Category: visual

That’s the title of an enormous sculpture made of plastic tubing, 250 feet long and 25 feet wide, which will appear at California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival next week. “And no doubt, festival-goers will find this to be one cool sculpture: It’s designed to spray water on passers-by.”

“For decades, three Italian Renaissance paintings have hung on the walls of Hearst Castle without betraying their grim history. But on Friday, state parks officials will formally acknowledge the artworks’ past, turning them over to the heirs of a Jewish couple who were forced by the Nazis to liquidate their Berlin art gallery in 1935.” The family will allow one of the paintings to remain at the castle.

“At their best, baseball and fine art are a lot alike. Both are esoteric, meaning everything to fans and little to outsiders. Both push up against a convoluted set of rules. Both get a lot of their meaning from the great plays and players of the past, and how new ones stack up against them. But what was unveiled yesterday in our new ballpark is a version of contemporary art that’s so simplified and trivialized that it’s like baseball without the subtle rules that make the game deserve a die-hard fan’s attention….”

“The director of a New York art gallery whose proprietor has been charged with stealing $88 million from investors, collectors and Bank of America Corp. has pleaded guilty to falsifying business records.” Steven Harvey was the director of the bankrupt Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. Last month, gallery owner Lawrence B. Salander was arrested on a 100-count indictment.

“Seeking to spotlight the 100th anniversary of the document that changed the face of Chicago, celebration organizers brought out the bling Tuesday night and unveiled designs for two temporary pavilions in Millennium Park by internationally-renowned architects,” Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel. “The pavilions … promise to join with the Art Institute of Chicago’s soon-to-debut Modern Wing to give five-year-old Millennium Park a fresh shot of energy.”

“The web-foot youngster reappeared before dawn yesterday on a Beacon Hill street corner, found leaning wearily against a tree like a lost boy looking for his mother. The bottom of his bronze heels offered the only evidence from the crime: a small slice on a right foot and a rough break in the two steel rods that once affixed him to cobblestones in an eternal march across the Public Garden.”

“In its latest effort to return wayward ancient artworks to their rightful owners, the J. Paul Getty Museum will send a Roman fresco fragment to Italy. The fragmentary panel, a roughly 36-by-32-inch section of a wall painting made in the third quarter of the 1st century BC, joined the museum’s collection in 1996 as a gift of New York collectors Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.”

“The AAMD code of ethics provides that sales proceeds may not be used ‘for purposes other than acquisitions of works of art for the collection.’ As seen in the National Academy case, the consequences of violating the guidelines can be grave. … The rule is usually justified on the ground that works in museum collections are held ‘in trust’ for the public and therefore cannot be sold. The problem with this argument is that museums sell work all the time.“

“The first sentence of the AAMD handbook guiding deaccessioning policy … says: ‘The board of an art museum should adopt a written policy pertaining to the deaccessioning and disposal of works of art from its collection.’ That doesn’t sound to me like the profession (or its ‘supporters’) thinks works in museum collections cannot be sold. It sounds like they think that, when such sales inevitably happen, they need to be done with forethought and care.”

“Pack, the second-to-last of Mrs. Mallard’s storied eight ducklings in the cherished ‘Make Way for Ducklings’ sculpture in the Public Garden, was stolen sometime between Sunday night and yesterday morning, cut off at the base of its bronze webbed feet. City officials consider the theft no prank, and have threatened to bring criminal charges of larceny of public art against anyone who stole the prized duckling.”