Category: visual

Peter Lewis’ departure from the Guggenheim makes him the loser in a struggle with director Thomas Krens. “For years the two had diverged on what the museum’s focus should be. Mr. Krens was interested in creating Guggenheim satellites around the world to build on the raging success of its showy outpost in Bilbao. Mr. Lewis felt that Mr. Krens should keep the museum’s attention on New York, getting the finances of the mother ship in order and perhaps seeking once again to open a branch elsewhere in the city. Each came to the conflict with distinct advantages…”

Some 200 artists and teachers protested outside the Louvre last weekend complaining about a decision to strip them of free admission to the museum. Since September, artists, teachers and students no longer have free entry to the Louvre. “For an artist, the Louvre is oxygen. People whose job it is to transmit art must have access to it.”

It’s taken 26 years for Christo and Jeanne-Claude to get their Central Park Gates project approved and built. Now it’s being sintalled in the park. “The Christos make no secret that their traveling show—from the political jockeying to the public debates to events like the signing of an original drawing, such as the one they’ve given to New York—is all part of what they consider their grand work of art. Whether this process is a critique of art and bureaucracy or simply great public theater, it’s an undeniably canny way to conduct business.”

The Guggenheim has lost its chairman and biggest donor. Citing “differences in direction,” Peter B. Lewis, the Cleveland philanthropist who has been a trustee of the museum since 1993 and most recently its chairman, resigned yesterday. He has given the institution about $77 million, nearly four times as much as any other board member in its history.

Twenty-three superstar architects work on building a hotel in Spain. “Among those greeted by the mayor of Madrid when the project was unveiled yesterday, and pursued by what seemed like the entire Spanish press corps, were London architects David Chipperfield, John Pawson and Ron Arad. The Japanese master Arata Isozaki was seated next to France’s Jean Nouvel, who has just completed a sparkling new addition to Madrid’s Reina Sofia art gallery. Norman Foster, who couldn’t be there, had made a video, and an ailing Zaha Hadid had sent her right-hand man to explain her contribution. I could go on, but suffice it to say, if architecture had Oscars, they would be like this.”

When Nero’s Rome fell, his palace in the middle of the city was buried. “This week, almost 2,000 years after Nero’s rule, Rome city officials unveiled a new find from the palace that offers a tantalizing hint of the treasures buried beneath the hill. It is a large mosaic, more than 9 by 6 feet, showing naked men harvesting grapes and making wine, a typical illustration for a Roman palace of the time.”

A computer analyst dies in Seattle, leaving the city $1 million for public art on the condition that an artist be commisssioned to create a male nude and place it in a prominent place. The city’s solution? It approached sculptor Louise Bourgeois, and plans to place the work in the Seattle Art Museum’s new sculpture park…

New York’s East Village was an art phenomenon of the 1980s. But, writes Peter Schjeldahl, “there was something toxically facetious about the East Village versions of avant-gardism and la vie bohème which heralded a shift to arch self-consciousness in American culture. But the half-cooked epoch was significant in ways that merit closer consideration than it has received.”

Aboriginals are asking for return of remains in museums. But the returns are controversial. “Large-scale and unique collections of valuable material could be destroyed, when very little is known about an object’s provenance.”

With art theft on the rise, the FBI is forming its first art theft unit. “The eight agents, who will be deployed around the country, are learning not just about art theft, but about art itself, including art history and how to distinguish artists, periods and styles.”