Category: visual

Marc Mayer has worked as a curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, has been director of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and was deputy director for art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

“The art world here is in an uproar over suggestions from Italy’s culture minister, Sandro Bondi, that the country should think of its state museums and archaeological sites as generators of revenue.”

“The art market’s crash — for that is what it is — threatens to remake the art world. In the past few weeks, auctioneers, dealers, artists and collectors have changed strategies and policies, and it’s likely that future changes will be even more sweeping. … Here, a look at how the art-market retrenchment will affect its players….”

“Some of Rome’s most visited museums and monuments are staying shut as ticket-booth workers and security guards stage a one-day strike amid fears of job cuts. The city-owned company that manages museums in the Italian capital – Zetema – says the walkout has closed several venues.”

“When the National Museum of American History reopens on Friday after two years and $85 million of renovation, it may begin to shed its reputation as one of the more cramped and confounding corners of the Smithsonian Institution. … [A] central five-story atrium now streams with daylight, promising other forms of illumination as the visitor heads off to the new or refreshed displays, with others to open in the next few months.”

“On a former parking lot in downtown Jerusalem some two dozen workers are now clearing the grounds for a planned museum/educational center designed by [Frank] Gehry and dedicated to the theme of tolerance.” But “the project is already inflaming some of the very passions it is dedicated to quelling, spurring protests from Islamic groups and the condemnation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.”

America, a 13-by-15-foot allegorical mural by Rufino Tamayo, has sold for $6.8 million at Sotheby’s. The mural, commissioned in 1995 by Houston’s Bank of the Southwest and sold to a collector in 1993 (and on loan ever since to the Dallas Museum of Art), is one of only five such works still in private hands in the U.S.

Christopher Knight of the L.A. Times hears that the board of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art, facing a catastrophic fiscal crisis, is prepared to propose a formal merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Paul W. Thompson, the director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, is stepping down to become the new rector, or president, of the Royal College of Art, London, the museum is expected to announce on Friday.” The Cooper-Hewitt, though located in Manhattan, is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

“The Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed to hand over 13 ancient artifacts and an early Renaissance cross to Italy after long negotiations, the museum and Italian officials announced here on Wednesday.”