Category: visual

“With global auction sales hitting $4.2 billion last year and scores of new galleries fighting for inventory, some dealers are reaching out to a largely untapped group of American artists: the impossibly precocious. From art hubs like New York to spots like Fort Wayne, Ind., dealers, collectors and museum curators are scouting artists still in their teens and early 20s. Painters who aren’t old enough to rent a car are hiring personal assistants, turning down interviews and having their work snapped up by such major collectors as Michael Ovitz and Charles Saatchi.”

Metropolitan Museum of Art director Phillipe De Montebello wonders why American museums and collectors have been targeted for return of looted artifacts, but not those in other countries. “I must say I am puzzled at one thing, which is the absence of claims against collectors and museums in Germany, Spain, the U.K., Switzerland, Denmark and Japan, among others. They were buying from dealers at least as much as the dealers now under indictment in the United States. I think we should reflect on why only the U.S. is being the target of claims.”

For years, admission to the Chicago Art Institute has been by “suggested donation.” “Patrons had to pay something, though one could pay as little as $1. Most visitors paid the full, posted price.” No more. “Museum officials are now asking the Chicago Park District Board for permission to make the listed admission fee mandatory.”

It was not very long ago that the enormity of the 9/11 tragedy united New York City in ways that surprised even the idealists. But hard-bitten observers of the development scene predicted from the beginning that hope, crystallized in architects’ renderings of soaring towers and austere landscapes of grief, would need to be tempered by ‘reality.’ They’ve gotten their way. At Ground Zero, design is distrusted and shunted aside at every turn in favor of the same enervating commercial product that can be erected and rented for a fraction of the cost elsewhere.” But maybe Barcelona offers a better way?

“Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied. Archaeologists said American soldiers even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags. But Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials are not giving up on it.”

Want to spend your days around art? That’s what museum security guards do. So “when it comes to the people who guard art, visitors might be surprised to find that in more than a few cases, underneath that stern visage and pressed uniform there beats the heart of an artist.”

The market for Australian art is on the rise, with a couple of million-dollar sales recently. The managing director of Sotheby’s says “people were in for a few surprises in the next few years on what the Australian market could achieve. It’s not fully priced … one could argue the whole market is undervalued.”

Dozens of paintings have disappeared from British embassies around the world in the past decade. “At least 42 paintings, prints and sculptures from the Government Art Collection have been stolen, lost or destroyed, according to information gained through the Freedom of Information Act. None of the works were insured and apart from objects that were known to have been stolen, more than half the total simply disappeared for no known reason.”

“The original Patent Office in Washington, D.C., considered one of the America’s best examples of Greek revival architecture, is nearing the end of a $300 million renovation. When the building reopens on July 1, the two Smithsonian museums it houses – the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum – will be newly accessible to the public.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has more art than it could possibly exhibit. The museum has an acquistions budget of only $1.2 million a year. But there are signs the PMA is in an acquisitive mood…