Category: visual

The museum business is thriving in the UK, where 42 million people visited museums last year. “The real seeds of change were sown in previous decades, when many museums split from outside authorities and set up as independent trusts. This gave them control over management and fund-raising, leaving them ideally placed to benefit from the great millennium giveaway of millions of pounds. The best of the schemes that survived have changed the whole landscape of the arts.”

Conventional wisdom: Los Angeles doesn’t care about inspired architecture. But “it’s becoming harder to make that argument these days, as developers, arts benefactors and academic institutions in Los Angeles begin to embrace the notion that cutting-edge design — however costly — can sow both economic and social dividends by spurring development and enlightening the public.”

“A wave of public and private building projects is suddenly focusing unusual attention on Rome’s rich subterranean world as one treasure after another emerges at a steady clip.”

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” stolen in 2004 and recovered after two years, appears to have been damaged by water. “Water has been absorbed by one corner of the paper board, and there is abrasion damage on the lower part of the painting, We have a large swath that is very visible.”

“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired Thomas Eakins’ ‘Wrestlers,’ a large-scale sporting painting created by the American realist in 1899, the museum announced Thursday. Michael Govan, LACMA’s director and chief executive, called the painting ‘one of the most significant acquisitions the museum has ever made’.”

“The collection contains about 7,500 works by more than 2,000 British artists, including works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, Paula Rego, and Gillian Wearing. Now, for the first time, the catalogue of the collection can be seen online.”

A painting believed to have been stolen from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum five years ago was presented Wednesday to the leader of Russia’s Communist Party.

You can often measure a city’s art scene by the number of parties, galas, and other hoity-toity social events built around it. L.A. has never been much of an “art party” town, but lately, that seems to be changing, as art and artists become the focal point of a diverse array of events. “Changes in the art world social milieu may reflect a larger cultural shift… All the partying is great for art. It plays an important function. At the heart of great art is great social energy.”

Architecture may be the one art form that everyone in the world can’t help but encounter and interact with on a daily basis, and yet, most people understand as much about architecture as they do about a Brahms symphony. Boston architect Stephen Chung is hoping to change that, with a new television show that “decodes contemporary public-space architecture” for a general audience.