John Alexander's retrospective gets a resounding thump from Blake Gopnik in today's Washington Post. The show, which just opened at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum in Washington D.C., was organized for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston by independent curator Jane Livingston, where it will travel on April 13. Opines Gopnik: "I'd place him somewhere up there among the 5,000 or so best artists in the country. Which is more than enough to justify his continuing to paint and collectors' continuing to buy him. What I don't understand is why our national art museum, with such limited exhibition slots and an already iffy reputation for its contemporary programming, would want to highlight such a secondary figure." Ouch.