Category: visual

What LACMA’s leaders wanted, in the beginning, were incremental improvements. What it got was an extreme makeover. But, “we are living in the golden age of arts and culture in this region. How can you look back when all eyes are looking forward?”

Jim Russell writes that only Congress can actually stop this juggernaut. “If a planned visitor center is built, it will diminish the evocative power of Maya Lin’s great 1982 work — by trying to explain it.”

“The public emergence of the $56-million building designed by architect Renzo Piano and financed by philanthropist and LACMA trustee Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, is far from the whole story. Much more than a new edifice, BCAM is the centerpiece of a multifaceted initiative to create a bold presence for contemporary art at LACMA and the keystone of a three-phase effort to transform the Wilshire Boulevard institution’s 20-acre campus.”

“A major loan exhibition of Bernini’s sculptures, paintings and drawings that is also described as the first full viewing of this artist’s portrait busts is headed for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles this summer. Including major loans from Italian museums, the exhibition underlines the benefits gained by the Getty from its recent handover of several dozen Greek antiquities.”

“Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers.”

“The Bowers Museum, under investigation on suspicion of accepting smuggled Thai and Native American art, is displaying Chinese art on loan from collectors who in the 1990s pleaded guilty to tax evasion and smuggling art.”

“While most marveled at the robust performance of the market with sales totaling $82.5 million in the Jan. 24 session on the day the Dow Jones was tumbling, a few were struck by the shift of interest they could sense. Suddenly, the spotlight was moving away from good or very good Dutch paintings on to top works of the German and French schools, with Neo-Classical pictures tripling their estimate.”

The prince questioned why society was willing to “vandalise” historic sites. “Corporate and residential towers are being proposed across London, and overshadowing World Heritage sites from Edinburgh to Bath,” he said. “For some unaccountable reason we seem to be determined to vandalise these few remaining sites which retain the kind of human scale and timeless character that so attract people to them.”

The show, which may or may not feature executive producer Parker onscreen, will feature 12 aspiring artists creating original works to be judged.