Category: visual

The Australian government is launching an investigation into the business practices of selling Aboriginal art. “Once a $750,000 business in 1971, aboriginal art is now reputed to bring in at least $149 million. But many well-known aboriginal artists continue to live in third world conditions in remote communities, sometimes paid with a crate of beer or a used four-wheel drive, while their representatives are seen driving brand new Rolls Royces in downtown Sydney.”

These days it isn’t enough to open a temple and expect the people will follow. In Delhi the creators of a new temple has added a little Hollywood pizzaz. “The creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it’s a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade.”

“The year-old project offers free access to claimants, enabling them both to search the site’s extensive inventory of objects believed to have been looted during World War II, and to list objects they believe had at one time belonged to their families.”

The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth Texas is returning a JMW Turner painting to heirs of the collector from whom it was stolen by the Nazis. This “puts a big hole in our collection. This was our only Turner and we don’t have a Constable either, so we’re missing both of these two great British landscapists. But this is one of those cases where the evidence was very strong that it was from a forced sale under the Nazi regime, and morally there was only one thing to do, which was to give it back.”

“Engineering Art is in part a dating agency between creatives and science, through events that Dr Miodownik organises at Tate Modern to get architects, artists and designers just to feel materials, to ‘innovate through their fingers’, learn their properties and get them ‘out there’ on buildings. Their obsession with novelty means that architects are as sensitive to trends as schoolkids.”

“Contemporary art prices have quadrupled since 1995, according to index-maker Art Market Research. In recent years, they’ve been propelled by growth in the U.S. and emerging markets, where wealthy businessmen have started to buy their national art at international auctions.” But a new report says art prices could collapse if there’s a global economic slowdown.

“In recent years, many cities have re-evaluated their approaches to public art and are incorporating new ideas, while other cities remain stuck on the original model. Milwaukee, more or less, falls into the latter category and is serving as a case study for hundreds of arts professionals in town for the Americans for the Arts national conference.”

The director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lars Nittve, has asked the Swedish government for 50m Swedish crowns ($6.8m) to buy work by female artists. The museum, which houses 250,000 20th-century works, has around nine times as many pieces by men as by women in its collection

“The Blue Rigi was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a 10-minute bidding battle at Christie’s in London. The work, which Christie’s described as “the most important watercolour to appear at auction for over 50 years”, had been expected to fetch about £2m.”

Without apparent warning, an iconic mural by artist Kent Twitchell depicting fellow artist Ed Ruscha was painted over Friday in Los Angeles. “It’s always been such a popular piece in the art world and in Los Angeles. I had no idea it was in danger in any way. To not be notified, to have it be a fait accompli…. It will take a while for the shock to wear off. It was sort of my ‘Mona Lisa’; I worked on it for nine years.”