Author: Douglas McLennan

Wednesday July 31

GREATER ROLE FOR ART: The Palace Museum in Taiwan holds some of China’s great art treasures. But the museum was also a political statement, created by Chiang Kai-shek after fleeing from the mainland in 1949. But now, “with the Nationalist Party’s fall from power in Taiwan, the museum has begun to change. Paintings and busts of Chiang Kai-shek have been removed. An ambitious construction project will soon begin, creating more space for tour groups and lectures instead of reception halls for diplomats and politicians. ‘I hope to change this museum from political to art,’ says the museum’s new director.” The New York Times 07/31/02

DESIGN THIS: Since the six proposed designs for the World Trade Center site have been pretty much unanimously discarded, officials overseeing the process have decided to solicit designers who may have been excluded before. “Many such groups were excluded from consideration for the first design contract because of their relative lack of experience working on big projects in New York. For instance, the firms were required to have 10 years of urban planning experience and to have worked on at least three $100 million projects.” The New York Times 07/30/02

TRAGEDY THROUGH THE EYES OF ART: As the anniversary of September 11 grows near, New Yorkers are wondering how artists will mark the event. “There’s an obvious desire to see how the city has changed over the past year through its art. After all, New York art was always so responsive to social upheaval. From the mid-Eighties, for example, the art community was profoundly affected by Aids and spoke articulately of the crisis… London Evening Standard 07/30/02

TATE IN SPACE… Think today’s ambitious museums have lost perspective with their expansion plans? The Tate pokes fun at its ambitions. “First there was Tate Britain. Then there was Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives. Next, coming to a galaxy near you: Tate in Space – an extraterrestrial art-exhibition venue for space tourists in search of intergalactic cultural enrichment. ‘In order to fulfill their mission to extend access to British and International contemporary art, the Tate Trustees have been considering for some time how they could find new dimensions to Tate’s work. They have therefore determined that the next Tate site should be in space’.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/31/02

Tuesday July 30

NEW ATTENTION FOR WOMEN ARTISTS: As a group, women artists have not received nearly the attention of their male counterparts. But in Australia, a recent string of big sales of work by women artists has caught the attention of collectors. Sydney Morning Herald 07/30/02

FIXING UP STONEHENGE: Stonehenge is a world heritage site. Yet it shows to very poor advantage. “The monument remains imprisoned within wire fences, and clenched in the fork of two busy roads. It is 13 years since the parliamentary public accounts committee condemned the present arrangements as ‘a national disgrace’.” Now English Heritage has announced some funding to fix up the surrounding site. The Guardian (UK) 07/27/02

Monday July 29

ANOTHER AUCTION SCANDAL? Sotheby’s is facing a crimminal investigation over a £49 million Rubens painting which was sold by an Austrian woman earlier this month. “Public prosecutors in Austria launched an inquiry after they were handed a dossier from an anonymous source claiming the company had conspired with the painting’s owner to conceal the true identity of the Old Master.” The Scotsman 07/28/02

“WHAT IS HAPPENING IS A CRIME”: Greece is building a museum at the base of the Acropolis to house the Parthenon Marbles, if Britain ever returns them. Greece is rushi9ng to get the $100 million museum open before the 2004 Olympics. But “a growing number of critics say the government is damaging other antiquities in a rush to make the museum ready in time. They charge that excavation at the museum’s site at the foot of the great Acropolis citadel has uncovered substantial Roman, Byzantine and Stone Age ruins that provide vivid archaeological snapshots of ancient Athens, and that development should be delayed while the remains are studied.” Washington Post 07/29/02

LOOKING AT DAVID: Michelangelo’s statue of David is one of the most-recognized scultures in the world. Yet the statue has some problems with proportion. “Some of the oddities of the statue come from its curious history – Michelangelo was handed a huge block of marble that another sculptor had made a start on. More complexities are contributed by its contemporary meaning; it has often been thought that it had a specific political meaning for a Florence in the wake of Lorenzo de Medici’s death and Savonarola’s deranged austerity. The more one looks at it, the less familiar and comprehensible it seems.” The Observer (UK) 07/28/02

BBC BUILDS FOR GREATNESS: The BBC may be a world leader in broadcasting, but its sense of visual style has never been great. That changes with the opening of a dramatic new headquarters. “The most dramatic feature of the building will be a vast newsroom – at 5,000 square metres the largest in the world – taking up virtually the whole of the lower ground floor of the main part of the building. It will be a symbol of the importance of the BBC in British, indeed world, culture.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/29/02

REVERSE BEGGING: An artist in Colchester England is given £300 and had 24 hours in which to spend it. He began asking people on the streets if they’d like it. “Instead of asking people for spare change I said, ‘Would you like some spare change, mate?’ When people saw that image they automatically went into their beggar mode, and said, ‘No mate’.” BBC 07/28/02

Sunday July 28

LOOKING TO DIVERSIFY? Planners are trying to jam so much into whatever will replace the World Trade Center that the design proposals so far are a hodgepodge acceptable to no one. “Perhaps the real lesson for the planners of the World Trade Center site is the same lesson as that of the stock market, just a couple of blocks from the WTC site. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket – instead of betting on all that office space – maybe the developers should look into diversification.” Boston Globe 07/28/02

SFMOMA’S NEW MAN: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been on an amazing upward trajectory in the past 15 years. Fueled by dotcom money, the museum built a new home and acquired an impressive collection. But Neal Benezra, SFMoMA’s new director comes into the job at a time of newly-imposed austerity. “SFMOMA remains in relatively good financial health – it has an $80 million endowment and continues to draw big crowds to shows such as last year’s Ansel Adams exhibition – but it laid off a dozen staff members in January and faces a $1 million deficit.” San Francisco Chronicle 07/28/02

Friday July 26

OLD TIME FRENZY: The biggest thing in New Hampshire each August? Antiques Week, a series of sales of American collectibles. Participants are a serious lot. “People come by the thousands. Customers line up at 2 a.m. the night before the show opens. These people are fanatics. They are so afraid they are going to miss something.” The New York Times 07/26/02

CHAGALL RETURNS HOME: It was a curious theft – a Chagall stolen in June 2001 from the Jewish Museum in New York, where it had been on loan. “A group calling itself the International Committee for Art and Peace sent a note saying it would not be returned until there was peace in the Middle East.” But it was later found in Kansas City. Now it’s been returned to its home in St. Petersburg, Russia. BBC 07/26/02

PARKING IT IN PHILLY: Philadelphia has arguably one of the most beautiful city skylines in America. Colonial architecture dovetails with sweepingly modern skyscrapers in an unusually successful marriage of old and new styles. But a new threat to the city’s architectural continuity has arisen, and is threatening to take over the city. “Philadelphia is a city where land is cheap but new construction is expensive. Because [parking] lots cost so little, they are a low-risk way to make money on open land until someone comes up with a better idea. Put another way, surface lots are a form of land speculation.” Philadelphia Inquirer 07/26/02

POLITICS ON PARADE: Even to the least cynical observer, the whole “animals-on-parade” concept (which began with cows in Chicago and has spread to nearly every animal in the barnyard in various American cities) has grown a bit tired. But Washington, D.C. may have found the right way to embrace the fad – with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The district’s parade of donkeys and elephants has a decidedly ironic feel – witness the “Florida Hybrid” elephant decorated with butterfly ballots. This being the nation’s capital, however, politics is inevitably involved: the Green Party has sued in an effort to force organizers to include their party emblem as well (it’s a sunflower – seriously) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is outraged that it isn’t being allowed to display one of the elephants with a meathook in its side. Ah, Washington in summertime… Chicago Tribune 07/26/02

Wednesday July 24

APPROPRIATION IS THE GREATEST FORM OF FLATTERY? Artists have always looked to other artists for inspiration. But what about artists who borrow images from others and incorporate them into their work? “Perhaps we are coming close to the computer world’s notion of the image as shareware. No one really owns it, it is constantly available, sometimes useful, sometimes disposable.” London Evening Standard 07/23/02

VANISHING ART: A half hour north of San Francisco there is a cave with paintings inside dating back to 500 AD. But they are deteriorating quickly. “The paintings present California officials with a dilemma as they try to balance the desire for access with the need for preservation. It’s an issue tackled at ancient sites around the world – from the Egyptian pyramids to national parks in the United States.” New Jersey Online (AP) 07/23/02

WHAT THEY COLLECT: “Of the 497 billionaires on the Forbes list of billionaires, 36 singled out by The Art Newspaper are known as major art collectors, although a good number of the others decorate their properties with pictures. When it comes to taste, 22 of the 36 collectors go for Modern and contemporary. Impressionism lags some way behind, with only 8 collectors. Clearly those with ultra financial ambitions opt for the cutting edge.” The Art Newspaper 07/19/02

OASIS AMIDST THE SPRAWL: An hour north of Philadelphia, an endless chain of strip malls and suburban sprawl gives way to a town small enough to be missed, but cultured enough to play host to an astonishing collection of American art. This is Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and from a poured-concrete castle highlighting some of America’s most innovative tile art to a surprisingly high-profile museum housed in an old 19th-century prison (and named after longtime denizen James Michener,) it has managed to maintain a prideful grip on an impressive array of regional art of the type usually only found in cities and private collections. Washington Post 07/24/02

Tuesday July 23

BMA ON A DOWN CYCLE: The British Museum draws 400,000 visitors a month – a success by any standard. “But beneath its familiar exterior, the museum, Britain’s most visited tourist attraction, is in turmoil. Even after several years of steep cuts, its budget deficit, growing steadily, is projected to reach almost $8 million in the next 18 months. A planned $118 million study center, once a cornerstone of the museum’s long-term strategy to engage the public more directly, has been abandoned. At any given time the museum keeps more than a dozen galleries closed to the public, another way of cutting costs. Meanwhile morale there is at rock bottom.” The New York Times 07/23/02

WORLD’S UGLIEST BUILDINGS: The ugliest buildings in the world? Forbes thinks it knows. These are buildings that cost a lot and should have been great – but aren’t. Some are obvious – the Millennium Dome is no one’s idea of great. But SFMoMA? Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project? Forbes 07/23/02

RECIPE FOR BOREDOM (AND MENACE?): Sydney is requiring use of a pattern book to guide designers of the city’s apartment buildings. “The pattern book, naturally enough, standardises detail, material and composition. And there’s the rub, since gains in taste are matched by losses in ingenuity and creative freedom. It yearns to improve design, but really just makes it plain that design is not a recipe game. But for it to be imposed from above, even on a nominally advisory basis, is menacing indeed.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/23/02

THE NEW MEDICIS: Some of today’s richest billionaires have taken a serious interest in art. “Their interest in the international art market is not just that of billionaires who enjoy the thrill of having an Old Master or a modern masterpiece displayed in the living room, however. As well as aesthetics and ostentation they are also encouraged by the continuing unpredictability of the stock markets. When share prices fall and the world’s wealthiest investors stand to lose billions, it is not surprising that they look for other repositories for their spare cash. And, in a bear market, fine art is the place for money to be.” The Independent (UK) 07/22/02

Monday July 22

THE ONE THAT ALMOST GOT AWAY: When a rare Van Dyck painting was recently offered to Tate Britain after the death of its owner, the museum jumped at the chance. Only one problem – the museum’s acquisitions budget has been cut so much (like at most British museums), the painting almost got away… The Telegraph (UK) 07/22/02

IN SEARCH OF A CLIENT: Why do the plans for replacing the World Trade Center seem so flat and uninspired? “New York’s finest skyscrapers have virtually all been the product of this synergy between an architect hitting his stride and a strong-willed client with a clear program and the ambition to make a mark. It’s hard to imagine how such a relationship can arise in downtown New York today. Even as the six draft plans for the trade center site were unveiled last week, it remains difficult to pinpoint who the client is amid the byzantine lines of command. It is not just a question of how the architects were selected, it is the lack of clarity in the program. These are not conditions for creating lasting architecture.” The New York Times 07/21/02

