Category: visual

Architecturally speaking, big box retailers are a blight on the American landscape. So when they fail, should the shells simply be left to rot? Maybe not – a new book argues that “those who gaze at the big-box stores…and fail to see future cathedrals, museums or artists’ communities have no sense of history. Or imagination.”

Is the new Art Gallery of Ontario teaching Toronto’s leaders a valuable lesson about the power of architecture? “Chances are this sense of engagement alone will be enough to win over sceptics, those modern architecture haters who believe the 20th century was the worst thing that ever happened. They may be right, but let’s not forget, this is the 21st century. Things have changed.”

Buffalo is a city with problems. But it’s also a city filled with architectural treasures, many of which are at risk of demolition or decay. “Now the city is reaching a crossroads. Just as local preservationists are completing restorations on some of the city’s most important landmarks, the federal government is considering a plan that could wipe out part of a historic neighborhood.”

Estrellita Brodsky, a graduate student and well-known New York philanthropist, is leading a movement to “raise the profile of Latin American art in museums, the academy and the international art market… Only in the last 15 years have scholars fully embraced the contributions of Latin American artists to 20th-century abstract movements, particularly in the areas of installation and performance.”

Nicolai Ouroussoff says that Frank Gehry’s reimagining of the Art Gallery of Ontario “may catch some fans of the architect off guard. Rather than a tumultuous creation, this may be one of Mr. Gehry’s most gentle and self-possessed designs. It is not a perfect building, yet its billowing glass facade, which evokes a crystal ship drifting through the city, is a masterly example of how to breathe life into a staid old structure.”

“When a fire ripped through Deyrolle, the beloved taxidermy establishment here, early one morning last February, it was as if a dagger had been plunged into the heart of Paris… Deyrolle has been a natural history emporium with the look and feel of a museum, except that just about everything was for sale.” Now, the difficult task of restoring the shop has begun, and all of Paris seems to be involved.

“Plakativ is paying E3.5m to restore the Correr Museum side of the Square in exchange for a 240-sq. m advertising space (half the size of an Olympic swimming pool) on the scaffolding of the façade. Near the bell tower there will shortly be a 60,000 sq. m ad, which has already been let out, and for which the asking price was E165,000 a month.”

“Visual artists who want to work with children and who apply for government funding for their projects will have to sign a contract agreeing to a raft of conditions, according to the Australia Council’s draft protocols for working with children.”

“The sales totaled just $9.6 million, less than half of the low estimate of $23 million. Yet the diehards came — collectors and dealers who hung in after a tough two days and nights of auctions.”

“Ukraine is unlikely to return more than a dozen paintings by Western European artists brought here from a German museum as Soviet war trophies during World War II, an official said Thursday… Ukrainian law prohibits the return of World War II trophy art, she noted, adding that many Ukrainian paintings seized during the war have been exhibited in Germany but ‘nobody is returning them to us.'”