Category: visual

“St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London has come under attack from medical professionals and politicians because of its decision to spend £250,000 ($467,000) on works of art for its new breast cancer screening centre. The hospital has defended its decision to purchase 12 paintings and installations—paid for with private donations and not through National Health Service funds—because, it says, there is evidence that, art will speed patients’ recovery by improving their spirits.”

A gang of art thieves is assembled and set the task of breaking in to a gallery and stealing art. On TV. “In Channel 4’s The Heist, they plan to penetrate state-of-the-art security at the Business Design Centre in Islington and remove The View From The Bandstand by Andrew Gifford – described by critics as a modern masterpiece. Each of the ex-criminals was once notorious in a certain field before going straight – an armed robber, jewellery thief, gangster, extortionist and internet hacker.”

Winnipeg’s Royal Art Lodge is an artist collective that’s getting some big traction outside the Coldest City In The World. “Usually one artist will start a drawing, throw it in a pile, and then others contribute, amend, appropriate, thus embarking on an ongoing dialogue until either a work reveals itself or is appropriately disposed of. ‘At the beginning of a meeting, I generally like to start drawings or paintings and then later on when my mind is working better I switch to finishing them. For me, there’s definitely more satisfaction in finishing. The works develop in a lot of different ways, but usually it is a lot easier to start a work than to finish one’.”

As Art Basel Miami has grown, the Chicago Art Fair has waned. “In recent years, Art Chicago, our own international art fair, has dwindled to near-irrelevance as Art Basel Miami has assiduously wooed away art dealers and artists from around the world. How did they do it? The hallmark of the success of the fair is a combination of institutional and private collaboration.”

An audit of artwork owned by city agencies in Los Angeles suggests that hundreds of pieces of art are missing. “The city has maintained its own art collection since at least the 1920s. There was a person who was supposed to be the curator of this collection, and he allowed city entities to borrow pieces to decorate city buildings. The problem was that over the years, the artwork that had been checked out was not really followed up on.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is hosting the first SWalvador Dali retrospective in the US since 1941. “The exhibition will comprise 200 works, including some of Dalí’s famous surrealist canvases. It will showcase the artist’s works as a painter, sculptor, writer, designer of ballets, filmmaker, theorist and publicist. If you don’t know Salvador Dalí, you will. Philadelphia will have Dalí banners, Dalí bus-wraps, Dalí window displays, a Dalí trolley, and lots else Dalí. The plan is to spread the excitement and economic impact citywide, creating an event people can participate in – and spend dollars on – even if they never set foot in the show.”

Romania has a new National Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s located in an enormous palace that former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had built but never occupied. “At 270 by 244 metres the building is the second largest building in the world (after the Pentagon). Construction began in 1984, but the massive structure was never completed. To clear land for it, Ceausescu bulldozed 7,000 homes and 26 churches in southern Bucharest and relocated over 70,000 people to the outskirts of the city.”

Ada Louise Huxtable has had a life-long relationship with the Museum of Modern Art, following its various incarnations on 53rd St. And the latest version? it’s “a suavely sophisticated, exquisitely executed, elegantly understated building that doubles the museum’s size. Mr. Taniguchi’s style–where less is so much more than trendy minimalism, with every carefully reasoned detail honed as close to perfection as possible–is the right architecture for the Modern. It is also the right building for New York.”

“If spending millions of dollars on art was something done in private a few years ago, conspicuous consumption is back. At this spinoff of the highly successful 35-year-old fair in Basel, Switzerland, young, hip hedge-fund managers, Fortune 500 executives and A-list actors are shopping side by side in a spree fueled by new wealth, a hot art market and the headlong pursuit of membership in a glamorous, elite club.”

Lawton Fitt has resigned as secretary of the Royal Academy. “Ms Fitt, who joined the academy only two years ago, was the first woman and the first American to be appointed as the RA’s secretary, one of the two most powerful positions at the organisation. But earlier this year reports spread of her feuding with Norman Rosenthal, the long-serving exhibitions secretary, a man who is admired as much for his inspired curatorial talent as he is loathed by many people for his abrasive style.”