Author: Douglas McLennan

Friday June 29

JACKO AND THE LADYBUG: A Styrofoam cup with dead ladybug, $29,900. Jars of internal cow organs, $250,000. A life-size sculpture of Michael Jackson with his pet chimpanzee, $5,600.000. “Who, in a troubled economy, is buying this stuff? Do they really believe they’ll enjoy looking at it for the rest of their lives? And perhaps most important, where do they put it?” Slate 06/28/01

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN DECLINE: In 1996, portrait artist William Utermohlen learned he had Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 60 at the time, and had just finished a self-portrait. Over the next five years, as the disease progressed, he continued doing self-portraits. That series of pictures, recently published, “graphically demonstrates the decline of spatial awareness, co-ordination and concentration associated with the disease.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/29/01

Thursday June 28

ON THE TRAIL OF STOLEN ART: Theft of art seems to be on the rise. “Most of the stolen art comes to London or America. Some of it goes to museums, but much of it is bought secretly by private collections for a fraction of market value. And this at a time when the focus on the uncovering and repatriation of hot art – from the Holocaust, the Soviet era, illegal digs at ancient sites, etc .- is at an all-time high in the US.” Forbes.com 06/27/01

SLIMMING DOWN THE DE YOUNG: San Francisco’s de Young museum goes through its storehouse and sells off a couple thousand works of art as it refocuses its collections. “After the auction house takes its commissions, the city-owned museums will net about $1.5 million, $500,000 more than projected.” San Francisco Chronicle 06/27/01

GIVING IMPRESSIONISM ANOTHER CHANCE: “Of all art extravaganzas, the Impressionist blockbuster tends to be the biggest, the most popular, and possibly the worst.” Ah, but wait. There’s a show at the Clark gallery which “brings back into focus some of the startling newness of a Monet, a Manet, a Degas. It might even fortify you for the next blockbuster.” Slate 06/26/01

A VIRUS IS A VIRUS: A computer virus written and launched for the Venice Biennale is, its makers say, a piece of art. The artists provide the source code and are selling it on T-shirts and on CD’s. But it’s still a virus and viruses… Wired 06/28/01

Wednesday June 27

STOLEN TO ORDER: Two paintings – a Gainsborough and a Bellotto – were stolen in a three-minute raid on an 18th-century house in Ireland Tuesday. “They are valued at £3 million, and were almost certainly stolen to order.” A pair of latex gloves left behind may be the crucial clue. Irish Times 06/27/01

• FUNDRAISING: Dissident or Provisional IRA fundraising was suspected as a possible motive for one of Ireland’s most daring art robberies.” The Times (UK) 06/27/01

TILTING AT ART: London has embraced modern art in a big way. Contemporary artists are stars. So how peculiar that national portrait prize-winner Stuart Pearson Wright should lash out against the type of contemporary art that has made Tate Modern a star. The Times (UK) 06/27/01

LONG GONE MONET SELLS: A Monet painting not seen in public since 1895, was sold for £10.12 million at Sotheby’s in London Tuesday. The Times (UK) 06/27/01

SURVEYING ARCHITECTURE: “While architecture is the most public of art forms, it’s the least subject to public debate in most of the nation’s newspapers. That’s one of the findings of the first-ever online survey of 40 architecture critics writing for daily American newspapers. . . Only about a fourth of the critics have degrees specific to the field of architecture, the survey found, but about half report having practical work experience in architecture or a related field.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/27/01

EMPTY ISLAND: The buildings on Berlin’s Island of Museums have been closed for some time, with major plans for renovation stalled by the city’s perilous financial condition. Now one of the museums has reopened after three years of renovation. Okay, there’s no art inside yet, but…Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06/26/01

SERIOUS CARTOONS: Political cartooning is a dicey profession. Politicians threaten you, readers cancel their subscriptions because you made their favorite pol look like a doofus, and editors constantly ask you who that guy on the left is supposed to be. But a new exhibit of Soviet political art on display in London shows another side of the profession – caricatures as propaganda. Nando Times (AP) 06/27/01

Tuesday June 26

THE NEW VAN GOGHS: In Berlin, a flourishing trade in commissioned “fakes.” “Under German law, the work of any painter dead for at least 70 years can be reproduced, provided the copy is an inch shorter than the original, and its origin clearly marked at the back.” The Independent (UK) 06/26/01

THE OLD MONETS: Two rarely seen but much sought-after paintings by Claude Monet will hit the block at Christie’s in London this week, and are expected to fetch a pretty penny. According to one art expert, “There’s a bit more Monet around than you’d expect because he’s so expensive that museums can’t afford to buy him, so there’s quite a lot of splendid pictures still washing about in private hands.” BBC 06/26/01

DIVINE INTERVENTION: “A Buddhist-influenced artwork incorporating the baptistry of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was removed on Saturday after the director of the cathedral’s visual arts program ordered the work’s artist to revise it or remove it. The removal prompted two other artists to pull their works from a group exhibition at the cathedral focusing on spirituality.” The New York Times 06/26/01 (one-time registration required for access)

AMATEUR STING: Archeologists in Egypt are protesting the allowance of amateur diggers on archeological sites. “The experts, who often fail to make headlines after years of painstaking work, have been stung by the amateurs’ sometimes spectacular finds, like the discovery of the lost underwater city of Herakleion” Middle East Times 06/22/01.

SO NO RETRACTABLE ROOF, THEN? It’s no secret that Chicago’s Wrigley Field, one of baseball’s most beloved parks, is often a bigger draw than the team that plays there (this year’s Cubs’ playoff run notwithstanding.) A new renovation plan promises to bring cosmetic improvements without disrupting the classic architecture of the place. Chicago Tribune 06/26/01

NEW GIANT BUDDHA: A plan to build the tallest Buddha in the world – 43 metres high – in Korea, has ignited controversy among Korean monks. Korea Times 06/26/01

LOOK FOR THE “MADE IN CHINA” LABEL: So you can’t afford a real Van Gogh, but want something rich-looking to hang over the mantle? That knockoff you pick up for a song at the museum gift shop more than likely originated in a small Chinese village called Dafen, and you probably paid ten times what the artist got for it. Nando Times (AP) 06/25/01

VIRTUAL PRESERVATION: “The British Library has preserved for the nation a unique 15th century “illuminated” manuscript worth £15m. The library has also made a virtual computer version of the Sherborne Missal so visitors can see more than they would if it was displayed under glass.” BBC 06/26/01

Monday June 25

SETTLING ON NAZI THEFT: The owners of a Monet painting up for auction this week have made a deal with the heirs of the painting’s original owner who was forced by the Nazis to sell the work in 1935. The two parties will split the proceeds from the sale, estimated to be between £1.5 million and £2 million. The Times (UK) 06/25/01

ASSEMBLY-LINE FORGER: “By French law, an artist is allowed to make twelve copies of any bronze sculpture, all to be numbered. Any further copy, even if made in the artist’s lifetime and under his supervision, is legally considered a reproduction.” So the some 6000 bronze fakes perpetrated by French entrepreneur Guy Hain and sold for $18 million are grounds for some good long jail time. The Art Newspaper 06/22/01

THE MUSEUM’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Outgoing Louvre director Pierre Rosenberg is pessimistic about the future of museums. “Until now there was art education in schools. You had a little bit of knowledge about antiquity and Old and New Testament. Now this knowledge is lost all over the world. What is the Annunciation, for example? The Louvre does deal with 1 million children each year. But that’s not enough. If the problem is not taken up by the Ministry of Education, it won’t work. And that’s everywhere. Without education, I am sure we are lost for the future.” Newsweek 06/25/01

HOT FOR VERMEER: The hottest show in London this year is the National Gallery’s Vermeer exhibition, featuring 13 of the artist’s 35 surviving paintings. The museum says it could easily sell twice the number of tickets it is offering, but doesn’t want to turn the galleries into a mob scene. London Evening Standard (UK) 06/24/01

RECONSIDERING MIES: Paul Goldberger reviews the new interest in Mies van der Rohe. “Mies’s buildings look like the simplest things you could imagine, yet they are among the richest works of architecture ever created. Modern architecture was supposed to remake the world, and Mies was at the center of the revolution, but he was also a counter-revolutionary who designed beautiful things. The New Yorker 06/15/01

Sunday June 24

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY: New York City recently held an architectural competition to decide what form a new 9-acre development in Midtown Manhattan would take. “The competition. . . raised public expectations that New York was finally poised to embrace architecture, as many other cities have, as a means of reckoning with the challenges of a changing world. The outcome — the choice of two long-established New York firms to create a master plan for the site — fell far short of those expectations.” The New York Times 06/24/01 (one-time registration required for access)

MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER SKYSCRAPER: The tallest structure in the world turns 25 this year, and it has aged well. “The CN Tower is more than a terrific swizzle stick. It is more than unrequited love over expensive beer and nachos in a revolving restaurant. But, though it has defined monumentality over the last quarter century, it maintains an enigmatic presence to those who look upon it daily.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 06/23/01

SERIOUSLY FUNNY: If you haven’t yet encountered Aaron McGruder’s edgy, confrontational comic strip, you will. The Boondocks is growing in popularity, even as its creator fields accusations of racism and snubs from many of the black community’s power brokers. McGruder’s main characters are all African-American, and he has no intention of using his strip as a tool for educating white America, which may explain why it is succeeding where other “black” comic strips have failed. The New York Times Magazine 06/24/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Friday June 22

WHAT SEROTA MEANS TO THE TATE: Figurative artists criticize Tate director Nicholas Serota for his taste in collecting. And true, you’re not likely to see figurative work at the Tate under his regime. But at mid-20th Century the Tate missed out on some of the most compelling art of its time by being too conservative. Serota, by contrast, is building one of the most important collections of late-20th/early-21st Century art. The Telegraph (UK) 06/22/01

• TATE WATCH: The Tate has been completely transformed from what it was a few years ago – good and bad. With Tate Modern director Lars Nittve leaving, where should the Tate go from here? And who are the main contenders for the job? The Times (UK) 06/22/01
• GREAT EXPECTATIONS: “As the intelligentsia speculates on who will be Tate Modern’s new director — the glamorous Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine, is this country’s most obvious candidate — the role is starting to emerge as something of a mixed blessing. Success may breed success, but Tate Modern’s start is intimidating — even the lavatory paper budget has had to be multiplied as the building creaks with an unforeseen quantity of visitors.” The Times (UK) 06/22/01
• Previously: LEAVING THE TATE: The head of the Tate Modern, Lars Nittve, has announced he is quitting the museum to become director of Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the country’s national museum of modern art. “Friends said that he was partly influenced by homesickness and denied that the complicated management structure at the Tate, which effectively made him Number Two at the gallery, played a part in his decision to leave.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/21/01

ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN? Postmodernism in architecture is dead isn’t it? At the least, no one wants to admit to being a postmodernist. “We must offer respect for the dead, but I’m not sure to whom the condolences should go if no one admits to really being a postmodernist, and if most of those presumed to have been such are still thriving, and, in some cases, are designing in more or less the same style.” Architecture Magazine 05/01

