Category: visual

When will the Barnes Collection move from its current home in to Philadelphia? Well, not even the foundation knows for certain, but it would seem that the transplant won’t happen until mid-to-late 2009, or perhaps even early 2010.

Art dealer Robert Hecht, accused of illegally trafficking in stolen art, is firing back at prosecutors in his trial in Rome, saying that he is being made a scapegoat for the crimes of others. “Mr. Hecht, 86, spoke during a recess in a long trial hearing. Inside the courtroom, a Rome prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, continued to build his case, detailing a web of connections among dealers who he said traded in freshly dug-up artifacts by routing them through Switzerland or prominent auction houses and into the collections of museums and private individuals.” Hecht and Getty Museum curator Marion True are both being prosecuted in the case.

“Acceding to a request from an angry donor, the Metropolitan Museum of Art [has] canceled plans to sell a large steel sculpture by the Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida – the only work in its collection by that artist… The sculpture was donated to the Met in 1986 by Frank Ribelin, a Dallas collector. Mr. Ribelin contacted The New York Times on Thursday to complain that the Met had never informed him of the planned sale and that he had learned of it only after a friend pointed it out to him at Sotheby’s Web site.”

Scientists are concerned that quarry blasting will damage a church Michelangelo worked on. “A large crack has already ripped through the marble pavement, ancient tombs, altar and baptismal font of the Romanesque Pieve della Cappella in Fabiana, near Lucca. The church nestles midway up the Altissimo hill, at the foot of which Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in 1517 in search of the area’s distinctive marble that he intended to use for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence.”

“Do galleries have to run or look the way they do? How inevitable is the repeating cycle of solo and group exhibitions and the steady movement of artworks from galleries to museums, auction houses and collectors’ homes? How can you slow, expose or disrupt the delivery mechanism – maybe even avoid it altogether occasionally – to reassert art as a process and a mind-set rather than a product?”

Artists for this year’s Beck’s Futures prize have been chosen. The thirteen artists up for the £20,000 award include sculptors, film-makers and illustrators working in the UK.

“Los Angeles has recently been home to several large-scale immersive image environments. A cynical perspective would suggest this is due to museums’ waning importance and the subsequent need to attract viewers with big, sparkling, cinematic images. Further, the easy mixing of disparate cultures and histories in massive mash-ups of artists and image-based technology suggests a utopian global village and a narrative of unity and harmony wrought by digital tools.” On the other hand, maybe not…

“Like Picasso, Rauschenberg has been an art machine; just keep the wheels rolling and sooner or later inspiration will strike. And it will probably take others to tell you when it’s really happened. How unlike the Duchampian constipation-mode of creation. Another rule for art: You gotta have product; lots and lots of things to sell. And then it dawns on you that the curatorial lack of discrimination mirrors Rauschenberg’s own system. This is not good.”

Architect Rafael Viñoly and managers of Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center are fighting over design deficiencies. “The managers of the Kimmel Center, the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, blame Mr. Viñoly’s firm for going $23 million over budget in the center’s construction. The case sheds light on an issue that has dogged architecture firms that attempt massive and politically difficult urban projects, while at the same time attempting to deliver state-of-the-art design.”

“Responding to growing involvement from the local Korean-American community and an increasing awareness nationally of Korean art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has hired its first curator of Korean art. Hyunsoo Woo, 36, formerly of the Japan Society in New York and the Brooklyn Museum, started work Monday as the museum’s associate curator of Korean art – making the museum one of just a few in the United States to have a full-time staffer devoted to Korean art.”