Category: visual

The auction house has signed a 30-year lease on a Brooklyn warehouse that currently houses “piles of dust and detritus as it looms over the weeds and gritty businesses of Imlay Street. But come January, Christie’s executives say, the building will boast infrared video cameras, biometric readers and motion-activated monitors, as well as smoke-, heat- and water-detection systems. Inside, the warehouse will hold the likes of van Gogh, Monet, Picasso and Brancusi, with each collection potentially worth more than the building itself.”

“Abu Dhabi’s leaders have recruited the most celebrated architects in the world to build [its] museums – and to provide kudos that an oil outpost in a notoriously unstable region could not otherwise obtain. … But who will visit the museums once they open? Abu Dhabi may be a city with almost 200 international communities in its midst, but culture has been something of an afterthought.”

“The two sites that the inferno neared are about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Athens, the country’s capital: the Marathon Archaeological Museum and the site of Ramnous in the prefecture of Ramnounta, [a Culture Ministry] spokesman said.”

“To champion portrait painting is to hark back to a 19th-century view of what matters in art, just as to visit the National Portrait Gallery is to enter an archive of social history rather than an art gallery. But isn’t there something perverse about this view?”

“The New York Five came to represent the idea that architecture could still express and advance our values as a culture. To some, the group embodies the last heroic period in New York architecture.”

“What began as a triumph for scholarship and Chicago’s architectural history has quickly soured. The city intends to tear down at least 28 buildings on the Michael Reese Hospital campus, including those linked to Gropius, to make room for the 2016 Olympics. Architectural preservationists have so far protested in vain.”

“Traditionally museums have been loath to allow the sponsors of an exhibition a significant role in curatorial decision making — particularly when the sponsor is a corporation, given the potential taint of commercialization and artistic compromise. And most major museums still draw the line there. Given the economic downturn, which has forced the cancellation, postponement or prolonging of exhibitions across the country, more small and midsize art institutions may be increasingly open to ready-made shows.”

“Why have so many British design treasures been so badly neglected? There are some boringly obvious logistical reasons.”

A legal battle has threatened to remove the paintings, valued at $24 million, from the museum. “An heir to an art dealer who had them looted by the Nazis has staked a claim to the museum’s prized works.”

“The local galleries’ struggles come as little surprise amid an economic crash that has claimed countless casualties. Art, despite its life-and-death status among those who create and embrace it, falls into the discretionary-spending category for many.”