Category: visual

“There are hundreds of thousands of missing works of art. Some – like the Cellini sculpture that has just been ransomed for £3.5m and the ‘Leonardo’ that was stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch last week – have been taken by thieves. Others have been destroyed by war or natural disaster. All of them acquire special significance once they disappear.” The Guardian puts together a virtual gallery of the disappeared.

Architect Rem Koolhaas struck out of some big projects in New York. So where did he go? China. “Every architect in the world right now is looking at China, because it seems to offer limitless opportunity. It’s a place of almost unstoppable optimism—despite this momentary setback from SARS—and immense building projects that are ideally suited for someone who positions himself right on the cusp of change, as [Mr. Koolhaas] does.”

An insurance company has received a ransom demand for a Cellini scuplture, stolen three months ago from an Austrian museum. “According to reports, the Uniqa insurance company received a letter last week demanding €5m (£3.5m) for the return of the Saliera or Saltcellar. This is thought to be the first response that insurers or police have had from the thieves who stole the 16th century solid gold sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini, estimated to be worth €50m, in a raid three months ago.”

The theft last week of an important Leonardo painting “highlights the difficulties of safeguarding valuable works of art while allowing access for the public. It is the latest in a series of robberies of art works so famous that they would be impossible to sell on the open market. Still missing are Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”, and Vermeer’s “The Concert”, stolen in March 1990 from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston by thieves dressed as policemen. Even art world insiders can only speculate as to their whereabouts and the motives of such robberies. Theories being put forward by the police and experts for this latest theft include links to terrorist groups and drugs gangs. Benvenuto Cellini’s salt, a masterpiece of 16th-century goldwork, was stolen in May from Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.”

Last week’s theft of a Leonardo in Scotland makes obvious the lack of security for artwork in many museums. “In recent years, the UK has become a target for the international gangs, who have learned that security of artworks in Britain is largely a matter of trust between owner and visitor. There are two famous stories about the Duke of Buccleuch that exemplify this. It is said the duke was once asked where the toilets were in the castle and he replied: ‘Along the corridor and turn right at the Holbein’.”

Catesby Leigh doesn’t like the Kennedy Center’s Rafael Viñoly plans for a $250 million addition to Washington’s Kennedy Center. At all. “For starters, the public space created by the eight-acre deck (including the roadway) is absurdly overblown. The plaza will be a desolate, windswept space. Moreover, an open-air stairway to the Potomac promenade from the Center’s existing terrace would be far preferable to the one Mr. Viñoly proposes. And his futuristic buildings may end up looking like airport terminals. The deck and the new buildings on it must be designed to provide inviting, humanely scaled public spaces. Mr. Viñoly’s scheme does not even begin to grasp this issue.”

Much of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage was destroyed during the country’s civil war and rule of the Taliban. But “Afghanistan’s legendary 2 000-year-old Tillya Tepe Bactrian gold hoard is safe and sound after lying hidden in a bank vault for the past 14 years, President Hamid Karzai said on Friday. The priceless collection of gold ornaments dating back about 2 000 years was safely stored in a presidential palace vault throughout the civil war and Taliban regime.”

Names are a powerful memorial in our culture. Michael Kimmelman ponders the likelihood of some sort of list of names at the World Trade Center site as a memorial. “The competition guidelines for the memorial at ground zero require that the design ‘recognize each individual who was a victim’ on Sept. 11, 2001, and on Feb. 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked. It’s a safe bet that many of the 5,200 submissions interpret that as some kind of list of names. By aesthetic and social consensus, names are today a kind of reflexive memorial impulse, lists of names having come almost automatically to connote ‘memorial,’ just as minimalism has come to be the presumptive sculptural style for memorial design, the monumental blank slate onto which the names can be inscribed.”

With more than 5000 entries in the design competition for a World Trade Center memorial, how do jurors go about choosing? “In the first round, a jury typically tries to eliminate 75 percent to 80 percent of the entries. Richard Andrews, the director of the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, said that sophisticated juries could rule out some entries within 10 seconds. ‘But there will also be entries where three or four of the jurors say they didn’t see anything and one will say: `Look at it again. Here’s what I found.’ And it will be held over for a second round.’ That’s when jurors really start debating and discussing stylistic differences among submissions.”