Author: Matthew Westphal

“Room 41 is part of the rearrangement of the Uffizi collection that has been defining [director Eike] Schmidt’s vision for the museum. Next month, the museum’s three paintings by Leonardo will be installed in a nearby room. Together, these artists capture ‘a magic moment in the first decade of the 16th century when Florence was the cultural and artistic center of the world,’ Mr. Schmidt said.” Elisabetta Povoledo pays a visit.

“With an estimated A$1bn dollars flowing into Australia’s second largest city through cultural tourism each year, Melbourne has long-been described as the country’s cultural capital. … In a move that should cement Melbourne’s place at the top, the Victorian State Government has now announced a partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) — one of the world’s most-visited art museums — to build Australia’s largest contemporary art gallery, NGV Contemporary, in the city’s revitalised arts precinct.”

Sanford Schwartz: “Put roughly, an outsider artist is a figure who makes a body of work while operating in relative isolation, unaware of, or indifferent to, developments in the work of professional artists … An outsider artist might be someone who resolutely, and perhaps eccentrically, wants to live and work only on her or his terms. An outsider artist might be someone who has been institutionalized, or who suffers some physical impairment, which keeps the person at a remove from others. But an outsider artist, as the term has evolved, might as easily be someone whose daily experience — as, say, a black person in the South — has kept that person from having any real contact with the larger culture beyond his or her immediate community.”