As part of Britain’s 2012 Cultural Olympiad, light sculptor Anthony McCall is creating an installation for the Liverpool waterfront made entirely of mist. Called Column. the artwork will be a machine-generated column of water vapor spiraling up above the city as far as the weather will allow.
Category: visual
Looted Afghan Art Objects Returned, Restored
“Lost Afghan treasures looted from Kabul are to go on display in a new exhibition [at the British Museum] thanks to an unknown benefactor. The mystery donor identified the fragments of intricately carved ivory as being among important exhibits stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1994.”
Keeping Afghanistan’s Greatest Treasures Safe Through Decades of War
“In 17 years of war after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, and five years of Taliban rule, most of the Afghan national museum’s riches were looted and some were deliberately destroyed. But the most valuable items survived, in a vault deep beneath the presidential palace, thanks to five men – among them museum director Omar Khan Massoudi.”
Shanghai’s Red Church Rises Again
“A $3-million conservation plan is returning the Holy Trinity church, built in the 1860s, to its former glory and signals yet another transformation in Chinese history.”
Why Ed Ruscha Titled His Latest Series of Paintings ‘Psycho Spaghetti Westerns’
“I was faced with this thought of having to have a title, and that just came out of the sky. I thought, ‘How perfect for these paintings.’ There are no references to Italian movies from the ’60s here, although I do like those movies, but ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ says it all: tangled up messes like spaghetti, and we’re living out here in the West, and we’re all psycho.”
The World’s Most Spectacular New Opera House (It’s In China)
“Set in Haixinsha Square, a brand new stretch of south China’s ever-expanding trading city, the opera house takes the form of what appear to be two enormous pebbles that might have been washed up on the shores of the Pearl river, on which Guangzhou stands.”
Academy Award Nomination Boosts Market For Banksy
“In the month since the nominations were announced, Banksy’s art has already shown signs of a price bump. Analysis provided by the art-price monitor, artnet, of the ten most recent sales of Banksy works shows that prices were on average 25 per cent higher than the highest estimate put on the work by auction houses.”
Judge Orders New Look At Barnes Collection Move To Philly
“A Montgomery County judge has ordered a hearing that could reopen the case of the Barnes Foundation’s move from its home in Lower Merion Township to the Parkway in Philadelphia.”
Brooklyn Museum – Space Reinvented
“An extensive redesign of its Great Hall has transformed it into an imposing space, defined by a dense grid of classical columns and 24-foot-high ceilings.”
Reinventing Conceptualism
Glenn Ligon “is someone who has figured out how to give Conceptualism some grit. He’s influenced a younger generation, perhaps because he is a political artist but not a protest artist. He has an unwillingness to be boxed in.”