Category: visual

“Although there are exceptions, most recent museum renovations and expansions have been more about the ambitions of museum directors, the egos of patrons, and the self-centered expressions of A-list architects than about serving the needs of art. Museums increasingly attempt to attract viewers through every avenue but that of art; through movies, restaurants, classes, gift shops, parties, pop-cultural exhibits, and interactive computers.”

“A lone, hooded intruder, clad in black, managed to break into the Art Deco building by the Seine overnight Wednesday. The burglar exploited a two-month-old malfunction in the museum’s alarm system, leading to questions about whether the thief had inside help.”

“Settlement has been reached in a long-standing dispute between the family of renowned Canadian sculptor Haydn Davies and the Ontario community college that razed one of Davies’ most famous outdoor works.”

“While the new spaces do a lot to connect the famously aloof complex to its surroundings, their architecture is too subdued in some places, pointlessly gimmicky at others. Worse, the spaces don’t flow together in a way that might have given the center the internal coherence that it sorely needs.”

The issue “has become a hotly-debated preoccupation of the city’s chattering classes since the gallery indicated its desire to move to a site a few blocks east of its current location.”

“[T]he issue in the friend-of-the-court brief that Brown filed on behalf of Marei Von Saher” is “the constitutionality of a 2002 California law that would save her from having her case thrown out on the grounds that she failed to file her stolen property claim within the usual three-year statute of limitations.”

“[S]everal of the country’s small and medium-size museums have been turning to the art-world equivalent of a bailout. They are partnering with a university or other academic institution, in some cases handing over artworks and changing locations, in a last-ditch effort to keep their doors open and their collections intact and available to the public.”

A slide show of the works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Modigliani and Léger that were reported missing this morning from the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, as well as news photos of the aftermath of the theft.

“These five works together add up to a better choice of the best art of the 20th century than you could find in most modern art museums. A fine collection has been robbed in the most intimate and horrible way of its treasures, and the world has – temporarily, we must hope – lost sight of some of the truly great works of the modern age.”