Category: visual

“Fisk University in Nashville, which wants to sell a $30 million ownership stake in its Stieglitz art collection to raise money, plans to appeal a court decision that set limits on the sale, the university announced on Wednesday.”

“The extreme caution and modesty of 2008 and 2009, the hesitation to be seen spending, is gone, too. Pay in the financial world is roaring back to pre-crisis levels, and art is increasingly seen as a safe place to park money, like gold.”

“The works date from 1900 to 1932, ranging from pictures of Picasso’s friends in early impoverished “Blue Period” Paris days to some finished drawings in the precise highly valued style of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres from the 1920’s. There are also Cubist pictures in the mix.”

“Two ancient walls fell in different areas of Pompeii on Wednesday, probably the casualties of heavy rains. The collapses were the third and fourth in less than a month. A staff member at the site said that the walls, a combination of ancient stone and mortar, did not contain frescoes.”

“Smartphones can overlay digital content, like images or movies, across real spaces.” With the most advanced apps, visitors can “use their phones as lenses, allowing them to see otherwise invisible images – like sleek computer-generated sculptures or floating interviews with artists – on the screens as they … point their phones’ cameras at objects.”

“We have an artistic movement with a professed desire to escape from modern times and return to a medieval aesthetic on the one hand, and a commitment to extreme realism and immediacy on the other. The house of Pre-Raphaelitism, divided against itself, cannot stand. Unless, of course, those two impulses can go together.”

Sotheby’s Australia were upbeat before last night’s Aboriginal art auction, but when selling opened it quickly became apparent buyers had not returned to the market.

“Tate Britain has been suffering an identity crisis for a decade, and is embarking on yet another round of therapy. The latest rehang of the collection is being billed as the beginning of an entirely new approach, scheduled to culminate in 2013 when a building programme gives it expanded gallery space and the entire collection will be displayed in chronological order. Yet if that sounds like a cure, the immediate arrangement pulls the patient to the very brink of catastrophe.”

“When Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi pitches up to inaugurate an art show, it’s got to be a pretty big deal. Anish Kapoor’s twin shows in Delhi and Mumbai are indeed being heralded almost as the return of an extremely successful prodigal son.”

The new chairman of Te Papa, the country’s national museum in Wellington, “has thrown his weight behind building a $100 million [NZ] art gallery to house the museum’s formidable – but rarely seen – collection.”