Category: visual

“More than 250 photographs and films of celebrities, and ordinary people doing ordinary, or more often, extraordinary things, when they thought they were unobserved, play provocatively with the idea of the forbidden gaze. Spanning the 1850s to today, [the exhibition is] like a history of the photographic invasion of privacy.”

“A fruit held by a satyr in the bottom right of the painting has been identified as belonging to Datura stramonium, a plant with a history of sending people mad and making them want to strip off their clothes. Its hallucinogenic effects were recorded in Ancient Greek texts and it has since been used as an aphrodisiac and a poison.”

Paul “Greenhalgh, 54, arrived at the Corcoran in spring 2006, hoping to consolidate the work of the art gallery and the city’s only art college, and to steady the programs and financial lifelines of the museum. However, the Corcoran has had a rocky recent past, dealing with declining donations and mounting repairs to an old and historic building.”

The triangular landmark’s “interior is a warren of awkward spaces,” so “it seemed logical that workers in the building would be thrilled at the prospect of moving to a better space. Not so. ‘Everyone will be dragged kicking and screaming from here,’ said Airie Stuart, publisher of Palgrave, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.”

“Barbara Hepworth took the fast track to critical success. By the time she was 33, the English sculptor was exhibiting her stone carvings with Kandinsky, Mondrian, Miro, Giacometti, and Calder. … In recent years, however, Hepworth’s position among the Masters of Modernism has slipped.”

“Hollywood has painted a picture of the art thief as glamorous, besuited Thomas Crowns, pilfering art for the thrill and challenge of it. But in the real world, it’s a much less charming affair. … In fact, most museum crooks are second-rate thugs that steal art because it packs so much value into such a compact and portable package.”

“[W]hile the added room will be welcome, almost more important for curators has been the opportunity to do what large, encyclopedic museums almost never get to do: completely take apart and put back together a vast permanent collection, and in so doing retell the story of art through its holdings.”

“Most people walk into an art exhibition and see only works of art. Author Sarah Thornton sees the art, but also signs of hustle and hierarchy in the status-obsessed art world. Thornton is not an artist or critic, but a social scientist who has used ethnographic methods to study the behaviour of artists, dealers and curators.”

“President and director James Cuno announced in a town hall-style meeting Thursday that approximately 50 security managers would be relieved, with the option to re-apply for their positions. An additional 15 staff members, or 2 percent of the museum’s total staff, were laid off within departments ranging from museum education to retail operations and the facility’s physical plant.”