Immerse In Rogues Gallery: The Secret Story Of The Lust, Lies, Greed, And Betrayals That Made The Metropolitan Museum Of Art Developed By Michael Gross Offered As Printed Matter

me, who has the ability to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art often, this was a very interesting book of how and with what funds the Museum got started and its history of the Directors and Board Members from then late's to present day.
It is a book laden with different personalities of the NYC elite J, P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller, up to the director, . . Thomas P Campbell in. There are many intriguing details: how the Cloisters was procured for the Met, how it was the directors' role to woo famous and ultimately very rich patrons of the arts.
It is a very densely detailed book and somewhat eye opening, For me, it was difficult to read in a timely fashion I think that it is best read in chapters over a long period of time so one can digest what one has read.
A soulsucking account of the Mets history

Filthy rich, clueless egomaniacs using tax deductible donations to deposit mostly priceless art/artifacts/ funding in exchange for social recognition.
Or perhaps to buy some semblance of a legacy after a miserly lifetime of accumulating wealth, This is a tediously researched accounting of the Mets evolution, complete with a registry of Whos Who in NYC , though Who really cares The Met is a terrific museum, but you wont get an inkling of that by reading this book.
Gossipy, yes but also thorough and penetrating in its disclosures and revelations, Too many characters to keep straight, but the progression through staff, trustees and donors leads to incredible wealth, great art and expectations perhaps from another era, I wish I'd known more when I was there, This book is, generally speaking, an excellent source of information, and I did enjoy it however, it suffered badly from needing a better editor, Additionally, the conclusion was tepid, and the lastpages were critical not only in a way that didn't make sense logically, but also in a way that didn't entirely convince me that the author or many of the people quoted often still very much alive today have ever enjoyed a museum.
Incredibly detailed account of the source and

circumstances surrounding what must be almost every large donation ever made to the Met, It gets repetitive in parts, hashing out the details of courting the moneyed, contesting wills, willfully ignoring or working against obtaining anything "modern," and obtaining grey or blackmarket antiquities, then dealing with the fallout of all of the above.


I can understand the low ratings of other readers but I found it incredibly successful as a straight piece of reference, bookended by a detailed account of the author's ongoing battle with a bureaucracy determined to thwart him and his virtuous exposé journalism by his account.
I guess there are some ugly bits, especially regarding antiquities without provenance, moneygrabbing tactics, and infighting among curators, directors, and trustees, but I really didn't come across anything SO HORRIBLE as to explain the museum's apparent stonewalling of the author.
Maybe that's the point, that whatever they're covering up is worse, but honestly, what kind of bureaucratic nonsense deserves that much protection Everyone involved is human with all the associated foibles and failings expected, just blown up on a grand scale.


Anyway, it can get a bit eyeglazing at points with its belabored attention to detail and worshipful tone of the museum's place in the city and the world, but I still found it a useful and necessary reference of a venerable institution.
This is a great gossipy read about the millionaires who founded the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, It's full of tales of the Morgan's and the Rockefellers who built the thing to house their private collections, They and their rich friends never intended that it be open to the public, What would the ignorant hordes know about art They wanted this to be a collection to be viewed by their set, It's a great story, told well and it really changes how you see the art once you know how it came to be in the museum in the first place.
.stars. BE AWARE! , if you are not that interested in the MET museum or have never been there or just want to read a simple book before your first visit, this is NOT the book for you.
This book is complicated, boring at some points and confusing at others, The other only comparison I can find to describe this book would be , if you watch a hot dog documentary, you learn a lot about the process and you learn how a hot made , but did you really wanted to know that.
only read this book if you have a passion about the MET and/or the elite art collectors that made the museum possible, as passion will be the only think that will get you through this book.
“Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime, ”
With these words as a starting point, Michael Gross, leading chronicler of the American rich, begins the first independent, unauthorized look at the saga of the nations greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In this endlessly entertaining followup to his bestselling social history Park, Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper classs cultural and philanthropic ambitions and maneuvers.
And he paints a revealing portrait of a previously hidden face of American wealth and power,

The Metropolitan, Gross writes, “is a huge alchemical experiment, turning the worst of mans attributesextravagance, lust, gluttony, acquisitiveness, envy, avarice, greed, egotism, and prideinto the very best, transmuting deadly sins into priceless treasure.
” The book covers the entireyear history of the Met, focusing on the museums most colorful characters, Opening with the lameduck director Philippe de Montebello, the museums longestserving leader who finally stepped down in, Rogues Gallery then goes back to the very beginning, highlighting, among many others: the first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an Italianborn epic phony, whose legacy is a trove of plundered ancient relics, some of which remain on display today John Pierpont Morgan, the greatest capitalist and art collector of his day, who turned the museum from the plaything of a handful of rich amateurs into a professional operation dedicated, sort of, to the public good John D.
Rockefeller Jr. , who never served the Met in any official capacity but who, during the Great Depression, proved the only man willing and rich enough to be its benefactor, which made him its behindthescenes puppeteer the controversial Thomas Hoving, whose tenure as director during the sixties and seventies revolutionized museums around the world but left the Met in chaos and Jane Engelhard and Annette de la Renta, a motherdaughter trustee tag team whose stories will astonish you think Casablanca rewritten by Edith Wharton.


With a supporting cast that includes artists, forgers, and looters, financial geniuses and scoundrels, museum officers like its chairman Arthur Amory Houghton, head of Corning Glass, who once ripped apart a priceless and ancient Islamic book in order to sell it off piecemeal, trustees like Jayne Wrightsman, the Hollywood party girl turned society grand dame, curators like the aging Dietrich von Bothmer, a refugee from Nazi Germany with a Bronze Star for heroism whose greatest acquisitions turned out to be looted, and donors like Irwin Untermyer, whose collecting obsession drove his wife and children to suicide, and with cameo appearances by everyone from Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland to Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten, Rogues Gallery is a rich, satisfying, alternately hilarious and horrifying look at Americas upper class, and what is perhaps its greatest creation.
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