Category: visual

The Bellevue Art Museum, which surprised the art world when it closed suddenly last fall, has delayed its reopening from July to October. Why? “Six months later, money is still missing in action. BAM has raised $180,000 and can’t reopen until it has at least $2.8 million.” The museum says it has a plan though, and the money to reopen will follow.

The Bellevue Art Museum’s revival plan “unveiled yesterday marks a significant artistic and financial departure from the museum’s earlier incarnation as an unconventional exhibitor of contemporary art. The plan also hinges on some big unknowns, including whether the museum can raise $2.8 million by the planned opening Oct. 28.”

The new improved Brooklyn Museum is getting a lot of good press. But John Perreault isn’t so impressed. “Although the intention to make the entrance more welcoming is not all bad, I fear that looking like a ferry terminal in Scandinavia is not quite right. That glassed-in aquarium effect! Those tilted masts! True enough, the old entrance, consisting of stingy doors leading to the stygian lobby, was off-putting. We will now enter through the best party room in Brooklyn, but at the expense of grandeur.”

“When people talk about N.Y. as the cultural capital of the world, they usually mean Manhattan. The rich institutions in the other four boroughs live marginalized lives, always clamouring for a sliver of mindshare and deeply resenting the inertia that keeps people stuck on the island in the middle of the city. Take the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Built more than a century ago as an expression of the manifest dreams of Brooklyn, which was still its own city, at 560,000 square feet it is the second-largest museum of art in the city, and one of the largest in the United States, with an outstanding collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts.”

The Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna recently reopened. “The collection is one of the largest and most valuable private collections in the world, and belongs to the royal family of Liechtenstein, the tiny country wedged between Austria and Switzerland. The museum closed on the eve of World War II in 1938 and since then the artwork has remained hidden behind castle walls in Liechtenstein. Until its closure the museum was regarded as a must-see among Vienna’s cultural wealth.”

Rem Koolhaas’ new Seattle Library could confirm his reputation as the most influential architect in the world. “While Frank Gehry remains the most famous architect in the world, for more than a decade Koolhaas, who is 59, has been the most influential. A few architects have a sharper theoretical edge than Koolhaas, and a few create more exciting spaces. But nobody—not even Gehry—produces buildings that are simultaneously so intellectually ambitious and so shamelessly populist.”

A year after the Iraq National Museum was looted, many of its artifacts have been recovered. But “in terms of archaeological losses, the looting of the museum may well be dwarfed by the continual destruction of archaeological sites all over Iraq by looters. This looting has touched upon well-known sites such as Nippur, home of an archaeological expedition of the Oriental Institute, Umma, Lagash, and Isin, but many more unexcavated sites are destroyed by the unsystematic onslaught of pick axes used by the looters throughout the country. The loss in archaeological data is impossible to quantify but clearly has reached disastrous dimensions. Although coalition forces have taken measures to protect some of the key sites in Iraq, archaeologists contend those measures have been inadequate.”

A large piece of property next to the Barnes Collection is about to be sold. Could the property represent a solution to the Barnes’ financial woes? “Were it to acquire a slice of Episcopal’s campus for a short access road, the Barnes could open an entrance on busy City Avenue, solving at a stroke the intractable traffic and parking disputes that have dogged the institution for years. Add a parking lot, and thousands more paying customers could see the foundation’s unrivaled collection of Renoirs, Matisses and Cezannes in the original halls designed by founder Albert C. Barnes for his collection. With a few other simple changes, the operating deficits that have plagued the Barnes for years would be gone.”

When Seattle collectors Virginia and Bagley Wright unpacked their Jeff Koons piece “John the Baptist” for a show at their gallery, they discovered a large crack. “Produced in an edition of three with an artist’s proof, “Saint John” is one of the most prominent pieces from Koons’ celebrated 1988 “Banality” series of large-scale, ceramic sculptures. “Saint John” would be worth millions today were it not for the crack and might be worth millions in spite of it. That’s a serious appreciation, considering that Bagley and Virginia Wright purchased it in 1991 for $150,000.”

There was a time – not all that long ago – when photographs were small and handheld. But “photographs have been steadily expanding in size, along with their importance in the eyes of critics and their value in the marketplace.” Is there a relationship between size and importance?