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Deborah Feller's avatar

Read it on my phone while eating dinner instead of my Archeaology mag, where I had just read how vicious the Assyrians were.

Your writing takes no prisoners, in a wry sort of way.

Very entertaining, especially since I agree with you.

I should take notes while reading so I can share all my reactions.

Your characterization of the Bklyn Mus is spot on.

What do you think Philippe would say about the new arrangement?

About those Seats: displayed like furniture, the paintings on a low platform & the labels in small type in front of them.

I have been alone in the Egyptian rooms, where light shining in through those big windows casts impossible glare on the glass display cases against the opposite wall.

As always, I love your digressions, usually anecdotes about people.

The riff on poets & the beautiful fragment was impressive for how familiar you are with the poetry I know & love because my mother had the books.

I'll put part 2 of Baltimore on my phone so I can get all caught up.

🦄💖

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Derek Neal's avatar

Instead of reading that Harper's cover story people should read this. I especially like the section on Deng Ming-Dao and went to check out his blog, which is a breath of fresh air in the way he writes about art. Kind of interested to read one of his books now or the one by his mother.

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Thomas Brown's avatar

thank you, I appreciate it, and yes, what a stroke of luck that I chose his woodcut and found his website, I also have it in the back of my mind to read his mother's book now

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David Gemeinhardt's avatar

I'm sufficiently intrigued by your review to put the Brooklyn Museum on my list of places to visit should I ever get to NYC again. As for period rooms, the closest museum to me that has any is the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I visit them whenever I'm in town on the theory that I should enjoy them while I can. Their days are surely numbered.

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Thomas Brown's avatar

I think the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in DC has the most period rooms of all, I tried to go last summer but they were closed for renovation, will try again next year

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David Gemeinhardt's avatar

Good to know. I might actually be going to DC in the next year or two!

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Andras Kisery's avatar

Oh god, those thematic rooms sound and look like a true nightmare. Taking the reduction of art to “content” to a new level. The content-oriented, primarily contextual and biographical labels have been doing this for a while, but now even chronology, and with it, any encouragement to think historically is gone.

But those Assyrian reliefs: to die for.

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Thomas Brown's avatar

I'd be more upset about it if the Met weren't a subway ride away, but even if granting that a thematic approach is ok for Brooklyn, the iPads were too much, I had to protest

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Deborah Feller's avatar

Oops! That was Yale.

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