Category: visual

“In L.A., galleries form a kind of cultural underground, operating in the shadow of an entertainment industry that is just beginning to pay them notice. Mainstream museums, on the other hand, are actively engaged in promoting local talent, introducing new work by young artists before it ever appears in a gallery. At the moment, both UCLA’s Hammer Museum and L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art are presenting exhibitions devoted to Los Angeles-based artists.”

“For some two decades the nine carved statues were displayed in the Park Avenue apartment of the producer Lewis M. Allen and the screenwriter Jay Presson Allen. … Ranging from four to six feet tall, the objects, known as vigango, were looted in recent decades from the burial sites of the rural Mijikenda people on the Kenyan coast.” Now Kenya is getting the objects back from Brooke Allen, the couple’s daughter.

However much scrutiny other museums face over their acquisition of antiquities, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles probably faces more. But newly appointed antiquities curator Karol Wight — a protegee of her predecessor, Marion True, who remains on trial in Rome on looting charges — “declared that despite the pressures, she did not intend to play a passive role in the international antiquities trade. ‘We do intend to be active in the market,’ she said. ‘This still is a growing collection.'”

This spring, the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave three of its design awards “to housing complexes built by nonprofit developers, while an urban design commendation celebrated the rebirth of a public housing project. This isn’t a fluke, or political correctness applied to subsidized housing. It reflects a surprising aspect of today’s urban landscape: Many of the most progressive buildings — both in appearance and function — are designed expressly for low- and moderate-income residents.”

“If money is any indication, the London sales have momentum. Christie’s reported a nearly 20% rise between the February sales and June sales. The total for the Impressionist, Modern, and Postwar Contemporary sales rose to $470 million from $392 million. Sotheby’s sold $408 million worth of art, their highest London total ever. Overall, the London auctions showed that the steady trends of the last two years are still in train.”

Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors has reopened after a three-year restoration. “The renovation of the castle’s crown jewel, paid for by French construction company Vinci at at cost of more than $18 million Cdn, was billed as the biggest cultural patronage project ever undertaken by a private company in France, where such work has traditionally been paid for by the state.”

“The annual June art auctions, which ended on Friday, have made London a more important art capital than it has been for more than 20 years. Even the pros were surprised.”

“The resurgence of museum activity since 2002–when the world economy was in a downturn exacerbated by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001– emerges as the most dramatic aspect of the survey. Around 61% of museums reported an increase in visitors in 2006, up from 44% the previous year and a huge recovery from 2002 when only 20% had more visitors than in 2001.”

New projects are breaking ground on Washington DC’s National Mall. “Not all of these changes are necessarily destructive, though some of them have preservationists, advocates for the Mall and even some government officials groaning. But they are profound changes, and strangely enough, they all have something to do with this city’s landscape of War and Peace.”

Will the museum let it go? “It is probably the single most-visited object in the BM’s entire collection, attracting even more visitors than the Parthenon Marbles. The Rosetta Stone has been at the museum since 1802, and has only left the building twice–when it was evacuated during World War I and when it was lent to the Louvre for one month in 1972.”