740 Park, The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building
Archive for the 'GripeBox' Category
Attention Sarah Palin fans (and hataz)!!!!
I am not the magazine writer Michael Joseph Gross so please don’t send me love or hate letters for him. Speaking of which, attention Fox News fans: Neither am I the lawyer Michael Gross who sometimes appears on Fox News, so please don’t send me mail meant for him, either. Oh, and guys? You’ve got mail (but I’ve deleted it).
Reading List
D Magazine in Dallas reports that Roger Horchow of the Horchow catalogs has very good taste in books.
Splitsville, Styles-style
Styles of the Times has just posted a piece on the Peter Brant-Stephanie Seymour divorce that is, alas typically, a day late and a dollar short. Anyone seeking more telling background on this fiercely ambitious and oddly-well-matched pair may want to dip into Model, where the compelling Mr. Brant’s criminal record (which goes unmentioned in the Times), and the stunning Ms. Seymour’s riveting sexual past with the likes of John Casablancas (it gets a sentence), Axl Rose (two sentences!) and Warren Beatty (also unmentioned) are given a full airing. A small taste, describing a 1992 fight between Rose and Seymour: “Seymour swung at him with a chair and punched him in the crotch. Stephanie, said the singer’s sister, ‘wants to push thing to the edge.’” She met her match in Peter Brant.
Rogues’ Gallery a #1 Bestseller
Just back from a long trip to faraway places and with internet access restored noticed that not only is Rogues’ Gallery the #4 bestselling paperback non-fiction book at Bookhampton this week, it is the #1 bestseller that is not about the Hamptons. So thanks again, discerning East End readers. “Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.” –Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959
We are #4!
Rogues’ Gallery is #4 on the Bookhampton non-fiction bestseller list this week. Thanks Bookhampton and all you East End readers!
It’s good to be the director
Gripebox first revealed Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell’s $4 million Fifth Avenue apartment–and some of the peculiarities of his living arrangements–here back in March. That’s not it above, but the floorplan shows the same apartment one floor above Campbell’s. Today’s New York Times reveals that though Campbell receives free housing across the street from his museum office, he pays no income tax on a perk that’s got to be worth a tidy six-figure sum annually. As so often happens when it deals with the Met, the local community newspaper went easy on Campbell, covering his situation in two very brief paragraphs, while serving up seven paragraphs on the similar housing perk given to Ellen Futter, director of the American Museum of Natural History (which has not had the sense to put mutiple Sulzbergers on its board of trustees). Too bad. The history of the Met’s housing benefit and who has benefitted from it is, to say the least, titillating. Thomas Hoving, for instance, refused it, preferring not to live (metaphorically speaking) above the store. There’s lots more of what the Times didn’t tell you in Rogues’ Gallery. Click the link to the left to buy a copy.
A Diller of a Promise
Forty American billionaires have made moral (i.e. not binding, but public) pledges, at the urging of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to give half their fortunes to charity, instead of using them soley to spoil future generations. Among those taking the pledge plunge: Paul Allen, Mike Bloomberg, Eli and Edythe Broad, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Larry Ellison, Barron Hilton, Ken Langone, George Lucas, Ronald O. Perelman, Pete Peterson, T. Boone Pickens, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Sandy Weill and Shelby White. Visit givingpledge.org to see the entire list–and if you’ve got the money, join in.
Attention Ron Burkle: B&N on the Block??
Barnes & Noble has announced that it is considering a sale of the company in order to increase stockholder value and raise its share price.
R.I.P. Judy Peabody
Judy Peabody died yesterday after a long and difficult illness. David Patrick Columbia has written a touching remembrance of this compassionate and open-minded heroine, one of the great ladies of New York City in this or any era.
Beach Reading: Rogues’ Gallery Rising
Rogues’ Gallery has rocketed to #2 on the Book Soup paperback non-fiction bestseller list this week. Love the Soup (and I don’t mean Tom Campbell’s) and thanks all you readers in Los Angeles!
Heavy Lifting
Maureen Dowd’s burqua notwithstanding, no one has ever accused the New York Times op-ed page of being either fashion-conscious or fashionable. But today’s top piece, correlating the appearance of platform shoes for women with economic distress is kind of fashion-clueless. “Economic distress causes distinctions between male and female dress to widen among the fashion-conscious,” the paper informs us, showing platforms from the Depression, World War II, 1974 and now in support of a claim that women don platforms to lift their moods. Have they never heard of The New York Dolls (shown circa 1974, above)?
“Creative and complete”
Yesterday, the design blog UnBeige praised my suggestion for the future of Marcel Breuer’s brutalist Whitney Museum as “the most creative and complete” in a recent poll of experts by The Art Newspaper: a museum of cultural philanthropy in which archival documents concerning great contributions are stored, catalogued and displayed. Meantime, the New York Observer called the idea “off-the-wall” but added, “We’re a fan of that idea.” We’re a fan of the New York Observer, too.
Gaunt, but not forgotten
News flash: Super-sized model Crystal Renn has the blogosphere up in arms over a recent weight loss that shrank her from a size 12 to a size 8. The New York Post’s Mandy Stadtmiller examines this shocking story of a model and her fluctuating appetite in “A Big Fat Lie.” I comment: “Maybe Crystal Renn just created a job-opening.”
What to do with the Whitney?
The Art Newspaper asked a panel of experts what should be done with Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum (the architect and his creation are above) when the museum moves downtown. My tongue-in-cheek thought follows those of former Whitney director David Ross and former Breuer architect Terence Riley.
“You will never look at the Wrightsman Galleries in the same way again.”
“Michael Gross examines the Met through the prism of [its] generous and often loathsome benefactors, from the robber barons to the present day Page Six personalities,” writes Nashville Realtor Elizabeth Colton Walls on her book review blog. Check it out here.
Rogues’ Gallery is coming to Westhampton Beach
I try to get out and they keep dragging me back. For all you East Enders, I’ll be speaking and signing Rogues’ Gallery (and 740 Park) on Saturday July 17th at 6 PM at the new Books & Books store at 130 Main Street in Westhampton Beach, NY. That’s the Books & Books we know and love from Miami–so please come support their first northern venture.
