Category: visual

“The president of Gainesville State College, last week had an adjunct art instructor’s painting — dealing with themes of racism and violence in American history — removed from a faculty art show. Faculty members are blasting the decision to remove the painting and the fact that the president did so, they say, prior to consulting the arts faculty or anyone at the college’s gallery.”

“The museum offered 32 paintings in 30 lots at prices estimated to bring between $706,000 and $1,022,000. It earned approximately $450,000 more than the high-end estimate.”

“Personally, I do not believe that originality has died, but I recognize that the obituaries cannot exactly be ignored. I keep abreast of whatever is being said about the death-of-originality movement’s dead white males, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.”

“The Egyptologist’s community is trying to assess the damage at the Egyptian National Museum by scrutinizing the footage shot just after looters broke into the building on Friday. Watching the footage, experts have been able to produce a map of the museum rooms where looting and vandalism took place, showing that the attack occurred on three sides.”

The Vancouver Art Gallery now has two years to prove that the site is the “best for a new gallery, that the VAG has a viable business plan, and that gallery officials can raise the funds to build the new facility – estimated at $250-million to $300-million.”

“Aiming to open the world’s art collections to online viewers, Google today unveiled the Google Art Project, a website that allows visitors to see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists, take virtual 360-degree tours of galleries, and zoom in for extreme close-up views to inspect a great artist’s brushwork.”

“A vast majority of Egypt’s museums and archaeological sites are secure and have not been looted, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief antiquities official, said.”

“In the first place, the current guidelines fail to accomplish their intended purposes– namely, to protect the public interest and to encourage prospective donors to donate art works to museums.”

The now-controversial 13-minute film (not video) is generally “regarded as an expression of the artist’s outrage and grief over the AIDS epidemic.” Yet “the people closest to the artist’s estate say the film and its creator have been too narrowly interpreted.” (For instance, Wojnarowicz completed Fire before he was diagnosed with AIDS.)

“[A] well-wrought container that accommodates [museum director Malcolm Rogers’s] program perfectly. There are no subtleties or surprises, no risks taken. The new wing is an unassailably logical solution, superbly executed and singularly lifeless, largely redeemed by curatorial and installation expertise.”