Category: visual

A judge has ruled that the Detroit Institute of Art can keep a Van Gogh painting claimed by the heirs of a German collector in the 1940s. “The case landed in court in January 2006 after the DIA failed to resolve a long-simmering dispute with the heirs. A parallel dispute between the heirs and the Toledo Museum of Art over a Gauguin painting was similarly dismissed by an Ohio judge in December.”

“The artwork-on-a-shovel that left town eight months ago with Margie J. Reese, Los Angeles’ former arts chief, is back in the city-run Watts Towers Arts Center after a detour to Reese’s home in Irving, Texas. Last July, an apparently unknowing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa presented the work by L.A. artist John Outterbridge as a farewell gift to Reese when she left her job as general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department….”

Some of the disputed trove of Jackson Pollock paintings have been sold. “Information about the sales came to light recently through the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which guards the legacies of the artist and of his wife, the painter Lee Krasner.”

Timothy Rubb has been director of the Cleveland Museum for a year. “He took over the Cleveland museum — regarded widely as one of the finest in nation — at an incredibly complex moment.” This is a museum at the crossroads, and Rubb is a careful driver.

“Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon and other postwar painters are fetching top prices at auctions as works by modern artists such as Pablo Picasso vanish into museums and private collections.”

“The emirate is now promoting itself as a hub for contemporary art, seven hours from London and from China. But while there is political will to establish an art market, there are no art museums in Dubai and no art schools either. Selling to the Emiratis turned out to be difficult although there was a smattering of ministerial purchases. Some of the exhibitors, who had come from as far afield as Tokyo, Korea, China and the US, returned home almost empty-handed.”

A French architect believes he has solved the mystery of how the great pyramids were constructed. “He believes workers used an outer ramp to build the first 43 metres (47 yards) then constructed an inner ramp to carry stones to the apex of the 137m pyramid.”

“For more than a decade, few people believed that the visionary designs which Czech architect Jan Kaplický and his partners submitted to competitions could actually be built. That only really changed after an organisation that must rank as the most unlikely patron in the history of the architectural avant-garde decided to take a punt on them.”

Museums in London and New York have recently made headlines with serious attempts to increase the profile of female artists in their collections. “Two concerns, though, arise from attempts to increase the valuation of women in art. Does the imposition of modern equalities on museums that deal with periods with different sensibilities falsify the historical record? And is a balance best achieved by the creation of separatist institutions?”

The shocking collapse of Alberta’s Prairie Art Gallery led to an outpouring of public support for the museum. But Canada’s Conservative government is standing by its policy that the nation’s museums need to stop expecting public money to be available whenever they need it. “More troubling for the country’s 2,500 museums is the fact that Ottawa has yet to produce a long-promised national museum policy. Instead, it all seems ad hoc.”