Govan is trying to re-write the history of his bizarre decision to spend $800M+ to shrink and lessen Los Angeles County's art museum. How do I know? Because back in 2015, Govan told me that he'd determined the extent of LACMA's needs himself, based on a 2001 study. www.latimes.com/opinion/op-e...

I had a little more to say. www.instagram.com/p/DUbAF6nkcS...

For several reasons, I'm thinking of Rupert García's great 1975 The Bicentennial Art Poster today. (It's in the collection of museums such as the National Gallery of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Today would be a very, very good time for it to be on view, and prominently.)

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Blas Isasi at the Saint Louis Art Museum; "Beginnings" at the @gettymuseum.bsky.social! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

Once again, there is a republicanism-and-democracy-endangering media/publishing crisis (that too many people within art discuss as an art criticism crisis).

Once again, there is a republicanism-and-democracy-endangering media/publishing crisis (that too many people within art discuss as an art criticism crisis).

Art critic Susan Lee Mackey reveals that she was attacked by government thugs on January 9. www.instagram.com/p/DUTSeZNEXl...

Art critic Susan Lee Mackey reveals that she was attacked by government thugs on January 9. www.instagram.com/p/DUTSeZNEXl...

Legendary artist Lewis Baltz on these sorts of buildings and the then-new industrial parks in which they are sited: “You don’t know whether they are manufacturing pantyhose or megadeath.”

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! William E. Wallace on his "Michelangelo & Titian," out next week from @princetonupress.bsky.social! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

Legendary artist Lewis Baltz on these sorts of buildings and the then-new industrial parks in which they are sited: “You don’t know whether they are manufacturing pantyhose or megadeath.”

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! William E. Wallace on his "Michelangelo & Titian," out next week from @princetonupress.bsky.social! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

The success of Henry Ossawa's Tanner’s Flights into Egypt is in their fusion of a Biblical legend to the US civic narrative. Today, a fascist regime has murdered and disappeared our neighbors in an attempt to demolish the civic narrative Tanner helped build. www.instagram.com/p/DUGZmf9EWh...

The success of Henry Ossawa's Tanner’s Flights into Egypt is in their fusion of a Biblical legend to the US civic narrative. Today, a fascist regime has murdered and disappeared our neighbors in an attempt to demolish the civic narrative Tanner helped build. www.instagram.com/p/DUGZmf9EWh...

1/ This museum and its leadership are a laughingstock. 2/ This "old movie prop" is not art, but the embarrassing director and curatorial leadership of the PMA, which did not object, don't seem to know that. Big, big problem.

Hope to see some of you Friday at this symposium on authoritarianism at JANM in Los Angeles. I'll be speaking with Glenn Kaino, and also a panel of institutional leaders. www.janm.org/democracy/ev...

And it wishes to lessen the Lei Yixin-sculpted Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, and many sculptors' + landscape architect Lawrence Halprin's FDR memorial by overshadowing their work with its Garden of American Heroes (GAH).

When you let the market decide what is important in art, when you let the market dictate your coverage, this is the inevitable result.

When you let the market decide what is important in art, when you let the market dictate your coverage, this is the inevitable result.

Art historian Henri Focillon's 1934 The Life of Forms was important to the first international human rights law (and to me as I research the intersections between US art and broader US histories). Was it also important to Matisse's WWII artmaking-as-resistance? www.instagram.com/p/DTsfOx4kXV...

The programming at the Cloisters investigates the past in ways that help us understand the present more than the Met's American Wing does. (Also, the American Wing is not unusual within the historical American field, sigh.)

Art historian Henri Focillon's 1934 The Life of Forms was important to the first international human rights law (and to me as I research the intersections between US art and broader US histories). Was it also important to Matisse's WWII artmaking-as-resistance? www.instagram.com/p/DTsfOx4kXV...

The programming at the Cloisters investigates the past in ways that help us understand the present more than the Met's American Wing does. (Also, the American Wing is not unusual within the historical American field, sigh.)

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Robert Therrien @thebroadmuseum.bsky.social, Gabriella Nugent on her Burlington Contemporary essay on biography as a flawed institutional, curatorial practice. manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Robert Therrien @thebroadmuseum.bsky.social, Gabriella Nugent on her Burlington Contemporary essay on biography as a flawed institutional, curatorial practice. manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

The worst, most embarrassing art object on long-term view at a US art museum is Dale Chihuly's Spiny Turd. For unknown reasons, it's at MFA Boston. (Am I forgetting an artwork? Or is this an easy call?)

