Is Steven Holl’s addition for Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, his masterpiece? “People around here were on the edge of their seats, unhappy because it’s so different, so risky. But inside it’s just incredible, really masterful.”
Category: visual
Husband Charged In Hermitage Thefts
The husband of a former Hermitage Musum curaor will be charged with the thefts of 200+ objects from the museum. “Officials said that Nikolai Zavadsky will be tried for stealing rare and valuable objects from the Hermitage along with his wife, Larissa, a former curator who died suddenly in October 2005.”
Italy: The Ethical Return Of Art
Italy’s culture minister makes his case for return of improperly acquired art on an ethical basis. “All our negotiations with various subjects are based on dossiers which are drawn from trial evidence procedures, cultural indications or on Italian law regarding Italian cultural patrimony. Our negotiations are not juridical, but on an ethical plane with all the subjects.”
Art In A Scientific Image
“The Science Photo Library was founded 25 years ago by Michael Marten after he and three colleagues published Worlds Within Worlds, the first popular book to show the new range of scientific imagery developed since the 1950s. The images were originally conceived purely as contributions to scientific knowledge, but over the years their use has extended into the worlds of art and culture.”
The Restored Yale Art Gallery
“While Yale has so far only redone the 1953 extension, designed by Louis I. Kahn, the university also plans to renovate wings that date from 1928 and 1867. It’s all part of a 10-year, $500-million plan to overhaul the entire arts campus. Work is also planned for the departments of art and art history, architecture and drama.”
Symbolically Dead
“Academics have long dismissed Symbolism as conservative. Even in the 1890s, Symbolism was criticized for its elitism and traditionalism. Yet a little more than a hundred years ago, all roads led to Symbolism. Today, Symbolism is the good art of bad ideas that people rarely know or otherwise choose to ignore.”
Bollocks, It’s Art
“Like Orwell’s Newspeak, art bollocks is variously used in a knowing way, as an in-joke, a private language, a posture, or maybe out of fear – to maintain some questionable status among equally questionable peers. This particular critical idiom has also spread from an increasingly politicised world of art theorising to adjacent areas of political and cultural criticism.”
At Last Chinese Treasure Museum Gets An Update
Taiwan’s National Palace Museum, home to the best of the 1,000-year-old art collection of China’s emperors, is often compared to leading Western institutions like the Louvre, the Prado and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After a major makeover, the museum finally has a building suitable for the art…
Artists At The Movies
Viusal artists have long played with film. But more artists are finding themselves behind conventional movie-making. “In most cases, their movies are extensions of their usual work, with one difference: the films are based on screenplays that have a fairly conventional narrative bent. They also feature seasoned actors and technical crews, and mean to reach audiences beyond museums and film festivals.”
Hollywood’s Complicated Relationship With Artists
“The movies have always loved artists, especially famous ones. Vulgar studio heads who made the money that kept them in caviar and Cuban cigars by lowballing their audiences could periodically redeem themselves by making a classy flick about the kind of real artist they themselves might be if they made classy flicks about real artists.”