Category: visual

The Cincinnati Museum of Art has acquired its first Renoir -Brouillard a Guernsey” (“Fog at Guernsey”) – the most expensive art the museum has ever bought. “The painting fills a gap in the museum’s Impressionist collection. ‘We have a lovely collection of Impressionists — Pissarro, Monet, Sisley — but Renoir was conspicuous in his absence’.”

If you’re looking for a traditional art museum experience, the new National Museum of the American Indian is probably not the place for you. But “visitors not conditioned by art-museum preconceptions begin to feel the stirrings of Indian spirit as soon as they enter the museum’s majestic 120-foot-high rotunda.”

If you’re a thief, maybe banks aren’t the place you want to hit these days. Art is where the money is. “The worldwide market in stolen art and collectibles is worth an estimated $4 billion, according to Scotland Yard.”

The new Museum of Modern Art reopened Saturday with a line of thousands that stretched around the block. “Many arrived hours before the 10 a.m. opening to be among the first to see the museum’s collection of world-class modern and contemporary art. At 10 a.m. sharp, the doors swung open to cheers.”

“The new Modern is not just beautiful, though Yoshio Taniguchi’s building is that and then some. It offers a new way of looking at art, a new way of living with it and a bracing enthusiasm that has not been felt for years.”

“With the reopening yesterday, one naturally asks, was it worth it? Has the museum effected a corresponding improvement in its ability to coherently display and interpret its superb collections of painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, architecture, and design? On balance, no. In some ways, the reborn MoMA is exciting, almost a different museum. However, much of that feeling has to do with the architecture. In other ways, it’s much less revolutionary than promised, and it sometimes seems confused about what it’s trying to achieve.”

“The new MoMA is so different a place from any time in the museum’s 75-year history that its original commitment has been pushed to a middle ground, from which it will continue to recede while the institution pursues related interests. This is not conjecture. The new building and how it is used send a message that had been sounded with increasing frequency since the last expansion.”

“The new Museum of Modern Art, which reopened to the public Saturday after a $425 million renovation and expansion, is that bracing shower: a work of architecture that is serene, urbane and blissfully understated.”

The British government is launching a set of standards for museums. “The initiative will govern how museums look after their collections and the information their visitors should expect to receive. The scheme is expected to become a “kite-mark” of quality for the smallest to largest institutions.”

What’s America’s best building? Robert Campbell suggests that Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin ought to be considered. But it’s in bad repair. “Wright is arguably the greatest American artist in any field of the visual arts, and Taliesin is perhaps his masterpiece. If we don’t save it, we have no claim to call ourselves a culture. The cost of restoration has been estimated at $60 million. The Big Dig is costing 250 times that.”