Category: visual

“Copia, the ambitious food, wine and art museum in Napa, Calif., today filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. In addition to the bankruptcy filing, Copia announced that it had secured a $2 million line of credit to fund its day-to-day operations while it looks for other ways out of a financial crisis that had been mounting for years.”

As “two new buildings open — one a library at Princeton University, the other an expansion of a major art museum in Toronto — it’s clear that the biggest threat to Gehry’s legacy may be the Gehry brand itself.”

The 15th-century bronze statue, the most famous depiction of the biblical king after Michelangelo’s, is back on its perch at the Bargello Museum in Florence after an 18-month, €200,000 cleaning using lasers. (“We could only intervene now with the newest laser techniques; even the most delicate mechanical procedure would have hurt it.”)

An exhibition shared between the Sackler Gallery in Washington and the Seattle Art Museum “reveals for the first time a virtually unknown school of monumental Hindu painting on paper that thrived from the 1720s to the mid-19th century. Not even specialized scholars had set eyes on the 60 works from the Marwar area, now part of the state of Rajasthan, that are preserved in the Mehrangarh Museum in the Fort of Jodhpur. The loan of important unpublished works of art by an Indian institution to a Western museum is a first in international museum relations.”

“A painting owned by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne has been identified as a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, an infamous figure of the Italian Renaissance. The oil painting, purchased in 1965, was formerly called Portrait of a Young Man and was thought to be by a Northern Italian painter. On Tuesday, however, the gallery announced it had discovered the painting was by famed Renaissance artist Dosso Dossi who lived 1486-1542.”

“Despite a shortlist featuring a film about broken crockery, a mannequin sitting on a lavatory, a photo collage and an installation featuring, among other things, Felix the Cat, this year’s [Turner Prize,] the winner of which will be announced tomorrow, has raised barely a murmur… The standard of work showcased is so bad that some claim the future of the Turner Prize itself, regarded as one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art awards, is in question.”

In New York, preservationists are fuming over what has become a pattern of behavior among those who view preservation as an impediment. “A property owner… is notified by the landmarks commission that its building or the neighborhood is being considered for landmark status. The owner then rushes to obtain a demolition or stripping permit from the city’s Department of Buildings so that notable qualities can be removed, rendering the structure unworthy of protection.”

“The Archbishop of Westminster has urged the National Gallery to give up a Renaissance masterpiece, calling it ‘a work of faith’ rather than art. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that The Baptism of Christ, painted by Piero della Francesca in the 1450s should be in Westminster Cathedral. … The painting has been in the gallery’s collection since 1861.”

“An art exhibition which was threatened by a row between the UK and Russia became one of the Royal Academy of Art’s most successful exhibitions. Almost 400,000 people visited From Russia when it opened at the London venue earlier this year. The exhibition was almost scrapped over Russian authorities’ fears the art could be seized while on British soil.”

“Old masters, which are expected to weather the current market downturn better than contemporary art, are the focus of London auctions next week. The hype that caused the run-up in prices for contemporary works passed by this traditionally more stable sector.”