Category: visual

One gallery owner says Miami Beach “was feral” when the fair opened in 2002. Now, Miami’s an arts destination. Is it more than “a bright, colourful taste”?

The overhauled Scottish National Portrait Gallery “is a museum of and for the people, Scotland’s family album, from the last crofters on St Kilda’s to the latest immigrants. Everyone should feel some connection with the thousands of faces on show.”

Despite a terrible economy, the art market is mad hot, with rising prices on almost every continent. Are scuzzy people, scarcity, snottiness or something else to blame?

“Miami developer Jorge Pérez has agreed to donate $35 million in cash and art from his collection to the Miami Art Museum in a deal that will see the museum renamed the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County.”

The only son of Wendy Reves, who donated a $400 million art collection to the museum in 1983, alleged that the DMA and several individuals pressured the elderly Reves to change her will in 1998. (No, the judge didn’t think that made any sense, either.)

“The show is less a survey of his work than a big-budget joke about the very idea of the career-summarizing survey. With the help of curator Nancy Spector and a team of crack engineers, Cattelan has suspended almost all the works from his two-decade career – about 130 in all – from cables in the center of the Guggenheim’s famous atrium.”

“Government figures show visits to museums that had previously charged for entry in London increased by 151% between 2000-01 and 2010-11. The total visitor numbers to DCMS-sponsored museums for 2010-11 was 43.8m.”

“After 165 years, Knoedler & Company, one of the oldest and most prestigious art galleries in the country, is permanently closing its doors. Opened at a time when there were no major museums in New York, Knoedler helped shape the tastes as well as decorate the homes of America’s new class of wealthy barons.”

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won a Palme d’Or at Cannes for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives, has an installation in Beijing that depicts – in video, sound and still photography – a woman “recovering from surgery on her legs after a motorcycle accident, right before she goes to sleep with a stranger visiting her” at home by the Mekong River.

“Ten years ago Miami was known mostly for its beaches and nightlife. Today it is a cultural destination with burgeoning ambitions.”