Category: visual

“The Bodleian Library has announced the winners of a competition for children aged 11 to 14 to design nine new gargoyles for the library’s north-west facade.”

“The show is the result of a 10-year campaign by the Culture Ministry and a special group of the carabinieri, or military police, specializing in art and archaeological theft to reclaim some of the innumerable objects looted from Italian soil.”

The Russian government has announced the cancellation of a major exhibition of Russian and French masterpieces at the Royal Academy in London. The government “said paintings from four Russian state museums would not be loaned to the UK because of worries that they could be subject to legal claims and would not ultimately be returned to Russia.”

“Over the past few years, museum shops have transformed themselves beyond recognition. Today’s visitors are greeted by a sophisticated retail experience involving paint-your-own-robot T-shirts, animatronic dinosaurs and replica crossbows. Galleries, schmalleries: these shops alone are worth the trip.”

“The four stations designed by Zaha Hadid and her colleague Patrik Schumacher might be snowfalls transformed into gleaming caverns of glass by a snow queen’s magic wand. Each is crowned with a smoothly flowing, translucent canopy that seems sculpted from ice, with bold, black lines emphasising the form. They are as beautiful as they are unexpected.”

“David Rubenstein, co-founder of the private-equity firm Carlyle Group, last night bought a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta, an English royal document and symbol of freedom, for $21.3 million including commission at Sotheby’s in New York.”

If the government gets its way, a rich architectural legacy will be supplanted by private, mixed-income developments with pitched roofs and wood-frame construction, an ersatz vision of small-town America. That this could happen in a city that still largely lies in ruins is both sad and grotesque.

Flamboyant architectural statements were not envisioned for this low-key but essential project. Instead, it’s the “back-of-the-house operations that have pride of place and account for most of the project’s $90 million cost — space for conservation labs, storage, research facilities and staff accommodations, including elegant offices.”

“A 4,000-year-old clay tablet authorities suspect was smuggled illegally from Iraq was pulled from eBay just minutes before the close of the online auction, authorities said Tuesday.”

“In terms of the narratives found in its art, it is easy to see how the city fails to grab much attention. With its tiny apartments and relatively stable economic environment, creative statements by Hong Kong artists tend to be more intimate, more personal and intrinsically different from those of the mainland, where the scale is vast and the problems are huge.”