Month: November 2000

So how’s the art market doing so far this season? “While the secondary market is looking sluggish, serious collectors are showing increased enthusiasm for major works by major artists. The result, according to many, is a feeding frenzy for top material.” – Forbes

This year’s Turner Prize goes to a photographer for the first time. The £20,000 prize, which has specialized in controversy in recent years, was awarded to Wolfgang Tillmans, a “German whose special line is taking pornographic homosexual pictures.” – The Telegraph (UK)

For the first time in memory, collectively the major museum shows in Manhattan are a flaccid, uninspired disappointment. “Perhaps it’s an anomaly. Certainly it’s the first time in memory that not a single big fall show will be remembered as being of more than cursory artistic significance. Tourism is one of Manhattan’s biggest industries, and cultural tourism is a linchpin to the city’s economy. For art museums, the urge is strong to court a huge and churning general public that’s more willing than ever to sample their offerings. While a single art season does not a watershed make, the fall 2000 season in the four big art museums certainly reflects an unmistakable long-term change. They’ve been aggressive in wooing the crowd.” – Los Angeles Times

• Why did New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani (not a politician particularly known for his love of visual art) go out of his way to get $67 million to the Guggenheim Museum for a new downtown museum? “Civic leaders have a responsibility to leave cities far greater and more beautiful than [they] were transmitted to us.” – Financial Times

For the $678 million project to go forward, the City Council has to sign off on it, as do the state and federal governments. The museum, of course, must raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build the project, which will include a performing arts center and public parks and plazas at three East River piers. – New York Times

The British Museum’s new £100 million Great Court was birthed in controversy. But the critics are raving: “My overall impression is that Norman Foster has given us the most surprising, and most sensationally beautiful, space in London.” But will success turn the venerable BM into a “recreational” museum like the Tate or Bilbao? – The Telegraph (UK)