The Art Newspaper profiles the curatorial focus at The Met’s new Breuer building, and its willingness to push deeper into the perspectives and dialogues of contemporary art.  “Whether we like it or not, professional artists are heirs to, and inextricably tied to, traditions,” says painter Kerry James Marshall, who will select a body of works from the museum collection to show alongside his own retrospective.  As he notes, the space allows the Met to “highlight the intellectual links between historical forms and modes of production.” (more…)

Cornelia Parker has been invited to design the next Met rooftop commission for the summer of 2016, the New York Times reports.   “In her large-scale installations, Cornelia opens our eyes to the special qualities – and sometimes darker significance – of familiar places and things we tend to overlook,” says Met chair of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sheena Wagstaff. (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has recorded at least 6.3 million visitors in the past year, the most in the 40 it has been recording attendance statistics.  The figures are attributed to the museum’s new seven day operating hours and a number of popular exhibitions. (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has named Daniel Weiss, the current head of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, as its new president and COO.  “The Met is a place that strives in everything it does to set a world standard, including its administration,” Weiss said of the opportunity. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on Museum Hack, an effort by founder Mark Rosen to breathe new life into the guided museum tour.  For $39, guests are treated to a two-hour tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, focusing on more unconventional works and infrequently discussed histories of some of the museum’s more interesting pieces.  “You typically don’t go to a fancy restaurant, study the menu for three seconds, order everything, gorge yourself and roll out the door,” Mr. Rosen said to his Sunday-morning charges. “Yet almost everybody comes here, tries to see everything in four hours or less, Instagrams the hell out of the place and leaves, remembering nothing.”  (more…)

A pair of statues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Southeast Asian collection will be sent back to Cambodia, officials announced this week.  The “Kneeling Attendants” were smuggled out of the country during the violent Cambodian civil war of the 1970’s, and were donated to the museum in the late 1980’s.  “This is a case in which additional information regarding the Kneeling Attendants has led the museum to consider facts that were not known at the time of the acquisition and to take the action we are announcing today,” said Met director Thomas P. Campbell. (more…)

Attentive curators for the Metropolitan Museum of Art made quite a find at this past January’s Old Masters Week auctions, buying an authentic sketch by Jacques-Louis David for $840.  The drawing, closely resembling David’s The Death of Socrates, was attributed to an anonymous artist, but the hawk-eyed curators took notice immediately.  “The drawing style is typical of David. It was obvious we had to have it.”  Said Met drawings curator George Goldner. (more…)

The National Museum of China has opened a new exhibition, featuring a large collection of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Earth, Sea and Sky: Nature in Western Art is the first large-scale collaboration between the two major arts institutions, and pulls from the American museum’s vast collection.  “Never before has an exhibition of this scope and theme, drawn entirely from the Met’s holdings, traveled to China.” Says Met director Thomas Campbell. (more…)

Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal “Canyon” went on display yesterday at MoMA; it has been at the Met on a temporary basis since 2005.  The owners have donated the work as part of a $41 million settlement with the IRS. Glenn Lowry, the director of the Modern, stated: “If you were going to sit down and close your eyes and dream of an installation, you would envision ‘Rebus,’ ‘Bed’ and ‘Canyon’ in conversation with each other.” (more…)

The Met has added a new curator in preparation to temporarily occupy the Whitney’s Breuer building in 2015. Nicolas Cullinan has been appointed as Curator in the modern and contemporary department by Chief Curator Sheena Wagstaff. He is currently the Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tate Modern. (more…)

Liliana Porter (right) and Ana Tiscornia, photo by ArtObserved

The following an interview with Liliana Porter, November 14th, 2012, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand for Art Observed:

As Liliana Porter received me in her West Village pied-a-terre for our interview, she asks, “hablas español?” The apartment is light, airy and sparsely decorated with objects such as a Claes Oldenburg pretzel on a shelf and a Richard Artschwager exclamation mark on a wall. As we walk to the window, Porter points out highlights of the view; the Chrysler building to the left and perhaps of more interest the rooftops and a garden beneath, belonging to Donna Karan “where she throws crazy parties”. Looking down it feels like we are on the balcony of a theater.

Liliana Porter, Man with Axe, 2011 courtesy Hosfelt Gallery New York and Pinta

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Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, has been appointed curator of Armory Focus: USA. In Celebration of the Centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, The Fourth Edition of Armory Focus will exhibit the achievements of contemporary art in America.  Several museum cultural partners will host exhibitions relating to the 1913 Armory and the development of modernism. During the fair, the Museum of Modern Art will present Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925; The Metropolitan Museum of Art will exhibit African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde; The New-York Historical Society will host The Armory Show at 100, featuring such canonical works as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, first viewed on American soil at The Armory Show of 1913. (more…)

Metropolitan Museum director Thomas P. Campbell is reportedly opening a discussion that may allow the public to access the Met on Mondays. The institution decided to close on Mondays in 1971, supposedly to lower costs, and remains closed on the first day of the week, except for holiday Mondays and when hosting previews for members. The increase in tourism to New York City and to the Met itself may be possible reasons for Campbell’s proposal; Met statistics reveal that a “record-breaking” 6.3 million people visited The Met over the past fiscal year, from June 2011 through June 2012.

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