Category: visual

“When considered with Michael Van Valkenburgh’s Brooklyn Bridge Park, under construction across the harbor in Brooklyn, [Adriaan Geuze’s plan] represents a shift in the character of the city’s park system as a whole that is as revolutionary as Robert Moses’ early public works projects or Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park.”

“The items,” from Salander’s Manhattan townhouse, “include Italian Baroque credenzas, 18th- and 19th-century American furniture, Venetian glass chandeliers and about 50 carpets. … The Stair auction will be the first sale of Salander’s property since he pleaded guilty to grand larceny and fraud in New York Supreme Court on March 18.”

“The success of an undertaking like this hinges not on the size but on the quality of the space, which is never thought about enough and never by the people who really know what they’re doing where museums are concerned. … When will [trustees] ever learn to listen, and to people who have the right experience?”

“Joseph Rosa, the John H. Bryan Curatorial Chair of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago, … will take over at one of the leading collegiate art museums in the country, which recently completed an expansion designed by Allied Works Architecture.”

“Once threatened with the wrecking ball, the towers have been saved by occasional infusions of state, local and federal funding and are kept in decent but insufficient repair by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. Now, a city budget crisis threatens even that minimal support, making a helpful gesture by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last week all the more welcome.”

It’s commercial. It’s not empty space. People with money are pushing it…

“The effect was to wipe out the admirable strides the AGO had made over the past six years, when it seemed to have become truly transparent and open in its dealings with the public, the media, its own staff and its neighbours.”

An expansion plan that involves building a second museum downtown has opened a rift on the museum’s 45-member board, which includes some of the wealthiest art patrons in New York.”

“Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city’s walls with politicized images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colorful works of graphic art. The more overtly political images tend to glamorize President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, and his demonization of Washington is a favorite subject.”

“Forgers are a peculiar breed and money is only one motive. Anonymous by necessity, they yearn for recognition. Technically adept, often with formal training and a keen sense of colour and form, they have produced work, down to the singular brushstroke or cut of the clay, that rivals the originals. But, by definition, they have not found their own voice; they are unable to put their name to pieces of modest integrity and flair when they know that they are capable of simulating the greats.”