by Jon Lackman | 21 June 2006 | Journals
Leo Steinberg’s notable 2002 CAA talk has been reprinted in the Brooklyn Rail: “… back to that walking seminar in Rome, 1957 … I remember [Wolfgang Lotz] as a marvelous teacher, with one welcome flaw in his nature: a touch of laziness, which made him reluctant to read student papers during a summer jaunt. To spare himself without forgoing material for the assignment of grades, he devised an ingenious ploy. He led us into a church … doled out a portion to each of us, told us to study it for fifteen minutes, then report in three minutes what it was all about … To me fell the Cerasi Chapel of 1601 … When I had done, Lotz said simply: ‘That’s for The Art Bulletin.’ So I wrote the piece, and, back in New York, showed it to a well-meaning fellow-student, Meg Potter—long dead—who read the first paragraph and exclaimed in dismay: ‘But Leo, this isn’t written in Art Bulletin style!’ Too late. The piece was already in the hands of the then editor of The Art Bulletin, one James Ackerman, bless him, who wrote back on September 7, 1958—’We accept your paper with enthusiasm. It is a fascinating piece, and, thank God, decently written.’”
