Category: visual

The provincial government of British Columbia has pledged CAN$50m to the construction of a new home for the Vancouver Art Gallery. “The $50-million is part of $209-million in funding for the arts that also includes $150-million to create a general cultural fund.”

Washington, D.C.’s National Museum of Women In the Arts has named its chief curator, Susan Fisher Sterling, as the institution’s new director. The museum “often does groundbreaking work but is just as often overlooked in the lineup of Washington museums,” and Sterling will be tasked with raising its profile.

“At first, the 2008 Whitney Biennial seemed destined to be the bad mother of all major museum shows. This would be ideal, of course. Hating the Whitney – the Super Bowl of American art – is a time-honoured tradition, like dissing Darth Vader… Yet, once again, the Whitney Biennial has failed to deliver on its promise of badness.”

Philadelphia is going through a wave of downtown development, which is changing the look of one of America’s oldest cities. One developer is hoping to completely reinvent a moribund section of the area known as Center City with a pair of skyscrapers anchoring a street level complex. Commence debate…. now.

Las Vegas’s MGM Mirage has launched a $40 million public art program designed to position the gambling and glitter capital as a true destination for the art world. “For many people, the debate over whether fine art belongs in Las Vegas seems to be tired or over.”

“A lot of the material now in store is in very bad condition. Material was thrown off the shelves during the looting, and trampled under foot. Environmental conditions inside the museum are not what they ought to be. It was very damp in June 2003, when I was there with British Museum conservators. This is very bad for ivories, cuneiform tablets and metal objects.”

“Sarah James and Laurie Nash, two principals at the executive search firm Phillips Oppenheim, are playing a crucial role in two decisions that will shape the New York art world for years to come: the selection of the future directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.”

The school has been given “seven months to renovate its Carl Van Vechten Gallery and return the collection to public display, or Fisk could risk losing the entire collection. In addition, the financially struggling school has been prohibited from selling all or any part of the collection, in accordance with the wishes of painter Georgia O’Keeffe, who donated the 101 artworks to Fisk in 1949.”

Sydney painter Del Katheryn Barton has won this year’s Archibald Award for portraits.
Her portrait, You Are What is Most Beautiful About Me, A Self Portrait with Kell and Arella, is of the artist with her son and daughter.

Sotheby’s dropped almost 7 percent in New York after an art-market analyst said more than half of the contemporary-art lots offered by three major auction houses last month in London fell short of or barely beat their low estimates.