Category: visual

“Debt-plagued Brandeis University has signed a contract with famed auction house Sotheby’s to lease rather than sell off works from its $350 million art collection. The move comes as the school tries to repair damage to its blemished reputation with the hiring of a new president, Frederick M. Lawrence, whose appointment was announced Thursday.”

“Julian Cox, 44, comes to San Francisco from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where he has been curator of photography for five years. Before going to the High Museum, Cox spent 12 years in the photography department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.”

“The painting — a forlorn boy with a can of red paint and the words ‘I remember when all this was trees’ affixed to an 8-foot tall cinder block wall — was removed by artists of 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios, where it remains on display in southwest Detroit.”

“Now, after 25 years of trying to build extensions to its cement fortress on Madison Avenue, the Whitney is going to do something very bold and scary — something that, in the light of these excellent shows, it seems ready to do. The Whitney is going to replicate itself.”

A research project this summer “retrac[ed] the routes taken by the imperial treasures in the 1930s and 1940s, when they were being safeguarded from the ravages of civil war and Japanese aggression, not to mention floods, bandits and warlords. The project is extraordinary because it was organized by rival museums, the Palace Museum of Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, each of which claims to be the rightful home of the artifacts.”

“As Balinese sculptor Nyoman Nuarta reviews a video of his giant sculpture of three women being defaced with spray paint and torn down by a group of angry fundamentalist Muslim activists in west Java last month, a haunting parallel comes to mind.”

“The VAG is a notorious gathering point for pro-marijuana events … and it’s not unusual to see – and smell – people smoking pot on the steps outside the gallery. While [a gallery volunteer] said ‘it just seems like common sense’ that marijuana smoke would have an impact on the art collection in storage, the gallery’s director Kathleen Bartels [said] the works are protected.”

“The painting according to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is the first known portrait that honours a named African subject as an individual and an equal, and thereby gives a useful insight into Britain in the 18th Century.”

“On July 2, [artist Clark Clark] said, he installed the piece with the help of fellow artist Jonathan Levy, who serves as the director of Gallery House. Said Mr. Clark: ‘He saw it when I brought it. He complimented it.’ But on July 4, Mr. Levy called Mr. Clark to inform him that ‘Evolve America’ had to be removed and replaced.”

“The tomb includes two false doors with colorful paintings depicting the two people buried there…. Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said the new finds were ‘the most distinguished tombs ever found from the Old Kingdom,’ because of their ‘amazing colors.'”