“Unforgiving and elemental, with its rocky beaches and weather-beaten forests of gnarled pine, Fårö epitomized Bergman’s unsparing and unsettled internal world. There’s a sensuality in its hardness that reveals itself only if you look closely: Fårö does its best not to charm you.”
Category: visual
Ashmolean’s £61M Redo Targets ‘Museum Fatigue’
“[T]he over-riding aim has been to double the gallery space and present the museum’s world-class collection of archaeological finds and art … in a way that is easier to understand.”
Miami Art Museum Director Departing At Critical Moment
Terrence Riley said the timing of his resignation “worked very well for me and very well for the project” of building MAM a new, $220 million home. “Riley said he leaves the job with very few regrets. One is that he didn’t do enough to muster the support of Miami’s art heavyweights.”
Ritchies Auction House Ordered Into Bankruptcy
“The troubled Toronto-based Ritchies Auctioneers has been pushed into bankruptcy by its landlord, who is claiming the 42-year-old company is indebted to her for nearly $131,000.” Court documents say Ritchies owes its one secured creditor about $300,000, while unsecured claims total “at least $1.5-million.”
Hundreds Of Visitors Show Up To Closed Ulster Museum
Newly refurbished, the Ulster Museum is welcoming the public after a three-year closure, and “more than 16,000 people filed through its doors since the grand re-opening last Thursday.” Hundreds more showed up yesterday, when the museum was closed, as it always is on Mondays.
With The Boom’s End, An Architectural Era Closes As Well
Nicolai Ouroussoff: “Yet as the dust settles on the last of these projects, what begins to emerge is a more complex image of America’s cultural values at the birth of a new century. The formal dazzle masks a deeper struggle by cities and architects to create accessible public space in an age of shrinking government revenue and privatization.”
Miami Art Museum Director Resigns Abruptly
“Terry Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum, has resigned, effective immediately. Riley, who arrived in 2006, has been spearheading the fundraising for the museum’s new location.” An architect, Riley “will return to Keenen/Riley Architects as a partner, and will continue working with the museum as a consultant through June 30.”
What Should Happen To Bank Art?
“The art owned by financial institutions should get out more — at the least to give the taxpayers, who have been so generous with the financial sector, an aesthetic return.”
Ancient Artifact As Political Football
“Globalization, it turns out, has only intensified, not diminished, cultural differences among nations. The forces of nationalism love to exploit culture because it’s symbolic, economically potent and couches identity politics in a legal context that tends to pit David against Goliath.”
Should College Museums Be Allowed To Sell Their Art?
“The roles of museums on campuses are not like those of museums downtown, since the former exist to serve the specific needs and interests of a campus’s students and faculty. I’d rather those museums were reclassified as galleries. To be sure, the provisions of deeds of gift must be scrupulously observed; but assuming that to be the case, let them sell their works of art if the funds thus gained will better serve the institutions’ educational mission.”