LIVERPOOL'S LITTLE-KNOWN ART WORLD

THE TOFF OF LIVERPOOL

John H. McFadden and His Age

By Richard Carreño

Camino Press (2021)

BOOK'S STARTLING REVELATIONS

GET ACCLAIM FROM LOCAL AUTHOR

By Ron Jones

Amazon.com

This is no hagiography. Where there are skeletons in the cupboard (and there are), Richard Carreño relishes dragging them out into the light of day. I consider myself a reasonably well-read amateur Liverpool historian, but confess that I had never heard of John H. McFadden. And neither had any of my fellow local history buffs, despite the fact that he and brother George headed up the biggest firm of cotton dealers not just in Liverpool during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era when the city was indisputably “King Cotton”, but on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Like John Howard McFadden's life itself, this is a book of two halves covering his early and later years in Philadelphia and his two decades or so in Liverpool when he was at the height of his cotton dealing powers. In spite of his business success and the great wealth that went with it, McFadden largely lived his life under the radar. So, it is thanks to Carreño that he has managed to tease out so much of the detail of his life. Aside from dealing in cotton futures, McFadden had three main passions, and the money to indulge them: medical research (of which Liverpool was a major beneficiary), polar exploration (and in particular Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton), and assembling an outstanding private collection of 18th and 19th century British paintings by the great masters.

 

Whilst McFadden largely amassed his fortune during his days in Liverpool, it was his birthplace of Philadelphia that was the main recipient of his largesse. Having spent the greater part of his life buying British masterpieces, what to do with them with life drawing to a close? The answer was to donate them to his hometown. But the canny McFadden had one stipulation: the “City of Brotherly Love” must first build a fitting gallery in which to display them…and build it within a challenging timespan. Hence the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Carreño has undertaken impressive research into this whole saga, which rightly takes up a goodly part of the book.

In other hands this biography might have resulted in a worthy but rather dull account of an extraordinary man leading a fairly ordinary life, but in Carreño’s hands it comes to life, mainly because it is so well-researched and entertainingly written.

Ron Jones is a journalist based in Liverpool. He is the author of The American Connection: The Story of Liverpool's Links with America from Christopher Columbus to The Beatles. 

Coming Soon! John H. McFadden and His Age—Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia

John H. McFadden and His Age

Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia

By Richard Carreño

To be published by Camino in early 2020
Fully Illustrated
In a city permeated by Benjamin Franklin’s legacy, it is easy to believe that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is another of Philadelphia’s ancient and legendary cultural institutions. But unlike the Library Company (1731, thanks to Franklin’s inspiration), the American Philosophical Society (1743, Franklin again), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1805), the Athenaeum of Philadelphia (1814), and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (1887), the Philadelphia Museum of Art—as we perceive it today—is a relative youngblood: its colossal building atop Fairmount Hill opened in 1928. Yet the museum’s roots in fact are in the late nineteenth century, in the institution’s first incarnation as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, chartered in 1876—making it among the defining institutions in the museology in the United States.

     The 1928 iteration of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was born in a time of tumultuous municipal transitional change. In a period of no more than thirty years, Philadelphia had reconsidered how money changed hands, who lived where, and how immigrant Americans would shape the city’s landscape. The museum’s founding was likewise messy: contentious, public, and expensive.
     Unlike the city’s other venerable cultural institutions, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was not the product of a single visionary, nor that of a coterie of affluent connoisseurs. Yet, one Philadelphian figured prominently in shaping the institution’s transformation: John H. McFadden. As the city’s—indeed, the country’s—grandest cotton king, McFadden is well-known as the donor of an important collection of British paintings to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Focusing on late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits and landscapes, the John Howard McFadden Memorial Collection comprises a rich and unified group of forty-three paintings by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, and George Romney.

