The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum is spectacular and demonstrates what an amazing eye can do for a collection.
Not only is the Alfred Leslie, Motherwell, Rothko, Louis, Pollock, Olitski and de Kooning first rate, but together the whole body of work could stand alone and rival most second-tier modern art museums.
It was nice to see some surprisingly delicious works, including a Paul Feeley (he’s so inexplicably underappreciated) and an Alfred Leslie which makes me wish he had stuck with the glorious centralized abstractions that helped launch his career in the fifties.
The disappointments were the Matta (is it me or do they all look and feel the same?) and the Miro–maybe I’m just tired of the Surrealists.
Promised to the Met since the eighties, it’s glorious to see the Newman’s stunning works finally at home in a public collection.
Pictured above are (left to right) Jules Olitski & Paul Feeley–taken before the guard told me that electronic devices were not allowed in the gallery (great, another no go photo zone).
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