Category: visual

Portable GPS locators are being used for art. One “technique involves holding a G.P.S. device, which records their path as a kind of line drawing, and then posting the results on the Web (www.gpsdrawing.com).” The artists travels in a shape as his progress is tracked by the GPS unit. “As G.P.S. receivers have become smaller and cheaper, a growing number of digital artists are exploiting the technology. Like much digital art, the ideas are often spiffier than the visuals.”

“The auction of a controversial painting attributed to Vincent Van Gogh has been delayed to re-examine its authenticity. The work was spotted at a Paris flea market in 1991 and bought for 1,500 euros ($1,800). It was expected to fetch more than 1 million euros ($1.2m) at auction on Saturday, but was withheld to allow further scrutiny by experts.”

The legendary “Farnsworth House” designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, has been purchased at auction by a group of preservationists backed by the National Trust, which intends to open it to the public. “The sale lays to rest months of fear that the 1951 steel-and-glass house in Plano, Illinois, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, would be sold to a developer and moved from its site.” The winning bid was for $7.5 million, and followed a quick but intense bidding war between the preservationists and an anonymous telephone bidder.

When the Art Gallery of Ontario announced, at the end of November, that it would be temporarily shuttering its Canadian wing, it took some time for the significance to reverberate with the public. But now that it has sunk in that the public will no longer have access to one of Canada’s most important collections, negative reaction is building. Sarah Milroy writes that the AGO has some legitimate business motives behind its decision, but that it is making all the wrong moves for all the right reasons. What could AGO have done differently? “The contrast to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum is instructive,” says Milroy.

A bill likely to pass in the Italian parliament would allow the state to sell off state assests – including buildings and possibly artworks. “Although the Colosseum and the Uffizi, for example, are both State property, no one believes that these will be carrying For Sale signs. Most people agree that the State owns vast numbers of former barracks, redundant post offices and stations, holiday homes for civil servants, and other unimportant buildings that can usefully pass into private hands. There might, however, be unrecognised treasures among these.”

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum packed away its most famous Rembrandt this week as the museum begins four years of renovation. “The museum was built for 250,000 visitors a year, has been getting more than a million, and is being remodelled to accommodate twice that number.”

“In Rome, prosecutors are seeking the indictment of Marion True, curator for antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and three art dealers on charges of illegally exporting cultural goods, receiving state-protected cultural property and criminal association. Italy, a pioneer in police work to crack down on illicit antiquities trafficking, forbids selling or exporting ancient artifacts found in the country. Getty officials defended True’s work.”

The Barnes Collection has lost “hundreds of items” including artwork by Matisse, Renoir and a Steinway piano. “It was unclear how the pieces disappeared, whether they were stolen, or when they might have been taken from the foundation.”

“Italian engineers have completed work to prevent the collapse of the cliff niches which house the remaining fragments of Afghanistan’s ancient Bamiyan Buddhas which were destroyed by the Taliban.”

There are four plinths in Trafalgar Square, but one of the pedestals has been empty since 1837. Now there’s a plan to rotate art onto the plinths, and the artists have been selected and their projects chosen. So what’s going up? Their work includes “a car covered with bird droppings, a statue of a handicapped, pregnant woman, a sculpture of anti-war demonstrators and a pigeon hotel.”