Attendance is up, so why are they so down (on Rogues’ Gallery)?
Attendance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned to levels not seen since 2001, says the The New York Observer. Perhaps understandably, no thank yous were issued to Rogues’ Gallery, but independent-minded reviewers have said the book re-ignites interest in and passion for the museum. “Even if you’ve been to the museum many times before, the stories Gross tells make you want to return immediately,” wrote Silvana Paternostro in Poder. “The tales are so compelling that instead of trying to downplay this book, the museum should be selling it in its gift shop.” Fat chance! But the paperback edition is on sale just about everywhere else that books are sold.
Soupy Sales and more….
Rogues’ Gallery has returned to the bestseller list at Book Soup, my favorite book store in Los Angeles (above). Also, this week, Crain’s New York Business references the book in its anniversary issue in a story on philanthropy as an economic engine by Miriam Kreinin Souccar, who describes the book as “a tell-all about power struggles behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And on that note, adieu
In a recent email exchange, the chief flack for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, charged that I was “averse to reason” when it comes to the museum I honor and the fascinating people whose lives are illuminated in the pages of Rogues’ Gallery. That led me to wonder if in fact it isn’t the museum’s administration and trustees who are averse to the beauty of truth. But enough. It’s almost summer, time to buy a few good books and chill in the heat. Here’s what independent experts said about Rogues’ Gallery. My advice? Decide for yourself.
“Explosive.” –Vanity Fair
“A blockbuster exhibition of human achievements and flaws…pages of Vanity Fair-worthy name-dropping and social-climbing.” –Amy Finnerty, New York Times Book Review
“Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It’s a terrific tale…gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed…What Gross reveals is stuff that more people should know.” –USA Today
“Who doesn’t love the Met, and who wouldn’t want to read tantalizing gossip about the upper echelon of social climbers, philanthropists, and curators who have warred for prestige and control over the storied museum since its beginning?…Completely unauthorized, this irresistible read exposes the dirty money and politics behind the Met’s rise. Plundered relics, millionaires’ meddling, and ambition disguised as social philanthropy are revealed thanks to Gross’ muckraking, producing one of the year’s most entertaining books. Take it to the beach (but not the museum).” –Nancy Bass Wyden, The Daily Beast
“Dense and exhaustively factual … the book is important, and what’s more, splendidly readable.” –Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com
“A compelling tale of the money, greed, egotism, and less than kosher acquisitions that have made the Met the mega-institution that it is today. It’s high culture meets lowlife behavior. And Gross has certainly dug up the goods—from Met-sanctioned tomb raiding in Cyprus to the classless antics of power-hungry trustees.” –Rachel Wolff, The Daily Beast
“Reads like an adventure novel.” Claudia Steinberg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
“An insightful, entertaining look at a great institution–with all its flaws and all its greatness.” -Gay Talese
“Riveting and accurate… I learned a lot.” –Tom Hoving, Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1966-1976)
“A prodigious piece of work about those who created and operate this nations’ leading museum of art. It’s simply great theatre. We’re indebted to Mr. Gross.” –Daniel Herrick, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1968-1985)
“Enlightening…persuasive…Gross is to be congratulated for the ingenuity of his research…After 140 years in existence, the Met was due for an exposé.” Avis Berman, The Economist
“Completely fascinating; lucidly and engagingly written…insightful….a marvelously readable volume.” –Stuart Silver, Chief Exhibition Designer, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1962-1977)
“Fun, gossipy, fascinating reading; the perfect museum lover’s book for summer at the beach or at home.” Dominique H. Vasseur, The Columbus Museum of Art
“Unofficial, juicy and probably very true history…a definite must read for anyone with an interest in art and museums.” Amy L. Hofland, Director of the Crow Collection of Asian Art (Dallas, Texas)
“Digs deep … a supremely detailed history.” –Kirkus
“Sprawling history……Behind-the-scenes dirt and an intriguing look at the symbiosis of culture and cash.” –Publishers Weekly
“A big tell-all book … zestfully mixes factual reportage with piquantly entertaining anecdotes.” –Booklist
“Dignified…authoritative…fascinating.” –Jesse Kornbluth, Headbutler.com
“A page-turner that unravels like an elite whodunit…fearlessly unearths secrets.” –George Christy, Beverly Hills Courier
“Fabulous, realistic, well-researched.” –Liz Smith
“By turns funny, outrageous, and disconcerting…Makes public what arguably should have been public knowledge long ago… nearly effortlessly and without disdain.” –artinfo.com
“A primer on how things are done to move the machines that make the metropolis….A great historical document.” –David Patrick Columbia, newyorksocialdiary.com
“Gross is a meticulous storyteller, and Rogues’ Gallery is an entertaining romp.” –frieze magazine
“A gripping, glib and gossipy deconstruction of the curators, directors, donors and trustees who dominated the Met since its founding.” –The Tulsa World
“This book is a museum piece.” — Page Six, The New York Post
“Yummy.” –New York Daily News
“A vivid view into the murky world of the super rich.” —Samantha Ettus, Obsessed TV
“A fine topography of the major players…Excavating the Met’s history in six chapters from 1870 to 2009, Gross reveals the personalities and relationships between donors and directors, curators and dealers, and the city of New York and its cultural crown jewel. It is astonishing what people will do for money, power, and social prominence, and we see a great deal of what they will do in Rogues’ Gallery. In the end, Gross wants the Met to succeed—he is not lobbing stones at the cathedral, but rather revealing what the men and women at the pulpit have been up to behind closed doors.” –Rick Ring, Providence Journal
“No holds barred… “stuffed with entertaining - and often embarrassing - detail about the Met’s administrators and donors.” –Financial Post (Canada)
“If you thought former J. Paul Getty Museum curator Marion True’s illegally procured antiquities trial was a cause célèbre, don’t miss Rogue’s Gallery. Michael Gross’s 483-page behemoth (on the heels of his equally dishy 740 Park) recounts the prestigious museum’s often-unsavory elitism…early acquisition practices others would call looting and takes on modern-day big wigs like Met vice-chairman, socialite—and Oscar’s honey—Annette de la Renta, whom Gross paints as an avid social climber in this sustained takedown of the rich and famous.” –Felicia Feaster, The Atlantan.