AS IF NEW YORK COULD GET ANY CREEPIER: Last year, a flower-covered 43-foot puppy adorned Rockefeller Plaza as part of New York’s public art program. But apparently, a pooch is just too tame for those edgy denizens of the Big Apple, who will spend the next several months under the steely gaze of a 30-foot high spider named Mama. Nando Times (AP) 06/21/01

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME (AND BREAK IT): A London artist hoping to prove that Londoners could appreciate public art without destroying it, found her sculpture vandalized. “I’d hoped to show that, even here, open-air sculpture doesn’t have to be made of bronze or stone to survive. It looks like I’ve been proved wrong. I was prepared for it to happen but not within eight hours of it going up.” London Evening Standard 06/21/01

ONE WAY TO STEAL ART… Then there was that day in 1995 when a visitor to the Museum of Modern Art in New York walked up to Duchamp’s famous bicycle wheel, pulled it off its pedestal, walked through the galleries, down the escalator and out the front door, escaping in a cab. The next day the artwork mysteriously reappeared, thrown over the museum’s fence… Forbes.com 06/21/01

• …AND ONE WAY TO GET IT BACK: “Berliners have woken up to find their city plastered with “Wanted” posters depicting the face of the late celebrated artist Francis Bacon. The posters offer a reward of 300,000 German marks (£100,000). Yet it is not Bacon himself they are demanding, but the return of a portrait of the artist stolen 13 years ago.” BBC 06/22/01

Thursday June 21

THEFT EVERYWHERE: A new report on looted art in Europe is alarming. “New research shows that in Italy alone more than 88,000 objects have been stolen from religious institutions over the past 20 years, while the Czech Republic has lost 40,000 objects since 1986.” The Times (UK) 06/21/01

LEAVING THE TATE: The head of the Tate Modern, Lars Nittve, has announced he is quitting the museum to become director of Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the country’s national museum of modern art. “Friends said that he was partly influenced by homesickness and denied that the complicated management structure at the Tate, which effectively made him Number Two at the gallery, played a part in his decision to leave. Nittve was said to have received a personal telephone call from Gran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, asking him to take the new job.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/21/01

CONCEPTUALISTS MEET VERMEER: The hottest young British artists today are highly conceptual. Vermeer, on the other hand, was a master of technique. Six young Brits go to the new Vermeer show at the National Gallery and record their impressions. The Guardian (UK) 06/21/01

VIRUS ART: Conceived and compiled for the invitation to the 49th Venice Biennale, ‘biennale.py’ is the product of the collaboration of two entities, 0100101110101101.ORG and epidemiC, already known for other shocking actions, often bordering with crime. ‘biennale.py’ is both a work of art and a computer virus. Exquisite Corpse 06/18/01

Wednesday June 20

THE HEART OF RICHNESS: “Africa, already plundered of its people by slavers, its animals by big-game hunters and poachers and its mineral wealth by miners, is now yielding up its cultural heritage. Across the continent, art and artifacts are being looted from museums, universities and straight from the ground. Most of the objects end up in Europe or the United States.” Time 06/18/01

BEFORE THE FLOOD: More than 1000 archeologists are working day and night to rescue artifacts in the Three Gorges region of China before the area is flooded by a giant hydro-electric project in 2003. People’s Daily (China) 06/19/01

NOW THAT THE CROWDS HAVE GONE, the Venice Biennale is a pleasure. “Somehow, miraculously, the show, even in its charming incoherence, manages to fit into and complement the city in the most remarkable way, a Harold to its Maude, making for a brief, crazy romance of unlikely soulmates, the true beauty of this event.” The New York Times 06/20/01 (one-time registration required for access)

FRANKLY FRIDA: The most anticipated art movie of the year is the Frida Kahlo biopic. “How has the swarthy, moustachioed woman who stares unsmiling from self-portraits become such a cult figure? How has a small fierce, intellectually complex cripple with an unbroken eyebrow become an icon? It happened partly by accident.” The Times (UK) 06/20/01

Tuesday June 19

SURPRISE – THE ASHMOLEAN DOES MODERN: Oxford’ Ashmolean is the world’s oldest public museum But “the opening of a modern gallery this week will uncover a collection quite unknown to the public and is a dramatic development at a museum internationally renowned for its old master paintings and its vast collection of antiquities.” The Guardian (UK) 06/19/01

VEXING VEXILLOLOGY: The rankings are out, and New Mexico, Texas, and Quebec are leading the pack, while Montana, Nebraska and Georgia have some serious work to do. On what, you ask? Why, only the most visible visual symbol of a state or province’s identity: its flag. Simplicity and relevance seem to be the best way to get your flag at the top of the list, while crowded logos, too many colors, and Confederate battle emblems will land you near the bottom. Ottawa Citizen (CP) 06/19/01

Monday June 18

MUSEUM CRASH? The growth in the number and interest in museums in the past decade has been unprecedented. But the growth is unsustainable, and beneath the boom is the unsettling fact that many museums are seriously undercapitalized. One expert says it will be a difficult next decade as museums try to stabilize. The Art Newspaper 06/15/01

BEING AT BASEL: There are 260 galleries at this year’s Basel art fair. Another 640 galleries were on the waiting list to show there, lured by the prospect of 53,000 art buyers attending the show. “By the time Art Basel ends [today], collectors and museums are expected to have bought $250 million to $300 million worth of contemporary art, though the exact total is not known because gallery sales are private.” The New York Times 06/17/01 (one-time registration required for access)

VERMEER/NOT VERMEER: Is it a 36th Vermeer or not? London’s National Gallery plans to display the disputed painting thought to be a Vermeer next to two verified originals and let the public judge. The Telegraph (UK) 06/17/01

SEEKING CHAGALL: New York’s Jewish Museum is offering a reward for information about a Chagall painting stolen from the museum last week. The New York Times 06/16/01 (one-time registration required for access)

CLEANING BILBAO: About a third of the 42,000 titanium sheets cladding the outside of the Guggenheim Bilbao are discolored with red stains. Earlier this year architect Frank Gehry criticized the museum for not maintaining the building; now the sheets will be cleaned at a rate of about 150 a day. CBC 06/15/01

SEEKING VAN GOGH: A writer seeks out three scenes that Van Gogh painted, and finds that though they have changed much in the 113 years or so since they were painted, they have stories to tell. Financial Times 06/18/01

Sunday June 17

THE TWO FACES OF… As the US government investigation of auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s for collusion wound up, Christie’s negotiated an amnesty agreement. But secret internal documents recently obtained show that what the company was saying to investigators and what it was actually doing were two different things. The New York Times 06/17/01 (one-time registration required for access)

PISA REOPENS: After 11 years of working to stabilize it, the leanning tower of Pisa reopened this week. “The $30 million project to stabilize the 12th century tower and return it to the sustainable tilt of 163 years ago is being hailed as one of the great engineering feats of all time.” San Francisco Chronicle (Boston Globe) 06/17/01

CAUTIONARY TALE: It’s been five years since Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art moved into its new building. Expectations were so high for a building that would transform the museum, but “what an odd structure it is that forces staff to get around it in order to best fulfill the mission of a museum. This one has done so for the last five years, and because there is no other choice, let’s look on the bright side.” Chicago Tribune 06/17/01

THE ARMANI UNIVERSE: Is Georgio Armani a billion-dollar clothes industry or an artist working on the human form? Hint – if you have dinner with the man, his people send over a selection of clothes for you to wear for the evening. “But this is just the way the Armani universe works. You accept an invitation to dinner. You wear the dress. It’s a deal most celebrities are used to. But as a mere journalist, I have to confess, it made me feel slightly uncomfortable.” The Observer (UK) 06/17/01

Friday June 15

WORLD’S BIGGEST ART FAIR: The art world is in Basel this week. “Once a year, for a week, this quaint little city in the corner of Switzerland becomes a fondue pot of culture. All the big dealers dip in as it plays host to the world’s biggest modern and contemporary art fair. The scene is truly international and so is the language — which is money. Behind the schmoozing and smiles, you see the glint of the hard sell.” The Times (UK) 06/15/01

KLIMT INSIDE, STRIKERS OUTSIDE: That’s how the National Gallery of Canada opens today. “The strikers say it’s their work that made the Klimt show possible, and they’re bitter that it’s opening without them.” The view of management is that “it’s up to the public to decide if they can afford to miss the most comprehensive show of Klimt’s work ever to reach North America.” CBC 06/14/01

FLAME BROILED ART: An art student at Britain’s Sunderland University had her car with her art project for school in the trunk stolen. When police recovered it, the car and the art were a charred wreck. So she had the 11-year Ford Fiesta towed to a shop where she made an art project out of it and entered it in the school’s final show. The Telegraph (UK) 06/15/01

Thursday June 14

GERMANY RETURNS ART TO GREECE: Germany is returning some of the art in its museums to Greece, which has been fighting to get it back. “Berlin’s Pergamon museum will send Greece ten sections of the Philippeion monument, built between 338 and 336 BC. Germany will also help restore the monument at Olympia, the sanctuary and site of the Olympic Games.” The Times (UK) 06/14/01

AND IT WON’T EVEN KILL YOU: Jam a bunch of quarters in the slot, pull the knob, and reach into the dispenser for a refreshing (if habit-forming) pack of… art? Yes, art – step right up and meet the Art*o*mat, a converted cigarette machine that dispenses pocket-sized pieces of art for the consumer on the go. Coming soon to a museum, grocery store, or laundromat near you. Washington Post 06/14/01

PERCENT FOR WHAT? Since 1979 the City of Chicago may have spent $15 million on its Percent for Art program. Or maybe it didn’t. The Public Art Program apparently hasn’t kept records of how much it has collected or what it has commissioned. Most alarming is the director’s explanation of his accounting: “It’s the city. We juggle money all the time.” Chicago Tribune 06/13/01

CHOCOLATE, RAW OYSTERS, AND GUSTAV KLIMT? “According to a study by the Institute of Psychoanalytical Psychiatry, published in Rome last week, a visit to an art museum — or even a church — can get those erotic feelings flowing. The study of 2,000 museum goers this spring concluded the lush flesh exhibited in Renaissance, Baroque and classical masterpieces left at least one-fifth of art lovers so excited they had a ‘fleeting but intense erotic adventure’ with a stranger.” Ottawa Citizen 06/14/01

ART THAT DICTATES ART: Frank Gehry’s influence on museum design is to elevate buildings to the level of showy pieces of art. But what of the art inside? The new architecture dictates the art by the nature of its strong personalities. And surely that isn’t good for art… The New Republic 06/13/01

A FAMILY TRADITION: For decades, the Wyeth family has quietly produced beautiful, if old-fashioned, works of art from their family homestead in rural Pennsylvania. Three generations of Wyeths (illustrator N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew of “Helga” series fame, and Andrew’s son Jamie) have each carved their own personal niche, but all three are bound together by a long tradition of complete disregard for what the critics think. Chicago Tribune 06/14/01

