Category: visual

Vandals have been destroying public arts this summer in Belgium. “Vandals have wrought destruction upon some of Belgium’s biggest summer open air art exhibitions, and replacing the damaged exhibits is beyond the funds of many of the organisers of the displays.”

Connecticut senator Senator Christopher J. Dodd is “seeking to correct what he and other lawmakers regard as a longstanding injustice: a dearth of images of women and members of minorities in one of the nation’s most visited buildings” – the Capitol.

Edinburgh’s mamoth Monet show has Richard Dorment wondering if Monet “may not be the most overrated painter of the 19th century. Monet was a virtuoso, like the composer Rossini. Both were prolific with their enormous talents. Ravishing though it is, their work needs to be taken in small doses so that you don’t notice how formulaic and repetitive it can be. This sprawling, grab-bag of a show looks at the period 1878-83” and reveals a formula applied over and over again. “So what if the show is lousy? It’s Monet, stupid. The box-office queues are long, and the gift shop is busy. The cynicism of the whole enterprise boggles the mind.”

The British government has decided not to allow a lime quarry to operate, thereby effectively ending “production of traditional lime mortar in the UK and a history stretching back to the Romans. Made by burning lime in kilns, it was used on most buildings erected before 1800. Without a homegrown source, some fear that builders and enthusiastic amateurs will use cement as an alternative for repairs, causing damage to historic brick and stonework.”

A German artist wants to rebuild the Berlin Wall in plastic. He’s been “working for three years to raise the €25m (£18m) he says it will take to rebuild a 29-mile plastic copy of the Berlin Wall across the city.” He hopes to build it in time for when the city hosts the World Cup in 2006.

Once Julian Schnabel was hot. Now not… “Everything Julian Schnabel does has only one meaning: it’s over. The story of American art that seemed so epic, so inexhaustible, from Jackson Pollock in the 1940s to Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark in the 1970s, is over. How can a culture become so creative so suddenly, and then, as suddenly, dry up? You have to admire Schnabel’s cojones for carrying on at all, so ruthlessly has he been expunged from the memory of the art world.”

Preservation of contemporary art is a huge concern. “High-tech art is at risk of literally fading away, leaving buyers with nothing to show for their money. Time is running out for museums, galleries and private collectors wanting to preserve their digital photography and video art, as recent research has shown that the deterioration is quicker than people realised. Institutions around the world are tackling this problem, and scientists at Basel University have been researching stability in photography since 1965.”

“At last month’s deadline, some 5,200 designs for the 9/11 memorial cascaded into the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., submitted by architects, artists and amateurs alike. The proposals are now being pared down by the jury–a distinguished panel that includes Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and Vartan Gregorian, former head of the New York Public Library. They’ll have their work cut out for them. The program for the competition is of baffling complexity…”

Duke University’s Nasher Museum is working towards a new home designed by a star architect. But will the new $23 million building wipe away the museum’s troubled history?

Edinburgh’s new Scottish Parliament building is under construction. “It is a glorious design, but derided by the press for being costly and late. True, its cost has risen from a nominal £10m at the time it was first seriously mooted in 1997, to £40m when its design was approved, to £100m when its scale was tripled, to £300m more recently, and to £345m today. This is a lot of money – but what a building.”