“Endlessly entertaining.” –Newport Seen
“This slightly irreverent history of one of the world’s great art museums, New York’s Metropolitan, is an intriguing look behind the scenes…an invaluable addition to the modern history of the art world.”
–The Calgary Sun
“A juicy, deliciously detailed history of the nation’s largest museum and the oversized egos of those who run it….As a history of culture in this city, it’s spot on.” — Brook Mason, Artnet.com
“Audacious…intriguing…factual…often irreverent…A honeypot of gossip…detail [that] boggles the mind.” –Jean Reeves Barre, The Buffalo News
“Incredible investigative reporting and pretty damning stuff…With every page, Gross exposes intimate details…to illustrate the fascinating history of this venerable institution…He tells the stories of the men and women who form the inner sanctum of wealth and power, how those who are at the pinnacle of New York society got to be there—by maneuvering marriage and money, by hook or by crook. The book is more like two books: one is the straight gossip of the who’s who with all the antic details of tabloid journalism. The other is a serious document of social history, exhaustively researched and meticulously crafted…Even if you’ve been to the museum many times before, the stories Gross tells make you want to return immediately. The tales are so compelling that instead of trying to downplay this book, the museum should be selling it in its gift shop.”
–Silvana Paternostro, Poder.
“A tell-much extravaganza…about the rich and powerful folks behind New York City’s Met, one of the finest art museums in the world. Stick this Rogues’ Gallery in your weekend bag or on your night stand and read it at your leisure. It won’t disappoint….With only a little more effort, however, and perhaps a little thought here and there, you can read a more substantial book, one that raises a serious question: Is the social web that created and sustained the Met about to disappear, leaving the Met with the life prospects of a beached whale? Even as he was having fun digging into the archives and tracking down skeletons in Fifth Avenue closets, Michael Gross was, in effect, rethinking the nature of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than thinking of it as a big solid structure that house and protects three millennia’s worth of art treasures, Gross came to present it as a fragile network of social relationships that somehow manages to balance the good, the bad, and the ugly in such a way that The Beautiful has a home…Gossip about the people who built the Met is the history of an institution told at the level of individual desires and actions. And, if gossip is a moral activity directed at maintaining social norms, then Rogue’s Gallery becomes something of an intervention directed at the institution itself.”
– Bill Benzon, The Valve
“A fascinating look into the inner workings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” –Hamptons Magazine
“A dishy read about behind-the-scenes social and civic maneuvering of the moguls who shaped the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” –Alan Peppard, The Dallas Morning News
“The ultimate insider’s look at the colorful characters who populate New York’s Metropolitan Museum.” — Washington Life
“Michael Gross is an acclaimed cultural journalist and an incisive, skilled, gossip-driven chronicler of the fashion and society worlds. He is fearlessly able to breach walls of secrecy and to nail down a story where no one wants to talk. As we move through the breathless behind-the-scenes narrative, we see the Met as we now know it take shape. Battles are fought over naming galleries, restrictions on donations are ignored by the latest generation of trustees, and the new donor holding the next great treasure is courted assiduously by an institution driven with a lust for acquisition that may have no rival in human history. Rogues’ Gallery sheds light on just why the Met does not want light to shine behind the scenes. It is a compelling portrait of New York as we know it. Peopled with outsized egos, often with doctored credentials, amassing wealth and treasures in strange and sometimes criminal ways, the Met is a quintessentially New York institution.” –Raymond Dowd, New York Law Journal
“Wonderfully juicy tell-all about the Metropolitan Museum…highly recommended if you like reading about how major museums and/or rich people operate.” –unBeige.com
En garde, Goliath!
Today, Jason Boog, editor of Galleycat, the book biz blog, asked me how I felt when I learned that Robert Silvers, eminence gris of the New York Review of Books, did indeed (as I speculate in the new afterword to Rogues’ Gallery) give an embargoed review copy of the book to Annette de la Renta, who promptly threatened to sue. My answer is here.
Montebello conquers Carnegie Hill
Curbed has the scoop on former Metropolitan Museum of Art director Guy-Philippe Lannes de Montebello’s new $1.75 million condo (bedroom above) at 40 East 94th Street on Carnegie Hill. Anywhere he hangs his art is home. Audio tour anyone?
Words to live (and die) by
A friend found this prescription for the American cultural philanthropist, penned in 1881 but still relevant 129 years later. It comes from a review by James Jackson Jarves, the first significant American art connoisseur, of a memoir by a Florentine merchant, Un Mercante Fiorentina a La Sua Famiglia nel Secolo XV by Giovanni di Pagolo Rucellai, whose family paid for the marble facade by Alberti of Santa Maria Novella (above).
“If we are to build up on American soil cities like Florence, world-renowned for art and science even more than for commerce and luxury, we must breed merchant princes cultured like Rucellai, and deeply imbued with his maxim, that it is pleasanter and more honorable to spend money for wise purposes than to make it; men whose souls are not shriveled by delusive notions of ’set’ and ’social position,’ mistaking the farthing light of self-importance for the electrical blaze of public munificence and duty.”
“All the juice,” says Madame Arcati
The UK’s maverick media blogger Madame Arcati just noted the arrival of the Rogues’ Gallery paperback. A certain Metropolitan Museum trustee, Arcati writes, “should be sending huge cheques to Michael for making her sound a lot more interesting than the gossip columns do, the silly bint.” That would be the same trustee George Gurley dubbed an “awe-inspiring badass” (see below). There’s more from the antic Arcati here.
Which Met Museum trustee is “an awe-inspiring badass”?
The New York Observer’s George Gurley profiles me and proves he’s quite a rogue himself in tomorrow’s paper.
With love from Met to you…
The Metropolitan Museum has announced a continuation of its Met Holiday Mondays program, opening portions of the museum to the public on the day of the week it is usually closed to all but invited press, trustees and special friends. Of course, on holiday weekends, the privileged flee, so it’s unlikely you’ll run into the likes of Jayne Wrightsman or Henry Kissinger, but Talleyrand and Madame X will prove acceptable replacements to most.
