Category: visual

Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art is raising admission prices 18% and closing on Mondays in an effort to deal with an ongoing deficit problem. (The museum is also closed Tuesdays.) “The changes come weeks after an upheaval at the museum, which has been struggling with deficits for years. Fundraising problems caused the gallery to cancel an ambitious project to build a new wing, designed by the internationally known architect Frank Gehry. The project excited city leaders and museum officials, but not the necessary donors… The museum’s director, David Levy, resigned as part of the shakeup. And the board announced that it was developing a series of strategic plans for the 136-year-old institution.”

The newly redesigned Freedom Tower that New York officials are hoping to build on the ruins of the World Trade Center was unveiled this morning with a number of architectural changes and a major security upgrade. “While the original plan called for a parallelogram base, eight isosceles triangles now rise out of a cubic base to a perfect octagon in the new reinforced middle of the tower, which supports a glass parapet. The tower will be capped with a mast incorporating an antenna, meant to suggest the torch of the Statue of Liberty.” The building’s actual location on the lot has also been changed as part of a plan to make it more resistant to truck bombs.

The New York art world’s migration to Chelsea continues unabated, and the formerly unfashionable neighborhood now sports twice as many galleries as SoHo had at the height of its own art boom in the 1990s. With the trendy galleries, of course, come upscale restaurants and hip nightclubs, which is exactly the fast-moving gentrification process that causes New York artists to seek out a new (and affordable) neighborhood every decade or so. But for now, Chelsea is unquestionably the place to be in the Big Apple.

Tobi Tobias comes back from Copenhagen’s Bournonville Festival with vivid impressions of the city’s new Opera House. “The Opera is masterly in its command of space and light and typically Danish in its harmonious juxtaposition of materials: glass (miles of it, it would seem), stone (in subdued shades of grey and sand that give it an eerie lightness), steely metal, and lovingly treated wood. The interior of the building continually echoes the curved shape of the façade. At the hub of the public space is a gigantic bowed form clad in glowing maple veneer. Fantasy suggests it’s the work of a violin maker operating on a Brobdingnagian scale.”

“Large companies have been buying art as never before, and for a very particular purpose: to make the workplace — from the smallest and most intimate of meeting rooms to the most grandiose of lobbies — a more stimulating environment in which to work. This week an exhibition opens in London that will show off some of the art acquired in recent years by some of the top corporations in the UK…”

Chicago’s year-old Millennium Park has been a great success. “The joyful postindustrial playground, which has brazenly discarded the old industrial age model of the serene urban park, is blowing equally strong winds of change across the cityscape that surrounds it, altering a museum’s plans, boosting real estate prospects and (perhaps) opening doors for more innovative architecture in a city whose design scene had grown stale as recently as a decade ago. It has emerged as a sparkling example, despite its widely publicized delays and cost overruns, of how big cities can get big things done. In the national conversation, Millennium Park is being hailed in some quarters as an example of how business and political leaders can pull together.”

Guy Perricone is the new managing directod of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. “Perricone joins the ICA from ABN AMRO of the Netherlands, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, where he was chief operating officer for Global Corporate Finance. He describes his new role at the ICA as that of a “practical visionary” whose mission is to support the artistic programme and enable each discipline to flourish and develop.”

The super-heated art market climbed higher at last week’s London sales. “This season’s four consecutive nights of auctions left even the cognoscenti shaking their heads.”

The sad state of contemporary Russian art is exemplified by the sham Moscow Biennale produced last winter, writes Viktor Misiano. “The biennale was paid for by the Russian government in a clear attempt to create a Western façade for the new Russia. The exhibition was wanted by the government and paid for by the government. It was practically imposed by the government. Some $2 million was spent on the blind reproduction of a Western biennale. Even the timing of the biennale was chosen for purely cynical reasons.”

Video art is hot right now, and collectors are eager to purchase innovative pieces. But what do you do with art that practically requires a major installation space and that, in many cases, never shuts up? It’s an increasingly real problem for collectors, not mention their unsuspecting houseguests…