A ghastly assemblage.(Letter to the Editor)

To the Editors:

I was so provoked by James Panero's review of the exhibition "David, Empire to Exile" (June 2005) that I felt compelled to respond to what was a ghastly assemblage of misinformation and diatribe passing as reflection on an exhibition.

It is both irresponsible and simply wrongheaded to associate Philippe Bordes's catalogue for the exhibition with "Bad scholarship." Philippe Bordes is probably the preeminent scholar of David's work, and the catalogue brings significant documentary and interpretative insights. To claim that "The show exists for little reason other than to highlight some recent Getty and Clark acquisitions" is just utter nonsense (especially as the Telemachus and Eucharis was acquired by the Getty in 1987 and has already been the subject of a "Getty Studies" volume). While Mr. Panero is quick to follow others in, as we say, "stating the bleeding obvious" by remarking on the absence of the Oath of the Horatii, the Coronation, and the Distribution of the Eagles (paintings that never travel anywhere, as everyone in the museum world knows), Mr. Panero does not appear to have actually looked much at the walls of the exhibition itself or noticed the hang. Instead, what the readers of The New Criterion have been entertained with is a peculiar mix of off-the-cuff glibness and long, entirely beside the point diatribes against Marxist and ...