Category: visual

A performance artist recreates the American prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, in the inner city of Manchester. It’s a bit of a shock. And why do it? “There is nothing complicated about it. This is a fully-operational miniature version of the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay. What is the point of painting a picture of it or showing photographs or a video of it? People have seen those and are immune to them.”

“Slowly but surely, despite concern in the international art world over whether anyone should be touching one of the world’s most admired statues at all, Cinzia Parnigoni has stripped 130 years of grime from the statue’s perfectly proportioned left elbow, providing a glimpse of what is to come. By spring next year, in time for his 500th birthday, she aims to have cleaned every nook and cranny of this famous but filthy marble man.”

Christo has wrapped a dog house – “Wrapped Snoopy House” in honor of his friend and Charlie Brown creator Charles M. Schulz. “In 1978, the cartoonist memorialized Christo’s work in his daily strip, with the beagle pondering what the Bulgarian artist would do next. The final panel on the strip has Snoopy standing before his wrapped doghouse – a prediction of the latest sculpture.”

Doug Chrismas is something of a mystery in the art world. “As director of Ace Institute of Contemporary Art, he’s provided a home for some of the world’s most demanding art since 1966. The subject of dozens of rumors alleging that he stiffs artists, has produced and sold unauthorized fabrications of sculptures, poaches artists from other dealers, and occasionally sells artworks that he fails to deliver to the buyer, Chrismas has become something of a local legend, partly because nobody really seems to know much about him.”

The Springfield, (Massachusetts) Library and Museum Association has filed a lawsuit against New York art dealer Knoedler for $3 million, after it had to return a painting to Italy because it was discovered to be war loot. “In June 2001, the Springfield Museum returned the oil painting ‘Spring sowing’ by Jacopo da Ponte, known as Il Bassano, to Italy, after having been shown evidence that the work had disappeared during World War II from the Italian Embassy in Warsaw while on loan from the Uffizi Gallery. Knoedler had sold the painting to the museum in 1955 for $5,000.”

“A report on emergency conservation needs at Baghdad’s National Museum has concluded that the damage caused by the war was ‘substantial’, primarily to ivory, stone and ceramic objects.”

When the Village Voice’s Jerry Salz published a scathing critique earlier this week of Maxwell Anderson’s tenure as director of the Whitney Museum, Anderson felt the need to set the record straight: “As the Whitney’s former director, freed for a time from the well-meaning restraints of publicists, it’s a pleasure to respond on behalf of all museum directors who are congenitally obliged to hold their tongues… Too few critics are informed enough about the realities of running a museum to write about the museum – as opposed to its manifestation through exhibitions accounting for only a portion of its energies and budget.”

Winnipeg artist Aliza Amihude makes jewelry. But her materials are a bit unusual – mouse droppings, toenail clippings, dead insects and pubic hair. And her work has stirred a wave of protest after she got a $5,000 grant from the provincial arts agency. “It is a pure waste of taxpayers’ money, yet it is out there on public display, no doubt available for children to see,” said the provincial opposition party’s culture critic in a debate on the art in the legislature.

The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg has been on an expansion tear. “Since 1988, when Vladimir Gusev became its director, the museum has expanded to take in four palaces around the city: the Mikhailovsky Palace, the Engineers’ Castle, the Stroganov Palace and the Marble Palace. ‘The Hermitage is begining to feel uneasy about our expansion’.”

The Whitney Museum is deep in trouble. “Adam Weinberg, its former curator of collections, recently director of Andover’s Addison Gallery, returned as its director on October 1. Weinberg is an encouraging choice; he’s smart, convivial, knows the board, and loves art. In order to save this ailing institution, however, he must do several thorny things while standing up to its pesky trustees.”