Category: visual

Here’s a “question of conceptual art and conceptual artists in general: Why do they bother? Why do conceptual artists continue to employ finite resources and materials, not to mention occupy valuable space in museums, when, unlike other artists, the conceptual artist has an infinite amount of perfectly adequate space available to make and exhibit art in his or her head?”

“‘WHY?’ is the question Peter Noever, the director of the Museum of Applied Arts [in Vienna], says he is constantly asked about a sprawling exhibition of propagandistic North Korean artworks now on view. … This is the first time that secretive totalitarian state has sent a large number of its artworks outside its sealed borders.”

“Art museums “not just about art” – how pathetically sad. Yet the evidence is all around us that this mind-set has become firmly rooted, in activities such as jazz Fridays at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and yoga classes at the Museum of Modern Art.”

“I think in the past we’ve tried a bit too hard to be something that we’re not. There’s this perceptual barrier that unless you are an expert, galleries aren’t for you. Art doesn’t have to be something that you pay to go see.”

“If all goes as planned, MAM, now a two-story building with a $5.5 million to $6 million operating budget, a 632-piece permanent collection and 33,000 square feet of space — a little less than half carved out for exhibitions — will move into a snazzy 200,000-square-foot facility with 120,000 square feet of programmable space where, museum leaders hope, its holdings will multiply.”

“If you want to make nine out of 10 architects squirm, ask them if they think about beauty when they’re designing, or whether beauty in architecture is profoundly important to them.”

“It was one of the more unusual art finds: four sketches by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais tucked inside covers of Led Zeppelin LPs. What brought the worlds of rock and fine art even closer was the fact the albums belonged to Rick Hobbs, chauffeur and aide of Jimmy Page, one of the band’s founders and a passionate collector of Victorian art.”

“A fierce row has erupted over the ownership of Michelangelo’s David between the Italian state and Florence, the city where the masterpiece is on display.”

“Why is a set of photos worth millions if they were shot by Ansel Adams, and next to nothing if the photographer depressing the plunger was a nobody? After all, the images remain the same.”

The case of the “lost” Ansel Adams negatives that purportedly are worth $200 million has turned into a public argument between Rick Norsigian, who found them at a Fresno garage sale 10 years ago, and the great photographer’s family and former associates and leading art-photography dealers, who deny that Adams took them.