Category: visual

The British government says that if museums don’t increase the numbers of children and economically poor visitors, they may lose funding. “A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) told us that if a museum fails to achieve its targets for no good reason, “we could withhold extra grant which might otherwise have been allocated to it in the next spending review.” He added that “we could also seek changes in the museum’s governance”—which means that trustees or the chairman might be replaced.”

St. Louis’ new Contemporary Art Museum is an $8 million gem. “The museum’s architect, Brad Cloepfil, eschewed such gestures in a simple but sophisticated design that consists of interlocking concrete planes, not unlike a house of cards. But this house of cards is anything but flimsy. It’s at once solid and permeable, a skillful geometric exercise that blurs the divisions between inside and outside, creating a serene but dynamic environment without the benefit of grand stairs, towering atriums or flapping wings.”

“The investigation into alleged fraud by Rudi Fuchs, the recently departed director of the Stedeljk Museum in Amsterdam, and the artist Karel Appel has been concluded, and there is no evidence of criminal activity by them.”

“Twenty years after this all began in Mexico City, spray-paint art has an international client base, even though few people in the established art trade have noticed it. Most large cities, in North and South America and in some parts of Europe, have at least one spray-paint artist. Fort Worth has one. Dallas has one. Las Vegas supports two. Club crawlers are prime customers for the $20-$30 pieces of art. And vacationers buy the work as a keepsake of their travels.”

What are the great museums for? Talk to the directors of those museums and you get some very different ideas. The British museum, for example…

This idea of “saving” art from being sold and taken out of the UK is unsustainable. “If our museums are going to continue collecting – and everyone agrees that “frozen collections” are a denial of what museums are about – priorities must be set. We cannot save everything.”

Italy is finally returning an ancient obelisk to Ethiopia. “In a move that sends a message to all nations attempting to recover looted artifacts, and to the governments and private collectors that hoard them, Italy is finally making good on a promise to return the Aksum Obelisk, capping decades of bitter dispute over the monument’s fate and home. The 1,700-year-old obelisk is ranked by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization as an outstanding historic and artistic object and is cherished by Ethiopians as a pillar of their civilization. Aksum was the cradle of Ethiopian Christianity. Benito Mussolini’s forces seized the 75-foot-high monument in 1937, during Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, and transported it to Rome as a trophy of fascist imperialism.”

Finalists for the World Trade Center memorial were presented with new technology. “With the chance to view the designs in this dynamic, strikingly ‘cinematic’ way, the public was given its first glimpse of a revolution that has been under way for the past few years. Indeed, the memorial competition itself accelerated that revolution, harnessing the explosion in broadband Internet access to allow millions of people around the world to view the animated presentations, more or less at once — something that was never before possible.”

Herbert Muschamp writes that the competition to design a memorial for the World Trade Center site illustrated what’s wrong with the WTC design process: “Too much symbolism. Not enough time. A breakdown of cultural authority. Until precise steps are taken to resolve all three issues, the design process will continue to sink deeper and deeper into political quicksand.”