LISA + DONNIE R OK. The words are both hopeful and bone-chilling. They were scrawled, in 2005, on a once-pretty white house with pale-blue shutters in New Orleans' Ninth Ward.
Five years ago this month, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history swept through Louisiana and Mississippi. An exhibition opening Aug. 28 (a day Read More
Blockbuster exhibitions are defined by their scope and scale. A staggering array of objects meant to illuminate the accomplishments of an artist, culture or epoch has become the norm—at least for institutions with the clout to pull them off. Audiences are used to seeing (and sometimes tolerating) these ambitious undertakings, hoping there’s a proper aesthetic Read More
How predictable is the Met’s fall schedule? Predictable enough to have us thanking our lucky stars that its umpteen-year roll of stellar exhibitions continues unabated. Case in point: Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, opening on Sept. 14, will highlight the astonishing foresight of the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939). Upon Read More
How predictable is the Met’s fall schedule? Predictable enough to have us thanking our lucky stars that its umpteen-year roll of stellar exhibitions continues unabated. Case in point: Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, opening on Sept. 14, will highlight the astonishing foresight of the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939). Read More
At a symposium a few years back, a critic of some note insisted that art lovers should dedicate their attention exclusively to “the new,” that they should welcome it indiscriminately in order to encourage culture. The critic insinuated that history was a waste of time and asked incredulously, “I mean, what are we going to Read More
Considering all the trouble cartoons have caused in the world lately, it was with some trepidation that I entertained James Mundy’s request. James is both a friend and the director of the Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, and he called a few weeks ago to ask permission to borrow some of my Read More
French painting from the 18th century is justly famous for its preoccupation with the pursuit of earthly privileges and pleasures. It abounds in delightful scenes of luxuriant luncheon parties, well-equipped pastoral outings, displays of sexual dalliance and sundry other pleasurable pastimes. Indeed, we're sometimes made to feel that in the era preceding the "deluge" of Read More
With certain exhibitions, this writer finds himself in a position not so much to "review" them as to recall his previous critical encounters with an oeuvre to which he paid close attention in the halcyon years of the artist's production. This is the case with the large retrospective exhibition that Ruth Fine and her colleagues Read More
We've had to wait a very long time to see a full-scale retrospective devoted to the work of the French painter Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940). The last really big show is said to have been organized in Paris in 1938. I have fond memories of a later exhibition that John Russell organized in 1971-72 at the Read More
It's been said of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), whose work is currently the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., that he was at once the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns. This may only be another way of Read More
The big retrospective devoted to Henry Moore (1898-1986), which
has now come to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, would be a capital event at almost any time. Yet this splendid exhibition is especially compelling just now for anyone who comes to it from a recent visit to the retrospective devoted to Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) Read MoreWhen was the last time you saw a major American museum
devote 10 large galleries to the sculpture of a distinctly minor contemporary talent? This is but one of the many questions raised by the overscale exhibition of Cy Twombly's underweight sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Even in a period like Read MoreA mere five years after the great Vermeer exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and only a couple of years after the enchanting show devoted to Pieter de Hooch at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, we are now treated to an even more expansive account of these 17th-century Dutch masters and their Read MoreOf the many things to be said about the extraordinary exhibition called Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries , which Sarah Greenough has organized at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the first is this: It not only illuminates a crucial chapter in the history of American modernism on Read More
The exhibition of Art Nouveau, 1890-1914 , organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and now on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is said to be the largest and most comprehensive survey of its subject ever attempted. I can well believe it. With more than 350 objects-which range Read More
