Category: visual

“Damien Hirst may have lost his title as the most expensive living artist at auction to Jeff Koons in New York last week, but he can still claim to be not only the richest artist in the world but also the one who spends the most on art. Bidding anonymously by telephone last Wednesday, he splashed out $33 million at Sotheby’s on a 14in by 12in self-portrait by Francis Bacon.”

“MoMA is our fountain of youth, our Garden of Eden, our Promised Land. But all these things will not last much longer if this institution continues excluding women from the display of its permanent collection of painting and sculpture from 1879 to 1969, which lives on the fourth and fifth floors.”

“Last year it looked as if the U.S. General Services Administration would tap Thomas Gordon Smith to be its chief architect. But modernists complained that picking Smith would send federal design back to the dark ages of imperial Rome after a flowering of adventurous buildings by the likes of Thom Mayne.”

“To what degree is a college art museum considered central to an academic mission, and to what extent is it seen primarily as a financial asset?”

“Should nonprofit art museums accept money from commercial galleries with a clear financial stake in the artist’s career, and in some cases in the artworks on display? More generally, can the willingness of galleries to pony up subtly influence what a museum sets out to exhibit?”

“Three organizations representing coin collectors and dealers have filed a lawsuit against the State Department demanding greater disclosure of how the government makes decisions on the import of ancient artifacts from abroad.”

“Despite so many sets of eyes scrutinizing where American art stands at this moment, there will be fewer artists participating: 81 artists have been chosen, compared with 100 two years ago.”

To be blunt, this is less a formal exhibition than an entertainment pupped by the Ghost Train and Tunnel of Love of the fairground and amusement park. This is not altogether surprising, for one of its organisers mounts spectacular entertainments in Las Vegas and another is responsible for the National Geographic magazines that we find in the waiting rooms of dentists.

“The Moderna Museet in Stockholm said it had investigated the authenticity of its six wooden Brillo boxes, donated by its former head, Pontus Hulten, in 1995, after a Swedish newspaper claimed they were all copies.”

“The court heard how a fake Egyptian statue was ‘knocked up in three weeks in a garden shed’ by Shaun Greenhalgh, who cared for his parents at the home they shared in Bromley Cross.”