Category: visual

“The Getty was the high bidder for the painting” – J.M.W. Turner’s Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino – “at an auction at Sotheby’s in London. But under British law, artworks of special significance that have been on British soil for more than 50 years can’t be sold and exported without a license – and the deal can be sunk if a British institution, or sometimes an individual, steps up to match what the foreign buyer was willing to pay.”

“[John] Marciari, now curator of European paintings at the San Diego Museum of Art, has published an article in the new issue of the Madrid quarterly Ars making the case that an unidentified painting in storage at the Yale University Art Gallery is actually an altarpiece by the Spanish master.”

Following the controversial, attention-getting Jeff Koons installation in 2008 and a similar show by French artist Xavier Veilhan in 2009, Château de Versailles director Jean-Jacques Aillagon has decided to display a “guest” artist every autumn. This year’s visitor is Takashi Murakami.

“Part of the reason art so rarely flourishes on TV is that most artists are reluctant to be represented in the mainstream media. Just hearing people on television discuss ‘the work’ in art-world lingo, makes us art-world denizens shudder: In the context of highly formatted cable entertainment, it sounds put on and pretentious.”

“Up to 60 per cent of Aboriginal art is bought through self-managed super[annuation] funds, according to managing director of Melbourne-based Moss Green Auctions Paul Sumner. Banning art investments from super would be a ‘massive disincentive’ to buyers, he said.”

“That [MOCA] had become a soap opera set was pure Deitch, for better or worse: stuntlike, crazily experimental, scrambling high and low culture, risking ridicule and seeming not to care much when it rains down on his head. And the shoot was a perfect emblem of the issues and anxieties raised by the choice of Mr. Deitch last January….”

“Greenwich Village tour guides point to the lot, now owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and tell visitors that Hopper’s diner stood there. But did it?”

“While the mainstream big beasts of the arts jungle, notably Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate (revealed last week to be on a taxpayer-funded salary of at least £160,000) are hailed as visionaries, Saatchi continues to be sniffed at. Even the artists whose names he made are happy to have a sneer at his expense.”

“Even as an optometrist, Silvia Pelini wasn’t prepared for the mammoth eyeball that is Chicago’s latest public art display” – a 30-foot sculpture by Tony Tasset called Eye.

“Kennedy, who has led [Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art] since 2005, will succeed former Toledo director Don Bacigalupi, who left the museum a year ago…. Kennedy served as director of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra from 1997 to 2004 and was assistant director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1989 to 1997.”