LATERAL MOVE? (AT BEST): Fifteen years ago Neil MacGregor took over the National Gallery in London and made a big success of the job. But apparently he needs a truly impossible job, so he’s taking over the top spot at the troubled British Museum. Why? The Art Newspaper 07/20/02

NATIONAL AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM: Plans are moving ahead for a National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. “One possible location for the museum is the 120-year-old Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian Institution, which is used for temporary exhibitions. But a new building is a possibility, despite the limited space on the Mall. The museum will be paid for by contributions from the public, said officials, who added that a preliminary cost estimate will be ready this fall.” The New York Times 07/22/02

WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF CALVIN KLEIN: When a group of Cistercian Trappist Bohemian monks went looking for an architect to design their new monastery they found themselves admiring a Calvin Klein store in New York. So architect John Pawson got the call. “If ever there were a marriage made in heaven, this was it. What the monks learned, to their delight, is that this was the commission Pawson had been dreaming of for decades.” The Guardian (UK) 07/22/02

Sunday July 21

CLOSING THE PRICE GAP: “For the first time in recent auction history, the huge gap separating Impressionist and Modern paintings from Old Masters was almost bridged last week at a Sotheby’s sale, where a Rubens set a record for the Flemish master at £49.5 million ($76.6 million). In fact, it could be argued that Old Masters are running ahead since the sale.” An isolated anomaly, or a sign of auction reality to come? International Herald Tribune (Paris) 07/20/02

• CROWDING OUT THE FIELD: Blockbuster sales like this week’s record-setting auction of a Rubens at Sotheby’s are exciting, certainly, but “the truth is that, although the price for the Rubens will raise the profile of Old Masters, it does not reflect what is really going on. The total for Sotheby’s main sale was £67.5 million but, subtracting the Rubens, it was £18 million, with a third of the 83 lots failing to sell.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/20/02

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL: The fault for the decidedly substandard proposals for New York’s memorial to the victims of 9/11/01 does not lie with the city’s developers alone, says Joel Budd. “Because of many conflicting pressures, the Development Corporation has not been allowed to make its decisions in peace. The families of those killed on September 11 have formed two pressure groups – September’s Mission, and the Coalition of 9/11 Families – to try to prevent development on the site. They are opposed by three local organisations” which want mixed-use development on the site. In other words, politics has once again overshadowed real progress, but that doesn’t change the basic reality that the six design proposals are just not good enough. The Telegraph (UK) 07/20/02

THE PEEP SHOW: Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre has something of a PR problem on its hands following the gallery’s efforts to shield its more sensitive patrons from a painting it feared would spark controversy for its explicit sexual content. The painting in question (which depicts a sexual act with racial and political overtones) was not removed from the Centre, but placed “on display” in a closed case with a small peephole in it, along with a warning about the content. The artist, surprisingly enough, is not thrilled with the arrangement. Toronto Star 07/21/02

PAINTING ON THE ROPES? “Judging from the two big international shows in Europe this summer, one might almost conclude that painting is no longer a viable art form. There’s barely a canvas to be seen in either Documenta 11, the latest version of the global survey that takes over Kassel, Germany, every five years, or its no-frills, equally earnest doppelgänger, Manifesta 4, a short train ride away in Frankfurt. Instead, video — that sleek, cost-efficient, hypnotizing successor to installation art — and photography rule the international survey circuit. Perhaps quixotically, museums in two other European cities have taken the opposite tack, mounting exhibitions devoted to painting alone.” The New York Times 07/21/02

NOT ALL RICH PEOPLE ARE JERKS: “Eli Broad is one of the richest people in America: His $5.2 billion fortune places him at No. 51 on this year’s Forbes magazine list. He is also one of the nation’s most charitable individuals: The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked him No. 5 last year, when he gave away more than $387 million. And he’s one of the world’s greatest art collectors: The current Artnews list puts him in the top 10. Another collector might build a Broad Museum. But this entrepreneur, who gives far more to public school causes than he spends on art, has instead created a ”lending library” of the contemporary work that is his focus.” Boston Globe 07/21/02

Friday July 19

CRITIQUING THE WTC MEMORIAL: The reviews are trickling in for the six proposals unveiled in New York this week for how to use the space formerly occupied by the World Trade Center towers. The biggest complaint seems to be the seemingly nonsensical decision to rebuild all the office space the towers contained, despite high existing vacancy rates and the city’s stated desire to turn the area into a thriving residential neighborhood. “As the designs make clear, the money men… holders of the office and retail leases to the 16-acre site — really are in charge. The plot’s owner, the Port Authority, is only too happy to go along with their plans to rebuild all the commercial space contained in the old World Trade Center. Why? Because it would get $120 million a year.” Chicago Tribune 07/19/02

FRAME-UP: David Thomson, the billionaire chairman of the Thomson newspaper group, was the winning bidder for Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents last week. He paid a record £49.5 million, but is said to have been unhappy with the painting’s frame. So he was busy this week putting together another £20,000 to change it. The Guardian (UK) 07/19/02

GERMAN BONANZA ON THE BLOCK: “A $20 million collection of German Expressionist and modern art that has been in the same Stuttgart family for three generations will be auctioned on Oct. 8 and 9 at Sotheby’s in London. The sale includes major German and Austrian paintings by artists including August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky and Alexei von Jawlensky, along with watercolors and prints by Max Beckmann and Max Pechstein.” The New York Times 07/19/02

ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR: Los Angeles is redesigning LAX, its airport. It’s a long-overdue makeover. And yet it reflects the nation’s apparent paranoia about security after last September 11. The plan “signals a significant shift in how we view the public realm. It sacrifices freedom of mobility for the illusion of invulnerability and the demands of continual surveillance. As such, it represents a new architecture of fear.” Los Angeles Times 07/19/02

VIENNA COMES TO NEW ENGLAND: “Vienna in the Berkshires in the summertime sounds like a publicist’s dream. And in a sense the series of cultural events called the Vienna Project, under way this summer in western Massachusetts, is exactly that. Nearly a dozen local museums, theaters and musical institutions are offering 20th-century Viennese fare, which means Strauss lieder, paintings of alpine landscapes and a “Sound of Music” singalong.” The New York Times 07/19/02

Thursday July 18

GREAT WALL IN PERIL: Experts warned this week that the Great Wall of China is endangered by increased tourism, graffiti, and unauthorized construction. “Peddlers have put up unauthorized ticket booths and ladders and collect money from Chinese and foreign tourists venturing to its wilder sections.” Discovery 07/17/02

THE RAPHAEL BEHIND THE PAINT: A Renaissance painting of a Madonna by a disciple of Raphael was in fact directed by the master himself. Scientists used an infrared device to peer behind the paint and discovered “the outlines of a picture almost identical to a Raphael sketch owned by Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. The original idea for the painting, its conception and the layout of the figures is almost certainly Raphael’s.” BBC 07/18/02

LONG ROAD TO HERMITAGE: A painting by Russian avant-gardist Kasimir Malevitch is now hanging in the Hermitage. The long and tangled story of how it got there begins with some potatoes. “Relatives of Malevich’s wife, the story goes, had hidden the painting from the Soviet authorities in a crate of potatoes. When times changed, a young man from the family wrapped the painting in a blanket, put it in a gym bag and brought it to the bank, hoping to offer it as collateral for a loan…” The New York Times 07/18/02

OUT OF FASHION: Why is the British Museum currently in a funding crisis? Outgoing BMA director Robert Anderson says there’s money for art – just not for traditional BMA functions. “The current financial restrictions are symptomatic of a broader problem: there is waning enthusiasm for the traditional functions of museums. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has plenty of money to give out, but collecting and interpreting the artefacts of human history is just not where it’s at. The museums that get money today are those that play to the new government agenda of social inclusion: running projects to improve self-esteem or reduce prejudice, or using new technologies to increase community participation. There is little support for the idea that objects and knowledge have a value in and of themselves.” Spiked-online 07/17/02

Wednesday July 17

REPLACING THE WTC: Six proposals were unveiled Tuesday for projects on the site of the World Trade Center. Each proposes multiple towers. None imagines any of them taller than 85 stories. Here’s a look at the plans. New York Magazine 07/16/02

• TALLER, BIGGER: With towers, some of the proposals envision structures taller than the old Twin Towers. Each would replace the commercial space of the former buildings. “The plans call for as much as 10 acres to be set aside for a memorial, although only four proposals preserve the tower footprints. Those plans envision taller office buildings and a denser development scheme than the two designs that build over the footprints.” New York Daily News 07/17/02

HARVARD CANCELS MUSEUM PLANS: Harvard has canceled plans to build a new museum which was to have been designed by Renzo Piano.” It’s a body blow to the mood of robust expansion that had prevailed among Boston-area museums – at least until the recent dive in the stock market. It greatly weakens recent signs the Boston area was on the verge of becoming a significant center for contemporary art. It makes the new Harvard administration look like philistines and the community that opposed the museum look parochial and petty.” Boston Globe 07/17/02

FOUR CONNECTICUT MUSEUMS TO CLOSE? Because of huge state budget cuts, four Connecticut historical museums may have to close. “The approximately 44 percent reduction in state aid means either the museums, which employ 12 people, or the Connecticut Historical Commission’s preservation division will have to close. The preservation office works to protect the state’s cultural resources and has 10 staff members.” Hartford Courant 07/17/02

THE NBT’S (NEXT BIG THINGS)? So what is to take the place of the YBA’s since the Young Brit Artists aren’t so young anymore and their ideas are getting a bit too familiar? Richard Dorment thinks the Whitechapel Gallery’s new show is a door to the future. “All five of the artists in the show are terrifically talented, but one in particular, 29-year-old Gary Webb, is the most original young artist I’ve come across in almost 15 years of writing art criticism.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/17/02

UNABLE TO ACQUIRE: Britain’s major museums have slashed their budgets for acquisitions of art. “Twenty years ago the five museums and galleries we examined received £7,897,000 in grant-in-aid specifically for acquisitions. This year they are allocating just £855,000—down nearly ten times. The fall in real terms is even greater, because of inflation. Art prices have probably tripled, which means that government grant in aid for acquisitions was effectively nearly 30 times higher two decades ago than it is today.” The Art Newspaper 07/14/02

STAR ADDITIVE: There’s been no official announcement, but architect Frank Gehry has signed on to design a major $150 million expansion of the Art Gallery of Ontario in his hometown of Toronto. The announcement can be expected later in the summer after details of the deal are finalized and Gehry has a vacation. But now “one of the most intriguing questions at the moment: How will the AGO deal with the feisty neighbours who are steadfastly resistant to any expansion of the museum?” Toronto Star 07/17/02

MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY PICTURE: An astonishing 5.5 million visitors go to the Louvre each year to see the Mona Lisa. It’s a great painting, sure. But its fame is the product of many things… The New Republic 07/15/02

Tuesday July 16

JACKHAMMERING ANTIQUITIES: Greece has been trying for years to get Britain to return the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum. Now the Greeks are building a swank museum at the base of the Parthenon to house the marbles and want to make it “so magnificent that Britain will finally bow to its demand to return” the statues. But to build the museum, authorities are destroying “a unique archaeological site” including “the impressive remains of an ancient Christian city and Roman baths, dating from the late Neolithic era to the post-Byzantine period. At the foot of the Acropolis. As bulldozers continued razing buildings surrounding the site yesterday, some 300 prominent Greek archaeologists and architects, and other leading lights in the arts and sciences, denounced the ‘cultural vandalism’ in a petition.” The Guardian (UK) 07/15/02

A GIANT GLASS… London’s distinctive new City Hall opens this week. “The striking circular structure once dubbed the ‘glass testicle’ by [London mayor] Ken Livingstone was designed by Lord Foster and cost £43m under a private finance deal. It is being hailed as one of the most inspired new buildings in Europe since the unveiling of the Pompidou Centre in Paris 25 years ago.” The Guardian (UK) 07/15/02

