Category: visual

“Pictures, over the decades, have been earmarked by the government as ‘national treasures’, which are not to be given export licences. My republican gorge rises. How are Van Dycks, owned by the earls of Pembroke, part of anyone’s heritage (unless your name is Herbert, of course)? “We”, the nation, can see the pictures, at Wilton House for £12 a head (or, touchingly noblesse oblige, free on September 7 this year). But that doesn’t make them ours.”

“A lost sketch by John Constable, never recorded in the catalogues of his work, has tumbled with a cascade of other drawings and letters from volumes which the British Library has owned for almost a century.”

“It’s hard to argue with the goal of democratizing museums, but some of these strategies smack of condescension. Why assume, for example, that Latinos are interested in dinosaurs only if they get free tacos? Or that they care about art only if it reflects their own most cherished religious images?”

“The strange thing about Washington’s nocturnal beauty is that none of it was planned, yet none of it was accidental either. A sense of hierarchy has grown up around the buildings that glow, though no policy has been written to perpetuate it.”

The Coeur d’Alene auction of western art was first held in 1985. “That year, there were 132 lots and it brought in $200,000. Last year there were 276 lots fetching $27.4 million, a record that many thought could not be matched. Last month Mr. Stremmel raced through 307 lots in under five hours to bring in $35.4 million, or about $28 million, if you strip away a cache of French Impressionist and Latin American masters that were oddly tucked into this year’s sale.”

“In a momentous few months, this previously respected but limited institution has landed in an international spotlight with panache, revealing its emerging arts leadership in the region and illuminating the complex strategies smaller museums increasingly employ to stay modern and engaged with their communities.”

Two months away from opening, the new Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver is shaping up as a series of boxes within a box, galleries opening into hallways that encircle areas devoted to art.

“At least two dozen art museums are leaderless, including such plum traditional institutions as the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the National Portrait Gallery and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Among modern-art museums, director chairs are empty in Houston, Chicago and at New York’s Guggenheim.”

“A 2006 survey by the American Association of Museums found that 50 percent of responding museums had begun or completed construction, renovation, or expansion in the previous three years. The boom is partly due to museum officials who recognize that using name architects for expansions helps attract tourists.”

“Now this is exquisite timing: Barry Bonds’ 756th home run and the unveiling of rival designs for San Francisco’s tallest tower and a new transit station came just 28 hours apart. Voila! Bay Area residents have something new to debate in what otherwise would be the doggiest days of summer. … Does San Francisco really need a modernistic ‘icon’ as tall as the Empire State Building?”