Category: visual

What’s wrong with architects these days? There have been a number of high-profile design failures – leaking rooks, structural malfunctions…. “These setbacks and controversies have allowed sober-minded skeptics to accuse the profession of abandoning its original purpose — holding up a roof and keeping out the weather — in favor of reckless and phantasmagorical aesthetic effects, best exemplified by the wavy titanium surfaces of Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim or the angled walls of Mr. Koolhaas’s new Central Library in Seattle.”

It’s not every day that a Vermeer is auctioned. Indeed, the last time one came on the market was 80 years ago. So the auction itself was an extraordinary event…

Philadelphia is to have casinos under a new measure passed last week. The deal, writes Inga Saffron, is a potential design disaster for the city. “The slots bill, which was rushed through the legislature without the usual opportunities for public comment, strips Philadelphia of planning and zoning powers over its future casinos. Instead, a seven-member, state-run gambling control board will decide the big design issues, from the location of the casinos down to the location of their garage driveways.”

The Eral Spencer has denied reports that the museum dedicated to his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales, will close because of declining visitor numbers. “Last year, an estimated 80,000 people turned up to visit the tribute. Accounts in 2003 showed the 450-acre Althorp estate had made a loss for the past three years. It is said to need 120,000 visitors annually to break even.”

The UK post office has told a London art gallery to “destroy prints showing postage stamps of the Queen in a gas mask – and tell them of anyone who owns copies. Royal Mail says Cauty’s prints – which were on show at the Tom Tom Gallery in Covent Garden – breach its copyright, based on photos of a portrait bust of the Queen by Arnold Machin.”

Philadelphia public schools go on a hunt for artwork in schools and come up with art worth millions. “The artworks — 1,200 in all, including paintings, sketches, sculptures, murals, tapestries and ancient artifacts — had been donated to the school system or bought for small sums long ago. Over the decades, many of them were taken down when the walls were painted and were put into storage, where they apparently were forgotten altogether. The collection is probably worth tens of millions of dollars, school officials and art experts said.”

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) didn’t just reorganize its permanent collection this spring – it decided to ask some fundamental questions about what can truly be said to constitute ‘modern art’ in the 21st century. “The museum has decided to work more carefully with the permanent collection… ‘partly as a philosophical corrective, to wean the public and the museum from an unrealistic diet of blockbuster shows.'”

There’s another Vermeer. “That means that, instead of there being – depending on who is doing the counting – about 35 authentic Vermeers in existence, there are now about 36. So why is there not more euphoria? Why no breathless feature articles, no documentaries on TV? And why are Sotheby’s estimating that at the auction tomorrow it will make not more than £3 million, or not much more than a rather average Roy Lichtenstein recently reached?”