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I’m not altogether sure that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is taking its new, entertaining, and utterly charming exhibition dedicated to photography and the occult, entirely seriously. At the launch party for “The Perfect Medium” last month, giggling guests sipped smoke-shrouded potions to woo-woo-woo Theremin tunes, as vast projected images of the séances of a century ago shimmered silver-and-gray against the walls of a great hall that could just, just for a moment, have been in Transylvania. Up beyond the sweep of the Met’s Norma Desmond staircase, a cheery crowd thronged past antique photographs of spirits, charlatans, and strange, [...]
Ghosts in The Machine: Spooky looks at the Met.
October 31, 2005
The Perfect Medium (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC); published originally in National Review Online
There is something a little peculiar about the BBC’s advance publicity for “Byron,” a half-hidden hint of embarrassment, a discreet cough of discomfort, which suggests it’s a touch worried that this glossy, entertaining new biopic might, like the unfortunate Lady Byron, be taken the wrong way. Could it be that “Byron,” which airs at 9 p.m. this Saturday on BBC America, is an unsuitably aristocratic topic for the obligatory, if strained, New Labour egalitarianism of the British broadcaster? Just in case it could, the BBC takes pains to quote earnest claims by “Byron” star Jonny Lee Miller (“Trainspotting” and Angelina [...]
Mad, Bad & Too Dangerous To Show
October 21, 2005
Byron; published originally in The New York Sun