Category: visual

“The offending art, by Joyce Zipperer, was installed with other artwork in the lobby of the Washington Square building at 1050 Connecticut Ave. NW. “Unmentionables” consists of 10 styles of women’s underwear — from old-fashioned bloomers to a skimpy thong — all made out of metal and strung along a clothesline.”

“Seizing “Bird’s Nest” at Customs for its somberness was in line with the enforced beauty of the Beijing Olympic moment, which included putting a cute young girl with straight teeth on television while the public heard the voice of the actual gap-toothed singer of “Ode to the Motherland” at the opening ceremony. Yet the words in Mr. Zhang’s painting were surely a more acute problem for Chinese officials, and there were a lot of them.”

Great European museums allow artists into their galleries to draw or paint. But “copying, apparently, is a polarizing subject. It does tend to come down to those who see it as part of a museum’s job and those who don’t. It’s notable that the larger museums that disallow copying are on the West Coast, where museums are younger and less tied to European traditions. They also have fewer significant works of old art.”

“RCMP have found the remaining two of a dozen pieces of Haida artist Bill Reid’s work that were stolen about three months ago from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. A gold eagle brooch was recovered intact, but five centimetres of a carved argillite pipe were broken off and are still missing.”

“The dispute is not only spectacular because of the valuable paintings, but also because of the people involved. The heirs are all German and Swedish citizens of Jewish ancestry. They are demanding that the paintings be returned by museums where American Jews such Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, art collector and president of the World Jewish Congress, wield great influence.”

Some statues are returning”The Iraqi authorities have no plans to rehabilitate statues that glorified the former regime but the municipality is restoring monuments that pay tribute to such figures as Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph and founder of Baghdad.”

“The Chinese government has attempted to censor an exhibition about the Cultural Revolution opening next month at New York’s Asia Society, The Art Newspaper has learned. The Chinese government has refused to allow museums in China to lend works to what is expected to be the most significant show yet on this subject.”

A retired Massachusetts lawyer has been found guilty of possessing six valuable paintings that had been stolen from a home in 1978.

Members of the public were to be invited to smoke inside the booths, which would stand within the Frieze tents. But Westminster council has rejected an application for the “smoking booth” art installation on the grounds that it has insufficient “artistic merit”.

“The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt is a fascinating narrative that brings the sisters to life as individuals. Yet their motivation, beyond an obvious love of art (and where did that come from, one wonders), remains elusive. Perhaps this is the natural order with many collectors. Perhaps they don’t intellectualize their passion in a way that translates readily to speech or writing.”