Wednesday June 13

VISUALIZE FRANCE: A new French government study of the visual arts world warns that “French contemporary artists are being pushed out of the world market because of stifling state patronage, a lack of private collectors and a failure of imagination.” The Times (UK) 06/13/01

TWO MORE VENICE BIENNALE REVIEWS:

• MODEL EXPERIENCE: “Fine painting, fascinating video, acres of photographs, a sculpture or two and plenty of self-indulgence – the Venice Biennale offers a perfect snapshot of the art world today.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/13/01
• NOT PLEASANT: over-crowded, under-inspired — and over-run with little golden turtles. The Times (UK) 06/13/01

SHAKESPEARE ON DISPLAY: The Art Gallery of Ontario plans to show a painting done in the early 1600s that is purported to be a portratit of Shakespeare. CBC 06/12/01

LET THERE BE LIGHT: A new exhibit produced jointly by museums in Amsterdam and Pittsburgh examines the role of light, both natural and artificial, in art history. The curators contend that the direction of visual art was changed forever by the development of gas and electric lights, and make a direct link between the oft-competing worlds of science and art. The New York Times 06/13/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Tuesday June 12

POLITICS – AND MORE – LOOM OVER NEW WARSAW MUSEUM: Anda Rottenberg was the moving force behind a new Museum of Contemporary Art for Warsaw. Frank Gehry was going to design it. Now the Polish Minister of Culture has removed her from the project. Stated reason: criticism of a selection committee. Apparent reason: politics. Suspected reason: anti-Semitism. The Art Newspaper 06/11/01

THE OVERCROWDED BIENNALE: The Venice Biennale is up in full cacophony. “As elsewhere in Venice, the crowd is now the problem more than ever. Has the Biennale grown too big? The gardens in Castello, its historic heart and home, have no more space for national pavilions. The ancient Arsenale, with its sprawl of disused yards and workshops, fill up as every new space becomes available. Meanwhile the Biennale spreads ever more widely through the city.” Financial Times 06/12/01

TATE-HATER: Hilton Kramer laments the Tate Museum and the toll of success. “This ill-conceived project clearly represents the spirit of the age, which in art and in life is besotted with an appetite for destroying what is good by enlarging it to a scale of extinction. It puts us on notice that in the twenty-first century we shall need no wars to devastate our monuments to the past. Our cultural bureaucrats have shown themselves to be fully capable of performing the task for us.” New Criterion 06/01

Monday June 11

CHAGALL MISSING: A rare Chagall oil painting has been stolen from Manhattan’s Jewish Museum. “A janitor noticed some sawdust on the floor near where the painting had hung around 8 a.m. [Friday], but didn’t report it because he wasn’t aware the painting was missing.” New York Post 06/09/01

PLAYING POORLY IN CANADA: The Canadian branch of Sotheby’s auction house has been getting waxed by the competition, its share of the Canadian market dwindling quickly. So the company has hired a high profile celebrity to run the company’s operations. Toronto Star 06/11/01

TOTEM RETURN: Chicago’s Field Museum has agreed to return a 27-foot tall totem pole to the Alaskan tribe that requested it. The pole was taken in 1899 by an artifact gathering expedition. Nando Times (AP) 06/11/01

VENICE BIENNALE OPENS: “At least 65 countries are coming to the 2001 biennale, including for the first time New Zealand, Singapore, Jamaica and Hong Kong. This has stretched capacity to the limits. The Italian artists were so numerous this year that they had to be housed in the Padiglione Venezia, the pavilion usually reserved for the press.” The Art Newspaper 06/08/01

• BIENNALE WINNERS: A list of artists winning prizes at this year’s Biennale. ARTForum 06/10/01

Sunday June 10

VENICE BIENNALE OPENS: “From the almost 300 artists showing in this 49th Biennale – 130 chosen by Szeeman, and 156 by curators in each of the 63 countries represented at the festival – you get about a half-century’s worth of styles, ideas and notions about what good art can be.” Washington Post 06/10/01

REMAKING LONDON: London’s mayor’s beliefs about his city’s future can be summarized as “either London buckles down and starts building skyscrapers with the abandon of a Shanghai or a Hong Kong or else Britain heads for the economic third division.” In his drive to remake the capital, he considers the preservationist English Heritage “the biggest threat to London’s future since the Luftwaffe.” The Observer (UK) 06/10/01

THE PUBLIC BLANK CANVAS: Two weeks before an artist was to install art inside 200 New York taxicabs, the NYC Taxi Commission denied permission for it. “The commission adhered to the common civic notion that the public deserves nothing less than predictable neutrality in its urban landscape. The flip side of our worship of individual expression is the enforced uniformity and blandness of the spaces we share: gray, blockish office buildings in the International Style, muzak in elevators, Starbucks and McDonald’s.” The New York Times 06/09/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Friday June 8

VIENNA’S BOLD AMBITION: Vienna’s new contemporary arts center is ambitious – “in its ambitions this project is right up there with Tate Modern, the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Getty Center: an international focus for the arts on a scale that only few institutions and metropolitan spaces can aspire to.” Financial Times (UK) 06/08/01

GUERILLA TRANSIT: A student at the Glasgow Institute of Art has been conducting guerilla art on bus riders. At bus stop kiosques, “instead of bus times and route information, puzzled travellers have found musings by the 23-year-old about how his life has been intertwined with bus journeys, including longing for a former girlfriend, a past job at Asda and the joys of eating carry-outs on late-night buses.” The Scotsman 06/08/01

Thursday June 7

THE CRITICS HATE IT: Critics are piling on the design for the new World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC. “Friedrich St. Florian’s design for the National World War II Memorial diminishes the substance of its architectural context. The design does not dare to know. It is, instead, a shrine to the idea of not knowing or, more precisely, of forgetting. It erases the historical relationship of World War II to ourselves. It puts sentiment in the place where knowledge ought to be.” The New York Times 06/07/01 (one-time registration required for access)

PLEASE DO NOT SIT ON THE ART: Chicago was the first American city to put a bunch of fiberglass animals in prominent locations and allow local artists to have at them, and the “Cows on Parade” project sparked a wave of copycats across the U.S. Now, with “Suite Home Chicago,” the city is trying again, with furniture being the rather unconventional theme. Still, don’t expect function to follow form: “Partly to discourage the homeless from camping out on them, they ‘have been made as uncomfortable as possible.'” Chicago Tribune 06/07/01

• HERE PIGGY PIGGY… Seattle’s doing fibreglass Pigs on Parade. Have artists been reduced to this? “It does serious damage to the public conception of what artists do. It moves artists away from being agents of inquiry and sensors of cultural shifts toward decorators. Good eyes for hire. What it amounts to is a retrograde shift in the artist’s position in society.” The Stranger 06/06/01

Wednesday June 6

TATE MODERN – SUPERSIZE ME? Tate Modern wants to double in size? “Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota wants more space because there are living artists out there, especially in America, who are reaching a certain age and are ‘looking for places where their work can be seen’: Elsworth Kelly, for example, or Robert Rauschen-burg, or Jasper Johns. The hope is to seduce them with beautiful expanses of new gallery, so the Tate can have many versions of its room of paintings given to them by Mark Rothko.” London Evening Standard 06/06/01

MARTHA STEWART IN THE SMITHSONIAN? Nothing against rich people – but should money allow you to choose what goes into a museum? The Smithsonian seems to be in a conflict of judgment as big donors get a very large say in some new projects. Washington Post 06/05/01

POST-BLACK: A new exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem presents “the work of twenty-eight unheralded African-American artists, who… plainly owe much to the politically convulsed nineties generation. This exhilarating show suggests that the ordeal of race in America may be verging on an upbeat phase that is without precedent.” The New Yorker 06/04/01

I WANT MY PAINTINGS: The “great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the last King of Poland, has written to the director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, claiming ownership of 180 paintings – including several Rubens, three Rembrandts and two Canalettos” – a collection worth £250 million. His claim, at first look seems to be shaky. London Evening Standard 06/06/01

MUSEUM INQUIRY: The Australian government is grilling top management of the National Gallery over some of the wrong answers museum officials provided to a government inquiry, including sayings that museum loans and traveling exhibitions had doubled when they hadn’t. One Senator demands: “I want to know why they got it wrong.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/06/01

MORE NAZI LOOT? Last week Glasgow’s museums put up lists of their artwork with uncertain provenance. “A bronze bust of Mary Queen of Scots and two paintings that once belonged to Charles I have been included in the list of works of art in Scottish galleries that may have been looted by Nazis.” Glasgow Herald 06/06/01

Tuesday June 5

BATTLE FOR THE STORY OF A NATION: Australia’s recently-opened National Museum attempts to tell the history of the country, and it has been generally praised by critics for being surprisingly candid. But documents obtained by the Sydney Herald show that deciding how that story would be told and what would get into the museum was a fierce behind-the-scenes battle. Sydney Morning Herald 06/05/01

A LAME DEBATE OVER ART: Australia is debating what its new Museum of Contemporary Art should look like. But it hasn’t been much of a debate, complains one critic. “Commentary has overwhelmed reporting and opinion pieces have pushed personal agendas. The usual suspects have been rounded up for comment and it has been nothing if not predictable. The newspaper letters columns too have lacked any sense of middle ground in their discussion of the MCA. It is as if reasoned debate must be avoided at all costs.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/05/01

WHAT TO DO WHEN IT’S STOLEN? “Selling stolen art in the auction business is, unfortunately, nothing new. At issue is the degree of liability an auction house has if it is learned that they have sold stolen goods–or at least goods to which the title is in dispute – and what the unwitting buyer can claim in recompense. In other words, how financially responsible should an auction house be when it fails to provide the kind of rigorous background check that can ensure buyers they aren’t buying hot art?” Forbes.com 06/04/01

MIES BACK IN FASHION: After a decade and a half in which Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has been “the juiciest target of those who attribute the physical alienation of American cities, at least in part, to the glass-and-steel high-rises on which he was the supreme authority,” the architect is suuddenly hot again. Why now? Perhaps it’s a reaction to “frustration in some quarters with the blob-and-matchstick work of the post-Gehry generation of architects.” ARTNews 06/01

Monday June 4

UNFAIR ACCOUNTING: Was a recent audit of museums by the Scottish government unfair and misleading? Some museums say the audit discriminates against smaller institutions. “David Clough, director of Kilmartin House Trust museum, in Argyll, claims it is unfair and portrays museums such as Kilmartin as ‘dead end institutions with no economic future’.” Glasgow Herald 06/03/01

WHAT TO CLEAN? Experts are piling on in condemning the Ufizzi’s plan to clean Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi. “It’s ridiculous. I have not the slightest idea why they want it cleaned. These are the first sketches and first ideas that the master put down with his brush, and who is to say which of these lines were really his?” The Telegraph (UK) 06/03/01

