What does a book report on the life of a nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician named Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) have to do with art and art education, the subjects I’m now immersed in? Quite a lot, as it happens. Never heard of Semmelweis? Neither had I until I read a historical fiction about him entitled The Cry […]
belief perseverance, Ignaz Semmelweis, institutional theory of art, Semmelweis Reflex, The Cry and the CovenantThe following letter was mailed to Daniel Brodsky, Chairman of the Met Museum’s board of trustees, on September 3rd. (I insert relevant links here.) In lieu of a response from him, I received a platitudinous letter from Jessica Hirschey, the museum’s Deputy Chief Membership Officer, dated September 17. That letter is appended below, along with […]
contemporary art, Max Hollein, Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe opening next week of the major exhibition Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art1 prompts me to post the following brief item about a little-known side of this master. The awe-inspiring grandeur of Michelangelo’s work earned him the reverent epithet of “Il Divino” among his contemporaries. It is therefore remarkable to […]
The best thing about the exhibition Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through September 20) is the light it sheds on the creation of Bingham’s wondrous Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845), one of the treasures of the Met’s holdings in American art. Since […]
The Piero referred to in this blog’s title is the painter Piero della Francesca (c. 1412-1492), one of the masters of the early Italian Renaissance whose work I especially esteem. (For information on the banner image, see the caption below.) I dedicate the blog for his sake to commemorate the values he and his work […]
