Category: visual

A major US casino has produced plans to build a new casino In Singapore that would include a branch of the Guggenheim. “Sources say that the planned development would cost more than US$2 billion, making it one of the most expensive casino projects in the region.” The project would be built by Las Vegas Sands, which “owns the Venetian hotel and casino on the Las Vegas strip. And the Venetian hosts the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, a venue for the presentation of exhibitions based on the collections of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums.”

The heirs of a Dutch art dealer are trying to recover a painting hanging in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. They say it was part of a collection looted by Nazis. The museum says the work, called The Deification of Aeneas, will remain on its walls until it can be determined whether it was sold legitimately.”

Paintings stolen last summer in Australia which were “described at the time as Australia’s biggest art heist” and “worth $67 million” are fakes. “The paintings – which included one entitled Son in a High Chair alleged to have been painted by French impressionist Paul Cezanne – were recovered from a Robina duplex last June. But Tweed-Byron police Acting Inspector Brett Greentree said experts consulted, including international art dealers Sothebys, had determined that the paintings were not genuine.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-draped ‘Gates of Central Park’ may have been taken down weeks ago, but the national interest generated by the massive public art project has lived on, spawning several spoofs, a few serious imitators, and an exhibit of photographs of the display. “The criticism that the aesthetic quality of ‘The Gates’ didn’t hold up compared with earlier Christo/Jeanne-Claude works doesn’t seem to take into account a shift in focus that the artists began developing in the late 1970s or early 1980s,” and such criticism certainly didn’t hurt the installation in the eyes of much of the public. “By the participatory measure, “The Gates” was a success, both in terms of the estimated 4 million visitors it attracted and the continuing activity it’s spawned.”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art said yesterday that it had acquired the Gilman Paper Company Collection of photographs, an archive that includes hundreds of works from the medium’s earliest years and that is widely considered to be the most important private photography collection in the world. The more than 8,500 photographs, some purchased by the Met and some donated by the foundation that owns them, will greatly strengthen the museum’s photography holdings and make it, along with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, one of the world’s pre-eminent institutions for 19th-century photographs.”

Asian cities are still wooing the New York-based contemporary-art institution. For many, especially here in the greater China region, the specter of cloning Bilbao’s boom is just too seductive. The Bilbao model has strong appeal in Asia, which is warming up to an idea the West realized long ago. Cities can prosper by attracting creative industries — architecture, art, music and publishing — and establishing themselves as animated places to live.

“It’s hard to criticize a trade show for being, well, a trade show. Throughout its seven years as the Armory Show, and in its previous incarnation as the Gramercy International Art Fair, this beast has, at moments, been the largest and most realistic reflection of New York’s—and sometimes even the world’s—contemporary art commerce. Dealers never brought the best of the best—that stuff’s not for public consumption—but they’ve always tried to make themselves look good. That made it buzzy and fun: Once upon a time, the art was surprising, sometimes ugly and sometimes downright nasty—but better yet, the fair displayed enormous egos and riveting internecine political machinations. But the fun—like most of the paintings—is on hold.”

The Whitney Museum goes to New York’s Landmarks Preservation Board to get permission to demolish two brownstones for an expansion. But there is resistance. “When we are being asked to demolish a historic building, I think we should be shown that it is really necessary for the programmatic function – not just a design function. The Whitney doesn’t seem to be making a compelling case for the loss.”

“The Smithsonian Institution reached into its own history yesterday and selected Lonnie G. Bunch, a former Smithsonian curator, to be the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch, 52, is president of the Chicago Historical Society, where in the past four years he has led the museum through a reorganization and capital campaign.”

“Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream has become a world icon of human anxiety, appearing on everything from T-shirts to blow-up dolls and causing endless debate among art experts. But what exactly is the surreal figure doing in the painting, with hands pressed to its head and open mouth: Screaming, or hearing a scream?” Munch himself described the moment that inspired the painting as a “scream from nature,” and the figure in the painting appears to be covering his ears, as if to block out a scream, but most people believe that the figure is the one doing the screaming.