John H. McFadden and His Age

Prologue

Will

 1917

On an unusually balmy December day in 1917, John H. McFadden signed his will with a sense of success and modesty. His valet Robert Potts dutifully added his name as one of several witnesses. In 21st-century dollars, the Philadelphia cotton grandee and art patron was a multimillionaire; his estate, at more than $5.2-million ($73-million), [1] was bequeathed to his ‘beloved’ wife Florence and their three adult children. The eldest, Philip, was a high-goal polo player. Alice, the middle child, had a dilettante’s interest in the theatre. The youngest, John H. McFadden, Jr., or ‘Jack,’ was a former U.S. Army officer.

Despite his immense wealth, McFadden was a man of probity. He once told a friend that his aim in life was to create ‘lasting good.’ ‘Then I could die happy.’[2] On 2 December, a day before his 67th birthday, McFadden had that last mission in mind when he put a pen from his favorite stationer, Bailey, Banks & Biddle, to foolscap, and forever sealed the fate of his art collection as a gift to Philadelphia’s cultural patrimony. Or, maybe.

McFadden was an international ‘cotton man.’[3] Among only a handful of such commodity moguls in the late 19th century, he and his older brother, George, reigned over an empire that brokered and shipped raw American and Egyptian cotton worldwide. Millions of cotton bales made their way to mills in England and in New England, and millions of dollars made their way to the coffers of their family firm, Geo. H. McFadden & Bro., Cotton Merchants. [4] By the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the McFadden partnership, headed by George as managing director, had become the country’s largest cotton trading venture.

It further established itself as one of America’s first truly multi-national conglomerates,

with shipping and trading interests in Europe, Africa, and in South America. As the otherwise anonymous ‘Bro.,’ John McFadden headed the company’s key Liverpool subsidiary. A third brother, the youngest, got no billing. J. Franklin McFadden, was, like George, Philadelphia based. Like his nephew Philip, Frank, as he was known, was a poloist, enjoying the sport in the city’s Main Line suburbs and in Florida. Whatever their individual contribution, Geo. H. McFadden & Bro. ballooned into a prodigiously remunerative entity, making the three siblings millionaires many times over.

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mary Cassat

PORTRAIT OF A SHREWD DEALER

By Ken Johnson

The New York Times

24 July 2015

Casual observers might suppose that mega-galleries like Larry Gagosian’s and David Zwirner’s are a distinctively 21st-century phenomenon. But the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris dealer who put Impressionism on the international map, preceded them by more than a century and a half. His fascinating and instructive story is the subject of “Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting,” a gorgeous exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

This show presents more than 90 paintings, including many Impressionist works that haven’t been seen in the United States in decades or ever, all of which passed through Durand-Ruel’s hands at some point. The paintings alone make the show a popular draw. But it’s the tale of Durand-Ruel’s career, richly detailed in essays by scholars in the exhibition catalog, that makes this more than just another crowd-pleaser.

PAUL STRAND

Exhibit of Works by Photographer Paul Strand

 

Photo: WritersClearinghouse News Service

Debuts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

 

 

The artist is not known for overtly political commentary in his photographs. Though societal and economic observations are always evident, this picture  of a swastika (left) one of the few he made, and the only one displayed in the PMA show.

Francisco Goya

 Whimsy with Bite

By RICHARD CARREÑO Bio
[WritersClearinghouse News Service] Posted 16 September 2014

Philadelphia

Tony Auth's recent death got me thinking about an exhibit of cartoons by Goya I visited about a fortnight ago at the Allentown Art Museum.

 

Auth, a former editorial cartoonist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Francisco Goya, Spain's great 19th century court painter, in the same breath?

 

Yes, because Goya (1764-1828), though often best known for such full-figure portraits such as the Duchess of Alba and the Nude Maja and Clothed Maja, was also an early social realist and Spain's first, yes, first, modern painter. It's hard not to to think of the horror of war depicted in Picasso's Guernica when viewing Goya's equally horrific scene of bloodshed in his Third of May, 1808. Goya's spirit imbued a new form of political and societal criticism that flowed in subsequent centuries from the sharpened quills of such penny-press English sharpshooters as William Hogarth,  George Cruikshank, James Gilray, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, and Steve Bell.

