Category: visual

Michael Kane doesn’t like Central Park with the Christo Gates in it. He’s “Gates hatin’: The park was better before. It was a peaceful oasis in a grid of metal and concrete. The spindly trees, the sweep of the lake, even the curvature of bridges, stone walls and steps blended organically into the backdrop. Now, in the interest of art, Christo bolts down jarring, squared-off frames (in orange, no less) throughout this vital sensory escape. So aesthetically insensitive. So rectangular. So lame.”

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is not the first venue in which you would expect to find an auto show. But there in its stately galleries are 16 vintage cars in all their glory, and they are there for a very good reason. “For car guys, the MFA’s nontraditional exhibition offers a rare chance for time with some of the world’s rarest and priciest racing machines, a collection built largely over the past 30 years by the fashion designer who created Polo. For the museum, the show has another function: to reach more men. The museum, noted for its flowery Impressionist works, says women visitors outnumber men, 64 percent to 36 percent.”

The artist Hargo, of Somerville, Massachusetts, may not have Christo’s cachet or financial wherewithal, but that hasn’t stopped him from piggybacking on the attention being paid to the better-known artist’s “Gates of Central Park”. In fact, Hargo’s “Somerville Gates,” unveiled in the artist’s apartment (and on his web site) this week after a day-long installation bear a striking resemblance to the much-larger New York version. But Hargo hastens to point out the difference in the visions of the two projects. For one thing, Hargo will be accepting donations to defray the costs of mounting his gates: that cost, by the way, is $3.50…

“Eight elephants in northern Thailand have painted their way into the Guinness Book of World Records after an art lover living in the United States shelled out a jumbo 1.5 million baht ($39,000) for their canvas creation — the highest price ever paid for elephant art.

“A representative of Christo’s German publisher has informed street artists, photographers and art vendors around Central Park that they would be subject to arrest for selling any images of The Gates. Christo’s publisher claims a vast new degree of copyright and trademark protection. They claim they will prosecute anyone who sells their own original photos of The Gates; who makes and sells a drawing of The Gates or who even uses the words, The Gates, without their permission.”

Federal authorities reversed themselves on Thursday and decided to release artwork, including fake passports, that they confiscated last week in Detroit from the luggage of an Austrian artist on his way to set up an exhibit at a museum.

“Those sleek flat screens popping up on people’s walls may just look like fancy televisions. A new generation of artists and gallery owners wants you to think of them as something else: an empty picture frame… Digital works, the latest genre of new media art, usually are sold in limited edition DVDs. But this spring, Steven Sacks, the director of New York City’s bit-forms gallery, plans to start selling lower-priced original works of software art at software ART space. Prices will range from $100 for unlimited-edition works to $1,000 for numbered pieces. Buyers will get a sleekly packaged disc; limited editions will be signed by the artist.”

New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum is proposing a “$75 million expansion that would create three new floors beneath the spacious gated garden of its home, the landmark Carnegie Mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. ‘In visitation and profile, Cooper-Hewitt is struggling to gain traction in the competitive cultural environment of New York City’.”

The Dallas Museum gets $400 million worth of art and cash, making it a major center of modern art. Moreover, “the gifts arrive amid a Dallas cultural building boom: a new $275 million performing arts center includes an opera house designed by Norman Foster, a theater designed by Rem Koolhaas and an arts high school. They will become part of the Dallas Arts District, which already embraces the Morton H. Myerson Symphony Center.”

The Dallas Museum of Art had a big day Tuesday, getting donations worth as much as $400 million: three extensive art collections, a $25 million Monet, $32 million of endowment funds for acquisitions and a really nice house on Preston Road. The stash of 800 works dating from the 1940s to the present includes giants such as Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter. It’s the largest combined gift in the museum’s history and one of the nation’s biggest ever.”