Overview

"""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 nation's greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this endlessly entertaining follow-up to his bestselling social history ""740 Park,"" Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper class's 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 man's attributes--extravagance, lust, gluttony, acquisitiveness, envy, avarice, greed, egotism, and pride--into the very best, transmuting deadly sins into priceless treasure."" The book covers the entire 138-year history of the Met, focusing on the museum's most colorful characters. Opening with the lame-duck director Philippe de Montebello, the museum's longest-serving leader who finally stepped down in 2008, ""Rogues' Gallery"" then goes back to the very beginning, highlighting, among many others: the first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an Italian-born 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 behind-the-scenes 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 mother-daughter 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 America's upper class, and what is perhaps its greatest creation."

Full Product Details

9780767924887

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Rogues' Gallery <br> Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale, with all the elements of a gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed Vanity Fair -style takedown. -Maria Puente, USA Today <br> Provocative. -Reid Pillifant, New York Observer <br> Any and all facts that I knew of personally, the author gets absolutely right, which makes me trust much else in the book-and there's a great deal else, indeed an entire history of the museum beginning from its gradual birth in the 1870s, told as a kind of extended gossip dish, a dense and exhaustively factual one, about the powerful egos that drove it into prominence and kept it there. I am not particularly sympathetic to any view of the world as a gossipy chronicle. I didn't expect to like the book's tone, but I found a good 100 pages had gone by before I could even put it down. . . . The book is important, and what's more, splendidly readable. -Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com <br> Highly entertaining. -Manuel

Praise for Rogues' Gallery <br> Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale, with all the elements of a gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed Vanity Fair -style takedown. -Maria Puente, USA Today <br> Provocative. -Reid Pillifant, New York Observer <br> Any and all facts that I knew of personally, the author gets absolutely right, which makes me trust much else in the book-and there's a great deal else, indeed an entire history of the museum beginning from its gradual birth in the 1870s, told as a kind of extended gossip dish, a dense and exhaustively factual one, about the powerful egos that drove it into prominence and kept it there. I am not particularly sympathetic to any view of the world as a gossipy chronicle. I didn't expect to like the book's tone, but I found a good 100 pages had gone by before I could even put it down. . . . The book is important, and what's more, splendidly readable. -Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com <br> Highly entertaining. -Manuela Hoelterhoff, Bloomberg <br> Gross' s coup is not only in the vast amounts of information he has obtained but also in his ability to tell a story about the rich and powerful people of New York nearly effortlessly and without disdain. -Jillian Steinhauer, ArtInfo.com<br> <br>. . . a pageturner that unravels like an elite whodunit, and is reaping encomiums from advance readers. Destined to be the talk of art circles in the U.S. and abroad. . . . Not only by art connoisseurs but by culturati hungry for a captivating, tattle-tale yarn, Rogues' Gallery will spark a furor. -George Christy, The Beverly Hills Courier <br> Gross relishes every nefarious or audacious episode as he marches through the museum's fascinating history of curatorial excellence, social climbing, and skulduggery. It' s a tale of elitists versus populists, of spectacular gifts and scandals, trustees refusing to consider art made by living artists and formidable innovators, especially Robert Moses and Th

Praise for 740 Park <br> Tantalizing, intimate, engrossing, intriguing. A deeply researched book that deserves a prominent place among the social histories of 20th-century Manhattan. -- Washington Post<br> <br> One building as [a] microcosm of life on a silver platter. The voyeurism is so giddy that 740 Park sometimes feels like an extended feat of free-association. . . . Outside the work of Edith Wharton or Jane Austen, it's rare to find such brazen speculation about exactly what people are worth. Changing demographic and economic realities have made 740 Park a mirror of its times. --Janet Maslin, New York Times <br> [A] great read . . . gossipy . . . revealing. -- People <br> This is social history at its finest. --Dominick Dunne <br> 740 Park is the home of some of the world's wealthiest people. Gross takes readers inside its doorman-protected walls, exposing the shocking and sometimes tragic secrets the building has been guarding for nearly a century. -- Star <br> It took a reporter and storyteller like Michael Gross to lay out the epic tale--truly, the story of American capitalism and 20th-century New York society--that is 740 Park Ave. . . . This is the kind of heady terrain Gross knows well. -- Hartford Courant

Praise for Rogues' Gallery Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale, with all the elements of a gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed Vanity Fair -style takedown. -Maria Puente, USA Today Provocative. -Reid Pillifant, New York Observer Any and all facts that I knew of personally, the author gets absolutely right, which makes me trust much else in the book-and there's a great deal else, indeed an entire history of the museum beginning from its gradual birth in the 1870s, told as a kind of extended gossip dish, a dense and exhaustively factual one, about the powerful egos that drove it into prominence and kept it there. I am not particularly sympathetic to any view of the world as a gossipy chronicle. I didn't expect to like the book's tone, but I found a good 100 pages had gone by before I could even put it down. . . . The book is important, and what's more, splendidly readable. -Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com Highly entertaining. -Manuela Hoelterhoff, Bloomberg Gross' s coup is not only in the vast amounts of information he has obtained but also in his ability to tell a story about the rich and powerful people of New York nearly effortlessly and without disdain. -Jillian Steinhauer, ArtInfo.com . . . a pageturner that unravels like an elite whodunit, and is reaping encomiums from advance readers. Destined to be the talk of art circles in the U.S. and abroad. . . . Not only by art connoisseurs but by culturati hungry for a captivating, tattle-tale yarn, Rogues' Gallery will spark a furor. -George Christy, The Beverly Hills Courier Gross relishes every nefarious or audacious episode as he marches through the museum's fascinating history of curatorial excellence, social climbing, and skulduggery. It' s a tale of elitists versus populists, of spectacular gifts and scandals, trustees refusing to consider art made by living artists and formidable innovators, especially Robert Moses and Th

Author Information

"Provocative cultural journalist and ""New York Times ""bestselling author Michael Gross is currently a""""contributing editor at ""Travel & Leisure."" He has""""previously held positions at the ""New York Times,"" "" New York,"" ""Radar,"" ""George,"" and ""Esquire.""""""His writing has appeared in ""Vanity Fair,"" ""Interview,"" "" Details,"" ""Elle,"" ""Architectural Digest,"" ""American Photo,"" "" Town & Country,"" and ""Cosmopolitan,"" and he has also written for the ""Washington Post,"" the ""International""""Herald Tribune,"" the ""Village Voice,"" the ""San Francisco""""Chronicle,"" and the ""Chicago Tribune."" He has profiled subjects from John F. Kennedy Jr. to Greta Garbo, from Richard Gere to Ivana Trump, and he has written on subjects such as divorce, plastic surgery, Greenwich Village, and sex in the nineties. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling ""Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women"" (1995), which was published in eight countries; ""My Generation"" (2000), a biography of the Baby Boom generation; ""Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren"" (2003); and ""740 Park"" (2005). He currently lives in New York City."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available