Category: visual

The city of Leipzig is opening a new museum, building on a thriving new visual arts scene. “The city’s vast train station made it central Europe’s transport hub and, particularly in music (Bach, Mendelssohn and Schumann all lived there for a while), it has long been a cultural hub as well. Now it is the storming art scene that is driving the city’s rise, with young artists emerging from the conservative (they teach painting) academy being touted, with the usual art world hyperbole, as the successors to the Young British Artists, while their work is snapped up – leading collectors including Jay Jopling, Charles Saatchi and Marianne Boesky.”

The New Orleans Museum of Art has survived the hurricane. “But when Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives arrived in the area Wednesday, NOMA employees holed up inside the museum were left in a quandary: FEMA wanted those evacuees to move to a safer location, but there was no way to secure the artwork inside. Six security and maintenance employees remained on duty during the hurricane and were joined by 30 evacuees, including the families of some employees.”

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s massive $258 million expansion project could be financed in part by bonds issued by the city’s Committee for Regional Economic Advancement, under a plan recommended by that body this week. The CREA, which also helped finance construction of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns’ football stadium, would float $90 million in bonds through the Cleveland port authority, and the museum would be responsible for repaying the loan as it receives money pledged by private donors for the expansion. The museum is stressing that it would not use its collection as collateral for the bonds.

“The Guggenheim has embarked on $27 million worth of complex work in the hope that it will emerge refreshed in 2007, just two years before it turns 50. All the work is to be done without closing down the museum. ‘It’s almost an art restoration. We tend to regard the Frank Lloyd Wright building as one of the greatest objects in the collection’.”

A collection of more than 100 pieces of pottery by Pablo Picasso will be sold at auction in London this fall. Included in the sale will be a famous Picasso earthenware vase called “Tripode,” which is expected to fetch the highest price.

“Boston likes to call itself the Athens of America, with its world-renowned symphony and ballet, libraries, and intellectual might. But some officials in a city that has long claimed itself a cultural hotbed worry that Boston has fallen far behind other cities in its promotion of public art. Saying that dozens of other cities have set aside large funds for public art while Boston does little, City Councilor Michael Ross said he will propose today that the city require private developers to put 1 percent of their construction costs into a fund to finance public art around the city… [But] developers already face tough building restrictions and must set aside money for affordable housing and job training, [and] may not be eager to pay more.”

Many of Italy’s most famous cultural sites are in peril, and the government is embarking on a campaign to increase awareness of the problem. “Pollution, vandalism and natural decay have all contributed to the condition of many cultural sites. ‘The care and defence of our cultural and artistic heritage isn’t only the state’s responsibility, it is every Italian’s. Italians must care for the great art they have around them today, or it may not be there for future generations’.”

A Copenhagen-area museum says a bust by French artist Paul Gauguin of one of his sons has been discovered in Denmark where a family had unwittingly been using it as a Christmas decoration.

A new show at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts that displays a collector’s boats has observers wondering about the ethics of romancing collectors for their collections. ‘Years ago, you got a little quiet thank-you note for supporting a museum. Today, they put your boats outside. But that is essentially killing philanthropy. Everybody is going to want the same thing. If he can have it, why can’t I’?”

A replica of the Lascaux cave in which prehistoric art was discovered, is scheduled for a world tour. “The cave, discovered by teenagers 65 years ago, has been closed to general view since 1963 to protect its rock paintings of bison and other animals, some depicting successive stages of a hunt. The 17,000-year-old images are considered among the finest surviving examples of palaeolithic art and have been described as the Sistine Chapel of the prehistoric age.”