Category: visual

“Can an art museum in this economic climate raise $480 million for an ambitious expansion and endowment campaign without a world famous architect like Frank Gehry or Renzo Piano attached to the project? SFMOMA has just placed a very big bet that it can, by selecting the critically acclaimed but not so commonly known Oslo-based firm Snøhetta,” which is best known for Norway’s new national opera house.

“Szarkowski was a good photographer, a great critic and an extraordinary curator. Like all good critics and curators, Szarkowski was both visionary and catalyst.”

“The boon of blockbusters is also their curse: too many people. The Impressionist show was by no means the worst; the Palace of the Legion of Honor does an even worse job of traffic control. I have literally been held motionless by a crowd at a Mayan exhibition at the Legion. I just stood there and prayed that Brownian motion would take me safely to the next room.”

“For the last 45 years, the Israel Museum has been both the crown jewel of this country’s cultural heritage and a bit of a mess,” giving visitors “a feeling of being overwhelmed by quantity and mildly perplexed about substance.” Beginning next week, “[t]here will be far fewer objects on display, with twice the space to view them, as well as richer links and explanations. … The idea is not simply to make the museum easier to navigate but also to suggest interesting connections among objects and between the particular and the universal.”

“The man behind the design of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon has predicted a long period of stagnation for architecture that will scar both the British landscape and the national economy. After the boom in the early years of the millennium, an era of paralysis lies ahead, according to Rab Bennetts.”

“The fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square – occupied at the moment by Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle – has in the past decade become a stage for works of contemporary art. And six artworks were shortlisted yesterday to be considered to become the next installation on the plinth in time for the 2012 Olympics.”

Scholars are examining an unsigned canvas depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, part of the art collection of the Jesuit order, to determine if it is by Caravaggio. Several historians note that the painting bears many of the artist’s stylistic trademarks; others urge caution, noting that no documentary evidence has been found that he ever tackled this particular subject.

“A painting of The Virgin and Child by the Spanish old master Murillo has been temporarily barred from export while efforts are made to keep it in the UK. A ‘last chance’ attempt to save the £3m painting for the nation was announced by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey.”

Well, how many of us really remember that “the Gherkin” is properly called the Swiss Re Tower? The new Strata tower, a £113.5m residential building intended to help redevelop a rundown central London district, gets its nickname from the vertical black and silver lines on its outer curtain wall and the three large wind turbines incorporated into the building’s top.

“A potential roadblock to Eli Broad’s plans for a downtown museum housing his contemporary art collection sprang up Thursday.” Shen Yun Performing Arts, a Falun Gong-affiliated organization which presents touring spectacles based on traditional Chinese music and dance, has proposed “a rival plan to build a 3,000-seat theater and training center … on the same parcel at Grand Avenue and 2nd Street.”