Category: visual

“Weathervane prices peaked four years ago when Sotheby’s sold a 6-foot weathervane of an American Indian for a record $5.6 million. The auction house only sold $7.7 million of Americana all last year, and this spring prices were still off by a third for everything from weathervanes to Queen Anne tea tables.”

“By zooming in with the click of a mouse, the smallest details can appear — even ones that aren’t ordinarily visible. The images have a resolution of up to 28 billion pixels — about 3,000 times stronger than that of an average digital camera.”

“Can skating and eco-education hope to reverse the effects of long-term economic forces and decades of wrong-headed urban renewal? I say yes, with caveats. Punching through the physical barriers around the arch could assemble a waterfront with enough cultural critical mass to spur investment and invite the four million annual visitors to linger.”

“The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Thursday that it finished its fiscal year with a $5.5-million surplus and has used most of it to continue replenishing the endowment it had illegally raided during nearly a decade of overspending.”

“For several years now, there has been talk about whether Las Vegas could handle what in any other city might be referred to as real architecture.” We’re now finding out, with CityCenter, which Paul Goldberger describes as “a kind of gated community of glittering starchitect ambition.”

“There is nothing worse than good taste. Nothing more stultifying than an array of consumer choices paraded as a philosophy of life. And there is nothing more absurd than someone who aspires to show good taste in contemporary art.”

“Built 18 kilometres from Bergama under the Roman emperor Hadrian, scholars believe Allianoi was an important health centre where those inflicted with ailments would come to take the waters. The site was declared a Heritage Site of the First Order by the region of Izmir in 2001.”

“Among the paintings, sculptures and books that graced the British and European offices of the investment bank before its collapse two years ago were two Lucian Freud etchings, a Gary Hume Madonna and some rather nice imari ware. But a fair few of those who turned up appeared to be obeying the summons of schadenfreude rather than aesthetics.”

The University of Colorado at Boulder Art Museum has just opened the doors on the first-ever stand-alone building in its 71-year history. The three-story, 25,000- square-foot structure is part of the school’s $63.5 million Visual Arts Complex, which also contains a second, much larger building housing the department

“The Indianapolis Museum of Art is turning to reserve police officers and college students in a new strategy to upgrade security and customer service. As part of an overhaul estimated to save $600,000 annually, the museum fired 33 full-time security officers and 23 part-time gallery attendants Monday.”