Category: visual

“Designed by the Japanese firm Sanaa, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, on the Bowery at Prince Street on the Lower East Side, is the kind of building that renews your faith in New York as a place where culture is lived, not just bought and sold.”

A Boston artist is painting portraits of Boston’s greatest hockey stars in the nude. One Thing? Those stars disn’t know anything about their new art roles…

“The 860-year-old mother city of Mother Russia is treating its old streets, alleys, boulevards and squares to a facelift. And as this is the espresso-fuelled heart of a confident nation awash with brash cash, that new face comes courtesy of the bulldozer, piledriver, wrecker’s ball and rubble truck.”

“Some time after the death of pop artist Andy Warhol, undoubtedly the most important and influential artist of his generation, a fact emerged with the force of revelation: throughout his life he had been religious… In a way, knowing this about Warhol changes everything.”

“The works of Boston-born artist David Park, who died at 49 in 1960, are finally enjoying some worldly renown… Twice this year, a David Park canvas has sold for more than $1 million, both records.” Compare that to the prices Park’s work garnered in his lifetime, when he would sell a landscape for $200 to buy shoes for his children.

“Three paintings by Flemish master Rubens held in a British gallery were not stolen by the Nazis, a government panel has ruled.” Instead, a Jewish-owned bank in the Netherlands was found to have legally sold the paintings prior to the Nazi invasion of Holland in 1940.

“A forensic scientist said yesterday that a large group of paintings discovered several years ago and thought by some to be by Jackson Pollock included many containing paints and materials that were not available until after the artist’s death in 1956.” The scientist was hired to examine the paintings by their owner, then threatened with a lawsuit if he disclosed his findings.

“Piece by priceless piece, artifact by ancient artifact, Iraq is slowly recovering the Mesopotamian treasures that were looted by bandits, militiamen and soldiers after Saddam Hussein was toppled.”

“The contenders have been commissioned to produce a scale model of their idea. The successful proposal will be announced next year and the new work unveiled in 2009.”

“The Royal Ontario Museum is trying to shoo a handful of long-time hot-dog and ice-cream vendors away from its dramatically renovated building because they don’t fit with its ‘glitzy’ new image.”