Category: visual

“Thieves broke into the Sao Paulo Museum of Art and made off with paintings by Pablo Picasso and Candido Portinari in a brazen heist Thursday morning that lasted just three minutes as recorded by security cameras.”

The Gardner Museum proposes a $60 million, 60,000-square-foot expansion designed by Renzo Piano that might make drastic changes to the Gardner’s Venetian-style palazzo.
“Some community activists worry that the cramped, 105-year-old museum’s much-needed modernization will violate the wishes of Boston’s golden-age doyenne.”

The museum “will help shift the focus away from the art market,” says Lu Jie. “Chinese art today is overproduced and overexposed. There are many very good artists working in China who are unknown. In the last month alone, 28 new art magazines launched in China–all of them are market led; none of them contain any art criticism.”

The loan of major works of art is in jeopardy, as the Russian government fears the art might be seized over provenance concerns.”The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it would fast-track ‘immunity from seizure’ laws to cover the paintings the Russians have threatened not to lend the show.”

“In one sprawling area are many hundreds of individual art factories, in which teams of artists crank out hand-painted replicas of any sort of picture you can imagine. European old masters. Andy Warhol. Gustav Klimt. Classic Chinese landscapes. Manet. Audubon. Botero.”

“Italian cultural officials say they’re offering art and history lovers an early ‘Christmas present’ this week with the opening of a new exhibition showcasing priceless artifacts recently repatriated to Italy… More than half of the exhibit’s artifacts are pieces returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.”

“Today, the New York Public Library is to announce… a three-year restoration of the facade, stairs and plaza that is to be completed in time for the building’s centennial in 2011.” The aim is to restore the Beaux Arts building to its original glory, and add new touches such as nighttime illumination to make it a true civic landmark.

A 40-acre park on Governors Island in New York City may not be a matter of earth-shaking national import, but Nicolai Ouroussoff says that the plan unveiled this week for the island may be “the most inspired public park built here in generations.”

“Why are so many buildings designed by today’s architects so bad? Bad not just in being ugly or failing to fit in with their surroundings, but bad in the sense that the roofs don’t keep out the rain, the walls let in draughts, and the whole structure fails to fulfil the function that it was meant to.”

“Our estimates for February so far are 10 percent to 15 percent higher than last year, and there’s still a week of art gathering left. We will see growth next year.”