Thomas Crow is the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Previously, he served as director of the Getty Research Institute. Before moderating a panel on Los Angeles imagery through the decades, he sat down in the green room to talk art, surfing, and the color gray.
Q. What’s hanging on your living room walls?
A. A surfboard and works of art.
Q. You’re an expert on 18th-century France. Whom today should we guillotine?
A. I decline to state.
Q. How much do you miss L.A.?
A. Profoundly.
Q. What talent do you wish you had?
A. I wish I could surf like Kelly Slater.
Q. What’s your favorite color?
A. Certain varieties of gray.
Q. What do you do when you can’t sleep?
A. Put my headphones on.
Q. What do you do when you can’t wake up?
A. I just don’t.
Q. What would you like to put up for a referendum in California?
A. To repeal Prop 13.
Q. Seems like someone is always complaining about the Getty for some reason. Why does it get so much grief?
A. I think it’s the color.
Q. What painter’s work should I buy now?
A. Ron Davis.
*Photo by Sarah Rivera.