Category: visual

“Early in the history of the garage, two philosophical currents emerge. Is the car a machine, to be stored as efficiently as possible? Or is it an extension of our quintessentially American mobility, which often is considered to be almost the same thing as freedom itself? From this split emerged two very different kinds of garages.”

“The Sao Paulo Museum of Art, which opened in 1947, is considered Latin America’s top museum for western modern and contemporary art. Yet on Dec. 20, a gang of thieves, using only a car jack and a crowbar, broke into the building and stole the two paintings, reportedly worth more than $50 million US in total. The building has no alarm and was relying on unarmed guards who patrol inside 24 hours a day.”

“A revelation that surprised the Italians is that US museums currently loan many more objects to Italian institutions than the reverse. The imbalance is due in part to Italy’s increasing interest in mounting temporary exhibitions of impressionism, post-impressionism and modern art, areas in which US museums have extensive holdings.”

“After 18 months of intense negotiations, the New York philanthropist Shelby White has ceded 10 classical antiquities from her private collection that Italy contends were looted from its soil, the Italian culture minister confirmed this week.”

Behind the ever-increasing frenzy of the art market prices, the world’s auction houses play a dangerous game of expectations…

“Nowadays, when people find it far harder to connect with the values of Renaissance Italy and often seem mysteriously untouched by the sheer life of Michelangelo’s art, it needs to be liberated. Sadly, the new proposal seems totally blind to that, and utterly insensitive to David. It involves moving the statue to a new cultural venue on the outskirts of Florence.”

“Florence has reached an unsustainable level of tourists. The actual site of David in the centre of town is logistically unfortunate. It would be beneficial for everyone to move it so that the tourist area can be enlarged and decongested.”

A sketchbook believed to have been Vincent van Gogh’s containing portraits similar to those in his most famous works has been found in Greece

Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University has been trying to make its architectural mark in the academic world for some time, but “conflicts among administrators, donors and trustees over architecture and urban design have led to uneven performances and lurches from one extreme to another.” It’s a struggle that highlights the difficulty of creating great buildings in a school setting.

“Hundreds of thousands of brightly colored balls went cascading down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps on Wednesday in the latest stunt orchestrated by the man who dyed the waters of the Trevi Fountain red.”