October 29, 2022
It was museum week.
Monday evening a friend and I attended The Eveillard Gift, a collection of European works on paper the Eveillards have given to the Frick Collection. At Frick Madison there was a gentle crowd in the fourth floor chamber, celebrating the acquisition. There was also confusion. Many of us thought the Gift was also represented on the second and third floors. There was scurring in and out of the enormous elevators. Who could complain? We feasted on old favorites: Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid, Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert.
Among the Eveillards’ works I was especially fond of a little Goya. It’s a single figure, a man dancing and playing the tambourine.
On Wednesday, another friend and I agreed to meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We planned on seeing the Tudor exhibit. Maybe duck into the Cubism exhibit.
The only problem: the Met is closed on Wednesdays. So we scooted up ten blocks to the Guggenheim. Of course there was a long line. Everyone else had thought the Met was open. The line moved smoothly and we had a rather expensive, mediocre lunch in the pleasant cafeteria that overlooks Fifth Avenue and Central Park. We discussed plans for a Judson group and then walked up a few flights looking at the Alex Katz exhibit. I’ve always thought Katz’s work was boring. This exhibit didn’t change my mind. In fact, I admire the building more than most of the art presented at the Guggenheim.