Category: visual

Today’s aggressive art market is “operating as a passive but powerful vacuum, literally tearing important paintings and sculptures from public walls and civic galleries. Current levels of public protection are not strong enough, and we risk the loss of irreplaceable treasures. Standards need to change.”

“As the art market has heated up and ultra-rich individuals have plunged into collecting, it might appear that museums can’t buy anything — least of all at auction, where prices can unexpectedly skyrocket.” But with the right friends…

“Is there such a thing as ‘women’s art’? Do we any longer need to think of women as a special group? Should there be a prize for women artists? For many, the terms female and male are simply cultural.”

This week Seattle opens a major new $85 million sculpture park. “In a city whose entrepreneurs profess that the survival of salmon is as important as economic revitalization or the arts, it seems natural that the park, the museum and downtown development are so closely intertwined.”

“The park has already captured the attention of city planners in New York and Paris for the innovative way it reunites the city and shore, and it’s being hailed as an amazing gift: Most of its $85 million price tag was paid by private donations.”

“A growing number of art museums in the US are incorporating sustainable technologies into their multi-million dollar expansions. Yet for every ­environmentally conscious museum, there are several leading art institutions that have given limited attention to ecological issues.”

“After months of rumors and a week of protests, the French government has finally confirmed that in exchange for a sum said to be $800 million to $1 billion, it will rent the name, art treasures and expertise of the Louvre to a new museum to be built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.”

With major French museums loaning (renting?) some of their significant art to museums in other parts of the world, a debate about the practice has broken out. “Such deep cooperation goes far beyond the typical museum loans for exhibits — and the sheer number of operations in progress has some in the art world worried that France’s museums will be put under strain.”

A Los Angeles artists is unhappy that a piece he made for the city was given away as a going away present last summer to Margie J. Reese, former general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Christie’s says its auction sales were up 36 percent last year to $4.7 billion. “Christie’s and its rival Sotheby’s are benefiting from low interest rates and a 10-year trebling of contemporary prices that have made art an attractive investment for billionaires from Ronald Lauder in the U.S. to Hong Kong’s Joseph Lau. Sellers have been lured with promises of benefits such as minimum prices.”