Category: visual

“The new Pompidou Center art museum in the eastern French city of Metz has generated a big buzz in the architecture world, largely for its complex freeform roof. When it opened to the public last week, the strange and arresting building likely overshadowed the Picassos, Dalis and Warhols it is exhibiting.”

Discovered last weekend, the stenciled work shows a forlorn boy holding a can of red paint next to the words “I remember when all this was trees.” But by Tuesday, artists from the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios, a feisty grassroots group, had excavated the 7-by-8-foot, 1,500-pound cinder block wall with a masonry saw and forklift and moved the piece to their grounds near the foot of the Ambassador Bridge in southwest Detroit.

A “study estimates the facility would have an annual economic impact of $50.32 million, create 1,960 jobs during its construction and development period, and 740 permanent jobs. Additionally, it says the Barnes will generate $3.86 million in state and city taxes annually.”

“The major spring auctions wrapped up this week in New York with sales that nearly tripled last year’s totals. A few artists appeared unaffected by the recent ups and downs of the market. But the playing field has been transformed by recession, and dozens of other top artists have been boosted or derailed by the boom-and-bust cycle.”

May 2010 might come to be remembered as the month when postwar and contemporary art became fully integrated into the broader art market.

A story from an old colleague relates that, when Kagan was young and at a private firm, she encountered a young, single partner making $750,000 a year. “So she asked the guy, ‘What do you do with all that money?’ And he said, ‘I buy art.’ I remember her telling that story and just shaking her head.” MJ Andersen suggests why visual art could be good for judges …

“So, my question to you Gen. Kagan is this: Do you support reopening the front doors of the United States Supreme Court to the people?”

“The move is riding on a $200 million fund-raising campaign – $150 million for construction and $50 million for endowment. The foundation has raised about $160 million so far,” of which “between $130 million and $140 million is in hand.”

“Until someone has made the cut, expect an organization to turn on the charm. Or scramble the jets. ‘The best bonding situation…is the private jet trip to an art fair,’ said David A. Ross, a former director of both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.”

“The 130 lots, including works attributed to the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and ‘the studio of El Greco,’ is expected to raise more than $2.5 million, Christie’s said. Proceeds will benefit people and businesses that filed claims in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, after the gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2007.”