Category: visual

The approach to Stonehenge is a miserable affair. So there’s a proposal to dig a tunnel to remove cars from the immedtiate area. But there’s controversy about the tunnel, so an inquiry’s being held. “Although the proposed tunnel will take the road out of sight of the stones, its entrance portals will still be within the Stonehenge world heritage site, which many archaeologists regard as one vast, man-made, sacred landscape. The inquiry will pitch the partners in the Stonehenge Project against one another.”

The Metropolitan Museum in New York opened the insides of some ancient Egyptian tombs last month but has suddenly had to close them. The “museum had removed protective glass screens from the tombs of Raemkai and Perneb Jan. 29, allowing visitors full views of interior limestone carvings for the first time in 90 years. But a crush of some 24,000 visitors since the unveiling has put the humidity at unacceptable limits.”

An architecture and design museum in suburban Chicago suddenly closed its doors in December, and no one seems to know why. “Village officials have been trying to reach Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, director of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, since the museum closed its doors without notice. Artworks were left outside the museum, exposed to the elements and potential theft, and dozens of lights were left on in offices.”

Turns out the looting of Iraq’s National Museum was a small thing compared to the pi;;aging of Iraqi Archaeological sites in the past year. “The market in illicit antiquities is global. Along with trafficking in drugs and arms, it is one of the most widespread crimes. Iraq has lately become the crux of the problem of the global black market in antiquities because of the increased amount of theft.”

“Arts Minister Estelle Morris has placed a temporary export ban on The Virgin in Mourning to allow £600,000 to be raised to keep the painting in the country. Owned by an anonymous collector, it is one of just two works by the 15th Century artist – whose identity is unknown – in the UK.”

Architect Daniel Libeskind has accepted a commission to design a new museum in Prague dedicated to the work of Salvador Dali. “The museum, estimated to cost $15.7 million, is to display between 1,000 and 1,500 of Dali’s works on loan from collections in Spain, France and Germany. The museum also will include a contemporary art exhibition hall, a restaurant, apartments for visiting artists and a theater.”

It was devastating when, just three years after its new building had opened in 1998, Stockholm’s National Museum of Modern Art had to close because of water and ventilation prolems. “Now, after two years of refurbishment and improvements, the Swedish National Museum of Modern Art is reopening on 14 February, with its building, designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, hopefully cured of all its ailments.”

“Denver, like much of the rest of the country and even the world, obviously has become swept up in the swelling enthusiasm for good design, a trend reflected in everything from Target’s sale of objects by name designers to blow-by-blow coverage of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Clearly, fueling part of this interest has been the rush in the past couple of decades by art museums to construct signature buildings by established and up-and-coming architects.”

Why is Bostons’ Museum of Fine Arts doing, traveling a show to the casinos of Las Vegas? “What even the critics can’t deny is the appeal of the paintings. So far, the Bellagio’s Monet show has been a smash, drawing 18,000 people in the 10 days after its Jan. 30 opening. At that pace, and with its $15 ticket price, the MFA could earn even more than $1 million – the total figure hinges on attendance – by the time the show closes in September.”

Three new blockbuster shows open in London. They’ll draw mobs. “But is that the true purpose of a museum or art gallery? For there exists a growing disquiet in the curatorial world that in the process of launching an ever more high-profile temporary exhibitions, part of the deeper function of the museum – as a place of reflection free from the everyday maelstrom; as a public sphere with a different ethos to the marketplace – is being lost.”