Storytelling at the museums

the compassionate story

Brooklyn Museum

Not to question the veracity of the Brooklyn Museum, but William Penn came 56 years after the first European settlers. The Dutch were the first, and through their Dutch West India Company conducted successful trading of goods with the Lenape. When the Dutch made deals to purchase land –– there is nothing “falsely” claimed or “stolen” land about it –– the Dutch understood that the Lenape could remain living on the land, and that the Dutch would protect the tribe from their enemies — who were other tribes that they happened to be in conflict with. The Europeans were generally non-violent and peaceful. It was General-Director Willem Kieft, 15 years into the settlement, who became violent and waged a highly unpopular 3-year war on the Native Americans in 1642. He was ousted through the Dutch settlers’ Remonstrance to the Dutch government. The Dutch people were tolerant of different groups of people living together. Hence, in 1682 William Penn and his group of Quaker refugees sought haven from religious prosecution.

But, whatever.

French Impressionist/early modern paintings in Brooklyn Museum’s collection (all of them):

Observation: Not one of the Impressionist paintings in the Brooklyn Museum was even close to being as good as the Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir that were deaccessioned by The Toledo Museum of Art on May 17, 2022. And to think that museum director Adam Levine told museum supporters that Edward Drummond Libbey would want the Toledo’s Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir large oil paintings to be deaccessioned, as if they were “mediocre.”

Model of the Jan Martense Schenck house that was built in Mill Basin, circa 1675-6. The actual house is displayed on the 5th floor of the museum. Duke Riley’s trash art exhibition is incorporated into it.

Seeing myself in the Art. (Which isn’t too difficult, considering that my Dutch immigrant ancestors, Elbert Elbertsen Stoothoff and Aechtji Cornelis Cool, lived within a mile of this house, and had a house just like it back in the seventeenth century. And I don’t think they’d like seeing modern-day garbage art hanging in their old house and being blamed for it. Their son-in-law, Colonel Thomas Willett Jr. was the sheriff of Yorkshire (including Long Island, Westchester and Staten Island) in 1676.

Neue Galerie

Jewish Museum

Kandinsky and Vicuña at the Guggenheim

Impressionist paintings at the Guggenheim:

Observation: none of these paintings are as good as the three paintings by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir that were recently deaccessioned by The Toledo Museum of Art.

Cézanne and Matisse sold to the same buyer. Who was it? Was it prearranged?

Art on the street

One reply on “Storytelling at the museums”