Who Kidnapped Brooke Astor? (NEWS FLASH: She’s Been Found!)
The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute has a new-ish show, “American Woman,” exploring the modern woman through dress—a very original way to look at women, no? But that’s not what interests me most here. At the very end of the show, there’s a gallery where still images of 200 iconic American women are projected onto the wall as living symbols of female emancipation, and their physical and intellectual liberation. I just got a list of those women and some are very worthy, but it’s a missing name–the late Brooke Astor’s–that intrigues me most.
Admittedly, she was no feminist; she inherited her millions, but at least chose to do good with them, and do it herself, not through a male surrogate. Astor was not just well-dressed, and an icon of female fashion, albeit of the most buttoned-up and expensive sort, she was also a model philanthropist in an age that could use more, not fewer, examples of such to be thrown up on walls and celebrated. So how odd that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she served tirelessly as a trustee and to which she gave countless millions of dollars, she would not be remembered and celebrated in just such a forum. Making this omission all the stranger, Mrs. William Astor aka Carolyne Schermerhorn Astor, or “the” Mrs. Astor of the famous 400 of the Gilded Age, is on the list. Rather than initiating a style revolution, as the museum press release puts it, she would more likely have been sent to the guillotine.
So I wondered, were any other members of the museum board on the list. Searching through the actresses (Gwynyth Paltrow), models (Christie Brinkley) and singers (Lady Gaga) thereon, I found Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was not a trustee but at least was a museum supporter, cosmetics heiress Aerin Lauder, whose grandmother would have killed to be a trustee but was not allowed into that select club, three Vanderbilt women, but only the founder of their fortune, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, ever made it into the board room, and finally, two actual trustees, Jayne Wrightsman and Annette de la Renta, both notably hard workers for the museum, and the first, at least, a figure of some cultural accomplishment. But hold their resumes up against Astor’s philanthropy and her indefatigable boosting of New York and you have to admit both look lightweight in comparison. Don’t you wonder how such choices get made—and who makes them?
Update: I got an email from the Met’s PR a day after this post went up, objecting to it. Brooke Astor is pictured, he told me in a subsequent phone call, though he admitted the photo was small so I might have missed it, and that originally she had not been on the list of 200 women that I checked, but that the list had since been revised and she had been included. He did not say when she was added, however, and I have since kicked myself for not asking. I did go up to the museum, however, and there Mrs. Astor was, pretty in pink on the gallery wall. But the image wasn’t small at all. It was, if anything, quite large in relation to most of the others. If I had anything to do with that, good. If she’s been there all along and was just left out of the press release I reported on (dated May 3, the day of the press preview and the Costume Institute Gala), that’s good too. This is a case where I’m glad if I was wrong. In the original post, I also thanked an intern who called the museum’s press office on my behalf since, I wrote, they won’t talk to me. The Met’s flack called that “patently untrue.” In truth, it was partly true. He does sometimes talk to me, though I would call it sparring. What matters is that he and his colleagues at the Met refused to talk to me when I was researching my book on the museum. I think that’s what’s called a distinction with a difference.
(Image swiped from nysocialdiary.com.)
I Can’t Get No WSJ-atisfaction
Do squeaky wheel get oiled? When I was at the New York Times I was taught that when someone called demanding a correction, I should always try to talk them out of it first. Today, blogger Scott Rosenberg reports how he recently bullied the Wall Street Journal into fixing a mistake. Which sent FishbowlNY digging into the archives of Gripebox to find my post of last fall about a still-uncorrected (and this has just got to be a record) five mistakes in one twenty-word WSJ sentence about 740 Park. That, at least, is satisfying.
The Circle Game: The Whitney and the Metropolitan
Art + Auction’s In the Air column revealed a few days ago that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is talking to the Whitney about taking over its Madison Avenue headquarters when and if the smaller institution moves to MePa. Rogues’ Gallery tells the whole saga of the pas de deux between the two museums, including the hilarious tale of how a merger was discussed for nearly twenty years and a Whitney Wing designed to be added to the Met, only to have the whole thing blow up over issues of curatorial arrogance and donor ambition (the two main subjects of the book). The Metropolitan was historically hostile to the contemporary art collected by the Whitney and its founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s son Sonny wanted “something with his name on it that he controlled,” Flora Biddle, a granddaughter told me. That’s the fabulous Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney above wearing a Leon Bakst costume, photographed circa 1913 by Baron Adolphe de Meyer. (Image snatched from http://attic-museumstudies.blogspot.com/2010/04/historical-hot-or-not-x.html)
“Greed is good…material”
Bedford-Katonah Patch’s Jessica Schneidman reports on last week’s CrossTalk benefit in the Katona Museum of Art’s Sculpture Garden which paired a certain author with the actress Patricia Clarkson (above right). “In addition to their keen senses of humor, as one audience member remarked, both guests seemed focused on ‘authenticity’ and the exposition of greed, corporate and otherwise,” she writes. Speaking of greed and good material, today’s New York Post highlights administrator salaries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a story titled “Culture vultures.” Suzanne Brenner, the Met’s chief investment officer, made $1.28 million as she watched the value of the museum’s investment portfolio plummet, reports the Post’s Isabel Vincent. The museum’s 2008 tax return is here. It shows that outgoing director Philippe de Montebello earned $916,030, incoming director Thomas Campbell earned $246,335, museum president Emily Rafferty raked in $773,070, and chief flack Harold Holzer took home $445,445, which is $10,000 more than museum lawyer Sharon Cott. Those figures may be of interest to all the museum employees who lost their jobs in 2009. I wonder if any of the highly-paid survivors took salary cuts?
Patricia Clarkson and Me? Wheee!
Oscar-nominated actresss Patricia Clarkson (above lower right in the SNL short Motherlover) and I appear together and separately tomorrow night at Crosstalk, a benefit for The Katonah Museum of Art and the Katonah Village Library. It starts with a reception at 6:30 PM at the museum at 134 Jay Street in Katonah, NY. “It’s usually the literati who show up here and not the glitterati,” Clarkson told a local newpspaer. “I do have to share a stage with Michael Gross, which is intimidating, but I will try to hold my own. I’ll be wearing a very short skirt.” In response, I can only quote David Bailey: “I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.”
