Category: visual

“Since December 2001 there has been a 66% increase in visits to museums which once charged for entry. The rise comes despite a drop in visitor numbers as a result of the July bombings in London.”

“To those of us reared on the fogeyish assumption that a museum’s collection is sacrosanct – that the British Museum will always have its Elgin Marbles and the Pitt Rivers its shrunken tribal heads – the idea of ancient vases being mauled and chipped by mobs of primary schoolchildren or Roman coin hoards being flogged off to fund the acquisition of a more socially relevant collection of graffiti art is indeed a pretty shocking one. But for the new breed of museum professional, this line of thinking is very much the fashionable orthodoxy.”

“No one disputes that the structure, called the Inca Uyo, is hundreds of years old. Everyone further agrees that the site, in the middle of a grassy enclosure where soccer matches and bullfights were once held, has been a moneymaker for this small town on the Andean high plains, near Lake Titicaca. But what seems all but certain is that the ruin, with 86 of the carved stones inside it, is not the ancient fertility temple that many here like to say it is.”

Jack Vettriano’s paintings are wildly popular with the public, and his work fetches huge prices. But he takes a workman’s attitude to art: “It’s wall decoration for me, I don’t regard it as this big meaningful thing. My subjects are men and women getting off, that’s all. Mind you, some people don’t think sex is serious, but I happen to think it’s terribly serious.”

New York’s Hispanic Society is moving from its obscure upper Manhattan location to downtown. The Society is “probably the most unknown major museum in the US. Its holdings of Spanish art, decorative arts, photographs, rare books and manuscripts are the most extensive outside of Spain, and worth billions of dollars.”

Last summer’s bombs in London caused a big drop in museum attendance. “Total UK museum visitor numbers were down by almost two million in 2005. Visits to the capital’s museums in August 2005 were down 24% on the same month the previous year, according to government figures. But attendance numbers are now rising again, the Department for Media, Culture and Sport has said.”

The Metropolitan Museum has made a deal with the Italians to return artwork. But this is just the beginning. “With the Italians playing their cards close to their vests and other nations, such as Greece, Turkey and Egypt, examining the prospects of making their own claims against American museums, worried museum officials are wondering who’s next.”

Chicago has approved the construction of what will be America’s tallest building. “The design for the $550 million tower, which was breathtaking but hardly flawless when it was introduced last July, has taken some important steps forward, both in the sky and along the ground. Now here’s the trend part of the story: If this tower and Jeanne Gang’s sensuous Aqua high-rise both get built, Chicago will be running a clinic in the new aesthetic possibilities offered by skyscrapers that are places to live rather than work.”

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is in a high-stakes dance with the Italian government over art the Italians claim has been looted. “The Italian investigators sit on one side of the table, their cards held close to the vest. Just what have they got? Can their hand prove what so many have said for years: that the MFA bought art looted from Italian archeological sites?”

The Tate is not oficially registered as a museum. “The gallery is currently in the anomalous position of not being among the 1,800 museums accredited to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). It is the only nationally-funded museum without this status. The reason for Tate being outside the MLA scheme is simple: it refuses to accept its guidelines on deaccessioning, which are part of a much broader set of standards.”