Category: visual

Some high profile thefts at Turkish museums have drawn attention to lax security there. “Although 78 of the country’s 93 state museums are equipped with electronic security systems, archaeologists in the field assert that those systems often malfunction or are insufficient. Thorough museum inventories, crucial to security measures, are rarely taken in Turkey’s museums. And of the objects that have been documented in display cases or in warehouse storage, experts say, many were registered by unqualified workers lacking critical reference information.”

Unesco is considering removing Stonehenge from the World Heritage list. Why? The site has “poor traffic management”.

Christie’s has removed an ancient Egyptian vessel from sale over concerns about how it was taken out of Egypt. “Upon receiving information which led us to believe that the object had possibly been improperly taken out of Egypt, we contacted the appropriate U.S. authorities and withdrew the item from the sale,”

Collectors have been on a buying spree as ArtBasel begins. “The quality this year is very high and so are the prices. People always say great material is hard to find, but we’re seeing it here–because right now, this week in Basel, is an excellent time to sell.”

“With 55,000 visitors to 300 stands, the world’s biggest modern- and contemporary-art fair is part of a $1.5 billion spring sale cycle, from New York’s May auctions to London’s this month. Early reports from dealers indicate buyers aren’t yet deterred by stock-market jitters from the U.S. to Russia.”

The opening of this year’s ArtBasel has been marred by the resignation of the organization’s charismatic director Sam Keller. “Keller will leave ArtBasel in 2008 to take up the helm at the Beyeler Foundation, replacing current director Christoph Vitali. The foundation, established in 1982 by the collector Ernst Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, houses a permanent collection of modern art in a building designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.”

Before Ralph Rugoff was a curator and museum director, he was a critic. “For more than 15 years, the new director of the Hayward Gallery in London has shaken up art audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, inspiring them to engage with the kind of puzzling, cerebral work that tends to put off all but the most dedicated of contemporary art aficionados.”

London is to be transformed by large buildings. “Power and money are what have made it both ugly and voraciously successful. It’s a largely unplanned city, with buildings that come and go. Little or nothing stays still in London. The drive for money makes it a restless creature, forever biting off its own limbs and watching them grow back in new, bigger and shinier forms.”

“By general agreement, he was the best artist of the twentieth century. How good was that? His sheer significance, as the god of modernity in painting, has always beggared ultimate judgment. Now the issue is being forced, at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, by direct comparisons of his work with that of the Old Masters who, from time to time, were important to him, either as models or as goads—notably Velázquez and Goya.”

“The painted portrait tried to give the answer before the advent of photography (though each medium provides a different answer), but it was always constrained by the demands of the times in which it was being painted. The painter was not necessarily trying to achieve an exact likeness – the face, for centuries, was the least important part of the portrait. What mattered was giving an impression of status – it was the clothes, the jewels, the background that spoke loudest. Nevertheless, there is still something to be learned from standing and staring.”