The DU Lounge

...named for Frick. I never looked to see who he was, but when the moved the Chemistry Department to a new building, they kept the name.

He was an interesting guy, a coal and steel magnate involved in the Johnstown Flood apparently because his "hunting club" failed to maintain their dam.

It's not like contempt for the poor by the super rich is a new thing.

Henry Clay Frick.

I took out of the library this week, an interesting book, about which I learned from a wealthy person ironically enough, called "The Great Leveler", even more ironically printed by the Princeton University Press, which contends that the only solution to great wealth inequity is violence, i.e. kill the rich.

I'm not sure I'll find time to read it, as my reading backlog is enormous now. I'm having a very hard time keeping up.

In any case, thank you. The provenance of great art is troubling - the Met was largely financed by the Sackler family ultimately of Oxycontin fame (although a Sackler, Arthur, pre-oxycontin, can be credited with the creation of the modern pharmaceutical industry).

Irrespective of the provenance and the ugliness behind its acquisition, great art is still great art.

I'll check it out before I die, I hope, but next on my list for great NY museums is the Neue. I am a huge fan of Max Beckmann, and as a result, I am very interested in the Weimar era German Art, as the country descended into fascism.

Thanks again. I appreciate the knowledge.