COURTESY NYC ARTS
Met Life
The next issue of Vanity Fair has a long take on Thomas Campbell’s very abrupt announcement that he will be departing from the Met, and it’s quite juicy. A chorus of unnamed board members and sources chime in to dish on what went wrong, revealing clashes between Campbell and Leonard Lauder, questionable hires, and financial blundering. Some even alleged that Campbell engaged in “friskiness with certain women on the staff” and that a lawsuit regarding this friskiness was recently settled. [Vanity Fair]
Meanwhile, some executives at the Met are still pulling multimillion-dollar salaries with six-figure bonuses. [The New York Post]
Artists Up Close
Here’s an interview with Robert Morris timed with his show of new work at Castelli Gallery’s recently inaugurated space on 40th Street in New York City. [The New York Times]
California artist Karen Fiorito has received death threats for installing an anti-Trump work on a billboard in Phoenix, Arizona. [The Hill]
A look at Howard Hodgkins, who died earlier this month, on the occasion of a new show opening this week at the National Portrait Gallery in London. [The Independent]
More Takes on the Whitney Biennial
A few more reviews of the Whitney Biennial trickled out this weekend, the most prominent from The New Yorker‘s Peter Schjeldahl, who likes a lot of the work but worries that it’s more reflective of the world before the 2016 presidential election, and thus “already feels nostalgic.” [The New Yorker]
Another review feels the need to ask—very bluntly in the headline—”Does Donald Trump Make for Good Art?” [The Daily Beast]
Crimes and Defacement
A college student was shot and killed at a Louisville, Kentucky art gallery Saturday, during a rap concert that was being held there. [U.S. News & World Report]
A man was arrested after slashing a painting at the National Gallery in London. [The Guardian]
The city of Boston marked the anniversary of the massive heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by publishing a slideshow of all the works still yet to be found. [The Boston Globe]
Art for Cheap
Victorian art: It’s not the sexiest work on the market, but it is super cheap right now. [Bloomberg]
A former Christie’s staffer writes about the psychological effects at play during the Affordable Art Fair. [Salon]
Conceptual Tech
A look into whether some start-ups could be inadvertently making conceptual art. [The Atlantic]