The Mob=The Met?
The Art Newspaper, the foremost international source of art news, asks today if the Metropolitan Museum of Art is behaving like the Cosa Nostra. “Omertà and oral history might seem a contradiction in terms, but great museums move in mysterious, some might say Sicilian ways as the writer Michael Gross discovered,” it observes. In writing anything at all about The Book That Must Not Be Mentioned, The Art Newspaper is breaking the ring of silence that has surrounded Rogues’ Gallery since it was first pubished last year. Some dare call it news. For much of the art press, however, the Sicilian saying holds: Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent’anni ‘mpaci (”He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace”).
Pub Day: “An amazing tale of intrigue”
Rogues’ Gallery (the paperback) is in stores today. Tonight at 7:30 PM, I’ll be giving the annual Endowment Fund Lecture for the Rockville Centre Public Library at my alma mater, the South Side Middle School (67 Hillside Avenue). Check the link for further details and to buy tickets. Thursday night, I’m speaking about the book at the Association of the Bar of New York (42 West 44th Street 6-8PM) as part of its Books at the Bar program (free and open to the public). Presumably any new threats of litigation against it will be dealt with on the spot.
Quote(s) of the day
Today’s Page Six quotes my recent blog post on last week’s so-called Party of the Year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And responding to my Huffington Post post, Oral-Gate (reprinted just below), on the Smithsonian refusing to keep the Metropolitan’s secrets, Jesse Kornbluth at headbutler wonders, “When is the Met going to grow up?” C’mon Jesse, the museum isn’t even 150 yet!
Oral-gate: More Secrets at the Metropolitan Museum
When I began researching Rogues Gallery, my “social” history of the leaders and benefactors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I discovered that although the institution celebrates the history of human creation, the Met’s keepers were profoundly anti-historical when it came to their own story. “If we say we won’t cooperate, will you go away?” was the first response of the Met’s chief flack who, ironically, moonlights writing history books himself.
Little did I know that another great American museum—The Smithsonian Institution–would not only agree with me, but would, when push came to shove, refuse to keep secrets for the Metropolitan. Last fall, it returned more than three dozen oral histories—some of which contain explosive revelations–to the Metropolitan after the New York museum refused to abide by a promise to release them.
It was 2006 when I first discovered the existence of the Metropolitan Museum Oral History Project–three-dozen-or-so taped and transcribed conversations with leaders of the museum, conducted under its auspices in the early 1990s and deposited in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, which listed them all in its catalog. Among those interviewed for the project were Brooke Astor, Morgan heir Robert M. Pennoyer, the controversial curator Dietrich von Bothmer, former museum chairmen C. Douglas Dillon, William Macomber, J. Richardson Dilworth, and Arthur O. Sulzberger, and the current chairman James R. Houghton and president Emily Rafferty. But they were restricted. Permission to read them had to come from the interview subjects, and sent via the office of the museum’s archivist.
Hopefully, I called the Smithsonian and located the curators in charge of the archives. Could I get at them? No, they were under lock and key. What if I got an interview subject’s permission directly? No, they could only be released if that permission came via the museum. But a year later, there was a glimmer of hope. The museum’s contract with the museum specified, Joy Weiner, a reference specialist at the Smithsonian, wrote to me in spring 2007, that the access restriction was supposed to have been lifted late in 2005. “AAA’s Registrar, Susan Cary was assured by the Met that the release would be issued this year,” Weiner went on, but then came the bad news: “Ms. Cary has made several attempts to get the written release from the Museum’s archivist, but to date, the restriction on the oral interviews remains.”
I didn’t give up. In part that was because I’d gotten to see part of one of the interviews—Bothmer’s—and discovered they were no-holds-barred affairs. Bothmer thought he had the right to let me read the copy that had been delivered to him by the museum’s chief lawyer, Ashton Hawkins. “We want to leave it up to you to decide whether to restrict access to the interview during your lifetime,” Hawkins wrote in a cover letter. But what Bothmer wanted didn’t matter to Hawkins’ successor. On learning that I was in Bothmer’s office reading his oral history, she promptly had it taken away and turned up personally to ensure I left the museum immediately and never got to finish it.
So that summer, I renewed my effort to get at more of them, and again there was a glimmer of hope. “We’ve heard from the Met and it does seem that they’re making some progress in the paperwork on their end and so I’m hopeful that we’ll soon be able to provide access to the oral histories that are due to be released,” Marisa Bourgoin, the Richard Manoogian Chief of Reference Services at the Archives of American Art, told me in an e-mail. “Please do continue to check in and know that we’re working on it!”
When, I wondered, should I ask again? “My understanding is that the Met is trying to resolve its issues this week (and we’re putting some gentle pressure on them to do so),” Bourgoin replied “Given some administrative requirements on this end, it might be best if you were back in touch with us in a couple of weeks. ”
A month later, I spoke to Weiner again and learned the Met was taking a bit longer than expected. She and Bourgoin both made it clear they found the situation less than acceptable—but there was nothing they could do. Without that letter from the museum, the 2005 release date was meaningless.
Though I never forgot that the treasure trove was there, just out of reach, at that point, I gave up on getting them through channels. I’d already started asking others who were interviewed to read them. I started with Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, former chairman of both the museum and the New York Times. I’d once worked for him at the Times and figured he, of all people, would appreciate why I was asking to read his. Perhaps he did, but he still refused to let me see it. He’d promised his “friends at the museum” that he wouldn’t, the man who published the Pentagon Papers said. I was disappointed but not entirely surprised. I’d discovered while researching the book that Punch’s father, the first Sulzberger to serve on the museum’s board, had been put there in order to blunt the paper’s coverage of the museum—“another fellow who goes along,” in the words of the Met’s then-landlord New York’s commissioner of parks, Robert Moses.
