Category: visual

It’s Sydney Biennale time again, and if there’s one word to describe this year’s edition, it’s “big.” From “an installation of 180,000 hand-sized clay figurines” to “a cunning combination of twisted modernist aesthetics and surveillance technology” that fills a room, Sydney is awash in outsized art.

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has removed Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams from the guest list for a major exhibition of “revolutionary” art, saying that his presence would be inappropriate. The exhibit’s curator, a personal friend of Adams’, is reportedly furious, but the V&A is so far standing firm. Adams led the political wing of the Irish Republican Army when the IRA was regularly mounting terrorist attacks on London, and many Britons hold him responsible, despite the IRA’s recent decision to lay down arms.

A reporter for the BBC has returned a 16th-century portrait by Florentine painter Alessandro Allori to a Berlin museum after discovering that the work was an original looted during World War II, and not a copy, as he had previously thought. Charles Wheeler was given the painting by a German farmer in 1952, but only thought to look into its origins last year.

Baltimore’s two largest art museums are scrapping their admission fees, an initiative made possible by a major grant from city and county governments. “The new policy, modeled on that of several other museums nationwide, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Cincinnati Art Museum, is aimed at boosting attendance, increasing visitor diversity and raising the city’s profile as a tourist destination.”

Just in time for the unveiling of its new $50 million expansion, the Minneapolis Insitute of Arts has acquired a pricey new piece for its collection. “The Louis XV-era painting Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume by Alexander Roslin was bought from the New York gallery Wildenstein & Co.” for $3 million, making it the most expensive work acquired by the MIA in nearly a decade.

You knew it had to happen eventually. Now that “American Idol,” “America’s Next Top Model,” “Project Runway” and “Top Chef” have all wrapped up for the season, it’s finally time for serious art to take its turn on the Reality TV Tilt-A-Whirl of Fame. “‘Artstar’ is an eight-week reality-TV series in which eight artists, age 22 to 67, vie for an exhibition at a popular New York gallery. All involved should be ashamed of themselves, but, hey, dude, it’s, like, a new age and, basically, here’s something amazing that will resonate, totally and absolutely.”

“Prosecutors at the conspiracy trial of [Marion True,] a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, presented on Wednesday photographs of a pair of ancient marble griffins — one of the glories of the Getty’s collection — lying in a car trunk, encrusted with grime and loosely wrapped in newspaper… Prosecutors said that the photographs, seized in a raid on a Swiss warehouse in 1995, show that the griffins were illegally dug up and removed from Italy.”

A Japanese acoustics expert says he’s been able to recreate Mona Lisa’s voice. “Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height at 168cm and create a model of her skull. Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned.”

“Buried under 13 feet of rubble and stones just 16 feet away from King Tutankhamun’s resting place, the chamber is believed to be the 63rd tomb found since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century. It is the first chamber discovered since the boy pharaoh was uncovered in 1922.”

Two bronze statues worth £45,000 in total have become the latest artworks to be stolen by thieves believed to be taking sculptures for their scrap value in the UK.