Category: visual

“Their method was simple. They bought cheap paintings at estate sales, antique shops, small auction houses and even garage sales, then turned around and offered them for sale on eBay. They bid against each other (shill bidding) to drive up the prices and wrote descriptions of the art that suggested the sellers didn’t know the extent of the “treasures” they owned. They listed art under a wide range of user IDs (legitimate) and complimented each other’s false practices (illegitimate).”

Conventional wisdom these days says that art unfairly looted by invading armies (especially Nazis) should be returned to its rightful owner and country of origin, no matter the consequences. So it was that Gustav Klimt’s famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was removed from Austria’s National Gallery and returned to the model’s heirs last year. Rather than keep the painting, however, the family promptly took it to auction, where it sold for a record $135 million. Now, one of the most famous paintings in the world is hanging in a New York businessman’s Fifth Avenue gallery, 4000 miles from its Austrian home.

Paris’s new Musée du quai Branly has been absorbing plenty of body blows from critics since opening last month, but Lisa Rochon points out how seldom the city of light has even attempted architectural provocation, and says that the Branly “a scandalous and necessary aberration that drags its jagged edge over the lousy, looting history of the French colonial era… And herein lies the great dilemma of the museum — its very existence is an assault on aboriginal peoples around the world.”

“After nearly 30 years together, Kendall College and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian are going their own ways. On Sept. 1, Kendall plans to give title to the museum’s land, building and collection, all in northwest Evanston, Illinois, to a non-profit formed to assume them.” The split has been years in the making, as “Kendall wanted assurances that the new non-profit — which was named after the museum — had the wherewithal to sustain the Mitchell.”

In an attempt to compensate for an operating deficit that has been averaging $3 million per year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is hiking its suggested admission fee to $20. The Met’s admission charge has always been voluntary, but the museum doesn’t go out of its way to call attention to that fact, and some are already complaining that the hike will discourage many lower-income individuals from seeing one of New York’s great museums.

Lee Rosenbaum takes a look at claims by one scholar that the Metropolitan Museum’s Duccio (for which it paid $50 million last year) is a fake. “None of this proves that the painting is a fake from the 19th century, as Beck somewhat recklessly claims, or even that it’s not by Duccio. The Met’s conservation lab has done a technical examination of the painting that it says provides additional support for the attribution. It should release those findings in detail (including any attempts to date the painting scientifically), to help clarify these matters.”

So Abu Dhabi is to get a Guggenheim Museum. “If there’s one place that doesn’t need an economically regenerating ‘Guggenheim effect’ it’s surely oil-rich Abu Dhabi. Is this a genuine cultural initiative, or just a ploy to lure Middle East shoppers away from Dubai’s designer boutiques? But what will they actually put in the new museum?”

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London have made an agreement to share collections. “Under the new arrangement, the Fine Arts Museums and the V&A will have preferential position for sharing exhibitions they respectively organize.”

The Smithsonian Museums need some urgent attention from Congress – both financial and ethical. “The Smithsonian’s leaders and their congressional overseers are allowing too much of our national museum to be transformed into a series of pavilions where, in exchange for sponsorship money and other deals, corporations may determine what parts of the American story should be told.”

David Altmejd, 32, a Montrealer who works in New York and London, was chosen by a Canada Council jury in a nationwide competition.