Category: visual

“The Cleveland Institute of Art’s dream of building an iconic new studio building designed by the leading Dutch architect Winy Maas has hit a financial wall. The art institute decided to scale back after a recent estimate showed that the design would cost “well north” of the $55 million budgeted for the project.”

What’s the best city to visit if you want to soak in high culture without spending your life’s savings? A new survey says that Warsaw, Poland, is the unlikely winner for art on a budget. “The Polish capital was judged cheapest for a three-day trip visiting museums, galleries and heritage sites.”

“In anticipation of opening its massively renovated home this fall, the Art Gallery of Ontario unveiled its new logo yesterday. The two-dimensional design has a multicoloured effect around the edge of its letters, creating an optical trick meant to symbolize the vibrancy of the museum… The logo cost less than $100,000, relatively low as corporate branding goes, and is part of the overall $254-million price tag of the renovation.”

“Her portrait sold for £17m but Sue Tilley,” known as artist Lucien Freud’s muse, “says the tabloids are only interested in getting her to strip… ‘Just because I took my clothes off for Lucian Freud, that doesn’t mean I’m a nudist or a floozy or whatever.'”

“Citing the recent change in the top leadership at the Smithsonian Institution, Sharon F. Patton announced yesterday that she is leaving as director of the National Museum of African Art at year’s end. Patton, 64, an art historian who taught at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, came to the museum in 2003.”

“The New Jersey State Museum’s main building reopens here on Saturday after four years of renovation, but appeals for celebration are premature. Closed since 2004 for work that expanded in scope, ran two years late and cost $15 million — with at least $12 million more still being sought from private donations — the museum’s main building seems to embody anticipation more than realization.”

“The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has appointed Gary Garrels senior curator of painting and sculpture. As of Sept. 1 he will replace Madeleine Grynsztejn, who left SFMOMA earlier this year to become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.”

“A 500-year-old panel painting by Domenico Beccafumi of Marcia was broken in half, in one of the most serious handling accidents known to have occurred in a UK museum in living memory. This happened during deinstallation of the “Renaissance Siena” exhibition, which closed on 13 January.”

It is not yet quite as broken down as London Bridge, not yet the subject of a nursery rhyme, but the roof is leaking, the masonry crumbling and, to put it in the human terms of an old man with a prostate problem and an arthritic spine, it needs more than a strategic bucket and a zimmer frame to keep it going.

“The decision is a major defeat for opponents of the move, who have been fighting in court since 2002 to keep the foundation’s dozens of Renoirs, Cezannes and Picassos hanging where Albert C. Barnes left them in Lower Merion Township when he died in 1951.’