Category: visual

“Until now, buyers wishing to take art works out of the country have required a licence granted by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, previously headquartered in South Kensington, close to the sale rooms of Sothebys and Christie’s. However, under Government cost-cutting proposals, the office is being moved more than 100 miles away to Birmingham, making Britain the only country in the EU to site its licensing body outside the capital.”

“One of Banksy’s best-loved Bristol murals has been targeted by vandals as fans continue to arrive in their droves for his exhibition just up the road. … In 2006 the city council asked the public whether they wanted the mural to stay or go – 93 per cent of respondents asked for it to remain.” That vote, a city councilor theorized in the wake of the defacement, may have “destroyed [Banksy’s] street cred.”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art said on Monday that it had completed a significant round of layoffs and voluntary retirements that it had warned in March would probably be necessary to contend with deep losses in its endowment. Over the last few weeks, the museum laid off 74 employees and gave retirement packages to 95 others who chose to accept them, it said.” The departures included some curatorial staff.

“Far be it from me to advise Greek ministers. Nevertheless, they are getting their tactics wrong over the interminable saga of the Elgin Marbles. … No argument goes on for this long — it has been simmering for around 200 years now — without both sides having a certain amount of justice in their cause. Let’s grant the Greeks that. The weak point of their case, though, is that it’s based on old-fashioned nationalism.”

“New York and Frank Owen Gehry should have made a perfect match. What better way to express the city’s exceptionalism than through architecture of overweening flamboyance? Over the years, New York has been tantalized by Gehry projects, tossing away the best and keeping a paltry scattering of seed pearls.”

“A vague conventional wisdom: Seattle is a mecca for public art… By this logic, public art is Seattle’s gift to the nation. It was that way once. But it hasn’t been that way for years–maybe decades.”

“Art Basel this year attracted 61,000 collectors, curators and art afficionados–more than ever before. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the five-day fair which closed on June 14th, drew over 300 galleries from 29 countries, showing works by more than 2,500 artists. To many it must have seemed as if the economic recession was happening elsewhere.”

For the younger generation of architects, the row between Prince Charles and Richard Rogers is a complete turn-off. It seems beside the point.

“The show, containing the work of 90-plus artists, doesn’t offend or go off the rails. Rather, it looks pretty much the way these sorts of big international group shows and cattle calls now look; it includes the artists that these sorts of shows now include. It’s full of the reflexive conceptualism that artists everywhere now produce because other artists everywhere produce it (and because curators curate it).”

“The Finnish approach to architecture is a sobering yet exhilarating antidote to a world gone mad for excessive and absurdly expensive design.”