Category: visual

Seattle’s new $85 million sculpture park is being built on the city’s downtown waterfront. “Seattle’s park will be free, fenceless and in the heart of the city. Officials hope the easy access will encourage a greater appreciation of the arts from people cycling, jogging or just strolling through the area. The collection will mix seminal works from sculptors Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra and Mark Di Suvero with with newly commissioned sculpture from Louise Bourgeois and Mark Dion, among others.”

A report by the Association of Art Museum Directors seeks to put American museums’ antiquities collecting in perspective. “The report states that 53 member institutions actively collect antiquities and altogether spent an average of $7 million per year purchasing antiquities over the last five years. This total is less than 10% of the global annual trade in antiquities, the report states, basing that figure on published reports that estimate the global trade anywhere from $100 million to $4 billion.” The point is that the collecting activities of American museums are not driving the international antiquities trade.

Frank Gehry says his hometown Toronto has missed out on being a great architecture center, even though several prominent projects are now underway. ” ‘It’s like every other community. There’s very little social planning; it seems to be more a world of opportunism and entertainment. … It doesn’t feel right, but I think I am just fuddy duddy because of my age,’ said Gehry, who is 77.”

“A survey of 3,370 institutions by the nonprofit group Heritage Preservation found that some 612 million artifacts – from photographs and paintings to nature specimens and pottery – are at risk of deterioration because they aren’t cared for properly. Nearly 60 percent of institutions surveyed acknowledged that light has damaged their collections, while 53 percent said moisture caused problems. And 26 percent of those surveyed have no special controls in place to protect their collections from light, temperature, and humidity. Perhaps most strikingly, 80 percent of the institutions surveyed don’t pay anyone to preserve their collections.

Architecture in Spain under Francisco Franco was dreadful. “Franco’s idea of great architecture was a deadening, nationalistic sort of classical kitsch. Modern architecture, for the most part, was just something for the tourists — mile after banal mile of hotels that were degrading to local culture and the fine beaches they were built on. And, yet, here we are. Spain today is an international stage for architectural innovation and experimentation.”

Now in his 70s, architect Richard Rogers has more projects than he has time. There’s the huge addition to New York’s convention center, of course. “There are big projects, like Madrid Airport, or Terminal Five at Heathrow, or the competition to redesign Darling Harbour, Sydney (they’re down to the last five); and there are small ones, like a £60,000 house (to prove that inexpensive housing can be other than Disneyfied), or a Maggie’s Centre, up the road from the office.”

“Museums win some, lose some. But over the years, the Getty has lost more than makes sense. The sports analogy for New Yorkers is the Knicks: rich, plagued by internal conflicts, infuriating, forever failing to meet sky-high expectations. But change is opportunity. The Getty should now go on a mission.”

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum is considering moving some of its archives from its museum on Fifth Ave. in new York to another Smithsonian facility. But critics “argue that the Cooper-Hewitt offers the rare advantage of relating objects in the museum itself to documents, photographs and other materials in the archive.”

Last week’s London auctions set records. “The winter auctions, featuring artists from Edvard Munch to Francis Bacon, were London’s biggest ever, exceeding 1989 totals before art prices last crashed. U.S. and Asian buyers pushed sale totals 5 percent above auctioneers’ top estimate of 245 million pounds. Last February’s total was 170.6 million pounds.”

Chocolate too gooey to express your sentiments on Valentine’s Day? Then consider some art with a twist on the message…