Category: visual

“The Cleveland Museum of Art recently acquired a widely reproduced masterpiece by Reginald Marsh, a superlative chronicler of Depression-era life in America. The painting, ‘A Paramount Picture,’ from 1934, depicts a rumpled, working-class woman standing near a well-to-do couple outside a movie theater showing Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘Cleopatra.'” The museum has not revealed what it paid for the painting.

“Two recovered Edvard Munch paintings will go on display in Oslo before they are repaired, say museum officials. Masterpieces The Scream and Madonna were stolen by two armed men in a daring daylight raid in 2004. Police recovered the paintings in August, and Norway’s Munch Museum said both works had suffered slight damage. They will be put on display briefly over the next few weeks.”

“Last year, for the first time in decades, Christie’s claimed ascendancy over Sotheby’s. In the first half of 2006 Christie’s extended its lead, selling $2.13 billion, up 38% on 2005, while Sotheby’s turned over $1.96 billion. Since the 1960s, Sotheby’s has always claimed the lead, although the gap between the two narrowed through the 1990s.”

“Art funds are a relatively new phenomenon, spawned by the financial markets’ constant search for new gizmos and by the booming art market, particularly the contemporary art market. About 12 funds have been created in the past three years, playing off the contrast between the surging art market and the flat stock market. Those that have stayed the course include The Fine Art Fund and The China Fund. Notwithstanding their financial marginality, art funds raise interesting dilemmas when their holdings are shown in public museums.”

The Tate Museum and Washington DC’s National Gallery were both in the hunt to buy Turner’s masterpiece, The Dark Rigi. But both were outmaneuvered by a crafty London dealer…

The Seattle Art Museum considers a reporter’s suggestion that deaccessioning records be made public and agrees. “It’s never come up as an issue before. We want to be open and perfectly honest, and we try to be transparent as times change. I had to think it through, but it makes perfect sense.”

“A new study by the economist Beatriz Plaza of the University of the Basque Country suggests that the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao will not return a profit on the public funds paid to establish the institution until 2010 at the earliest, despite reports from the museum that this investment has already been paid off.”

Imminent tax code changes have American museum directors worried donations of art will dry up. But “some members of Congress saw the previous law as ripe for abuse and out of sync with most of the tax code, which does not allow fractional gifts of tangible assets and which tends to require that the public benefit for a charitable contribution occur in the same year that the taxpayer takes a deduction for the gift.”

“The Baltimore Museum of Art has received a $1 million gift from a local philanthropist to support its new policy of free admission to the public that begins Oct. 1. Suzanne F. Cohen, former chairwoman of the BMA board and a long-time supporter of the museum’s programs, donated the money last November, during her tenure as board chair, to establish an endowment that will be known as the Cohen Family Fund for Free Admission, the museum said.”

“The destruction of the World Trade Center is part of the reason American architecture is more brash and experimental than ever before. The void left by the collapse of the world’s most recognizable pair of towers showed us with grim clarity that buildings matter — as icons, as memories, as something we all share. … After a generation where conformity was the norm, we’ll soon learn if provocative drama has a place in America’s urban landscape. Cities across the country are opening the door to imaginative designs that exult in the unexpected — and at skyline scale.”