Category: visual

“Last year we revealed that Damien Hirst was to replace the rotting shark in his The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living…. Now the British artist is to repair his Mother and Child, Divided (1993),an installation of a bisected cow and calf in four formaldehyde tanks, in the collection of the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. The work is leaking and has been sent to the artist’s studio in London for emergency repairs.”

“Elton John said a photograph of two girls by Nan Goldin has been published around the world ‘without any objections of which we are aware’ and auctioned twice by Sotheby’s. The photo, ‘Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing,’ was seized by Northumbria police from the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, England, while on loan from the singer-songwriter….”

“The biggest surprise for most Pakistanis is that the National Art Gallery ever opened at all. It took a marathon 28 years to develop and build, and was a victim of financing shortfalls, bureaucratic inertia and repeated shifts in power under alternate military and civilian governments, which often undid what their predecessors had started.”

“Just as the Dutch government was moving to discourage new claims for restitution of art looted during World War II, the heirs of a Dutch Jewish art dealer have filed one of the largest claims to date for paintings now held in Dutch museums.”

“Fisk University’s board of trustees has agreed in principle to share ownership of its prized Alfred Stieglitz Collection with the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas in exchange for $30 million… The founder of Crystal Bridges, the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton, also pledged $1 million to renovate and maintain the Fisk gallery that houses the collection and to finance an art internship.”

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art decided Tuesday to dismantle an uncompleted Christoph Büchel work without opening it to the public. A judge had ruled last week that MassMoCA could show the work, ignoring Büchel’s objections. “Buchel, who has rarely spoken to the press, sent an e-mail to the Globe Tuesday night in response to the museum’s move. Pointedly referencing his dispute with Mass MoCA over the project’s budget, he offered to donate a ‘permanent installation’ that wouldn’t cost anything to pull off. He concluded the email with an image of the plan — a tweak of the museum’s rooftop signage to spell out ‘Mass CoMA’.”

“The J. Paul Getty Museum said it will sign an agreement today to return 40 antiquities to the Italian government, after a dispute over stolen relics that rocked the reputation of the world’s richest art institution. The agreement will be signed by Getty Museum Director Michael Brand and the Italian government this afternoon in Rome….”

“A federal judge in Springfield, Massachusetts, rejected artist Christoph Büchel suit for an injunction to bar the museum from showing his unfinished work. “In oral arguments, Büchel’s lawyer, told the judge that if an artist says a work is not finished, and not in a state to be publicly displayed, ‘then to show it to the public, against the artist’s wishes, is a distortion’. But [the judge] asked how something could be distorted that wasn’t even created yet.”

“Documenta, the contemporary art show that takes place every five years in the German town of Kassel, drew a record 754,000 paying visitors this year, 100,000 more than attended the last edition in 2002.”

How does Lucien Freud know when he’s finished a portrait? “Freud’s criterion is that he feels he’s finished when he gets the impression he’s working on somebody else’s painting. You can see what he means: his own input is complete.”