Category: visual

“The founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian spent more than $250,000 in institution funds over the past four years on first-class transportation and plush lodging in hotels around the world, including more than a dozen trips to Paris.”

A group of scientists is convinced that Michelangelo painted a barely concealed image of a human brain into his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and that other famous paintings are hiding brains as well. According to the theory, “the artists were fascinated by the scientific discoveries being made by anatomists, but their theories had to be concealed in the imagery of their paintings.”

Bangladesh has cancelled an exhibition of rare artifacts at a Paris museum after two statues of Vishnu were stolen en route to France. The 1,500-year-old works — a statue of Vishnu and a bust of the Hindu god — went missing Saturday.

“The government cares less about the arts and the Ugandans have other worries than to think about contemporary art. Realistically, an average Ugandan cannot afford to buy our works. Art as such is not a basic need. It is people who have extra to spend that think that their walls are empty. It has also a lot to do with education and a specific sense of aesthetics.”

SAM opened a new home and sculpture park. “Overall, the park could be called a resounding success. Then there is the downtown museum. With 70 percent more exhibition space, the potential to continue growing eight floors into the future and a wealth of recent acquisitions, the museum is a new institution. Its gaps are no longer as notable as its depths and its cross-cultural connections.”

“Despite turmoil in the financial markets, there are no signs that the art market is softening. The fall auction season in New York saw robust prices across most categories, with postwar and contemporary works in particular going through the roof. It seemed like a new record was being shattered every time an art auction was held.”

“Much of the credit goes to the emergence in the 1980s of graphic novels, which offer more complex story lines for more mature audiences than traditional comic books do. They typically are more durably bound and longer than the floppy comic magazines that told the tales of Superman or the antics of small-town teenager Archie Andrews and friends.”

Oscar Niemeyer – who celebrated his 100th birthday this month – in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s established himself as one of Modernism’s greatest luminaries. But “some of his most revered buildings — from the Brasilía Cathedral to the grand Monumental Axis of the city itself — have been marred by the architect’s own hand.” So “at what point do we — that is, the public that idolizes him, his government and private clients — have an obligation to intervene? Or is posing the question an act of spectacularly bad taste?”

While some good and interesting buildings are rising, one comes away with the feeling that architects are indeed failing to risk and lead.

“Cubism didn’t just change what pictures after it looked like. It changed almost everything about the way an artist could come at the world. And here’s what makes that cubist watershed even more notable: A century later, and it’s hard to find a clearly cubist touch in much of anything young artists are making. Can there truly be a watershed that doesn’t water what’s downstream?”