Category: visual

The Watts Gallery is a small museum with a disastrously leaking roof. The museum wants to sell two major paintings to safeguard the future of its collection. “It has the blessing of the Museums Association, which initially threatened to cancel the Surrey gallery’s registration as a museum if the sale went ahead.”

The British Museums Association is “telling its 1,500 members to give unused items to other museums or public institutions – but they could also be sold in exceptional circumstances. It is a major change of policy for the organisation, which has banned selling objects for 30 years.”

Public Architecture, a 5-year-old nonprofit in San Francisco has a different sort of vision: to turn the concept of pro bono work into an industry norm. “Begun in 2005, the program dubbed the 1% Solution aims at getting architectural firms to contribute 1 percent of their billable hours annually to socially responsible initiatives.”

“Why did LACMA need a new contemporary art museum in such a rush? LACMA’s sprawling campus now includes seven eccentric buildings. Shouldn’t its leaders figure out the museum’s vision and campus plan before forging ahead with more?”

“Art lovers may be delighted to see artworks long held in secret by Russia, but the sad truth is that the British government and the Royal Academy are now complicit in the theft of private property. If other countries follow Britain’s lead and pass “immunity from seizure” legislation in the hopes of playing host to ‘From Russia’ or similar shows, the results will be far more pernicious than anyone can imagine.”

Last year it looked like Yale had agreed to return artifacts taken from Machu Picchu. “But having finally obtained a copy of the agreement, I can see that Yale continues to deny Peru the right to its cultural patrimony, something Peru has demanded since 1920.”

“The Louvre’s Tactile Gallery, targeted to the blind and visually impaired, is the only space in the museum where visitors can touch the sculptures, with no guards or alarms to stop them. Its latest exhibit is a crowd-pleaser: a menagerie of sculpted lions, snakes, horses and eagles.”

“Among all these bristling claimants to the past, is it possible to strike a balance between protecting history and unfolding it, between safeguarding it and making it available for our own pleasure and instruction?”

“Perhaps the most significant phenomenon attributable to changes in wealth distribution is the increase, globally, in new museums and galleries that are conceived, funded and run privately, usually but not invariably through the vehicle of a philanthropic trust or foundation, in which tax breaks are traded for ceding formal legal ownership, but not necessarily control.”

The opening of the new glass-and-concrete facility at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens has suffered myriad delays over the past few years.