Category: visual

US Confiscates Art Passports

US Customs agents have confiscated fake passports intended for an art show, saying they might be “harmful if imported.” “The items belonged to an art group headed by Vienna artist Robert Jelinek, and included what the government described as “fantasy passports,” along with ink pads, rubber stamps and ink. They were taken from Jelinek’s luggage Feb. 9 in Detroit as he headed for Cincinnati.”

National Gallery Tops 5 Million Visitors

London’s National Gallery was the UK’s most popular museum attraction in 2004. “With 5 million people marching through the National Gallery’s doors last year, it was the most visited museum in the country, and the second most visited tourist attraction – pipped only by the perennially popular Blackpool Pleasure Beach, according to figures prepared by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.”

Central Park Gates Draw Million People

More than a million people have been to Central Park to see the Christo Gates. “An estimated 350,000 people visited the park on Saturday’s opening day; even more – 450,000 – came Sunday. Rain reduced crowds on Monday, the conservancy said, but noted that 200,000 visited on Tuesday, when U.S. First Lady Laura Bush was among those in attendance. By comparison, the park typically receives 65,000 visitors a day during weekends in February. In the spring during the city’s busy tourist season, the park receives about 250,000 visitors a day on weekends.”

British Government Knew Queen’s Benin Bronze Had Been “Expropriated”

The British Foreign Office knew back in the 1970s that a Benin bronze head given to the Queen by Benin’s president had been “expropriated” from the Lagos Museum. “The bronze which Gowon gave to the Queen on his [1973] state visit was a sixteenth century piece worth up to £30,000 on the market. It was in the Lagos Museum up to a few days before Gowon left for the UK when, realising he had to come bearing a suitable gift, he sent to the Museum and said ‘I’ll have that one’.”

Iraqi Artifacts Recovered In US

Eight priceless Iraqi stone seals are recovered by the FBI in the US. An “ex-Marine bought the seals from a vendor on a U.S. military base in southern Iraq in late 2003. He returned with them to the United States in early 2004 and took them to show Zainab Bahrani, a Columbia University professor of ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology. “I think he just looked me up on the Internet. He was in New York and looking for an expert. His goal was to return them right from the start. The reason he did it was that he was trying to show how easy it is to remove cultural artifacts out of Iraq. This is not a unique example. These objects are being taken out of the country by the thousands, and we are fortunate he brought the issue to the forefront.”

Would Olmstead Have Liked Central Park’s “Gates”?

What would the architects of Central Park have thought of the Christo and Jeanne Claude Gates? Probably not much. “From the beginning, Olmsted and Vaux strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce art into the park. In their Greensward Plan of 1858—the competition entry that won them the commission—they wrote that while it would be possible to build elegant buildings in the park, “we conceive that all such architectural structures should be confessedly subservient to the main idea, and that nothing artificial should be obtruded on the view.” They considered art a similar distraction from the restorative purpose of the landscape and kept statues out of the park.”

Lincoln On Historical Steroids

It’s three months before the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is supposed to open in Springfield, Illinois. “Museum officials say they’re blending scholarship and showmanship on a scale never attempted before, without undermining the accuracy of the history they present. If they succeed, they contend, museums all over the world will imitate them. If they fail, they know — because it’s started to happen already — they’ll be savaged for Disneyfying the past.”