Category: visual

“Though the creation of such an institution has support from members of Congress, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and celebrities like Eva Longoria, building it faces significant obstacles, including budget pressures and a feeling among some in Washington that the Smithsonian should stop spinning off new specialty museums and concentrate on improving the ones it already has.”

“Claims made by an Iranian government official that the Louvre pledged to help organise a major exhibition of Persian artefacts in Tehran are strongly denied by the Paris museum, which says that an agreement was never finalised.”

Christopher Hawthorne wonders “how to explain the fact that Los Angeles architects have for so long been much better known, locally and around the world, than their counterparts in landscape architecture? Why have our best gardens tended to be even more susceptible to neglect or demolition than our best houses, which are themselves infamously vulnerable?”

“It seems we choose the art history we want, or need. Since Damien Hirst broke the ice at the start of the 1990s, British artists have succeeded and become fashionable at home and abroad. The generation who grew up with this art have now had time to do their PhDs and become curators or lecturers, and the official picture of Britain’s art history is changing before our eyes.”

“Norwegian architect Sverre Max Stenersen wants to tow a giant retired oil platform from the North Sea to Trondheim. Remodelled with apartments and other facilities, Stenersen would like to remind Norwegians where their wealth comes from and revitalize a blighted neighborhood.”

“At the center of the current wave of troubles is Guy Wildenstein, 65, the president of Wildenstein & Company, an operation with spaces in New York, Tokyo and Paris. The family has faced controversies in the past, and lawsuits, too, but never in the number or magnitude of those on the docket now.”

“The passion of Christ has always been associated with bodily fluids – it is true that artists traditionally stressed blood rather than urine, but they scarcely stinted on the revulsion of Christ’s fleshly death. Piss Christ can be legitimately compared to the horrible sores and green pus on the body of Grunewald’s Christ in the Isenheim altarpiece.”

“The 55-metre, 330-tonne glittering steel wing can hold up to 1,400 people at any one time, but it needs at least 20 people to get it moving. The monument to unity is called Citizens in Motion, and is apparently all about people coming together. If you want to make it move, you have to get a group together and all go in a particular direction.”

“Just after 11am on Sunday, four people in sunglasses entered the gallery where the exhibition was being held. One took a hammer from his sock and threatened security staff. A guard restrained one man but the remaining members of the group managed to smash an acrylic screen and slash the photograph with what police believe was a screwdriver or ice pick.”

“A report being released today by the American Association of Museums shows more than 70 percent of the nation’s museums were under financial distress last year because most saw government and corporate funding reduced from an already bad year in 2009.”