Category: visual

Michael Kimmelman likes this year’s Venice Biennale. “Reactions to biennales are always Rashomon-like. That the current festival is generally regarded as pensive and a bit risk-averse is partly a response to the previous biennale, a fiasco that would make nearly anything else seem prudent and sober. Call this the first fairly adult biennale in memory.”

With the opening here on Thursday of “Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” – a two-year, four-city American tour with the stated goals of mass appeal and mass profits – many feared this more recent curse, of abject commercialism, would rise again. Yet unless vast sums are lost, this is one time when the curse may have lost its power.”

“Cultural institutions across the United States are drawing crowds as they open exhibits featuring the likes of “The Lord of the Rings,” Princess Diana, and “Star Wars.” But some wonder, as they stroll among the characters, costumes, and movie memorabilia, how is this museum material?”

A Goya painting has been recovered in Montenegro. “The oil painting, Count Ugolino, had been lifted from a gallery in Turin, northern Italy, in December 2001. Goya’s work – which evokes a gory episode from Dante’s Inferno – was retrieved during a raid on a flat near the Montenegrin capital of Pogdorica.”

It seems like there’s a memorial to war or the Holocaust on most streets in Berlin. “The Germans are correct in asserting that no other country has ever taken such a monumental (pun intended) step toward memorializing its own crimes. That’s just not what national memorials generally do. But Berlin is a city in which almost every street evokes complex historical events; Germany is a country rich with sites of its tragic past.”

“Sources close to The Power Plant, Toronto’s premier non-collecting showcase for cutting-edge contemporary art, confirmed yesterday that a search committee has picked Gregory Burke to succeed Wayne Baerwaldt as the gallery’s director. Baerwaldt, who came to The Power Plant in March, 2002, after running Winnipeg’s Plug In Gallery for 13 years, announced his resignation in February and completed his term in Toronto June 2. Burke is currently in Venice overseeing New Zealand’s participation in the city’s famous Biennale. He also was curator of New Zealand’s first-ever presentation at the Biennale, in 2001. For the last seven years he’s been director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth on New Zealand’s Northern Island.”

Adrian Searle find much to like at this year’s Venice Biennale, but there’s too much to get your head around. “The Venice Biennale is filled with nullities and profundities, the silly and the serious. Always, there is too much to see, things to forget and things that surprise and confuse. Confusion is good, but there’s too much of it, even though this is a smaller, better biennale than the previous two editions.”

“Over the past decade, as a result of a government initiative called Renaissance in the Regions and through the huge amount of investment made by the Heritage Lottery Fund, there has been the beginning of a transformation in museums and galleries throughout Britain. All of this is good news. But it has become increasingly clear that museums and galleries cannot live on capital projects alone. There is no point having beautiful, gleaming new museums and galleries with the most up-to-date facilities and cafés if they don’t have the money to buy works of art.”

The Chicago Art Institute is expanding its commitment to architecture, “appointing a forward-looking curator and expanding and renaming the department to include modern and contemporary design.” Joseph Rosa, 45, will become the curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute’s newly christened Department of Architecture and Design. On Monday the museum’s board of trustees approved the appointment of Rosa, who is currently in a similar position at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Art Basel art fair opens, and as much as $300 million in sales could be made. “Names on collectors’ shopping lists include classic contemporaries, such as Andy Warhol; artists in mid-career who did well at the New York auctions, including Prince and Kippenberger, and younger ones who have waiting lists for new works, such as Kai Althoff and Neo Rauch, say collectors and dealers. It’s hard to see who the promising new artists are because a rush of money into the market has pushed up prices for everyone in recent years.”