Category: visual

Noted historian Paul Johnson undertakes a history of art. “The book is really an extended and engaging work of art criticism rather than a strict history, with many fresh points of view and many eccentric ones. In places, it is deeply flawed. But it always has the virtue of a strong and opinionated intelligence guiding its arguments and prose.”

“Knowing what lies beneath the surface before the trowel hits the soil has long been the dream of many an archaeologist. As well as saving time in determining where to dig, it would enable archaeologists to answer questions with a minimum of destruction—and potentially none at all. This dream is slowly becoming a reality, as a result of improvements in non-destructive surveying techniques. Archaeology has never been a wealthy discipline, but by borrowing tools developed for more well-endowed professions, archaeologists are developing X-ray vision—or, to be precise, infra-red, microwave and magnetic vision, which are even better. Such tools enable archaeologists to identify and target small areas of interest, and to move away from the complete excavation of sites towards a more selective approach.”

The World Trade Center site project is becoming some kind of Hall of Fame for architects. Now Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki, and Jean Nouvel have been recruited to design towers ringing the memorial site planned for the southwest corner of the new World Trade Center. Already working on the project are Daniel Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava, who is working for the Port Authority to develop a transit hub on the site.

Seattle arts groups are struggling. But it was still a surprise when the Bellevue Art Museum abruptly closed the doors of its new buildin. “Last week, the Bellevue Art Museum made the stunning announcement that it was closing its doors through at least the end of this year, only two and a half years after opening a $23 million, 36,000-square-foot Steven Holl-designed facility intended to be downtown Bellevue’s cultural anchor.”

Rem Koolhaas’s new building for the the Illinois Institute of Technology is a winner, writes Herbert Muschamp. The “$48.2 million project is a bazaar of a building, a souk of sensations that stands in vibrant contrast to the immaculately modern desert around it. Situated on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, this is the Dutch architect’s first completed building in the United States. If you want to know what all the fuss over Mr. Koolhaas has been about, this student center is an exemplary place to start. It’s Koolhaas à go-go, a masterwork for the young and curious.”

Know your art? Most Britons, it seems, don’t. “In terms of knowing their masterpieces from their modern day art, most of the British public can’t, confusing works by Monet and Rolf Harris. An Encyclopaedia Britannica poll published today finds that 7% believe that Water Lilies was painted by the Australian with the wobble boards instead of by French Impressionist Claude Monet.”

London’s National Gallery says the museum’s lack of money is seriously compromising the institution. “Already staff shortages have forced occasional closures for a few hours on the gallery’s main floor, where its principal collection is displayed. The situation is already dire in the lower galleries, which also hold hundreds of important paintings. Although members of the public make appointments to view, a general public opening is now only guaranteed on Wednesday afternoons.”

So you want to get yourself some art, hmm? But the world of galleries and artists and collectors seems so far removed from your everyday life that you hardly know where to begin. And besides that, you’re on a budget. The solution may just be simple education, and a new group known as Art Mob, based at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, seeks to provide it, with lectures on collecting, tours of artists’ studios, and one-on-one chats with curators and museum directors.

Mega-selling author Danielle Steel is opening a gallery in San Francisco. “She plans to favor work by lesser-known and younger artists. ‘Not necessarily chronologically young, but those who are really struggling with something.’ Steel anticipates skepticism and even ridicule in her new venture. ‘The first thing that was said about us came from San Francisco Magazine. We hadn’t even put the carpet in yet and they wrote, ‘Can you spell dilettante’?”

Two years ago, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts was the first American museum to create a private company to “run its gift shops, publish its glossy mail-order catalog, and hawk posters, T-shirts, and jewelry on the Internet.” But “with the company losing $2.9 million its first year and $3 million for the fiscal year that ended June 2002, the museum could no longer support it,” and so the company is being closed.