Sunday June 3

ART IN THE SLUMS: When Jacobo Borges proposed a new museum in one of the worst slums of Caracas, critics said few would come to such a bad location to see art. “But six years later, the Jacobo Borges Museum is one of the most celebrated in South America – and not just because the neighborhood is bad.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 06/03/01

TECH-SAVVY: “Instead of taking place on the margins, in out-of-the-way galleries with the requisite electrical outlets, technologically based art, which now includes digital projects, has increasingly become the main course.” San Francisco Chronicle 06/03/01

Friday June 1

INSURING PROBLEMS: It’s getting more difficult to borrow major works of art for exhibitions. The Australian government has a program to help insure loaned art in Australia, but even that program is becoming problematic. Sydney Morning Herald 06/01/01

SOMETHING TO GO INSIDE: The Guggenheim is expanding with new locations. But it needs art to go inside. So it has established some acquisition committees. “Unlike other museums, which have had such committees for decades, the Guggenheim formed these only six years ago. During the 1980’s and early 90’s, the collection barely grew.” The New York Times 06/01/01 (one-time registration required for access)

AUCTIONING CHURCHILL: A large collection of Winston Churchill documents, including photographs never before seen in public, are to be auctioned. But British historians – who have not yet seen the collection – are upset that the collection may leave the UK without them having a chance to buy it. London Evening Standard 05/31/01

HEART’S DESIRE: If Edwina Currie won the lottery, she knows exactly what she’d do – buy a Rembrandt. Specifically The Night Watch. “It invites you in; it begs you to leap inside the frame and gird your loins in 17th-century Amsterdam.” The Times (UK) 06/01/01

THE CRITIC THEY LOVED TO HATE: Joan Altabe was an award-winning architecture and visual art critic for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and the newspaper’s most controversial writer. But her acid word processor won her lots of enemies, and after she was laid off last month, many wondered if her foes had finally got her fired. St. Petersburg Times 05/31/01

IT’S ALL ABOUT PRIORITIES: The spotlight-loving director of Canada’s National Gallery was awarded the prestigious Order of Canada recently, and his employees are pretty steamed about it. Why? They’ve all been on strike for three weeks. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 06/01/01

UP NEXT – POTHOLE COLLAGE! Anything can be art if you look at it right. Today’s supporting example: Ottawa’s Louise Levergneux, who has made quite a nice little career out of photographing, collecting, and marketing – get ready – manhole covers. Ottawa Citizen 06/01/01

Wednesday May 31

• “JUST CALL IT McMOMA”: Getting your museum noticed these days requires “surreal amounts of money” these days, not to mention the promotional instincts of PT Barnum. The Museum of Modern Art’s Glenn Lowry has been “resculpting” MoMA so that the museum gets its fair share (of money and attention). He has hired a crack marketing team at private-sector salaries and has chosen to oversee projects that include building a Philippe Starck-meets-Amazon.com art and design Web store, and renting part of the museum’s art collection to a billionaire Japanese real estate mogul. New York Observer 05/31/00
• HOW TO SAVE VENICE ART? Acid rain is eating the outdoor art of Venice. “Amputated arms, graffiti, and the black streaks caused by sulphur dioxide have marred the appearance of much Venetian sculpture, and everywhere there are examples such as Alessandro Vittoria’s statue of Saint Zaccaria on the central portal of the church, which remains faceless after its marble features disintegrated.” Some want to rescue the work by taking it inside and replacing it with copies. The Art Newspaper 05/31/00
• DANCING ON THE THAMES: Architect Terry Farrell designed two of London’s most flamboyant buildings on the Thames in the 1980s – the MI6 headquarters and the redesigned Charing Cross Station – then promptly fell out of favor without a single London commission in the 90s. Now he’s got seven major London projects in the works, all for prime sites along the river, and whether or not they’re loved, they’re sure to be noticed. London Times 05/31/00
• REPORTS OF OUR DEATH ARE… The Royal Canadian Academy of Art decided to do a millennial show and made an open call to artists. The idea might have worked 120 years ago when the Academy was formed. “Maybe it even worked 30 years ago, when the RCA’s annual exhibition finally died off. For better or worse, however, at the beginning of the 21st century it’s simply not how things work – as any truly vigorous arts organization would have understood right off. Toronto Globe and Mail 05/30/00

Tuesday May 30

• THE REAL DICK: That maybe-Richard Diebenkorn-that wasn’t in that E-Bay auction that got everybody so excited a few weeks ago and forced a winning bid of $135,000? Well maybe it is real after all. Though the auction was nullified, experts are now looking at the painting to determine its patrimony. San Francisco Chronicle 05/30/00

Monday May 29

• AN APPETITE FOR (FREE) ART:Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art gets a corporate grant to abolish its $12 admission charge. In the first four days since going free, attendance has doubled, and twice the museum has had to temporarily close its doors because of overcrowding. Sydney Morning Herald 05/29/00
• THE STORY BEHIND THE PAINT: It’s been possible to tell what lies underneath the layers of paint of a painting for some time. “However, new technologies such as infra-red analysis – one of several methods used to determine the history and construction of paintings – makes the task more precise.” The technology is helping rewrite the histories of some works of art. The Age (Melbourne) 05/29/00
• A FAKE FAKE: Fifty years ago, Australia’s most important painting – thought to be by 15th-century Flemish master Jan van Eyck –  was declared a fake by experts in Brussels who ruled it was not by van Eyck and was probably not even Flemish. The painting was taken down from the National Gallery and put away. But new research shows the experts might have been wrong and now the painting may be returned to display. The Age (Melbourne) 05/29/00
• THE STOLEN ART PROBLEM: Theft of artwork has become a major international problem. The British government wants to do something about it. But first – just how big a problem is it? No one seems to know for sure. The Telegraph (London) 05/29/00

Sunday May 28

• ART STARS:Britain’s hip new artists have become glamorous celebs. “This isn’t so surprising when you consider the new wealth giving a golden glow to new British art. It’s become a nice little earner.” But do they lose some their hipness by traveling in these new circles?  Sunday Times (London) 05/28/00
• MUSEUMS AS ENTERTAINMENT: “Entertainment gets a bad rap as diversionary distraction, a shallow Pied Piper ostensibly leading us away from the serious things in life. But try telling that to Shakespeare or Bernini, who managed to make extremely entertaining art. Entertainment’s dual responsibilities are to hold interest and give pleasure. Why this should be considered a minor achievement is anybody’s guess – especially for art – although American Puritanism is one likely culprit. But art is not brain surgery, nor the answer to perennial problems like war or world hunger.” Los Angeles Times 05/28/00

Saturday May 27

• MOMA NO-NO: Media Mogul S.I. Newhouse has been forced to give up his priuzed seat on the Museum of Modern Art board of directors (he’s been a member for 27 years). “One of the world’s most prolific art collectors, Newhouse stepped down to avoid being expelled for breaking a rule barring trustees from buying a painting from the museum. He bought a 1913 Picasso, Man with Guitar, that the museum had decided to de-acquisition to fund new buys. The picture, in the museum’s basement, was sold to an unidentified art dealer who sold it to Mr Newhouse for $10 million.” The Times (London) 05/27/00
• NYET EXCHANGE: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a law banning the return of stolen WWII artwork to Germany.  “The works in question include a rare Gutenberg Bible, gold artifacts from the ancient site of Troy, a drawing by Rembrandt and paintings by Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.” Washington Post 05/27/00
• NASA DE MEDICI: When you think of the US space agency, you think rockets, not art. But NASA has commissioned hundreds of artworks about space, and a number of them are currently touring the country. “Featured artists include Peter Max, Robert McCall, Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth. To give them creative fodder, NASA allows selected artists wide access to events, such as shuttle launches.” Discover.com 05/25/00
• MUSEUMS AS THEME PARK: Have museums been caught up in an infotainment vortex? “It is no longer enough to be the repository of objects and artifacts stored for presentation and posterity, presented to the public for their edification. Now museums have to engage with the public, competing with the rest of the entertainment industry for tourist dollars and leisure time. All the while maintaining their learning function.” Policy.com 05/26/00
• PUBLIC ART PROTEST: For two months neighbors of the University of Massachusetts in Boston have been protesting the pending installation of a new piece of public art. The sculpture was due to be installed this weekend, but this week someone took a sledgehammer to the work’s support piers, forcing a postponement. Boston Globe 05/27/00

Friday May 26

• LOOT AIN’T LEGIT: The International Council of Museums has condemned the Louvre’s recent decision to exhibit two 2,000-year-old terracotta figures which were looted from Nigeria and then illegally exported by a Brussels dealer. French president Jacques Chirac has intervened to plea with Nigeria’s president to legitimize the acquisition which he hopes will have a permanent home in the Louvre’s new non-European art gallery. The Art Newspaper 05/25/00
• FINDING FAULT: Neil MacGregor, director of London’s National Gallery, has criticized the UK government’s recent euphoria over much-publicized museum and gallery openings, including the Tate Modern. Striking at the Government’s boast that it had increased access, Mr. MacGregor said: “There may be more access; but it is access to ignorance.” The Independent 05/26/00
• ART IN A CAN: Minneapolis has a graffiti problem. Some officials charge that the city’s arts institutions are encouraging the taggers by sponsoring spray can art. Minneapolis Star-Tribune 05/26/00 
• A RIGHT TO BE NAKED? A university of South Florida student labored on his art exhibition for much of the semester. He built a fiberglass cave in which he proposed to live in naked for the duration of the show. Uh-uh, said the gallery director – no one can stay overnight in the museum, and besides, we don’t like the nudity thing. The artist is crying censorship. St. Petersburg Times 05/25/00 

Thursday May 25

• CORPORATE DIVESTMENT: Sara Lee donates 52 works of art to 40 museums. It’s the largest gift to the most museums in US corporate history. ” The 52 works are described as representing ‘a concise survey of European avant-garde painting and sculpture from 1870 to 1960.’ Not much would strike a viewer as ‘avant-garde,’ most of the art having entered the mainstream years ago.” MSNBC (Newhouse) 05/23/00
• DIRTY LAUNDRY: UK Arts Minster Alan Howarth has selected a panel of experts to examine ways to crack down on Britain’s growing black market for smuggled art and antiquities. An estimated £500 million is laundered every year through the sale of looted artifacts from the Middle East and Africa, all of which can then be legally bought and sold in the UK. Ananova 05/24/00
• SECOND CYBER-THOUGHTS: The Tate Museum commissioned a web artist known as Harwood. “He proposed to make a mock version of the existing Tate website, to which one in three visitors to www.tate.org.uk would be diverted. Clicking through the various categories of the museum’s site, visitors would be dropped into Harwood’s version produced in the same structure and design, but with ‘hacked’ artworks” – work changed digitally by the artist. The work was to debut this week, but that’s been postponed, perhaps to straighten out some reservations about the concept. The Guardian 05/25/00
• DOME DEFENSE: Despite public outcry, shoddy attendance, and the dissenting opinions of 64 MPs, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has defended the UK government’s decision to pump £29m into the Millennium Dome. BBC 05/25/00
• DESIGN FOR LIVING: Israel’s architecture exhibit at the upcoming Venice Biennale attempts to answer the beguiling question: What, exactly, is a city? “In curator Hillel Schocken’s view, modern urban planning has been an utter failure; not one successful city was created in the 20th century. He proposes a new definition of the city, one that fulfills the idea of intimate anonymity.” Ha’aretz (Israel) 05/25/00
• COSMIC SHIFT: For the first time since Washington DC’s Air and Space Museum opened in 1976, the museum is not the most popular museum ticket in town. In the battle of Smithsonians, Natural History is winning. “In the first four months of 2000, 2.3‚million people visited Air and Space. In the same span, 2.8‚million have gone through Natural History. Last month 1‚million visitors walked through Air and Space, compared with 1.3‚million at Natural History.” Washington Post 05/25/00
• The most-stolen work of art in the world goes on display. Ananova 05/25/00 
• BELAGIO TO CLOSE SUNDAY: The Belagio Hotel gallery will close this weekend and its art will be sold. The hotel plans to reopen the gallery later with traveling exhibitions. Las Vegas Sun 05/25/00 

