Category: visual

The first major online art fair opened last weekend, but it got off to a troubled start. In the VIP Art Fair’s first days, its website slowed to a crawl, shut down temporarily and lost a key interactive feature. One online critic renamed VIP: “Very Inactive Page.”

“Their spending spree meant that Christie’s, the world’s largest auction house, announced yesterday sales of £3.3 billion ($5.3bn) last year, a jump of 53 per cent on its 2009 performance and the highest total in the company’s 245-year history.”

Until recently, a museum occasionally culling and selling items from its permanent collection was thought unremarkable. “Yet deaccessioning – the art world term for selling pieces from a museum’s collection – has become a dirty word and the focus of increasingly intense attention” – even when the proceeds are reserved for new acquisitions.

The Lebanese capital’s “oldest districts – once home to traditional Lebanese and Ottoman structures, some characterized by their red-tile roofs and colonnaded halls – are increasingly the site of the construction of luxury business and residential blocks.”

“When forgotten Picassos aren’t turning up in the most unlikely places, they’re depicting the most unlikely subjects.”

“Anyone who missed the chance to romp among the handpainted ceramic seeds created by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern will soon get another opportunity – but the close encounter will cost up to £120,000. For the first time a sackful of the seeds is to be sold officially at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art next month.”

Richard P. Townsend had held the job less than two years. “It’s the third change at the top for the Long Beach museum in little more than 3 1/2 years since completing a $15-million expansion and renovation in 2007.”

“Arguably, in fact, the heart of Gehry’s design is not the auditorium but rather the rehearsal and recording rooms that make up the southern half of the New World Center. Taken together, these spaces suggest a whitewashed seaside village beneath the larger building’s protective roof.”

“The grand finale provoked a frenzy like nothing seen before at a Parisian gallery. Visitors were advised to come between 3am and 4.30am on the first two nights, and between 2am and 5am on the final night. But even at 3am on Sunday, the queues lasted for three hours. By that afternoon, waiting time had reached a peak of five hours.”

“For nearly three decades, Mark Augustus Landis has visited ­museums across the US in various guises and tried to donate paintings he has forged.Landis has been prolific and amazingly persistent.”