Art News Roundup: Caravaggio, Klimt, Notre Dame, and the Smithsonian

If I’m counting correctly, this is my 50th monthly “in the news” piece, a storyline I introduced in 2021. Art news, that is — toward the end of every month, I survey the glass hive, reporting the good, the dubious, the bad, and the ghastly.

I tend to abhor hierarchies, but I’ll start with the good — or, I should write, wonderful — exhibition called He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model at the Museum of the City of New York. It’s a one-object show that just opened, but what an object. Over the past 20 or so years, Macken, a truck driver and Queens native, has been making a 50-by-27-foot aerial-view model of New York City showing tens of thousands of buildings made with balsa wood, cardboard, an X-Acto knife, and Elmer’s Glue. Greenery, rivers, roads, bridges, piers, beaches, and plazas make for a sweeping panorama. Never has New York looked so good. Icons such as Paul Manship’s Prometheus bronze at Rockefeller Center and the water tanks topping city buildings make for a fantasy world.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

If I’m counting correctly, this is my 50th monthly “in the news” piece, a storyline I introduced in 2021. Art news, that is — toward the end of every month, I survey the glass hive, reporting the good, the dubious, the bad, and the ghastly.

I tend to abhor hierarchies, but I’ll start with the good — or, I should write, wonderful — exhibition called He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model at the Museum of the City of New York. It’s a one-object show that just opened, but what an object. Over the past 20 or so years, Macken, a truck driver and Queens native, has been making a 50-by-27-foot aerial-view model of New York City showing tens of thousands of buildings made with balsa wood, cardboard, an X-Acto knife, and Elmer’s Glue. Greenery, rivers, roads, bridges, piers, beaches, and plazas make for a sweeping panorama. Never has New York looked so good. Icons such as Paul Manship’s Prometheus bronze at Rockefeller Center and the water tanks topping city buildings make for a fantasy world.