Category: visual

The Washington, D.C.-based Corcoran Gallery of Art has selected British art historian Paul Greenhaulgh as its next president. “The appointment is part of a wrenching overhaul at the 136-year-old Corcoran after five years of bold plans and occasional turmoil.” Greenhaulgh currently runs an art school in Nova Scotia, experience which should serve him well at the Corcoran, where he will also be in charge of the gallery’s College of Art & Design. “He succeeds David C. Levy, the Corcoran’s director for 14 years. Levy resigned suddenly in May as the board of trustees suspended efforts to build a wing designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry. Fundraising for the project had stalled, and the Corcoran had accumulated deficits in 17 of the past 21 years.”

Chicago is a fabulous museum town, but some residents believe that the city’s world-renowned museums frequently ignore the art that’s right under their nose. Enter the Chicago Art Foundation, founded a year ago with the mission of building a new museum to showcase Chicago-based art. Such endeavors take huge amounts of time and money, of course, but the foundation has made impressive progress in a relatively short period of time.

“Defying high anticipation, one of two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart that have been in the New York Public Library’s collection for more than a century failed to sell at Sotheby’s yesterday in an auction that had generated advance controversy.” The other portrait sold for considerably less than the auction house had expected. “The works are among 16 paintings, watercolors and sculptures that the New York Public Library put on the block yesterday to raise money for its endowment. The decision, announced in April, drew protests from many art lovers and museum curators who said they felt that the library was jettisoning treasures central to the civic history of New York.”

“After much analysis, the FBI has come up with its list of the top 10 art crimes, and it’s asking the public for help in solving them. FBI investigators are on the hunt for Rembrandts, Renoirs, stolen treasures from Iraq, two Van Goghs, and Munch’s The Scream.”

Italian officials have little concrete evidence that objects in the Metropolitan Museum are stolen. “For six of the seven pots, Italian evidence doesn’t tie them to any clandestine digs or tomb robbers, according to a judge’s conviction of Roman art dealer Giacomo Medici, who was charged with smuggling the pots. Italian negotiators are using evidence from his trial in their negotiations with the Met. For the seventh vase, a 2,500-year-old pot painted by the artist Euphronios, an allegedly incriminating journal found in an American art dealer’s Paris apartment makes no mention of the object ever being in Italy.”

“The 2006 Biennial will have a title for the first time, ‘Day for night’, which the curators believe sums up a dark mood in contemporary culture. They say that many of the works that will be included in the show reflect a sense of foreboding, dread or anxiety which emerged as a recognisable theme from the hundreds of artist studios they visited.”

“These are troubled times for the Tate. Behind the scenes, the critically-acclaimed series of 13 paintings, said to be Ofili’s take on the Last Supper, is at the centre of a row that has engulfed some of the biggest names in Britain’s artistic establishment. At the heart of the affair is the fact that, when The Upper Room was purchased from him for £705,000 earlier this year, Ofili was himself a Tate trustee. This, critics say, represents a major conflict of interest. The matter is so serious that, last week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it will investigate.”

“For 70 years, the sprawling Whitney Biennial exhibition of contemporary art has prided itself on its insistence on an American point of view. But as times and tastes change and art world boundaries dissolve, the 2006 biennial’s two foreign-born curators have ventured across the Atlantic. Not content with just recording what’s happening in contemporary art around the United States, the curators have scoured artists’ studios in art capitals like Milan, London, Paris and Berlin, a first for Whitney Biennial curators… Given the proliferation of large art fairs all over the world and the speed by which images travel across the Internet, the curators said they wanted to make this biennial something more than a rambling show of new art.”

How big has the Basel Miami art fair become? “Miami’s fair may do around $110 million this year. New York’s Armory Show said it took in about $45 million in March. London’s Frieze Art Fair reported October sales of $57 million, up 27 percent. Art Cologne closed Nov. 1 after taking in about $85 million. Including New York’s November auctions, collectors of contemporary art this fall may have spent more than $600 million by the time Miami’s fair ends on Dec. 4, based on published figures and fair directors’ estimates.”

Sir Timothy Clifford is leaving the National Gallery of Scotland a changed place. “Though his flaws are as flamboyant as his talents, he is the most naturally gifted museum man of his generation. He has stamped his own taste and personality on the National Gallery of Scotland so strongly that it is easy to forget what it was like before his arrival.”