“There were also fewer flashy parties, fewer celebrity sightings among the national pavilions and an absence of hit-you-over-the-head installations.”
Category: visual
At The Venice Biennale – The Opulent Parties Roll On
“Recession be damned. Evidence of ludicrous wealth is everywhere at the Biennale, which officially opens today. Cartoonishly sleek yachts, all registered in the Cayman Islands, line the Grand Canal near the entrance to the Biennale. Politicians and art collectors have arrived at the numerous exhibition openings all over the lagoon by water taxi, many of the men with trophy wives in tow.”
Long-Closed Rijksmuseum Still Doesn’t Have An Opening Date
“This whole system of reinstallation and rebuilding and reopening, again and again new opening dates, means that the world is changing. Technical things are changing, security measures are changing, the way we look at art is changing … You can’t make a plan in 2003 and keep it stable 100 per cent for, let’s say, 10 years.”
Frank Gehry Did Himself A Favor Walking Away From This Project
“With each setback, Gehry’s master plan for the site, which at one point consisted of 17 buildings, was stripped back until the dynamic unity of his design collapsed. Last year, the Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff practically begged Gehry to walk away so that Ratner could not use his brand name as a fig leaf to build something hideous.”
The Louvre Is Healthy. But…
“Times are getting tough for the largest art museum in the world. While the astonishing news is that the Louvre is coping, the not-so-good news is that it is in danger of running into trouble by 2010.”
New Research: Ukraine Was Extensively Looted In WWII
“According to Serhii Kot, a scholar at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, during World War II Ukraine lost a “colossal amount of cultural valuables”, on a scale unheard of since the Mongols invaded the country in the early 13th century.”
Survey: Museums Are Canceling Shows Because Of Recession
“The situation seems considerably worse in North America than in Europe. This is probably because North American museums are much more dependent on private sponsorship and endowments–particularly hit by the recession–while EuroÂpean institutions receive more government funding.”
Bamboozlement – A Story Of Art And Theft
“What seems so extraordinary about these lists is the casual way that literally thousands of paintings were stolen, sold and bartered so that even more could be stolen. The Nazis even had their own organization dedicated to the task at hand – the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the ERR. A vast criminal network dedicated to plundering art.”
NY Arena Developer Drops Gehry Design – It’s Too Expensive
Citing financial concerns, the developer of the long-delayed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn has scrapped plans for a Frank Gehry-designed $1 billion glass-walled basketball arena for the Nets in favor of a less expensive arena.
Statues Of Limitations
“The Roman Senate posthumously censured Nero and decreed the erasure of his public image. Art historians refer to the statue scrubbing as Damnatio memoriae, Latin for “damnation of memory.” Obit Magazine picks out some modern-day candidates for the treatment.