THE RIGHT TO CRITICIZE: Earlier this year The Art Newspaper reported on destruction of World Heritage artifacts by the Israeli army in Palestine. “We reminded readers that the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage contravenes the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and that Israel is a signatory to this convention.” The reaction of readers was immediate, and charges of anti-semiticism flew. Yet pointing out and criticizing behavior is not anti-semitic, writes Anna Somers Cocks, the Art Newspaper’s editor. It is a responsibility. New Statesman 07/15/02

SUPPORTING THE STRIKE: Sir Timothy Clifford, director of the Scottish National Galleries, has surprised supporters of the museum by saying he sided with the museum’s workers in their recently threatened strike against the museum. “For far too long, we have not been paying our museum staff enough. They work extremely hard and deserve to be paid properly. They are perfectly correct to stand up for their rights. Speaking from a personal point of view, I know I am the lowest-paid director of a gallery in the UK, so it is no bad thing that these concerns are being looked at.” The Scotsman 07/14/02

Monday July 15

TO OWN A HITLER: Hitler was a painter – but one with modest talent. Nonetheless, “there is a busy and lucrative trade in Hitler’s artwork mostly watercolours, a few oils, lots of hand-painted postcards (some of which were actually sent and include birthday salutations and wish-you-were-here vacation greetings on the flip side), and a few 1-by-2-inch miniatures that reveal an obsession with architectural detail. What does it mean now, half a century later, to own a Hitler, to hang it in a place of honour in your front hall, to want it so badly that you fight the government for decades for the right to call it your own?” The Age (Melbourne) 07/15/02

SEE GLOBAL BUY LOCAL: The world of fashion has been dominated in the past couple decades by global fashion houses – slickly marketed designer chic intended for the streets of Paris to Beijing. But there are signs that is changing, that the global fashionistas are giving up some ground to small distinctive designer houses. The Age (Melbourne) 07/15/02

AESTHETIC PROTECTION: Since the Oklahoma bombing and September 11, Washington DC’s official buildings and monuments have been ringed with ugly barriers. “Walk the grounds of the Capitol and the Mall, as I do every day, and you can only be depressed by the spectacle of places once renowned for their beauty now ringed by fences and barriers and police cars, not to mention the ubiquitous presence of police officers, few of whom seem to have done any time in charm school.” A new report suggests more aesthetic protection – we’re in for the long haul. Washington Post 07/15/02

Sunday July 14

‘TATE MODERN OF THE NORTH’ OPENS: “The doors of the new £46m Baltic contemporary arts centre next to the River Tyne opened to the public at one minute past midnight on Saturday. Five thousand art enthusiasts queued for the opening of the gallery, dubbed the “Tate Modern of the north”, which is housed in an old flour mill… The gallery aims to put the north east of England on the art world’s map after many years of London hogging the limelight with big UK galleries.” BBC 07/13/02

• VERY PRETTY, BUT WHAT IS IT FOR? “Baltic has no permanent collection of art. Nothing ancient or modern, nothing contemporary, nothing famous or cherished or hated. This is one of its founding principles. Another is its avowed to decision to go it alone – no loaned sharks, no touring shows, nothing borrowed in any quantity from London.” A risky strategy, perhaps, but one which the Baltic’s directors hope will result in something more than just another regional museum. The Observer (UK) 07/14/02

THE COLLECTOR’S EYE: Art collecting is a delicate process for the investor who expects to see any return on his purchases. Artists fall in and out of fashion faster than Oscar dresses, and a must-have engraving in 1900 may be all but worthless a few decades later. So what is the trick to finding value in something as undefinable as art? It’s a lot more complicated than “I know what I like,” but one of Canada’s top collectors seems to think that that’s not a bad place to start. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/13/02

MORE FLAK FOR DOCUMENTA: This year’s Documenta exhibit in Germany has been catching a fair amount of heat for being elitist, silly, and overly ambitious. Russell Smith is unsure of the worth of a show that requires the viewer to spend an inordinate amount of time reading dense academic explanations of obscure pieces. “Explaining abstract concepts in everyday language is far from a dumb activity; indeed it usually requires more intelligence than speaking in code does. That code is usually more vague than precise. It’s the dialect that’s a dumbing down.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/13/02

BRINGING IT ALL HOME: China has spent a good amount of time over the centuries being invaded, attacked, and plundered. One of the upshots of such a beleagured history is that a great many Chinese art pieces have been scattered to the winds, and have wound up, legitimately or not, in museums and private collections far from home. A new generation of collectors is attempting to repatriate many of the artifacts, and in the process, is driving up the cost of Chinese art worldwide. Philadelphia Inquirer (Knight Ridder) 07/14/02

NEW URBANISM AND THE BOSTON HIGH-RISE: New Urbanists are not really all that fond of urban landscapes at all. They tend to prefer small-scale construction to high-density city architecture, and they generally can’t stand high rises. So what was the Congress for New Urbanism thinking when they gave an award to the gigantic Ritz-Carlton Towers in Boston? “What the New Urbanists have figured out is that a place such as the Ritz can be a city version of the tightly clustered, mixed-use, humanly scaled world they cherish.” Boston Globe 07/14/02

LIBESKIND SPEAKS: The architect of the new Jewish Museum in Berlin explains his vision of what makes for good architecture in the modern world. “Buildings provide spaces for living, but are also de facto instruments, giving shape to the sound of the world. Music and architecture are related not only by metaphor, but also through concrete space.” The Guardian (UK) 07/13/02

Friday July 12

MIA EXPANSION UNVEILED: The Twin Cities are packed full of unusual-looking museums, from the Walker Art Center to the Frank Gehry-designed Weisman Museum. But the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts has always been proud to be the museum that looks like a museum – solemn, staid, majestic, and with plenty of columns. Architect Michael Graves is in charge of MIA’s upcoming expansion project, and the plans were unveiled yesterday. “The 117,000-square-foot addition will increase gallery space by 40 percent and add space for offices, art restoration, storage and framemaking. Inside, one of the most dramatic spaces will be a reception hall and a skylit dome that recalls the museum’s main rotunda. Three floors of new galleries will ring the light well under the dome.” The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 07/12/02

LATINO MUSEUM BACK ON TRACK: Being a niche museum is never easy, especially when the rock-bottom economy is giving even the biggest galleries fits. So it was something of a surprise this week to hear that LA’s beleagured Latino Museum of History, Art, and Culture has managed to dig itself almost completely out of debt, and is readying for a new beginning. The museum had been forced to close in 2000, but reopened earlier this year. Los Angeles Times 07/12/02

Thursday July 11

RECORD PRICE FOR A PAINTING: “A lost masterpiece by Rubens last night became the most expensive picture ever sold, when a rare books dealer paid £49.5 million to acquire it for a private collector at a Sotheby’s auction in London.” The Guardian (UK) 07/12/02

TOP TEN COLLECTORS: ARTNews is out with its annual list of worldwide art collectors. “In any given year, there are at least five people spending at least $100 million a year on art.” ARTNews 07/02

SUPERSIZE IT: Hilton Kramer isn’t impressed with the Museum of Modern Art’s new temporary home in Queens or with MoMA’s expansion plans. “It is with mixed feelings that we face this bigger MoMA and the other overscale expansions now in the works for the Morgan Library, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the High Museum in Atlanta and, of course, the ever-expanding, ever-deflating Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The only thing we know for certain about this mania for perpetual museum expansion is that it has everything to do with money and ambition, and very little to do with the life of art.” New York Observer 07/11/02

Wednesday July 10

FINDING MICHELANGELO: New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum has discovered it owns a Michelangelo drawing. It was discovered in a box of light fixture designs. “The drawing, purchased in 1942, was one of five anonymous Italian Renaissance works for which the museum paid a total of $60.” Its current value is between $10 million and $12 million, art dealers said. Washington Post 07/09/02

MAKE THEM STARS: How to build interest in historic buildings? How about a TV game show? “The BBC2 series, Restoration, is designed to interest viewers in historic treasures around the country and raise money to save the winning entry. Viewers will take part in regional heats over 10 weeks, voting for their favourite endangered buildings. The winner will be restored from cash raised by the programme.” The Guardian (UK) 07/09/02

ART BY DESIGN: We depend do much on design for the modern museum experience. Design can help clarify art, help give it a context, help focus our attentions. But does design also overwhelm the art we care about? London Evening Standard 07/09/02

NEW TAKE ON WAR: Manchester’s new Imperial War Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind “opens a new chapter in the treatment of war as a museum subject. Museums of war can make up for much of the missing context. They allow us to see behind the headlines, to read the full ghastly menu of war – the private notes of soldiers, the mapped strategies of generals, the account sheets of civilian casualties. The tone of such museums has to be handled with great care, however: they can so easily become vehicles of vainglorious nationalism or monuments to human despair.” Financial Times 07/08/02

Tuesday July 9

MURAL FIX: Fifty-one damaged outdoor murals in Los Angeles are awaiting repairs. “Many of the most heavily damaged murals were commissioned just before the 1984 Olympics by the Olympic Organizing Committee and local corporations, with the support of Caltrans. Most of the damage cited by the study was caused by vandalism, deterioration and dirt accumulation.” But the state has allocated enough money – $1.7 million – to repair only about half the murals. Los Angeles Times 07/08/02

ROYAL ACADEMY MAY MAKE CUTS: London’s Royal Academy is hurting for money, what with corporate sponsorships and ticket sales down since last fall. Now rumors that the RA may cut staff to save money. “The academy, which was set up in 1768 by artists for artists and counts David Hockney, Peter Blake and Norman Foster among its members, has become a £20m a year business.” The Guardian (UK) 07/06/02

MOMA – MISSING THE POINT? Critic Jed Perl doesn’t think much of the Museum of Modern Art’s new temporary home in Queens. “In recent years, the Museum of Modern Art has mostly seemed to be aware of experimentation as a p.r. value. At MoMA QNS the gathering of classics suggests a trophy perched on the edge of a dumpster. And the arrangement of contemporary art feels like a twelve-step program designed by somebody who is trying too hard to be hip.” The New Republic 07/08/02

Monday July 8

NEW ART EXAMINER DEAD? Is Chicago’s New Art Examiner, the city’s only visual arts magazine going out of business? The magazine is “said to be $150,000 in debt,” and shut down operations in May. It “canceled the July/August issue, laid off the staff and closed the office. Just a year ago, at a cost of more than $100,000, the Examiner was ‘re-launched’ following another financial crisis. The magazine has survived similar episodes in the past, but never has ceased publishing.” Artnet.com 07/05/02

THE DIMMING LIGHT: Thomas Kinkade is the most-collected painter in America. “More than 350 galleries in the US are dedicated entirely to his work. The income from his painting last year was more than $150 million.” Kinkade has also opened a housing subdivision based on his treacly paintings. But not all is going well for the “Painter of Light.” :Last year, the company posted losses of $16.6 million, having turned in a profit of $16.2 million the year before. Shares that stood at $25.75 in 1998 are now $3.66.” The Guardian (UK) 07/08/02

SAVING HAVANA: Havana’s celebrated architecture is endangered. But how to keep the city working while protecting heritage? “Everyone agrees it’s a city covered in a veil of nostalgia, of beautiful, crumbling decadence. But we’ve always believed it’s also necessary to reveal it as a functional city, not just a museum piece. There’s no validity in creating a theme park. So we desperately need to look for the balance.” Newsweek 07/08/02

Sunday July 7

DOCUMENTA PIGEONHOLES ITSELF: The Documenta festival in Kassel, Germany, may have hit a wall of its own creation with this year’s ultra-political edition. “It isn’t the presence of a political agenda, though, that is the problem with this installment of Documenta, which has been mounted every four or five years since 1955 and, since a landmark presentation in 1972, has earned a reputation as the most significant international survey of contemporary art in the world. It’s the near absence of diversity that grates. Through sheer numbers, Documenta insists that one kind of art–political art–is most significant today.” Los Angeles Times 07/07/02