Wednesday May 24

• DULWICH DOOMED? “The most architecturally venerated of London’s art galleries,” the 18^th-century Dulwich Picture Gallery has recently undergone extensive restoration thanks to £5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. How did the revitalization affect Sir John Soane’s original collection? “It’s hard not to feel a twinge of regret, as Soane’s ghost has faded a little more with this new work. It feels normal, which it never was before.” London Evening Standard 05/24/00
• ROCK ON THE BLOCK: New York’s art deco landmark Rockefeller Center is up for sale for an estimated $2-2.5 billion. The property includes 12 historic buildings and is home to Christie’s and NBC. Times of India  (Reuters)05/24/00
• PORTRAITS TO THE STARS: In 1969, London’s National Portrait Gallery dropped its requirement that subjects must be dead for 10 years before being portrayed on gallery walls. Ever since, celebrities have been vying for space among the canvases. “With a television star preferred any day over a worthy politician, the gallery has veered towards the voyeurist appeal of a Madame Tussaud’s.” New York Times 05/24/00 (one-time registration required for entry)  
• LOSE, LOSE: London’s Millennium Dome has been at the center of controversy since the day it was built. The latest stir: the Dome was given an extra £29 million from the National Lottery this week on condition that its chairman resign. He did, and then MPs protested the government’s earlier promise that no further public funds would be advanced to the Dome. The Telegraph 05/24/00
• MARKET-MAKERS: In 1990, the now-defunct Japanese Itoman Corp. purchase some expensive artwork, “a move that caused huge damage to the trading firm” in part because the prices for the paintings were highly inflated. Last week the paintings were sold at auction and the low prices are probably deflated. The artmarket in Japan see its highs and lows. Daily Yomiuri 05/24/00

Tuesday May 23

• WHERE’S THE MODERN IN TATE MODERN? So the opening of the Tate Modern was the art event of the century. But there are a few problems, aren’t there? “The Tate owns fewer than 700 pieces of international art – not all that many really. It wasn’t created to be a museum of world art at all – in fact, at about the time that the Museum of Modern Art was being established in New York, the Tate was turning up its nose at the work of Gaudier-Brzeska, and didn’t really start buying 20th-century international art until well after the Second World War. The consequence of this is that, although the Tate owns 38 Picassos, it also has enormous gaps in its collection.” New Statesman 05/23/00
• WYNN TO GET BELAGIO TAX BREAKS: Casino mogul Steve Wynnis expected to benefit handsomely from major tax breaks when MGM sells off Belagio Hotel’s $200 million worth of fine art in Las Vegas. Las Vegas Sun 05/23/00 
• ART JUMBLE: The new new thing is for museums to hang art out of its traditional chronological order. This of course has some critics and curators fuming. Not Thomas Hoving, however: I applaud the jumble-jamble approach. A work of art is an act of magical genius and it essentially doesn’t matter if it was created in the fifth decade of whatever century or is an example of the late middle mature style of whatever artist or school of painting. And it really doesn’t edify the member of the viewing public if that work is isolated within other similar works in time or space. Artnet.com 05/23/00

Monday May 22

• WATERING THE SPIRIT OF ART: A pair of “guerilla artists” walked into the new Tate Modern museum and urinated in Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” “The pair claimed that the purpose of their action was to ‘celebrate the spirit of modern art.’ Bemused onlookers in the room applauded, thinking that they had just seen an officially planned performance. The artists claim that after their performance, which lasted about a minute, the Tate closed the room to the public but made no attempt to apprehend them.” The Guardian 05/22/00
• FIRE SALE: The British government is considering early plans to sell off the fantastically costly Millennium Dome at a bargain basement price. The Dome has been a popular and critical flop. The Telegraph 05/21/00 
  • BAIL OUT: Dome needs £30 million from the National Lottery to stave off bankruptcy and save the jobs of 5,000 staff. The Independent 05/22/00
• GOLD MEDAL PERFORMANCE: Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry has won the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, “awarded on behalf of the Queen by the Royal Institute of British Architecture, and still, despite the big bucks attached to newer international prizes, the most prestigious of its kind.” The Guardian 05/22/00
• TROPHY PICTURES: Ireland’s booming economy has caused a surge in Ireland’s art market prices. The Telegraph (London) 05/22/00
• ONLINE GUGGENHEIM: The Guggenheim World Empire becomes the WWW Empire. The museum “has pledged the equivalent of a real building’s budget to create the Guggenheim Virtual Museum (GVM), launched this month, on a laptop near you. Wagering that the New York-based architecture firm Asymptote can do for it in virtual space what Frank Gehry’s Bilbao did in the physical world, the Guggenheim’s commitment is not only costly but long-term: Its design and construction will be ongoing, given the fluid nature of the medium.” Architecture Magazine 05/00 

Sunday May 21 

• PICTURE PERFECT: Who says photography has to record something real? In the late ’70s, a number of artists began “questioning the documentary capacity of photography. Instead of taking pictures of extant scenes, James Casebere built elaborate models and photographed them, presenting the prints rather than the constructions as his art. Other artists were coming up with similar strategies at the time, all departing from the tradition of straight photography and its commitment to reality.” Los Angeles Times 05/21/00

Friday May 19

• CHILD’S P(L)AY: Damien Hirst has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to two children’s charities to settle a copyright suit sparked by his latest work, “Hymn,” a 20ft bronze sculpture (which recently sold for £1m) that is a larger-than-life replica of a well-known child’s anatomy set. BBC 05/19/00  
• WHY WE LIKE OUR BIG McHOUSES: Everyone, it seems, decries suburban sprawl. From the McHouse architecture to the sterile streetlife, the ‘burbs make an easy target. But “for all the scorn that’s heaped on the suburbs – and especially on subdivisions of nearly identical houses on the fringe of metropolitan areas – people like living there. And not just middle-class drones either.” Weekly Standard 05/22/00
• VINTAGE FAKES? Some of Louise Hine’s vintage master photographs appear to have been forged. Experts are investigating. Chicago Tribune 05/19/00
• MAN OH MANN: The governor of Virginia has objected to a slide show by photographer Sally Mann given earlier this month in a state-owned museum. In his letter to the museum’s interim director the governor wrote he was ‘shocked and dismayed that this type of exhibit occurred on state owned property.’ ” Fox News (AP) 05/19/00
• HEY – IT’S ONLY A BUILDING: “And the opening of Tate Modern. My reaction? Stunned. Literally stunned. Suddenly, London has become the greatest city the world has to offer, the city that is positively buzzing with energy and optimism and sheer in-your-face modernity.” The Guardian 05/19/00
• TOP OF 1000 YEARS: Four American museum curators each have a go at picking their top ten artworks of the past 1,000 years.  Two of them pick Chartres as No.1. Christian Science Monitor 05/19/00 
• I THINK I CAN: No. 3 auctioneer Phillips comes back with another auction – and has better luck selling it after last week’s disaster. New York Times 05/19/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• SITTING ON CEREMONY: Plans to erect a statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt sitting in a wheel chair stir controversy in Washington DC. Washington Post 05/19/00

Thursday May 18

• TWO DONUTS ON STILTS: Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project is said to look like a cross between a spaceship and a glob of playdough – what about his plans for the new Manhattan Guggenheim? “Take two donuts with holes in them, and put them up on stilts.” Disney World, say the critics. The future, say Gehry and Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim’s director. Art Newspaper 05/18/00
• TWO DONUTS ON STILTS: Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project is said to look like a cross between a spaceship and a glob of playdough – what about his plans for the new Manhattan Guggenheim? “Take two donuts with holes in them, and put them up on stilts.” Disney World, say the critics. The future, say Gehry and Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim’s director. Art Newspaper 05/18/00
• “MISS IT AND YOU’LL CURSE YOURSELF”: The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto broke all of its attendance records this spring with a blockbuster show of Egyptian artifacts. But popular as ancient Egypt is, to get people through the door the museum hired a slick ad agency to whip up interest. Toronto Globe and Mail 05/18/00
• POP DADDY: Richard Hamilton, whose 1956 collage “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So, So Appealing?” is considered by many to have signaled the birth of British pop art, is still at the top of his game – fascinated by all things modern and by his own paintings’ iconic status. “Perhaps that is why of all living British artists he is the one whose work gets the richest showing in the opening displays at Tate Modern.” The Guardian 05/18/00  
• DID ALBRIGHT’S FATHER STEAL ART? A new biography revives claims that US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s father stole paintings after WWII and that the family still has them. Prague Post 05/17/00 
• BUYING ART WITH YOUR MILLIONS: The newly-rich internet crowd gets into the contemporary art market in a big way. This week’s Christie’s sale of contemporary art was marked by record prices and spirited bidding. “It was such a young audience I thought for a moment I’d wandered into ‘Gladiator.’ “ New York Times 05/18/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• MALEVICH SALE: A somewhat overlooked sald of a Malevich painting at the Phillips auction last week signals a final end to Stalinism. New York Observer 05/18/00
• FAILURE TO PROTECT NATIVE ARTISTS: Indian artists tell Congress that the US government is not enforcing a law designed to protect American Indian artisans from forgers said to be cutting into a $1 billion a year business. Baltimore Sun (AP) 05/18/00