 

VERMEER AT THE PMA

A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal

Is It for Real?
By Richard Carreño Posted 26 July 2014
[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

Philadelphia

It's hard not to like the works of the 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). His paintings are easy on the eyes, noted for a bright, luminous palette; portraying attractive studio scenes, populated with attractive people. He shows off Delft, his hometown, as a middle-class burgh; it's denizens, prosperous and well-attired. Comfort zone, anyone?

 

There's no better Vermeer poster child than Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665). Recently rehung at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Pearl has most notably in recent years become one of the world's most recognizable portraits. Along the lines of that other general public icon, the Mona Lisa. As in the case with Mona, a door-buster at the Musee du Louvre, mass appeal means massive lines. Before returning to The Netherlands, Pearl had a brief run in New York. The lines were of fire-sale proportions.

 

Not to worry, Philadelphia. Philly Vermeer aficionados are not so troubled in viewing Young Woman Seated at A Virginal (1670-1672), now on a year-long visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That is, if local fans even want to be so bothered. Amazingly, for a Vermeer, the diminuative oil (25 centimeters by 20 centimeters) is more door-stopper, than buster.

 

I visited the painting recently in Gallery 264, where it has been hanging forlornly on loan since late last year. The gallery is a walk-through space (not a destination gallery), and Young Woman gets nary any attention.

 

'You're here to see the Vermeer, eh?' the museum guard on duty says to me. I nod. 'Oh,' he says. Not exactly, any variant of 'Make my day!'

 

The problem is that Young Woman, one of Vermeer's last works he painted in his truncated, 43-years, isn't really a Vermeer.

Jacob Epstein Busts of Einstein and Weizmann...

...DOUBLE THE ARTIST'S
SCULPTURES IN PHILADELPHIA
By Richard Carreño
Posted 9 July 2014

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

Despite their coevality, a cursory comparison would not suggest much commonality between Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952). Einstein, of course, went on to create the Theory of Relativity; Weizmann, in 1949, was among the founders of the new State of Israel. (He also became its first president).

Interestingly enough, Weizmann, like the physicist Einstein, was also a scientist. They were both Jewish refugees, on the run from Nazi terror. And they both wound up, at different times in 1933, in the London studio of Anglo-American sculpture Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), where, thanks to Epstein's artistic skill, nay, genius, they were immortalized in bronze busts that have become the iconic images of both men.

 

Einstein and Weizmann have something else in common: Epstein's sculpted tributes to them share nearby space in a little-known installation at the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

For Philadelphia, the Penn-sited busts also contribute to a startling statistic; they double, yes, double, the number of Epstein sculpted works believed to be available for public viewing in the city. A large, outdoor sculpture, titled Social Consciousness, is located (and, unfortunately, largely ignored) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and a bust of Epstein's wife is part of the permanent collection at the La Salle University Museum.

PHILLY SECRETLY COMES TO THE RESCUE

Before

After

 Photos: WritersClearinghouse News Service

 

MET II IN WORLD WAR II 

By Richard Carreño Bio Posted: July 5, 2014

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

For two years during World War II, from 1942 to 1944, the Metropolitan Museum of Art went to war -- in Philadelphia.

      Thanks to the Monuments Men, a recent film and a book by the same title, the war-time Met is now best known for its one-time director James J. Rorimer, a principal in organizing the group of GIs who, in their role in hunting down Europe's art treasures stolen by the Nazis, became known in romantic vernacular as the 'Monuments Men.'

      Less known is how another Met director, Francis Henry Taylor, Rorimer's predecessor and a former curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, worked quietly during the early war years to protect America's art patrimony.

      And how, thanks to Taylor, a mansion in the contiguous northwest Philadelphia suburb of Springfield became an auxiliary venue of the venerable New York art institution. In secret. 

UNDERGROUND ART

A Church Archway? A Street Loggia?
PMA'S HIDDEN VAULTS
Groin vaults, that is.

Since 1962, the northside arched entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been closed. That's about to change.

