Article: Fruit salad at the met: in the April 1989 issue, Anna Somers Cocks gave a withering reception to the Metropolitan Museum's 'Louis XIV State Bedroom'--perhaps the last gasp of the confected museum 'period room'.(From the APOLLO archives)

The 'Louis XIV' State Bedroom', opened with great fanfare at the Metropolitan Museum last year, puts me irresistibly in mind of the story of the 1930s hostess who proudly showed her new drawing room to Syrie Maugham, declaring it to be 'Louis XV', and got back the crushing response, 'My dear, whatever makes you think so?' The Met bedroom is a shockingly expensive pastiche financed by Mrs Charles Wrightsman, trustee and benefactor of the Museum, and although everyone in the furniture and interior architecture world knows it is a bad joke, no one dares say so for fear of offending Mrs Wrightsman, who also paid for a symposium to celebrate the opening.

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