Category: visual

The lobby of the Golden State Mutual building in Los Angeles is decorated with a 1949 set of murals, painted by Charles Alston and Hale Woodruff, depicting various African-American workers in early California. With Golden State Mutual out of business, “the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is planning to buy the works for $750,000 and remove them.” Preservationists are objecting.

How a giant outdoor advertisement for a real estate development called Hollywoodland became a worldwide symbol for Los Angeles and its main industry – with spells as the scene of a suicide and a celebration of liberalized marijuana laws.

“The artists’ group says it is responding to a range of abuses that have been reported on the island, including the failure of contractors to repay recruitment fees — which can lead to crippling debt for laborers — hazardous working conditions and the arbitrary withholding of wages.”

“When the collectors are trustees or provide financing for an exhibition, it looks as if the museum is selling out to vanity shows or renting its galleries. If museums show a collection without the promise of a gift, they are seen as endorsing the art and elevating its value.”

“While museums have long strived to be welcoming places as well as havens of learning, social media is turning them into virtual community centers.”

“The UK art market is in danger of being squeezed by changes to Britain’s tax regime in conjuction with new European Union regulations that affect the trade.”

“Performance art grande dame Marina Abramovic has won a two-year legal action against a French film-maker who committed copyright infringement by making two films, mainly based on her 1992 Biography piece, that misrepresented her work.”

Jonathan Jones: “He was a contemporary of the sceptical thinker Voltaire, and his art is just as radical. It defiantly rejects Christian tradition and embraces a new world of pleasure and freedom. Watteau declared more beautifully than any other artist that life is for living.”

“Samuel Wilkinson really has changed the lightbulb, or, to be exact, the low-energy lightbulb, a Cinderella of the design world. His playful low-energy lightbulbs with two intertwining swirls, named Plumen 001, have just won the overall [Brit Insurance] Design of the Year award.”

A member of the competition jury that in 1999 selected the US architect Peter Eisenman to design a monumental cultural complex in Santiago de Compostela, northwest Spain, has called the decision “an expensive mistake. Probably one of the largest in the history of architecture.”