Category: visual

“I’m not telling you my nominations, obviously. But perhaps I’ll mention an artist I decided not to put forward. A perverse devil in me flirted with Banksy. This really was perverse because I’ve denounced this artist many times. … Perhaps putting Banksy forward for the Turner might give the public a chance to actually engage with his art instead of just hearing about it?”

“Robert Adams, whose images of the American West have made him an internationally celebrated photographer, just got $61,000 richer. That’s the amount Adams received this week as part of the Hasselblad Prize, one of photography’s top honors.”

“A new, vividly colored portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has emerged from the windows of Arezzo’s Cathedral in Tuscany, Italy, claims an Italian scholar who has published the finding in a new book, The Portraits of Leonardo.“

“The recession forced state lawmakers to slash more than $3 billion from budgets this year, but legislators were able to scrape together $1.6 million to buy and renovate the Albany [Ga.] Museum of Art. Apparently the General Assembly didn’t see the ‘not for sale’ sign on the property before approving the money in the state budget. The allocation has left museum officials befuddled.”

“Buildings once strove for solidity–not merely to be stable but also to look stable, hence the optical corrections in ancient Greek architecture such as entasis, a subtle tapering of columns that makes them appear more settled to the human eye.” That’s now a rule architects are eager to break.

“Citing a lack of evidence, a Boston Municipal Court clerk-magistrate yesterday rejected some of the vandalism charges Boston police are trying to bring against celebrated graffiti artist Frank Shepard Fairey, Fairey’s lawyer said. The clerk-magistrate said that seven of the 17 charges police wanted to bring … should not go forward in criminal court because there is not enough proof he committed the acts of vandalism, said Fairey’s lawyer, Jeffrey Wiesner.”

“Opened in 1914, the small, neoclassical Montclair [N.J.] Art Museum has long boasted an impressive collection of American art…. In the stewardship of its permanent collection, however, Montclair has left a more questionable legacy. The museum has often treated its record of local philanthropy as trade-in art.” Now the museum is exploiting a loophole in the Association of Art Museum Directors guidelines, selling works from its collection as part of its new “financial security plan.”

“He [and Jeanne-Claude] never carried out the project – the Opera House was not complete when the pair were first in town [in 1969] – but the concept diagram, Wrapped Sydney Opera House, will be sold this month at the auction house Deutscher and Hackett. Its estimate is $50,000 to $80,000 [Aus].”

“The heirs of the German Expressionist painter George Grosz filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York on Friday against the Museum of Modern Art, saying it had refused to return two paintings and a watercolor by Grosz that were left behind when he fled Germany in 1933.”

“The Tate galleries have made hundreds of video and audio downloads available for free on iTunes. More than 400 files are now on iTunes U – a section of the online store which features educational content.”