Category: visual

So some Americans are determined to build a fence between Mexico and the US. But what should that fence look like? “Maybe some form of backyard diplomacy is in order — Mexico is no enemy — and there are obvious suspects for the job: professional designers, whose duty it is to come up with welcome solutions that defy ugly problems; to create appeal where there might be none.”

“Defections seem to be contagious in Chelsea these days. Long-settled artists are suddenly playing the field, ditching their dealers in favor of galleries with bigger spaces, better locations, stronger connections to museums and collectors and — perhaps most important — a star-studded roster of artists. The difference today, many dealers say, is that it’s the successful artists — whose work commands dizzying sums— who are defecting.”

“A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.”

“There has been intense speculation about the destination of the five Klimts since they were returned to Maria Altmann earlier this year. Some believed their exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA, until 30 June) was preliminary to an offer from the museum for the works.”

There’s an attempt to tear down London’s Commonwealth Institute. “The fate of the Commonwealth Institute is one of those turning points in the history of taste… When it was new, this was as modern as official London got: a slightly shocking intrusion to the skyline against the backdrop of a Royal Park, with an interior that had something of the flavour of an expo. Of course, that fragile-looking roof leaked almost from the beginning and, as coup followed coup, the dioramas couldn’t keep up with changing political and economic realities. The building’s present ramshackle state, betraying brave hopes gone sour, is a pretty accurate reflection of the Commonwealth itself.”

Much has been made of the cultural building boom going on in Minneapolis, but Blair Kamin says that not all the new stuff is worthy of attention. In particular, architect Michael Graves’ new addition to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a major disappointment. “Some neighbors of the museum liken his addition to a mausoleum or a big-box store, a not-so-veiled shot at the wing’s chief sponsor, Minneapolis-based Target Corp.”

Cesar Pelli’s newly opened Minneapolis Central Library cuts an imposing figure on the northern edge of the city’s downtown. Pelli designed the building to be adaptable well into the future, and to function as a public gathering space in the city center. “But the library falters as a public presence, owing to the aesthetic gulf between its expressionistic roof and its plain-Jane wings. Pelli’s attempts to elevate the mundane wings above the level of a suburban office building cannot overcome their banal geometry. [Still, the building is] light-filled and democratic in spirit, endeavoring to make people feel comfortable rather than intimidated.”

“Frank Lloyd Wright came tantalizingly close to redefining the Washington skyline. The master architect was commissioned to design a $15 million complex at the corner of Florida and Connecticut avenues. Two drawings from 1940 — which appear in an exhibition opening today at the National Building Museum — show how the neighborhood above Dupont Circle could have become a stunning landmark equal to New York’s Rockefeller Center.” So what happened? Wright’s self-importance apparently rubbed the Washington bureaucracy the wrong way, and what could have been a major urban initiative died at the hands of the local zoning code. All of which explains how Wright came to build a major skyscraper in the middle of an Oklahoma prairie.

Three hundred and fifty artifacts worth $100 million in the Getty Museum have been identified as having questionable provenance. “The newly identified objects include many of the most prestigious and striking exhibits at the trust’s recently reopened Getty Villa, the only museum in the US dedicated to ancient art. Thirty-five of the museum’s catalogue of 104 “masterpieces” feature on the new list of disputed artefacts. They include a sculpture of two griffins, a marble and limestone sculpture of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and a bronze known as Victorious Youth, which is displayed in its own temperature-controlled room.”

In an effort to resolve amicably a dispute over looted antiquities, Italian authorities have offered a deal to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. “If accepted, the deal would be similar to that struck earlier this year by the Italians with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Met agreed in February to return six objects –including the famous, 2,500-year-old Euphronios krater. In return, the Met will receive objects ‘of equivalent beauty and importance’ for as long as four years, the longest Italian law will allow. In addition, the Italians will permit the Met to conduct archeological digs in Italy, and to take out loans of works discovered.”