Category: visual

The new memorial fountain to Diana, Princess of Wales, is about to be christened in London’s Hyde Park. “The memorial fountain is like this: a surprising, yet ultimately gentle drawing together of unlikely family, friends and supporters of the late princess, and design professionals. It is a very English compromise, one that will neither frighten the horses plodding around Hyde Park, nor offend any of the millions of people who will pass this way to dip a toe, as it were, into Diana’s memory.”

“Chances are there would have been some degree of opposition sooner or later had anyone suggested building a 10-story, 175-ton nickel-surfaced teardrop suspended within a bronze-clad tower on a pier across the water from the World Trade Center site as a 9/11 memorial. But when the artist turns out to be Zurab Tsereteli, a Russian sculptor whose works — like a 300-foot statue of Columbus or a 165-foot Peter the Great — are so controversial that opponents once threatened to wire Peter with explosives and blow him up, another level of tumult is pretty much guaranteed.”

With the attentions of the city focused elsewhere for tales of its history, the Museum of the City of New York is at risk of becoming a footnote among cultural institutions interpreting the city’s heritage…

London is “looking quite literally for a new profile, one with shapely skyscrapers designed by big-name architects proclaiming the city’s determination to be known as an innovative 21st-century metropolis. By 2010, not just the majestic dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral but also a new forest of glass and steel will symbolize the ancient heart of London. After centuries of sprawling growth, the city is finally reaching for the sky.”

Twenty-five years after Robert Hughes’ wrote “The Shock of the New”, he goes back to update. But how? “Most of the 1980s artists over whom such a fuss was made have turned out to be merely rhetorical, or inept, or otherwise fallen by the wayside. Is there anyone who really cares much what Julian Schnabel or David Salle, for instance, are now doing? Do the recent paintings of Sandro Chia or Georg Baselitz excite interest? Maybe in your breast, but not in mine.”

Venice authorities are puzzled over the cause of damage inflicted on religious statues all over the city. “Witnesses reported seeing a man with a hammer climb a decorated column at the Doge’s Palace in the Piazza San Marco and smash the hands of a statue. Similar damage has recently been found on religious statues at other historic buildings around the city. Mayor Paolo Costa said the attacks were the work of an isolated lunatic.”

Museum attendance in Pakistan is very low. So the owner of a museum in Lahore wants to create an e-museum to display artwork. ” ‘I would like to make our collections accessible to as many people as possible and the e-museum seems like a great way to do this.’ The family also hopes subscriptions to the e-museum will provide much-needed revenue.”

An exhibition marking 100 years since Salvador Dali’s birth has been closed by police in Helsinki, who seized works amid suspicions they were forged

The Corcoran Museum is asking the District of Columbia city council for $40 million towards the museum’s $200 million Frank Gehry-designed expansion. “Some will see the TIF package as a creative financing vehicle to promote the arts and deliver a jolt to the city’s tourism industry. Others no doubt will consider it a $40 million gift to a solidly backed institution at the expense of D.C. taxpayers.”

Depending on who you ask, the number of contemporary art collectors has doubled, tripled or even quintupled in the past decade, and many are betting on unknown artists, hoping to cash in on the next big thing. The market is being bid up as collectors try to guess who will be hot in the future. But with ten times the players there were during the art bubble of the 80s, are we in for even a bigger crash this time around?