Category: visual

The Stirling Prize is the UK’s top honor for architecture. Yet “many of the other buildings to scoop the prize have failed to live up to the praise heaped on them. Critics say architects have become detached from everyday life and are calling for a rethink of the prize so that buildings are judged on how well they stand up to use.”

The art market has become so hot that collectors are jockeying for an edge in buying. “The most important thing an art adviser can provide is access. It’s become much more difficult to buy art these days, especially in the primary market, which is highly imperfect because, unlike auction buying, it’s a closed system based largely on relationships of trust.”

Paris’ new Branly Museum is a disaster, writes Robert Campbell. “Everywhere in the Branly, the architecture crowds out the treasures it contains. It’s the mud-like interior you remember, not the displays. This is one of many museums now being built that have been conceived as tourist destinations. The architecture is supposed to be part of the tourist magnet.”

Houston’s Children’s Museum is doubling in size. “Designed by Robert Venturi, one of the United States’ best-known architects, the museum’s current home opened in 1992 and was designed to accommodate 350,000 visitors a year. Annual attendance runs at about 600,000.”

Museums are experimenting with technologies such as YouTube. “Much the same way that MoMA and other contemporary museums added photography and film as artists began working with them, the Internet is becoming an increasingly important creative medium.”

“Buyers for contemporary Russian art were overwhelmingly non-Russian until around five years ago. But no longer. A new class of collectors has appeared, while contemporary galleries are springing up fast in Moscow.”

Two paintings by Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning have been sold for $143.5 million in a private transaction. Media mogul David Geffen was the seller, and the buyers are a pair of hedge fund billionaires looking to up the profile of their own collections.

Nicolai Ouroussoff says that Daniel Libeskind’s new addition to the Denver Art Museum is a mighty piece of work, but also one which embodies “all of the contradictions within Mr. Libeskind’s oeuvre. Its bold, often mesmerizing forms reaffirm the originality of his talent, yet its tortured geometries make it a daunting place to install or view art — hardly a minor drawback. And for all its emotional power, the building seems eerily out of date, and its flaws readily apparent.”

Inga Saffron loves the new Libeskind addition. “When the prow of the museum’s new Hamilton Building cruises into view, it is a staggering sight. Its slashing, titanium-sheathed planes thrust up from Denver’s wide-open city grid like a newborn Rocky Mountain… In contrast with its ponderous, earthbound neighbors, his museum looks ready for a springy takeoff.”

An installation piece by San Francisco artist William T. Wiley was damaged over the weekend during the opening celebrations of the newly expanded Denver Art Museum. Parts of the installation were knocked to the floor when a visitor tripped into them. Museum officials aren’t saying how severe the damage is.