Category: visual

Yes, the Getty’s operating budget is being cut by almost 25 percent. “But one thing about the Getty that apparently is not dwindling with hard times is its appeal to the public.” Attendance has risen — “despite a 10% reduction in operating hours at the Getty Center” and higher parking fees. (One enticement: Admission is still free.)

“The Walker Art Center…, which has cut its budget by $1.1 million (5 percent) this fiscal year, will further reduce expenses by $900,000 (4 percent) in the next fiscal year, which begins in July. The combined cuts mean the Walker’s budget will drop from $21.3 million to $19.3 million.”

“In a tough economy, New York museum-goers are less open to ‘suggestion.’ Rather than pay the full $20, recommended admission price to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, visitors lately are forking over as little as a buck to walk through the door.”

The Yankees and the Mets are about to unveil their new ballparks, each designed by HOK Sport. The latest Yankee Stadium “has tried hard, very hard, to make us think of its predecessor, with sumptuous architectural effects that have the self-important air of a new courthouse built to look as if it had been there since William Howard Taft was President.” The Mets’ new home, “Citi Field, which people are already calling TARP Field, or Bailout Park … is pleasanter in every way than the harsh stadium it replaces.”

“When St. Vincent’s hospital finally swings a wrecking ball at the O’Toole Building–the endearingly awkward, formerly white, three-layered stack with tear-off perforations and protruding upper floors on Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street–it will be for the greater good of Greenwich Village. The medical tower that rises in its place will serve the community and fortify the hospital’s tottering finances. But this improvement comes at the cost of eccentricity.”

“Spain’s long-running love affair with cutting-edge architecture has come to a dramatic end as high-profile projects from the world’s greatest architects fall foul of recession and a countrywide building bust.”

“Dealers at the world’s biggest art and antiques fair cut prices of some modern works by as much as 20 percent as collectors sink cash into Old Masters, whose prices have held steady to defy the economic gloom.”

Ronald Coles “reportedly sold artworks to investors for their personal retirement portfolios. Under Australian tax law, people who invest in art for superannuation purposes cannot keep the artworks with their personal assets. This meant that Mr Coles retained the works he sold to investors, and displayed them at galleries, social functions, sporting events and celebrity homes. Mr Coles also allegedly sold some paintings without investors’ knowledge or permission, and without passing on the proceeds.”

“The competition’s greatest value is as a measure of just how far many European governments have come in addressing failed urban policies of the past. The designs all seek to breathe new life into the dead zones created unwittingly by Modernist and postwar planners. Americans can only hope that such ingenuity will prod us toward a similar re-evaluation in the near future.”

“A leading contemporary Russian artist says he has perfected a technique to boil human corpses into crude oil from which he will create permanent sculptures, and he has already signed up willing volunteers.”