Category: visual

The fair’s organizers said this year’s event, which ended yesterday, had 55,000 visitors compared with 60,000 last year and 70,000 in 2006. Daniel Hug, who takes over the fair’s leadership on May 1, has said his priority is to improve quality and lure more international dealers and collectors.

“For years, the art expert Rómulo-Antonio Ténes has been struggling to call Picasso’s heirs to account on a charge of spoliation. He argues that they have knowingly misrepresented the oeuvre of Picasso’s father, José Ruiz Blasco, as juvenile works by Picasso.”

“Next year two giant statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III will begin to rise again, just a hundred meters behind his two existing colossi that mark the entrance to the temple. In the years to come, another two statues, still half-buried, will also be returned to their former upright position.”

“Landscape architecture has become the most dynamic of the design disciplines over the last five years or so. Not just in Chicago and Seattle but also in New York, Cairo, Singapore and elsewhere around the world, landscape architects are turning greenery into genuine civic momentum. In downtown Los Angeles, that prospect seems as distant as ever.”

Architect Jean Nouvel’s design “for a condo and hotel resting on three floors of new galleries for the Museum of Modern Art is an ecstatic reproach to Manhattan’s regularity. It would be to the skyline what Broadway is to the street grid: an indispensable violation and a zagging flourish.”

“Methodologies of assessment differ and criteria of value can be debated, but few people would disagree that right now, London is the financial, creative, media, music and possibly even social and sporting centre of the planet.” But its architecture? Looking beyond the record of the current mayor, what will the new London look like?

“In Britain, there are tax benefits when works of art are given to the nation – but the donor has to be dead. This is the acceptance-in-lieu scheme, which gives tax relief on the deceased’s estate. Through Gift Aid it is possible to make gifts of cash, of stocks and shares, and even land while you are still alive, and get both the financial benefits and sense of personal reward from doing so. But this is not the case with objects that would be valuable additions to museums, galleries, libraries and archives.”

“Contemporary French art has been streaming out of the country and into the hands of foreign buyers at an alarming rate in recent years. Addressing concerns about the decline of French culture and economic interests, French Culture Minister Christine Albanel unveiled a series of proposals earlier this month to stimulate spending on art works by French buyers.”

The Guggenheim’s closing of its gallery in the Venetian Hotel Marks an end. The philosophy of the Guggenheim Hermitage had been to send visitors the message that “you don’t have to know anything about this to enjoy it; we’re not going to make you feel intimidated,” but without dumbing down the art. Nonetheless, while “we broke even and even made money sometimes,” the museum director said, attendance had dropped the last two years. “Seven years is dog years in Las Vegas. All good things come to an end.”

“In a time of glut and waste on every front, compression and economy have undeniable appeal. And if a great work of art is one that is essential in all its parts, that has nothing superfluous or that can be subtracted, working small may improve the odds.”