Category: visual

“Forget the recession for a minute. The California Community Foundation, in partnership with the Getty Trust, is still doling out money to Los Angeles County’s visual artists. In this year’s round of fellowships, to be announced today, 10 mid-career artists will receive $20,000 apiece and four emerging figures will each get $15,000.”

Daniel Grant: “In most cases, museums prefer going to auction. Whatever criticism these institutions receive for selling objects only increases if they don’t do it that way.” But that doesn’t mean auctions are the smartest choice. “The method of disposing of deaccessioned objects needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and museum directors fearful of public criticism might want to broaden their outlook.”

“It’s a glass ledge, 1 1/2 inches thick and poking out about four feet from the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower. There is no frame under the floor, only air — 1,353 feet of it, straight down to the miniature taxis on Wacker Drive.” The trick to it “is an intriguing feat of engineering, a team of designers and builders said Wednesday, swearing on a stack of liability policies as they unveiled the project. “

“[It] is the earliest depiction of Rembrandt as a hopeful teenager, not as he would have liked to have been seen but how he looked to a fellow art student in Amsterdam. Jan Lievens painted Rembrandt at the age of 16, as the central figure in The Cardplayers, which is believed to have been completed in 1623-24.”

Timothy Rub, incoming director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “is at that awkward stage in a new leader’s tenure – perhaps wanting to talk substantively about his ideas for the job, yet wary of committing too much too early – but he is happy to say one thing quite unequivocally: He’s thinking of Philadelphia long-term.”

“Ann Goldstein, a 25-year veteran of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and its senior curator since 2001, has been appointed general artistic director of the Stedelijk Museum, a leading modern and contemporary art institution in Amsterdam. … Goldstein said that the Los Angeles museum’s financial troubles played no part in her decision to move to Amsterdam.”

Ada Louise Huxtable: “By design, Lincoln Center was isolated from its surroundings. In accordance with one of the more faulty modernist practices of the day, it was built on a platform, or ‘podium’ (a favorite buzz word), separating it from the city streets and dedicating it to access by car.” In rebuilding the 50-year-old complex, architects are breaking down that bunker mentality, “reuniting Lincoln Center with the city.”

“Bombarded by lawsuits accusing him of fraud” – his hedge funds lost $2.4 billion in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – “Merkin and his wife have arranged to sell their impressive collection of paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, as well as some valuable sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, according to legal papers filed Tuesday. An anonymous buyer has agreed to pay $310 million for the trove” – money that will go into a victim compensation fund.

“Plans to build a new structure on the roof of Westminster Abbey have been announced, changing the London skyline in the first major building work at the medieval Abbey for 250 years. The addition – an architectural feature in the shape of a large crown – will complete a section of the church that has been left unfinished for centuries.”