Author: Douglas McLennan

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 archaeological treasure. – CNN

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

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

— opens the eagerly-anticipated Tate Modern today. Gala parties to follow. – BBC

The cliché 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

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

“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)

Ebay cancels the accounts of a man who was selling a painting many believed was a Diebenkorn. The online auctioneer 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

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