Michael S. Bell

It might be in the best interest of art and museums if curators and other staff members were simply to do their jobs without excessive concern about the motives of directors and trustees. Jacques Barzun, in his slim 1974 volume The Use and Abuse of Art, gave fair warning about the catastrophe he rightly perceived to be coming, and in which we have all been compicit. Curators have let art museums become Wal-Mart, super-sized. The entrepreneurial tail is now wagging the art-historical dog.

— Michael S. Bell, Letter to the Editor, Art in America, January 2008, p. 31.

 

Rules of Weight

Paper by Charles L. Barzun, Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 5, 2008. Abstract and document download.