Others proved more willing. The son of the late Arthur Rosenblatt, who’d been a vice-Director of the museum under Tom Hoving and Philippe de Montebello, gave me a copy of his. The daughter of James Rorimer, Hoving’s predecessor at the museum, read me page after page of another conducted with her mother, Kay, who’d worked in the museum’s library before becoming its first lady. Kay Rorimer’s was personal and unrevealing compared to letters of hers I found through other sources. But Rosenblatt’s was explosive, scathing, and I quoted from it liberally in the book, which was published in hardcover last May. The story of the book’s reception—which was itself revealing—is told in a new afterword to the paperback, out next week. So, briefly, is the story of the surprising conclusion to what I’ve come to think of as Oral-gate.
Last fall, while writing that afterword, I called the Smithsonian again. Hope springs eternal, I guess. I learned, to my surprise, that the Oral Histories were no longer there. They had been, to use the museum term-of-art, de-accessioned and returned to the Metropolitan. Why? The Washington historical museum decided that it no longer wanted to house a cache of historical documents if, as the New York art museum insisted, they were to remain “under lock and key,” unavailable to legitimate researchers, Bourgoin said. “After a long conversation, we came to an understanding that they were in a better position to manage the restrictions than we were. It was untenable for us.” But Bourgoin also said that the Met had promised to begin releasing them, and a few days later, I got an email from her reporting that James Moske, a new Met archivist, had just told her that seven of them had been unlocked. Thrilled to hear that, though dreading the task of updating my book further, I called Moske. No, he said, they weren’t open yet. Then, last week, wondering if perhaps they were closed only to me, I induced a reporter to try to get at them. No, she was told, they were still unavailable. But they would be opened, the museum said. “Soon.” Based on that promise, her editor told her this was no story.
The next morning, I sent the reporter an email. “So, to recap,” I wrote, “The Met commissioned oral histories, locked them up at the Smithsonian for 15 years, refused to release them as the contract stipulated and the Smithsonian returned them, essentially in disgust. They told the Smithsonian they had begun releasing them, but in fact they had not and months later, still have not released them. But they promise to do so. Eventually. Really. Do I have that right?”
With all due respect to that editor, I still think it’s a story worth telling.
Originally published by The Huffington Post on May 5, 2010
I have seen the scat future and it is Nikki Yanofsky
The sweet sixteen sensation live on May 4th 2010 at Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Club, Columbus Circle
History made “palatable”
The annual Vogue magazine corporate promotion party….oh, sorry, the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Party of the Year for its Costume Institute…was held last night and inspired the usual outpouring of uncritical praise from press folk who probably did not pay the $15,000-per-plate price of admission. Once the exclusive social event of the year, the party is now a paparazzi photo-op for movie and TV stars, a fashion marketing vehicle and a staging ground for six months of features for Vogue. Once the exclusive province of society demi-Goddeses like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Marella Agnella, Babe Paley and Pat Buckley, it now belongs to Sarah Jessica Parker and Oprah Winfrey (above), Eva Mendes, Nicole Ritchie, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller and Jude Law, Emma Watson, Katy Perry, Zoe Kravitz, Bar Rafaeli and, well, you get the picture, and if you don’t rest assured you will as US Weekly, In Touch and Star recycle them over coming months. Society? Well, Mayor Mike and Barbara Walters were at the table of museum machers Annette and Oscar de la Renta, Wendi Murdoch wore a dress hand-picked for her by La Wintour herself, marking her ascension to a place no Murdoch has wanted to go before, and Cathy Horyn of the New York Times assures readers today that “various members of the [Vogue-owning] Newhouse family” were also present and accounted for. But the most telling bit of coverage, also in the Times, comes from Suzy Menkes, who reviews the fashion show that is allegedly the reason for all the celebration. “The dulcet tones of Sarah Jessica Parker on the audio guide make history palatable,” she assures, but adds, “What is missing from the exhibition are fashion crosscurrents to link past and present…an Oscar de la Renta gown to fit with the new money heiresses in their Worth gowns; a current Asian-American designer beside Anna May Wong’s dress; a Ralph Lauren chemise to challenge the flappers; and the troubling beauty of Rodarte among the Bohemians. And why not show the casual ease of Michael Kors or, indeed, jeans and T-shirts from the Gap, to project how sportswear became America’s dominant fashion force? ” Yes, indeed. Why not just be honest and admit that the great art museum’s most famous night is now nothing more than an sales promotion exercise for one magazine, a few fashion designers and the infotainment business?
Father of Mine
Cindy Adams takes off after New York’s new bike Nazis at the end of an hysterical rant-romp on urban manners in today’s New York Post. Though her real target is “our revered, beloved, adored Emperor Bloomberg” for the “imbecilic, idiotic, vehicular ruling” that “turned Broadway into Rockaway…The Street of Dreams, the most famous area on this planet, into a nightmare”–a pedestrian plaza–she reserves special scorn for Bloomberg’s “whacked-out” transportation commissioner: “this unknown whack-job with the three names — Janette Sadik-Something…whom nobody, not one soul, not even her family, ever heard of — and who bike-rides . . . bike-rides! . . . because that’s the way she normally travels around the city. The woman doesn’t ever get in a car. She gets on a bike. That’s about the same level of intelligence that put that Napolitano nobody in charge of Homeland Security.”
Warning, what follows is not NSFW or for persons under 18:
That reminded me that I’d heard of her family, written about her father a few years ago, and might even have a clue to offer as to what turned this commish into a bike-riding “whack-job.” Orhan Sadik-Kahn survived the bombing of Dresden as a child to become a corporate tycoon and PaineWebber officer with a palatial manse in Old Greenwich. His first wife was Janette’s mother. His second was likely a little embarrassed when he put himself on the covers of tabloids and at the center of a magazine cover story I wrote about old men who lost their heads for Natashas, a pack of Soviet cuties who invaded New York about a decade ago and preyed on guys like Sadik-Kahn. Sadik-Kahn’s Natasha ultimately sued him, charging that he rented her “an apartment at the Galleria, insisting that she remain home at all times so he could have sex on demand….sneaked in and penetrated her while she slept, would pretend to be an infant and suckle at her breasts for three hours at a time, begged her to procure other women for group sex, flew home from vacations just to have sex with her, took hundreds of nude photos of her, asked her to describe sex with other men, and insisted that she have ‘wild’ sex with him in his wife’s bed.” That’s enough to make you a little whacky, no?
