The Easel

28th April 2020

America’s Big Museums on the Hot Seat

Holland Cotter | The New York Times | 18th March 2020

In the flush of post-Civil War confidence, New York founded the Metropolitan Museum. Some reviews marking its 150th anniversary recount the museum’s early days as the “tycoons darling”. The linked piece notes contemporary challenges – an uneasy relationship with contemporary art, a tendency to ignore artists who are not male and white. “They need to rethink the Temple of Beauty branding … they need to rethink what they were and are.”

21st April 2020

Painting After All: Authors Sheena Wagstaff and Brinda Kumar on the Gerhard Richter Book and Exhibition

Rachael High | metmuseum blog | 14th April 2020

Curators of the Gerhard Richter show in New York explain Richter’s belief in painting. He has a “deep-seated mistrust” of photography. It cannot capture a sense of realism and is “ultimately not about truth in any direct way”. Painting, in contrast “has more of a singular presence and relevance to our actual living moment. After everything that has happened to humankind … painting is still there as evidence of our collective endurance”.

Visions of the implausible

Mario Naves | The New Criterion | 12th March 2020

When this show was mounted in Paris, it mystified. It mystifies in New York, too. Lecqueu trained as an architect and moved to Paris just before the French Revolution. His perfectionist, grandiose designs “fizzled”, his career as well. He also produced equally meticulous, “unnerving” erotic drawings. Where does this leave us? “[T]he appeal of his art is, in fact, its impossibility. A little of Lequeu goes a long way.”

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