“Portrait of Pastor Swalmius, painted in 1637, had been the subject of debate of by art connoisseurs for centuries. But curators at Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts were overjoyed after layers of dark varnish were removed to reveal the Dutch painter’s signature.”
Category: visual
And Now – The Hangover After The Museum Bubble?
“Museum downsizing is generally reported on as the collateral damage of the more general train wreck in the economy. But the truth is that museum boards and higher-ups not only participated in the madness of the “bubble era” — the period of super-charged, risk-fueled craziness that the world is now trying desperately to recover from — but actively fed it.”
Rethinking the Sustainability Of Preservation
“Architectural conservation has always been important, but at a time of environmental crisis, it no longer makes sense to tear down the past to clear the way for the future. More than ever, we must learn to live with history.”
New Acropolis Museum Looks Ahead Into The Ruins Of The Past
“With its survey (on a lower floor) of archaic sculptures excavated on the Acropolis, and its dramatic mirroring of the Parthenon, the New Acropolis Museum makes a standing argument for repatriation of the so-called Elgin Marbles, the largest and finest remnants of Parthenon sculpture, prize treasures of the British Museum since the early 19th century.”
Reading That Image Of President Clinton And Kim Jong-Il
“What seem to our eye as limitations are the result of deliberate intent. It’s a piece of political propaganda. As such it belongs to a subspecies of kitsch known as totalitarian kitsch, where art’s sole raison d’etre is to bolster a dictatorial regime and glorify its leader.”
Cash-Strapped UK Cities Seek To Sell Art
“Art is in danger of being sold off by councils across Britain, as economic circumstances open the window of opportunity to every hard-faced philistine.”
San Francisco Arts Community Worries About Losing Gap Founder’s Collection
“The fate of his collection, which includes about a thousand works by such artists as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Alexander Calder and is conservatively valued in the tens of millions of dollars, has San Francisco’s art community fearful that the city could lose an irreplaceable cultural treasure.”
Architect Will Alsop, King Of ‘Blobitecture,’ Chucks Concrete For Canvas
“Will Alsop, the Stirling prize-winning architect who carved a reputation as the profession’s enfant terrible for his blob-shaped buildings and disdain for conservative planning, today quit his practice to spend more time painting.”
MoCA China Founder Spent, Opened, And Fled
“The founder of the short-lived Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) China in Hong Kong left the country soon after the museum opened last autumn, leaving behind massive debts, several sources confirm. Jeffrey du Vallier d’Aragon Aranita, a realist painter, registered the non-profit in 2007 and announced plans to establish a network of non-profit MoCAs throughout China that would share collections and programming.”
NYC’s Guggenheim Museum At The Half-Century Mark
“Fifty years ago, an object landed on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It looked like it had dropped from outer space, and was treated as such. Writer Norman Mailer said it ‘shattered the mood of the neighborhood’ — ‘wantonly’ and ‘barbarically.’ Prominent avant-garde artists signed a petition against it, even though it was meant to hold contemporary art.”