A number of groups have pledged to rebuild Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas which were destroyed by the Taliban. “The people are poor, and many of the poorest live in caves in the cliff side – their first priority is to eat. But a lot of them want to see the statues reconstructed. The only thing we can do to bring change here is to develop tourism.”
Category: visual
The Black Art Of Art Sales Projections
By most accounts, this year’s Basel Miami Art Fair was a bifg success. “By the time the fair closed on Dec. 10, three top sellers estimated that sales totaled between $200 million and $400 million, and dealers of both young and established artists reported turnover as strong or even stronger than that of a year ago. But CultureGrrl is skeptical: “What exactly does this mean? Apparently, three anonymous wheeler-dealers, out of the 200 gallerists with booths at the fair, tallied up their own totals, consulted the gossip grapevine, and came up with separate guesstimates of what the other 197 dealers had done.”
Is Hirst-The-Collector Killing Hirst-The-Artist?
Damien Hirst has put up a show of art he has collected. “While all this energy and ambition is admirable, there is a risk that the whirligig of activity is distracting him from his own work. Hirst urgently needs to reinvigorate his practice, after harsh criticism of recent shows in New York and London. But is he doing so?”
Cleveland Museum Gets New Leader
The Cleveland Museum of Art has named longtime trustee Alfred Rankin Jr. as its new president. “Rankin, who has served on the board 14 years, succeeds former museum president James Bartlett, a retired venture capitalist, who will stay on as co-chairman, along with Cleveland lawyer Michael Horvitz.”
Bringing Back An Architect’s Vision
Yale University’s famously influential art gallery designed by architect Louis Kahn has reopened following a three-year restoration. “The university lavished the spectacular sum of $44 million – enough to finance an entire new museum – on reconstructing Kahn’s loftlike gallery, replacing its entire steel-and-glass window wall… Although the Yale gallery now looks brand new, the Polshek architects initially despaired over their ability to correct its severe structural problems without compromising the architect’s vision.”
Rutgers Picks An Architect For Its Transformation
“With a cylindrical glass academic building and a new undulating landscape that will extend the campus right to ‘the banks of the old Raritan,’ the Mexican architect Enrique Norten has won the competition to reimagine the historic Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey… Undetermined is how much the overall project will cost and how long it will take. Rutgers hopes to raise much of the money from public and possibly private sources.”
Will W’s Oils Fetch This Much?
“A Moroccan landscape by Sir Winston Churchill fetched £612,500 in auction at Sotheby’s today. The figure was far in excess of the painting’s estimated price tag of £250,000.”
National Portrait Gallery Director To Retire
“National Portrait Gallery Director Marc Pachter, who has held a series of high-profile jobs during his 33 years at the Smithsonian Institution, announced yesterday that he will step down next October.”
Why The Getty Is Giving Back To Greece
The museum agreed Monday to return two antiquities. “The pivotal factor leading to the pact… was a dossier of evidence presented to the Getty’s lawyers in October indicating that the statue and wreath were illegally spirited out of Greece before the museum bought them in 1993 for about $4.4 million.”
V & A – How Do You Rehang An Encyclopedia?
The Victoria & Albert Museum “has been opening the first galleries in its £110 million plan to re-display its entire collection, a transformation that is both necessary and welcome, but which has made a lot of people in the art world uneasy.”