(Frayling will soon stage an exhibition on the spags in the scholarly Gene Autry museum in Los Angeles, taking pasta right into the heartland of the red-meat western: he's really chuffed about that).
"When I first met her, she wore Comme des Garçons and Issey, and looked like the editor of a fashion magazine rather than the scholarly academic and museum professional that she was.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's popular "The Steins Collect" exhibition - more than 200 works that demonstrate the influence of Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law Sarah as 20th century art patrons - will soon get a scholarly footnote, the museum said Tuesday.
These favored garments--often carefully preserved as a family heirloom, sometimes passed down from generation to generation along with mementoes of the bride and her wedding day--have also been the subject of glossy, image-filled books, scholarly studies and museum exhibitions, extending their rather noble bearing.
In museum shows, scholarly books and MTV dance marathons, not to mention tourism promotions, individual cities are being recast as the neighborhoods of one vast cosmopolitan condition.
In a joint statement, the Getty's director, Michael Brand, said the museum's scholarly research had shown that the artifacts' "proper home is in Italy".
The opening of the West is a vast topic, and this show of one man's collection -- as opposed to the scholarly overview of a museum survey -- is bound to leave many gaps.
What better place to undertake the effort than LACMA, which has perhaps the most distinguished record of any American museum in scholarly exhibitions of Modern art that unfolded in Germany?
But once again, the exhibition slips below the standard expected of serious museums presenting scholarly art historical shows.
