Category: visual

“To test whether people really mistake paintings by professionals with those produced by children and chimps, researchers at Boston College showed art and non-art students pairs of images – one by an Abstract Expressionist and one by a child or animal. Their survey results, released in March, revealed that a clear majority of participants in both groups liked the professional paintings more and judged them as better.”

It “seems, at first, like an unwitting irony. So does proposing that a center can be ‘distinctly horizontal’–i.e., decentralized. It’s either an unwitting irony, or it’s very LA.”

Conceptual artist and prankster Alexander Melamid (late of Komar and …) has opened “the Art Healing Ministry, a storefront clinic at 98 Thompson Street in SoHo, where people can come in by appointment and be treated, by means of exposure to fine art, for a variety of physical and psychological ailments.”

“Reports of a lacklustre indigenous art trade were confirmed in spectacular fashion last week when the first big Aboriginal art sale in six months grossed just $1.25 million from estimates that anticipated double or triple that.”

“CSArt, a new project of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, is modeled on a wildly popular Minnesota art CSA, which has inspired groups in Chicago and Frederick, Md., to create their versions. And some glassmakers in Burlington, Vt., independently adopted the CSA form last year.”

“The Cincinnati Art Museum has displayed conservation work before. But this is the first time that, at Per Knutas’ suggestion, the museum has connected the powerful microscope he uses – the same kind that’s used for surgical procedures – to a 42-inch flat screen TV hanging on the wall behind him. Visitors can see the painstaking conservation work like never before.”

“More than 1,300 museums across the country are offering free admission to active duty military personnel and their families all summer in a program with the National Endowment for the Arts.”

“The closing of Merion not only marks the end of an era, it also represents a radical transformation in the nature of the institution. In the process, the essential spirit of the place – its genius loci – and a good deal of Albert C. Barnes as well, will be left behind.”

“Why such market-mania for Warhol? Why not Rothko, Newman, Nauman, or Judd? Why not Rosenquist, Kusama, Hesse, or any other first-rate big name?”

The consensus among museum professionals and exhibition organisers is that the large-scale exhibition is here to stay, “as long as the public continues to attend and as long as the museum needs the exhibitions for its financial balance.”