Category: visual

“Crowds who flocked to admire some of the loneliest paintings of the 20th century have helped to make the Edward Hopper exhibition at London’s Tate Modern one of the gallery’s most successful… By the time the exhibition closes tomorrow night, the Tate expects to have sold more than 420,000 tickets – a total beaten only by Matisse-Picasso two years ago. The gallery has stayed open late every night for weeks to meet the demand.”

On the surface all looks like a go for rebuilding New York’s Penn Station within the old US Post Office across the street from Madison Square Garden. “Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the project, with its soaring glass-enclosed great hall, was originally unveiled in 1999. It has been a pet project of politicians from both sides of the aisle, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whom the proposed station is named, and Gov. George E. Pataki. Most of the $800 million needed to complete the project’s construction has been in place since 2001. And the post office abandoned the space this summer, in part to make room for the news media covering the convention.” So why has the project stalled out?

Artist Jack Vettriano might not get respect from critics, but his work gets a big vote of priase on the auction floor. “An auction of 40 paintings by Jack Vettriano, a self-taught artist snubbed by national collections, has raised £2.5m at Sotheby’s in Scotland. The highest sum paid was £330,400 for Mad Dogs – painted in 1991 when he was selling work for a few hundred pounds.”

An exhibition examining the Confederate flag has not yet opened at Gettysburg College, but it has already attracted the ire of a Confederate heritage group with a flag-lynching piece called “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag”…

If artistic objects like Munch’s “The Scream” have monetary worth only because we agree that they do, what is it that makes us value them? “Myths develop around great artists, and objects associated with their actual physical presence become imbued, in many people’s minds, with some kind of spiritual aura.”

“Sure, there are plenty of commercial products available to clean and restore architectural treasures, but quite often, preservationists turn to items such as Ivory soap, candles, sponges, spatulas, tea, and eggs. It’s simply a matter of using common sense to determine which products work best…”

Native Hawaiians are protesting the Bishop Museum’s plan to “define itself as a native Hawaiian organization under the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. NAGPRA was enacted to provide procedures for museums to return ancestral bones and four classes of objects to Native Americans and Hawaiians.” The museum believes it can claim ownership of Hawaiian artifacts if it is considered a native organization. Critics disagree: “This is extremely colonial and paternal.”

Iraq’s cultural heritage is being plundered under American occupation. “Ironically, the bombing campaign of 2003 had not damaged archeological sites. It was only in the aftermath, during the occupation, that the most extensive cultural destruction took place. At first there was the looting of the museums under the watch of coalition troops, but that was to be followed by more extensive and active destruction. Active damage of the historical record is ongoing at several archeological sites occupied as military camps.”

The mummy of King Cheops, resident of the Great Pyramid has never been found. But now, a new theory of a secret passage within the pyramid. “Using architectural analysis and ground-penetrating radar, two amateur French Egyptologists claim to have discovered a previously unknown corridor inside the pyramid. They believe it leads directly to Khufu’s burial chamber, a room which – if it exists – is unlikely ever to have been violated, and probably still contains the king’s remains.”

The French government wants to build a “second Louvre” museum in the north of France. “Louvre II, conceived to display some of the main gallery’s vast unseen collection while bringing some of the nation’s finest heritage to one of its more dilapidated provinces, epitomises the French government’s drive towards decentralisation. For many, it is an absurd and amateur proposal born more out of political correctness than common sense.”