Category: visual

Can We Talk About 5 Pointz, And The Line Between Homage And Exploitation?

To do that, we first need to go down a rabbit hole of, well, history (recent history). Do we remember this? “In 2013, [the owner] made plans to tear down the building and replace it with condos, as part of a larger ongoing movement to tear down the entire city of New York and replace it with condos. The art community protested, and Wolkoff whitewashed the building overnight, destroying the artwork.” Uff. – AV Club

LACMA Decides To Collapse Euro And American Art Into One Big Department

Christopher Knight on why this isn’t going to work – with a review of a new show embedded within the commentary: “Art museums have two audiences — one general, who may or may not have a genuine interest (there’s got to be someplace to take the in-laws over the holidays); the other a dedicated art audience, who range from passionate enthusiasts to committed professionals. … Lose the core and the museum is in trouble.” – Los Angeles Times

A Stolen De Kooning Gets A Homecoming Party (And A Restoration Fundraiser)

Though Woman-Ochre will go to the Getty for about 18 months of restoration, and will be shown at the Getty before it returns to Arizona, the painting stolen in 1985, it gets one night of pre-restoration display at the museum where a man and a woman simply walked in, distracted a guard, cut it out of its frame, and then … disappeared. – The Guardian (UK) (Associated Press)

Meet DC’s National Gallery’s First Woman Director

The gallery’s fifth director, Kaywin Feldman thinks that her appointment as the institution’s first woman director broadcasts a commitment to diversity. When she started working in the field 25 years ago, only about 15 percent of museum directors were women; now, according to the AAMD’s 2017 Gender Gap report, 48 percent of museums have female directors—but only 30 percent of museums with annual budgets of $15m and higher, decreasing as budget size increases. Feldman now oversees a museum with a $190m annual operating budget. – The Art Newspaper

NY’s New Hudson Yards – Architecture As Luxury Branding With A Giant Waste Basket In The Center

Michael Kimmelman: “It gives physical form to a crisis of city leadership, asleep at the wheel through two administrations, and to a pernicious theory of civic welfare that presumes private development is New York’s primary goal, the truest measure of urban vitality and health, with money the city’s only real currency.” – The New York Times