Category: visual

“Rich and strange or luxurious ornament? Whatever your view, Klimt’s work is now so valuable, it’s near impossible to put on a full-scale show. Still, Tate Liverpool has tried… “

Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum is reopening this weekend in its impressive new home. “The move of this 42-year-old museum around the corner… the size of that new home (60,000 square feet or eight times the size of the old), its expanded ambitions (projecting 60,000 annual visitors instead of 15,000) — all this is a considerable achievement for an institution that used to be housed in an old garage and that now hopes to be an anchor for revitalizing Seattle’s Chinatown.”

“The gala presentation of “Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano” (“Michelangelo: The Wise Hand”), a volume of photographs of this Renaissance master’s sculptures, may well have been the most lavish book debut in history… But then, this is no ordinary book, starting with its retail price of 100,000 euros.”

After several aborted attempts to bring a Frank Gehry-designed building to Manhattan, the starchitect’s 76-story Beekman Tower is rising near Ground Zero. “It will join an imposing cluster of landmarks around City Hall… Draped over a classical shell, the tower’s crinkled steel skin is proof that the skyscraper has yet to exhaust itself as an urban art form.”

“Artworks that contain everything from chocolate syrup to exotic Amazon fruits to television tubes and radio transistors often present daunting challenges for museums, collectors, and artists themselves when it comes to preserving their art for future generations… The issue is taking on urgency as institutions face the passing of many 20th-century artists, and consulting them about their ephemeral artwork is no longer possible.”

“The National Museum of Wildlife Art — a low-slung, reddish flagstone building hugging a hillside along the highway north of this ski town — was designed to fit in with its surroundings. The 51,000-square-foot museum succeeded better than expected,” to the extent that most people seem completely unaware of its existence.

“A Scot who picked up a painting on impulse at Glasgow’s Barrowland market for 50p in the 1970s was celebrating yesterday after it sold at auction for nearly £35,000. The oil painting, by leading 19th century Canadian artist Cornelius David Krieghoff, was snapped up in seconds at Lyon and Turnbull auction house in Edinburgh after a bidding war which started at £20,000.”

“The Russian billionaire now bestrides the art world just as the American tycoon did a century ago, with limitless resources and limited taste, provoking precisely the same combination of awe, envy, snobbery and quiet admiration.”

“Classical and traditional architects are furious that there is not a doric column or a Tuscan pediment to be seen in the RIBA’s list of 92 buildings, which instead celebrates the lords of the hi-tech movement, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, and a school of designers who followed in their pioneering modernist footsteps.”

The controversial portrait painter Jonathan Yeo’s design for a deck chair for London’s parks has been rejected on the grounds that it is too pornographic.