Category: visual

“Officials at the [Fresno Metropolitan Museum] have said financial problems could force the museum to close as early as next month, prompting the exhibitor of ‘Marc Chagall: The Early Etchings’ to unexpectedly pull the show Sunday.” The exhibitor “said the Met still owes him nearly $10,000 … and he was worried that the artwork would be locked up in a failed museum.”

“Bowing to continued financial pressure and a lack of donations, the Claremont Museum of Art said today that it would close its doors to the public on Dec. 27 and move its permanent collection to a warehouse. … The museum, which currently rents space in a former citrus packing plant, is scheduled to move out by Dec. 31.”

Forty-odd years ago, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown “were on a search for a way out of the dead end of postwar Modernism, whose early hopes had by then deteriorated into a dreary functionalism.” They found it in Las Vegas.

“It was Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who – daunted at the thought of writing by hand piles of greetings to his friends – came up with the idea in 1843. That first card represented three generations of an early Victorian family, flanked by scenes of charitable acts, celebrating by drinking goblets of wine.”

The $125,000 grant “creates the unlikely, face-to-face juxtaposition of Andy Warhol … with Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant artisan whose single-handed creation of the hundred-foot-high, ornately sculpted and decorated Watts Towers over more than 30 years established him as one of art history’s ultimate do-it-yourselfers.”

“The diary of Ludwig Borchardt, who discovered the head in 1912, shows that he knew that the 3,400 year-old limestone bust was of Queen Nefertiti and instead listed it as a ‘painted plaster bust of a princess,'” according to the Cairo-based Supreme Council of Authority.

“The case, identical to the others in the Grainger Hall of Gems and lit to hold a diamond ring, is part of a new offer by the museum to pop the question there. The $350 fee includes a champagne toast, with optional add-ons.”

“Collectors responded to the financial crisis by selecting the best 20th-century classics, Old Masters, wine and jewelry at international auctions. They shunned investment in some contemporary art as prices dropped by half and sales fell 75 percent. Private transactions increased….”

“Annual sales of contemporary art slumped 75 percent at the two largest auction houses’ evening sales in 2009 after they abandoned price guarantees to sellers. Worldwide auction sales of contemporary art grew more than eightfold between 2003 and 2007, according to French database Artprice.”

“It’s certainly unlike any shopping arena you’ve ever encountered, with acres of open space, daringly bold white walls, those trademark Libeskind jagged edges everywhere and — totally unheard of in Sin City — a generosity of natural light pouring into the building.”