Category: visual

“These days, the crisis of looting in Iraq has brought the freewheeling world of art smuggling into the spotlight. But long before the turmoil in Baghdad, the clandestine art market had established itself as a multi-billion-dollar international business. By some estimates it ranks in profitability right after the illegal market for arms and drugs. In Italy, as in Iraq, layers of civilization have graced the landscape with a seemingly unending supply of salable treasures. “

What difference does it make what frame is put around a painting? A great deal of difference, it appears…

Daniel Libeskind is fighting for his ideas at the World Trade Center site. “The revisions. The redesigning. The new studies. The jockeying. Not just an architect, Libeskind has emerged as a tough defender of his vision, amid the high stakes tug of war that threatens to pick his design apart. Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he loses. And the battle is far from over. “

Is Chicago architecture going to the dogs? “Chicago long has enjoyed a reputation as a city that superbly balances the demands of business and the art of architecture, but the present building boom – the nation’s largest surge of high-rise residential construction – is throwing that balance grotesquely out of whack. Wherever you glance these days – on either side of North Michigan Avenue, just west of South Lake Shore Drive, or along the Chicago River – you are apt to see a towering construction crane, to hear the whir of a cement mixer and to exclaim, ‘What went wrong’?”

Robert Campbell notes that Frank Gehry’s new much-praised performing arts center at Bard College marks a new turn in the architect’s evolution. “What strikes you right away about the Fisher is how casual, how thrown-together it looks. It’s basically a building of three or four cubes made of glass, concrete, and stucco, with a shiny blanket of stainless steel thrown over them as if to protect them from the rain. The blanket falls over the cubes in a billow of curves, as loose and free as if it had landed accidentally. The only place where it takes a definite shape is at the main entrance, where it swoops down like a monk’s hood to shade and protect visitors as they enter, or as they stand outside for an intermission.”

“British and American archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum said yesterday they had uncovered evidence to suggest that the emperor Caligula really was a self-deifying megalomaniac, and not the misunderstood, if eccentric, ruler that modern scholars have striven to create.”

“In a recent survey investors ranked art second only to property as the best place to park one’s hard earned cash. But just like any other asset it might not turn a profit.”

The hottest show in Edinburgh this summer? It’s a show that’s not part of the Edinburgh Festival or the Fringe Festival. It’s the blockbuster Monet show at the National Galleries of Scotland, which is seeing record numbers of visitors as the Monet show opens.

Adam Weinberg is the new director of the Whitney Museum. “Weinberg, who has been director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., since 1999, is no stranger to the Whitney. He has worked there twice before, most recently as a senior curator. He succeeds Maxwell L. Anderson, who resigned under fire in May.”

Australia’s new National Gallery of Victoria is a big hit with crowds. “About 1.5 million people have visited the Potter Centre in its first nine months.” The gallery is so popular and “donors are so keen to be part of the action they have contributed more than $70 million under three different schemes in the past four years – a record for Victoria, if not the country.”