Category: visual

“‘Get out,’ a crowd of 150 archaeology graduates chanted outside the office of Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, who threw in his lot with the old order when he accepted a Cabinet post in the last weeks of Hosni Mubarak’s rule.”

“His dogged black-and-white documentation of those he called ‘the forgotten ones’ – mine workers, steel workers, Native Americans, the town and country poor of all races, especially black – could be dismissed by art-world formalists as politically, but not artistically, important. … [But] his whole enterprise [was] a humanist slap to the faces of those who hide behind art to ignore the world.”

“In a statement entitled ‘sad news’, he lists 18 items that have disappeared. They include a gilded wood statue of the boy king Tutankhamun being carried by a goddess and parts of another statue of him harpooning. A criminal investigation has begun to try to recover the valuable objects. A group of men already in custody is being questioned.”

“Russian collectors, who largely sat out major sales after recession hit, are back, and auction houses say they’re scrambling to determine which artists appeal to them most.”

“In contrast to the dumb, boxy towers clad in murky glass that have defaced New York City’s skyline during the past decade, Gehry has produced a gawky beauty that captures the open-ended energy of the city. It fascinates rather than ravishes.”

“Like Google Earth, with its ability to spy on homes halfway around the world, Google Art Project uses technology that is initially astounding — and then weirdly disappointing. It’s exciting, for those who fetishize “the hand of the master,” to feel oneself so close to genius. But we’re deluding ourselves if we think Van Gogh’s brilliance can be subdivided into pixels.”

“The Chinese antiquities at the heart of the Penn Museum’s beleaguered and depleted ‘Secrets of the Silk Road’ exhibition were never approved for display in Philadelphia, a Chinese Embassy spokesman said Tuesday, almost a week after the museum announced the pieces had been stripped from the show.”

“An NYU professor triggered a debate about campus privacy in November when he decided to implant a camera in the back of his head for a year-long art project. Now the professor, Wafaa Bilal, faces a much bigger obstacle than students who might not want their pictures taken. His body is rejecting part of the implanted device.”

“The museum announced Wednesday that it has received a $500,000, one-year grant from the James Irvine Foundation to carry out its work on the towers. The city [of Los Angeles] couldn’t have landed the grant on its own because the San Francisco-based foundation doesn’t fund government agencies.”

“Split Second: Indian Paintings,” which opens in July, will be “an exhibition of 10 rarely seen canvases from the museum’s collection … chosen largely through an online experiment” – in a process more sophisticated than a simple vote for favorites.