Category: visual

“The Museum of the American Indian has much to boast of… But the ambition of creating a ‘museum different’ – the goal of making that museum answer to the needs, tastes and traditions of perhaps 600 diverse tribes, ranging from the Tapirape of the Brazilian jungles to the Yupik of Alaska – results in so many constituencies that the museum often ends up filtering away detail rather than displaying it, and minimizing difference even while it claims to be discovering it.”

Architect David Adjaye’s design for Denver’s new Museum of Contemporary Art won’t be unveiled until October, but details are trickling out slowly. Plans for the museum have expanded since Adjaye was engaged to design it, with the latest projections showing an increase in both square footage and price. It was decided early on that “the building should not contain one or two large spaces that could be partitioned and adapted to all kinds of art. Instead, they’re opting for an array of distinctive galleries, each serving certain types of work better than others.”

“After essentially sealing the country off from foreign architects for much of the 20th century, the Chinese government kicked off the 21st by turning itself into the biggest single patron of avant-garde architecture in the world.” But the government’s enthusiasm is proving short-lived, as major projects by big-name foreign architects have recently been savaged in the state-controlled Chinese press, halted or delayed by the same authorities who initially gave them the green light, and generally placed on a national dart board. Call it one part nationalism, and two parts fiscal insecurity…

“The construction boom that has been remaking Beijing has attracted famous architects from around the world. But the cityscape is hardly the stuff of a glossy design magazine. For every Zaha Hadid tower in the works for the capital, there are hundreds of forgettably mediocre buildings already in place, displaying the sort of mirrored-glass facades and gilded decoration that went out of style in America sometime in the 1980’s.” The plague of bad architecture is so bad that a website has been launched to chronicle the worst examples.

“Video art has come such a long way since it began nearly 40 years ago that it has already, in its purest form, been threatened with extinction. Like any 20th-century product that has an in-built obsolescence factor, the video camera has developed at such a rate that the original model has long been consigned to history. So has the art it produced; outdated but unforgotten by younger artists working today.” Still, the advent of digital technology has advanced the art more than it has made past work obsolete. Indeed, the genre has developed and evolved so quickly that its 40-year history is as extensive as many centuries-old art movements.

This past spring, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts rented out 21 Monets to a commercial art gallery operating inside a Las Vegas casino. On April 13, the casino lost power for three days, and the paintings may have been left baking in the desert heat while the juice was restored. Tough luck? You bet, and according to many in the museum world, a serious ethical lapse by the MFA as well. There are codes to which accredited museums and their directors must supposedly adhere, but according to AJ Blogger Tyler Green, those codes are frequently flouted, and rarely enforced. “Critics [have] warned about what might happen when a museum considered money-making to be more important than caring for and conserving art. When the electricity died at Bellagio, an academic debate was transformed into a real-life disaster.”

Authorities in Norway still say they have no solid leads in the theft of Munch’s The Scream from an Oslo gallery, but police have reportedly raided several addresses in the city over the last month, in the hope that the paintings will turn up in the abodes of known criminals. Drug warrants have been used as a pretext for the raids, which have so far yielded nothing of value.

A provocative painting by Damien Loeb has been removed from an exhibit in Connecticut after copyright issues were raised. The painting, like much of Loeb’s work, contains photographic images appropriated from other artists’ work, and worked into Loeb’s canvas. The artist has faced legal challenges to his appropriation before, and has vehemently defended his right to employ the technique.

Times are tough for art institutions and foundations across North America. And one of the dirty little secrets of the business is that such organizations frequently keep themselves afloat fiscally by selling off bits of their collections. But is it ethical to do so? The answer depends on whom you ask, and there doesn’t seem to be any general agreement. But for foundations which refuse to give up any piece of their collections, (such as Philadelphia’s notoriously strapped Barnes Foundation,) the alternative can be serious financial hardship and even insolvency.

“François Boucher was surely the most beguiling painter who ever lived, capable of giving the most pleasure to the client – and presumably the sitter too.” And yet, Boucher’s reputation lies at the bottom of a pile of more “high-minded” painters, a victim of the popularity he enjoyed in life. And while it’s true that Boucher was perhaps a bit too infatuated with small, unimportant work (designing Easter eggs for a king, for example,) he was also an undeniably brilliant artist who was forever being plastered with labels he did not deserve. In the end, his greatest crime in the eyes of today’s elitist art audience may have been making too many people happy.