Squat and monstrous, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum lies grimly along Fifth Avenue like the palace of some dour despot. But the men who choose its collections are not stonily infallible. Recently one blunder was exposed, many blunders alleged.
Alceo Dossena lives in Rome, where for years he has sculped in Classical and Renaissance styles. With the secrecy of an alchemist he produces the effect of century-long erosions on his statuary. Alceo insists that he is only a copyist. But he has a Greek Athena in the Cleveland Museum, a Renaissance tomb in the Boston Museum, a chastely draped Grecian maiden in the Metropolitan....
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