The curious case of Miro at the NGA and McGlone at the WaPo

Whitmore’s query highlights a question that arises frequently in museums: How do curators decide what to display? Such decisions are the cornerstone of a curator’s job, said Harry Cooper, head of the National Gallery’s department of modern and contemporary art. “Generally, it’s a fun kind of puzzle to put together,” he said.  

It can be fraught with tension, however, especially because only a small fraction of any museum’s collection ends up on display. The National Gallery of Art has almost 148,000 works in its permanent collection, and only 2,834 are on view.

Read the whole WaPo article by Peggy McGlone here.


BTW: Did anybody in the DMV know that "Peggy McGlone joined the Washington Post in 2014 as its local arts reporter. Prior to that, she covered the arts for The Star-Ledger in New Jersey for more than a decade."


The reason that I find that description from the WaPo's website laughable is that from a quick look at what McGlone has been assigned to cover so far (see that here), it seems like the vast majority of her "local arts reporting" has been on area museums' stories (such as this really good one on Miro's tapestry), but precious little on the "local arts scene" which is a helluva lot more that museum stories.


I'd like to see McGlone start covering some other local arts stories besides museums or otherwise the WaPo needs to change her duties' description to: "Peggy McGlone joined the Washington Post in 2014 as its local art museums' scene reporter. Prior to that, she covered the arts for The Star-Ledger in New Jersey for more than a decade."


Makes me wanna call my good bud and peeps Jeff Bezos and complain to him about this.