Category: visual

“In a move that concedes a measure of victory to long-term opponents, the Autry National Center [of the American West] has bowed out of a protracted battle for a $175-million expansion of its facility in Griffith Park.” The city of Los Angeles would not approve the plans unless the Autry committed to support the nearby Southwest Museum of the American Indian, with which the Autry merged in 2003, “as a fully functioning art institution in perpetuity” at its current location.

“A Russian tourist sparked a security alert when she threw a mug at the Mona Lisa, the world’s best-known painting, officials at Louvre Museum in Paris have revealed. Screams erupted from the 40-odd tourists jostling for position around Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic painted lady when the empty terracotta mug flew over their heads and smashed into the portrait,” which was unharmed behind its bullet-proof screen.

“Three nervous consignors congregated in the Ritchies Auctioneers parking lot in Toronto yesterday, hoping to collect unsold items and money owed to them from the auctioneer, which unexpectedly closed its doors last week following its split with Sotheby’s. The consigners and a company delivery man left empty handed. … Meanwhile, a new account of the company’s difficulties has surfaced. “

“More than 40 years ago, a group of young Manhattan architects with a shared interest in the aesthetics of old-fashioned Modernism began getting together to talk about their work, their lives and the state of the field. And in the decades that followed, even as their styles grew apart — and as they became celebrities in and beyond the world of architecture — they continued talking.”

“Once sleekly sculptural,” architect Ben Van Berkel’s Millennium Park pavilion “now resembles a beaten-up jungle gym.” Zaha Hadid’s pavilion is also showing wear and tear. “It’s easy to point fingers at Van Berkel and Hadid for creating dazzling pieces of sculpture that failed to anticipate how people would behave. Yet it is also true that star architects need tough clients to say no, when they come up with designs that are beautiful but impractical.”

“A five-star hotel in Berlin has opened its doors to cash-strapped artists, asking them to pay for bed and board not with money but with a work of art. The offer from the Hotel Marienbad in Auguststrasse is open to painters, sculptors or conceptual artists willing to ‘subject the hotel to permanent change’ with their efforts.” The bad news: They do pick and choose their guests from a voluminous waiting list.

“Reacting to museums’ complaints of sharp declines in art donations, a bill announced Friday by Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, could revive the practice of so-called fractional gifts by making the process easier and more tax-advantageous. Before the 2006 Pension Protection Act, collectors were allowed a tax break when they donated a work of art incrementally, giving away a certain percentage of rights to the work each year.”

“Shepard Fairey is all for free speech and creating a political dialogue. But the man who created the instantly recognizable posters for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has some choice words for the anonymous artist who made the Obama Joker artwork. ‘I have my doubts about the person’s intelligence,’ Fairey said on the phone from Pittsburgh.”

It’s the Museum of Modern Art’s Glenn Lowry. “His $1.95 million in salary, bonus and benefits earned him a place as the best-paid director among the half-dozen largest U.S. museums by budget that have filed returns for 2008, according to Bloomberg research.” This year he earned $1.32 million after a voluntary pay cut.

“There are about 13,500 items, of which some 2,500 are oil paintings. This collection — equivalent to a small museum — began when the government noticed in 1898 that it had accumulated various pictures and statues, and brought them together under the Ministry of Works. It was established as the GAC in 1982.”