Category: visual

The masters-of-the-universe firm has famously set aside $16.7 billion for its 2009 bonus pool. And what of Pei Cobb Fried, the architects designing Goldman’s new skyscraper near Ground Zero? The practice’s “eight principals probably make a nice living. And their pay packages would be laughed off Wall Street.”

“There has simply never been a moment in modern history when a city so teemed with celebrated artists as London does now. There is a real sense in which to be an artist at all here confers a kind of fame on you. But is there any chance of anyone in 20 years giving a flying fondu about even 5% of our famous artists?”

“Sutton Council asked residents to vote on whether the ‘punk’ mural should stay on its Beddington Farm Road site. More than 93% of the 250 voters urged the council to keep it but as the vote was taking place, the work was defaced by graffiti ‘taggers’.”

Victor Pinchuk, “one of the world’s leading contemporary-art collectors,” said that he “envisages a multi-functional center with a permanent collection built on, though not limited to, works that he owns. Pinchuk said he’s ready to provide ‘100 percent’ financing for the center.”

“An eclectic batch of artworks that once adorned the corporate offices of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sold for $1.35 million,” or “almost double the projected total,” at auction Sunday. One art adviser explained part of the appeal: “This gives you a piece of financial history — good, bad or indifferent.”

“To encounter contemporary Cuban art is relatively rare for U.S. citizens, who continue to risk $7500 fines for traveling to Cuba under an ongoing economic embargo.” Now the largest show to come to the US since 1944 has some wondering if the travel ban to Cuba might be lifted.

“In the year since the worldwide recession devastated the art market, prices have tumbled, collectors have retreated and auction houses have instituted layoffs. And now Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury are tiptoeing carefully.”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Young Archer is a marble Renaissance youth with an amazing backstory: Thirteen years ago, it was declared by NYU’s Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt to be an early work of Michelangelo himself. Rival scholars howled, and art historians continue to pick over its anatomy and history for clues.”

“So we take our hats off today to New York’s Museum of Modern Art for its ability to have a chuckle at its own expense. The institution has tweeted a recent blog post featuring a rejection letter that the museum sent to Andy Warhol in 1956.”

“The city fathers and business leaders understand the value that an exuberant arts community has for a metropolitan area, but the urban developers still have not created a vibrant life, as opposed to a lifestyle, in downtown Dallas….”