Back to September 2010 ARTnews Retrospective  

100 Years Ago

One has to devise many ways and means to get paintings cheaply abroad. Some of those artists may be starving, yet they will apparently prefer to get a few marks at a pawnbroker's than to take a fair price from you, simply because you are an American, and they claim you will get five times what you paid for the picture from one of our bloated millionaires. . . . One should not appear too eager to buy, too much in a hurry to leave the country. One should be to all appearances a man of leisure who doesn't care whether he buys or not.
—"Buying Pictures Abroad," September 17, 1910

75 Years Ago

"The Brooklyn Museum is establishing an interne system for training candidates for the museum profession," Director Philip N. Youtz has announced. The establishment as an integral part of museum training of a system of internership . . . marks the recognition of the professional character of curatorial work. To make this system possible the Rockefeller Foundation has offered the Brooklyn Museum six fellowships. . . . The Foundation has expressed a preference for men who are thoroughly grounded academically and who are certain to find a place of leadership in the museum profession.
—"Brooklyn Takes Art Internes," September 14, 1935

50 Years Ago

No collector of this generation's ironies will have failed to note the collapse of bourgeois opposition to Picasso. . . . This collapse was . . . evident at the opening of the big Picasso show at the Tate. So general was the sense of exhilaration generated by the 268 canvases on view that it was difficult to remember that, only fifteen years previously, Picasso's wartime canvases had had the middlebrows baying for blood. . . . But nature comes to terms with art, and even the Queen of England, not best known for her modern-art studies, is said to have taken an unfeigned delight in her two-hour private tour of the exhibition.
—"London: Picasso Conquest," by John Russell, September 1960

25 Years Ago

Palladium owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager (of Studio 54 notoriety) recruited none other than Henry Geldzahler, former Metropolitan Museum curator and New York City cultural commissioner, to act as club curator.

"Artists are the focal point of the '80s," said Rubell of his decision to make art a key ingredient in his latest venture. "They're the celebrities now in the same way fashion designers were in the '70s and rock stars were in the '60s."
—"Bright Lights Big City," by Deborah Phillips, September 1985