“Over the years the Guggenheim has held 57 exhibitions and attracted 1.8 million visitors. It also commissioned 17 artists — among them John Baldessari, Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Richter and James Rosenquist — to create new works that were first shown at Deutsche Guggenheim.”
Category: visual
The ’60s ‘Happenings’, Remembered By Their Instigators
“But what actually happened at the Happenings? Because they were so ephemeral, and documentation is so patchy, art historians have spent decades trying to figure that out. So have their creators.” Claes Oldenburg, Patty Mucha, Lucas Samaras, Red Grooms and others look back.
When Picasso Turned Anglophile
“[A] major new exhibition on the artist will reveal how Picasso developed a taste for all things English during his first trip to Britain. Picasso spent 10 weeks in London during the summer of 1919, designing scenery and costumes for [Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes staging of] The Three-Cornered Hat.”
Enemies Of Christo’s Colorado Project Make Last Stand
The battle against the artist’s plan to temporarily erect canopies of silver fabric over 42 miles of the Arkansas River in central Colorado is in its final skirmish, with the anti-Christo forces led by a group calling itself Rags Over the Arkansas River (ROAR).
Architecture, A Profession In Meltdown
“When the Great Recession dawned, architecture was the glamour profession of the creative class. … A once-thriving profession, one that requires considerable education and work ethic, and which has traditionally served a wide range of functions – designing mansions for the 1 percent as well as public libraries – is [now] in trouble.”
Qatar Pays Record $250 Million For A Painting
“The tiny, oil-rich nation of Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than $250 million. The deal, in a single stroke, sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market.”
Cairo’s Overlooked Museum
“A diamond in the rough, the Egyptian Museum of Modern Art houses works by more than 1,500 Egyptian artists, mostly from the middle and late 20th century … Overshadowed by Egypt’s pharaonic and medieval Islamic heritage, and the more recent upsurge in interest in contemporary Arab art, the country’s modernist artists elicit scant respect.”
Damien Hirst With Your Spot Paintings, Eat Your Heart Out
“The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama transformed a completely white room, including furniture, into a spectacle featuring her signature dots, helped by children who visited the exhibition over two weeks and placed brightly coloured stickers throughout the installation.” (Much more fun than Hirst’s rigid grids.)
The Artist Who Throws Herself At Men (Literally)
“There is [Lily] McElroy, all five feet and three inches of her, leaping through the air, her skirt in a state of disarray, turning an idiom into reality. Other bar dwellers look stunned, annoyed, or amused as one of McElroy’s friends takes a picture.”
Cleveland Museum Of Art Ousts Board Chair (And So…)
Michael “Horvitz’s departure was a rare sign of discord at an institution with a reputation for solid management. The loss of a generous donor – Horvitz and his family have contributed more than $5 million to the museum’s expansion and renovation – also raises questions about how the museum could have alienated someone with the potential to do more for it in the future.”