[DOC] Cool Cars; High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture by John DeWitt in Arts-Photography

Description

ldquo;Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime.rdquo; With these words as a starting point; Michael Gross; leading chronicler of the American rich; begins the first independent; unauthorized look at the saga of the nationrsquo;s greatest museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this endlessly entertaining follow-up to his bestselling social history 740 Park; Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper classrsquo;s cultural and philanthropic ambitions and maneuvers. And he paints a revealing portrait of a previously hidden face of American wealth and power.The Metropolitan; Gross writes; ldquo;is a huge alchemical experiment; turning the worst of manrsquo;s attributesmdash;extravagance; lust; gluttony; acquisitiveness; envy; avarice; greed; egotism; and pridemdash;into the very best; transmuting deadly sins into priceless treasure.rdquo; The book covers the entire 138-year history of the Met; focusing on the museumrsquo;s most colorful characters. Opening with the lame-duck director Philippe de Montebello; the museumrsquo;s longest-serving leader who finally stepped down in 2008; Roguesrsquo; Gallery then goes back to the very beginning; highlighting; among many others: the first director; Luigi Palma di Cesnola; an Italian-born epic phony; whose legacy is a trove of plundered ancient relics; some of which remain on display today; John Pierpont Morgan; the greatest capitalist and art collector of his day; who turned the museum from the plaything of a handful of rich amateurs into a professional operation dedicated; sort of; to the public good; John D. Rockefeller Jr.; who never served the Met in any official capacity but who; during the Great Depression; proved the only man willing and rich enough to be its benefactor; which made him its behind-the-scenes puppeteer; the controversial Thomas Hoving; whose tenure as director during the sixties and seventies revolutionized museums around the world but left the Met in chaos; and Jane Engelhard and Annette de la Renta; a mother-daughter trustee tag team whose stories will astonish you (think Casablanca rewritten by Edith Wharton).With a supporting cast that includes artists; forgers; and looters; financial geniuses and scoundrels; museum officers (like its chairman Arthur Amory Houghton; head of Corning Glass; who once ripped apart a priceless and ancient Islamic book in order to sell it off piecemeal); trustees (like Jayne Wrightsman; the Hollywood party girl turned society grand dame); curators (like the aging Dietrich von Bothmer; a refugee from Nazi Germany with a Bronze Star for heroism whose greatest acquisitions turned out to be looted); and donors (like Irwin Untermyer; whose collecting obsession drove his wife and children to suicide); and with cameo appearances by everyone from Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland to Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten; Roguesrsquo; Gallery is a rich; satisfying; alternately hilarious and horrifying look at Americarsquo;s upper class; and what is perhaps its greatest creation.