Category: visual

Why are US critics so eager to complain about MoMA? Jonathan Jones is baffled. “I can see that if I were a New York critic I would be finding fault with MoMA too. I’m glad I’m not, and can look at it with the healthy romanticism they doubtless feel when they contemplate Tate Modern’s vast spaces, so refreshingly uncluttered by all those Picasso paintings MoMA is burdened with.”

“Austria yesterday returned a painting by Edvard Munch, called Summer Night on the Beach, to Marina Fistoulari-Mahler, the granddaughter of composer Gustav Mahler, ending a 60-year legal battle.”

A mathematical process known as “stylometry” is being developed in an effort to change the way art experts authenticate paintings. Teams of engineers, working with art experts and students, are attempting to quantify a “visual signature” for Vincent Van Gogh. The techniques in play are similar to those used “to determine the authorship of letters, literary texts, and even musical compositions.”

“The Renoir family archive, which was sold in 2005 causing deep disquiet in France, has been acquired by a gallery in Arizona.” In 2003, the gallery “produced a ‘House of Renoir’ business plan to market a range of novelty items such as mousepads and toilet roll holders, as well as hundreds of thousands of marble, stone and bronze sculptures–all based on Renoir-Guino originals.”

“The department says it is planning to develop a renewed federal vision for museums in the 21st century, and creating new criteria for identifying collections of outstanding national importance, including collections held across the country.”

“Richard Andrews, director of the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery for two decades, will resign by next February… Andrews is the reason the Henry is a nationally recognized force on the contemporary art scene. When he was hired, the Henry was a small museum without a core identity. He took it in the contemporary direction.”

Even without a true blockbuster work to anchor it, Tuesday’s sale of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s New York hauled in a staggering $278.5m, just under its high-end estimate. The bidding was driven largely by “an international group of today’s new rich [who] dropped millions of dollars, ignoring auction house estimates and paying whatever it took to take the right image home.”

London’s Tate Museum goes to Manhattan and holds a glittery high-profile fundraiser. This is the museum’s “biggest and most high-profile fundraising event outside Britain. In a signal of the institution’s supreme confidence, buoyed by the runaway success of Tate Modern, it had the audacity to sneak into the world capital of contemporary art, New York, and steal the show.”

The Ottawa-based Hnatyshyn Foundation announced on Tuesday the creation of a new $15,000 prize to honour a mid-career curator who has made “a significant contribution to the advancement of the contemporary visual arts.”

Lincoln Center is known for its performing arts. And the campus is getting a visual makeover over the next few years. But now America’s most famous arts center is dipping a toe into the visual arts. “Plans include using Lincoln Center’s 16-acre campus as a venue for sculpture and new media and adding a visual arts component to the Lincoln Center Festival, the international festival of music, drama, and dance that takes place each July.”