A comprehensive portrait of a noteworthy patron of the arts.
One man’s journey from successful chemist to prominent art collector.
Born in Philadelphia, Albert Barnes (1872-1951) grew up working class in a part of town where bullies were so prevalent that he “taught himself to box by sparring with his brother.” Barnes eventually attended the University of Pennsylvania to study medicine yet remained “as keen to fight as ever.” That bulldozer attitude served him well. After graduation, he got a job with the drug company H.K. Mulford and Company, where, during off hours, he and a colleague developed the drug that made his fortune: Argyrol, a “silver-based antiseptic” used to treat gonorrhea. He would use his riches to build the Barnes Foundation, one of the most extensive modern art collections of the 20th century, with a focus on artists “with a socially progressive slant.” In this admiring work, Gopnik, author of a celebrated biography of Andy Warhol, documents the highlights of that collection, with its Cézannes, Renoirs, and El Grecos, and Barnes’ egalitarian impulses, such as his efforts to educate the public for the “improvement of human nature” and to provide opportunities for Black artists, although he “had the same white-savior complex as many of his peers on the left.” He even wrote books about art, one of which, The Art in Painting, is so prolix that, Gopnik writes, “reading analysis after analysis of his favorite paintings can feel like consulting the lab notes from a year’s worth of assays on a silver colloid.” As one can tell from that sentence, Gopnik is no slouch at wordiness, either. His prose can be arch, as when he notes that, in The Art in Painting, “Barnes perorates on the yellow and green rhythms in a Cézanne.” But this is a clear-eyed assessment of a champion of modern art, even if Barnes’ judgment wasn’t always keen. When he saw Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, he called it “so incoherent that it might as well have been called Cow Eating Oysters.”
A comprehensive portrait of a noteworthy patron of the arts.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780063284036
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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