Category: visual

The Victoria & Albert Museum says it will drop fees for publishing images in scholarly books and magazines. “Reproduction costs now often make it difficult to publish specialist art historical material. The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges.”

Five Ottawa national museums get $100 million from the Canadian government to fix up their buildings. “Many of Ottawa’s national cultural institutions have complained about the decline of their facilities for years, saying they have had to defer necessary repairs and upgrades due to lack of funds.”

German-born artist Tomma Abts has become the first woman painter to win the controversial Turner Prize in its 22-year history.

“Chicago-based Merchandise Mart Properties Inc… last year bought Art Chicago, the longest-running and once-leading contemporary art fair in the country, from its longtime producer. Its team will be at Art Basel Miami Beach — as it has been at other such fairs around the world — to try to make the contacts and find the elements that could return Art Chicago to international prominence… Part of the Mart’s plan is to host five concurrent commercial shows, of varying size and focus, in its complex along the Chicago River.”

“If things are looking up for architecture in the 21st century, it’s partly because of the roof. After decades of neglect, it is once again becoming the most visible element of new buildings, let alone whole cities. All those flat-roofed towers constructed since the 1950s and ’60s are being reimagined as occasions for greenery, gardens, pools, playgrounds and even parks. Then there’s the advent of Google Earth, a free computer program that has people everywhere looking at buildings — and entire cities — from the top down. Suddenly, the whole planet has been turned into a roofscape.”

“In an article published this week in the prestigious science journal Nature, two physicists contend that a method intended to identify complex geometric patterns in the seemingly chaotic drip paintings of Jackson Pollock is flawed and may be useless in the increasingly convoluted world of authenticating Pollock’s work.”

“Russia’s largest company, Gazprom, announced on Friday that it had chosen the architecture firm RMJM London to design [St. Peterburg’s] tallest building, brushing aside arguments from preservationists and residents that the project — whoever the architect — would destroy the city’s architectural harmony.”

Admission to England’s museums and galleries has been free for five years. “To mark the occasion, the government released figures which showed an average 83% rise in visits to museums and galleries which formerly charged. That is 30m extra visits, says the government, and something to be celebrated, according to the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell.” But some warn that if the state cuts its support, the price barrier may have to go back up.

A large percentage of the American art world seems to accept, without argument, the idea that New York is the art center of the world, and has no peer. But the dean of the Yale School of Art and curator of next year’s Venice Biennale is on a mission to get artists and art lovers to look beyond New York, which he says is overvalued to a ridiculous degree. Robert Storr says that the most interesting modern art is coming from Asia and Africa, that the best-run museum in the country is in Minneapolis, and that the art world’s obsession with money allows the New York-centric viewpoint to thrive.

Proving that a painting is what someone thinks it is can be a daunting task, especially when there is evidence that it may have been painted by an old master whose name would make the canvas worth millions. This week, a once-disputed Rembrandt will go under the hammer in New York, and whoever buys it will inherit quite a history along with the art. The painting, which was discovered in 1972, wasn’t certified as a Rembrandt until nearly a quarter-century later, and its story underlines the important advances that have been made in art analysis over the past few decades.