Category: visual

Not all the news from the Acropolis is about that brand-new museum. Using new imaging techniques, researchers for the British Museum have finally discovered traces of the pigments which scholars have long suspected were used to paint the Athenian temple’s friezes and sculptures.

“Researchers at Tokyo’s Keio University say they have found that the birds have ‘advanced perceptive abilities’ and can distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ paintings, recognising beauty the way humans do. The team – which previously published research saying that pigeons can tell a Monet from a Picasso – was seeking to find out whether the animals may also be able to prefer one to the other.”

“Governments have failed to live up to commitments to track down and return looted art to Nazi victims and their heirs, claimants’ representatives said before an international meeting on Holocaust-era assets. The June 26-30 conference in Prague, attended by delegates from some 50 countries, will review how far nations put into action a non-binding 1998 agreement, known as the Washington principles. Delegates also aim to agree [on] a new declaration on stolen art.”

Michael Kimmelman: “So the new museum that Bernard Tschumi, the Swiss-born architect, has devised near the base of the Acropolis is a $200 million, 226,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art rebuttal to Britain’s argument” that only the British Museum can take proper care of the Elgin Marbles. “‘But Greek archaeology has always been a kind of fantasy,’ Antonis Liakos, a leading Greek historian, noted the other day. The repatriation argument, relying on claims of historical integrity, itself distorts history.”

“New York City has a new exposition center that will primarily launch large-scale, experiential exhibitions. The Discovery Times Square Exposition opens this week with two blockbuster shows. One recounts the poignant story of the Titanic and the other the discovery of the 3.2 million-year-old fossil known as Lucy.”

“[O]n June 4, a laborer working on construction of the new American Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts knocked a hole in a wall and saw an envelope sticking out of the rubble.” It was “a typewritten note from 1926, a letter to the future from a long-ago laborer who helped build the wall.” A historian who directs the museum’s libraries and archives “has enlisted the help of history buffs, genealogists, and archivists – as well as the power of the Internet – to piece together his story.”

“A second mural in central Bristol by the graffiti artist Banksy has been defaced. The Mild Mild West, which depicts comic policemen and a bear, has been splattered with blue paint. On Monday, a picture painted on the side of a wall in the city’s Park Street was vandalised with blue paint splashes.”

“Stephen Deuchar is to become the new director of the Art Fund, the U.K. charity announced today. Deuchar, 52, is director of Tate Britain and chairman of the 2009 Turner Prize jury. He will take up his new post on Jan. 4, 2010, the Art Fund said in an e-mailed statement.”

“A painting by Claude Monet and one by Pablo Picasso sold for 12.1 million pounds combined ($20 million) at Christie’s International in London last night as the auction market for Impressionist art contracted 74 percent. Christie’s 44-lot sale tallied 37.1 million pounds with fees, just above the low estimate of 36.85 million pounds, based on hammer prices.”

“Of all the things going the way of the Internet these days, one is the gallery exhibition announcement card. … In most cases environmental concerns shield a certain, shall we say, cost-cutting desperation. ‘Sculpture Center is Going Paperless.’ ‘Francesca Kaufmann is Going Paperless.’ ‘Going Green’ (from P.P.O.W.). … Sometimes you wish they’d just come clean.”