Category: visual

The Russian government says it will spend more than $177 million US to restore the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow’s largest museum of European art.

“Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger is among internationally-acclaimed artists shortlisted for the Ebbsfleet Landmark. He is proposing a white horse, 33 times life-size, which would look out over the Ebbsfleet Valley and mark the new Ebbsfleet International station.”

“The art world is in a terrific fizz about painting at the moment. It has suddenly decided that painting is not dead any more but very much alive. And like somebody startled from sleep, it can’t quite tell the difference between anything.”

It’s the image of a leaf. “Experts will spend months poring over Leaf and looking at documentation from Wedgwood’s time to try to pin down whether it is his work. The image originally came from the collection of Henry Bright, whose prominent Bristol family was connected to the scientific community in and around 1800.”

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie International art festival is booming, “as visitors packed parties, filled galleries, and plumped the bottom line of cafes and gift shops. The Carnegie drew 1,377 to its Friday night gala, 933 for the Strolling Dinner with 444 more joining the festivities during the Late Night Event… The weekend museum attendance [was] 2,677.”

“Fears that the Christie’s sale of Impressionist and modern art would usher in a market meltdown were assuaged early Tuesday evening when everything from a Monet landscape to a monumental sculpture by Rodin brought record prices. But the sale also had its bumps, as 14 out of 58 works failed to sell because they were considered either too expensive or second-rate examples by first-rate artists.”

Many artists and curators are angry over the recent sale of some 200 works of Chinese art at auction in New York. “As the collection was being formed, they were duped into thinking that a rich Westerner was putting together a permanent collection and would eventually donate some of the works to leading museums. Instead, they say, the buyers were a group of investors who quickly cashed in…”

An 1873 canvas by Monet of a riverbank landscape with two trains atop a railway bridge sold for $41.4 million Tuesday night at Christie’s. It was a record price for the artist.

“Banksy is not to be dismissed lightly. If nothing else, the work of the other graffiti artists made Banksy look like the Michelangelo of the medium. Even more unexpectedly, several of his three-dimensional installations could have held their own in any show in the land. Next stop the Turner Prize.”

“Last November the Smithsonian solicited ideas for a public-private partnership to save the building. It also conducted a staff survey about how the building could be used. The public submitted 11 proposals and the staff came up with 2,000 ideas.”