Category: visual

“The Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha, the new national symbol of Qatar, is an understated Gulf icon. And it might just be the best new museum or gallery building anywhere. IM Pei, the Chinese-American architect behind the Louvre’s glass pyramid, agreed to undertake the project — his last, at the age of 91.”

Today, we tend to think of this design as “extravagant,” “exuberant,” “swaggering” or “brash” — words that could just as well describe the city in which the building stands. Early appraisals were less generous: An “upended swordfish” is how one critic saw it. A “stunt design,” said another.

“Mao’s image is less conspicuous [in China] than it once was. His status took a dip when the savageries of the Cultural Revolution began to be told… [But] he remains omnipresent, like some Warholian multiple. Look and you’ll find him. His star power holds.”

“A rare astronomy tool that helped medieval scientists tell time will remain in Britain after the British Museum scrambled to come up with the money to buy it… Money from the National Heritage Memorial fund, the Art Fund and the British Museum Friends helped the museum purchase it recently for $700,000.”

Artists working with oils is nothing new. But an artist working with actual oil? “I love using this stuff. It’s seductive. My work has a serious conflict. It’s that honest conflict of: I participate and I’m doing this. I indict myself in the process — I’m partners in crime with the oil industry.”

St. Paul, Minnesota, has a plan to use public art to reduce road rage and perplex drivers into an unexpected sense of calm. (How very Midwestern, no?) “The signs are about the same size as regular traffic signs and feature unusual designs including mazes, bright clovers, and even optical illusions.”

The sculpture that was smashed in a British museum this week is only the latest in a long line of art-related disasters over the years. Who could forget the Cambridge man who tripped down a staircase, taking two priceless Chinese vases with him? Or Steve Wynn putting his arm through a Picasso he’d just agreed to sell?

“In what the judges described as ‘a photo-finish’, a digital video of an athlete on a treadmill last night beat a field of 54 works by 16 artists to win the inaugural $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize – an award established by the philanthropic [Aussie] businessman to unite sport and art.”

Washington DC,s National Museum of American History promises to “shed new light on American history, by bringing light into the building and by establishing new ways of interpreting American history” when it reopens this fall.

Even as China enjoys an unprecedented art boom, female artists there have found it tough getting recognized. That’s a shame, because it “is some of the most innovative work around,” writes one critic, who charts the reasons for their underexposure.