Hiding for days in the basement of a kindergarten in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that became synonymous with Russian war crimes, Oksana Semenik had time to think. Outside, Russian troops were rampaging through the town, killing civilians who ventured into the streets. Knowing she might not make it out, Ms. Semenik, an art historian, mulled […]
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Iris Apfel, Eye-Catcher With a Kaleidoscopic Wardrobe, Dies at 102
Iris Apfel, a New York society matron and interior designer who late in life knocked the socks off the fashion world with a brash bohemian style that mixed hippie vintage and haute couture, found treasures in flea markets and reveled in contradictions, died on Friday at her home in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102. […]
Read MoreThe Met Museum Aims to Get Harlem Right, Second Time Around
Notoriously, in the winter of 1969 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its first exhibition devoted to African American culture, but with a show devoid of art. Called “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900—1968,” it was a photomural-with-texts affair of a kind found in ethnology museums. As a student in town […]
Read MoreMighty Shiva Was Never Meant to Live in Manhattan
“What if museums give back so much art that they have nothing left to display?” As a scholar of the debates about returning cultural objects to the countries from which they were stolen, I have, over the years, heard many variations of that question. “Museums have lots and lots of stuff,” I usually answer, fighting […]
Read MoreThe Met Will Return 16 Ancient Treasures Tied to Looting
The Metropolitan Museum of Art said Friday that it had agreed to return 16 major Khmer era artworks to Cambodia and Thailand. The works are associated with Douglas A.J. Latchford, a Met donor and prolific dealer who was indicted as an illegal trafficker of ancient artifacts shortly before his death in 2020. In recent years, […]
Read MoreThe Glory of Designs by Women (It’s About Time)
Last October, when it was announced that Sarah Burton was leaving Alexander McQueen, the house she had nurtured to new gorgeousness after the suicide of its founder, and would be replaced by an Irish designer named Seán McGirr, it set off a sort of tsunami of angst in the fashion world. See, it turned out […]
Read MoreBest Art of 2023: ‘Manet/Degas,’ Lauren Halsey and Henry Taylor
Roberta Smith Invigorating, Surprising, Sometimes Even Violent Color Color has a life all its own. Without art, without people, it is everywhere, one of the natural wonders of the world. Still what people have managed to do with it sometimes seems miraculous, a gift. Especially in art, where its generosity and warmth become even more […]
Read MoreThe Met’s New European Galleries Feature 6 Must-See Paintings
Let the light in. Five years after the Metropolitan Museum of Art set off on a major renovation of its galleries for European painting, the super-prime real estate at the top of its grand staircase is open again. Up in the attic, the architects Beyer Blinder Belle have replaced 30,000 square feet of skylights for […]
Read MoreLong Ignored by the Western Art World, Africa’s Medieval Treasures Shine
We like to keep history as we’ve learned it in a headlock, to make sure it doesn’t shift or change. Standard maps are useful aids in imposing paralysis. They turn the world into a fixed field of safe-spots and blanks, an us-them weave of gates and fences. One of the many — many — benefits […]
Read MoreMatisse and Derain: the ‘Wild Beasts’ of Fauvism
If you ever took an art history survey in college, you may recall the blur of Fauvism. In the parade of projected images, it was the shocking flash of pure color that sped past as the course made its way to the more demanding rigors and longer shelf lives of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and […]
Read MoreThe Next Costume Institute Fashion Blockbuster Is Revealed
After the pop culture bonanza of this summer’s “Barbie,” the hoo-ha surrounding the live action remake of “The Little Mermaid” and the attention paid to anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, observers could be forgiven for hearing the title of the next Costume Institute blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and think they were […]
Read MoreThe Next Costume Institute Fashion Blockbuster Is Revealed
After the pop culture bonanza of this summer’s “Barbie,” the hoo-ha surrounding the live action remake of “The Little Mermaid” and the attention paid to anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, observers could be forgiven for hearing the title of the next Costume Institute blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and think they were […]
Read MoreMet Museum’s Great Hall Store to Become Gallery
In an attempt to modernize how visitors experience its 19th-century building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning to turn the large store off its Great Hall into an 11,500-square-foot gallery for its blockbuster Costume Institute exhibitions and to transform an entrance underneath the main staircase into a retail space and restaurant that will be […]
Read MoreManet’s ‘Olympia,’ the 19th Century’s Most Scandalous Painting, Comes to New York
“A colossal ineptitude,” one enraged critic called it. “Her face is stupid,” another wrote. The papers declared it “shapeless,” “putrefied,” “incomprehensible.” They said it “recalls the horror of the morgue.” And when the Parisian crowds rolled into the Salon of 1865, they too went berserk in front of Édouard Manet’s painting of a courtesan, her […]
Read MoreNairy Baghramian Breaks Through With Metropolitan Museum Facade Commission
But other works strike an eerier note, evoking sections of the anatomy — like windpipes or knee joints — or its supports, like prostheses and dental retainers. (The references could also be to buildings and their scaffolding, or infrastructure like heating ducts.) She does not hide the metal hooks, joints, pins or fasteners that connect […]
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