Tag Archives: art

Busman’s Holiday

Two days before the official beginning of spring 2021, I decided to leave my lockdown quarters in Brooklyn Heights and visit my home away from home: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I took a taxi and was shocked along the … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Donald Trump Is “Making America Beautiful Again”

On February 10, 2020, I came across a small headline in The New York Times proclaiming that Donald Trump is making “America beautiful again.” It was paired with an image of the National Museum of African American History and Culture … Continue reading

Posted in politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Public Parks, Private Gardens: The Met Celebrates Spring

Given the nor’easter that dumped snow all over Central Park and our constantly dreary politics, it is wonderful that the Met is putting on a show that overflows with sunshine and outdoor delights. The exhibit is on the ground floor … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Farewell to David Rockefeller

One of the pleasures of being a biographer is that one becomes intimate with one’s subjects without really knowing them in the flesh. So it is, after spending five years writing America’s Medicis: The Rockefellers and their Astonishing Cultural Legacy, with the … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Georges Seurat’s Circus Sideshow at the Met

Georges Seurat was a visionary. He applied primary colors in tiny dots, and ended up with unbelievably beautiful novel textures and shades. His technique was based on the theory of the color wheel and as a reaction to the spontaneous, … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Max Beckmann at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Thank God this painting is in New York,” Sabine Rewald kept repeating as she led a flock of reporters through the magnificent exhibition of Max Beckmann paintings that she had curated for the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Given … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Need Cheering Up? Go See Stuart Davis at the Whitney Museum of Art

Want to forget Brexit, Trump, and the rest of the long, dark list of summer events that seems to be lengthening by the day? Go to the still sparklingly new Whitney Museum of American Art and immerse yourself in the … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Two very different women, the socially striving Arabella Worsham and the retiring Laura Spelman Rockefeller, occupied the lavish Gilded Age dressing room that joined the period rooms in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning in … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pergamon, and my Belgian History Teacher, Come to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

As soon as I entered the Met Museum’s magnificent survey of Hellenistic Art (Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World, April 18-June 17, 2016) the voice of Miss Feytmans, who taught at my high school some 75 years … Continue reading

Posted in Art review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Visiting the Musee Rodin in the Wake of World War II

For me, the reopening of the Musee Rodin unleashed floods of memories. In April 1946, a month before my nuclear family was to immigrate to the United States, my mother, who was somewhat of a tyrant, surprisingly let me visit … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment