Pat M. J. reviewed on 12/10/2011 + 66 more book reviews

Michael Gross has written the definitive book on the history of the Metropolitan Museum, a work that was not supported by the Met's executive committee/board members who were hostile to any "literary" interpretations of the museum's 138 -year history seeing the light of a publisher's press. I can't imagine anyone else doing a better job of the extraordinarily fine and exhaustive research and volume of interviewing to present this iconoclast portrait; given the author's quote: "Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime", you have to know that the egos and the mania and the power makers and climbers will be well represented in this history. "Rogues' Gallery" is a fabulous job of presenting all the colors; the black, the white and the gray. Anyone who collects, who loves art and its various incarnations has to read this one. I was just as ambiguous as the ancient and the modern leaders of the museum about building a Modern Art collection there. They never have had, nor allowed a definitive modern picture collection to accumulate within their enlarged walls. Should they have? I didn't know that the Met was publicly funded in part by New York City, which demanded a more influential position in the board planning as time went on; sometimes this was a plus for the progress of the institution as a public cultural asset for the city. A magnificent job of reporting and laying it all out there to let the Public decide if they have been well served by the power makers, the curators and the public "servants" up to the present.

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