At least it will, if the multi-million-dollar Frank Gehry-inspired design plan to expand interior contemporary art gallery space gets done anytime soon.

Museum officials have their fingers crossed. It's one of those run-it-up-the-flagpole,- see-if-anyone-salutes plan.

Photos:
 WritersClearinghouse News Service

Starchitech Gehry was in town yesterday (26 June) to do a bit of flag waving.

Instrumental in the plan, which
will principally involve new gallery space under the Rocky steps, will be the reopening of the north-south groin vaulted loggia-like corridor that cuts across the building. The north end will be re-introduced as a new museum entrance.

The corridor, or walkway, the museum calls it, is a mammoth, imposing space -- a delight to behold.

Fortunately, progress on building and repurposing the building -- already in the works for more than five years -- will proceed as the cash rolls in, according to museum officials. A good thing! As of now, they don't think the project will be completed until 2028. Ouch!
--Richard Carreño

The Rocky Statue? Look Closely Below

Editor's Sketchbook

'MODERN' ART TURNS 100

New York

What do Constantine Brancusi's Muse endormie, Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (N0.2), François Picabia's Dances at the Spring, and Jacques Villion's Young Girl have in common? These works, then contemporary works, were all part of scores of now 'modern' paintings and sculptures that were displayed in the ground-breaking Armory Show, held in New York 100 years ago and now recreated at the New-York Historical Society Museum &; Library, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street.

 

There's another commonality: These and other sculptures and pictures, more than a dozen in all, are now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the single best-represented repository of Armory Show submissions, all part of the museum's stellar Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection.

 

'The Armory Show at 100' is one of the best art exhibits I've ever had the privilege of attending. It's a time capsule of what modern art was to become. I was transported to 1913 and 69th Regiment Armory (1906), still functioning at 68 Lexington Avenue, between 25th and 26 streets. Imagine, if you will, being an attendee at that time, seeing, aye savouring, early first works by Picasso, Matisse, and Van Gogh. Add a Renoir or two, a picture by Goya, even an Augustus John, the under-appreciated English portraitist. In all, scores of artists are represented. Still, only a fraction of the total collection in the show itself. 

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Architect Louis Kahn in the auditorium of the original building of the Kimbell Art Museum.
(Circular speakers, at top, were designed by architect David Traub of Philadelphia).

What if they built an art museum and forgot the art?
 Richard Carreno reports from Fort Worth, Texas

ARTLESS

BY RICHARD CARRENO

[WITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE/BIO]

Step forward Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum 2.0, the recently rolled out new addition that, so far, seems to be all about the building's architect, the Italian Renzo Piano, than the art that's supposed to be displayed there. 

OK, 'so far.' To be fair, the new addition, a bookend to the original Kimbell, designed in 1972 by the celebrated Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974), is still in its infancy, only opening in November, 2013. And, yes, one gallery, the West Gallery, is in full swing with a presentation of Asian art. Otherwise the addition -- actually a separate building divided from the Kahn building by a broad plaza -- is presently mostly just library, gift shop, and cafe.

At Penn's Arthur Ross Gallery

REALLY RODIN?

You decide.

The installation of Auguste Rodin sculpture is from the collection of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. The Cantors collected Rodin works for decades. She still does. According to foundation, all their pieces are the real deal. That's open to debate. Most experts argue that the only 'real' Rodins are those cast during the artist's lifetime at the foundry of his choosing under his supervision/permission. The Cantor sculptures don't meet this test. A poster in the Penn exhibit tries to explains this away in its own way. Still the works are interesting in themselves. For the real deal, visit the Rodin Museum on the Parkway. Works there all pass muster. The Arthur Ross show runs through 22 December. Free.

-- Richard Carreño

Comprehend This

Cleveland Museum Gets it Right

By Richard Carreño

The author and a new friend
Photo: Joan T. Kane/Writers Clearinghouse News Service

Cleveland

[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]

Now, there are two.

