Getty Villa, Los Angeles

These pictures are from 2006. I thought I'd make a comparison to the new Met Galleries.








The Getty Villa is alot about being in Southern California. It is sunny and warm, the ocean light is magnificent.








There is a lightness of being just in California itself, its newness and lack of western history.

There is something of the contemporary shopping mall in the restoration. And the site also exudes the "faux" of the transporting of Greek and Roman culture to California and then presenting as Authentic.

I was amazed at realizing the bronze sculpture like I'd seen years ago in Naples Italy was unlabeled as reproduction.









Nothing has the weight to support say, the actual Greek sculpture, incidentally they now have to give back to Italy. This sculpture's head looks a bit out of kilter reattached. The body drapery classical like the Parthenon Sculptures in London.











I had a hard time telling if I thought the Greek sculpture was great? It all seems Hellenistic, I guess meaning late? Its all very clean and new looking.There is nothing to compare it to in California, except my minds memory of European Museums. The Naples Museum which I saw some time ago was dark and the sculpture stained and worn.









Malibu is already so much like the Pompeii of Rome and then to transport culture to its furthest western edge is breathtaking.

I later went to the Getty on the hill and stood in the sunset watching a traffic jam of hundreds of thousands of cars extending over southern California, all inching their ways home on a friday evening.

Yes, there was something of the apocalyptic in the scene. The conversation being the return of the Getty sculpture to it's rightful home.

New NY Metropolitan Museum of Art Greek and Roman Galleries

The Galleries in the morning light of a sunny day are wonderful. The sculpture lends it's elegance to this light.




I'm not sure the architecture is worth description, good that it included lots of light, and on a rainy day in winter one will forget it is new.





The sculpture is wonderful but by now feels provincial, and democraticly parceled around the historical galleries. But I guess nothing is really that good to take the lead or warrant a special setting. One realizes how far the examples are from the spoils that London, Paris, and Rome have in their Museums.



I wonder if the best examples of French Canova and the American sculptor, Powers, compare with these lesser Roman copies.

There is almost no real Greek sculpture in America, most are Roman copies. I have wanted to do some research to find out exactly what there is.







Have these three graces been in storage these last years, I havent know it? There are some wonderful heads I haven't seen or are displayed differently to allow them new profiles.






Are these Frescoes embedded in sheet rock? I don't think either installation is very remarkable. There is some interest in how contemporary it looks without any trim, but Im not sure that is good.

Carnegie Museum of Art

It's not as easy to stop in Pittsburgh. You have to drive a half hour off the Turnpike and the roads go up hills and down winding around and I got lost numerous times.









So part of the judging is was it worth it? I was surprised as I'd been here before but I guess under distracting circumstances, a Carnegie International show back in the eighties and then besides a wedding, we rushed through.


Yes, that is another Sol Lewitt.

Right off a surprise. A Joe Zucker from back in 1978.





I thought I knew the Museum but not even a bit.

Like this Monet.







They have twice the interesting things as anything I visited this trip.

At first I was disconcerted as I entered the Renaissance galleries all painted a steel wedgewood like blue.





And then this salon style? I figure a toss up as to be able to present more but look where this Ryder, a premier painting in America hangs!
















But the there are astounding examples, a Stuart Davis which should have changed his place in History. The walls were a greyer blue now which felt good.







A Rothko that I havent seen look this good anywhere.












Alex Katz a just natural here, and then again beside a Keifer!
















Well that was great.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

I got interested in posting these things as there is so much out there one doesn't know of, happening all the time.

Indianapolis has a new building which swallowed its old one. It looks a bit like an old Worlds Fair pavillion to me. Then a bit like a government building of this day.



So the architecture is nothing to remark upon.

But then one is thankful somehow for the plain space that is allowed the art.

But first this rather remarkable entry to the Galleries, like the curators don't quite agree with the architecture either and tried to spiff it up. This little Rodin sculpture is there in the middle of the floor.



As one enters the galleries, I felt I was in someones home that really cared about the art a lot of really great juxtapositions.







I had a great time here in the Western Art Galleries, then

the 2nd floor has remarkable ancient chinese pottery --amazing really I think, so very much like is happening in other stages of man's consciousness in other places at other times.



