Category: visual

The Art Loss Register is a small operation. But since its founding, the company has compiled a huge database of stolen art and assisted in the recovery of millions of dollars worth of objects.

“Istvan Kantor, best known as the man who was banned from the National Gallery of Canada in the 1990s for tossing a vial of his own blood on the walls, has turned up in Berlin where he sprayed more of his bodily fluids at a statue of Michael Jackson yesterday. Also known as Monty Cantsin, Kantor was banned from the Art Gallery of Ontario for vomiting on a painting in 1996. Six months later he repeated the performance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. At the time he said he was protesting the ‘oppressively trite and painfully banal’ nature of the works in question.”

“In the past 25 years, Chinese artists have followed and studied the art of Europe, America and Asia’s developed countries. There has been scant contemporary Chinese art with its own distinctive language and aesthetic value that does not defer to the expectations of the established art circuit.” Now, a third wave of Chinese artists is wrking with a language that is distinctly Chinese…

Keepers of LA’s Disney Hall are considering dulling the finish of the exterior after a study finds that reflection of the sun heats nearby apartments and poses a hazard to traffic. Gehry is said to agree to the changes.

Cambridge University is considering closing down its architecture school. “The prospect of our leading research university closing its only department that has a direct impact on the quality of our built environment is worrying and may indicate deeper attitudes and realities that are of equal concern.”

“Marcel Duchamp’s iconic urinal has been named the most influential piece of modern art. “The Duchamp came out top in a survey of 500 artists, curators, critics and dealers commissioned by the sponsor of the Turner prize, Gordon’s. Different categories of respondents chose markedly different works, with artists in particular plumping overwhelmingly for Fountain. ‘It feels like there is a new generation out there saying, ‘Cut the crap – Duchamp opened up modern art’.”

With MoMA now charging $20 just for the privilege of getting in the door, other museums are sure to follow with higher admission charges of their own. But such hikes are not only inconvenient, says Jeff Weinstein, they threaten to undermine the very mission of art museums. “Without dependable government grants, museums think they must be run like Wal-Marts in order to survive,” but by setting their price scale according to what the high rollers will pay, museums run the risk that no penniless youth will ever set foot inside. And assuming that today’s penniless youths are tomorrow’s millionaire entrepreneurs, as some of them certainly are, MoMA is risking the interest of an entire generation for short-term profit.

More than 600 paintings and assorted trinkets from the home of President John F. Kennedy & Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s this week, with the full sale expected to bring $1 million or more. “Among the most prominent items, Kennedy will offer the paintings done in 1968 by Aaron Shickler in the living room of her mother’s Manhattan apartment, Portrait Of Jacqueline Kennedy With Caroline And John Jr. and John And Caroline Reading, A Study, that likely will sell for $3,000 to $12,000.”

The American government is trying to seize a Picasso from a Chicago collector. “The attempt is a rare instance in which federal prosecutors, apparently for the first time in California, are invoking the US National Stolen Property Act (NSPA) against an individual collector in an attempt to seize art in a Nazi-loot claim, on the theory that the work is stolen goods which crossed state lines.”

The newly announced show of King Tut treasures coming to America is a for-profit affair and being packaged as entertainment. “The Egyptian government intends to clear $10 million in every city visited by a new touring show of Tutankhamun artifacts. Its financial goals have cultural institutions around the United States weighing the crowds his treasures are likely to draw against the prospect of having to charge as much as $30.”