Category: visual

Vegas mogul Steve Wynn is irritated. Many critics didn’t greet the opening of his new $2.7 billion Wynn hotel casino with the kind of awe he expected. “Comparing a Vegas casino — each of which is likely to be imploded and rebuilt, by the next century anyway — to the world’s greatest and most enduring structures is an invitation to snickering, even if it might actually be true. But if others question whether his Trump-like hubris has brought him this backlash, Wynn himself wonders why few have asked him to explain the claim.”

Christie’s auction house reports record sales for the first six months of 2005. “Sales at Christie’s, which is owned by François Pinault, were $1.65bn in the six months to June – a third higher than last year. It sold 178 works of art for more than $1m, compared with 132 during the same period last year.”

What drove Christie’s record sales in the first have of this year? Chinese buyers. “Now if anyone doubts that the Chinese art market is exploding, Christie’s has attributed its record sales of £910m for the first six months of 2005 to the emergence of Chinese buyers keen to buy back their cultural heritage. Asian art accounted for £71.3m of Christie’s sales between January and June, far short of the £232.3m spent on impressionist and modern art but outstripping the £38.5m spent on old masters.”

A gift of 800 contemporary artworks valued at $215 million by three couples to the Dallas Museum of Art earlier this year, vaults the museum to a new level. But the gift was only part of a remarkable pattern of support by patrons trying to build a civic collection.

“Brand, 47, a native of Australia, is considered to be a rising star in the museum world and has been on short lists for several other museum directorships. He became the assistant director of the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia at 38, and took the director’s job four years later in Richmond, where he embarked on an aggressive mission to build the museum’s holdings, shepherd donations of major collections and raise $100 million for an expansion.” Brand: “One of the reasons why I’ve come to the Getty is that it’s already a great museum. I’m not coming here saying that it needs to be saved or anything like that.”

The list, to be voted on by the public, is a familiar one. “These are the paintings in Britain’s galleries most often written about, most regularly reproduced. People love them precisely because they are as familiar as old friends. Pablo Picasso is out while Sir Henry Raeburn is in. In a sense, this list – chosen by a panel but based on public nominations – is a tribute to art education. It may be predictable, but it is wide-ranging.”

The J. Paul Getty Trust has hired Michael Brand as director of its museum. “The new director has headed the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2000 and previously served as a museum executive in his native Australia. At the J. Paul Getty Museum, Brand will oversee the acquisition, education, exhibition, service and outreach operations.”

“Michael Brand, a native of Australia and an expert on Indian art and architecture, inherits a museum with a $5 billion endowment and world-class collections of antiquities, photography and illuminated manuscripts.”

Want an architecture tour of Denver? You could do worse than tour the city’s branch libraries. “Virtually from the beginning of Denver’s library system, its leaders have believed that form was as important as function, more or less consistently investing in high-quality architecture.” It’s “a surprisingly comprehensive lesson in 20th and 21st century architecture from arts and crafts and other historic styles through modernism and post-modernism.” Radical or not, all the libraries have been accepted by patrons, and most have become local landmarks.

Architect Santiago Calatrava’s proposed twisty spiral skyscraper has caught the imagination of the public. “Whatever it expresses, the twisting tower clearly has struck a chord with the public. Consider the nicknames already given to Calatrava’s skyscraper — the drill bit, the big screw, the twizzler, the birthday candle. The twisting tower also is a hot topic today among architects and architecture students. As designers explore new ways to break out of the old box, they prize buildings that suggest motion and feeling. Calatrava’s design promises to bring to the skyscraper the same Baroque exuberance with which Frank Gehry has infused fresh vitality into the once-staid world of art museums and concert halls.”