Category: visual

“The Philadelphia Museum of Art has divided the leadership of its department of modern and contemporary art between two senior curators, an action that director Anne d’Harnoncourt said enhances the museum’s ability to manage a growing collection of art made from 1900 to the present. Michael R. Taylor, acting head of the department since November, has been named Muriel and Philip Berman curator of modern art. He will oversee collections and exhibitions of works from the first half of the 20th century. The museum is seeking an equivalent curator of contemporary art, whose purview will be from the mid-20th century to the present.”

Regina Hackett trains a tough eye on Seattle-area museums and finds a troubled landscape. The Bellevue Art Museum is still hoping to reopen this fall. The Henry Gallery is struggling with a reduced budget. The Seattle Art Museum, planning a major expansion of its home and hoping to open a large sculpture park, plans to close for a year during construction…

An exceptionally crafted Roman bowl cut from a single block of glass has set a record at auction in London this week, fetching £2,646,650. The sum is the most ever paid for a piece of ancient glass. “The Constable-Maxwell cage-cup dates from the third century and is decorated with a delicate lattice design. It has survived intact for 17 centuries. It is the third time the item has set the record for the highest price paid for a piece of ancient glass.”

Seattle’s The Stranger magazine gets a new art critic and he’s a bit put off by his reception in local galleries. “There is a mentality and an attitude about art–perhaps stemming from a protectiveness toward it, since it can be so easily dismissed–whose core conceit is exclusion: You don’t have the tools to understand this; you shouldn’t be here. Elitism has driven me away from the art world several times over the years–in Chicago, in New York, and, yes, in Seattle. (Curiously, in London of all places, I never encountered such starchiness.) And this has been true for many of my friends–smart, credentialed people. It’s the real crisis–more than funding, more than education–that plagues contemporary American art.”

The District of Columbia city council has voted to give $40 million to the Corcoran Gallery to help finance its new Frank Gehry wing.

“With China’s economy expanding and tourism growing even faster, insiders and outsiders worry that China will not take the time and trouble, or have the resources and expertise, to preserve its rich cultural heritage. Much has already been lost.”

Richard Dorment has new appreciation for Charles Saatchi’s place in the artworld. “Since the fire, I’ve become much more aware of what the Saatchi Gallery means for the visual arts in this country. It has many faults – the difficult exhibition spaces at County Hall, the vagaries of Charles Saatchi’s taste, a PR machine in overdrive – but there is nowhere else in the world where so much new art is made instantly accessible to the public on a regular basis. I suppose you never know what you have until you see how easily it could disappear.”

Police have forced a gallery to cover a nude sculpture. “Police said the model at the A Gallery, in Wimbledon, south-west London, was deemed offensive under the Indecent Displays Act 1991.”

“A painting sold at auction for £75,000 three years ago could be worth millions after experts authenticated it as a work by Italian master Caravaggio. It had been sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2001, where the catalogue listed it as the possible work of 17th Century artist Carlo Magnone. But Sotheby’s remains “adamant” that the painting is not by Caravaggio.”

Stanlee Gatti, the “irrepressible arts advocate and event designer to the rich and famous” has resigned as president of the San Francisco Arts Commission. “He steered the agency during the boom years of the 1990s, when an unprecedented number of public artworks, paid for by the 2 percent cut public art gets from the budget of every new civic project, appeared around the city: 57 permanent pieces, including installations at the airport by noted artists such as Vito Acconci and Ned Kahn, Robert Arneson heads along the Embarcadero and a score of temporary installations by big names like Bill Viola and the late Keith Haring.”