Category: visual

Why did the Corcoran abandon its Frank Gehry addition and ask for the resignation of David levy, its director? “Mr. Levy believed that there was still a way to get the Gehry building done. Its price tag had soared to about $200 million, but ‘we’d raised $110 million, more money than any institution in this city has ever raised,’ he says. But the board felt the task of fund raising was eating up all the institutional oxygen, so it asked for his resignaton.”

A Greek curator is on truial for offending the Eastern Orthodox church last year when he “organised a major modern art exhibition in Greece as part of a series of cultural events leading up to the Olympics. The case against him stems from a painting by Belgian artist Thierry de Cordier, which shows a penis next to a Christian cross.” If found guilty he could go to jail for five years.

Justin Davidson admits that conventional wisdom says the Ground Zero rebuilding process is a mess. But. “Yes, much of what is happening downtown is lamentable, secretive, unpredictable and slow. But nearly four years after the attacks we have a plan that, for all its flaws, represents a workable compromise. We should keep prodding it toward reality.”

“Katharine Reid announced in February she would retire as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art as soon as a successor could be named. This week, she sped up her schedule… Effective Friday, July 1, Reid will become consulting director of the museum. Deputy directors Charles Venable, Susan Jaros and Janet Ashe will run the museum as a team until a new director is appointed.” Reid’s departure comes as the museum is gearing up for a massive six-year expansion project, and the search for her successor is likely months from being completed.

For the last several years, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that the overarching mission of Britain’s Turner Prize was to antagonize art lovers and the general public as much as humanly possible, while simultaneously propping up the careers of artists who fit nicely into the “shock and awe” category. But this year’s Turner shortlist appears to be going in quite a different direction, and includes a painter specializing in traditional still life and landscape work. The shortlist ought to go a long way towards placating the prize’s harshest critics, who have accused Turner organizers of ignoring many serious young artists in favor of conceptually-based flavors of the month.

A New York Court has struck down a neighborhood group’s challenge to a major expansion by the Metropolitan Museum. “The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that the community group’s court petition to block construction on environmental grounds was time-barred – more than two years late. The court said the group should have acted within four months.”

Miami is filling in its skyline at an alarming rate, and it promises to change the very character of the city. “As of April, there were 261 development projects in motion (this is to say somewhere between preliminary application and recent completion) in the city of Miami. For Miami this means a mind-boggling 69,039 residential units, which is basically the equivalent of building a medium-sized city. Not all of this is what might be considered ”prime” residential development, along the bay or in or near downtown, but a significant percentage is.”

The Pompidou Museum in Paris is doing a radical rehang of its permanent collection for the first time in 28 years. The museum will “display its permanent collection in thematic sections rather than chronological order. The new hang is entitled “Big bang: destruction and creation in 20th-century art.”