Recently, we reported here the unkind words of the LA Times reporter Elizabeth Snead about Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow. She called them “two of the coldest and least sexy actresses ...” (Paltrow and Kidman are set to star together in a daring sex-change movie.)

I was surprised at how many of our readers responded critically to Ms. Snead and stood up for the stars. Some readers suggested the reporter be sued for libel. Others just asked where she got off being so critical and unkind.

I have been wondering. Do big celebrities like Nicole and Gwyneth ever read this stuff and take it to heart? When Nicole showed up last week at the Country Music Awards, people seemed to be piling on against the Australian beauty, there for her husband, Keith Urban.

Nicole’s lips were too plump, said some, reflecting on the notorious pucker of Meg Ryan. Others commented that her bosoms were suspiciously “aloft”—that her bountiful cleavage had “caused a stir” on the red carpet.

Please! Two coats of lipstick will fill out any mouth. And every single time Nicole wears a low-cut gown, there’s rumor of breast augmentation. Has nobody ever heard of Victoria’s Secret?!

Speaking of Nicole Kidman, there she was last week at NYC’s Plaza Hotel with all of the other famous leading ladies from the upcoming Harvey Weinstein movie, “Nine.” Daniel Day-Lewis, their single leading man, joined them. It was definitely an autograph collector’s/ paparazzo’s dream.

If you’ve visited the Metropolitan Museum’s relatively recent arrangement of Hellenistic, Etruscan and Roman treasures, then you are beholden to a woman named Shelby White. The Met’s “Leon Levy and Shelby White Court” attests to her generosity and that of her late husband.

Shelby’s biography is replete with Mount Holyoke and Columbia University honors, board membership at the Met, and connections to the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harvard Museum, to name a few.

When her husband was alive, Shelby and Leon were the guiding lights behind the preservation of so many of the ancient world’s works of art. They were enthusiastic scholars and collectors. Shelby is a writer as well, the author of a book we have mentioned in this space, “What Every Woman Should Know About Her Husband’s Money.”

Now, Shelby has added another feather to her historical, archaeological and collecting cap. She bought a huge Manhattan mansion on 84th Street between 5th and Madison avenues and completely did it over, creating a gallery, lecture hall and banquet space.

Here, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World is her brainchild, in connection with New York University. And Shelby’s mansion offers an unprecedented chance to see extraordinary works of art from so-called “Old Europe.” (This is a relatively new term, coined in 1984 by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. It refers to Southeastern Europe, in particular the civilizations of the Danube Valley—Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Malta.)