Category: visual

“More than two years after the Barnes board, backed by a $150 million fundraising promise from three charitable foundations, petitioned the court for permission to move the collection, Montgomery County Orphans’ Court Judge Stanley Ott agreed that the Barnes needs to relocate to a more-accessible location to avoid going broke.”

Were the walls at the new Museum of Modern Art put up by a contractor with ties to organized crime? That’s the allegation. “The firm, Interstate Drywall, has been affiliated with the family of the late John (Dapper Don) Gotti for years, according to several mob informants and public documents. Construction companies align themselves with mob families so they can get cheaper nonunion help on union jobs, and so they can intimidate other contractors from bidding against them for certain contracts, authorities say.”

Construction begins on what will be the world’s tallest building. It’s in Dubai and will be 160 stories. “The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 metres tall – just 5 metres shy of half a mile – once completed in 2008. That will be nearly 300 metres taller than the tallest floored building in the world today, the Taipei Tower in Taiwan.”

“Judge Stanley R. Ott of the Montgomery County Orphans’ Court said the proposed move, backed by pledges of $150 million in financial support primarily from three Philadelphia-area foundations, seemed the only realistic way to save the Barnes from bankruptcy and salvage its prized legacy.”

A Manhattan art dealer pleads guilty to art forgery over a period of 15 years. “The government charged that Ely Sakhai had purchased genuine but lesser-known works of Gauguin and other Impressionist and modern artists, then ordered copies made by skilled forgers working from the originals. Other painters whose works were copied were Chagall, Klee, Modigliani and Renoir. Mr. Sakhai then sold the copies to private collectors, primarily in Japan and Taiwan.”

A dispute at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick is dragging through the Canadian legal system. So far the legal costs alone are about $1.5 million for the three parties involved in the tug of war: the art gallery and the Canadian and British Beaverbrook foundations. “At stake is ownership of about 200 prized paintings worth at least $100 million, housed at the provincial art gallery in Fredericton.”

New York City will likely cut its funding to city museums, and the museums are weighing ways to make up the difference. “Leaders of the 34 city-owned arts groups that make up the Cultural Institutions Group got a face-to-face account of the city’s financial problems in a meeting with Mayor Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago. What officials heard was that they’ll have to absorb the same cuts of 9 percent over 18 months required of all other city agencies. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the city’s top tourist attraction, is upping its suggested donation from $12 to $15 next month.”

The UK government is announcing that free admission will continue at the nation’s major museums for three more years. “Under today’s package being announced by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, the big national museums will get increases of a fraction over inflation, while the lion’s share of a £40 million injection of extra cash to arts and heritage will go outside London to modernise regional museums.”

Istanbul has opened a Museum of Modern Art. “Istanbul has been a very important city like New York, London, Paris etc. for centuries. Its only deficiency was a modern arts museum. Now we have one. This museum has added another beauty to the city. Istanbul will be the city of museums and our studies for this will continue.”

A new art school in Philadelphia has scored a major grant from the Delaware River Port Authority, and some officials are asking how a small-scale start-up operation could be awarded a quarter of a million dollars in bridge toll proceeds (nearly twice the school’s entire annual operating budget) while other, more established arts groups go begging. The answer appears to be that school officials have friends in very high political places – friends who lobbied hard for Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to approve the grant quickly and quietly.