you wander the halls, taking measure of the […]
A three-day art excursion took us to Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio; Greensburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The impetus was the “Manet/Morisot” show at CMA that had been so well received in San Francisco earlier this year. It was exceptional, although too small-scaled to have merited the trip by itself. Fortunately, in the next gallery was a […]
The art galleries in Chelsea are always worth a look, but yesterday’s walk was unusually rewarding. An hour before lunch at the Cookshop and 90 minutes after gave us time to wander 20th and 22nd Sts. and not much more, with the following highlights: Benny Andrews at Michael Rosenfeld. Andrews is one of those artists […]
If the function of an art museum is the display of art, the new building for the Studio Museum of Harlem fails spectacularly. My guess is that not more than 25% of the space contains art. Its most notable feature is a massive main staircase, which is all you see when you enter. In keeping […]
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 […]
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 […]
The new show of Renoir “drawings” (i.e., any work on paper plus a couple of oils) at the Morgan Library and Museum should hammer the final nail in the coffin of Renoir’s reputation as a coequal of Manet, Monet, Degas, Sisley and Pissarro in the pantheon of Impressionism. Moreover, Caillebotte and Morisot have risen lately […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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