Category: visual

“The Cleveland Museum of Art is delaying by four or five months a decision about whether to go ahead with a proposed $225 million expansion and renovation… The reason for the slowdown, museum officials said, is that construction documents prepared by New York architect Rafael Viñoly won’t be complete by March, when the museum had hoped to put them out for bids by contractors. The museum now expects the blueprints to be ready for bids in August, about a month after the museum decides whether it has enough money to go ahead.”

Two major collections, not seen for years, have been uncovered in Afghanistan and Iraq. “But when will these astonishing objects next be seen, and where? That, too, is highly controversial. In neither Baghdad nor Kabul is the security position good enough to allow museums to reopen – and the Kabul Museum is a ruin. It has been mooted that both the Bactrian and Nimrud treasures should go on international tour to museums in America. The Musée Guimet in Paris – which has a magnificent Afghan collection – has expressed interest in the Bactrian gold. But these are highly sensitive proposals. To parade the Nimrud jewellery around the USA, would ‘not be at all a tactful thing to do. Let the Iraqi people see their treasures first’.”

Miami now has three big commercial art fairs on its annual schedule. “A community that just a few years ago wondered if it would ever develop a commercial art market now finds itself grappling with the possibility that it may be saddled with too much of a good thing. After all, these waves of art dealers winging into town aren’t coming simply to enrich our cultural lives, as welcome as that may be. They’re coming to ring up sales. And one has to wonder if there are enough art-hungry customers to go around.”

A campaign to persuade the British government to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece has been mouted. “Run by umbrella organisation Marbles Reunited, it is based on research suggesting three out of every four British people want them returned. The group wants them put alongside the other surviving Parthenon sculptures in a museum being specially built for the start of the Athens Olympics.”

“An increasing number of Britons believe that it is wrong to keep the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum in London. A new video, sent yesterday to 1,000 parliamentarians, opinion formers and television companies, begins a new, slicker phase in the longstanding campaign to return the Parthenon stones, formerly known as the Elgin marbles, to Athens.”

Tiffany Jenkins argues that the Parthenon Marbles belong where they are. “It is vital that the marbles remain in the British Museum. Not because the marbles look better there, because the British Museum owns them, or because the Greeks can’t look after them. Quite simply, the marbles take on a higher meaning in Bloomsbury than they ever could in Athens. In the British Museum the marbles can be seen among the artefacts of human history.”

The sale of 44 paintings once owned by the Whitney family is expected to bring $140 million. It’s the highest pre-sale estimate ever – the collectioncludes work by Picasso, Manet, and major works by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Sir Alfred J. Munnings and John Singer Sargent. “The paintings are the property of the New York-based Greentree Foundation founded in 1982 by Betsey Whitney after the death of her husband, John Hay Whitney, to promote human rights, peace and international cooperation. Betsey Whitney died in 1998.”

The “cleaning” of Michelangelo’s David is more about politics than aesthetics, claims one critic. “Fundamentally this is about money. The actual restoration itself may cost relatively little – a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million. But in terms of the increase in the number of admission tickets sold, the number of books, videos and toys purchased at the museum store, the reproduction rights – you’re probably talking billions. Why do you think the city of Florence and the Italian state are arguing over who owns David? The science they use to defend their decisions is irrelevant, it’s just window dressing to disguise a power struggle.

The Walker Art Center is arguably the dominant institution in Minnesota’s arts scene, which is quite an accomplishment for a relatively small, quirky modern art museum housed in a decidedly dated modernist building. There are more glamorous museums in the Twin Cities, but Minnesotans love the Walker, with its claustrophobic stairwells, leaking skylights, and bare, unadorned concrete decor. On Valentine’s Day, the Walker will close for a year-long renovation and addition which will forever change its distinctive look and cramped feel. The renovation is a good thing, says Mary Abbe, but she’ll miss the old Walker.

Salvator Dali’s biographer claims that he owns the rights to Dali’s commercial work. But the Dali Foundation disputes the claim, and the row hangs like a cloud over celebrations of the surrealist’s 100th birthday. “Dalí has turned out to be as much of a cash generator since his death as he was during his money-obsessed career. The foundation, which runs a museum in his birthplace, Figueres in north-east Spain, expects to earn more than €1m a year.”