Category: visual

Today “great museums and universities have a hard time finding even a modestly competent director; one person rarely possesses the necessary array of talent. Philippe De Montebello could certainly play all the parts–administrator, scholar, sweet-talker, politician, fund-raiser, collector, showman–but simple versatility was not what finally distinguished his tenure.”

“Critical theory has bred its own Frankenstein. There are so many artists that ironize, jam, play, and flip the system of art evaluation. … There’s also a lack of honesty [among artists]–and I see it among my students–about their engagement, their relationship, with the market and with marketing.”

“Rent jitters are common among Chelsea art dealers these days, as the district becomes a victim of its own success. Car repair shops have given way to luxury towers designed by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, and galleries in need of new digs must pay up or leave.”

“LACMA’s Modern collection doesn’t have a new building, but it does have 22,000 square feet of expansive, handsomely redesigned galleries that take up the entire plaza level of the Ahmanson Building. Talk about night and day. A perusal of the new installation is a clear demonstration that a new building is nice, and it can have beneficial effects for art, but a transformative art collection is infinitely superior.”

What does a country do with the monuments built to glorify leaders of deposed regimes? Some tear down the big statues and edifaces. Spain is addressing what to do with the bric-a-brac left from the Franco years…

“A pensioner who fooled the art world by selling fake antiques his son had made, has had his sentencing adjourned. The family made at least £850,000 from the scam, including selling the fake Egyptian statue “Princess Amarna” to Bolton Museum for £440,000.”

“The job is either the easiest or the hardest position in the museum world to fill, depending on how you look at it. Easy, because the Met is at the top of the ladder, internationally, so it’s unlikely that anyone offered the job would turn it down. Hard, because it is unlikely that all of the qualities a Met director should have will be found in equal degrees in any one individual.”

“Art history has expanded to many areas of the world, but the canon in Europe and the US has still not changed much. Intense and complex questioning of art history has been going on at least for 30 years, but what is interesting about the Australian conference is that more of the world, or at least its interrelations, will be discussed.”

“Nearly a year after opening, Seattle’s outdoor art park appears to be holding up pretty well. Yet it has suffered some wear and tear, as much from the sloppy wet kiss of Mother Nature as from the poor judgment of those who think rubbing hands across the artwork or engraving initials into them is a fine thing to do.”

“The Eli Broad gift would catapult the museum in rank to having the nation’s greatest collection of American Pop Art — a status especially appropriate to Los Angeles, pop culture capital of the known universe.”