Category: visual

“In a survey of just over 300 museums (one-fifth of the total), half had made purchases in the past six months. Of these, 58% had got a better-than-expected museum discount or had paid less than anticipated at auction.”

“A group of volunteers clearing graffiti from the walls and bus stops in their home town have inadvertently painted over a modern masterpiece – and cost its owner £5,000. The work, attributed to street artist Banksy, depicted Paddington Bear with the caption ‘Migration is not a crime’ and was painted on to a wall owned by Julian Chatt in Glastonbury, Somerset.”

“The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has decided to auction three paintings by Thomas Eakins, the 19th-century American artist, to raise money for its acquisition fund. The works, which are being sold by Christie’s in a public sale May 20, have been culled from the 220 pieces by Eakins in the museum’s collection.”

“The European Union just announced the winner of the biannual Mies van der Rohe architecture prize, and it goes to Snøhetta for its work on the Oslo Opera House. They take home an $80,000 prize – a considerable haul, in the penny-pinching world of architecture competitions.”

An exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art this fall “will include the first U.S. showing of Beheading the Baptist, a silver relief depicting seven figures at the execution of John. The question is who created the relief. For centuries it has been credited to Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, who was Leonardo’s mentor. But Gary Radke, guest curator of the exhibit at the High, believes that two of the figures are the work of Leonardo himself.”

Frank Gehry got his friends Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen to create a 65-foot-tall bow-tie and collar for his downtown L.A. concert hall. But the sculpture’s aluminum skin kept coming off and costs soared; ultimately the L.A. Music Center sued the artists, fabricators and consulting engineer, who all counter-sued each other. After two years and a five-volume case file, the entire affair has been ended.

For “the planet’s most precious places,” Unesco’s “World Heritage seal is a guarantee of preservation. … At least that’s the perception. But now many within the conservation community are convinced Unesco is failing. They say the moribund organisation is teetering on its once sound foundations as its principles and priorities crumble under the weight of bureaucracy and outside influence.”

“If the Mall in Washington, D.C., is the ‘nation’s lawn,’ then the institutions that line it must be the national lawn ornaments. … Two weeks ago, the Smithsonian announced an architect to design the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the latest addition to this display. Is it a nymph, a gnome, or another flamingo?”

“‘Never once — never once — have I decided on an exhibition because the attendance was going to be phenomenal,'” says Koshalek, the new director of the Smithsonian’s modern and contemporary art museum. “‘Never once. Never.’ If anything, given the current economic climate and the cost of major shows, he imagines a series of smaller projects that might re-create a few of modernism’s landmark exhibitions, which were often much more modest than today’s extravaganzas.”

“A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has tossed out one of Clint Arthur’s two class action lawsuits alleging that L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Louis Vuitton North America violated the Fine Prints Act, a California law that requires dealers in limited-edition art reproductions to certify their authenticity and provide information about how rare they are and how they were created.” The rejected suit stemmed from Arthur’s purchase of a trio of Takashi Murakami prints.