From the Globe, more on the MFA’s recent Degas acquisition…
THANKS BUT NO THANKS That’s the answer WGBH-TV’s ‘’Greater Boston'’ got this week when it invited the folks at the Museum of Fine Arts to talk about their pricey new acquisition, Degas’s ‘’Duchessa di Montejasi With Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla.'’ The show’s producers figured George Shackelford, head of the MFA’s art of Europe department, might want to crow about the picture, which cost the museum more than $20 million. Wrong. After considering the ‘’timing and format'’ of the proposed feature, MFA officials declined to participate. ‘’We don’t have to accept every opportunity that’s presented to us,'’ said Lisa Colli, museum spokeswoman. Especially when Globe art critic Christine Temin is involved. Already smarting from Temin’s less-than-rave review of the piece (she wrote that the MFA owns better examples of the same genre by Degas), the museum made it clear to the show’s producers that it would prefer if Temin was not in the ‘’Greater Boston'’ segment. ‘’They decided they weren’t interested in doing an interview with us, and without them a feature is impossible,'’ said Anne Adams, supervising producer of ‘’Greater Boston. ‘’The door’s still open. We hope we can come back next week, or the week after, and do a piece that includes Christine.'’ The museum will only say maybe. ‘’It depends on the format,'’ Colli said.
The offending review, by the way, seems pretty spot on in its assessment of the painting: a great portrait, but an odd choice for the resources the MFA spent on it.
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