Category: visual

“Sam Keller, director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach for seven years, is stepping down to become director of the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. Art Basel organizers announced on Tuesday that he was being replaced” by a triumvirate of directors, who will split the managerial duties into artistic, fiscal, and strategic compartments.

An artist in New York is slowly making her way across the city, tracing a single, thick chalk line onto pavement and sidewalk. A meditation on linear thought? A revolt against the tyranny of traffic lanes? Nope – she’s quietly tracing the line scientists believe will represent the edge of the great flood that could destroy chunks of America’s largest city as a result of climate change.

“Pieces of architectural history sit on Milwaukee’s south side – a row of four duplexes and two cottages designed by Frank Lloyd Wright more than 90 years ago for low- to moderate-income families. But years of extreme makeovers, including aluminum siding added to one house, rendered some of them shells of their former designs. Now a nonprofit group wants to restore the Frank Lloyd Wright charm to one of the single-family homes… The group hopes to make it a museum, inspire others to renovate the four remaining structures and motivate architects to design housing for the disadvantaged.”

Boston’s Clark Art Institute has received a gift of $50m, along with $40m worth of great English art. “Turners, Constables, Gainsboroughs, and other pieces from the English Romantic period of the early 1800s” are included in the gift, which came from the estate of the late Sir Edwin Manton. The donation is the largest ever received by the Clark.

One of the highlights of this year’s Venice Biennale is the Dutch pavilion, where artist Aeronaut Mik’s work is stopping visitors in their tracks. “Mik works at the border between politics and play, reality and drama. His Venice project, called ‘Citizens and Subjects,’ includes a series of video projections of disasters and crises that raises the stakes for what theater means.”

“The idea of debonair, highly intelligent, well-connected art thieves” is alluring and makes for good movies, but the reality is far different, experts say. “Most art thieves fall into four categories: political activists who steal to make a point; ransom specialists who say they will destroy a work unless they are paid; small-time crooks who do not realise how hard it is to sell an easily identifiable painting; and – statistically the most likely – the mentally disturbed.”

“Three shimmering paintings by Monet and a portrait by Lucian Freud expected to set a world record for the artist are among the stars of sales predicted to smash European auction records next week. More than £200m-worth of art is for sale over three days at Christie’s, and a further £250m at its rival Sotheby’s.”

Sculptor Anthony Gormley “recently erected 30 nude sculptures around London to promote his current show at the Hayward Gallery. One such work was placed on the fly tower over at the National Theatre. This has caused problems. The fly tower is currently adorned in grass as part of an installation by the celebrated artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey.” The pair are reportedly quite displeased, but the theatre says that nothing could be done to avoid the double-booking.

This spring’s art auction boom has been an undeniably wild ride, with records being set seemingly every time an auctioneer’s gavel falls. But “privately, many are saying of the current auction boom that price is not always a reflection of quality. With records being set so frequently, people are also beginning to wonder whether the bubble will burst — as it did in the early ’90s — and whether the current market is sustainable.”

An art exhibit in Melbourne is taking direct aim at what the artist sees as the underhanded and duplicitous world of art dealers. “It is a hard-hitting show that raises many bogeys the art establishment would have hoped had been laid to rest.”