THE JEWISH EYE: “To be a great photographer, Garry Winogrand liked to claim during the 1970’s, it was first of all necessary to be Jewish… As generalizations go, Winogrand’s semi-serious barroom boast has a lot of evidence to back it up. In no other visual art form except cinema over the last 100 years were Jews such a shaping force. From first decade to last, in fine art, reportage, portraiture, fashion and especially street photography, a staggering number of influential figures have been Jewish.” The New York Times 07/07/02

IT’S OUR BALL, AND WE’RE STAYING HOME: All around Europe, governments have been grappling with the issue of how to protect national artistic treasures obtained in times of war and pillage against the legal assaults of families who, quite legitimately, feel that the works belong to them. An exhibit of Czech works scheduled to be shown in France has been called back by the Czech government amid talk that a claim might be placed on the works by a French family. Calgary Herald 07/06/02

PURGING THE UGLY IN OHIO: “Kenyon is one of those small liberal arts schools that have won reputations far out of proportion to their size. Its curriculum draws applicants from around the country and beyond, and outside the classroom it boasts successes ranging from perennial champion swim teams to a highly regarded literary magazine, the Kenyon Review. But from the time its first permanent building was completed in 1829, Kenyon has taken almost as much pride in the look of its campus as in the quality of its education. The campus is mainly a collection of Gothic buildings, modeled after European churches and colleges. So now there is a campaign to cleanse it of architectural ugliness by tearing down buildings that people here call ‘sixties boxes’ or ‘unfortunate sixties mistakes.'” The New York Times 07/06/02

Friday July 5

SELLOUT: Last month Italy passed a law that would allow the state to sell off its assets to raise money. Does this include museums and architectural heritage? The law’s proponents say no. But there are nagging questions, and a few unsavory loopholes… The Art Newspaper 07/05/02

BLOOD SCULPTURE MELTS? Did workers at collector Charles Saatchi’s house destroy an important frozen artwork by unplugging the freezer in which it was stored? “Rumours spread after suggestions that Saatchi had stored a blood sculpture made by Britart’s enfant terrible, Marc Quinn, among his frozen peas. The work, Self, consists of Quinn’s head cast in nine pints of his own frozen, congealed blood.” The Guardian (UK) 07/04/02

CITY OF GLASS: Like many cities Tacoma is attempting downtown renewal through the arts. The city has opened a new $48 million museum dedicated to glass art. The Northwest is one of the centers of glass art and Dale Chihuly is the hometown boy. Still – the museum is hedging its glass bets by widening the museum’s focus to include other contemporary art. A crisis of confidence in the museum’s concept? Seattle Post-Intelligencer 07/05/02

• BUILDING AS SCULPTURE: “With one grand gesture, architect Arthur Erickson did the $48-million museum a tremendous favor by creating an identifiable image, but he did an even larger service to the community by providing an urban living room for the city.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 07/05/02
• Previously: TALE OF TWO MUSEUMS: A new international museum dedicated to glass art is opening in Tacoma Washington. The museum is a natural for the area, but it’s competing with a new art museum being built just a block away. “Many in the arts community are wondering how the two museums ended up in a neck-and-neck rivalry for patronage and programming. Are they serving the best interests of the public? And how will they avoid the kind of competitive one-upmanship their opening exhibitions signal?” Seattle Times 07/01/02

Thursday July 4

WHAT RIGHT’S RIGHT? Artist Rick Rush painted a picture of Tiger Woods after he won the Masters. Woods sued, claiming that he had not granted the rights for his image to be used. Now the case has become a major test of where the rights of artistic expression and celebrity licensing intersect, with major corporations, news organizations and artists all weighing in. The New York Times 07/04/02

DONOR PULLBACK HURTS MOCA: Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art is having its best year ever attendance-wise, with a popular Andy Warhol show drawing in the crowds. But the museum is facing a financial challenge after a donor who had pledged $10 million notified that $6.9 million of the pledge might not be mae after all due to a downturn in the donor’s business. Los Angeles Times 07/03/02

CRACKED EGG: Norman Foster’s new London City Hall is a huge glass egg that screams importance. “In theory, this building, which will be opened by the Queen on July 23, is the most important to be erected in the capital since County Hall, former seat of the London County Council and Greater London Council. Except that, in this case, the building’s message is sadly at odds with the reality of what is going to go on within it.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/04/02

HARVARD’S LOSS: James Cuno’s departure as director of the Harvard Museums to become director of the Courtauld Institute is “certainly not glad tidings for Harvard, with its famously ambivalent attitude toward art, especially of the contemporary sort that Cuno has championed. There is fear now that the progress Cuno has made will halt or even be reversed, that his agenda – including plans for a new Renzo Piano -designed museum on the banks of the Charles – will unravel.” Boston Globe 07/03/02

Wednesday July 3

TAKE YOUR FIRST PRIZE AND… Last week Randwick, Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts building won Australia’s top architecture award for public building. But the building’s neighbors tell a different story, accusing the project of “poor design, aesthetic ignorance and political maneouvring. Randwick Council has denounced the NIDA site on Anzac Parade, Kensington, as an ‘utter disgrace’, claiming that the back of the building was causing problems for thousands of local residents. The height of the building had also created an overshadowing problem for residents whose backyards adjoin the site.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/03/02

A MOVE AT THE RIGHT TIME: The Museum of Modern Art’s temporary move out to Queens is more than a physical dislocation. “With a long-serving chairman of the board stepping down, and two of its curators gone to new jobs, this is a time of profound transition for MoMA in every sense. One of the ironies of its move to Queens is that it is there and in the borough of Brooklyn that the really interesting new art in New York is being made and shown.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/03/02

NO REPATRIATION HERE: “A Swiss art gallery will be allowed to keep a Kandinsky painting looted by Nazis after reaching an out-of-court settlement with the artist’s family. The deal brings to an end the long-running dispute between the Ernst Beyeler Foundation and the heirs of Sophie Lissitzky-Kueppers over Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation Number 10.” BBC 07/03/02

HARD TO LIKE, EASY TO ADMIRE: Lucien Freud is currently being celebrated at the Tate. “I find Freud’s work hard to like and almost impossible not to admire. It constitutes a superb performance in a socially charged role. What this has to do with its artistic qualities is a question tangential to his prestige in England and among Anglophiles everywhere. One feels rather like a spoilsport—or an American, if that’s not the same thing—for bringing it up.” The New Yorker 07/01/02

• ESTABLISHMENT WOG? “Lucian Freud, a seemingly misanthropic senior citizen who paints unflattering portraits of a chosen few in all their lumpy and lardy nakedness, has been proclaimed by the papers – again – as our ‘greatest living painter’.” But is his position in today’s establishment better secured than his place in history? New Statesman 07/01/02

LACKING VISION IN TORONTO? The design for Toronto’s new opera house is in, and musicians ought to love it. With the spectre of the acoustically miserable Roy Thompson Hall hanging over the city’s music scene, architect Jack Diamond has taken great pains to insure a quality sound mix inside the new facility. But architecture critics claim that Diamond has sacrificed form to function, presenting a design that may be musically compelling, but lacks architectural focus. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/03/02

Tuesday July 2

THE RISE OF ZAHA HADID: Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid suddenly has some very big projects coming online. Like a megaproject in Singapore named “one-north – the city lies one degree north of the equator – the vast 200-hectare site will be home to a massive science and technology quarter. Costed at £14 billion, the masterplan will change the face of Singapore, and represents the boldest bid ever made by the sparkling city to plan for the future, to outsmart the awakening dragon of China.” Financial Times 07/02/02

HOME-WRECKERS: Some 1,700 historic English country houses were destroyed during the 20th Century, a shameful carnage visited upon the nation’s heritage. “The 1950s and 1960s were black decades for the country house. Just under 300 houses are recorded as lost during the 1950s, although the total is certainly higher; and the 1960s tells a similar sorry tale. Fire was frequently the cause, but demolition and deliberate abandonment, often by long-established families, was another reason for their demise.” The Times (UK) 07/02/02

WINKING AT THE TAX MAN: Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski is being investigated for tax evasion on purchases of art he bought but for which he didn’t pay sales tax, claiming that the work was being shipped out of New York. What gave him away? “Investigators had obtained a fax which listed some of the paintings that were being shipped to New Hampshire with the words ‘wink wink’ in parentheses, indicating that the objects were not going to New Hampshire but were instead going to Mr Kozlowski’s New York address.” The Art Newspaper 06/30/02

Monday July 1

THE NEED TO BE #1: Why is New York’s Museum of Modern Art going through the pain of relocation and rebuilding itself? “For most of the 20th century, MOMA was the most energetic and ambitious museum around, and was rewarded with many of the best Cezannes, Picassos and Pollocks. Now, the ample spaces of Tate Modern make a powerful pitch for their contemporary equivalents. The new Moma will counter this, by offering its finest and most prominent floor to contemporary art.” London Evening Standard 06/28/02

TALE OF TWO MUSEUMS: A new international museum dedicated to glass art is opening in Tacoma Washington. The museum is a natural for the area, but it’s competing with a new art museum being built just a block away. “Many in the arts community are wondering how the two museums ended up in a neck-and-neck rivalry for patronage and programming. Are they serving the best interests of the public? And how will they avoid the kind of competitive one-upmanship their opening exhibitions signal?” Seattle Times 07/01/02

WHERE WE LIVE: “Given that most of the world’s population lives in cities, we do need to understand the lure and the ways, good and bad, of cities. Most academic studies are inaccessible to the majority of people. Not only is the subject huge, but the language used is all too often as dusty as a summer street in central Cairo. Television has yet to help.” So how about a new museum? The Guardian (UK) 07/01/02

OUT OF AFRICA: Where was the first art made? Archaeologists have long thought it was Europe. But a South African archaeologist is “challenging the theory that artistic culture first developed in Europe about 35,000 years ago, after people had migrated out of Africa. He has dug up evidence which, he claims, shows that such behaviour evolved over 70,000 years ago—and in Africa.” The Economist 06/28/02

ART OF SAFE INVESTMENT: Recent London art sales suggest that investors may be turning to art as a stable investment as the stock market sinks lower. The Telegraph (UK) 07/01/02

Sunday June 30

OVERREACHING AT THE GUGGENHEIM: The Guggenheim, that beacon of expansionist artistic fervor, is in trouble. Staff layoffs, cancelled exhibitions, and general fiscal chaos have combined to tarnish the reputation of director Thomas Krens, who has been considered an essential innovator for years. With some in the arts world calling for Krens’s resignation, where is the Guggenheim going, and how will it get there with no apparent cash flow? The New York Times 06/30/02

LIBESKIND’S LEGACY: “Daniel Libeskind has been a leading light in architecture for 30 years, yet he didn’t build a thing until 1999. But the Jewish Museum in Berlin was both a professional challenge and a personal test: his parents had fled the Nazis. As his Imperial War Musuem North opens in Manchester, he tells [The Guardian] how buildings help us make sense of history.” The Guardian (UK) 06/29/02

• BUDGET CUTS FOR THE BETTER: Libeskind’s new Imperial War Museum almost never made it off the drawing board after the Heritage Fund ordered its budget slashed by an unheard-of 40%. But instead of abandoning the project, Libeskind resdesigned the entire building, and claims that the cheaper version wound up being considerably better than the original. The Telegraph (UK) 06/29/02
• DIVERSIFYING THE PORTFOLIO: Daniel Libeskind’s stature as an architect often overshadows his earlier career – as a young man, he was a widely hailed concert pianist. This summer, Libeskind is returning to his musical roots, conducting a new production of a Messiaen opera in Berlin. The Guardian (UK) 06/28/02

GETTY COMES THROUGH FOR ST. PAUL’S: Philanthropist and art collector Paul Getty has announced a £5 million gift dedicated to the restoration of the famous facade of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The cathedral’s outer face has been crumbling for centuries under the harsh city conditions, and its famous 64,000-ton dome has been slowly crushing the entire building. The Getty gift brings the cathedral halfway towards its fundraising goal for a full restoration. The Guardian (UK) 06/28/02