I arrived at the Cleveland Museum of Art, thinking that its well-respected core collections in Egyptology, Greco-Roman classics, armour--and, you know, the other stuff from the Old Masters to Impressionism and beyond--would reaffirm its status as one of a dwindling, few 'encyclopedic' museums in the United States. Three, in fact, along with Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (The Boston Museum of Fine Arts lost its 'encyclopedic' title when fire ravaged its Egyptian holdings many years ago).

'No,' I was told by my Cleveland guide, Richard. 'We don't call ourselves that (encyclopedic) anymore. We're now what we call "comprehensive."' Why the coy turn in terminology? Something to do with a competition thing, Richard added vaguely. Competition? Surely a losing battle with the Met; even the Philadelphia Museum.'What we're focusing is quality. The best of its kind--that we can acquire and afford .'

RIP: Michael McGonigle

We write to share the sad news that Michael McGonigle
passed away last Friday, November 9.

Michael was a caring, dedicated colleague with a deep love of film,
and he will be greatly missed.

His popular Members’ Film Club lectures showcased his
unique intelligence, wit, and authenticity.

Michael’s family has announced a public memorial:

Saturday, December 8, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
The Ethical Society of Philadelphia
1906 Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia

At this juncture, Members’ Film Club has been suspended.

Thank you for your caring and support.

 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

___________________________________________________________________________________

Merry Christmas!

Dr. Richard Hodges addresses a press gaggle in previewing the new show at the Penn Museum.
Photos/Writers Clearinghouse News Service

Or a Period of Bliss

Maya Predict World's End 23 December
Time -- how the Maya calculated it, revered it, and predicted it -- is the theme of a new inter-active exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology. It's the best thing the Penn Museum, under the direction of the brilliant Dr. Richard Hodges has done, in years. That's saying a lot since Hodges -- who alas is leaving for an academic post in Rome -- has transformed the museum to a worthy companion to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, only taking a back seat to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for curatorial skill in presenting ancient civilizations.

'Maya, 2012: Lords of Time' runs to 13 January 2013. If if all goes well, that is. According to the Maya calendar, doomsday will come two days before Christmas, as the Western calendar is calculated. Or, if not doomsday, the beginning of a period of bliss. Never mind, the Maya weren't sure.

This wonderful exhibit was curated by Dr. Loa Traxler and Simon Martin. Come to learn about Maya time. Come away learning about the Maya, uniquely different from the Aztec with whom they are often confused.

P.S. Got to wondering about the almost interchangeable usage of 'Maya' and 'Mayan' in the exhibit as noun and adjective. Actually, not so. 'Maya' is the noun and adjective for all things Maya, except their language which is Mayan. The meaning of 'Maya'? Native People.
-- Richard Carreño

Forget It!

Zoe Strauss Disses Junto,

Centrepiece portrait in Stauss' exhibit
at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Favours New York Times

____________________

Rescheduling Appointment

For Art Museum Exhibit?

_____________________________

Blog Editor Carreño

Says 'Sorry, Forget it!'

Dear Richard Carreno,

Thank you very much for booking office hours with me. As you may know, this exhibition (with all of its satellite components) is the first of its kind at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I am very pleased to have you be a part of it!

Because the show has been such a phenomenal success thus far, many opportunities have opened up that conflict with my Museum obligations, including some office hours appointments. Though I have worked hard to avoid this outcome, it is with great regret that I must cancel your appointment with me on Friday, April 6 so that I can pursue a major project with the New York Times.

Please note that this cancellation does come with the promise of rescheduling! Because the office I use, however, has been generously offered to me for public use by Timothy Rub, the CEO and Director of the Museum, we are still working to determine when it is available. I plan on offering several dates for which I can make it up to you. It is my hope that you will be able to reschedule our meeting on one of them.

If you have any questions or concerns please reply to this email and either Justin or Emily (my two wonderful exhibition assistants) will be happy to respond. They will also get those make up dates to you as soon as we have it figured out. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause given its short notice and am very grateful for your understanding. We will make this happen!

