Massive Links! Critic Nicolai Ourousoff Leaves The Times | Met Admission Prices Go Up | Child Genius Stories Never Die

Roman Ondak at The Arsanale in Venice

• New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff will be leaving at the end of the month to write a book about “the architectural and cultural history of the last 100 years”. Archpaper has the memo, but our favorite coverage so far comes from CultureGrrl’s Lee Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum claims CultureGrrl readers will remember the critic by the missteps she’s highlighted on her own blog, most notably the recommendation that New York’s Museum of Arts & Design be torn down.
• Venice! Five million links everywhere for that shit. I’ll share my own thoughts on the show shortly, but the best review I’ve read so far comes from Adrian Searle at The Guardian. He says in “the climate-controlled half-light”, the 16th-century Tintorettos in the contemporary art show of La Biennale “just look big, excessive and out of place.” Someone had to say it. There’s more good stuff where that came from.
• Lots of blather over The Met raising their voluntary admission ticket prices to 25 bucks. According to the New York Times, the hike is intended to remedy their annual operating budget, which had averaged a 3 million dollar loss in recent years. My two cents: I’ve never thought the public should be charged to see their own belongings, but as long as that’s happening, I don’t think museum ticket prices should fall outside the price of a midrange restaurant. In other words, if visiting the museum is a treat it should still be one many people can afford. This is definitely pushing the limit of “midrange”.
• In the words of AFC’s Will Brand, “The best thing about the Met raising it’s prices is Tyler Green’s post“. It’s very touching.
• 20×200.com will release a pair of Paul Fusco photographs tomorrow to benefit Magnum Foundation. Edition prices begin at $100 and go live on the site tomorrow at 2 pm EST. Can. Not. Wait.
• Donald Kuspit describes the work in “Marc Chagall and His Circle”, up at The Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, as “half-baked”, plus a lot of “other” “not-very-positive things about” Chagall’s contemporaries “mysteriously placed” in “quotes”. Whoever he’s quoting has some serious qualms about quasi-Modernism. Ultimately, though, Kuspit spins it into a positive. Did Chagall give us the first Jewish Modernist art?
• The child genius story NEVER DIES. Four year old Aelita Andre will open her first solo show at Agora Gallery and the press is eating it up. Call me when MoMA buys one of her paintings. Then we’ll have something to talk about.

Tagged as: Adrian Searle, CultureGrrl, Donald Kuspit, Lee Rosenbaum, Marc Chagall, Nicolai Ouroussoff, the metropolitan museum of art, Tintoretto