Category: visual

“Colors: You can’t trust them. To test this proposition: When next in a museum, first buy yourself a postcard, then go and find the painting it pretends to reproduce, and compare them side by side. You’ll see. The card will be demolished by the real thing…”

“A few museum-goers are starting to ask questions about the antiquities in their museums: How did they end up here, despite being considered stolen property under U.S. law, foreign law and the 1970 UNESCO treaty protecting cultural heritage? In many cases, the museums don’t know for sure — or aren’t saying.”

Philadelphia’s skyline has always been a bit understated for an American city of its size (due in large part to a longstanding unofficial rule that no building could be taller than the statue of William Penn that stands atop the magnificent city hall) but ever since city officials began allowing developers greater leeway in the 1980s, Philly has been getting vertical. Inga Saffron says that the proliferation of skyscrapers isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that the city’s distinct lack of an urban plan is a serious threat to Philadelphia’s distinctive look and feel. “The main issue is no longer about how high Philadelphia’s towers should go. It’s about guiding what happens on the ground.”

New York art dealer Irving Blum long ago donated most of his collection of Andy Warhol’s pop art depictions of Campbell’s Soup cans to the Museum of Modern Art, but he apparently held back at least one work, from the days before Warhol discovered silkscreening. “‘Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot),’ an early hand-painted work from 1962, will be auctioned at Christie’s sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York on May 9. It is expected to fetch $10 million to $15 million.”

Billionaire Paul Allen shows off a bit of his (reputedly terrific) art collection in a show at his Experience Music Project in Seattle. “Allen’s $250 million museum could use the sales boost. Since opening in 2000, annual visits have dropped from a peak of 531,000 to 378,000 last year. Advance ticket sales for the $8 art show have been “brisk”. Entrance to the entire museum is $33.”

Conventional wisdom has it that the supply of Old Masters for sale is drying up. Don’t tell that to the participants of the Maastricht Fair. “Once again, exhibitors proved they are still able to find amazing works of top quality across a range of fields. Where else can you see, under one (admittedly vast) roof, two major Rembrandts, a Fra Angelico fresh from a show at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, a Clouet, a whole kunstkammer of amber including a piece from the lost Amber Room at Tsarskoye Selo, an elephant folio of Audubon’s Birds of America, and a throne from the Royal Palace of Warsaw?”

Officials from the Smithsonian Institution were on Capitol Hill yesterday to testify to the deteriorating condition of the landmark D.C. museum complex, and to beg Congress for more money to make repairs. In response, at least one Democratic Congressman is strongly urging the Smithsonian to scrap its free-admission policy in order to raise the money on its own.

“The activities of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer who has done business with many of the world’s top collectors, came into sharp focus on Wednesday at the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Robert Hecht, an American dealer.” Specifically, prosecutors are bringing to light details of “Mr. Symes’s elaborate use of offshore companies and warehouses to buy and sell ancient artworks. Italians contend that some of these works were illegally excavated and exported.”

Conservators at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge are working restore Qing vases that were shattered when a museum viisitor tripped and smashed into them. What will happen when they’re glued back together? They’ll go back on display. “These vases were given to us in the 1940s and have been in the same place for 50 years. Some 9 million people have walked past them and this is the first time they have been damaged. We have to look at the risk in perspective.”

“At a news conference in the Grand Ballroom of the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue, Gov. Rendell announced that the state would contribute $25 million toward construction of a new home for the Merion museum on the site of the Youth Study Center, between 20th and 21st Streets. The grant announced yesterday is one of the largest such grants ever dispensed from Harrisburg.”