Category: visual

Back in January, the Toronto city council voted almost unanimously to move the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art from its current home in North York to the center of a growing arts district in the city’s downtown. But budget crunches are forcing the city to cut back all over, and one of the items slated for a serious fiscal blow is the MCCA’s budget. Under the current plan before the council, the museum would lose more than a third of its annual budget, which will force it to curtail most of its programming for the year.

“What if modern architecture could meet up frankly, honestly with mass production the way that French architect Le Corbusier imagined it? What if you could actually afford to buy a house by award-winning architects? If the project of modernism took hold, North America might start to look like a place of gritty, tenacious promise and less like a bad copy of its past. To help undo the prevailing nostalgia for architecture, in which new houses typically look as dated as top hats and waistcoats, there is the Royal Q series of modernist homes or cottages designed by Kohn Shnier Architects.”

“A multimillion-dollar deal to bring hundreds of bronze sculptures attributed to the French master Auguste Rodin to a small Ontario art gallery has collapsed, with the result that the gallery may be forced to close its doors as early as next month.” The 510 bronze pieces, reportedly worth as much as CAN$135 million, were expected to be the linchpin of an ambitious art project which would have placed Canadian and international sculpture in and around the town of Barrie, Ontario, home of the MacLaren Art Centre. But questions cropped up about the proposed deal to bring the bronzes to Barrie, with some experts even questioning whether all 510 pieces exist.

Software magnate and collector Peter Norton has recently found himself split in two – as a member of the boards of directors of the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art. .”In recent years, the Whitney, founded as a showcase for American art, has featured more international art, putting it in more direct competition with MoMA. Mr. Norton now serves on committees at both museums. What happens if both are bidding on the same acquisitions at the same galleries, or vying to get the same exhibitions? In the social order of generations past, it would have been unheard of to serve on the Whitney and MoMA boards at once.”

So David Hockney has declared the end of photography. Oh really? asks Joel Sternfeld, winner of the Citigroup photography prize: “The Hockney argument is as simplistic as saying that any non-fiction book is truthful. You can never lose sight of the fact that it’s authored. With a photograph, you are left with the same modes of interpretation as you are with a book. You ask: what do we know about the author and their background? What do I know about the subject?”

A long unseen Botticelli is among a collection of the master’s work that goes on display in Florence this month. It’s being called the largest show of the painter’s work ever mounted. “The never previously displayed masterpiece is the last of four panels that make up one of Botticelli’s most disturbing works – The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti.”

In Australia, “the future of the $85 million Parliament House art collection has been cast into doubt, with MPs considering proposals to curb purchases of emerging artists, stop temporary exhibitions, cut staff and hire a part-time corporate art curator.” The government undertook a review of the collection last year after Government backbenchers’ complaints that there were not enough “traditional” landscapes on offer to decorate their offices.”

One of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s most prominent board members has resigned and withdrawn his financial support for the museum. He’s protesting the gallery’s plans for a $194 million transformation by architect Frank Gehry. Joey Tanenbaum describes the Gehry project as “needless destruction” and “a blatant attempt to eradicate the recent history of the gallery.”

UK museums warn that they need an extra £115 million a year to keep up their services. “A Manifesto for Museums, launched on Tuesday, contained a warning that large London attractions may not be able to keep going at their present levels.

Some 2000 British museums say that funding of museums hasn’t kept up with costs in recent years. Museums generate £3bn for the economy and employ 40,000 people. And members of the public make 100 million museum visits per year – more than the total crowds at all the UK’s live sporting events put together.”