DOES CNN CAUSE WAR? A new exhibition in the small Belgian community of Ypres focuses on the 20th century’s nearly ceaseless military conflicts from the perspective of the media types who covered it. The exhibit is wide-ranging, but its central focus can be boiled down to one basic question: has media saturation so numbed humanity to the sight of horrible violence that we are no longer able to be put off by the prospect of death and destruction? Financial Times 06/28/02

Friday June 28

A RIVER AWAY: The Museum of Modern Art is opening its new temporary home in Queens this weekend. “The Modern’s galleries are efficient and airless, like the inside of a storage center, which is exactly what this building is. On the other hand, there is something touching and apt about seeing priceless Cézannes, Seurats and Braques in a makeshift, unadorned setting: they look fresh and by contrast seem to pop off the walls even more than usual.” The New York Times 06/28/02

• NEW TALES TO TELL: “The opening of the temporary Modern tomorrow in Long Island City is less significant than the closing of the museum’s old quarters. The space was exhausted, and so was the institution’s underlying premise. Since the Modern’s founding in 1929, it has become increasingly clear that its use of the word modern is historically cavalier. This unpromising commission offers a graceful promenade through the history of modern thought.” The New York Times 06/28/02
  
• KING OF QUEENS: It’s “a museum that engenders a remarkable sense of intimacy between art and viewer and acts as a pointed challenge to the monumental museum projects that have become ubiquitous in the past decade. In its populist spirit, it is closer to Los Angeles projects like Frank Gehry’s Geffen Contemporary – a gaping warehouse space built in the ethnic enclave of Little Tokyo in 1983 – than to the typical, more refined Manhattan museum.” Los Angeles Times 06/28/02
  

TO PLUG THE HOLES: The British Museum needs an extra £10 million a year to fix its budget woes. “We still receive 30% less than we did in 1992 due to government cuts. We’ve had to cut back and slim down over the last decade but now the point has been reached where we simply can’t do that any more.” BBC 06/28/02

AND THERE’S LESS DUST THAN A MILL, TOO: Is it really possible to rebuild a town in decline around the arts? The residents of one old mill town in western Massachusetts would say so: since the MASS MoCA museum opened in North Adams in 1999, tourists have flocked to it, complimentary events have sprung up regularly, and the gallery has become as much a pillar of the community as the old mills used to be. Boston Globe 06/28/02

HOW NOT TO OBSERVE: In trying to decide what kind of memorial should be chosen for the World Trade Center, it’s a good idea to look at the Oklahoma bombing memorial (for an example of what not to do). “There are so many symbols here as to obliterate the poetry of any one of them. There are so many faces on televisions inside the museum describing their pain to you that you feel wrung out like a rag. Worst of all, the memorial has nothing to say about the important historical issues that triggered Timothy McVeigh’s madness. The problem is obvious.” New York Observer 06/26/02

FIRST PHOTO GETS THE ONCE-OVER: The world’s first photograph dates from 1826, depicts an idyllic pastoral scene, and is in remarkably good condition for a 176-year-old image. It sits on a pewter plate covered with bitumin, and took three days of exposure to create. The heliograph, as its creator referred to it, is undergoing its first-ever scientific study at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Chicago Tribune 06/28/02

Thursday June 27

IMPOVERISHING THE BRITISH MUSEUM: There are many reasons for the British Museum’s woeful financial condition. But outgoing director Robert Anderson says it comes down to simple underfunding. “It is easy to say that efficiency must be increased, but it comes to the point that people have extraordinary work loads, and their output is already extraordinarily high. We are a flagship museum, and yet in many ways we are impoverished.” The Guardian (UK) 06/26/02

WANTED – BETTER IDEAS: Australia’s most prestigious architecture awards, presented this week, were a jumble of compromises and unfulfilled expectations. One award – for residential design, wasn’t even awarded. “Too many projects are results of Land and Environment Court rulings … slowly the art of architecture is being whittled toward a more predictable and forecast outcome.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/27/02

IN AMERICA WE’D FINE THE ARTIST: The mayor of Ankara, Turkey, decided that a statue of a nude in one of the city’s parks was obscene and anti-Islamic, and ordered it taken down. That was in 1994. This week, an Ankara court ordered the mayor to pay 4 billion Turkish lira for damage to the statue incurred during its removal, plus other damages, plus interest. BBC 06/27/02

eBAY AS ART CANVAS: With 50 million users, eBay has become fodder for artists. “Recently, a Canadian artist did an eBay search for the word ‘malaria’, bought everything connected with it and put an eclectic array of memorabilia on display in an exhibition in London. And an impoverished Newcastle graduate sold his soul on eBay for £11. The so-called ‘item’was bought by a man from Oklahoma who had lost his own soul in a bet.” The Scotsman 06/26/02

ART THAT MEANS SOMETHING (BUT WHAT?): Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty are “famous for two gestures: presenting Rachel Whiteread with a cheque for £40,000 as ‘worst British artist’ on the night she won the £25,000 Turner Prize, and then, most famously, incinerating what appeared to be £1 million in cash on the Isle of Jura in front of a handful of bemused witnesses. Art prank? Scam? Political statement? Drummond and Cauty made an agreement at the time never to explain themselves, and they never have.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/27/02

ART OUT OF THE LIMELIGHT: Catherine Goodman just won the prestigious BP Portrait Award. She’s also known to be Prince Charles’ art adviser. But her work sells for only a few thousand pounds, and she works slowly and accepts few commissions. “Art can be tough if people want a lot of attention. I’m not sure I do. I want to carry on painting and selling and having people tell me what they think of the pictures, but I don’t want to be a celebrity. I’m not sure it’s very good for artists.” The Telegraph (UK) 06 27/02

Wednesday June 26

STOLEN ART RECOVERED: Nineteen works of art valued at £20 million that were stolen last year have been recovered by police in Madrid. “Among the paintings taken in August last year were two by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya – The Donkey’s Fall and The Swing – and a work by French impressionist Camille Pisarro, called Eragny Landscape.” BBC 06/25/02

OLDEST TOMB: “A 4,600 year-old Egyptian tomb, glued shut and with its original owner still inside, has been discovered by archaeologists working near the Giza Pyramids.” The tomb is thought to be the oldest intact tomb ever discovered. Discovery 06/24/02

ANOTHER BIG-TIME AUCTION: “A ‘sensuous’ portrait by Picasso of his mistress at the height of their passion has been sold at auction for more than £15m. Nu au collier fetched £15,956,650 – almost double the estimate of up to £9m – when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in London.” BBC 06/25/02

MOMA’S ATTENTION-GETTERS: What to do when your museum is forced to move from the middle of Manhattan to an old warehouse in Queens? Hold a parade and shoot off fireworks, of course. New York’s Museum of Modern Art may be in temporary quarters, but its curators are making darned sure that New Yorkers know where to find them, with “a procession over the Queensborough bridge,” a series of galas and opening parties, and a massive fireworks display bridging the two boroughs with a rainbow. The New York Times 06/26/02

FRESH BASEL: The Basel Art Fair has scratched and clawed its way to to become one of the modern art world’s preeminent events, and these days, it has also become something of a gauge for the health of the industry. To judge by this year’s installment, all is well: the pace was chaotic, the displays eclectic, and, most importantly, sales were brisk. Boston Globe 06/26/02

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: “When it was initiated in 1992, the idea of founding a contemporary art museum in Sarajevo was considered nothing short of crazy, but foundations were laid this week for the museum’s first wing and it already boasts one of the world’s largest exhibitions… Now, the collection includes 120 works of internationally acclaimed artists and its value is estimated at some $7 million.” Nando Times (Agence France-Presse) 06/26/02

THE NEW ALTERNATIVES: “Just when we all assumed that the alternative space movement had met a noble death, laid low by the double-fisted blows of the culture wars and the New York real estate market, a host of new outfits have sprung up, offering an alternative not only to the gallery system, but to our traditional view of an alternative space.” Village Voice 06/26/02

LOSING THE ART OF COLLECTING: Some of Australia’s biggest corporations are getting out of art collecting. Several have put their collections up for auction or donated them recently. “Companies that have opted out of the art market totally or in part include Shell, Rio Tinto, Orica, AXA and BP Australia.” The Age (Melbourne) 06/26/02

WHAT’S WRONG WITH CRAFT? “It is a sad fact that in the art universities of recent years it is the concept constructors – students who produce weird installations or have quirky ideas – who receive the highest marks. Craft creators – those with a natural talent – who want to learn to better their ability, are left unencouraged, often ignored and always poorly marked.” The Guardian (UK) 06/25/02

Tuesday June 25

NOTHING SAYS I LOVE YOU LIKE FLOWERS: A painting of Monet’s Waterlilies that has not been seen in public for more than 75 years sold for just over $20 million on Monday, Sotheby’s auction house said.” Nando Times (AP) 06/24/02

REINVENTING THE MFA: The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is reinventing itself. A decade ago it was deep in debt and on the decline. Now it’s hired star architect Norman Foster to reimagine what one of America’s great museums might become. “To pay for this expansion, and for additions to its endowment and budget, the museum has embarked on a drive to raise a daunting $425 million. Officials here say this is the largest fund-raising effort ever undertaken by an art institution outside New York City. The new building is expected to cost $180 million and be completed in 2007.” The New York Times 06/25/02

REINVENTING THE COOPER-HEWITT: New York’s Cooper Hewitt Museum, America’s foremost design museum, ius cutting back. “Over recent months, more than a dozen administrators, curators, researchers and part-time consultants have left the Cooper-Hewitt, fleeing an atmosphere described by a former employee as ‘draining’and by another as ‘total misery’.” The New York Times 06/25/02

BLOWING UP BOLOGNA? Police apparently intercepted a plan by terrorists affiliated with al-Qa ‘eda to blow up Bologna’s “most important church to erase the offence of a 15th-century Gothic fresco showing Mohammed being tormented by devils in hell. The Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported that in a telephone call intercepted by police in February, one of the suspect’s alleged associates discussed plans for an attack on the Church of San Petronio, which has a large fresco by Giovanni da Modena showing the founder of the Islamic religion in hell.” The Guardian (UK) 06/24/02

MUSEUMS AS PARTY ANIMALS: “Over the past 25 years a new balance – seesaw might be a better term – has been established in national museums between public and private money. In many ways, this is a positive change. Museums are far more responsive to their public now than they used to be. Permanent collections are often more interestingly displayed. Temporary exhibitions are more frequent. The fierce, old, military-style warders have been replaced by friendlier staff. Information about the collections is available on-line.” On the other hand, the amount of energy required to court favor with the giving classes threatens to overwhelm the business of seeing to art. London Evening Standard 06/24/02

BRUTALLY BACK: “Over the past few years, something quite extraordinary has happened to the cityscape of Blairite Britain. Contrary to conservative expectations, some of our most despised structures have been restored, revamped – even given coveted listed status. The modern monoliths we once loathed have become our newest national monuments. Against all the odds, brutalism is back in vogue.” New Statesman 06/24/02

TOW-AWAY ART: Artists unhappy with the growing numbers of abandoned cars on Hackney, England streets, stage an art project to do something about it. “The idea was to create a series of designer ‘car covers’ to turn the burnt out cars on Hackney’s street into works of art.” The zealous city council towed away the decorated cars. “The way to get rid of a car is to decorate it and make it pretty and then the council will move it.” The Guardian (UK) 06/24/02

Monday June 24

ON THE TRAIL OF STOLEN TREASURE: “Theft of historic artifacts is massive worldwide. “Interpol, the international police network, says it is impossible to track the volume of trade in stolen antiquities because so much of it is so far underground. Some pieces disappear straight from digs, before anyone can catalogue them, and into the hands of collectors who never risk showing them publicly. But many involved in the study and preservation – and the buying and selling – of ancient art say that although the change is likely to be slow and fitful, it has begun.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/24/02

