Category: visual

It was late May 2004 when an arson fire swept through a London warehouse, destroying hundreds of works of art valued at £50 million. The reaction of the British people was stunning: an outpouring of bitter glee aimed squarely at the much-reviled avant-garde artists whose work had gone up in smoke, and at the prominent but reclusive collector (Charles Saatchi) who had been their champion. Several months on, the losses from the fire are still being tallied, but the disdain of the public for what was lost remains palpable.

Dino and Jake Chapman – the sibling artists who created the massive sculpture known as “Hell,” which is considered to have been the most significant artwork lost in the fire at Charles Saatchi’s warehouse last spring – will collaborate on a new version of the work, which they promise will dwarf the original. “Hell, a diorama which took the Chapmans more than two years to construct, using thousands of plastic soldiers, was bought by Charles Saatchi for £500,000. Mounted in glass cases arranged in the shape of a swastika, it showed scenes of torture and mass killing.”

At a reform school for juvenile offenders, you might expect that an art class could be therapeutic, but most wouldn’t expect it to produce a large amount of wuality work. But at one such school in the UK, Rupert Christiansen’s expectations were dashed. “One would have expected more violence and neurosis, more splurges of abstract expressionism. I saw one copy of Munch’s The Scream, but otherwise the dominant aesthetic mood is oddly cheerful… I’ve no doubt that the persistent could earn places at art college. It is impossible not to be moved, impressed and heartened.”

“The Vatican is hoping to raise £2m to fund the restoration of Michelangelo’s last two frescos, which are hidden from the public in a chapel where the Pope prays and reads mass to private audiences. The frescos – the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Conversion of St Paul – are faded after being exposed to dust and soot over centuries of candlelit prayer in the Pauline chapel, close to the better-known Sistine chapel. As the artist’s last paintings, the two six-sq-metre frescos are considered among the most important masterpieces in the Vatican’s care. When they were last restored, in the 1930s, several cracks were repaired.”

“Two courtroom artists are suing former TV talk show host Rosie O’Donnell for copyright infringement, accusing her of trying to pass off photographs of their sketches of her as work she produced.” O’Donnell, who denies the charge, used the images in collages she made.

A couple who want to put a Frank Gehry-designed building on their Napa Valley wine estate are facing opposition from neighbors. They don’t object to the architecture but fear the structure would draw more tourists, exacerbating traffic jams on an already congested highway.

Court is back in session for the Barnes Foundation in its attempt to move from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, to central Philadelphia. “Among those on tap to support the Barnes’ petition is Jeremy A. Sabloff, the former director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Sabloff and James N. Wood, the former director and the president of the Art Institute of Chicago, are expected to testify against the Barnes’ selling any of its stored art to create a new operating endowment.” But the art students opposing the move have lined up some experts of their own…

Three years into fund-raising for a $425 million expansion project, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has hit the $245 million mark. Now it’s time to widen the circle of donors.

“A new art gallery is shunning the usual launch party etiquette by banning guests from air-kissing and calling each other ‘darling’.”

The photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib riveted the world, but are they worthy of a museum exhibition? The Andy Warhol Museum, where the show opened Friday, is getting vociferous responses from both sides.