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Making the Mummies Cringe, Pt. II
Today’s New York Times reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art bookstore may have banned a book, The Clarks of Cooperstown by Nicholas Fox Weber, about the notable and notably interesting art-collecting family. The article hints that the book ban resulted from its discussion of homosexuality in the Clark clan. Museum spokesman Harold Holzer, who (curiously enough) moonlights as an author himself, begs to differ, claiming it’s all about the Benjamins, baby, i.e. the museum’s desire to goose sales of the catalog for its current–and terrific, by the way–Clark collection exhibit. But granted that this news comes on the heels of the revelation that Danny Danziger’s forthcoming valentine to the Museum was delayed and its contents gutted at the museum’s bidding (as gripebox has noted here), it does seem that museum officials might benefit from a refresher course on the Bill of Rights.
May 18th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
[…] 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 , here and here. […]