Wednesday May 17

• MONUMENT TO MUSIC: Frank Gehry’s swoopy droopy Experience Music Project (please don’t call it a museum) is opening soon in Seattle. Says Gehry: “This building is supposed to be a lot of fun. That’s what Paul Allen wanted. Fun. It’s supposed to be unusual. The (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum) in Cleveland wanted a straight-forward corporate look. Paul didn’t want that. He wanted what he called a swoopy building. Nobody has seen this before or will see it again. Nobody will build another one.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/16/00
  • A BUILDING OR A METAPHOR? “Up close, the latest offering from architect Frank Gehry looks like a cross between a giant spaceship and globs of playdough.” National Post (Canada) 05/17/00
• TRACES OF GENIUS: Scientists plan to test DNA found in smudges and fingerprints in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and sketches to better understand the master and distinguish his work from that of his apprentices. “Vezzosi believes that the best traces can be found in ink stains on the handwritten pages of Leonardo’s notebooks, as the master himself recommended using saliva to thicken black ink.” Discovery.com 05/16/00
• PICKING UP THE PIECES: At one time the top spot running Sotheby’s would have been considered a real dream job. But with scandals and investigations and uncertainties, William Ruprecht confesses that he “took a very deep breath and had a moment of hesitation” before accepting the assignment last February. After last week’s successful spring auctions, it appears some of the storm has passed. Financial Times 05/16/00
• A REAL CIRCUS: The State of Florida decides to give control of Sarasota’s Ringling Museum (with a fine collection of Old Master paintings) to Florida State University. Now the museum’s director has resigned and the Board, University, and public are in conflict. Sarasota Herald-Tribune 05/15/00

Tuesday May 16

• THE REAL PAINTING STARS OF LONDON: Curious that as the Tate Modern opens, virtually ignoring painting from the past 20 years, London galleries are full of it – and a lot of it is figurative and quite interesting. This is where the enduring contemporary stars of the painting world are hanging out. Financial Times 05/16/00 
• PIANO PRESTO: Renzo Piano just might be the world’s busiest architect: For Hermès he is designing a Far East headquarters in Tokyo. In America, he is working on the Harvard Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, an art campus in Atlanta and a sculpture gallery in Dallas. There is a telecom HQ in Rotterdam, a Paul Klee museum in Switzerland, a trio of new concert halls in Rome, an elegant tower in Sydney nearing completion, and a pilgrimage church in southern Italy which looks set to be the religious masterpiece of millennium year. In Berlin his Potsdamer Platz, a vast development spanning a blighted area on either side of the Wall, is nearly complete. The Times (London) 05/16/00
• SOME STRIKING MOMA WORKERS RETURN TO WORK: About 40 percent of the 250 workers striking against the Museum of Modern Art in New York over poor wages and job security have crossed the picket line, says museum management. New York Times 05/16/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• ONE SICK PUPPY: Even his admirers call Gottfried Helnwein that. “He earned his first gallery show in the 70s by driving around his native Vienna dressed in Nazi uniform, his head bandaged, fake blood trickling from his mouth. It caught the eye of an art dealer who signed him up and has remained faithful to Austria’s enfant terrible ever since.” The Guardian 05/16/00
• A BOARD HELD ACCOUNTABLE: Leaders of Vancouver’s arts community hold a summit with the board of the Vancouver Art Gallery. The VAG has been under attack since the murky departure of of the museum’s director and some questionable actions by the board of directors. Vancouver Province 05/16/00

Monday May 15

• LONG TERM STRATEGY:Even though last week’s auction in New York by Phillips – pushing hard to gain a toehold on Sotheby’s and Christie’s – was little short of a disaster and cost the company a great deal of money, Phillips is in to stay. “It would be a mistake to believe that it can be done quickly. It will take three to five years to reposition ourselves and grow from there. This is by no means a quick fix.” The Telegraph (London) 05/15/00
• THE WORLD’S TALLEST YACHT’S MAST: “In the very heart of Chicago, work is about to begin on the tallest building in the world. Including its twin 450ft lightning-conducting digital communications antennae, 7 South Dearborn will be 2,000ft tall, with 108 floors.” It will be as beautiful as it is tall, as innovative as it is graceful. The Guardian 05/15/00
• THE HISTORY OF THE WOLRD: Berlin’s answer to London’s Millennium Dome is an ambitious exhibition called “Seven Hills – Images and Signs of the 21st Century,” a celebration of humankind’s future and a catalog of its past. Die Welt 05/15/00
• MY BODY MY ART: A number of artists are tapping into a vein of concern about what some see as runaway technology in medical science. “The debate’s over what we do with our bodies – science is catalyzing these debates – but where they play them out are culturally, personally, and legally. The artwork becomes a corporate body to mimic what happens in reality.” Wired 05/15/00
• WILL CLICK FOR ART? Last week’s sham sale of a fake Diebenkorn over an E-Bay auction had plenty of people scratching their heads. Of course there was all the business about the speculation over the painting. And yes it was peculiar how gullible some people apparently are. But what really threw skeptics was the fact that someone would actually pay six-figures for a piece of art by clicking a mouse. Maybe the internet can sell online art after all. New York Times 05/15/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• WHEN MARY SUED SALLE: In January New York art dealer Mary Boone signed David Salle to her stable. Now she’s suing him for $1 million. Evidently “Boone promised to advance Salle $500,000, in return for which he would consign work worth at least $850,000 to her gallery. She’d pay all the promotional costs, and they’d split the sales, 60-40 in his favor.” Boone says Salle failed to deliver on the promised work. New York Daily News 05/14/00 
• ART OF THE WEB? Last week the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art gave out a big award for online art. Did anyone care? A panel in SF talked about web art at the museum this weekend.  “Asked whether artists working on the Net need or want the collaboration of traditional art institutions, Webby-winner Michael Samyn – prefacing his response by remarking he didn’t understand the question because he is ‘a designer, not an artist’ – said ‘No.’ ” Wired 05/15/00
• GUGGENHEIM AWARD: The Council of Europe has awarded Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum its Best Museum in Europe award. BBC 05/15/00
• STRONG START: Australian art sales have surged in the first part of this year. Sydney Morning Herald 05/15/00
• BUT HOW TO PAY THE TAX? Under a new Australian tax system, all small businesses (including artists) must have an Australian Business Number or face having 48.5 per cent withholding tax taken out of every payment they receive. But many aboriginal artists on the edge of the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory operate largely outside the formal economy. “Advocates for the Aboriginal arts industry claim it is unrealistic to expect most of the estimated 18,000 Aboriginal artists who derive an income from their creative work to comply with the details of the new tax system.” Sydney Morning Herald 05/15/00

Sunday May 14

• NEW YORK TO ARCHITECTURE – DROP DEAD: The new zoning rule overhaul put forward by NY mayor Rudy Giuliani amounts to a direct attack on the creativity of architects. Just how far can a government go with restrictions on building design before it violates constitutional principles? New York Times 05/14/00 (One-time registration required for entry)
• NO LIBEL: A French appeals court has ruled that art historian Hector Feliciano did not commit libel for suggesting in his book about art stolen by the Nazis that the late art dealer Georges Wildenstein may have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Nandotimes 05/13/00
• ART BY ANY OTHER NAME: Why must the cards labeling works of art be so vacuous? “Now, though, even the most venerable institutions have succumbed to the pull of populism: exhibitions have been dumbed down. And for this, I blame the curators and the catalogues and wall labels they provide. It is not the artists chosen that are at fault but rather the commentaries on them and quality of information supplied in the galleries.” The Telegraph (London) 05/14/00
• THE BREAK BETWEEN ARCHITECTS AND THE REAL WORLD: Los Angeles is booming. But architects aren’t smiling. “The reason is that once again the profession’s creative elite has been relegated to the sidelines, designing scattered landmark residences while the majority of new housing remains in the hands of corporate developers. The break between the worlds of first-rate architecture and conventional home building – never close in the first place – is now a chasm.” Los Angeles Times 05/14/00
• NEW IRISH ARCHITECTURE: Ireland didn’t produce much in the way of decent architecture in the 1980s. Most of the large civic projects were roads and bridges. “Disengaged from the infrastructural process, architects felt envious and threatened. One prominent architect nominated for an award remarked that he would hate his building to be ‘beaten by a runway’ at Dublin airport.” Now some new signs of life. Sunday Times (London) 05/14/00

Friday May 12

• HITLER’S ART DEALER, Karl Haberstock, has been a major ongoing donor of Germany’s Municipal Art Museum in Ausburg. The museum, which has been publicly denounced by the World Jewish Congress, has finally agreed to investigate the provenance of the museum’s more questionable works and to open its archives to the public over the Internet. Wired 05/11/00 (Reuters) 
• THE STARS COME OUT: The Tate Modern opens with a powerhouse collection of high-wattage luminaries. The Guardian 05/12/00
  • ART CENTERPIECE: Britain’s newest and brightest museum. The Independent 05/12/00
  • POWERHOUSE OPENING: A big night for London. The Telegraph 05/12/00
  • INAUGURATION OF A NEW QUEEN: London Times 05/12/00
    • The real queen comes for a look. London Times 05/12/00
  • A BIG BUILDING: “People will go there even if they’re not going to look at art.” CBC 05/12/00
  • ART FOR ALL: The Queen cut the ribbon to officially open the Tate Modern to a gala crowd last night. Today the public gets it first look inside. Sydney Morning Herald 05/12/00
• WHO GOT THE BUZZ? Artists, that’s who. “It is pointless to start flinging labels around and referring to art as the new rock ‘n’ roll or the new fashion or even the new film industry, since what actually seems to have happened is that the art world has subsumed all these things and turned them into, well, art. At the same time, the players at the centre of all the excitement, the artists themselves, have emerged as the absolute celebrities of the moment, with the (now, not so) Young British Artists attaining a kind of super-supremacy, like the super-models and rock superstars before them.” London Evening Standard 05/12/00
• SO MUCH FOR THAT EXPERIMENT: MGM Grand has announced it will sell off its part of the $400 million worth of artwork it acquired with its purchase of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Former owner Steve Wynn had opened a gallery in the hotel to show the art, and charged visitors admission. MGM says it will use the money to finance its acquisition of the hotel. Las Vegas Sun 05/12/00 
• THE ART OF THE E-AUCTION: “The eBay con artists get all the attention, but what about the lesser-known eBay artists? That’s right. There is a new breed of artist using the Internet auction site as a forum for creative expression. Their work is hard to categorize; it’s a combination of conceptual art and performance art, sort of like a digital happening in cyberspace. Where else can an artist reach a potential audience of millions? What better place to make a wry comment on our materialistic consumer culture?” Boston Globe 05/12/00
• EXPENSIVE CHALLENGE: Bernard Arnault is trying to challenge Sotheby’s and Christie’s by pumping life (and a lot of money) into No. 3 auctioneer Philips. The company debuted this week’s auction with an ambitious lineup with about $81 million in art. Less than two thirds sold, however – bringing in just $40.1 million – so Arnault will have to make up the difference himself  because of the minimum prices he guaranteed to his sellers. New York Post 05/12/00
  • CHARITY AUCTION OR SERIOUS ART SALE? “The auction began nearly an hour late, and then it started with an announcement that 3 percent of the hammer prices would go to the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Dressed in a bright orange dress with matching lipstick, the movie star Sharon Stone, campaign chairwoman for the charity, made a speech about AIDS. Throughout the evening, she wandered up and down the aisles trying to drum up excitement in the otherwise dead room.” New York Times 05/12/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• TWENTY YEARS OF MAKEOVER: In an era of rapid change in the museum world, James Wood has been director of the Arts Institute of Chicago for 20 years. “During his time, all the museum’s departments were renovated; the original beaux-arts building was restored; a wing was built; a department of architecture founded; a program of publications resumed; a constellation of conservation labs established; and curators of nearly every department were replaced.” Not to mention two decades-worth of exhibitions of art. Wood reflects on the past and future of American museums. Chicago Tribune 05/12/00
• POST-DESERT STORM ART: Iraq’s national museum, which has been closed since the Gulf War, has finally reopened to the public. More than 10,000 artifacts are on display, including rare Sumerian and Babylonian sculpture and archeological treasure. CNN 05/11/00
• LONGA THANKGA: The longest and largest Tibetan painting – a thankga about six football fields long – has gone on display in the Revolutionary Museum in Beijing. CNN 05/12/00
• CONTEMPO-PLINTH: A panel decided to make the vacant plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square an ongoing showcase for contemporary art. BBC 05/12/00
• E-MINIMALISM: It’s the digital equivalent of watching paint dry. An artist takes minimalism to the net: “On the computer screen, ‘Film Task’ appears to be a simple black square that, over eight hours, gradually turns white. Since it takes about 30 minutes for the eye to discern a change, patience is required (along with the Shockwave plug-in). A monotonous sine wave serves as the soundtrack, the only accompaniment.” New York Times 05/12/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

