The Quality Instinct: Seeing Art Through a Museum Director's Eye

If you are curious about the world of art, especially the relationship between the museum director or curator, the academic art historian, the art dealer/auctioneer, and collector, this will be a rare, insightful and candid view.Maxwell Anderson grew up with an unusual education, in retrospect seemingly tailor-made for his vocation. He cut his curatorial teeth at the Met, directed the Whitney, and most recently is Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. This very readable account of his experiences is at times a bit self-congratulatory, but not in an offensive way for me. The writing is generally good, a bit uneven at times, but eminently readable and enjoyable for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.

Imagine being given a private tour through the world’s most important museum by a charming and knowledgeable insider; ushered into rooms you didn’t know existed, shown the often-infinitesimal differences between a fake and a masterpiece, entertained with captivating stories and enlightened by a connoisseur’s insight about the attributes of all priceless art; be it a bust by Gian Lorenzo Bernini or a quilt from Gee’s Bend, Alabama.This marvelous book holds your hand and guides you from “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” to “I know what I like and I can clearly articulate why”. It's generous in the way that the best books by experts are; it gives the reader/viewer a sense of confidence and the nerve to envision that with enough study and enthusiasm, mastery might be within reach.

Extremely well written - approaches art from the standpoint of defining quality, artistic interpretation, use of materials, revelance to the history of the visual arts and personal appreciation.Does not use the 'usual' suspects for discussion - selects works that truly reflect artistic integrity in all of it's many guises.

The five features of what constitutes "quality" are appropriate and well thought out, but subjective which, in turn, makes the entire discussion of what constitutes quality moot. Also, the author spends a lot of effort in self-aggrandizement telling us how he found important works that others had missed, placed them in time through his extensive knowledge of classical art, etc. If you get the message on the five caracteristics, the rest is fluff.

This man's style of writing is exquisite, plus we are led to understand his development of comprehending "good, better, best" with respect to art.