Category: visual

New York’s Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, “home to art and antiques fairs, is to be turned into a visual and performing arts centre in an ambitious $50 million renovation.”

“The Guggenheim has been seeking to open a branch in Asia, exploring partnerships in Hong Kong and Singapore, among other possibilities, and the creation is an indication of the institution’s commitment to expanding Asian programming and acquisitions.”

When the new home of New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art is completed sometime in 2007, Nicolai Ouroussoff expects it to have a profound influence on an art scene that has sometimes forgotten that art and architecture are supposed to work together. “It is now razor-clear that the building will do more to freshen the bond between Manhattan’s art and architecture communities than any building since Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum of American Art opened on Madison Avenue four decades ago.”

Los Angeles is not a city known for its art fairs, but organizers of the new Art Week Plus are hoping that the confluence of four smaller fairs can lead to a whole greater than its sum. “Each fair has its own opening gala, designed as much for hobnobbing as art viewing. And along with pushing Rubenses and Rauschenbergs, promoters are touting the celebrity angle.”

Now that Athens is opening a museum in which it hopes to display the Elgin Marbles, will Britain consider returning its marbles? Not really. “Anyone who saw the condition of the west frieze in Athens next to the Elgin Marbles in London would immediately decide that the Marbles in London should stay there.”

After initial reports of looting of Iraqi art died down, so did concern. “Gradually, however, the extent of the loss and damage to Iraq’s heritage across the country became clearer. Many of the Iraq National Museum’s major pieces, too big and heavy to move, had been smashed. At Mosul, 16 bronze Assyrian door panels from the city gates of Balawat (9th century BC) had been stolen, as had cuneiform tablets from Khorsabad and Nineveh. In Baghdad, the National Library and State Archives building was burned down and the national collections of contemporary Iraqi and European art, including works by Picasso and Miró, were looted. Even more serious, perhaps, has been the damage to Iraq’s archaeology.”

Copenhagen’s National Gallery has discovered that two paintings thought to be fake Rembrandts are in fact real. “International art experts have re-evaluated 10 canvases that bear Rembrandt’s signature but were kept in storage for years because they were thought to be copies by his students. The five experts concluded that two of the paintings were by Rembrandt.”

A 38-tonne Richard Serra sculture is missing from a leading Spanish museum. “The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid bought the huge Serra sculpture in the 1980s at a cost of more than $200,000.”

“A life-size 1779 portrait of George Washington, projected to sell for as much as $15 million at Christie’s International, will be one of the highlights of this week’s Americana auctions in New York. Christie’s and Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. are hoping to bring in $61.5 million during the auctions that begin Friday.”

Two ancient Egyptian sculptures recently set back-to-back records, selling at auction for $2.25 million and $2.8 million within the space of an hour. The sale prices may have surprised many, but the Texas-based Kimbell Art Museum, which bought the more expensive piece, believes that it is one of the few surviving works of art which can put a face on a notoriously remote civilization.