Category: visual

Paris’ Pompidou Centre has become “cut off, cumbersome, and complex,” says its new leadership. What’s needed? A turnaround plan, of course, and a big one is in the works…

Wednesday night’s Sotheby’s sale was disappointing. At least that’s what the financial markets seem to think. “Sotheby’s shares tumbled $14.23, or 28 percent, to $35.84 in New York trading after analysts downgraded their ratings.”

“[Canada’s] Conservative government nailed the final nail into the coffin of the National Portrait Gallery’s Ottawa building site yesterday, ordering workers to take down signs outside the former U.S. embassy on Wellington Street that was to have housed the fledgling institution.”

“A Vincent Van Gogh painting has failed to sell at an art auction in New York. Sotheby’s was hoping The Wheat Fields would fetch up to $35m, but it failed to reach its undisclosed reserve or attract a bid over $25m.” The painting is believed to be Van Gogh’s last completed work.

Van Gogh wasn’t the only artist getting no love from bidders at yesterday’s Sotheby’s auction. 20 of 76 lots failed to sell, including works by Picasso and Miró. Some think the tumbling stock market may have made buyers cautious, but a Christie’s auction did better under the same conditions.

“What is unseemly about The Age of Rembrandt is the jingling sound of money audible throughout and the subliminal appeals for more of it to replenish the museum’s coffers. The title of the show is a misnomer and a ruse.”

Thomas Schütte has created something unique in Trafalgar Square. “At once, you see that Schütte has taken this list and inverted it to produce a statue that is transparent, colourful, and horizontal. Whereas everything else in the square is heavy and inert, the new piece is as light as air and suggestive of movement.”

“In years to come, historians will use the architecture of the 2008 and 2012 Olympics as a cunning indicator of the decline of the west and the rise of the east. The newly unveiled designs for the main stadium [for the London games] sink the spirit. It’s our own fault.”

“The Rose Art Museum is selling a prized painting by Impressionist artist Childe Hassam that will fetch an estimated $2 million to $3 million at an auction later this month. Such a sale would be the largest in the Brandeis University museum’s history.”

“The computer models are so accurate they can re-create the dimensions of objects to within a few microns – less than the width of a human hair – and the digital ‘files’ that make up each model hold billions of individual bits of information.”