All Things Must Pass
Bye-bye to all that....
The New York Post announced this morning that I’ve left Bergdorf Goodman magazine after seven-plus years as its editor, having “aggressively transformed the once-catalog-like publication into an eclectic cultural forum.” It also went from a money-loser to a profit-making machine for the store after I replaced fashion-magazine-like promotion pieces on designers and merchandise with what I called “a commerce-free zone” of articles and portfolios designed to entertain the store’s sophisticated customers rather than sell stuff. The Post listed a few of the magazine’s contributors, but they all deserve a shout-out: So in no particular order, thanks to writers Jay McInerney, Linda Fairstein, Liz Smith, Tama Janowitz, Jesse Kornbluth, Anthony Haden-Guest, Paul Goldberger, Christopher Gray, Eden Collinsworth, Gerry Dryansky, Joseph Giovanini, J.D. Podolsky, Benedetta Pignatelli, Bill Nack, Nina Burleigh, Gigi Levangie Grazer, Suzanne O’Malley, Bob Morris, Melik Kaylin, Jill Brooke, Jamie Malanowski, Laren Stover, Mireille Guiliano, Mark Ellwood, Jim Larkin, Lisa Birnbach, Pamela Keogh, Annette Tapert, Karen Moline, Jennet Conant, Lynn Yaeger and Daphne Merkin. Also to the non-writers I induced to contribute: Tiffany Dubin, Bryan Bantry, Dan Barber of the Blue Hill restaurants, Charlie Palmer of Aureole, and Susan Gutfreund. Photographers whose work appeared included Jerry Schatzberg, Melvin Sokolsky, Slim Aarons, Harry Benson, Nigel Parry, Melanie Dunea, “Hoppy” Hopkins, Angus McBean, Norman Parkinson, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Betty Kuhner, Sam Haskins, and in the upcoming issue, Gleb Derujinsky. I also published illustrations by Marisa Acocella and Kenneth Paul Block. And before the last year, when the magazine again began featuring vendors, its centerpiece Conversation feature eavesdropped on a veritable pantheon of New Yorkers: Jeff Koons and Jane Alexander, Lisa Phillips and John Waters, Dominick Dunne and Taki Theodorocopulous, Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud, Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer, Tom Brokaw and Ellen Futter, Robert A.M. Stern, Bobby Short and Peter Duchin, Gloria Vanderbilt and her son Anderson Cooper, Peter Beard and Mary Ellen Mark, Keith McNally and Nora Ephron, Ken Sunshine and Bonnie Fuller, parks commissioner Adrian Benepe and Danny Meyer, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder, Gay Talese and Peter Kaplan, Albert Hadley and Bunny Williams, and Charles Best of DonorsChoose and Vartan Gregorian. Thanks to all. It was fun while it lasted.
Announcing the Rogues’ Gallery paperback launch event
The updated paperback edition of Rogues’ Gallery will be launched May 5th at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. Read about the event here.
Signs of the Apocalypse Pt. II
The magazine rack next to the checkout line at Whole Foods in Columbus Circle has been replaced by a mountain of ale. Is this a message in a bottle to magazine writers and editors?
Cry, the Beloved Profession
“Don’t you realize we’re just typists for plutocrats now?” –a 24-year-old reporter at one of the world’s largest news organizations, yesterday.
Ghost Story
Tom Hoving makes a posthumous appearance on Page Six today with his new BFF and successor as Metropolitan Museum director Guy-Philippe Lannes de Montebello, who was known as Mr. Five Names when he ran an art museum in Texas. A nugget concerning Montebello’s appearance (above) at Hoving’s memorial early this month, it’s the first leak from the new afterword to the paperback edition of Rogues’ Gallery (out May 11).
Rogues’ Gallery Theme Song
I think books should have theme songs. This one’s for Rogues’ Gallery. Thanks to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Am I Blue?
A note last night from Avatar co-star Stephen Lang’s PR woman informed me that my much-publicized upcoming appearance on May 20th (at 6:30 PM) at the Katonah Museum and Katonah Village Library’s CrossTalk series, featuring two experts talking on unrelated topics, will not be with Lang, but with Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson. (All CrossTalk events begin with a wine reception at 6:30, followed by the program. Proceeds support children’s programs at the Museum and the Library, which will be the site of the talk. Prepaid reservations required; please call the KMA for reservations–$20 in advance; $25 at the door.) I stand corrected. Can you put the gun down now, Mr. Lang?
Want the inside skinny on Manhattan society? Come to Brooklyn, Briarcliff Manor, Rockville Centre, Katonah or the New York Bar Association.
The updated paperback edition of Rogues’ Gallery will be published on May 11th. But there will be a sneak preview on May 5th, when PowerHouse Arena hosts the paperback launch party from 7 to 9 PM. Michael M. Thomas, the author, acerbic journalist and former curator of the Metropolitan Museum, will match wits with Michael Gross in a discussion of the book and the controversy it created. Join the fun at 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY
Also, on Sunday May 2, 2010, Michael Gross will speak at the Arts Abloom festival, a benefit for the Briarcliff Library and Community Center in Briarcliff Manor, NY. From 4 to 6 PM at the Briarcliff Library and Community Center ($10 suggested donation), on May 11, 2010, he’ll give the Rockville Centre Public Library’s annual endowed lecture at 7:30 PM at the South Side Middle School on Hillside Avenue in Rockville Centre, NY. On Thursday May 13, 2010, he will speak at Books at the Bar, sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 6PM-8PM at 42 West 44th Street. And on Thursday May 20, 2010 at 6:30 PM, he’ll appear alongside Stephen Lang, co-star of Avatar, at the Katonah Village Library, as part of the Katonah Museum of Art’s CrossTalk series. Check here for further appearances.
