Category: visual

“No serious art is easy to interpret. Nor is there ever a single valid interpretation of art. If art is good, there are many things to be said about it and much that will remain unsayable.”

“Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have redesigned Harmony Atrium between West 62nd and 63rd Streets as a “theatrical garden” featuring 20-foot-high walls of plants and rods of falling water. The goal is to transform the space… into a 7,000-square-foot round-the-clock gathering place and a gateway to Lincoln Center’s performing arts campus.”

Local artists in Minnesota are being given an opportunity to air their concerns about the future of a regional art program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. MIA’s exhibition program is unique among large U.S. museums, and the recent resignation of the program’s curator sparked alarm. “The chief worry is that artists would no longer be able to choose and organize shows by their peers.”

“With thousands of murals and sculptures in public spaces, the question of what to do with such art that its owner no longer wants is likely to come up more and more.”

“Christie’s sold 1.8 billion pounds ($3.6 billion) of art and collectibles over the six months, compared with 1.6 billion pounds in the same period a year earlier, according to an e-mailed statement reld today. Auction sales include London-based Christie’s fees.”

“The museum announced Tuesday that C. Griffith Mann, director of the curatorial division of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, will take up his new duties in Cleveland by mid-September… Mann, 39, rose quickly from a curatorial fellowship in 1999 to the top curatorial post at the Walters in 2007.”

“At the same time that art museums and galleries have developed larger collections, they have fewer options to expand. Perhaps inevitably, an art services industry that has sprung up in the dark warehouses of New York City’s boroughs is also growing.”

“While most major museums have some fakes in their collections, few like to advertise the fact. But in an unusual move, the Brooklyn Museum is planning an exhibition for 2009 that will call attention to a group of forgeries among its collection of Coptic sculptures.”

Minneapolis Institute of Arts director Kaywin Feldman moved Tuesday to reassure Minnesota artists of the museum’s continued commitment to showcasing their work.

“Despite the phenomenal marketability of flower paintings, no one does them any more. What proliferates instead is botanical art. Flower portraiture is not of itself contemptible; the greatest Dutch flower painters were aware that the flowers they were depicting were worth more than their depictions, and treated them with a special awe and excitement; but they were never unaware of their fragility.”