Category: visual

Conde Nast makes a list of the seven modern architectural wonders of the world. What makes the list? Projects in Chicago, Seattle, Germany, London and Japan…

The Bellevue Art Museum in a Seattle suburb plans to reopen in June as a crafts museum. When the museum abruptly closed in September 2003, the “museum was running out of money and faced low attendance after moving to a new $23 million building downtown in 2001. Some of the problems were attributed to lackluster exhibits, a cold, unwelcoming feeling inside the building, an unclear mission and poor management.”

A Picasso painting stolen last year from the Pompidou, has been recovered. “Following a tip-off, police traced the painting – worth 2.5m euros (£1.7m) – to a house in Paris where the painting was hidden behind a wardrobe. Cubist painting Nature Morte a la Charlotte, completed in 1924, was reported missing in May last year from a restoration workshop.”

A two-year renovation project at the home-turned-museum of legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has uncovered a vast wardrobe of previously undiscovered clothing and other valuable artifacts.

Forget malls. How 90s of you. Today’s temples to shopping aggregation are called “lifestyle centers” (we kiddeth thee not). “While these new malls may appear to be public space, they’re not public at all—at least if you want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the commercial one. They’re also enormously successful—by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country.”

What does Andrea Rich’s sudden retirement running the LA County Museum mean? “Everybody is trying to put the best face on the sudden “retirement.” LACMA still has tens of millions of dollars to raise for construction and endowment in its multiphase expansion plan, and now there are two big jobs to be filled, not just one. (Perhaps the nascent deputy will be promoted.) For that, unfortunately, LACMA will have to go to the back of a lengthy line; major director searches are already underway at heavy-hitters such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum and the Minneapolis Art Institute. But what ended badly, started badly. The vacuum in professional conscience from both the boardroom (expected) and the director’s suite (unexpected) means LACMA has been a rudderless ship for longer than a decade.

How do you know when the whole architect-as-superstar phenomenon has gotten completely out of control? When Frank Gehry shows up to play himself on an episode of The Simpsons…

Christie’s is trying to tap into a wealthy Middle East market. “London-based Christie’s, which had auction sales of $2.5 billion last year, will open as many as four offices in the Middle East during the next five years, starting with Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.”

Staring next year artists in the UK will earn a percentage of the resale value of their work when it changes hands. “The measure would earn artists royalties of 4.5% on sales of up to £50,000, with a sliding scale coming into effect above that. However, royalties to the handful of artist millionaires would be capped at £9,000 for each sale. The payments would help some well-known artists.” But some say that the plan will chase art sales out of the country to the US

“Until the last quarter of the 20th century, Texas hardly existed on the cultural map of America. Virtually every one of the state’s major museums was built in the past 35 years. And, during the last decade or so, a new museum seems to open every year, inevitably designed by a leading international architect. Art follows money, and Texas money comes not only from oil but also from cattle, land development, banking, and insurance. You only have to set foot in a Texas museum to realise how generous wealthy Texans can be. But they are also sophisticated collectors who have filled their museums with works of art of the highest quality.”