I've often thought that history should be taught backwards. Start with our place in time and trace the steps back. Of course, that would be hard to do with museums. We don't know quite what from our own time deserves collecting. We also don't know quite where we are in the particular paradigm of art. … Continue reading On the Idea of a Modern Art Museum
A selection of major works from The William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York will soon be on view at the de Young in San Francisco. The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism is particularly rich in the works of Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, with significant works … Continue reading Paley’s Taste for Modernism Coming to de Young
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced recently that 6.28 million people visited the Met during the fiscal year that ended on June 30. The number, which includes attendance at The Cloisters museum and gardens, is the highest recorded since the Metropolitan Museum began tracking visitor attendance more than 40 years ago. The total number of … Continue reading Met: Record Attendance for New Galleries
The Duncan Phyfe exhibit is now on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Previously at the Met in New York, MFAH is the second stop for the exhibit. Most of what was on view in New York is available in Houston, but there are a few changes. Most notably the comparison of Phyfe … Continue reading Duncan Phyfe Up at MFA Houston
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired one of only 16 known casts of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Abraham Lincoln, the Man (Standing Lincoln), a rare, authorized reduction of the large bronze monument that the sculptor originally created for Lincoln Park in Chicago between 1884 and 1887. The Met’s 40-1/2-inch-high bronze statuette was one of a limited … Continue reading Metropolitan Museum of Art Acquires Saint-Gaudens Standing Lincoln
The Metropolitan Museum’s Fifth Avenue Plaza and Fountains are going to get a re-do. OLIN, a leading landscape architecture, urban design and planning studio, was chosen for the project. The plans were unveiled at a presentation at the Museum on February 7, 2012. Once all the necessary approvals for the project are in place, construction … Continue reading Plaza at Met Entrance To Get a Redo
Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York—the first retrospective on Phyfe in 90 years was long over-due. It was postponed so long due to the financial situation that at one time I thought it would never materialize. The first retrospective show of Phyfe’s furniture, also at the Met, curated by Charles Over Cornelius in 1922, … Continue reading Duncan Phyfe at the Met
Few art institutions can launch a new grand installation of American Art in both thematic and chronological order, without feeling contrived. The Met is an exception. The new American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art takes 30,000 square feet of the second floor, spreading over 26 galleries. Together with multi-leveled periods rooms, decorative arts … Continue reading A Visit to the New American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY Korean buncheong ceramics is one of those forms that makes you wonder if the Modernists were truly modern. Buncheong is a 20th Century coinage for a experimental form of stoneware that was the rage in Korean households in the 15th and 16th Centuries. The word is a contraction for a longer term … Continue reading Ancient Abstract Korean Pottery
A painting by Paul Gauguin on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and hanging in the National Gallery in Washington D.C. was attacked last week. Reports indicate there is no apparent damage, but the work will be inspected more closely. The attacker apparently pounded the painting with her fists then tried to pull it from … Continue reading Woman Screaming “This Is Evil” Attacks Gauguin Painting at National Gallery
Urban Art & Antiques 