Category: visual

“A twisting, 400m-high skyscraper, to be built overlooking the historical centre of St Petersburg, the building was to house the headquarters of the state gas monopoly, Gazprom. … This week, after months of uncertainty and contradictory statements from high-ranking Russian politicians, the final nail seems to have been hammered into the coffin of the project.”

The artist’s plan to hang panels of translucent fabric over nearly six miles of the Arkansas River has gotten the blessing of the local chapter of the Sierra Club – enraging local environmentalists who are adamantly opposed to the project.

“For every day one recent week, I lounged in the grand old space the Corcoran calls the Mantel Room, where the museum has created a Salon with dozens of its best old European pictures.”

“Despite several weeks of accusations, counterclaims and deepening investigations, the mystery at the core of the case of Picasso and the electrician seems no closer to being solved.”

“There is one thing museums could do that would put looters and smugglers out of business while uncovering more of the world’s cultural treasures at far lower cost: excavate archaeological sites themselves. Today this might seem a strange idea, but it’s exactly what museums like the Louvre and the British Museum did in the 19th century.”

“New York police are looking for a thief who tunnelled into an apartment last month and stole works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and others. The thief broke through a hallway wall between 24 and 28 November while the owner was away and took art and other items worth $750,000.”

“These are the waning days of the suburban Barnes. … [The move] has arguably been made inevitable by years of fiscal mismanagement, neighborhood rancor, legal wrangling, and, above all, the conditional generosity of three Philadelphia foundations which wanted the art in the city.”

NPR staff “went digging through Flickr and found a record-breaking giant snow(wo)man with pine trees as arms, thumb-sized snowmen, an army of hundreds in the streets of Moscow and hilariously twisted Calvin & Hobbes-inspired installations.”

“The National Gallery of Canada is seeking legal advice over a dispute between Toronto artist AA Bronson and the Washington-based National Portrait Gallery. Bronson, a former member of Toronto’s pioneering General Idea art collective, has asked the National Portrait Gallery to return his photograph from the gay-themed exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.”

“Brussels has ruled that the work of the American artist [Dan Flavin] … should be classified for tax purposes as simple light fixtures. His work, they said, has ‘the characteristics of lighting fittings … and is therefore to be classified … as wall lighting fittings’.” Similarly affected is video artist Bill Viola.