Category: visual

“The Australian Taxation Office is targeting collectors who could be claiming deductions for artworks they keep for themselves, one of several potential rorts identified in an internal report. It also warns about private collectors using the resources of public galleries to enhance the reputation of artists in their own collection.”

“Sotheby’s has devoted every inch of its London gallery space to “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever.” Some 30 guards have been employed to watch over the installation during the 11-day free public viewing, which was open until midnight Saturday and was seen by nearly 9,000 people by Sunday night.”

Contemporary art’s equivalent to Cannes, which had insisted on year-to-year contracts with the city since it came to Florida in 2002, has agreed to a three-year contract “under a hard-fought deal with the city that gives the show’s owner a financial stake in the Miami Beach Convention Center.”

Influential art critic Robert Hughes has come out swinging against Damien Hirst and what he sees as the grossly inflated art market that has allowed Hirst to become a global star. “Actually, the presence of a Hirst in a collection is a sure sign of dullness of taste.”

“Catherine Hess, the curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum who organized its current, critically acclaimed exhibition ‘Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture,’ has been appointed curator of European art at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.”

“The Philadelphia Museum of Art has assembled a search committee to… find a successor to Anne d’Harnoncourt, the longtime director who died unexpectedly June 1.” There is no timetable for the search, and the museum’s board chair says that the interim arrangement of splitting the artistic and business sides of the leadership is likely to remain in place after a new director is hired.

“Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the advisory board of the Three Rivers Arts Festival have appointed Colleen Russell Criste acting director of the arts organization, four days after the Carnegie took over the festival, citing a concern over its ‘financial health,’ and eliminated its executive director and associate director.”

Thomas Campbell may not have been the chattering classes’ idea of an exciting choice to head the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he says he’s up to the task, and has a clear idea of where he wants to take the institution. “In this age of communication and the Internet our local and international audiences are actually very sophisticated. So the big challenge is how to deliver different levels of information to different audiences.”

“This choice is fresh, daring, and unconventional. Under Philippe de Montebello’s directorship–he retires at the end of the year–the magnificent stone pile on Fifth Avenue has become the most exciting museum in the world. And I feel fairly sure that the selection of Campbell is going to be remembered as the last miraculous act of the de Montebello years.”

The Marc Chagall Committee, a Paris-based group authorized to authenticate work by the Franco-Russian artist, has told the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo that the paintings attributed to Chagall in a recent exhibition are fakes.