Category: visual

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History is to undergo the biggest renovation in its history. “Ocean Hall will cost $60 million and cover 28,000 square feet — 3,000 more than the successful makeover of the Hall of Mammals last year. It will bring together for the first time all 50 of the museum’s marine scientists and government specialists in what’s being called the Smithsonian Ocean Science Initiative.”

There’s art in Philadelphia public schools – as much as $30 million worth of art. “The school district had commissioned a survey of school buildings over the past year to see what art existed. It expected to find a few interesting pieces in odd places, but nothing like this. There may be as many as 100 museum-quality pieces in the Philadelphia schools’ collection.”

“Ever since Impressionism, we tend to associate a unique visual style with an authentic expression of some inner feeling of the soul of the artist. Then if he does it over again, you think, ‘Wait, how authentic was this?’ Certainly, many artistic masterpieces are singular, but the ideal of the unique, individual work of art is fairly new — it emerged 200 or so years ago as part of the artistic movement known as Romanticism.”

The New England Journal of Medicine is publishing a scientist’s observation that Rembrandt might have suffered from a vision disorder known as “lazy eye.” “Consequently, Rembrandt probably had little depth perception, which might have actually been an asset, since artists have to depict a three-dimensional world on a flat canvas.”

To celebrate its 150th birthday, London’s National Portrait Gallery is planning to display a controversial portrait said to be of William Shakespeare. “The so-called Chandos portrait, which has been the subject of fierce debate over whether it really does feature Shakespeare, is set to be joined by other controversial portraits of the writer whose life is little documented.”

Some 20,000 American Indians are expected to march in Washington DC next week to celebrate the openin of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum is “the first national museum in the United States to be dedicated exclusively to Native Americans and the first to present all exhibitions from a native viewpoint. The procession, which culminates in the opening ceremony, will begin with a tropical flourish, as Hawaiian conch-shell blowers signal the start from the balcony of the Smithsonian Castle.”

“For the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has chosen a woman as president: Emily Kernan Rafferty, the Met’s current senior vice president for external affairs. Ms. Rafferty will succeed David E. McKinney when he retires in January.”

The Venice Architecture Biennale take the temperature olf contemporary architecture. “Where the Victorians tried to cope with the unnerving urban explosion of the Industrial Revolution with architecture that appeared four-square, authoritative and inevitable, modern architects, or at least those highlighted at the biennale, seem to think that the way to respond to the equally unstable post-industrialised world is to create buildings that appear as if they too are in a state of constant change. This, of course, is a fallacy.”

“A ‘secret’ painting by the young Pablo Picasso was unveiled at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao yesterday after experts found it hidden beneath layers of paint on another of his canvasses. The 104-year-old painting was yesterday hailed as Picasso’s first Paris picture, painted during a visit in 1900 when he was 19.”

Denver is trying to raise money to build a museum to house 2000 works from the estate of Clyfford Still. But the terms of the deal are very restrictive. “None of that art can be sold, and some question whether Still’s name will attract a wide audience. Few would question the viability of a Pollock, de Kooning, or Rothko museum, but those artists are much better known. If marketing abstraction to the masses weren’t challenge enough, the artist’s will forbids the display of work by other artists in the museum, so the institution cannot create a varied schedule of temporary exhibitions to lure return visitors.”