“Should museums be able to use contracts to create a copyright-like control of public images? Maureen Whalen, lawyer for the J. Paul Getty Trust, has suggested that just because a museum has centuries-old paintings in its physical possession that doesn’t give it a right to decide how the images are used.”
Category: visual
Mexico Restores Diego Rivera Murals In National Palace
“Diligent specialists are touching up missing color with watercolor paints, and using a weak alcohol solution to wash away dust and grime that the murals have collected. The restoration is expected to be completed in September.”
Palm Springs Art Museum Gets ‘Bonanza Of Contemporary Art’
“Composed of 116 pieces by 66 artists, the international trove” – collected and donated by Donna and Cargill MacMillan – “is particularly strong in sculpture, including pieces by Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois, Donald Judd, Mona Hatoum and Gary Hume.”
San Diego Museum Receives Huge Collection Of Non-Western Art
“Six months into a year-long exhibition of Oceanic art, the San Diego Museum of Art has announced a major acquisition of artworks from one of the lenders, the Sana Art Foundation. Under terms of a new alliance between the two organizations, about 900 works from Oceania, Africa and the Americas will be transferred from the foundation to the museum.”
Their Budgets Tight, Visitors Flock To Historic Sites
“Just when the withering economy is shrinking art, antiques and design sales, there is a rise in attendance and interest in historic homes and artist sites in both the US and the UK.”
House-Hunting Tour: A Frank Lloyd Wright Masterpiece
“Known as the Ennis House, it’s an architectural masterpiece designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. But, like a lot of old houses, it needs some work. Drive past the grime and glitz of Hollywood toward the hills of Griffith Park and suddenly, there it is: a Mayan temple perched above the city. Ennis House is one of Wright’s most famous creations — and not only to architecture buffs.” And it’s for sale.
Michelangelo And Mapplethorpe, Side By Side In Florence
“It’s just been announced that ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: Perfection in Form’, the first ever exhibition of a modern artist in the gallery where – in addition to David – Michelangelo’s unfinished Prisoners and Saint Matthew hold the stage, is to be extended by popular demand until January 2010. Apparently it has been a huge success since opening this May.”
For A Wet And Steamy Metropolis, A Dissolving Skyscraper
“It is impossible to compete with Bangkok’s existing exotic menagerie of skyscrapers, so [architect Ole] Scheeren proposes a monolith, an un-twin tower, the dumb, extruded box of modernist orthodoxy – but then begins to erode its perfection. It is as if a computer virus has begun to eat away at an image, pixellating it, or as if a tower of sugar cubes is dissolving away.”
‘Like A Lower East Side Gallery Transplanted Into A Treehouse’: NY State’s Wassaic Project
“A rare survivor among the stately wood-crib elevators that once towered over rural America, this 105-foot-tall structure has been reincarnated as one of the strangest new homes for contemporary art in the Northeast.”
O’Keeffe Museum Puts Elementary School On Notice
“Officials of The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe complained recently about a ‘GOK’ logo proposed for the [Albuquerque, N.M.,] school’s new facade, and about T-shirts that said ‘Georgia O’Keeffe Kindergarten.’ E-mails from the museum warned of possible trademark infringement and suggested that fees may be required for some uses of the name. … The school has borne O’Keeffe’s name since it opened in 1988.”