Any critic whose name is on the mailing lists of museums and galleries soon becomes inured to the extravagant claims found in press releases. So much so that the most bounteous string of superlatives is likely to be met with little more than a sigh. Yet there are occasions when a press-release statement, made on behalf of an artist or exhibition, is so preposterous that it can cause even the initiated reviewer to blanch. Such a moment came for this writer upon receiving notice of the exhibition “Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York” at the New-York Historical Society. In the press release, we are informed that one aspect of the show deals with the Ashcan School’s take on “changing gender roles.” Only in the politicized art world of the 1990s could it be suggested that stalwart fogeys like George Luks and John Sloan occupy the same ideological turf as Cindy Sherman.

The curators of “Metropolitan Lives” might balk at such a comparison, and it is an overstatement. But if you guessed that the paintings in this show are exhibited as a means of validating its wall labels, you would not be off the mark. “Metropolitan Lives” reduces art to artifact. It presents the paintings, drawings, and prints of the Ashcan School as historical documents overlaid with a polite veneer of politics. The art of Luks, Sloan, George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, and Everett Shinn is presented alongside postcards of the period, sheet music, brochures,