“Museum directors are watching as a case pitting the heirs of Kazimir Malevich against an Amsterdam museum winds its way through the U.S. courts. At its core is a novel bid to get around a federal law protecting loaned art from seizure. ‘If there isn’t some guarantee, I don’t know why anyone would lend anything…especially given the litigious nature of the art world right now’.”
Blog
Art Basel Miami’s Gold Rush Business
The world’s largest art fair does great business. But many collectors who swept in on the first day and reserved art, later canceled. “Last year we had more South Americans and Europeans. This year there were more Americans and institutions.”
Wendy Wasserstein Hospitalized With Leukemia
“Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein is battling leukemia at a New York hospital, a source close to her said yesterday. The Brooklyn-born writer’s condition was especially grave because an unspecified infection has prevented doctors from administering chemotherapy, the source said.”
Color Purple – Hurry Up And Wait
“Watching this beat-the-clock production summons the frustrations of riding through a picturesque stretch of country in a supertrain like the TGV. The landscape looks seductively lush and varied; the local populace seems lively and inviting, like people you might want to know; you can even hear tantalizing snatches of folks singing in an intriguing idiom as they go about their work. But it all passes by in a watercolor blur. This show isn’t stiff and anemic like its chief musical competition this season. But it never slows down long enough for you to embrace it.”
The New New Basel Miami
Art Basel Miami opens with a flourish. “While many top galleries returned, 55 percent of the galleries chosen were new this year — a deliberate attempt to keep the fair fresh, said Art Basel director Sam Keller. The strategy worked, said many fairgoers.”
Solving Classical Music With Technology?
“A growing number of classical music purveyors are looking to the new digital technology for solutions to some of their most vexing problems. Just as it makes sense for recording companies with declining CD sales to jump aboard the download bandwagon, so too does it make sense for classical groups seeking new audiences to break ground in cyberspace.”
Color Purple An Honorable Attempt
“Vastly improved from its pre-Broadway incarnation in Atlanta, Griffin’s ambitious production opened here Thursday night with its dignity intact and no cause whatsoever for embarrassment by any of the impassioned parties involved. This is an earnest, honest, intermittently engaging and competently directed attempt to wrestle the chronological sweep of Walker’s epic and intensely personal novel about the 40-year journey to self-worth of an abused rural Georgian named Celie into an accessible, middle-brow Broadway musical. It is an almost impossible task.”
America’s Newspaper Architecture Critics
America’s newspapers don’t have many architecture critics on staff. Here’s a profile of four of the most prominent: the Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell, Chicago Tribune’s Blair Kamin, LA Times’ Christopher Hawthorne, and New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff.
Tracing The Priceless Euphronios Cup
“The priceless Euphronios cup — painted with the image of the fallen Trojan war hero Sarpedon — is the earliest known work painted by the Athenian master, last seen intact publicly in New York in 1990 on the Sotheby’s block as lot #6 selling for $742,000 and going to a “European buyer”. I considered it a relevant question, since the “European buyer” for the cup last week identified himself to the press in Italy as Giacomo Medici, a man convicted of antiquities smuggling and now appealing a 10-year sentence.”
Save Venice By Flooding Her?
Presented last week to city leaders, the $117-million project would involve injecting seawater under Venice to raise it 30 centimeters (12 inches) in 10 years. “Our hypothesis entails drilling 12 holes, each 30 centimeters wide and 700 meters long, within a 10-kilometer radius around the city. Each hole will pump seawater into the ground beneath Venice. At 700 meters below ground there are sand formations saturated 100 percent with water, which will expand if we put more in. This would generate an increase in volume and the raising of the floor.”