Category: visual

“At a growing number of museums around the country, party nights aimed at younger patrons are bringing in everything from D.J.’s spinning house music to double-Dutch jump-ropers (at the Seattle Art Museum’s Thursday After Hours series, which sometimes lasts until midnight)… Museums have plenty of reason to look for younger crowds. According to a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and conducted by the Census Bureau, the median age of Americans who visited art museums rose by five years, from 40 to 45, between 1992 and 2002, reflecting a sharp drop in museum visits by people 18 to 34.”

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has always viewed 20th-century modernism as the core of its collection, and the museum’s new home pays appropriate tribute to that tradition. But while the collection is virtually beyond reproach, Michael Kimmelman sees many flaws in the new MoMA’s finished product, beginning with the somewhat boxy and cold feel of the architecture, and exemplified by the “appalling and cynical” $20 admission price. An additional disappointment is that “the Modern is clearly still not sure what to make of the art of the last 30 or 40 years – what its role and mission, as well as its taste and judgment, are in an art world that has changed and expanded.”

MoMA may have a new look, but patrons will have no trouble finding their familiar old favorite works, and that brings up an interesting conundrum for an institution purporting to be about all that is new. “Art museums have come to be petting zoos. They are places where strange, wild, difficult, potentially dangerous objects are brought, stripped of their histories and confined to ‘neutral’ settings for safe observation. This way, objects start to change, to lose their volatility, their bite and sting and, at the Modern, their modern-ness. And what does modern-ness mean, applied to art? A zillion things.”

“The Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, a tuition-free art school and an active part of Philadelphia’s cultural community, will auction nearly all its remaining artwork [this weekend],” raising as much as $100,000 for the school’s endowment. But the school is stressing that the sale, which will include 50 Russian religious icons and a treasure trove of works by local artists, was not precipitated by budget problems, but by a desire to find a home for the works where they can be seen by the public. The school has no exhibition space of its own, and in fact, the existence of its collection came as a surprise to many in the art world.

Richard Dorment is thrilled by the new Museum of Modern Art. “Everything about the building radiates expensive reticence, conservative good taste. Externally, its sheer façade of subdued black granite, aluminum panels, and white and grey glass gives little hint of the wonders inside. But, when you step over the threshold, something extraordinary happens. Taniguchi’s serenely minimalist architecture draws you gently but inexorably forward with the promise of what I am tempted to call enlightenment.”

The Royal College of Art is holding a secret art sale. “Most of the 2,000-odd works in the show are by RCA students, present or past. Some, however, are by extremely well-known artists – including David Hockney, Bill Viola, Perry and Damien Hirst. All are on sale for £35 – but the catch is that as a buyer you won’t be told whom your work is by until you have handed over the cash. You could be walking away with the most fantastic bargain. Or not.”

Norman Foster has designed “one of the world’s most breathtaking” bridges. “A sublime marriage of British and French architecture and engineering, the Grand Viaduc du Millau outdoes even the stirring 10-year-old Pont du Normandie that spans the mouth of the Seine between Honfleur and Le Havre. With a 2.5km span, the Millau bridge is far from the longest in the world, yet it is surely one of the most beautiful. In terms of artistry, it challenges the Garabit viaduct, which Gustave Eiffel built across the River Truyère in 1884.”

In many ways, the new Museum of Modern Art is the “anti-Bilbao. Notched with neat precision into the urban fabric of midtown Manhattan, it is a secret garden of the mind, setting out with dazzling clarity one of the great art collections of the world. The results can be as stupendous as they are because of the benefactors, donors and museum professionals who focused on the acquisitions along the way.”

Robert Campbell feels letdown by the new Museum of Modern Art. “It isn’t bad, it’s just uninteresting. It’s the old MoMA all over again, only bigger. Here are the same-old same-old white walls and ceiling track lights, and then more white walls and more ceiling track lights. You feel like a lab rat in a snow maze. There’s no attempt to create memorable architectural space for the artworks to inhabit. Instead, seeing them spotlighted on these placeless, anonymous white walls is like seeing isolated images on a screen in an academic slide lecture.”

“The new museum wasn’t the only thing being built: The collections were, too. The MoMA has acquired hundreds of works since the exodus. The words “New Acquisition” appear on label after label. While museums that ignored the 20th century lament that it’s too late now to catch up — the art isn’t available and its cost would be prohibitive — the MoMA has received from its supporters a windfall that would make up an entire 20th-century department in any other institution. And these new additions match the quality of the existing holdings — which is staggering. Very few things are less than the finest of their kind.”