AT HOME IN QUEENS: The Museum of Modern reopens this week in its new temporary home in Queens. “On the face of it, Queens and the Museum of Modern Art make the quintessential odd couple. But you do not have to spend a whole lot of time in MoMA’s new neighborhood to realize that the pairing actually makes good sense. Long Island City, the specific setting for MoMA’s new venue, is a place apart, even in diverse, sprawling Queens. It’s a fast-changing flatland of working and abandoned factories, auto body shops and industrial miscellany, with a scattering of attached houses and apartment buildings. The area’s future is up for grabs.” Washington Post 06/23/02

THE CONTRARY FREUD: Over the past 30 years Lucien Freud has been mad, bad and dangerous to know. His pictures pitiless, ambiguous, violent and aggressive, he has been a man of twilight lives between the gutter and the Ritz, mixing with the most rich and socially eminent, yet a man of privacy and mystery whose telephone number no one knows, and who inhabits houses without doorbells, flitting like Dracula from one to t’other, to work on sleeping models through the night. He is as bohemian as Puccini, as much a ruffian as Caravaggio (I once witnessed his stealing a girl from Peter Langan without plunging a dagger into that clumsy lecher’s groin), and as much a creature of the ivory tower as Vermeer. All this lends gloss to his pictures and pushes up the price – the truth is probably much less fabulous.” London Evening Standard 06/21/02

THERE ONCE WAS A MUSEUM IN GROZNY: “Before the war between Russia and the would-be breakaway Republic of Chechnya, there were 3,270 works in the Grozny Museum collection, including 950 paintings. But the museum was bombed, with many of its paintings detroyed. Much of what was left was looted to sell for arms. Now an attempt to rebuild the Grozny Museum. The Art Newspaper 06/21/02

ONE MAN’S SURPLUS IS… Britain’s Labour government has a policy of selling off items that are deemed to be surplus. “While few would quarrel with the Ministry of Defence selling off a disused Army base or the Highways Agency disposing of some surplus road maintenance equipment, the flaws in the policy are becoming clear.” As the policy tags items of artistic or historical importance, critics worry about a sell-off of the nation’s important heritage. The Telegraph (UK) 06/24/02

PECKING ORDER: A huge glass-domed biosphere building in Cornwall is being endangered by seagulls. Seems the birds are mistaking their own reflections in the glass for hostile males, and are attacking the glass panels, doing considerable damage… The Guardian (UK) 06/21/02

REMEMBERING J. CARTER BROWN: “Brown epitomised the American impresario art museum director. He was the first to hold a masters degree in business administration. His diplomatic skills pulled foreign loans to Washington by the planeload. Ever the pitch-man for his institution, he urged benefactors to donate art “for the nation.” The pitch worked, and paintings by Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso and Veronese flowed in.” The Art Newspaper 06/21/02

Sunday June 23

STRIKE ACTION IN SCOTLAND: Scotland’s nationally run galleries are facing a partial work stoppage by their staff to begin June 30. “The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents 120 staff, said the decision would mean a ban on all overtime and the closure of all four galleries on Sundays.” The dispute centers on the contention of the PCS that staffers are underpaid and undervalued, with most making less than £5 per hour. BBC 06/21/02

SPEAKING OF STRIKES… What should the museum-going public make of the strike at the British Museum? “The strike and its causes are symptomatic of the disease that has hit cultural life in Britain… This is an artificially engineered crisis. It is as much the duty of a nation to fund its museums as it is to maintain its monuments. Government funding, currently set at £36 million, has been cut in real terms by 30 percent over a 10-year period according to most accounts.” International Herald Tribune (Paris) 06/22/02

MORE FREUDIAN ANALYSIS: Lucien Freud’s nude portraits, on exhibit at the Tate Britain, say a great deal about his perception of the world. “The naked animal, unidealised and depicted with extreme concentration on physical essence and fact, has come to seem like mainstream Freud: his grand contribution to twentieth-century painting. But to see his career at full stretch is to see how much else was achieved long before and how that past seeps into the future.” The Observer (UK) 06/23/02

THE NAKED SENSUALITY OF CLOTHING: An exhibit at the UK’s National Gallery purports to be about the history of clothing and drapery in classical painting, but Andrew Graham-Dixon sees some down-and-dirty subtext. “As well as offering an interesting and informative potted history of western fashion – showing, for example, how the doublet-and-hose peacock finery of male dress during the Renaissance evolved, through the Enlightenment and beyond, into the democratically inspired sartorial restraint of the suit – [the] exhibition also and, more piquantly, explores the invention and development of what we now know as sex appeal.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/22/02

MUSEUM OF ONE MAN’S MIND: There is always a certain quirkiness in museums designed to house personal collections. The tastes of the individual tend to overshadow any larger objective, and England’s Horniman Museum remains a perfect example as it reopens following a massive renovation. “The museum is now a triumphant architectural blend of the present and the past. The white limestone slabs of the new building echo the delicate white wrought-iron tracery of the conservatory, which is to the side of the main structures, and irresistibly remind the onlooker of hothouses at Kew Gardens or even the original Crystal Palace.” The Guardian (UK) 06/22/02

FINALLY, ART AND EXERCISE TOGETHER! Think of it as an extremely high-tech Etch-a-Sketch crossed with a connect-the-dots game. Two British artists and a state-of-the-art Global Positioning System are creating artworks by tracing roads, highways, and bridges in various UK cities, routes they travel on bicycles while the GPS system records their progress. Their efforts are then posted and discussed on their website, which has already begun to spawn copycat efforts worldwide. Wired 06/22/02

Friday June 21

TYRANNY OF THE ACOUSTIGUIDE: Thinking about reaching for one of those handy acoustiguides now so popular at many museums? Think again. “It makes choices for you. It pick winners. Most museums that use the system restrict it to a (growing) menu of ‘masterpieces’, effectively relegating great tracts of their collection into a sort of art-historical Division Three – there to be scanned indulgently if you happen to have some quirky personal attachment, but clearly far beneath general interest. So immediately your choices are curtailed. Then, once the audioguide has imposed its snobbery on you, it sets about telling you, with varying degrees of skill and subtlety, what you ought to think about the art on show, and this is where the real trouble begins.” Electricreview.com 05/26/03

SISTER WENDY’S PRIVATE TOUR: Sister Wendy’s trip through American museums for her recent series didn’t include a stop at LA’s Norton Simon Museum. So the museum made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and Wendy obliged with a private tour captured on tape. “It’s a little strange that Sister Wendy, known more for her broad telepopulist appeal than for the eloquence or originality of her insights, should be sequestered in the back room of a deluxe suburban vanity museum. But such an improbable arrangement is actually pretty much par for the course in the long, strange trip of the art nun’s career.” LAWeekly 06/20/02

PRINCE OF A MISTAKE: Earlier this week three works by Prince Charles were put up for auction in Birmingham. Interest in the watercolors was high – they were listed at a few hundred pounds, but they eventually fetched £20,000. The day after the sale, though, it was noticed that a mistake had been made – the art wasn’t painted at all – they’re lithographs. “Worth a few hundred pounds, they were excellent copies of the original works, but of interest more for their novelty value than their artistic merit.” The Scotsman 06/20/02

Thursday June 20

WHERE’S THE PUBLIC IN CHICAGO’S PUBLIC ART FUND? Chicago’s Public Art Fund spends millions on public art, financed by the city’s percent for art ordinance. Some of its projects are highly visible, yet critics charge that the program operates in secret and lacks accountability. How much money does it spend? How does it decide what to buy? You’d think public records would be available, and yet… Chicago Tribune 06/20/02

LOST IN THE WTC: “Among the major losses of a historic and archaeological nature was the Five Points archaeological collection, which, excavated in the early 1990s had been stored in the basement of Six World Trade Center, the building that was destroyed when the facade of Tower One fell into it. Only 18 of about one million unique artifacts documenting the lives of nineteenth-century New Yorkers survive.” Archaeology 06/19/02

TALE OF TWO CITIES: Why is Toronto unable to produce artists in the way that Vancouver is? Perhaps it is structural. From weak schools, a sense of insularity and a lack of serious public art program, Toronto doesn’t encourage a mix of artists. “Vancouver provides a vivid contrast. The city’s leading artists have leapfrogged over Toronto to establish connections in New York, Dusseldorf and beyond.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/20/02

Wednesday June 19

FIRST COMMISSION WINS: This year’s £25,000 BP Portrait Award has been won by Catherine Goodman. Her painting of Antony Sutch was her first commissioned portrait, and the first time in many years that the competition has been won by a formal traditional portrait. Despite the art world skirmishing over conceptual conceptual art crowding out figurative painting, the portrait competition, now in its 22nd year, attracted 760. The Guardian (UK) 06/18/02

WEIGHING ANCHOR: Due to security concerns, the Anchorage, a space under the Brooklyn Bridge used for the past 19 summers as a space for art installations and performances, is being closed because of fears of terrorism. “The 50-foot-tall vaulted ceilings, stone floors, windowless brick and overhead traffic hum gave the ambience a tilt toward the introspective and mysterious. The Anchorage could seem all gothic gloom or cool cave. It changed, depending on the art: a cathedral, a dungeon, a fort.” Village Voice 06/18/02

UNDERSTANDING FREUD: This summer’s hottest art show in London is the Lucien Freud retrospective at Tate Britain. At 79, Freud is generally considered Britain’s top living artist. “Let me be clear about this: at every stage in his long career, Freud has painted wonderful pictures. In a show with 156 works, I am talking about no more than a dozen misses or near-misses, but they are enough to show that painting does not come easily to Freud. He’s a thrilling artist because when he performs, he doesn’t have a net to catch him if he falls.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/19/02

• A HISTORY OF LOOKING: “For 60 years, Freud has interrogated reality with a tough, unsatisfied intelligence. Eyes stripped as a snake’s, he has studied the visual evidence of life. He has searched for the truths that his paintings will tell.” The Times (UK) 06/19/02
• ARTIST LAUREATE: “At Freud’s level of artistic dedication he is competing with history. It is a daunting sport for, unlike the athlete, the artist is running against an international field that includes famous contestants who have been dead for centuries.” London Evening Standard 06/18/02
• ABOUT PAINTING: “The viewer who believes he has discerned a truth about a relationship between artist and subject, however, is likely to be mistaken. It is mostly projection. There is some kind of truth somewhere in there, but it is first and foremost a truth about depiction in painting itself.” The Guardian (UK) 06/18/02

POLLING THE MASSES: “A major exercise to decide on the best way of displaying art in Wales has started.” And while asking the public might seem to be a risky method of deciding policy, that is exactly the route Wales is going. Among the proposals on the table are an expansion of the current National Museum and the construction of a new, dedicated gallery. BBC 06/19/02

Tuesday June 18

ANOTHER TAKE ON DOCUMENTA: Michael Kimmelman writes that the show delivers what it promised. But “calm, clear, remarkably orderly considering its size, the show is also puritanical and nearly humorless. It gives the impression of having been conceived by people for whom the messiness and frivolity of art are almost moral failures. Some control over the organization of a show this size is necessary. Too much is alarming.” The New York Times 06/18/02

• OVERLOAD: An exhausted Peter Plagens marvels at the sheer size of the event. And how much explanation the art takes. “Never in the history of contemporary-art shows have so many viewers been asked to read so much while standing on such unforgiving concrete floors.” It’s also difficult to sort out. “Hardly any of the art in Kassel lives up to the huge political burden placed upon it.” With the show’s attempt “to get art to act as a rebuttal to the G8’s style of globalization, Documenta has turned itself into a clever, but only occasionally convincing, Didactamenta.” Newsweek 06/24/02

