Category: visual

“Crowds in museums are nothing new. They’ve been a fixture of temporary ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions for years. For a long time, the rest of the museum–the permanent collection–remained considerably less populated. Lately, though, the permanent galleries, too, have become more and more crowded. The new crush of bodies is partly the result of a surge of tourism, funneling out-of-town visitors into local venues, and partly the culmination of a long and steady increase in the public’s interest in art.”

Here’s the shortlist: “The architects on the short list are Tadao Ando, from Osaka, Japan; Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York; Kengo Kuma, Tokyo; Rafael Moneo, Madrid; Thom Mayne/Morphosis, Los Angeles; and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, New York.”

Authors of a new book say that “museums are hoarding thousands of artworks seized by the Nazis and doing too little, especially in Germany, to trace the prewar Jewish owners or their heirs.”

“The chief architect working on the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona yesterday condemned a plan to build a bullet-train tunnel less than two metres from Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece.”

Germany says it won’t lend a 3,400-year-old statue of Queen Nefertiti to Egypt because it is too fragile to travel. Egyptians don’t accept the excuse. “We will make the lives of these museums miserable,” the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt said. “It will be a scientific war.”

There are about 30 full-time classical ateliers in America. “The atelier system–of extended apprenticeships in the studios of master artists–is an old European tradition, spanning back to the Renaissance and up through the Flemish painting guilds to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. But they faced extinction in America when art education became a province of universities in the first half of the 20th century.”

“For the fifth consecutive session of the US Congress, a bill has been introduced that would allow artists to deduct the fair market value of works of their own creation from their taxes, if they donate them to museums and libraries. Existing provisions enable collectors to deduct the value of donated art, but artists can deduct only the cost of supplies such as canvas and paint.”

“From Sweden comes a cautionary tale of what can happen when free museum admission is scrapped. … The news will make uncomfortable reading for anyone who believes that re-introducing entrance fees could restore the financial health of the arts in the UK, which came in for another battering after it was announced this week that an extra £675m will be diverted from the National Lottery to help finance the 2012 Olympic Games.”

“After months of controversy, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission ruled unanimously yesterday that the New-York Historical Society can renovate the exterior of its landmark building at 170 Central Park West. … Some community groups and preservationists had opposed the changes, calling them architecturally irresponsible….”

“The tale of ‘The Wall’ spans more than a third of a century, 10 years of it in litigation, in which the outdoor art installation went up in SoHo, came down in SoHo — and stayed down. But its reputation only grew as the artist, the artwork’s landlords, neighborhood activists and, of course, lawyers, clashed. … But yesterday, the conflict seemed about to end, not with a bang, but with applause.”