In this, the deepest depth of summer, we’ve decided to take a vacation and are away for the rest of the week. We’ll have a margarita for you.

-ADD

ABOVE: detail from Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s The Arch of Constantine and the Forum, Rome (1843), from the Frick Collection. The museum’s new director is gradually trying to modernize the New York institution.

Henry Clay Frick was a rich, irredeemable asshole of the gilded age, and his museum bears his mark. It’s also quite rich, pretty gilded, and has some distinctly assholish tendencies (like not letting in kids under 10—it’s a place that hates children, for god’s sake). But the collection, of course, is top-notch, as befitted a rat-bastard robber-baron such as HCF. And the museum has coasted for years on a pillowy cushion of easy money and an impeccable reputation. Well, it coasts no more: so says the New York Times.

Anne L. Poulet, the new director of the Frick Collection, is apparently nudging the museum into the 20th century with such patron-shocking moves as 1) proper lighting, 2) moving some paintings around, and 3) thinking about expanding. The Frick has in recent years been running $1 million deficits, and needs to start thinking about, oh, say, actually encouraging people to come in and look around. But not too many—that would spoil it.

LINK: New York Times > Making a Less Fusty Frick (and Hoping Nobody Notices)

[ps - sorry no post yesterday, it was a national holiday in Canada. That’s good enough for us!]