Category: visual

“If the Barnes Foundation is going to relocate and construct a new building, how should it interpret—or update—its founder’s specific intentions about how the collection should be displayed? The best solution might be to not even try. Why not treat the galleries of the Barnes as an artistically significant artifact, and simply move them to the new location, burlap-covered walls and all? The result would resemble the transplanted historical interiors exhibited in many large museums.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected on a technicality an appeal of the decision which cleared the way for the Barnes Foundation to move from its home in suburban Philadephia to the city’s thriving downtown. The appeal had been filed by an art student, but the high court ruled that he waited too long to file it. Opponents of the move say that they will continue to look for ways to continue their fight, but they would appear to be out of legal options.

Spring auction season is almost upon us, and indications are that new will be the new old this year. “A decade ago the big money was primarily to be found in Impressionist and modern art. But during the next two weeks of back-to-back evening auctions, newer art is expected to be where hungry buyers will gravitate. Fueled in large part by a passionate group of multimillionaire hedge-fund managers, with deep pockets and a taste for the 20th and 21st centuries, they relish the competition of bidding at auction and will often pay whatever it takes to bring home the best.”

“It was a gamble when [Boston’s] Museum of Fine Arts decided to loan more than a dozen Monets to a Las Vegas casino gallery last year. Art critics and museum curators were not pleased, saying that it violated the mission of the nonprofit institution. But the MFA received a reported $1 million, and the show at the Bellagio Gallery of Art will draw about 450,000 people by its May 30 closing.” So naturally, the Bostonians will shortly be sending more works to Vegas for the casino’s next show, in exchange for a now-undisclosed amount of money.

The Laocoon is an iconic piece oif art, an ancient wonder. But “an art historian is claiming that the ancient masterpiece – which fascinated not just Michelangelo but Blake, who engraved it, and Napoleon, who seized it – is not what it seems. She says it was carved by Michelangelo himself. Can this be possible and, if so, what would it mean?”

The National Gallery of Art is suspending its guided tours for groups of schoolchildren, and “reevaluating” its entire educational focus. The move won’t save a lot of money, since the guided tours were given by volunteer docents, but museum officials had noted a sharp downturn in the number of students participating in the guided tours, and an uptick in the number of children wandering the museum on their own.

This weekend, Chicago’s annual art fair kicks off. And so does Chicago’s other annual art fair. Oh, and the other one, too. In fact, the heated competition between two established fairs and one new upstart is garnering international attention, as lawsuits are filed, dates are juggled, and trash is talked. It’s a full-fledged art war, and while no one seems to be sure whether such a thing is actually good for art, it’s damned entertaining to watch.

“Not everybody can stroll the streets of Melbourne, Baghdad or Vilnius, Lithuania, looking for street art, but one website lets everybody do so virtually, by bringing international images of spray paintings, stickers, stencils and more to the masses. Known as the Wooster Collective, the New York City-based site houses an array of graffiti and street art from around the world. Artists and camera-happy passersby send in photos of their works and sightings, and site creators put them up in blog-style postings that ensure the pictures take center stage.”

Jerry Saltz ponders the cult of personalities and gossip currently flashing through the New York art world. “Gallerist Kenny Schachter describes the phase we’re in as “economics-ism” and “bottom-line aesthetics,” by which I think he means that now art is considered successful if it’s shown in a gallery or bought by collectors. Fitting in and conforming have become aesthetic criteria. Tautology rules. Many artists find all this depressing and regularly disparage the carousing and ask if it’s possible to get their work out without behaving in bogus ways. Not to sound like a Creed song, but no matter how serious an artist is, it’s almost impossible to behave this flippantly and still maintain one’s credibility.”

Despite a showdown with his museum’s biggest benefactor several months ago, Guggenheim Museum director Thomas Krens hasn’t ratcheted down his ambitious plans. “The key to his business plan is hiring big-name architects to design buildings that will become tourist destinations in themselves, like the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright building on Fifth Avenue or its Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. And though the museum’s new leaders express caution about the budget, they share Mr. Krens’s vision.”