Category: visual

“Body art was all the rage in early Australia, as it was in many other parts of the ancient world, and now a new study reports that elaborate and distinctive designs on the skin of indigenous Aussies repeated characters and motifs found on rock art and all sorts of portable objects, ranging from toys to pipes.”

“More than 850,000 people viewed the attraction, giving the museum its highest attendance figures since the Tutankhamun display of 1972. The collection boosted overall visitor figures from 2007-08 to six million.”

“Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the world’s two top auctioneers, have just completed a series of summer sales in London that raised more than $1-billion, underlining how resilient the top end of the market is despite growing economic gloom. But falling share prices, inflationary pressures and rising costs of oil appear to be taking their toll on the middle market.”

“The negatives so far outweigh the positives that such shows hurt, rather than help, a museum’s mission. The latest example is “Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections From the Cheech Marin Collection,” which opened recently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The clumsy title is the least of its problems.”

Monday’s contemporary sales netted $171.87 million. “These enormous figures do not do full justice to the astonishing zest with which bidders jumped into the fray right from the beginning.”

A glazed terra-cotta relief by the Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia came loose overnight from its perch above a doorway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and crashed to the stone floor below, suffering serious damage, museum officials said on Tuesday.

The odd thing is that the Serpentine Pavilion is Gehry’s first English venture. “Probably the last, too,” he says. “I don’t think England likes me. The critics don’t, that’s for sure. I reckon I’ve got a couple of years in me, but I don’t count on making a career in England.”

“Artists are always the laboratory for the first ideas, the first emotions. Architects take emotions from the streets, the art galleries, the museums; they steal. Architects often wish they were artists, and Jean Nouvel is of the artier kind.”

British Museum Director Neil MacGregor was approached to be the next head of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has preferred to keep his London job for another five years, the British Museum said.

The green revolution in building design is “unleashing architectural inventiveness not seen in 100 years. Climate change has lent urgency to building-industry efforts that have simmered quietly for years.”