Auctions: Things You Never Knew You Wanted
There’s something awe-inspiring about a museum, about going into a grand hall full of “priceless” works of art. Museums are edifying and educational and almost sacred. The setting and entire experience...
View ArticleNight Vision: Photography After Dark
Early September is often a transition month for museums, at least in New York, where the big fall exhibitions are still being put up. However, you can still catch a tiny (only three rooms) but...
View ArticleInfinite Jest: The History of Caricature
Not many museum exhibitions set out to make you laugh. Over the years, the Prints & Drawings department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken advantage of its relatively low-key position in a...
View ArticleParis Museums: Off the Beaten Track
Some of the most interesting art museums and the exhibitions that stay with you the longest are the ones that focus less on the art. The ones that accomplish this most easily are house museums, which...
View ArticleJean-Antoine Watteau: Renegade Rococo
The Rococo gets a lot of flak from art-lovers and diffidents alike. Too flouncy, too silly, too full of simple, seductive pleasures. Basically: too pretty. For some reason it’s unfashionable to relish...
View ArticleOpen House New York 2011
This past weekend was the ninth annual Open House New York event. OHNY is a non-profit dedicated to celebrating New York City’s architectural and design accomplishments, and the October weekend is its...
View ArticleNew Islamic Galleries at the Met
Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia Such a portentous-sounding title has not been bestowed upon anything related to this region since Borodin’s...
View ArticleHoliday Music: The Non-Standards
By this time in the year, we’re probably close to burn-out on our Christmas carol listening. It’s everywhere—in the stories, on the street, probably in your home because there’s this idea that, hey,...
View ArticleNew Year’s In Vienna: An Uplifting Tradition
Is there a more universally enjoyed composer than Johann Strauss, Jr.? It’s hard to say. Sure, some individual pieces by other composers are more popular (ex., the New World Symphony, Beethoven’s 9th,...
View ArticleOld Masters in New York
New York doesn’t usually get the best of the Old Masters (that’s reserved for the London and Paris sales, from whence the stuff originates), but there are a lot of vitally important pieces coming up at...
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