Monday June 17

STRIKE CLOSES BMA: The British Museum is closed today after 750 museum workers went on strike, protesting government cuts in funding. “Some 100 strikers picketed the museum, handing out leaflets to members of the public. It is the first time the museum has been closed by industrial action in its 250-year history.” BBC 06/17/02

NEW ICA CHAIRMAN: Alan Yentob, the BBC’s director of drama, entertainment and children’s programmes, has been named new chairman of London’s Institute of Contemporary Art. The ICA’s previous chairman left in a blaze of publicity, declaring that concept art was “pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat that I wouldn’t accept even as a gift”. The Guardian (UK) 06/14/02

• GLAMOUR BOY: As the BBC’s arts and entertainment supremo, Yentob is an avowed populariser and, after years of rubbing shoulders with the corporation’s glitzier talent, he is now as close to being ‘the glamorous face of BBC management’ as licence feepayers are ever likely to get for their money. Those connections are, of course, what appealed to the board of the ICA when they judged his suitability.” The Observer (UK) 06/16/02

FIGHTING FOR SCRAPS: There is so little high-end art available for sale in the UK that when even a minor sale comes up for auction, there’s a feeding frenzy. The Telegraph (UK) 06/17/02

RECORD ANTIQUITY SALE: A heavily restored ancient Roman Venus sculpture sold in London at auction last week for “£7.9 million, more than twice the estimate and a world auction record for an antiquity. There may now be an export bar to allow British museums to try and match the price, but it is very unlikely any could raise such a sum. The Jenkins Venus, also known as the Barberini Venus, was pieced together from fragments over 200 years ago, and became one of the most admired works of classical art of the 18th century. The Guardian (UK) 06/15/02

LOOKING OUT: This edition of Documenta is the most international and outward-looking yet. “The main themes of this Documenta are migration, precarious post-colonial constellations, cultural intermixing and changing perspectives within a new global society. All the sore points, the terrible conflicts which often trigger or prevent these changes, are given center stage: the tortured Balkans; the misery of the underdeveloped and exploited; racism; the genocide in Rwanda; the hell of a South African gold mine; South American military dictatorships; guerrilla wars; Sept. 11, 2001; the refugee ships sunk in the Mediterranean with their unretrieved bodies, searched for by teams of underwater archaeologists. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06/16/02

• Previously: RANT W/O BACKUP: Documenta is the world’s most lavish festival of contemporary art, and it has been staged in Kassel every five years or so since the Marshall Plan came to the bombed-out town. This year its curator advances the idea that America’s domination of world culture is an enervating force, that it is “materializing, hegemonizing and attempting to regulate all forms of social relations and cultural exchanges.” Curiously, there is little art in the show to back up the premise. Washington Post 06/16/02

WHAT’S THE VISION? Rem Koolhaas “may be our greatest contemporary architect, but the nature and volume of his production indicate that he wants to be more than that. He plays the game of cultural critic and theorist, visionary, urbanist, and shaper of cities for the globalized, digitized, commercialized world of the twenty-first century. If we don’t begin thinking critically about what he’s doing, how our cities look and function might greatly reflect his influence – and what we get might not be what we want.” American Prospect 06/17/02

Sunday June 16

FREE ME: When the LA County Museum of Art began charging admission in 1978, attendance slid by 44 percent. Now, nearly 25 years later, despite 3 million more people in LA, the number of people visiting LACMA is roughly the same as it was in pre-admission 1978. As the museum goes out to raise $300 million to makeover its campus, Christopher Knight writes that one of LACMA’s top priorities ought to be eliminating the admission fee. “No one should underestimate the barrier erected by general admission fees. Yet the issue isn’t just a matter of affordability. It also concerns a more fundamental relationship with art.” Los Angeles Times 06/09/02

TEARING DOWN HISTORY: The 20th Century was a bad one for English manors. “More than 1,000 country houses, perhaps one in six, were demolished in the 20th century. The result was an architectural and cultural tragedy that has no parallel in this country since the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Superb collections of art were broken up, some of the most delightful gardens and landscapes ever created abandoned, and many of this country’s finest buildings razed to the ground. The causes of that destruction have never been spelt out before, perhaps because the event was too painful.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/15/02

RANT W/O BACKUP: Documenta is the world’s most lavish festival of contemporary art, and it has been staged in Kassel every five years or so since the Marshall Plan came to the bombed-out town. This year its curator advances the idea that America’s domination of world culture is an ennervating force, that it is “materializing, hegemonizing and attempting to regulate all forms of social relations and cultural exchanges.” Curiously, there is little art in the show to back up the premise. Washington Post 06/16/02

IS IT CHEATING? When photography was invented many predicted the end of painting. Didn’t happen, of course. But lately there have been fresh debates about the “fairness” of painters using mechanical devices to help in their work. Does it somehow lessen a work if the artist used visual aids? “I’m guessing that psychoanalysts would diagnose this as displaced anxiety.” The New York Times 06/16/02

CUTTING THE EDGE: Is there anything tougher than being a contemporary art center? Constantly defining and redefining “contemporary” is a balancing act that gets tougher as the organization gets older. The Atlanta Contemporay Art Center is about to turn 30. With funding down and the search for a new director, ACAC is facing an identity crisis – does it still matter? Atlanta Journal-Constitution 06/16/02

THE ART OF RESTORATION: Paris’ small Museum of Jewish Art and History tries to keep politics out. That means it’s “not a Holocaust museum, although reportedly one is being planned for Paris. To museum organizer Laurence Sigal-Klagsbald, ‘restoring Jewish culture is an answer in itself to the annihilation planned by the Nazis’.” Toronto Star 06/16/02

Friday June 14

THOROUGHLY MODERN BIDDING: With Impressionist works too expensive for most collectors, contemporary art has caught the interest of investors. Prices for 20th Century work has been setting records of late. “The stock market is not currently offering many opportunities for people to get involved so when they find something that gives them pleasure, like art, they say ‘let’s do it.’ “. Financial Times 06/14/02

ART FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY: “There’s a transformation taking place in art museums. These temples of contemplation that once catered mostly to adults now offer a full menu of programs aimed at families — not to mention school groups, singles, teenagers, seniors or any other demographic group willing to walk through the front door. At the venerable National Gallery of Art and the exclusive Kreeger Museum, even preschoolers now have their own programming.” Washington Post 06/14/02

BRITAIN’S BEST NEW BUILDINGS: The Royal Institute of British Architects has made a list of the 58 best new buildings in the UK. “The buildings, which range in size from a tolbooth and a private residence to big industrial centres and the Gateshead millennium bridge, have all been selected to receive a RIBA award for their high architectural standards and their contribution to the local environment.” The Guardian (UK) 06/13/02

SCOTTISH GALLERY WORKERS THINK STRIKE: While staff at the National Galleries of Scotland ponder a strike, the museum director is on a paid six-month sabbatical in Italy. And the museum is proposing to increase his salary by almost a quarter. That doesn’t sit well with junior staff. “Here we have a director on a six-month sabbatical, travelling the world, while the lowest-paid members of staff can barely afford to get themselves to work.” The Scotsman 06/13/02

Thursday June 13

MORATORIUM ON COLLECTING: The Denver Museum is building a $62 million addition. To help focus on getting ready for the expansion, the museum has declared a moratorium on acquistions. “The museum will not make purchases or accept any gifts of artworks except those to be exhibited in the new wing, and it will not grant loans of pieces to other institutions or borrow from them.” Denver Post 06/13/02

CLEVELAND EXPANSION: The Cleveland Museum of Art has approved plans for a $170 million-plus expansion. Architect Rafael Vinoly presented plans for the addition this week. The museum hopes to start construction in 2004. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 06/13/02

FOR THE SOUL OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY: London’s Royal Academy has had a very successful few years. But now director David Gordon is leaving, and the RA is at a crossroads. “At issue is whether artists or administrators should run the public side of the organisation, now that it has been transformed into a £20 million-a-year business, putting on world-class exhibitions. With the RA about to embark on a £50 million project to take over 6 Burlington Gardens, the former Museum of Mankind building, the debate has added urgency.” The Art Newspaper 06/10/02

DRAW ME A PICTURE: Is there any place for drawing in art? “If art can be bought ready-made, or if it can be made in some way that has nothing to do with manual dexterity, with a video camera or a computer program, then drawing, this essential act of making, has definitely been marginalized, turned into a sideline, a caprice. A sea change has occurred, one of the fundamental ones in the history of art, or so we are told. But what of those artists who still believe that art is not so much in the conceptualization as in the realization?” The New Republic 06/10/02

Wednesday June 12

BRITISH MUSEUM STRIKE: The British Museum won’t open next Monday because of a 24-hour strike by its workers. They are protesting cuts and management of the museum. “It is believed to be the first time the museum will have closed because of industrial action in its 250-year history.” The Guardian (UK) 06/12/02

FOOD FIGHT: A show of Italian Masters sponsored by the Italian government and sent to Australia has provoked a fierce review that has insulted the Italians. “Attacks on the show feed fears that Australia is regarded by the rest of the world as the back of beyond, a place where nobody would care to send too many masterpieces, and also that Australians are taken for bumpkins, too unsophisticated to realise when they are being fobbed off.” The Times (UK) 06/12/02

DESIGN-CHALLENGED: Wonder why people don’t grow up with an appreciation for good architecture? Start with school buildings. The province of Ontario is building new schools, but the amount spent on design is pitiful. “On their own and strapped for money, some of the region’s school boards are replicating school designs over two or three different sites. Sadly, the new schools in Toronto can’t achieve the robust detailing of the public schools that emerged in the city in the early 20th century.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/12/02

THE COWS COME TO LONDON: The arts cows invade London. “The organisers claim it as the world’s largest public art event. And with more than 150 bovines on display, and another six cities around the world lining up for more cow action, they might not be far wrong.” They’ve earned respect in other cities, even in cities where you wouldn’t expect it. In New York “their cumulative effect on the viewer was to disrupt the flow of thought. What struck me was the extent to which people noticed them and began to treat them in a way that public sculptors hardly dare to dream of – with respect. No one vandalised the New York cows.” London Evening Standard 06/12/02

SETTING UP FOR ART: Howard Hodgkin makes set designs for the theatre. They’re distinctive and drawings of them have been collected up for an exhibition this summer. But don’t call them art. Hodgkin will get angry if you do. “They exist only as part of a performance, on stage, with performers, audience, lighting. Otherwise they’re no more real than those discarded costume sketches people hang on their walls and expect you to admire. Completely ridiculous.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/12/02

DEALER SENTENCED FOR ART SALES: New York art dealer Frederick Schultz has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for trying to sell stolen Egyptian artifacts. “The stiff sentence, coming after Mr. Schultz’s conviction on Feb. 12, is seen as a sign of the federal government’s determination to crack down on the trade in ancient objects that have been illegally taken out of their countries of origin.” The New York Times 06/12/02

Tuesday June 11

A PLAN TO SAVE VENICE: Venice has decided to build a controversial “Thames barrier-type structure with 79 gates, each weighing 300 tonnes” to help control flooding of the city’s lagoon. “But there are fears about how this might affect the Venice lagoon, particularly the possibility that it could further restrict the flushing of the city’s waterways by the tide, making the famous stinking canals more stagnant.” So British scientists have been brought in to “suggest ways to prevent the city becoming the first high-profile victim of global warming anda rise in sea levels.” The Guardian (UK) 06/10/02

THE ANNUAL: Each summer, London’s Royal Academy stages its Summer Exhibition. It’s in its 234th year, and it is the “largest open-submission exhibition of contemporary art anywhere in the world. Any such antiquity will naturally gather some myths, and the most pernicious and unfair myth, unthinkingly retailed, is that the summer show is the repository of the amateur and Sunday painting, boardroom portrait and worthy landscape.” Financial Times 06/11/02

• HOUSE OF THE ALREADY-DONES: “At this year’s show one is frequently waylaid across a crowded room by some familiar-seeming image, only to realise on closer inspection that it is not actually a Lucian Freud, or a Cy Twombly, or a Richard Artschwager, as one might suppose, but in fact some sedulous substitute.” The Times (UK) 06/11/02

