Short Takes |
By
Published: May 8, 2010
When last we checked in with Michael Gross, author of Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he was being flogged by the Museum and its trustees for writing such a cheeky book. The Met wasn’t selling the book in its gift shop; Annette de la Renta had the vapors. I thought this was pigheaded, so I wrote about it. Now Gross has unearthed a new development: Oral histories of Met employees that he would have liked to have read --- histories that were to have been made public --- have been buried by the Museum. Okay, so Michael Gross is stirring the pot just as his book is published in a paperback edition. But when is the Met going to grow up?