The Mystery of Twittering Machine

As I have been traveling so much lately (and I'm heading off to the Poconos this weekend), I have been trying to catch up with some of the art reviews that the WaPo has done in the last couple of weeks.

And I have noticed an interesting mystery in a recent review.

On Sunday, June 18, 2006, Jessica Dawson reviewed the Paul Klee show at the Phillips Collection.

It always bugs me somewhat when Jessica "uses" the Galleries column to review a museum show that will most likely be reviewed by Gopnik or O'Sullivan anyway - to me she's wasting the precious "Galleries" print space, which I believe its supposed to be focused on galleries, on a museum show.

However, in this review she was writing it for Sunday Arts, I guess subbing in place for the WaPo's Chief Art Critic, who as we all know, only writes about museums, and not galleries.

Read that review here. She writes:

At the Phillips, the Duchampian "Twittering Machine" is on view, as is the anxiously Freudian "Girl With Doll's Pram," where the little girl's breasts are the size of Hindenburgs.

Then, later on I read Michael O'Sullivan's review of the same show, published at few days later on Friday, June 23, 2006. Read O'Sullivan's review here, and he writes:

Oddly enough, one of my favorite paintings, MOMA's "The Twittering Machine," is not on view at the Phillips, although you'll find it in the accompanying catalogue.

Uh?

Is the painting there or not?

And so I call the Phillips, and the nice PR lady tells me that O'Sullivan is right, and that "The Twittering Machine," although published in the catalog, did not make it to the exhibition. And she's cracking up because it was highlighted in the Dawson review, and although published in the catalog, it is not listed in the checklist for the exhibition.

"Did she actually ---," I begin to ask.

"Come to the exhibition?" interrupts the nice Phillips lady, "Yes, she did... and that's what makes the mention of a piece not in the exhibition even odder."

Sigh...

Update: As usual, Bailey is crazy.