Category: visual

The new Museum of Modern Art building is a fun place to walk through, writes Adrian Searle. “Whether Moma is the museum best placed to collect not the art of our time but the art of the future is another matter. Current American art doesn’t seem to matter to the degree it once did. And Moma shows us that, to a large extent, the art that has counted most in its history has been made elsewhere.”

The architecture of Edwin Lutyens may be the only good thing that came of British colonialism in India, but “almost every Lutyens bungalow in private hands has gone, destroyed in the welter of demolitions that took place between 1980 and 2000. Now it has been announced that the same fate awaits the remaining 60% of the Lutyens buildings still owned by the government… The idea is to replace them with ‘ultra-modern day fuel-efficient apartment blocks’, which, if the mock-ups published in the Times of India are anything to go by, will resemble bland 1960s student housing projects of grey windowless concrete.”

Oslo’s Munch Museum is seeking permission from the City Council to make all the blueprints of its buildings inaccessible to the public, as part of a new round of security upgrades in the wake of the much-publicized theft of two masterpieces from its collection. There are legal questions involved in classifying what are usually public documents, but the council believes that it can keep at least some of the blueprints secret.

There is a major downtown building boom going on in Minneapolis, with riverfront lofts, high-rise condos, and mixed-use developments adding to an already thriving urban core. But architects are beginning to wonder what it will take to get Minneapolitans to embrace new design ideas – every time an architect proposes a modernist design for one of the new residences, neighborhood groups scream objections and demand a building that will “fit in” better. The result is a brand spanking new collection of faux-classic buildings that are giving a relatively young city a decidedly retro look.

A dozen of Britain’s leading visual artists were given camera phones and asked to snap away for an exhibition of “fonetography.” “The gallery said the brief for each of the artists involved was ‘simply to capture the moment’. Organisers said they wanted to see what some of the leading visual artists could do with camera phones, which have had an impact on everyday photography.”

“These projects take what conceptual artists did in the 1970s — projects such as sitting in a room for a year, or making one painting that depicts the day’s date every day for 40 years — and let computers do much of the work. It is not clear if these projects are meant to honour or mock the original art works, but then the original projects were often done in a spirit of great playfulness themselves, so it hardly matters.”

Staff at Washington DC’s National Gallery have been complaining of physical ailments because of a new Dan Flavin exhibition. “Ever since the gallery’s Oct. 3 opening of “Dan Flavin: A Retrospective,” staffers watching over the sprawling display of 44 illuminated works by the fluorescent-tube-obsessed minimalist have complained of headaches, anxiety, and nervousness—all allegedly brought on by excessive wattage. A combined 48,600 watts, to be exact. One staffer is said to have passed out.”

Greece’s new government says it plans to finish a new museum at the Acropolis by 2006, at a cost of 129 million Euros. “The previous, Socialist government had sworn to have the building ready before the Athens Olympics, at a cost of 94 million euros. But nothing happened.” The Greek government hopes that one day the museum will house the Parthenon Marbles.

An art dealer in Taos, New Mexico found a $38,000 piece of art that had been stolen from his gallery a few months before listed for sale on the internet. Now it appears other stolen art is turning up here…

The Museum of Modern Art’s new building won’t be the only new acquistion on display when it opens next week. “In the last three years, the museum has added well over $100 million worth of art and objects, officials there estimate. Some have been purchases, others gifts from trustees or museum lovers.”