Thursday May 11

• NAKED, NUDE, STARKERS: No, no, no – certainly no one would suggest that Larry Gagosian’s first exhibit in his new London gallery was cynically sensation – it was art after all, featuring an artist “who pays 23 tall, slender women to spend three hours being stared at while naked except for stilettos. The 23 women were chosen for their height their figures, pale skins and auburn hair, as well as attributes best not inquired after. For three hours they stared back dispassionately as London’s art world arrived, had a long look, and then had a free drink across the road in a bar called Strawberry Moons.” London Evening Standard 05/11/00 
• SWEAT EQUITY: The Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition exploring American sweatshops – consisting of archival photos and a few historical artifacts, including mass-produced slave workshirts, union posters from the ’20s onward and objects seized in the infamous 1995 El Monte sweatshop raid – would have seemed to have been a natural for LA’s Museum of Tolerance. But the show wasn’t even advertised or the press notified. How come? LA Weekly 05/11/00
• QUEEN ELIZABETH opens the eagerly-anticipated Tate Modern today. Gala parties to follow. BBC 05/11/00
  • THE GLOBAL MUSEUM SWEEPSTAKES: The cliche in art these days is that museums are the modern cathedrals. Who cares if there isn’t enough to go inside. Increasingly visitors come to experience the architecture – “an experiential encounter that competes with, and often dwarfs, our encounters with the art inside.” Thus opens the new Tate Modern. LA Weekly 05/11/00
  • SUBJECTIVE OPINION: Instead of hanging art chronologically at the new Tate Modern, curators have taken a thematic approach, jumbling eras and ages to trace themes. The Art Newspaper 05/11/00 
  • GREAT AT THE TATE: “I’ve got complaints about Tate Modern – but because they perhaps have less to do with the museum than my own un-grooviness, I’ll save them until later. Art is what counts; and the art at Tate Modern – much of it heaped up and hidden away until now in the vaults of the old Tate Gallery (now become Tate Britain) – is marvellously served.” National Post (Canada) 05/11/00
• GOING ONCE…AH, FORGET IT: Ebay cancels the accounts of a man who was selling a painting many believed was a Diebenkorn. The online auctioeer said the man listed the work in a way that “artificially inflated the price” and accused him of “shill bidding” in which he entered bids on his own items. New York Times 05/11/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
• RECORD PRICE: An Emily Carr painting is auctioned for $1 million in Vancouver – a record for the artist, and the most ever paid for a piece of art at auction in Western Canada. CBC 05/11/00

Wednesday May 10

• CON ARTIST: The man who put the purported Diebenkorn painting for sale on eBay Monday (and received a final bid of $135,805) “acknowledged yesterday that he concocted part of the story he used to describe the work and said he would be willing to let the buyer out of the sale. Far from being a married homeowner who cleaned the painting out of his garage to please his wife, he is single and has sold a raft of paintings on eBay.” New York Times 05/10/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
• $14 MILLION AN HOUR: Christie’s 20^th century art auction Tuesday night had one blockbuster: a 1932 Picasso portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, that sold for $28.6 million. It took Picasso just two and a half hours to paint it. New York Times 05/10/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
• AUCTIONS AWAY FROM NEW YORK: Tonight one of Emily Carr’s best paintings goes up for auction in Vancouver. It’s expected to bring the highest price for a painting ever paid in Western Canada. How much?  Between $300,000 and $500,000. “The current record for an Emily Carr painting sold at auction was “In the Circle,” which sold in Toronto in 1987 for $297,000. The current record in Western Canada for a painting sold at auction is $231,000. And the current national auction record is Lawren Harris’ “Lake Superior III,” which sold for $1.56-million.” National Post 05/10/00
• ART CATHEDRAL: In the time of Frank Gehry, one may begin to think an innovative new museum requires an innovative new structure to house it. But the new Tate Modern has found its home in a reused power station that has been transformed into a work of art unto its own. “With one neat sidestep Sir Nicholas Serota avoided all the controversy that would inevitably have raged had he commissioned a new building. He picked a site which makes the most of that much-underused London asset, the Thames, and has a stunningly powerful relationship with St Paul’s Cathedral.” The Telegraph 05/10/00
  • DANGER – 650,000 VOLTS: That pretty much describes the impact the new Tate Modern has. “We are trying both to create a museum of modern art and rethink what a museum of modern art is.” San Francisco Chronicle 05/10/00
  • OR THE LATEST BEHEMOTH? “What are people going to say in 100 years about all these new museums for modern art that we’re building, which seem to be getting almost as big as the Met?” New York Times 05/10/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 

Tuesday May 9

• TIME WILL TELL: “Sinister, bleak and elitist? Or cool, beautiful and welcoming?” London’s new Tate Modern opens officially on Thursday, but three days of parties and lavish preview receptions – expected to draw 10,000 people – are already underway. And no one’s without an opinion on how the new gallery will or will not transform the city’s cultural life. The Telegraph 05/09/00  
• “WATERSHED OF BRITISH CULTURAL LIFE”: The big bold Tate Modern “signals the importance of the art of our times, and its centrality in our culture.” The Guardian 05/09/00
• ONLINE SALES FRENZY: A California man recently put a “‘great big wild abstract painting’ that he said was bought years ago at a garage sale in Berkeley and had a small hole inflicted by a son wielding a plastic tricycle” up for sale on eBay. Bidding started at 25 cents, and within minutes had soared to $135,805, due to speculation that it was actually a 1952 Diebenkorn. “A six-figure sale would not only be one of the highest prices paid online for art, it would also be a powerful testimony to the ability of the Internet to ignite a sales frenzy.” New York Times 05/09/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 
• AUSTRALIAN ART BOOM: Melbourne antique dealer John Furphy was proud to announce that the Australian art market has experienced an unprecedented boom over the last three years – due in part to the growing popularity of Aboriginal “dot” paintings – with total sales doubling (to $69 million) between 1997 and 1999. The Age (Melbourne) 05/09/00  
• GENETICALLY TESTED ART: A gallery owner in Auckland, New Zealand is using DNA testing of a few hairs trapped under the paint to verify if his painting is a genuine Gauguin. CBC 05/08/00

Monday May 8

• DANCING WITH THE TRUTH: Most writing about Marcel Duchamp focuses on what he said or wrote. But “through most of his subsequent career, Duchamp worked harder at burnishing his persona than he ever did at creating art. And he certainly spent more time plotting ways to expand an extremely limited oeuvre than he did poring over his signature accessory, the chess board (but that’s another story).” The Idler 05/08/00
• “PART OF A DECEPTION?” Two men say they were hired by Georgia O’Keeffe to do chores for her. “John Poling, a philosophy professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and Jacobo ‘Jackie’ Suazo, a retired state employee in Santa Fe, each recall being welcomed by O’Keeffe at her Albuquerque home, doing chores and, ultimately, being allowed to paint with her.” What became of the paintings is part of a tangled legacy. CNN 05/05/00
• MAKING A MOVE IN THE PASSING LANE… The spring auctions are on this week in New York, and while Sotheby’s and Christie’s still dominate, some attention is going to No. 3, Philips, recently bought by Bernard Arnault, the “billionaire French entrepreneur and bitter rival of Christie’s proprietor François Pinault. The works to be auctioned at the American Craft Museum, away from Phillips’s own inadequate saleroom, are impressive. The auctioneer that has traditionally sold pictures of five- and six-figure values has moved into a new league.” The Telegraph (London) 05/08/00
• AWKWARD TRANSITION: A familiar face will be absent at this week’s Sotheby’s auctions. Diana Brooks was the face of Sotheby’s as its president and chief executive before she resigned amidst widening auction house investigations in February. But “so big was her role at Sotheby’s that it was impossible for her simply to walk away, officials at the company say.” New York Times 05/08/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• THE VISION THING:How could New York not build itself Frank Gehry’s new Guggenheim in Lower Manhattan?It will have to be considered the most important new piece of architecture to be added to the cityscape since Frank Lloyd Wright’s original spiral. “The Guggenheim spiral is crotchety architecture that has generated a sentimental allegiance. But the Guggenheim plan for lower Manhattan induces dazed admiration, and a shuddering recognition of how much is still possible in today’s architecture. This is the key concept: possibility. If New York is the new Rome, it too needs its follies and risk-takers, its architecture of vision and vulgarity. If we don’t build this museum now, we’ll never forgive ourselves. And a hundred years hence, neither will anyone else.” Feed 05/05/00

Sunday May 7

• CITY OF MURALS: Philadelphia is mural crazy, covering every blank wall it can with murals – some commissioned and painted by professional artists, but many others the cheerful product of community pride. “Last year at this time the mural count was about 1,800. Now it is 1,900, which prompts the question, how many will be enough? Has mural-painting become a bureaucratic cottage industry? Has it become so important to the city’s tourist promotion that no one will ever recognize a practical limit?” Philadelphia Inquirer 05/07/00
• THE FASCINATING TATE: “The intense interest in this latest Tate is not just to do with the fact that it has cost £134 million, is constructed within Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s monumental Bankside power station by the iconoclastic Swiss modernists Herzog and de Meuron; and is about to open with a gruelling round of celebrity parties. Nor is it just about the negotiation with a wealthy American collector, Kent Logan, over the possible gift of a chunk of his £100m Saatchi-esque stash of contemporary art. No: it is the fact that the collection on display has been, so to speak, jumbled up.” Sunday Times 05/07/00
  • TAKING ON THE TATE: Among the building excitement about this week’s opening of the new Tate Modern in London, not all the critics are enthusiastic. “Tate Modern is a graceless, gimmicky name for a building that is Britain’s best example of fascist architecture, speaking in its modern abstract classicism of Hitler, Mussolini and Atatürk rather than the timid aspirations of Attlee in 1947, the year of its foundation.” London Evening Standard 05/05/00
   

