Peter Aspden talks to New York’s Metropolitan Museum’s director, Thomas Campbell, about the Met’s need for a new role:

The Met is even beginning to plug into the crowd-pleasing circus that is the contemporary art world, with a forthcoming exhibition on John Baldessari that would have been a more obvious fit at the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim. Campbell feels the Met has had a “bad rap” in terms of engaging with late modern and contemporary art, which has always been part of its programming. The difference now is “the recognition that there is a sizeable audience [for it] and we can, here at the Met, put it in the context of our encyclopaedic collections of art history, which is a very different experience from seeing it only in its own context”. Continue Reading

David Koch has pledged $10 million to improve the fountains in front of the Met in New York, Eric Orden says:

“If you go down Fifth Avenue, that plaza is so dreary,” he said. “I want to improve the lighting, so that when you pass by at night and look over there, you’ll see a beautiful fountain, dancing away.”

According to Mr. Koch, a committee has met every Friday for the past several weeks to interview architectural firms competing for the commission. He declined to name the firms. Mr. Holzer declined to comment about whether a committee had been formed, as well as on the overall cost of the project, saying it is “much too soon” to provide a comprehensive figure.Continue Reading

The Met releases its newest acquisition–a bust by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt–through Carol Vogel’s New York Times column:

Works by Messerschmidt rarely come on the market, and when they do, there are often many competitors vying for them. Five years ago, at Sotheby’s in New York, the Louvre beat out the Getty and the Met, spending $4.8 million for the bust of a grimacing figured called “Ill-Humored Man.” The Met bought “A Hypocrite and Slanderer” from Roman C. Herzig, a dealer with a gallery in Vienna. It had come from a private collection in Austria.

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