Category: visual

“Under pressure from Bomber Command veterans’ groups and sympathetic politicians, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa will adjust the wording on a panel dealing with the 1945 firebombing of Dresden.” Critics “warn of the precedent of a public museum adapting its texts in response to political pressure.”

With the financial markets struggling, will the art market back off its torrid pace? “While some buyers may drop out, auction house executives say, others will step in: the pool of potential buyers has increased as collectors grow more diverse.”

“Now, nearly 30 years after work began, the restoration of Raphael’s frescoes in the rooms named after him in the Vatican Museums is approaching completion. Restorers said in recent interviews that their work in the Raphael Stanzas has brought insights into how the artist worked, from mistakes he made in mixing plaster to how he transferred his exquisite designs from small pieces of paper to the sprawling walls of papal apartments.”

“Memo to architects and your enablers: It’s time to put ‘icon’ to rest. The word should be banished from the world of design, and with it the notion that the worth of new buildings is measured by how much they stick out – vertically, stylistically, you name it. This doesn’t mean tall buildings are bad, or that startling looks are to be shunned in favor of architectural deja vu. But the idea that you grab attention by making people gawk? It is so 2002.”

“In the two years since Hurricane Katrina, what has the rebuilding effort produced? … There have been only a handful of earnest, grass-roots proposals to preserve what’s left of the historic fabric. Amid this atmosphere of malaise, two recently announced projects for downtown New Orleans stand out as the first truly creative attempts to foster the city’s resurrection. The first, an extravagant proposal for a new New Orleans National Jazz Center and park by Morphosis, is the most significant work of architecture proposed in the city since the Superdome.”

Canadian art donors and museums are complaining that a board set up to value gifts for tax purposes has been capricious. “In 2000-2001 the review board considered 926 applications related to donations to public institutions; in 2005-2006 that number had dropped to 748. Donors say that the government wants it both ways: slashing funds for cultural institutions, urging them to go to the private sector – and then throwing obstacles in the way of potential donors.”

“Opponents of a plan to move The Barnes Foundation’s multibillion-dollar art collection to Philadelphia filed a petition Monday asking a judge to reconsider his decision allowing the move.”

The Boston College show features about 170 Jackson Pollocks, including paintings, drawings, photographs, and letters. But the most interest will be generated by two dozen paintings which may or may not be by the 20th Century master. “Studied by scientists and argued over by art historians, the paint-spattered pictures will be on view for the first time.”

“Does anyone go to Pop for the politics any more? In love with ad-mass culture and all things American, Pop’s biggest shocks were to do with presenting both as a new kind of art, not issuing dark warnings to the President.”

“Shanghai, home to more skyscrapers than New York and a population of 20 million swept into an endless sprawl of suburbs, is not a city one tends to associate with Art Deco. Yet the 1930s was Shanghai’s first great decade of economic boom, and both the Western bankers who ran the city and the new Chinese middle classes wanted to associate only with the new.”