My warmest regards,
Zoe Strauss

New Kid in Town

Met's Loss, PAFA's Gain
By Richard Carreño
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]
Curators, even at the stellar Metropolitan Museum of Art, can blunder. Such was the case early last year when the Met presented at an ambitious retrospective of 19th-century American art that, not surprisingly, drew plentifully and wisely from permanent collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Of course, we encountered the usual Philadelphia 'persons' of interest: Thomas Eakins, Charles Willson Peale, Winslow Homer, and the like. But, to my mind, there was a conspicuous omission. Nowhere to be found in the 'American Stories' show was the masterful African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), a PAFA graduate and Eakins acolyte. Some one had dropped the ball.

That oversight is now about to be corrected. Thanks to PAFA. And the La Salle University Museum of Art.

The biggest nod in the new-found Tanner recognition -- call it even a revival -- goes to PAFA, which will launch a gargantuan public meditation early next year on the Tanner oeuvre. That bow to the long-neglected artist (viz the Met show) will be 'Modern Spirit,' an exhibition curated, organized, and brilliantly marketed by PAFA with accompanying publications, lectures, and even a children's book. The show will be at the academy from 28 January to 15 April, then will soldier on later in the year with the Tanner banner to the Cincinnati Art Museum and to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums

Philadelphia's Parkway Muses 

By Jackie Atkins

[Writers Clearinghouse News Service] 

Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums

By Richard Carreno

WritersClearinghousePress

180 pp $19.99

ISBN: 978-1-105-14489-9 

AT a glance, it's simply a beautiful Philadelphia reproduction of the Champs-Elysée. But for Richard Carreño, it's 'Museum Mile,' the core of Philadelphia's museums and galleries on the city's famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

In Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums, Carreño looks deep into this street-scape for its architectural and artistic resources, embodied in the Parkway's venerable public arts and cultural spaces. In all, he canvasses more than a dozen of the city's arts institutions. Sometimes he strays in the name of local insights -– as far afield even as Jerusalem and Nice, France.

The book gets much closer to home with Carreño's sharp and reflective appraisal of changes at the Barnes Foundation museum. Significantly, Museum Mile coincides with the debut in 2012 of the 'new' Barnes, now the on the Parkway's newest cultural jewel.

Not much has escaped the author as he examines and deconstructs paintings with the fervor of an explorer and teacher. The artists whose compositions he describes come under as equal scrutiny as their works themselves. Similarly, administrative and curatorial staff members, and even some of Philadelphia's most prominent arts donors and financiers, never go unchallenged.

Carreño looks 'behind' the canvass. Before addressing the hidden techniques of the sporting art of Alfred J. Munnings, Carreño carefully scrutinizes this English country artist's background to explain the influence of Munnings' life experiences in his portrayals of uncommon horses and their equally uncommon riders.

Carreño introduces Michael Taylor, until recently modern art curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as 'part scholar, part art historian, and part sleuth.' He describes his pioneering shows, and how Taylor singularly captures the importance, need, and workmanship of a museum curator.

Small tidbits make reading Museum Mile informative, substantive, and enlightening.

Not contented with just profiles of artists and the museums that showcase their work, Carreño spins tales of Philadelphia politics and intrigues as they relate the Museum Mile's art world. Neither the controversial founder of the Barnes Foundation, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, nor the film, The Art of the Steal, a screed against the Barnes' move from Merion in suburban Philadelphia to the Parkway, escape Carreño's critique.

Such seemingly mundane issues as the advisability of backpack captivity by the staff at the National Museum of American Jewish History and, more important, often draconian security measures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art get special attention from the author.

Even those familiar with Philadelphia's artistic treasures will come away, after reading the almost forty essays in Museum Mile, with previously unknown insights and, yes, some juicy morsels. From the grandness of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to the historical roots of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to the sheer wonder of the Barnes Foundation museum, Richard Carreño informs and edifies the reader in a knowledgeable work.

(Jackie Atkins, a short story and screenplay writer, lives in Cape May, New Jersey).