Category: visual

It was nearly 50 years ago when the city of Minneapolis tore up one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the world, in return for a one-time payoff from the auto industry. Now, with traffic reaching crisis levels, the city is spending millions to build a single new light rail line, a project which is viewed as a long-overdue public good by some, and a money-sucking folly by others. In an effort to make the rail line a desirable method of travel for a populace used to climbing into SUVs for their daily commute, the station stops are being designed by local artists and architects with an eye to reflecting their surroundings. In particular, the station rising outside the MetroDome in downtown Minneapolis is “rich with symbolic references to the site’s past.”

“Employees of the Harvard University art museums are bracing for a round of cuts as the museums try to shrink a projected operating-budget deficit of almost $1.5 million. Workers were told by memo last week that layoffs would be part of a larger plan to balance the budget.” No one is talking in hard numbers yet, and museum administrators have criticized a student paper for hyping the layoffs, but with more than 70% of the museum budgets funded by endowment funds, which have been hard-hit by the continuing economic slump, few expect the staff cuts will be minor.

Nearly everyone spent at least some amount of time as a student cobbling together some sort of dubious model of our solar system for science class. But in rural Maine, residents have taken such projects to a whole new level. “A community endeavor four years in the making before its completion in June, the Maine Solar System Model is a three-dimensional roadside scale model of the solar system, stretching from the Northern Maine Museum of Science in Presque Isle 40 miles southward to the hamlet of Houlton. The scale is 93 million to 1.” The sun is represented by a huge mural at the museum, whereas Pluto is a 1-inch diameter ball, in accordance with proper scaling.

An Israeli art dealer has been arrested and charged with faking an ossuary that was thought to be the resting place of Jesus’ brother. “The limestone box is inscribed in Aramaic with the words “Ya’akov (James), son of Yosef (Joseph), brother of Yeshua (Jesus).”

“Organisers of an exhibition involving the skinless body of a child have insisted it will go ahead today, despite being refused a venue by Edinburgh City Council. The professor, who claims that he turns human bodies into works of sculpture when he injects them with plastic to preserve them, faced criticism from politicians and bereavement support groups who called for a boycott of the exhibition.”

The pillaging and destruction of Cambodian temples has accelerated at an alarming rate. “As the latest holes testify, anyone wishing to pillage the remaining hidden riches will encounter few obstacles. Experts fear the decades-long looting for artefacts across Cambodia is now so rampant there will soon be little left outside the splendours of the Unesco world heritage site at Angkor. Almost all sites of antiquity and temples far from towns are being destroyed…”

Having invaded and occupied Iraq, the United States is planning to assemble some of Iraq’s greatest art treasures for a traveling exhibition to tour the US within the next six to eight months. Artwork will include “the so-called treasures of Nimrud, a collection of Assyrian jewellery dating back to the 8th century BC, which has never been shown abroad before.”

In Laguna Beach, California people create living tableaux of great works of art. “This experience in trompe l’oeil (fooling the eye), an artistic extravaganza once featured on ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not,’ takes place not in Hollywood, but 50 miles south in the hilly coastal art colony of Laguna Beach. Quiet most of the year, and filled with white water, surfers, and artists, the village comes alive every summer as it hosts the Laguna Beach Art Festival and the internationally acclaimed Pageant of the Masters, where a cast of thousands have mastered the art of holding still – for about 90 seconds.”

Two of New York’s most venerable museums – the Frick and the Whitney – are looking for new leaders this summer. “Speculation about who will lead these two prominent Manhattan museums has become the hot topic in the art world during an otherwise quiet summer.”

“Last week, the final guests checked out of the daunting Moskva hotel, for 70 years the gateway to Soviet Moscow, looming over one corner of Red Square. The better rooms of this heroic Stalinist pile may well have been bugged, but they did offer magnificent views over Red Square and St Basil’s cathedral. From the 15th floor the views were the stuff of epic Russian films, while from the corridor windows you could just peep across the walls of the reclusive Kremlin. For some years a debate has raged in Moscow over the future of the 1,000-room Stalinist hotel featured on every bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and built in the early 30s.”