Saturday May 6

• NO EYE FOR ART: A Berlin thief named Krysztof stole a van and discovered the next day that he had pulled off one of the city’s biggest art thefts ever. Too bad. He’d gotten rid of most of it. “Chagall and Miro he had never heard of, so he sold them to a fence for the equivalent of a few hundred pounds. But some of the loot, estimated to be worth DM1.6m (£500,000), was thrown away, conscientiously sorted into the relevant bins at the city dump. A portfolio of drawings went into the paper recycling skip, the metal sculpture and engravings were discarded in the box marked ‘scrap’. Some paintings had to be cut up because they would not fit. But Krysztof enjoyed the task. He never did like post-modernism.” The Independent 05/06/00
• A BLOODY MESS: An exhibit in London seeks to confront its audience. The piece that provoked the strongest reaction was a punching bag filled with pig’s blood hanging in a boxing ring which, one of the curators explained was meant as a comment on the sport. “Unfortunately one of the guests ignored the ‘Do Not Touch’ signs and punched it so hard it burst. Blood went everywhere, spattering the floors, the walls and even the startled bystanders, many of whom started screaming.” The Independent 05/06/00
• WOODMAN CUSTODY: In a memorabilia dispute, the Detroit Institute of Arts is battling with the family of a Connecticut pupeteer over who gets custody of the original Howdy Doody puppet. The museum claims the puppet was promised to it, and wants to add it to its collection of puppets. The family claims the puppeteer made no such promise. Detroit News 05/06/00

Friday May 5

• LOUVRE SHUT DOWN: Security guards at the Louvre in Paris went out on strike Thursday, forcing the museum to close. The guards struck in sympathy with cafeteria workers who have been on strike for four weeks. The museum attracts 16,000 visitors a day this time of year. The Independent 05/05/00
• MOVING ON UP: Though it attracts a million visitors a year, London’s National Portrait Gallery has always been upstaged by its more prominent neighbor, the National Gallery. But a new makeover courtesy of an £11.9 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and another £4 million from private donations, has transformed the gallery into somethinjg much much more. London Times 05/05/00
• DISCERNING TASTE: Noted architecture critic Donald Trump has come out against the Guggenheim Museum’s proposal to build a new Frank Gehry-designed branch in Lower Manhattan. “This building could potentially destroy the skyline of lower Manhattan. There are some people that equate [the design] to a junkyard,” says The Donald. New York Post 05/05/00
• GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER: A high-profile artist has withdrawn the promise of a multi-million donation of his art collection to the Vancouver Art Gallery in the wake of leadership turmoil. CBC 05/05/00
• DEMOCRATIC ART: The German parliament has voted to allow Hans Haacke’s controversial artwork to be installed in the Reichstag. “The work consists of a huge wooden container sunk into the floor to be filled with earth from the constituencies of the 660 members of the German parliament. Seeds from all over Germany are to be planted in the earth to produce a garden that will be left to grow wild. A neon inscription above the container will read “Der Bevölkerung” (To the people), a deliberate subversion of the words which were inscribed in bronze on the façade of the Reichstag in 1915: “Dem Deutschen Volke” (To the German people).” The Art Newspaper 05/05/00

Thursday May 4

• UNDERSTANDING IMPRESSIONISM: In the spring of 1886, your opinion of impressionism seemed determined by whether you lived in Paris or New York: “In New York, critics aligned impressionism with cubism by emphasizing their rationalist aspects, whereas in Paris their differences as perceptualist and structuralist modes took priority.” A 21-page pamphlet entitled “Science and Philosophy in Art” was circulated at an exhibition in New York and eventually made its way back the French impressionist painters, who took it up excitedly and distributed it amongst themselves.  The writer turned out to be a 29-year-old American woman chemist, Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott, whose particular defense of impressionism was before its time. American Art Spring 2000
• FINDERS NOT KEEPERS: Last December, Chinese police caught seven midnight marauders digging in an area on the outskirts of Beijing.  The leader of the seven men confessed they had long suspected there was an ancient tomb in the area – sure enough, when  “archaeologists from the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau continued the dig [they] concluded that, not only were they on the brink of uncovering a tomb, but given the initial findings it could be the resting place of a Han dynasty king.”  Time Asia 05/08/00

Wednesday May 3

• ARTFUL BUYBACK:Failing to convince Christie’s auction house not to sell what they consider to be looted cultural treasures, Beijingers bid on the items in Hong Kong auctions to keep the artwork in China.  “We spent half an hour calling our group leaders in Europe to report the feelings of Hong Kong’s people, the attitude of Christie’s and the statement of the State Bureau of Cultural Relics. Our leaders’ decision was that if Christie’s insisted on going ahead to sell the looted treasures, we would grab them . . . and the only way was to join the bidding.” South China Morning Post 05/02/00
• LARRY DOES LONDON: Manhattan art dealer Larry Gagosian, known as one of the brashest dealers on the art scene, is taking his larger-than-life gig to London where a new branch of his gallery will open May 9. “Gagosian has been described as “the hottest art dealer in the world,” known for persuading people to part with art they never knew they wanted to sell, and convincing others to buy it at prices they never knew they were prepared to pay.” London Evening Standard 05/03/00
• JUST ANOTHER STATUE: Boston has not had a good record of choosing public art. Last weekend a symposium sought to identify ways to turn that record around. “More artist input, and less community involvement in dictating content and style, was a subplot that simmered without reaching a boil. The community that asks for and gets another figurative statue of a local hero is a community unaware of the world of other options – the world artists know. But ‘community involvement’ has become such a lightning rod that many people in the arts are afraid to question it. Boston Globe 05/03/00
• ART OUTPOST: “Usually, new government buildings forage for their furnishings and decoration after the builders have left. Art is an afterthought. But in Moscow the British government specially commissioned furniture, textiles and works of art by British artists while the building was still under construction. The result is a tribute to their foresight, for if diplomacy is the art of presenting your country in the best possible light, the new embassy is itself a symbol of the achievements that have made Britain so pre-eminent in the visual arts in recent years. The Telegraph (London) 05/03/00
• NOT TO BE UPSTAGED: London’s Royal Academy – the good folks who brought you “Sensation” are out to do it again. Just in case anyone thought the RA was going to cede the contemporary turf to the about-to-open Tate Modern, the RA announces a sure-to-shock show focused on beauty and horror. The Guardian 05/03/00

Tuesday May 2

• PUTTING ON AIRS: A government report released today by UK Arts Minster Alan Howarth concludes that “snobbery and discrimination” by museum staffs may prevent the poor and socially disenfranchised from visiting. The report urges cultural institutions to combat social exclusion by urging staff to be less intimidating and by taking steps, like putting catalogs on the internet to reach broader, more diverse audiences. The Independent 05/02/00 
• FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE: An impressive number of Japanese homeowners have hired avant-garde architects to design inventive homes with no exterior walls or made entirely from glass. “These houses are not the work of oddball individualists, but creative attempts by cutting-edge architects to redefine the management of space, light, privacy and nature in the Japanese home.” Smithsonian 05/00  
• THE POLITICS OF ARTIFACTS: Honolulu’s Bishop Museum used to have an excellent reputation for the study of Polynesian culture. But times have changed. Recently, the museum allowed 83 ancient Hawaiian artifacts worth millions of dollars to be turned over to a Native Hawaiian organization as provided for by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. But a dispute has erupted over whether the artifacts will be cared for properly and if the group that now has possession is actually entitled to the work. Archeology Magazine 05/00
• DESIGNER DISCARDS: Designer Karl Lagerfeld’s astonishing collection of 18^th century furniture and art objects fetched $21.7 million at Christie’s – the second-biggest sale ever for the Christie’s Monaco auction house. Times of India 05/02/00

Monday May 1

• SELLING HERITAGE: The Chinese government tried to stop Christie’s auction house from selling two sculptures at auction in Hong Kong. The sale went ahead anyway, and the pieces were bought by a Beijing man, who says he bought them for “the Chinese people.” According to China’s State Bureau of Cultural Relics, “both sculptures came from a set of 12 bronze animal heads that adorned the Zodiac Fountain at Yuanmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, which was looted by British and French troops during the second Opium War in 1860.” China Times 05/01/00
• Chinese angry at auction house over auction. New York Times 05/01/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• POWER IN KNOWLEDGE: Several projects are underway to put online records of art sales. Once, collectors had to rely on what dealers and auction houses told them about a painting’s history. Now, at the click of a button, they can do their own research and perhaps establish a partial, and sometimes a complete, provenance. The Telegraph (London) 05/01/00
• TODAY MELBOURNE, TOMORROW… Deutscher Menzies controls the Melbourne auction business and has a leg up in Sydney. “Once the saleroom is established nationally, it will take on the big two [Sotheby’s and Christie’s] on their home turfs in London and New York. In December Menzies made a bid for the world’s third oldest auction house, the London-based Phillips. He was one of a group of shortlisted bidders but lost out to French financier Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury products group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The Age (Melbourne) 05/01/00
• SOMETHING TO GO INSIDE: The about-to-open Tate Modern is negotiating with San Francisco entrepreneur Kent Logan who may be “about to give part of his £100 million art collection – one of the world’s largest in private hands – to the new museum. The Guardian 05/01/00
• MUSEUM WITH A PLAN: London’s new Tate Modern opens next week. “From the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, examples of museums promoting urban renewal are plentiful. But for the Tate this angle proved a useful marketing tool. Having picked the site for an annex, museum officials needed to raise $214 million to convert the abandoned power plant. And they understood that a museum that promised economic and social benefits to the city would be an easier sell than art for art’s sake.”  New York Times 05/01/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• EARLY ARTISTS: British archeologists have found evidence that  suggests humans were producing art 350,000 to 400,000 years ago. The evidence – found in a cave in Zambia – suggests the area’s Stone Age inhabitants were producing painted art before they evolved into our species. The Independent 05/01/00
• BOOTY EXCHANGE: On Saturday Germany and Russia met in St. Petersburg to swap art they had stolen from one another during World War II. “In exchange for the intricately inlaid chest and glistening mosaic from Peter the Great’s famed Amber Room, Russia has agreed to return 101 artworks looted from Germany by Soviet troops after World War II. A Russian law largely bans repatriating booty art, seen by Russians as compensation for an estimated several hundred thousand items destroyed or lost during the Nazi occupation.” Chicago Tribune 05/01/00
• NO MADAME TUSSAUD’S, BUT… London’s Royal Academy show of Monet last year raked in the visitors, making it the eighth most-visited attraction in the UK. Visitor numbers at the RA leapt from 912,714 in 1998 to 1.39m last year, boosting the academy from 19th to eighth place. But before anyone gets too excited, consider that Madame Tussaud’s at No. 2 on the list logged more than twice as many visitors. BBC 05/01/01