Oh, sister! Jane Gross, who is mine, has just launched her new blog, The New Old Age, at nytimes.com. You can teach a print dog new tricks!
Clay Felker, the inventor of the modern city magazine and spiritual father of New Journalism, died today. One of the smaller publications referred to in his Times obit was the East Side Express, where I was lucky enough to start my career in journalism, working for Clay for fifteen weeks I will never forget. He was–and will remain–an inspiration to anyone who believes in the power of truth in words, medium notwithstanding.
I got to this late but can’t resist. Last week’s Home section of the Times had a very funny story about a real estate marketing party at the Park Avenue maisonette of the late William F. and Pat Buckley, which has just come on the market. The Times captioned the photo above saying only that they were “guests” at the affair. That caption is worthy of expansion, for the two swells pictured are Michael and Eleanor Kennedy. He is the one-time radical lawyer who defended the likes of Huey Newton, Tim Leary, and the Weathermen. His presence in the apartment of the late great voice of conservatism is enough to make one’s head spin. The question is, left to right, or right to left??? (photo from nytimes.com)
The death of fashion model Ruslana Korshunova set my phone ringing. This is what I had to say on the subject to The Telegraph in London. “People generalise about fashion models to their own peril. We can’t draw conclusions about one from the last. The occupational hazards of modelling are well known - there are substance abuse, body issues and self-esteem issues. But we don’t know why this girl jumped out of a window. It could be it had nothing to do with modelling.” I also pointed out that when sad, poor, normal un-beautiful people kill themselves, they don’t appear on tabloid covers or inspire public hand-wringing about their inner pain, impoverished souls (or bad eating habits). RIP Ruslana.
Town & Country with Ivanka Trump on the cover: $4.95
Its mention of 740 Park as the book at her bedside: Priceless
Five years ago, an apartment my wife and I owned was flooded, and my co-op’s insurance company, a subsidiary of AIG, offered us seven cents back for every dollar we’d lost, even though we had what’s called a “replacement” policy that should have paid to repair the damages entirely. When we kicked up a fuss, AIG sent a team of people to eyeball the place, led by a man who looked very much like Martin Sullivan, the chief executive AIG canned yesterday. I can’t be sure it was him because I was seeing red after the beefy, white-haired dude walked in, looked around, and muttered, “What a s**thole.” Doh. A gorgeous, 1840s top-nailed quarter sewn oak floor had been destroyed, Greek Revival moldings had melted, and the ceiling was buckling. So I cheered when Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, Sullivan’s predecessor, was kicked to the curb a few years back. I’d like to believe that today’s news means Mr. S**thole has gotten his just desserts, too. Yeah, karma’s a bitch, ain’t it, Marty?
The press continues to speculate who will replace the Metropolitan Museum’s longest-serving director, Philippe de Montebello. Today’s New York Sun has the latest state-of-the-arts list, which drops Met president Emily Rafferty and the British Museum’s Neal MacGregor but adds the Met curator and Havemeyer descendent Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and includes two Timothys: Timothy Potts of Scotland by way of the Kimball and Cleveland’s Timothy Rub. Funny how no one mentions that Montebello’s longevity is the exception for Met directors. The job has killed several of his predecessors. Ay, there’s the Rub. Stick that in your Potts and smoke it.
The summer issue of Bergdorf Goodman Magazine will be out next week, featuring my conversation with Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud, whose new restaurants Bar Boulud, Benoit and Adour have recently brightened the dining scene in the neighborhood I call Vuitton (which is somewhere between uptown and downtown). Say those three words with a broad, fake French accent and it will make more sense. Read it here: Boulud-Ducasse
Vanity Fair has a Madonna slideshow on its web site that includes the photos the late Herb Ritts shot for her very first VF cover story, penned by yours truly.
