Category: visual

“There was a time when important historical and cultural sites were visited only by aristocratic travelers making the Grand Tour or exploring Italy. Then came ‘bourgeois’ tourism, which was still an elite affair but involved hundreds of thousands of cultivated and sensitive travelers. With the advent of mass tourism, some important sites increased their income, but at the cost of ugliness and vandalism.” What to do? How about replicas?

“A man put his foot through a $300,000 painting Wednesday afternoon at the Milwaukee Art Museum and told museum workers later that the image disturbed him… Painted in 1640, the oil painting depicts the outcome of the biblical tale of David and Goliath, with David carrying the giant Goliath’s severed head.”

“A mountain village in Umbria is caught up in a tug of war with the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the 2,600-year-old Etruscan chariot that is a highlight of the museum’s new Greek and Roman galleries… The residents of Monteleone, population 680, say the chariot was illegally sold and should never have left the country.” Now, a New Jersey mayor, of all people, has joined the struggle and is pressuring the Met to give back the chariot.

“This explosion of annexes, extensions and branches, and the proliferation of ‘brand’ museums – already Guggenheim and Tate, soon Louvre, followed by many others – seems, at first, a good thing.” But is there enough good art to go in them?

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Alex Matter had sold some of a trove of disputed Jackson Pollock paintings. “But Matter has repeatedly stated he has no plans to sell the works. And the filmmaker, whom the Times could not reach for its story, told the Globe by phone yesterday that he has not sold any of the paintings.” Then, the story changed once more.

“An unusual group donation by 20 Italian-Canadian families will pump $10-million into the Art Gallery of Ontario’s ambitious expansion and renovation program… The $10-million, which the AGO has been touting as “a milestone gift,” means the gallery has now raised 87 per cent of the $207-million it budgeted for its Transformation AGO capital campaign. Overall cost of the expansion, to be completed by mid-2008, is $254-million, which includes a $50-million endowment already raised.”

“About a decade ago, the auction houses had a eureka moment and realised if they put the same resources behind new art as they put behind old masters, they would have a supply of goodies that was effectively bottomless. Unlike old masters or impressionists, the supply of contemporary art can never dry up.” But which art will be considered classics tomorrow?

When Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano “asked the other 26 EU heads of state to choose a work of art to send to Rome for the exhibition – Italy’s contribution to celebrations marking the 1957 signing of the Treaty of Rome, the EU’s founding document – he gave them a free hand. The result is an extraordinarily eclectic mixture that has drawn applause but also raised a few eyebrows. The Queen, I was told, had had no doubts, firmly telling President Napolitano when he paid a state visit to London in October that the artist to represent Britain was J. M. W. Turner.”

“The Getty Conservation Institute is working on a masterplan to conserve one of China’s most important heritage sites–the Cave Grottoes at Mogao. The project will begin in 2008, according to the Getty Trust. It is part of a much larger scheme to develop comprehensive guidelines for the whole of China–making the Getty the first non-governmental organisation to create a system for conserving the heritage of an entire nation.”

Richard Rogers finally wins architecture’s top prize. But why’d it take so long? “It may be because Rogers, unlike many of his high-profile colleagues, has generally avoided playing the star. While his colleagues Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid have attempted to build what are, in effect, works of art, Rogers has been content to practice the art of building. Not at all the same thing, and a curiously traditional attitude for such a resolute iconoclast.”