Category: visual

Magazines that attempt to explore the art world without confining themselves to a rigid format frequently fall prey to irrelevance or flippancy, but this autumn has seen the demise of what AJ Blogger Nancy Levinson calls “one of the strangest, smartest, most idiosyncratic and eccentric periodicals ever to maintain a quarterly publication schedule… Nest wasn’t everyone’s cup of oolong souchong, but it was the sort of periodical that’s become increasingly rare, not to say endangered: a magazine shaped by the passions and ideas of its leading editor.”

The Cleveland Institute of Art is a distinguished school, but over the decades, its leaders fear that it may have missed an artistic boat or two. “After World War II, [CIA] grew increasingly conservative and insular. It hired a lot of former graduates as faculty. It emphasized fundamental skills, such as painting and drawing, virtually to the exclusion of the theories and concepts that drive the art world today.” Now, a new “academic demolition crew” has taken over the school, and is making a concerted push for change in the way that art students are educated.

“Frank Gehry, admired for his voluptuous buildings of undulating titanium and steel, is to be the architect of a new performing arts center at ground zero, his first major cultural project in Manhattan, the development corporation in charge of rebuilding the site said yesterday. The selection of Mr. Gehry for the arts center – which is to include the Joyce Theater and the Signature Theater – brings to Lower Manhattan a celebrity architect who has been notably absent from perhaps the most closely watched architectural site in the world.”

A new graduate program at Russia’s University of St. Petersburg is offering high-level training to students interested in getting into museum administration. The curriculum is an effort to insure that the country’s rich museum legacy doesn’t fall victim to poor management just as museums are being forced to look to private funding sources for the first time.

The world of art restoration is a mysterious one to even the most frequent of museumgoers, but a new program launched by the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts is giving non-experts a glimpse of the processes involved in caring for great and aging artwork. “On two occasions now, the Institute has performed its magic in a public gallery, so that visitors could witness the techniques in progress and in person – and for those who may have been prevented by time or geography from following the exhibit first-hand… the entire process [is archived for public viewing] on the web.”

At some point in the last twenty years, the works of Edvard Munch crossed over from being mere admired art to being symbols of contemporary culture. But what is it about the painter that so engages people, more than 50 years after his death? It may be that Munch’s “landscapes and portraits of inner anguish” touch a nerve with nervous individuals in a world filled with fear and uncertainty.

In the past four years, voting has been revitalized as an issue in the United States, but usually when people talk about taking another look at the design of the system, they’re not thinking about aesthetics. Frank Gehry, Christo, Robert A.M. Stern, Diane von Furstenberg and Richard Meier are some of those who are. “The Voting Booth Project, on display at Parsons School of Design in New York, features offbeat interpretations of about 50 of the Votomatic booths used in Florida during the controversial 2000 presidential election.”

A Damian Loeb painting titled “Blow Job (Three Little Boys)” that was removed from a University of Hartford exhibition does, in fact, depict the sons of a wealthy businessman with ties to the school, staff and faculty say. “And Douglas S. Cramer, the collector who lent the works for the show, said the university had informed him that the boys’ family was distressed by the painting. … But by every account, from the curator to Mr. Cramer to Mr. Loeb, the painting’s removal was less a clear censorship case than it was one of copyright and surprising coincidence.”

Iraqi architect Hadid has been tapped to design Scotland’s new £50 million riverfront museum. “Glasgow, a former European city of architecture and design, is bracing itself for the arrival of one of Hadid’s avante-garde designs which will occupy one of the most symbolic sites in the city.” Hadid, an avowed deconstructionist, is promising that her building will be, of all things, “fun.”

Boston’s new home for the Institute of Contemporary Art is under construction on the city’s riverfront, defying the expectations of critics who doubted the organization’s ability to raise the necessary funds. “The new ICA is not just a museum, but a museum that aims to define a new district. Boston’s waterfront is slated for billions of dollars in construction over the next few years, as land that is now parking lots and lobster shacks is turned over to housing, hotels, restaurants and shops.” Still, the ICA must still overcome Boston’s notorious conservatism when it comes to the arts, and convince the local populace that new art is just as good as old.