Category: visual

“The Krens Era showed that museum directors could wander far from the traditionally ethical as long as their boards were compliant. While many of Mr. Krens’ peers copied his “innovations,” many more watched and said nothing. The Association of Art Museum Directors—a strong candidate for the most spineless, useless industry association in America—never sanctioned, censured or formally criticized Mr. Krens in any way. In the end, Mr. Krens’ most lasting legacy is this: He made the building of synergies between nonprofit art museums and for-profit corporations acceptable to his peers. More than anything else, that’s made him the most influential museum director in America.”

Every five years the British Art Show takes the temperature of contemporary art in the UK. “What has changed in the years since 2000 is that British art, like British society, has become international. Though every artist in the 2005 show lives, works, and may have trained here in Britain, they come from the Netherlands, France, Turkey, Serbia, the USA, Italy, Brazil, Pakistan, Uganda, Zambia, Germany, Poland, Canada, Bulgaria and India. That feels absolutely right. London has always been a cosmopolitan city, but over the past five years it has become the centre of the art world.”

Italian police have “recovered works of art worth €1.5m that had been stolen from churches, castles and private homes throughout northern Italy since 1990. The 19 paintings and one 18th-century kneeling-stool were discovered at the home of a farmer near the city of Cremona, about 62 miles south-west of Milan.”

The Getty Museum says that memos cited in a Los Angeles Times story last weekend about questionable provenance of many Getty artifacts were stolen from the museum. “As much as it would like to be able to do so, the Getty cannot respond to many of the Times’ assertions because they rely on privileged and confidential information stolen from the Getty’s files,’ the museum said in a statement. The statement did not specify who allegedly stole the information.”

Charles Saatchi is moving his successful gallery out of London’s South Bank. “The gallery, which opened its doors at County Hall near Waterloo in 2003, is to move into the Duke of York’s HQ building near Sloane Square in 2007. The 62-year-old collector has blamed the behaviour of his current landlord, Makota Okamoto, for his decision to move premises.”

By its own admission, the Getty Museum has a potentially big problem with stolen Italian artifacts. Former Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Hoving has some suggestions for resolving the issue…

“The behaviour of the landlord has made our long-term tenancy untenable. He has made the gallery staff despondent with an endless campaign of petty unpleasantness and we didn’t feel the gallery could develop in this malevolent atmosphere.”

The piece – an anti-Bush statement – was to have been part of a show at the university’s art gallery. “In the eyes of UW-Green Bay’s chancellor, ‘Patriot Act’ is an endorsement of assassination. He has banned it from the university’s gallery, where it was scheduled to be shown as part of a traveling exhibit, saying in a letter to faculty and staff that ‘in a society all too violence prone, using these or other venues to appear to advocate or suggest assassination is not something the UW-Green Bay may do.’ To the artist, the work expresses nothing more than a desire to see Bush voted out of office.”

“It’s clearly a good time to go to galleries. Tate’s visitor numbers have dropped by up to 20% since July 7, and while that’s obviously not a good thing in itself, it does make for fantastic viewing conditions. Tate Britain at the weekend was similarly quiet, although the gorgeous new Chris Ofili installation, The Upper Room, was getting quite a lot of punters.”

Architects have a terrible track record when it comes to building theatre spaces. “All the interesting practitioners say the same thing about buildings: ‘Why is it that we can’t build permissive, exciting, beautiful, available theatre space? Why is it that so many of our new buildings feel corporate, overmanaged, overfinished, icily perfect and therefore alienating to a process which by its nature is exploratory and provisional?'” Time for some new thinking?