Category: visual

“The proposal as it stands now … reaches too far, and eagerly takes on too much aesthetic responsibility, to succeed as anything resembling a master plan. By filling in as many design details as it does, it seems to foreclose the possibility of operating as a crisp, reserved foundation for other designers, artists and architects to build upon. At the same time, it is too conceptually weak to stand on its own.”

“Returning to Boston to face two graffiti charges, the Los Angeles-based artist who created the controversial ‘Hope’ poster of Barack Obama may be facing a deluge of new charges. During a closed-door hearing yesterday in Brighton District Court, Boston police applied for two additional vandalism charges against Shepard Fairey, and a detective working the case indicated that police plan to seek 29 more charges in Roxbury district and Boston municipal courts.”

“This may be the only place in America where Shepard Fairey, the street artist whose omnipresent portrait of Barack Obama has become a touchstone, is not fully feeling the love. Mr. Fairey appeared in two municipal courts here this week to fight a cascade of vandalism charges…. While this is not his first encounter with the police — Mr. Fairey has been arrested more than a dozen times for posting his art on whatever surface catches his eye — it appears to be his biggest legal tangle to date.”

“Three months after the Association of Art Museum Directors imposed severe sanctions on the National Academy Museum for selling two important Hudson River School paintings to pay bills, the two institutions issued a joint statement on Wednesday signaling that a compromise was taking shape. The statement said they had made progress towards helping the academy ‘regain its footing as a member in good standing of the American art museum community.'”

When the Associated Press demanded credit and compensation for use of the image of Barack Obama in Shepard Fairey’s iconic “Hope” poster (which the artist based on an AP photo), he filed a prophylactic suit against the news agency, arguing that he was protected under the Fair Use Doctrine. “Today, the AP returned the favor, filing an answer and a countersuit in the U.S. District Court.”

“Archeologists have uncovered carved stucco panels depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents in Guatemala’s northern jungle that are the oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan creation myth.”

“As the UN prepares to leave its New York headquarters for a four-year, $2bn renovation, staff are scouring the corridors to try to find valuable works of art that have gone missing.” Among the lost items are a sculpture by abstract expressionist José de Rivera, paintings and other gifts from Mexico, China, Belarus and other member nations.

When the literary symposium about Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum takes place March 16, participants might consider the museum’s modest attendance figures. “We have become so accustomed to using pop-culture yardsticks — profitability, celebrity, fashion — to measure the success or failure of art and art museums that it’s easy to lose sight of what matters. In fact, a degree of obscurity, relatively speaking, is one of the great charms of the Rose’s collection.”

“Sotheby’s cut the pay of Chief Executive William F. Ruprecht for 2008 after he earned $10.3 million the year before as the art market peaked. The New York-based auction house indicated in a filing last month that Ruprecht’s pay, while reduced, was at least $2.1 million. … Sotheby’s 2008 profit of $28.3 million was the smallest since a $20.7 million loss in 2003. More than 200 staffers will lose their jobs this year amid $100 million in cost cutting.”

The grant is to establish at France’s flagship art museum some of the youth-oriented programs that are common in U.S. museums: multimedia and “hands-on” displays, “DVDs, online features and lessons-in-a-box or lessons-on-a-cart that can circulate in the schools.”