Category: visual

“Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.”

Evidence suggests that celebrated art critic John Ruskin didn’t burn a stack of Turner’s work, as he claimed. “Ruskin appears to have been tried and convicted by the standard version of his involvement with the Turner bequest, which characterizes him as the man who destroyed any surviving evidence of his hero’s sex life. Although the bonfire incident has passed into the popular imagination as one of the defining landmarks of Victorian censorship, what evidence there is to support this version of events is surprisingly slight.”

So some are prepared to declare that painting is back in. “An art form commonly reported to be on its last legs is about to skip jauntily back into the aesthetic arena. The tortoise of tradition catches up with the hare of technology. The old-fashioned canvas overtakes newfangled conceptualism. Or does it? I would not start peeling the champagne foil yet.”

John Perreault visits the Barnes Collection while it’s still in the original. “Yes, the ideal would be to replicate exactly the Barnes art ensembles. But you and I know that only in Artopia are ideals achieved. In real life, time goes by and there are emergencies, fancied and otherwise. Someone might come up with a new way of teaching art that is much more effective than Barnes’ juxtapositions. Or people may just become bored with the same old arrangements. So, not only as an educational creation in itself but also as a fallback, the Barnes should create a virtual tour of the museum to record exactly the way the founder of the foundation intended the art to be shown.”

London’s Whitechapel Gallery is expanding. moving next door to its current location. “The former library space, once the home of the largest collection of Yiddish books in Europe, will provide space for site-specific commissions, the display of rarely seen collections, and a new restaurant, bookshop and education room. It will also display work from the archives, which includes material relating to visits to east London by artists including Picasso and Rothko. The architects are Robbrecht and Daem.”

Selling art online was one promise of the internet. But it’s never really caught on. Now an artist in Washington State is offering art to be digitally printed for prices beginning at about $25. It’s not schlock but the kind of art you might find in reasonable galleries. Artists receive 75 percent of a sale, with the remaining 25 percent going to maintain and expand the site…

Where did the art stolen by Iraq from Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1990-91 go? “Although most of the collection looted from Kuwait’s National Museum has been recovered, almost all the jewellery, Islamic art and other works taken from wealthy Kuwaitis by the Iraqis during the six-month occupation has vanished. Only a few pieces have surfaced on the international art market, and none of it was found in Iraq after the war in 2003.”

A Barnes Foundation art student is appealing a ruling last month that permits the Barnes to relocate to downtown Philadelphia. “I don’t want the art to be relocated away from where it is suppose to be. I was disappointd in the court’s decision and felt the evidence did not support the decision.”

The Museum of Modern Art now offers audio description tours for the visual-impaired. “The regular tour takes about two-and-a-half hours, with 75 stops, and is available in six languages. What’s new here is a multiplicity of voices, including some from the past read by actors. Also, instead of hearing from one curator, visitors now hear from many, with additional perspective from conservators and artists, including Chuck Close, Marcel Duchamp and Lorna Simpson.”

Architects around the world are volunteering to help in the tsunami-affected region. “Many feel that sitting at a screen sweating over the design of handrail details for the next cute downtown boutique hotel just doesn’t make sense when more than 150,000 people have lost their lives, more than five million people have been made homeless and whole towns have been swept away.”