Category: visual

Christina Mackie has won this year’s Beck’s Futures Prize for her sulpture and media installation. Mackie beat five other artists – Donald Urquhart, Luke Fowler, Ryan Gander, Lali Chetwynd and Daria Martin.

“The funeral stone, or stele, is one of a group of six obelisks erected at Axum when Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century A.D. It was stolen by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937 and turned into a symbol of fascist power during his short-lived efforts to revive the grandeur of imperial Rome.”

The Pierpont Morgan Library is undergoing an image makeover to match its $102 million building makeover. “Although the library has long had a vigorous program of exhibitions, organizing shows like “Master Drawings From the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums” that have attracted tens of thousands of visitors, its very name has long been misleading. Even some New Yorkers assume that it is a run-of-the-mill library, rather than the repository of a world-class collection of old master drawings and prints, medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, and literary, historical and music manuscripts, in addition to rare books. Many believe that it is a private institution closed to the uninvited.”

It doesn’t look like Daniel Libeskind’s tower for the World Trade Center site will get built. So he’s traveled the plans across the country to California. “The architect’s plans for a 37-story condo tower named “Aura” in Sacramento, California, bear a remarkable resemblance to his original design for the second-tallest building at the ground-zero site. The 430-foot tower, to rise later this year, has the same geometric design at its pinnacle, with a sharply sloping downward angle on one corner. With the exception of its balconies, the tower is strikingly familiar.”

It’s been two years since the Iraq Museum was looted. “To date, 3,000 have been recovered in Baghdad, some returned by ordinary citizens, others by the police. In addition, more than 1,600 objects have been seized in neighbouring countries, some 300 in Italy and more than 600 in the United States. Most of the stolen items are unaccounted for, but some private collectors in the Middle East and Europe have admitted possessing objects bearing the initials IM (Iraq Museum inventory number).”

Canada’s National Gallery is in severe disrepair. “The imposing glass and steel structure, designed by architect Moshe Safdie, opened its doors in 1989. Sixteen years later, gallery director Pierre Théberge says he can’t keep up with the cost of repairs. Currently, the gallery’s annual $45-million budget allots $1 million for repair work. ‘We would need … between $4 [million] and $5 million a year … to keep up with repairs over the next five or 10 years’.”

The former Liverpool Museum has expanded to nearly twice its size and been renamed World Museum Liverpool. The city is gearing up for its year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008.

Why did Oliver Hoare, a leading London art dealer, invoice the world’s biggest collector Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar for massive overcharges? “On one occasion Mr Hoare invoiced Sheikh Saud £5.5 million for a jade pendant originally made for Shah Jahan. Ten months earlier the same object had sold at Sotheby’s for £454,500. Mr Hoare’s invoices are now being examined by Qatari authorities as part of the investigation into Sheikh Saud’s spending.”

“British art, historically, has its charms. In addition to Gainsborough’s perfumed rococo world, we have Constable and Turner. All three, if you have grown up with the swagging, blustering variability of British weather, are acute barometers of the national soul. But do their works make it into the world’s top 10, or even top 100?”

“Chicago will be the site of not one but two big international contemporary art fairs starting their simultaneous four-day public runs on Friday. But out of sight at both will be three of this city’s more prominent, high-end contemporary art dealers.”