The Smithsonian has opened a new gallery focusing on the history, art, and culture of Korea. “Around the gallery are ceramics spanning 1,500 years, an exhibit on calligraphy, a brief look at Korean identity and several pieces of contemporary Korean art. The museum has a collection of more than 4,000 Korean artifacts and works of art, but before the opening of the Korea Gallery, only one pair of ceramics had been displayed in recent memory.”
Author: sbergman
Cleveland Acquires Major Photography Collection
“The Cleveland Museum of Art has filled a major gap in its collection by acquiring one of the most important collections of 20th-century Surrealist photography in private hands. The museum agreed this week to buy 171 photographs owned by David Raymond, a New York art collector and producer of independent films. The purchase price was not revealed. Raymond is also donating additional works, bringing the total acquisition to 180 individual images.”
Heavy Metal Meets Old Wood
A four-piece band of 20-somethings won a Battle of the Bands in Pittsburgh this month, thrilling the audience with their up-tempo, energetic performance and enthusiastic devotion to rocking out. Nothing unusual about that, right? Well, in this case, the four performers were all classically trained cellists, the band is called Cellofourte, and the songs they play are “energetic instrumentals that sounded like a mix of Vivaldi baroque and speed metal.”
History Wiped Out By A Philly Fix
Philadelphia has a brand new parking lot where two historic buildings used to stand, but the demolition should never have happened. “In a city as old as Philadelphia, you expect to lose a few historic structures now and then. What makes this case stand out is the high-profile location and the fact that the city was firmly on the side of preservation. Three agencies joined forces to defend the pair of Greek Revival buildings from an ambitious developer who considered them a nuisance. That official city policy, however, was undermined by a building inspector who acted on his own initiative and assisted the owner in obtaining a demolition permit.”
Europe’s Big Fat Arty Summer
This is promising to be a banner art summer for Europe, as a rare convergence will see the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Germany’s Documenta festival, and the Muenster Sculpture Project all opening within weeks of each other. Venice opens its 52nd edition this weekend, and already, the buzz coming from the continent is deafening.
Venice To Get New Modern Art Center
Christie’s owner François Pinault has signed a deal with the city of Venice “to create a contemporary-art center in an unused customs house called Punta della Dogana, at the entrance to the Grand Canal. The agreement is for 30 years, during which Mr. Pinault is to make 141 works he has accumulated the basis of the new museum’s permanent collection.”
Deflating Racism With Laughs (And 3 Nasty Words)
A new play focusing squarely on America’s obsession with (and fear of) racial epithets is getting a two-month run at a major L.A.theatre. And did we mention that it’s a comedy? The play, “whose three-word title consists simply of… racial slurs, seems remarkably well timed to land in the middle of the national discomfort zone.”
Arts & Culture: Not Appearing In Your Newspaper
As several high-profile newspapers and magazines have forced out or reassigned their classical music critics, a predictable discussion has ensued about the future of criticism. “Classical music is already riled by fears of aging, declining audiences and an increasingly marginal role in American society: curiously enough, the same worries afflicting newspapers, which are cutting costs and trying to grope their way in the multimedia world.”
Hey, It Beats All-Day Muzak
When Center City Philadelphia’s department store, Wanamaker’s, was bought out, first by Hecht’s and then Macy’s, music aficionados worried that the store’s famous (and famously incongruous) pipe organ would be seen as an unnecessary frill. But Macy’s has embraced the unusual tradition of the in-store organ, and this year, the company allowed “devotees of the instrument [to] put in 61 more pipes and [gave] them thousands more square feet to set up an organ repair shop.”
Italian Prosecutors Looking Beyond True, Hecht
Prosecutors in the art trafficking trial of Getty Museum trustee Marion True and antiquities dealer Robert Hecht have been following a strategy of “calling attention to collectors, especially well-heeled Americans, with the implicit message that every player in the global antiquities trade is within their sights… The tactic has infuriated defense lawyers, whose objections became so heated on Friday that Judge Gustavo Barbalinardo decided to suspend the proceedings until tempers cooled.”