Then what happens-- I was looking so forward to it--

The 3rd floor contemporarary art just fizzles? Nada, nothing there-- bunch of lame installation and video of no interest at all to me, a Turrell with no light, grey and a video of a plane wreck, or I wasn't going to spend the rest of my afternoon to be more disappointed.



It exhausted me and I half forgot how great the other galleries were.

Pulitzer Foundation, St Louis

The Pulitzer is an Ando Museum, and along with his Ft Worth, Museum of Modern Art, I think the most beautiful of Museums.



This one is built around an Ellsworth Kelley which sets an aesthetic surface and they show different ecumenical, is that the word -- all religions of Art, beside it.

I think this is a bit like the way curators use John McCracken these days at Art Fairs, and especially this year's Documenta, to organize the fray.

Well, it was closed today and I was very disappointed.





But I had pictures from a few years ago. This was an amazing exhibition, and among the best things done since the de Menils had the power to put together such things.

Richard Serras have been in St Louis for along time, I remember driving through St Louis more than 10 years ago and the morning news program was-- what did you think of the Richard Serra? They had one installed somewhere?

St Louis Art Museum and the Pulitzer Foundation

I'm back in the green country. It is 105' here and humid and worse than anywhere I've been this summer.





This is the painting that greets me, though. I really like Caleb Bingham, look how good this other figure is too. Precursor to Benton and then Disney-- real connections. He's got a bit of a that Rousseau like-- naivety.



They have really good Pre Columbian things that belonged to the psychologist, Rollo May, I'm not sure if he owned the Max Beckmann's also but they are really good too.







There are really a lot of German Paintings, this Kiefer, another down stairs and a bunch of Richter and Polke.

Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray died yesterday, she was one of the most influential artists of the downtown scene in what was the last best shot, the Manhattan eighties.

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, New Addition

Steven Holl, Architect



Wow, this is a whole different museum. It seems he was actually there and loved seeing these shapes and their allusion to the art within as much as I did.



I stayed in a well known guest house of his in New Mexico. He used the same diamond plaster walls. He made picture windows to the outside. He made a lot of mistakes but seeing this all is forgiven.



The outside is almost a generic metal building, made of glass sandwiched with something that makes an elegant Agnes Martin line or I thought of Robert Mangold-- which shows up inside repeatedly.



Somehow a curve shows up and makes a distinctive gallery, again respectful to the art, rather than taking it over for itself.








There is even a cathedral like space one feels.


The paintings look great from Rothenberg, Murray, sadly died yesterday, which this makes a great memorial-- then Salle, Guston, and Dunham.

The Winters and Scully, in Denver looking iffy, would have looked good here too on these substantial walls.

Denver Art Museum

Coming out of the Mountains into Denver one comes upon the new housing projects,








then Daniel Libeskind.



Amazing I drove right up and parked. My initial reaction was it was kind of small, in that space. Then thought it looked like a something fallen upside down, of course I'm writing this in Kansas.




I took these remarks from the DAM website:

The Hamilton Building's design recalls the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and geometric rock crystals found in the foothills near Denver. "I was inspired by the light and the geology of the Rockies, but most of all by the wide-open faces of the people of Denver," says Libeskind. The building is covered in 9,000 titanium panels that reflect the Colorado sunshine.

Strange remarks wouldn't you say?



This view of the Michael Graves buildings now look a bit like a fake something in Las Vegas. The Bourgeois sculpture seems the necessary museum pendant, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City has one too.



These are all pretty interesting spaces, for themselves but nothing surprising to me by now, the Zaha Hadid in Cincinatti is almost the same. A little better done.



But I have never understood how it is that architects get away with so much more than artists, there are really alot of designy details--like these little circles with numbers in them? A countdown to it's own deconstruction?

It seemed the construction was a bit casual. Many details still not worked out.



Any way it's not my idea of how a museum should be built. I wondered, could you imagine something like this at the World Trade Center Site?

There's a nice Terry Winters and a Sean Scully, which didn't hit me then. They would look better on more substantial walls. Those paintings are more about a kind of permanence which this museum lacks.



There are alot of children here and things to attract them, little kiosks meant to lure them in ways a painting won't?

I would have taken a picture of a great Clifford Still, they had it in an little show showcasing the new Still Museum that will be in that complex. But that was not allowed, besides it seemed Still would be shuddering, as his picture, as you walk in, is suspended by wires in front of a jutting wall.