Yves Saint Laurent died in France today. Twenty years ago, I interviewed him just before his company went public and asked how he felt about sharing ownership of his name. In response, he pulled a framed quotation from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, off the wall of his Paris office. Slowly, a tremulous finger tracing the words, he read it aloud in French. ‘’The magnificent and lamentable family of the nervous is the salt of the earth,'’ it read in part. ‘’They are the ones - and not others - who founded religions and created masterpieces. The world will never know all that it owes them, nor especially how much they suffered.'’ (photo by Michael Gross)
Women’s Wear Daily should know. Last week, it announced the return of the supermodel. Welcome back, Christy, Claudia and Linda. You’re a sight for sore eyes and as welcome as miniskirts in spring.
Page Six announced this morning that Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, my 1995 book on the fashion modeling industry, has been optioned by KDX Productions to be made into a ten-part documentary. Given that today’s papers also bring news that the film of my pal Steven M.L. Aronson’s fantastic book on a society murder, Savage Grace, published ten years before that in 1985, has finally made it to the screen and is coming out next week, it probably bears repeating that good things are well worth waiting for.
Galleycat has some fun with the fact that the powers-that-be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art don’t like the book I’m writing—and don’t need to read it to know that! The book blog has issued a call for photos of the building (which the Met doesn’t want me to have) and they’re already arriving. Here’s the best so far (above), taken by Gilbert King.
Philippe de Montebello is going to work for New York University, where, according to Carol Vogel in todays’ Times, he will lecture on the history of collecting and connoisseurship and the evolution of museums, and serve as a special advisor–whatever that means–to NYU’s new Abu Dhabi campus. Curiously, when the Louvre announced plans to open a branch museum in Abu Dhabi, Montebello condemned the move as commercializing art. Some NYU students I know think the new campus is all about the Benjamins, too.
Liz Smith has it first: the title of my next book on the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be Rogues’ Gallery. La Liz gets a few more things right, too. The Met is “remarkable, incredibly valuable and super-important,” and so is its incredibly rich story, which is why I chose to write it. The Met has refused to let a photo archive “sell photos of the building for the book jacket. (Even though the museum is owned by the city and sits on public land.)” And the Met “will survive” my daring to look at its history without its blessing. If all goes according to plan, Rogues’ Gallery will be published next year by Broadway Books, despite the museum’s attempts to stop it. Meantime, you can read Gripebox on the museum’s relationship to a free press here, hereand here.
My slightly unserious timeline of the history of St. Barthelemy, my favorite island, is in the new June 2008 issue of Travel + Leisure.
Steve Schwarzman is likely channeling Rodney Dangerfield today. He can’t get no respect. A very snarky article on B-1 of the Times takes pot-shots at the Blackstone Group biggie and the New York Public Library for its plan to plaster his name all over the library’s facade in thanks for his recently announced gift of $100,000,000 to kick-start the library’s modernization. Schwarzman’s spotty track record in philanthropy is well known. Less known, perhaps, is his relationship to books and authors. When I approached him for an interview for 740 Park, his contempt was as clear as it was clarifying. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that he’d filled the bookshelves in his trophy apartment with books by the yard, bought at the Strand Bookstore. But hey, better books he hasn’t read than no books at all!
UPDATE: Galleycat on Gripebox on Schwarzman
Hear ye, hear ye, hedge fund honchos: There’s about to be a rare apartment for sale in the quiet half of 740 Park Avenue, the anti-chic “back of the bus” apartments that use 71 East 71st Street for their address. June Speight, widow of a former co-op board president (and one of the last of the old breed WASPS in the building), died this past weekend, which means that apartment 4/5 C (you can see an equivalent floor plan here) should be on the market soon, priced somewhere around $30 million. The last sale in the building, of the somewhat larger apartment 4/5A facing Park Avenue and using the front entrance, to David and Tamara Winn, fetched $32 million.
In the new issue of Travel & Leisure, your faithful correspondent takes a look at the magic that is Vienna.
(Photo by Adam Friedberg)
Marty Peretz has a slightly grumpy take on the Metropolitan Museum’s latest offerings on his blog, The Spine, focused on its upcoming Jeff Koons-on-the-roof exhibit. But the best line belongs to a commenter, commenting on a comment referencing Damien Hirst. “‘Does this mean that the Met has jumped the shark?’ Nah. Just installed it. ”
