“For the last 20 years, however, in spite of an almost total lack of state support, without public art galleries or non-profit exhibition spaces, … a vital alternative infrastructure for the making and exhibiting of contemporary art has developed within Beirut.”
Category: visual
A Stick-and-Stone Artist’s Number-One Work: His Home
“Patrick Dougherty, a sculptor who weaves tree saplings into whirling, animated shapes that resemble tumbleweeds or gusts of wind, likes to say that his first artwork was his house.”
A Fine Use for a Failed Bank: The American Museum of Ceramic Art
“[The] PFF Bank and Trust … in Pomona closed its doors last year, and the FDIC put its building up for sale this year. But instead of another business taking over the two-story, 51,000-square-foot building, the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) will be moving in and gaining some serious elbow room.”
Winners In This Year’s $250,000 ArtPrize Competition
Chris LaPorte, whose 28-foot-wide pencil drawing titled “Cavalry, American Officers, 1921” depicts a group of several uniformed officers in stunning detail, has won the ArtPrize 2010’s $250,000 top prize.
Why Do Art Museums Present Vanity Exhibitions?
Christopher Knight: “The visitor experience is rarely satisfying. At a vanity show, exploring an artist’s specific talents or a group of artists’ larger cultural meaning is secondary. Focus is shifted to the collector’s aptitude. The leading question viewers debate is simply: How skillful has this shopper been?”
Are Street Artists Selling Out Their Very Nature?
“Their work is provocative, political, uncensored and usually exacted under cover of darkness. Viewed as vandalism by many, street art is steeped in punk, anarchy and iconoclasm. Because it ideologically sticks two fingers up at the Man, it seems anathema that street art should become increasingly commercial.”
What Has the Phila. Museum’s Director Spent His First Year Thinking About?
“Chiefly, it appears, [Timothy Rub] has thought about space. … The challenge involves ‘being able to devote as much space as possible in the main building to art,’ he said. It’s not just about displaying as many objects as possible, it involves a thoughtful presentation of those objects.”
The Design of the Lower Manhattan Islamic Center: ‘An Enlightened Building’
“Park51 [has] released three drawings, which show a scrupulously contemporary building, conversant in the latest design trends, drenched with light and transparent to the world. The basic symbolism of the building is obvious: It is porous, open and bright, which is to say, it is literally an enlightened building.”
Outsider Wins Top UK Architecture Prize
“The Royal Institute of British Architects gives its top prize to Sir David Chipperfield. His elevation to the pantheon of gold medal winners, alongside the likes of Sir Edwin Lutyens, Louis Kahn Frank Lloyd Wright and Lord Foster, carries a glimmer of irony.”
Stolen Munch Painting Recovered (But Museum Didn’t Notice It Was Gone)
“An Edvard Munch painting, Two Friends, valued at $1.5 million, was discovered in the apartment raid by police, along with paintings by Swedish artist Gustaf Rydberg and Paer Siegaard. Police traced them back to the Malmo Art Museum because of labels on the back of paintings.”