Category: visual

“After 10 years of financial development but fluctuating quality and a growing belief that it was falling just too far downmarket to attract serious players, this year’s Glasgow Art Fair is making determined efforts to mature. Of course, growing up is hard to do and the fair has come under concerted pressure from those local galleries who perceive themselves as unfairly excluded… For the visitor, the ability to breathe will be welcome, the atmosphere is far more visually careful, with spaces well hung and a better focus on individual artists rather than a pile-’em-high Wal-Mart approach to retailing that was beginning to prevail.”

“This year, the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth, will be celebrated with a broad spectrum of artistic activities across Europe, ranging from a major exhibition which contrasts Rembrandt with that other great painter of light, Caravaggio, to a stage musical about the Dutch master and a walk in his footsteps in his home city.”

“Shoes pervade the London instalment of this year’s Beck’s Futures show, which opened at the ICA on Friday. Gallery-goers in Glasgow and Bristol, where the same shortlisted artists will soon be showing a different selection of works, may come away with a different impression. But in London, feet and shoes seem to be everywhere.”

Picasso’s “Guernica may denounce war, but Spaniards appear determined not to allow one of their most famous paintings any peace. Everybody in Spain, it sometimes seems, wants to get their hands on it. The latest claim comes from the Basque country.”

A man who admitted posing as a Saudi sheik as part of a scheme to sell a fake Rembrandt painting for $2.8 million, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 months in confinement in St. Louis.

“In recent months, a number of museums nationwide — including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles — have begun offering audio tours that can be accessed via mobile phones as an alternative to the audio devices often available for rent at exhibitions. Museum visitors are given a phone number to dial to begin the tour. Then information on individual artworks is heard by entering various codes on the keypad.”

Maria Altmann successfully sued the Austrian government for return of paintings by Gustav Klimt. Now she’s loaned them to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “The three-month loan to LACMA of a textbook painting is partly a gesture of gratitude to the city where Altmann emigrated. But it’s also a holding action. With the seven-year legal battle over title to the art now settled, the heirs face a daunting question: What obligations — if any — does the family have in determining the ultimate fate of a painting of monumental cultural significance?”

The art market is humming. But can it continue winning? “In the art world, there’s a clear delineation between those who experienced the last crash, in the early nineties, and those who didn’t. ‘This market is fueled by collectors who have never been through a correction,’ says art adviser Darlene Lutz, active since the eighties. ‘The generations who did are watching this with disbelief. It’s like teenagers who have unprotected sex thinking they’ll never get pregnant. And then, whoops . . . look what happened’!”

Has the Museum of Modern Art become too safe? Too museum-like? “No one doubts that MoMA remained the preeminent museum of its kind anywhere. But MoMA was traditionally a living idea, not a static monument. It aspired to be the center of an arts community. It considered itself an edgy institution that challenges and instructs.” And now?

A date has been set for the opening of the new Daniel-Libeskind-designed Denver Art Museum building. It’s October 7. “Planning for the building began in 1999 when Denver voters approved a $62.5 million bond issue. The project also prompted the DAM board to raise more than $50 million in endowment funds, and another $28 million for upgrades in the project.”