Category: visual

“Edward Horsford’s high-speed photography freezes the spherical innards of water balloons – just as the balloon skins break open, and just before they splash to the floor.”

“Do they boost the Southern California art community or dilute it? Do they build the foundation for sales and create collectors or draw looky-loos opting for a cheap night out? There are almost as many opinions as there are participants in the more than 20 art walks in greater Los Angeles.”

“The trial of former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True ended in a bureaucratic whimper Wednesday in Rome when a three-judge panel halted the proceedings, ruling that the statute of limitations had expired on criminal charges that she had conspired to traffic in looted art.”

“Renderings such as these are the stock-in-trade of architectural clients, be they real estate developers or museum directors, who are trying to curry favor with people and institutions who are indispensible to the success of their projects.” The renderings aren’t “presented in bad faith. But let’s be clear: These drawings are marketing tools. They are not architectural designs.”

“A bar of soap allegedly made of fat removed from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has gone on show in Zurich.” Artist Gianni Motti claims he obtained the material from a clinic where Berlusconi had liposuction in 2004; the clinic, alas, denies the whole thing.

“An Egyptian court convicted 11 officials from the Culture Ministry, including the deputy minister, of gross negligence and incompetence in the theft of a Vincent Van Gogh painting that embarrassed the government.”

“Songzhuang at first seems like a medium-sized town of no particular distinction, with its long, ramshackle main street … Then you notice the Land Rovers and Mercedes sedans, the art galleries and exhibition halls, and you’ve arrived in what has become over the past decade one of the biggest and liveliest artists’ colonies in the world.”

“Fisk University has drafted a new plan to sell a $30 million share in its art collection to an Arkansas museum, hoping that this time the court will sign off on the deal.”

“What happens if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it? What happens if a man spends 30 years building an architectural- spiritual monument in the west Texas desert, which few people have seen and probably very few will ever see?”