Category: visual

“The head of the Smithsonian Latino Center resigned in February after an internal investigation found that she violated a variety of rules and ethics policies by abusing her expense account, trying to steer a contract to a friend and soliciting free tickets for fashion shows, concerts and music awards ceremonies, according to records released by the Smithsonian.”

“A museum about great storytelling wants to be the architectural equivalent of a screaming headline or a great TV- news teaser, grabbing your attention and dragging you inside.”

“Reported discoveries of lost works by Leonardo da Vinci are almost as common as, well, images of the Mona Lisa. The latest attribution to be proposed involves the design for the illustrations in a chess book from around 1500.”

The Prado Museum has excluded a prominent Goya painting from a new blockbuster show because of suspicions it was not painted by Goya after all.

When the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art opened on the Strip, both set out to feed art to the masses. Neither was enough to justify a stop in Las Vegas for the savvy cultural tourist. But that was never the plan. The plan was to insert art where art hadn’t been, make a lot of money doing so and add cachet to the resorts.”

“Architecture has entered another of its periodic bouts of fascination with impermanence. Maybe it’s the anxiety produced by doomsday predictions about the state of the environment and, lately, the economy. Maybe it’s the quicksilver quality of digital culture, closer in character to sand or water than bricks and mortar. Whatever the source, architects are playing up the idea of temporariness, and even finding solace in it, to a degree not seen since the 1960s and ’70s.”

So Denver is launching its own biennale. “At least 50 major biennials take place internationally, and more are being added to the list all the time, making it easy to wonder: How many biennials are too many? And with each new one, isn’t the drawing power of such events becoming increasingly diluted?”

Scottish politicians want to acquire a sculpture for the parliament. Curators of the public collection say the work is not up to the standard of the rest of the collection. So who’s winning the standoff?

“In late April every year, the American Quilter’s Society draws 35,000 quilt makers and quilt lovers to Paducah for one of the biggest quilt shows in the country. The niche craft has been used as an economic engine to revive this once-declining town. The story of Paducah also helps demonstrate why quilting is now a $3.3 billion industry, with an estimated 27 million enthusiasts.”

“The scarcity of bids – nine cities in total were invited to compete – reflects the unusual nature of the competition, which invited private developers, rather than civic governments, to take the lead and then round up local support.”