Category: visual

A bizarre dig in Bosnia threatens an archaeologically rich area. “The prospect of their own Valley of the Kings has captured the imagination of many Bosnians desperate for a way to boost the shattered economy and raise the national pride of a country racked by conflict. Opponents of the project are, however, horrified at the prospect of irreparable damage to an area they believe is important enough to be a tourist attraction without a pyramid, yet warrants further archaeological research.”

DC’s Phillips Collection has built an extension behind its traditional facade. “Preserving this facade was a big mistake,” writes Benjamin Forgey. It was “a fruitless exercise in neighborhood nostalgia. After nearly 30 years of experience with our preservation ordinance, we as a city ought to have learned not to fear the architectural future, but to embrace it. And then to apply the law accordingly. Thus, a great opportunity was lost. Instead of getting a new building that speaks honestly about what is behind its facade — and that speaks for the 21st century while respecting its neighbors — we got a timorous fake.”

Sales of British antiques are falling. “In 2004/05 dealers sold art and antiques worth an estimated total of £647m ($1.16 billion), down from an estimated £658m in 2003/04.”

Sixty years after Edvard Much died and 40 years since the Munch Museum opened in Oslo, scholars are trying to track down all the artist’s work. And 70 major paintings are unaccounted for. “The paintings which cannot be found are probably in private collections. ‘In some cases we have an idea who owns the works, but they have not replied when we’ve contacted them’.”

Simon Doonan is under attack for allegedly stealing an artist’s ideas for the store windows Doonan designs. “Underlying the whole debacle is the horribly flawed idea that artists are somehow at the apex of our society. According to this ridiculous thinking, artists are somehow innately superior to us window dressers, or to coffee-shop waitresses and strip-club fluffers. Being an artist is not just a job or vocation, but something holy and infinitely worthy. In this topsy-turvy retarded world, the option to place a monopoly on a found object would automatically fall to an artist over a window dresser.”

Today’s market for contemporary art is so hot, dealers and collectors are turning to art schools. “Though the conventional image of an artist’s mentor is not generally a venture capitalist, such a presence is not so surprising in an era when collectors from Wall Street are underwriting high prices for contemporary art. The art world is, in the end, a numbers game: as collectors, art fairs and galleries keep growing, while first-rate artworks for sale decrease, dealers and collectors are scouring the country’s top graduate schools looking for the Warhols of the future.”

Italy has a huge antiquities theft problem. “In an average week, carabinieri fly helicopters over archaeological sites taking aerial photographs to reveal illegal diggings. They go on offshore dives to prevent unauthorized underwater excavations. Still other officers in their stylish black-and-red uniforms show up unannounced at antique shops, auction houses and outdoor markets, to videotape items for sale to match against the more than 2.5 million missing objects cataloged in the art squad’s vast database.”

Retrospectives are the traditional and accepted means for taking a comprehensive career look at a major artist. But what happens if an artist’s output proves too big to be contained by a retrospective? Eric Gibson argues that sculptor David Smith is one such artist…

One of the most anticipated contemporary art moments of the year arrived this week in the UK, when Marc Quinn’s much-ballyhooed sculpture of supermodel Kate Moss was unveiled. And that, says Jonathan Jones, should tell us all we need to know about the state of contemporary art in Britain. “After all the sensations, after the brilliant careers and after the fire, we have arrived by some cyclical divine joke in 18th-century London, where portraiture is god and the leading artists of the day compete to depict [celebrities.]”

Some in Congress have proposed that the Smithsonian raise funds by instituting a $1 admission charge for its historically free museums. The plan could raise $25 million a year, but that’s assuming that everyone who walked through the door last year would still have done so if it cost a buck. “All around there are all kinds of people who have deigned to come in: girls with Britney parts and translucent skin that fairly match the French portrait they just walked by, and old ladies with blue hair and jogging suits, and professorial-looking men with striped shirts and tan suit jackets. And quiet waterfalls and young women with red leather jackets and fading red hair. And teens in flip-flops and spaghetti straps.” Would they be here if it wasn’t free?