Category: visual

“As far as visuals go, the coolest design is, without much doubt, the project by Gisela Baurmann, Sawad Brooks, and Jonas Coersmeier, all three of whom live in New York. The center of their design is something called the Memorial Cloud, a field of tubes that is flat and see-through on the top, at street level, and has an undulating ceiling, one whose shapes recall church architecture, when seen from underneath. The tubes are lit dramatically from below: one beam for each victim.”

A list of the 13 judges for the World Trade Center memorial.

“For at least the last six years, the resale market for Canadian art has been decidedly bullish, with the last three or four being especially buoyant. Indeed, since the spring of 1999, close to 10 paintings by Canadian artists have either come close to or surpassed the $1-million selling mark at auctions in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary.” Can the enthusiasm continue?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which attracted 5 million visitors a year, has expansion plans. But those plans have run afoul of the museum’s neighbors on Fifth Avenue. “A coalition that represents residents of 15 buildings, mostly along Fifth Avenue, sued the Metropolitan and the City of New York on Thursday in an attempt to block the museum’s longstanding plan to expand.”

An ophthalmic surgeon is “convinced JMW Turner was slightly colour-blind, and this particularly affected his perception of red and blue. The blues are all wrong, either too dark or too bright, and the reds get stronger and stronger, which is exactly what you would expect. And I have no doubt that later in life he had untreated cataracts, which would have made the centre of his field of vision very blurred, with some objects at the edges in focus – and with exactly that effect of dazzling shimmering light we see in the paintings.”

A French curator plans to build a chain of private museums across France. “Privately owned museums may be commonplace in the United States, but in France the government owns, subsidizes and operates all but the smallest museums. So Mr. Restellini’s initiative is at the very least unusual. But he runs up against still more entrenched attitudes when he argues that it is also possible to make money out of private museums and glitzy exhibitions.”

Is the “white cube” approach to showing art still viable? “The question is not the death of the white cube, the question is how we work with artists in order to find the right way to make each work of art a glorious experience, and there is no general rule here: some need just a space in the mind; others a web site; some a sumptuous hall of mirrors; some a white cube.”

With the addition of architects Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, and Fumihiko Maki designing for the site of the World Trade Center, (joining Daniel Libeskind, David Childs and Santiago Calatrava)the Lower Manhattan site is beginning to look like a playground of archi-stars.

The Bellevue Art Museum, in a suburb of Seattle, had a signature architect and significant community support when it opened three years ago. So why did the $23-million museum suddenly close its doors this fall and its managers declare the organization was out of money? “The museum’s unexpected closure left Bellevue leaders stunned and arts patrons baffled that a cultural institution serving some of the country’s wealthiest communities could fold for lack of money. Even the timing of the closure was bizarre, announced just two days before a new exhibit opened.”

Kenneth Baker writes that visitors to museums don’t seem to take much time looking at pieces of art. “Research has shown that people spend between 20 and 60 seconds per art object. The figure sounds shockingly low — until we reflect on our own viewing habits. So how much time should we devote to an artwork? How much time do we need to ‘get it,’ and who says?”