Category: visual

“While Iraq struggles to return to peaceful normality, the British have been working to restore some of the country’s pride in its past – with a museum.”

“[T]he fair phenomenon, which grew out of the need for dealers to compete with the ever-expanding range of the auction rooms, is now deeply entrenched as a concept for convenient one-stop shopping and has become a key source of income for dealers.” While “there may now be too many fairs, and some may fall by the wayside, those that adapt to the new economic reality can survive.”

“[A]s the recession affects both public and private funding sources, the economic pains are being felt across the museum world — from the large institutions with sizable endowments and hefty ticket prices, to the small museums that scrape by on government funding. … This funding crisis has led to some soul-searching about how far a museum may go to stay open.”

“A painting by Titian has sparked a political row after the Scottish Government confirmed it had pledged a ‘significant sum’ towards its purchase. It followed newspaper reports that the government was contributing £17.5m towards acquiring the work of art. … But Glasgow MP, Ian Davidson, questioned the logic of spending such large sums during an economic downturn.”

“Daniel Libeskind has proposed a tower next to Manhattan’s Madison Square with huge multifloor gashes hacked out of its tubular form. Were it to be built, it would be a crude and unavoidable reminder of the horrors of 9/11. Is it Daniel’s revenge?”

“Like the shepherds, the color print has nearly vanished. Today, you get some glossies sent out as holiday cards, and some lucky ones get matted and framed, but the vast majority of color photographs now taken – and there are countless millions of them – pass before us, just briefly, on a screen.”

“The art market is often described as the last unregulated financial market in the world. It has remained stubbornly resistant to almost all efforts to bring transparency to its operations, which still mainly function on the basis of highly personal relations and often secretive transactions.”

During the recent boom, “[f]orm followed frivolity. Function was left off the guest list.” But with the bust, “[t]he pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two – and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process.”

“Neil MacGregor is far more than just the highly successful administrator of an iconic national establishment. He is a committed idealist who, in a world in which culture is increasingly presented as the acceptable face of politics, has pioneered a broader, more open, more peaceable way forward.”

“Colin Renfrew, a British archaeologist who is an authority on the trade in looted antiquities,” is preparing “to violate the museum world’s unwritten rules of politesse” by giving a lecture titled “Combating the Illicit Antiquities Trade: The 1970 Rule as a Turning Point (or How the Metropolitan Museum Lags Behind the Getty).”