“The heaven that leads men to hell”
In a provocative post on his literary web site, The Valve, William Benzon compares Shakespeare’s King Lear to the tragedy of Brooke Astor and her son, Anthony Marshall, both former trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who experienced what can be gently termed image issues in old age. “In the end Anthony Marshall was sacrificed in a magical effort to maintain the Astor myth at face value,” Benzon concludes. “It’s as though Whomever was trying to deny Brooke Astor’s mortality, and her dementia, by insisting [that] Marshall did her in – there were, for example, unsubstantiated rumors [of] urine-stained sheets — or, at any rate, he despoiled her surrogate, the estate. If The Son can be painted Evil Black, then She and We (oh yes, We) can paint ourselves the purest Immortal White. We can come to the rescue of one whom we had anointed to Rescue Us. What a grand fantasy! And what a dismal implosion it caused.” Then, drawing a parallel between Heaven and the Immortal White We of what passes for New York Society, Benzon cites the folly described in the concluding couplet of Shakespeare’s 129th sonnet:
This the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Read the rest of “Mrs. Astor and King Lear” here.
Will wonders never cease?
Eleven months into the life of a book, surprises are usually hard to find. But Rogues’ Gallery earned two this week. One of New York’s finest book stores, Rizzoli on 57th Street, has put it in the front window (above, lower left) for the first time, and the Albright Memorial Library serving Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, PA, the hometown of the late Metropolitan Museum trustee Charles Wrightsman’s first wife, has recommended it on its blog, calling it “the compelling true story of the coupling of art with commerce (and mystery).”
Tom Terrific (and his era) Remembered
No snark today. I’m just back from Tom Hoving’s memorial at the Temple of Dendur and it was a touching and happy event from the moment his daughter Trea Hoving (who organized the whole thing with her mother Nancy Hoving) stepped to a podium in front of one of those marvelous sprays of flowers (donated to Hoving’s Met in perpetuity by Lila Acheson Wallace) and said “Morning! I had the coolest dad!” In fact, I was touched even before I went inside by the honor guard the Parks Department placed out front, and another as guests walked through the doors to the Sackler wing and the Temple (above).
As a video played, set to the Overture from The Who’s Tommy (nice touch), the laughs started and never stopped, inspiring even by the normally dour Philippe de Montebello, who called his predecessor as the museum’s director “a protean figure…brilliant…mesmerizing…tempermental…Quixotic….combative…quicker than any of us…a real scholar…rather fond of hyperbole…” It was that last that got the laugh, since all present know Montebello called Hoving less kind things than that after, as he put it, “we went our separate ways,” but as I said, let’s leave that for another day. “The mark of Tom Hoving is everywhere at the Metropolitan,” his successor continued, adding that “some day this will be called The Hoving Era.” It already is, but again, never mind.
Also at the podium were Judy Collins, who sang “Both Sides Now” and led a singalong to “Amazing Grace,” former vice director Harry Parker, who noted that Hoving was “usually pleased to tweak the nose of authority,” former Parks Commissioner and Hoving aide Henry Stern, who pointed out that it was only thanks to Hoving that the magnificent site of the memorial even graces New York’s Central Park, and Hoving’s former ABC-TV producer Donovan Moore, who concluded, “You don’t need coin to be rich in life, you just need to team up with someone like Tom Hoving.”
In the full-house were many members of the Hoving family and his museum and New York City parks department staffs as well as Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., the Met’s president, Emily Rafferty, new director Thomas Campbell, Jules Feiffer, former Whitney director Tom Armstrong, New Museum director Lisa Phillips, and several Met trustees. One of them was asked if he’d read any recent books on the Metropolitan by another guest. “We’re not allowed to,” the trustee replied. He would have been during the late, great Hoving era, which today, at least, seemed not very long ago at all.
UPDATE: A Gripebox reader with deep ties to the museum says, with some shock, that few if any current museum trustees deigned to attend the Hoving memorial, but adds that former GE chairman Jack Welch was also there.
Lazard, Oh Frere (i.e. Oh, Brother)!
Justin Force Lazard has been arrested and as of last Saturday was being held at Riker’s Island pending extradition to California. The son of ABC foreign correspondent Sidney Lazard and allegedly a descendant of the founder of the Lazard Frères investment bank, the former actor and Calvin Klein model failed to show up for his trial after he was arrested and had his mug shot (above) taken on July 4, 2006 for allegedly “exposing himself in front of numerous witnesses who were attending a public fireworks display at Library Park,” in Lakeport, California, the Lake County News reported last week. Lazard, the paper continued, “reportedly struggled with officers, who used Tasers to subdue him. Last May he was scheduled to go to trial on misdemeanor charges of annoying or molesting a child under 18, engaging in lewd conduct in public and indecent exposure. However, he failed to appear and the Lake County Superior Court issued a bench warrant for Lazard’s arrest, according to court records.” Named Lakeport’s “most wanted” criminal, he was apprehended at U.S. Customs as he returned to New York from the Caribbean. Making the tawdry case much stranger, the blog Law Shucks revealed last year “that the park now has a plaque that reads as follows: ‘This playground is dedicated to the children of Lakeport, CA, Creating Childhood Memories. Donate[d] by Justin Lazard 2008.’” The plaque was apparently later removed.
Lazard has been in the news before, most recently in 2008 when Page Six said he was suing the Dominican Republic hotel where he married “Project Runway” contestant Shannon Fluet, claiming she was manhandled by the manager, then beaten by a security guard. He also made a cameo in my 1998 story “From Russia With Sex,” as an ex-boyfriend of the Latvian model and tabloid scandal star, Ines Misan. “After a long romance and a brief engagement [to Lazard],” I wrote, “Misan returned to New York in 1995. But she kept her Lazard connection, moving in with Justin’s parents and holding on to his checks and one of his credit cards, which she used to pay her rent and buy a VCR.”
“Be fair, it was a misdemeanor,” says a former friend. “If it were serious they could have charged him with a felony. The serious thing is his arrogance and stupidity for not showing up.” What about the original allegations of, er, creating some yucky childhood memories? “He suffers from the OJ thing, clinical narcissism coupled with sociopathy,” the friend opines.
Your reward for reading this far? Lazard in a Calvin Klein commericial:
“We’re not in Google anymore, Toto.”
Google has changed its name. Happy April Fools Day.
