Category: visual

“If there’s anything good that has come out of the financial crisis it’s the slew of high-quality graphics to help us understand what’s going on. Some [of these 27] visualizations attempt to explain it all while others focus on affected business. Others concentrate on how we, as citizens are affected.”

“The contents of fashion designer Gianni Versace’s opulent villa on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como sold [in London] Wednesday for more than seven million pounds, Sotheby’s auction house said.” Among the top-selling items were a pair of cherry-wood bookcases and two large plaster statues of naked Greek boxers.

“Sotheby’s, which auctioned the contents of Versace’s villa in London yesterday, withdrew an 18th-century portrait by the German artist Johann Zoffany after its subject’s family claimed that it had been stolen from their home in London 30 years ago.”

“Has free admission to our national museums and galleries become a luxury we can’t afford? … I don’t, on balance, propose that museum charges should be reintroduced – they are clearly a force for the general social good, and there are few enough of those around nowadays. But I do wonder whether institutions might be a little more aggressive about asking us to chip in.”

“The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) of Long Beach has named Richard P. Townsend as its next president and chief executive officer. A museum spokeswoman said the position has been vacant for more than a year.”

“A member of Congress said yesterday that he would hold a hearing to investigate health-and-safety allegations regarding the handling of asbestos at the Smithsonian Institution. … [National Air and Space] Museum lighting specialist Richard Pullman, 53, filed a federal whistleblower claim yesterday with the Office of Special Counsel alleging that the institution retaliated by effectively demoting him for reporting workplace-safety violations.”

“For most of his life, Martin Munkacsi was a madcap adventurer, Candide with a camera.” The great early 20th-century photojournalist is having a retrospective at New York’s International Center of Photography, with new prints made from lost glass negatives which turned up on eBay two years ago.

“When ‘Duke’ Wellington Reiter rode into town last August, to take the reins at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, some of the locals got a little nervous. … The scent of change was in the air.” Now Reiter has called a school-wide meeting, and some wonder “whether the projected financial crunch will become an excuse for altering the distinctive character of the school, which is known for its broad curriculum and its proud aversion to anything as restrictive and reductive as majors and grades.”

“The Italian government has successfully brokered deals with American museums and private collectors for the return of what it says are looted antiquities. But it is finding the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, an art museum in Copenhagen, harder to crack. … At the core of the dispute are Etruscan and Greco-Roman objects that the Glyptotek bought from Robert Hecht, an American antiquities dealer now on trial in Rome….”

The Queens Museum of Art’s “most famous asset is its 9,335-square-foot scale model of New York City, originally built for the 1964 World’s Fair. The Panorama of the City of New York has 895,000 structures, replicating every street, bridge and skyscraper in the five boroughs.” Under the museum’s new “Adopt-a-Building program … the panorama will evolve gradually along with the city — at least, for those who pay.”