Category: visual

“As we head into a month full of exhibitions devoted to feminist art — including the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles — a reasonable question might be: Why now? Why, 30 years after the heyday of the feminist art movement, are we putting this work under the lens?”

“As MOCA’s development events manager, coordinating an average of 35 events a year, [Vanessa] Gonzalez is more rock ‘n’ roll chick than art geek, with her platinum hair, platform shoes, high-gloss lips and vanity plates that say ‘GR*UPIE.’ Over the past five years, she’s produced events that have made MOCA one of the hottest social tickets in town…. With the growing L.A. art scene, the museum’s membership has also shot up….”

“Australia’s most prestigious portrait prize has been awarded to John Beard for his painting of a fellow artist. Beard, a Welsh-born artist, painted Janet Laurence in oil and wax on linen. The monochrome portrait of Ms Laurence’s head and shoulders, measuring about one square metre, today took out the $35,000 Archibald Prize.”

“Someone out there has a problem with art. … The evidence is the bright green and purple splashes of paint that began appearing on walls in Brooklyn and Manhattan more than a month ago. The carefully aimed blobs obscured or disfigured dozens of pieces of street art created by people who may not be household names, but who have achieved the esteem of peers and some recognition from the mainstream art world.”

“Two Picasso paintings with a combined value of 50 million euros (£33.7m) have been stolen from his granddaughter’s home in Paris… There was no evidence of an attempted break-in at the home in the city’s seventh arrondissement, police said. The organised crime squad of the Paris police force is investigating.”

“A US art collector who had paintings valued at £20m stolen from his home in Massachusetts has won a legal battle in London to have them returned to him. Michael Bakwin asked the High Court to award him ownership rights on four canvasses, which were taken in 1978 and ended up with Sotheby’s auction house.”

“As the art market booms and interest in collecting grows, museums around the world are expanding with new buildings, new branches and new styles. … A new golden age of museums or a profit-motivated bubble?” Major gallery directors convened in Tokyo this month to ponder their survival strategy.

“Congress is taking another hard look at the Smithsonian Institution’s funding and governance after an audit showed the top official at the museum complex had nearly $90,000 in unauthorized expenses, including private jet travel and expensive gifts. Lawrence M. Small, 65, who became secretary of the Smithsonian in 2000, will earn $915,698 this year in total compensation….”

“No other tower in America is shaped so resolutely by the desire to create a healthy environment for workers while reducing the use of energy and natural resources. And no other high-rise so casually defies expectations of how a tower ‘ought’ to look.”

Making lists of favorite buildings is problematic. The Architecture Institute of America did a poll, and critic Robert Campbell says there are some lessons. “It’s hard to ignore the fact that so many of the most admired modernist architects are missing. There’s nothing by Mies van der Rohe — not the Seagram tower in New York, nor the Farnsworth House near Plano, Ill., nor Crown Hall in Chicago.”