Category: visual

“I think the museum gives us the possibility to talk about culture in a really broad way. We can address the things that are concerning to us in contemporary culture: health, environmental degradation, what should our level of population be, and so on. All these things the museum should be engaging with, because all of them have a history we can illustrate and talk about.”

They are “threatened by the destruction of their professional habitat. Magazines that used to commission such photographers to create in-depth chronicles of social phenomena, cultural conflict and struggle and change within communities have either gone out of print (the most legendary, Life, died as a weekly in 1972 and as a monthly in 2000) or are operating on scarcer and scarcer resources.”

Thomas P Campbell: “We assume people know who Rembrandt is, for example … and, frankly, considering our international audience, I doubt whether many of them do know who [he] was, or the significance of a particular period room, in a broader context. What I’m trying to do is to get the museum rethinking the visitor experience from the moment that people arrive at the museum: the signage they encounter, the bits of paper they pick up, all the way through to the way we deliver information in the galleries.”

“Future historians peering at the outcome of art sales this year may conclude that the early 21st century was the time when abstract notions took precedence over visual perception. … This new cerebral approach to art that ignores the visual aspect has gone a long way toward erasing the distinction between supreme artistic achievement and moderately successful art.”

“This new cerebral approach to art that ignores the visual aspect has gone a long way toward erasing the distinction between supreme artistic achievement and moderately successful art.”

“I’m seeing artists I think are good and, if they can survive the ridicule — the accusations that this is bringing on Armageddon — they may have an amazing journey in front of them. I hope they do.”

“Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario had record attendance of 878,478 visitors in 2009-10, the first full year since it reopened with a renovation by architect Frank Gehry. About half that total — 404,364 people — attended the blockbuster show King Tut.”

“So, why would Sotheby’s think that anyone would pay millions of dollars for a 19th-Century silk flag that, unlike Custer and his charges, survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn? And why would the Detroit Institute of Arts decide to sell it now after 115 years of stewardship?”

The second stage of the popular new elevated park, running from 20th to 30th Streets, opens next spring. The design will include “a ‘flyover’ where the walkway rises above the High Line’s level, and into the shady canopy of sumac trees” and “a dense stretch of trees and shrubs” described as a “version of Central Park’s wild and woolly Ramble” and named the “Chelsea Thicket.” (Ahem.)

“Fast-food chicken bones, red lentils, sardine heads and microbes – not the contents of a kitchen bin, but raw ingredients for a new wave of art.” The Museum of Arts and Design in New York’s show “Dead or Alive” features such splashes from this new wave as a dodo sculpted out of chicken bones, a roulette wheel skillfully fashioned from fish heads and bamboo skewers, and a Chinese-style landscape painted on swan feathers.