Among the very strangest things is reading a book that obviously relied upon one of your books for many of its points and arguments, but pretends that your book never existed. I guess the authors hoped no one would notice, but theft tends to get spotted...

With Trump indicating that he wants his fascist, Rand-ian Garden of American Heroes (GAH) to be sited near (and to overshadow) memorials to FDR and MLK, some thoughts on GAH and on why the art world should lead the fight against it. www.instagram.com/p/DTffj1XEaq...

With Trump indicating that he wants his fascist, Rand-ian Garden of American Heroes (GAH) to be sited near (and to overshadow) memorials to FDR and MLK, some thoughts on GAH and on why the art world should lead the fight against it. www.instagram.com/p/DTffj1XEaq...

The Trump administration is eyeing West Potomac Park, site of the FDR and MLK memorials, for its so-called Garden of American Heroes (GAH) sculpture or monument park. The art world has chosen to look away and ignore this. That's a mistake. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

John Singleton Copley's extraordinary 1775 portrait of Charlestonians Ralph and Alice Izard now on view at the MFA Boston is about a lot more than the Izards' cultural erudition. It's about justifying enslavement as republicanism advances in colonial North America. www.instagram.com/p/DTaTZkQkYHW/

🚨New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Firelei Báez at @mcachicago.bsky.social, and "Black Photojournalism" at the Carnegie Museum of Art! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

John Singleton Copley's extraordinary 1775 portrait of Charlestonians Ralph and Alice Izard now on view at the MFA Boston is about a lot more than the Izards' cultural erudition. It's about justifying enslavement as republicanism advances in colonial North America. www.instagram.com/p/DTaTZkQkYHW/

🚨New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Firelei Báez at @mcachicago.bsky.social, and "Black Photojournalism" at the Carnegie Museum of Art! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

This headline is in error, Artnews. LACMA is not expanding; it is contracting. (More specifically, LACMA is spending over $800M to have less gallery space than it had before it spent $800M. 🤦🏻‍♂️)

This headline is in error, Artnews. LACMA is not expanding; it is contracting. (More specifically, LACMA is spending over $800M to have less gallery space than it had before it spent $800M. 🤦🏻‍♂️)

Davide Gasparotto has posted that David Alan Brown passed away last week. In 2009 the NGA's Brown agreed to talk with me about a subject museums prefer to handle in private: re-attribution. The resulting posts were among the most popular in Modern Art Notes' run. medium.com/%40tylergree...

Davide Gasparotto has posted that David Alan Brown passed away last week. In 2009 the NGA's Brown agreed to talk with me about a subject museums prefer to handle in private: re-attribution. The resulting posts were among the most popular in Modern Art Notes' run. medium.com/%40tylergree...

The co-designer of this station was the son of artist John La Farge.

I have seen it only digitally, but this 1891 George Inness that the Toledo Museum of Art is selling at Christie's seems too good to deaccession.

"The Arts & Sciences are the Destruction of Tyrannies or Bad Governments." - William Blake.

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Beverly Adams on Wifredo Lam at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Jamillah James on Yoko Ono at MCA Chicago! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

How many times in pre-Civil War US culture does a white man arm a Black man? I think the answer is *one*: this Carl Wimar drawing for what became one of the most influential US paintings of the century. The (partial) story behind it is pretty amazing.

With Trump threatening to build a 'triumphant' arch near Washington's Lincoln Monument, thoughts on Cady Noland's wry take on the form (Metal Fence, 1991). www.instagram.com/p/COc5GhWFVwC/

With Trump threatening to build a 'triumphant' arch near Washington's Lincoln Monument, thoughts on Cady Noland's wry take on the form (Metal Fence, 1991). www.instagram.com/p/COc5GhWFVwC/

How many times in pre-Civil War US culture does a white man arm a Black man? I think the answer is *one*: this Carl Wimar drawing for what became one of the most influential US paintings of the century. The (partial) story behind it is pretty amazing.

Carl Wimar's 1854 drawing for his 1856 Attack on an Emigrant Train, recently published by the St. Louis Art Museum, may be the most stunning artwork of the US 19th century. (And that's only the beginning of a remarkable, never-before-told, even suppressed, story.) www.instagram.com/p/DSSVND_kRe...

Carl Wimar's 1854 drawing for his 1856 Attack on an Emigrant Train, recently published by the St. Louis Art Museum, may be the most stunning artwork of the US 19th century. (And that's only the beginning of a remarkable, never-before-told, even suppressed, story.) www.instagram.com/p/DSSVND_kRe...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Dyani White Hawk returns to the program on the occasion of a career-length survey at the Walker Art Center! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d... 🔊: open.spotify.com/episode/0GFN...