Category: visual

The School of Visual Arts in New York City has always produced good posters to promote itself in subway stations. SVA’s latest campaign may be its most ingenious yet: posters that mimic – uncannily well – the mosaics on station walls. It wasn’t easy to do …

“The greatest works in our galleries – even the buildings – come from the deep pockets of egotistical, tyrannical patrons in search of self-glory. Twas ever thus. Art funding has never been a pretty picture. But today, some are too squeamish about “tainted money” from certain sources.”

“The contents of the exhibition, “Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds,” were mined by a commercial treasure hunter and not according to academic methods, a practice that many archaeologists deplore, equating it with modern-day piracy.”

“SCI-Arc bought a century-old rail freight depot that is a quarter of a mile long and about 37 feet wide. The school has been a tenant in the building for 10 years, having failed in an earlier attempt to buy the property.”

“We have been so long accustomed to the idea that Barcelona’s most famous landmark is a permanent ruin, unfinished and unfinishable, that it comes as a shock to find it is now keeping out the weather, for the first time in its 130 years of making.”

“Before he was director general of the Dresden collections, Mark Roth served as director of the German Hygiene-Museum. He was also president of the German Museums Association from 1996 to 2003.”

“The small shock is just how weak the museum’s collection is, and how poorly the paintings, sculptures and decorative arts have been installed in the open floor plan galleries. Six big floors of displays offer, at best, less than two floors of museum-worthy art.”

“Philip Kennicott, currently the paper’s culture critic, will fill the post vacated by Blake Gopnik in December. Kennicott will continue to write on architecture, one of the many topics he covered as culture critic; he’s been regularly reviewing museum exhibits since Gopnik’s departure.”

“The new Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs (MSAA) production unit has just fabricated its first batch of replicas … [130] statues depicting the unique collection of King Tutankhamun. The replicas are to be produced for tourists and hotels in [the Red Sea resort town of] Sharm El-Sheikh.”