EDITORIAL

Montebello’s Way

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has not only a name that suggests the French aristocracy.

A Rolls-Royce collection of Oceanic art

Mark Blackburn’s collection of Pacific island art is one of the finest in the world. At home in Hawaii, he talks to Louise Nicholson about his ‘manic’ hunt for the best.

The Kimbell: a museum of masterpieces

This month marks the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Its extraordinary collection, housed in a world-famous building by Louis Kahn, takes its distinctive character from the museum’s policy of collecting only works ‘of the first class’. Its acting director, Malcolm Warner, introduces this special issue devoted to the Kimbell by explaining how this challenging aim has served it ‘triumphantly well’.

Where quantity yields to quality

Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell from 1998 to 2007, looks back over the successes and challenges during nine years of collecting for a museum interested only in the best.

Preserving the Light

The Kimbell’s conservation studio has always been central to the life of the museum.
Claire Barry, the chief conservator, discusses three case studies that demonstrate
how the department’s work has produced significant discoveries.

Kahn’s Kimbell

The Kimbell’s building is a masterpiece by Louis Kahn. Patricia Cummings Loud
traces the influence on it of architects and monuments that Kahn admired – from Roman
baths to Le Corbusier – and explains why it has so greatly influenced museum design in the 35 years since it was opened.

Knee-jerk controversy

Recent shortlists for the 25-year-old Turner Prize have been a little dull –
so why does the press get so excited?

Steam ahead

The proposed rebuilding of london’s euston station is an opportunity to atone for a great architectural crime.

Lost in a storm

In December 1970, John Beckwith described the career of Arthur Kingsley Porter, whose life, dedicated to architectural history, ended tragically.

A Cambodian masterpiece restored

Recent study and conservation of the Kimbell’s 7th-century Cambodian stone sculpture of the Hindu deity Harihara has renewed appreciation of its spectacular quality, and ended some doubts about its authenticity, writes Jennifer Casler Price.

Frida the Mexican

Mexico is embracing Frida Kahlo as an icon of national identity, as well as a feminist and communist. Gauvin Alexander Bailey reviews a huge monographic exhibition in Mexico City, of which parts will be shown through the USA.

Raising children

An exhibition of portraits of children reveals how British educational ideals influenced the Continent in the 18th century, writes Hugh Belsey.