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  1. Architecture

Remembering Orchestra Hall

Going to a concert, like going to church or a nice restaurant or traveling on a plane or an overnight train, once meant dressing up and looking your best. We had been taught that dressing up showed respect—and classical music evoked special respect. This had little to do with how much one . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

Charles Dickens, according to his son Henry, “never made a point of his religious convictions,” which were “very strong and deep.” They were also liberal and rather loose. Although he sometimes attended Anglican services and was well-versed in Scripture, Dickens was not interested in . . . . Continue Reading »

D.C. Gets its Gehry

Washington, D.C.’s cultural apparatchiks have long hankered for a Frank Gehry showpiece. On the eve of the new millennium, the director of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery implored Gehry, then basking in accolades for his titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to enter a competition to . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Catesby Leigh notes in his essay “Monumental Contrast” (October) that the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in New York City is a sign that the “monumental aesthetic” in public art is an “endangered species.” Those of us in the art world know only too well that in civic art the . . . . Continue Reading »

Restoration and Desecration

In recent years, reports have appeared in the media of art restorations so appalling they produce howls of laughter. That these stories have focused on the mutilation of works of religious art is no accident: Ineptitude combines with sacrilege. The most recent atrocity was inflicted on a copy of a . . . . Continue Reading »

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