Category: visual

The Rev. Paul R. Shanley is one of the Boston priests who has been charged with child sexual abuse, and he is living in the trendy Cape Cod burg of Provincetown while awaiting trial. The new arrival didn’t sit well with one Provincetown artist, who was very nearly one of Shanley’s victims as a child. So when Mike Ware “heard of a proposal to create site-specific art installations in the Meadows Motel… he decided to furnish a room for ‘this one person who really affected my life.’ So Ware designed his contribution to the exhibit, which opens tomorrow in Provincetown: a jail cell for the Rev. Paul R. Shanley.”

Charles Pierce, director of the Morgan Library in New York, has just moved into temporary offices while the library is being expandedIt’s now so common to see museums shut, turn into construction sites and reopen a few years later that one can easily assume that the whole process is that simple. Yet as I surveyed my new office, I realized how complex, unsettling, and even difficult the last three years have been. There were, as I learned only after we had started, four major challenges involved in our goal of remaking the Morgan Library.”

A conspiracy theory is ripping through Glasgow’s visual arts community. “It goes something like this: Glasgow City Council, which owns Tramway, has secretly agreed to let Scottish Ballet make the building its new home, even though this will mean the closure of Tramway 2, one of Europe’s most striking exhibition spaces and, its supporters argue, vital to Glasgow’s reputation as a centre of excellence in visual art. Why? Because, one well known artist told me, ‘It’s very clear that they [the council] don’t care about the visual arts and would rather be rid of it. What they’ve done with the Tramway visual arts programme is slowly strangle it.’ This was one of the more measured responses. Naturally, Glasgow City Council denies this.”

The new Laban dance center in South London has won this year’s Stirling Prize for architecture. “The Laban centre, designed by the Swiss team Herzog & de Meuron – who gave Bankside power station a new lease of life as Tate Modern – has brought glamour to an old London district which for many years has been in need of cultural or indeed any kind of investment.”

This year’s World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites includes structures from every continent.

A recreation in Manchester of the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba invites civilians to become prisoners for a day. “The worst thing was the sensory deprivation. When I couldn’t see or hear anything I wanted to panic. I jumped if someone touched me and the ground was so uneven I was scared I’d fall down. I felt euphoric whenever my mask was taken off.”

An 18th century chair bought for £300 50 years ago, has set the world record for an English chair when it sold for £386,400, almost twice the highest estimate, at a Sotheby’s auction.

The Maryland Institute College of Art has a new building-size sculpture for a home. “Designed by Ziger/Snead and Charles Brickbauer to put MICA on the map as a center for digital art and design, Brown Center is that rare work of architecture that lives up to its billing. It is, quite simply, the first great Baltimore building of the new millennium – a world-class home for art in the Mount Royal cultural district.”

A show in Miami brings together designs for 25 museums built in the past decade. “It’s a confounding mandate. Museums can no longer be temples-on-the hill, built by and for a tiny elite, but they must serve a larger and more diverse public without compromising artistic standards. The architecture must not be inaccessible, and yet it must be exceptional, enough to draw public interest and attract crowds with architecture that is both part of and apart from the city. All these are fodder for thought, and the 25 projects on view certainly can lift the level of dialogue.”

You know, of course, that many artists don’t literally “make” all of their work. Enter the assistant. “Being an artist’s assistant is an underground thing. I didn’t know how it worked at all, that most artists have them. I couldn’t do what I’m doing without full-time assistants. Nor could I do it without a computer. But even without, I’d still be an artist and I’d still make things. That’s my nature – just like a fish that grows to the size of the tank, assistants allow us to grow our work yet remain the same’.”