HARVARD MUSEUM CHIEF TO COURTAULD: James Cuno, the director of the Harvard University Art Museums since 1991, has been named director of the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. The appointment is seen as a sideways move for the highly-regarded Cuno, who is also president of the Association of Art Museum Directors in the US. His departure from Harvard is “the latest in a number of high-profile departures from the university since the arrival last year of president Lawrence H. Summers.” Boston Globe 06/11/02

Monday June 10

DOCUMENTING CONTEMPORARY ART: The 11th Documenta opens in Kassel. “Despite contemporary techniques – video, installation, photography – this Documenta 11 fails to match the work of much of the 1990s in loudness, velocity or the frequency of its shock effects. There are fewer illustrations of political theses than feared, and instead more truly classical art than many might have anticipated. In order to avoid making a loss, Documenta 11 must attract 630,000 visitors to Kassel and earn over euro 6.9 million ($6.5 million) by Sept. 15.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06/09/02

A CONSERVATION SCANDAL: How was the ancient Villa of the Papyri – one of the richest and largest of the ancient Roman villas ever discovered, “allowed to degenerate into a massive dumping site for rubbish while weeds ravaged the ancient mosaic floor, holes in the plastic roof left it exposed to rain, and rising water levels blocked access to the site?” It’s a sad case of bungled bureaucracy… The Art Newspaper 06/07/02

IS THIS ANY WAY TO BUILD A CITY? So Los Angeles might get a new football stadium, and it might not cost taxpayers money. Okay – but potential developers of the project are so far shy about revealing details of the project – like where exactly it might be built. Should Angelinos trust them? The “plans for downtown have yet to show such ambition. They are safe, formulaic, somewhat soulless. They embody an age of corporate gigantism in which decisions are made by committee, and the only real concern is the bottom line.” Is this any way to plan urban landscapes? Los Angeles Times 06/10/02

PAUL GOTTLIEB, 67: “In his 20 years as publisher and editor in chief of the country’s most notable publisher of art books he exercised vast influence, not merely on how such books are published but also on how art is presented and promoted at museums around the world. Gottlieb knew just about everybody connected in one way or another to publishing and art.” Washington Post 06/10/02

Sunday June 9

BRITISH MUSEUM STRIKE PROTEST: Staff at the British Museum have voted to strike to protest plans by the museum to cut 150 workers. The financially-challenged museum is trying to close a £5m budget shortfall. “National treasures will be hidden away from the public, galleries will be closed off and less school children will be educated in the British Museum if the government does not accept that world-class museums cannot be funded by gift shops and cafes alone.” The Guardian (UK) 06/08/02

WHOSE HISTORY? Britain has always had a reverence for its history, and the country is full of historic markers. But “is today’s historic environment – the stately homes, museums, religious edifices, tourist attractions, heritage centres, preservation areas – adequately serving the complex intellectual requirements of a multi-cultural, multi-layered Britain? Not according to a recent report by the Historic Environment Steering Group. This commission of great and good heritage experts worryingly concluded that, ‘People are interested in the historic environment.But many people feel powerless and excluded’.” The Guardian (UK) 06/07/02

Friday June 7

THE FRIDA FAD: “Never has a woman with a mustache been so revered – or so marketed – as Frida Kahlo. Like a female Che Guevara, she has become a cottage industry. In the past year, Volvo has used her self-portraits to sell cars to Hispanics, the U.S. Postal Service put her on a stamp, and Time magazine put her on its cover. There have been Frida look-alike contests, Frida operas, plays, documentaries, novels, a cookbook, and now, an English-language movie. But, like a game of telephone, the more Kahlo’s story has been told, the more it has been distorted, omitting uncomfortable details that show her to be a far more complex and flawed figure than the movies and cookbooks suggest.” Washington Monthly 06/02

RETURN TO REALISM (DID IT EVER GO AWAY?): Painters and sculptors who have eschewed abstraction in rendering their particular take on the visible world have proliferated and thrived, occasionally even generating a movement—photorealism, for example. Now, emerging from the last decade’s polymorphous stew of postmodernism, realist artists are moving back into the foreground. But there’s just one puzzle: no one seems able to define what realism actually is.” ArtNews 06/02

Thursday June 6

THE NEW WTC – A TOWERING CONCEPT? Word is that the architects working on plans for a replacement for the World Trade Center are contemplating a building of about the same height as the Twin Towers. “The tower also could be shorter, perhaps 1,300 feet or 1,350 feet, but it clearly would be no ordinary office building. It would contain about 65 to 70 stories of office floors, with the highest of those floors reaching 900 feet or more. Above them would be an empty vertical space, enclosed in a skeletal extension of the building’s superstructure, making it visible to passersby. This chamber of air, which would be 300 to 400 feet tall, would soar ethereally toward the clouds.” Chicago Tribune 06/06/02

CUBAN CLAIMS FOR ART: Many Cuban refugees fleeing Cuba had to leave artwork behind. “Over the last decade, a growing number of these works have surfaced outside Cuba and been put up for sale. Some left the island via diplomatic channels, others were exported privately and illegally, and some, particularly in the early 1990’s, were put on the international market by Cuba itself as it sought hard currency.” Increasingly, the original owners are making claims for the art. The New York Times 06/06/02

A LITTLE ART SCANDAL: A British internet firm offers exclusive reproductions of “never before published” Old Master drawings from the British Museum. But of course this isn’t right. “The talk of unpublished, rarely seen material is nonsense. But the most misleading thing of all is the omission, in this quasi-official joint-venture parasitic commercial- wheeze website, of the fact that any member of the public, at any time during opening hours, can ask to see any drawing or print in the museum’s collection, and that this access is free.” The Guardian (UK) 06/06/02

TAKES ONE TO CATCH ONE: A British art security expert is defending his use of an art thief to track down two stolen works of art – including a Titian. “The ex-prisoner has been using his former criminal contacts to make inquiries about the paintings, and has claimed that recently he came close to the art thieves.” BBC 06/06/02

QUEEN’S GALLERY USED ENDANGERED WOOD: Queen Elizabeth’s new Queen’s Gallery is under attack because endangered rare tropical woods were used in its construction. “The use of this timber not only goes against the palace’s sustainable forest purchasing policy, but is a snub to the Duke of Edinburgh, president emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund, who said in 1998 that all ‘forests subject to commercial exploitation should be certified under the Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme’.” The Guardian (UK) 06/05/02

Wednesday June 5

MISSING IN ACTION: A more complete list of valuable art items lost in the World Trade Center collapse is being put together. Among them: “first editions of Helen Keller’s books. Sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Artifacts from the African Burial Ground, a centuries-old Manhattan cemetery. Thousands of photographs of Broadway, off-Broadway and even off-off-Broadway shows.” Los Angeles Times (AP) 06/05/02

GOING THREE-DIMENSIONAL: Forget painting – sculpture is the hot artform of choice right now. “Sculpture is no longer the poor cousin of painting. A lot of established painting collectors have turned their backs and started buying sculptures. They’ve filled their walls with pictures and now are looking for objects to put outside in their gardens or in their beach houses.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/05/02

GROVELING TO BE LIKED? The newly reopened Manchester Art Gallery is doubled in size. It’s a handsome new building. But “the displays are presented with a frantically jovial emphasis on accessibility. The room containing the most recent items, for example, is labelled ‘Modern Art – You Cannot Be Serious’, which is more suitable for a tabloid headline on the Turner Prize than a serious museum.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/05/02

WHAT’S IT TAKE? The new Turner Prize short list is up, but one critic is still thinking about last year’s winner. “You have to make suitable contemporary art, and smack suitably of controversy, to stand a chance of winning the Turner Prize; and actually winning it bestows both fame and a heroic aspect. In one sense the winner can be seen to represent all struggling and misunderstood artists whose work may be a darn sight less controversial in international art world terms, but which can be just as misunderstood, if not more so, in one’s own local context. Making art and the way it’s perceived is all relative to the time and place you happen to be in. Fame also means that a lot more people will misunderstand and denigrate your work than before, so it’s a mixed blessing.” *spark-online 06/02

IN PRAISE OF GLASS: Glass is the latest hot material in buildings. “New kinds of glass – for ceilings, floors, walls – are helping define the latest architectural look at home and at work, according to a survey of some 500 exhibitors at the recent American Institute of Architects’ national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Instead of hanging art on the walls, designers can manipulate building materials so that color, texture and mood are integrated into the walls themselves.” Wired 06/05/02

Tuesday June 4

MET DOWN: The Metropolitan Museum in New York has seen a big dip in visitors this year. “The museum has lost about 1 million visitors this year, down from about 5 million in each of the two years before.” That translates to a drop of 20-25 percent. Museum officials say the biggest decline is visitors from Asia and Europe. New York Post 06/04/02

TASTE TEST: New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl, art historian Linda Nochlin and writer George Plimpton get together to talk about approaching art. “Taste is the residue of our previous experience, and if we are presented with something that doesn’t fit we immediately try to reject it. I think that’s good. Taste keeps us from being wowed by absolutely everything all the time; without it, we wouldn’t get to work in the morning. Out of a spirit of economy, we try to reject things, or to put them aside, or to think they’re understood. I think that’s healthy, in a way. I think that if you’re a critic you’re supposed to stick with it till you feel sure, and when a work of art defeats all my best efforts to dismiss it, that’s when I go down on my knees and want to shout about it to everyone.” The New Yorker 06/03/02

STOLEN GIACOMETTI: A Giacometti sculpture was stolen from the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. “Thieves had used the crowd of about 16,000 visitors on the center’s extra ‘Long Night’ with opening hours extended until 3:00 a.m. to swap the original bronze for a painted wooden figure.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06/03/02

Monday June 3

THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S LITTLE PROBLEM: “The British Museum has the collections to make it, with the Met in New York and the Louvre in Paris, one of the three great museums in the world. It is also visited by three million tourists a year, a quarter of all visitors to London, which makes it a showpiece for the capital and for the country. If it is dim and dusty and closed for business, it makes the whole nation look bad.” So how, with all the lottery money put aside for culture in the past decade, does the BM find itself in such precarious financial condition? London Evening Standard 05/031/02

THE QUEEN’S NEW MESS: Critics are piling on Queen Elizabeth’s new gallery to mark her jubilee. “To give it its due, what will be the most enduring physical reminder of the Queen’s golden jubilee does give confused visitors unclear about which parts of the palace are off-limits an unmistakable signal of where they will be welcome. But it looks more like a collection of giant milk bottles, left at the backdoor of the palace, rather than a descendant of the sublime Greek temples of Paestum that [architect John] Simpson fondly imagines them to be.” The Observer (UK) 06/02/02

Sunday June 2

PRICELESS? IT’S JUST A WORD: Recent high prices for paintings gets one reporter thinking about how the value for great works of art is set. “If ‘priceless’ is a real concept to a museum curator, it’s just a word – and a false one at that – in the calculating marketplace, where everything has a price.” What would be the real-world price of some of the Art Institute of Chicago’s most famous pictures? Chicago Sun-Times 06/02/02

NO SMALL MATTER: Smithsonian chief Lawrence Small has roiled the institution like none before him. “Since Small’s arrival, markers of an institution in turmoil have popped up almost monthly: Directors of six museums submitted their resignations. Congress had to step in to save pioneering scientific research. A benefactor withdrew $38 million after her ideas were ridiculed by staffers. And more than 200 academics protested the “commercialization” of the Smithsonian–even faulting its decision to award the cafeteria contract at the National Air and Space Museum to McDonald’s.” Los Angeles Times 06/02/02

ART OF THE MEETING: Documenta is the once-every-five-years assemblage of contemporary art. “Documenta is not this year’s only group show, but Kassel is definitely Rendezvous 2002 for museum directors, curators, dealers, gallery owners and collectors. They will be there because everyone will be there.” The New York Times 06/02/02