Category: visual

Oil heiress Caroline Wiess Law has left Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts the bulk of her estate. “When all of Law’s assets are sold and the legal proceedings conclude, possibly by the end of this year, the museum could net between $400 million and $450 million. In recent history, this would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest cash gifts to an art museum. This money will help make Houston one of the most important museums in terms of programming and serving the public.”

A website is offering images of colored ancient statues. The experiments in color are part of “a growing trend that has resulted in a recent Vatican Museum exhibit on colored statues, as well as actual restoration of the world’s best-preserved painted sculpture. Before these projects, most all Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman and other early sculptures only were seen in the monotone colors of the sculpture’s primary material, such as clay or marble, even though many of the objects originally were covered with gilt and bright paints.”

A fingerprint and stylistic touches uncovered during restoration of a disputed Renaissance masterpiece raises the possibility it may have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci, who sometimes left his mark on works as a kind of signature, restorers said Tuesday.

What has happened to the World Trade Center Memorial? A year after being chosen, the design has been bloated, writes James Russell. “It was inevitable the planned memorial would grow to a disturbingly large size, once it was deemed that the towers’ footprints must be entirely preserved — for political, not design reasons, in response to pleas from some of the victims’ family members. In the past year, the proposed project has expanded into a vast commemorative complex; it threatens to become a grandiose paean to grief.”

Architect Santiago Calatrava, 53, wins the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor, the Gold Medal. “Even at his age, Calatrava still deserves to be called a phenom. After all, at 53 most architects with strong personal visions are just beginning to make their presence felt. But Calatrava has accomplished so much in so short a period of time it is hard to comprehend. He has designed opera houses, museums, stadiums, civic centers, train stations, airports and other types of buildings throughout Europe and in the United States. And bridges. With Calatrava, you cannot forget bridges.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Central Park Gates “are charming bits of civic ornament,” writes Blake Gopnik. “They’re drawing New Yorkers out in crowds to stroll among and under them, and should continue to do so for the two weeks that they’re up. But as a work of outdoor art, in competition with the best of Bernini or even Henry Moore — and especially compared with some of the couple’s earlier projects — they’re unusually slight. It’s amazing how small the artistic return can be on a piece that fills 850 acres in the middle of one of the world’s great cities and looks set to cost $21 million before it’s done.”

The Tampa Museum wants to build a signature $54 million building downtown to house its collections. But is the museum director described as “nice” up to the job of getting it done?

Staff at three leading UK museums are planning to strike Wednesday. “Curators and other workers at the Science Museum in London will take part in the protest over a below-inflation wage offer and cost-cutting measures. The National Railway Museum in York and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford will also be hit by the action.”

Parts of a long-lost port city in India were uncovered by last year’s tsunami. “Archaeologists say they have discovered some stone remains from the coast close to India’s famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state following the 26 December tsunami. They believe that the “structures” could be the remains of an ancient and once-flourishing port city in the area housing the famous 1200-year-old rock-hewn temple.”