The Sleeve Should Be Illegal: & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick

"“Masterpiece for masterpiece, the Frick is the best small museum in the United States for western painting before 1900…. Empowered by its new setting, work once considered frivolous becomes visual thunder.” There’s no quarrel with Pulitzer prize-winning art critic Jerry Salz’ s assessment of the Frick’s collection, only impatience to visit the Frick’s new digs . That the Gilded Age founder was a vicious robber baron exemplifies the many contradictions that we’ve inherited with our art spaces into the 21st century. We can still marvel at the masterpieces even as we question their provenance and original purpose as capitalist trophies. Can’t we? Unable to visit in person, I’ll console myself with this superlative collection of essays about the masterworks at the Frick. It’s no surprise that two of the finest art critics – Salz and the poet Peter Schjeldahl – live in New York , my old home town, nor that they share a love for this institution, so dear for being so idiosyncratic. “More than one contributor to The Sleeve Should Be Illegal invokes a sensation of walking on air after a visit to the Frick, a payoff of renewed faith in the powers of art and a forgivable pride in our own perhaps untrained and underused capacities to comprehend the aesthetic and spiritual stakes of a timeless game.” This beautifully produced book includes 61 reflections on the Frick’s collection, which holds masterpieces by some of the most celebrated artists in the Western tradition―among them Bellini, Gainsborough, Goya, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Whistler. Other books about museums that I’ve added to my reference library include Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes , a look at the thorny issues of provenance and restitution, and the subject of a forthcoming Five Books interview. Watch this space."