Category: visual

Peru is threatening to sue Yale University, demanding return of artifacts from Machu Picchu. “Peru has notified [Yale’s president] Richard Levin that a lawsuit is prepared if its rights to the archaeological pieces are not recognised,” the Peruvian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Guggenheim Foundation announces six finalists for this year’s Hugo Boss Prize. “This year’s finalists are an international sampling of today’s trendiest artists. The group is heavily tipped toward performance art; none of the finalists are painters.”

“Epic tales, attributed to the Greek poet Homer, aren’t just adventure stories, although on that level alone they deserve to have endured for centuries. They’re also instructive moral and ethical allegories about virtues such as courage, fidelity and honor. European artists of the 17th through the 19th centuries were inspired by these sagas, which attests to their durable appeal. But now we’re in the 21st century. Do paintings and sculptures that propound classical ideals still have anything to say that today’s museumgoers would find meaningful?”

A new municipal building is being erected in the parking lot next to LA’s Watts Towers. “Neighbors are concerned about congestion, and preservationists who cherish Simon Rodia’s fantasia of folk-art sculpture worry that the new building, which would augment the smaller, existing arts center nearby, will obstruct views of the towers. They question why officials decided to place a new, $4.7-million youth arts center near the towers, rather than on city-owned property around the corner that originally was designated for the project.”

“Museum directors are watching as a case pitting the heirs of Kazimir Malevich against an Amsterdam museum winds its way through the U.S. courts. At its core is a novel bid to get around a federal law protecting loaned art from seizure. ‘If there isn’t some guarantee, I don’t know why anyone would lend anything…especially given the litigious nature of the art world right now’.”

The world’s largest art fair does great business. But many collectors who swept in on the first day and reserved art, later canceled. “Last year we had more South Americans and Europeans. This year there were more Americans and institutions.”

Art Basel Miami opens with a flourish. “While many top galleries returned, 55 percent of the galleries chosen were new this year — a deliberate attempt to keep the fair fresh, said Art Basel director Sam Keller. The strategy worked, said many fairgoers.”

America’s newspapers don’t have many architecture critics on staff. Here’s a profile of four of the most prominent: the Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell, Chicago Tribune’s Blair Kamin, LA Times’ Christopher Hawthorne, and New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff.

“The priceless Euphronios cup — painted with the image of the fallen Trojan war hero Sarpedon — is the earliest known work painted by the Athenian master, last seen intact publicly in New York in 1990 on the Sotheby’s block as lot #6 selling for $742,000 and going to a “European buyer”. I considered it a relevant question, since the “European buyer” for the cup last week identified himself to the press in Italy as Giacomo Medici, a man convicted of antiquities smuggling and now appealing a 10-year sentence.”

“The flashy contours, flamboyant engineering effects, and mechanical gimmickry of the Santiago Calatrava style are futuristic in a way that went out of fashion circa 1965, when the last New York World’s Fair closed. The seemingly advanced (though in fact retrograde) aspects of his architecture disguise its underlying sentimentality, and make it palatable to patrons of a certain sophistication who would reject more pronounced expressions of kitsch. That he has found a constituency in the art world is perplexing, but his appeal to a popular audience makes perfect sense.”