Landers is out. Gave an uplifting, modest, inspiring speech.

Who are you going to believe?

I'm glad this issue of MMD: Museums, Materials, Discussions is out. The topic is fascinating and poignantly topical, and it gave me the opportunity to participate in a roundtable with two very interesting and better informed colleagues.
mmdjournal.unibo.it/issue/view/1...

#museum #curators

Back to the future in Riyadh.

The sun going down on 2024

Came across this memory of the first Trump term in Kyle Chayka’s _The Longing for Less_.

“It was an immigration checkpoint where police and guards were checking IDs. As a single white man traveling in a spotless rental car I got waved on without a second glance.”

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, “A Hypocrite and a Slanderer” (ca 1770-83). Metropolitan Museum”

Bernard van Orsley, Virgin and Child with Angels (ca 1538). Metropolitan Museum. Detail.

Tell me again about how there’s not enough housing in NYC

These galleries may well make people newly passionate about works of art that have not finished telling us all they might.

Europe, painting, museum: all terms that have been contested of late. The new galleries clearly have gotten all the memos, and have nevertheless found creative undefended responses to many of them.

The curators have reimagined the display, in deeply thoughtful and sophisticated ways, moving beyond simple national traditions, working with contrasts as much as continuities, juxtapositions that edify, move and delight.

Serendipitously found myself in the rehung European Paintings Gallery at the Met this week. A triumph!
 
Works dazzle in the carefully calibrated lighting on tinted walls. Statues have joined the mix, and beautiful furniture. The views from gallery to gallery make the experience in itself aesthetic.