Category: visual

Sixteen historically interesting but physically decayed buildings have been put on the UK endangered heritage list. “They include a redundant colliery, the burnt out shell of a 13th century moated manor house, a Victorian sewage pumping station, and a vast, battered shed which is the only remaining airship hangar in Europe.”

“Depending on how you look at it, the newly reopened Royal Ontario Museum is either half empty or half full. The Toronto museum said attendance is 50 per cent higher than average for this time last year. But at least 24 summer workers were recently laid off. Some of these workers said they were told to expect 10,000 visitors a day… In fact, the ROM is getting only 1,500 to 3,500 visitors on weekdays.”

The Jim Henson Foundation is making a major donation of Muppet artifacts to the Center for Puppetry Arts In Atlanta. The gift will include “500 to 700 puppets, including some of the first Muppets built; props; scenic elements; posters; sketches; and drawings.”

“A painting that hung for several years in a bank has set a new record price for Australian aboriginal artwork. The piece, by renowned indigenous artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, was sold for more than US$2m at an auction in Melbourne. The sale more than doubled the previous record for Aborigine art.”

“Many who have followed the brouhaha over the Barnes blame the institution’s Merion neighbors for complaining about the Barnes years ago, and wonder why, as founders of Friends of the Barnes, they are now fighting to keep it in Merion. The neighbors say they have been misunderstood.”

A woman kissed a white painting by Cy Twombly in a French museum and damaged it. “The immaculate white canvas so attracted Sam Rindy she smudged it with her lipstick, saying later she had wanted to make it even more beautiful. The 3x2m (9×6-foot) painting by US artist Cy Twombly is valued at more than $2m (£970,000).”

“At the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and other national museums, where admission costs anywhere from $9 to $12, some two-thirds of all visitors are foreign tourists, as are three-quarters of visitors between the ages of 18 and 25. The new government of President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to alter this profile. With a view to persuading more French people to enjoy art, it is pondering whether to follow the British and Danish examples of allowing free access to the permanent collections of major museums.”

A small but influential number of celebrity architects “are considering selling their archives — which can include tens of thousands of objects, from multiple large-scale models and reams of drawings to correspondence and other records — even as they continue to practice.”

“Now, as the foundation, in financial trouble, moves ever closer to leaving its odd home and transplanting its collection to a new building planned for downtown Philadelphia — a decision viewed as essential by some and apostasy by others — Harry Sefarbi is often seen as more than just a veteran teacher of Barnes’s method. He has become a voluble, cane-carrying symbol of all the ethereal qualities that critics of the move fear may be lost in the foundation’s translation to a sleeker, more contemporary space.”

In the latest effort to keep the Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, township officials yesterday passed a zoning ordinance that would more than double the number of visitors allowed each year. The ordinance allows up to 140,000 visitors per year. A previous rule allowed the Barnes to be open three days a week to about 400 visitors a day.