Category: visual

“Naked figures writhe in an eerie darkness. Vicious beasts bare their teeth and snarl. The faces of lost souls cry out in unimaginable agony, forced into strange and contorted positions reminiscent of crucifixion. Such a vision evokes a scene of the apocalypse typical of 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But no, these paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero are depictions of real events. Despite their hellish subject matter, they are all meticulously based on photographs and press accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.” Having made their way from Europe, they’re now on view in New York.

“Buried deep inside Pennsylvania’s voluminous, multibillion-dollar capital budget for fiscal year 2001-02 was $7 million for ‘restoration, stabilization and site enhancements for the Barnes Foundation.’ Fifteen pages later, the budget set aside another $100 million for ‘design and construction of a museum facility’ to house the Barnes collection.”

A growing number of museums are spying on their patrons, trying to better understand how visitors interact with the museum. “Known collectively as ‘visitor studies,’ the movement has its own experts, its own literature, its own conferences. Spying is only part of the equation.”

Thirty-five thousand people showed up for the opening weekend of the new Denver Art Museum. “The large weekend crowds resulted in the museum running out of free tickets to enter the new $110 million wing less than 24 hours into the event.”

When architect Steven Holl was selected to design a new Denver courthouse in December, “it was a celebratory moment for a city anticipating a building with his signature way with light. But in August and September the terrain between city and architect turned from tension to termination.”

“Their 10 panels depict scenes from the Old Testament, intricately illustrated in high and low relief. When the three-ton, 20-foot-tall doors were completed, in 1452, Michelangelo pronounced them grand enough to adorn the entrance to paradise, and so they became known as ‘The Gates of Paradise.’ They have for centuries been considered one of the masterpieces of Western art.”

“One of the most beautiful and infamous treasure hoards of the 20th century, 14 pieces of Roman-era silver of staggering quality, will resurface today on display in London, to the consternation of leading archaeologists who regard it as archaeological loot.”

“Inspired by a glimpse of the Rocky Mountains gained as he first flew into Denver, Libeskind’s new building for the Denver Art Museum sits like an alien craft amid the civic grandeur of the mile-high city’s downtown. Docked at an angle on a vacant plot of land, its hull shimmers in the sun, the titanium surface reflecting the colours around it, silver and ochre fading into a brackish brown. The stern of the ship is a jumble of metal boxes, stacked any which way. Its prow looms over the adjoining road, jutting out toward the museum’s existing building, a grey crenellated mausoleum of a place.”

“As he received the £20,000 prize to a standing ovation, Lord Rogers described his £1.2 billion building at Madrid’s Barajas airport, with its mile-long wavy roof designed to look like billowing clouds tethered to the ground, as “the greatest experience I’ve had in architecture since the Pompidou Centre (his 1970s building in Paris).”

“ArtReview magazine’s annual list of the 100 most powerful people in the contemporary art scene was published yesterday, prompting predictable modest coughs from those who found themselves near the top, and sniffy dismissals from those who had been bumped down the list or, worse, banished altogether.”