Category: visual

Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam, artist John Baldessari, director Edward Hall, and five others “with an eye for the peculiar reveal why they love the witty Belgian surrealist.”

“With more and more people becoming familiar with social-networking sites, artists are tapping into these online communities and making works that harness new capabilities.”

“Britain’s biggest prize for museums has been awarded to the biggest of them all – the British Museum, which won for its BBC-partnered A History of the World, a series charting the millennia through 100 objects.”

“On Thursday, an almost eerily white St Paul’s cathedral was unveiled: it was the first day Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece had spent without scaffolding for 15 years. The 18-month, final stage of the £40m restoration had led to the cathedral’s west front being entirely hidden behind hoardings.”

“After a while, you get used to the trappings of death: the vacant, hollow stares; prongs of teeth protruding from desiccated gums … What you don’t get used to … are the trappings of life that are still evident in these mummified bodies.”

John W. Smith, 51, currently the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, takes over at the RISD museum in September. He succeeds Hope Alswang, who resigned in July 2009 under pressure from RISD President John Maeda.

“The era of the world-class museum built by a single philanthropist in the tradition of Isabella Stewart Gardner, John Pierpont Morgan Jr. and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney may seem to have passed, but Alice L. Walton is bringing it back.”

“The replica, which will be 85 percent of the original size of the building, will be installed as one of the key components of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. … Its elaborate structure and the intricate painted decoration on the cupola ceiling will reproduce a form of architectural and artistic expression that was wiped out in World War II.”

Newly published research finds they prefer the imagery of Pablo Picasso to the impressionism of Claude Monet. For babies, “a painted canvas is simply a visual pattern,” writes a University of Zurich research team led by psychologist Trix Cacchione, “and some patterns appeal to them more than others.”

“Anish Kapoor has cancelled plans to present his sculptures at the National Museum of China in Beijing, in protest against the continuing detention of Ai Weiwei. He had been asked by the British Council to consider a show at the newly renovated museum in Tiananmen Square as part the ‘UK Now’ festival in China late next year.”