Category: visual

Those beautiful Impressionist realist landscapes that make you wish you lived in a place where, with once glance, you could look down on farms and streams, mountains and villages, may not be quite as realistic as they appear. The vast majority of such canvases, which are almost always painted as if the viewer (and the painter) are looking down from the heavens at the glorious lands below, actually tend to be impossible views, at least, if the artist is meant to be standing in one place as he paints. A new exhibition in Salford examines the varied reasons for such mild deceptions, which range from God complexes to public relations gimmickry to simple humor.

“The job held by veteran curator Michael Cunningham, a respected expert in Japanese and Korean art, has been eliminated by the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of its effort to balance its budget… The museum [has also] cut the jobs of four other members of the curatorial staff, all of whom were research or curatorial assistants. The museum, suffering from declines in the value of its endowment, is making the cuts to reduce expenses and trim its 2004 operating budget from $33 million to $29.7 million. A total of 37 jobs are being eliminated, a figure that includes the curatorial cuts, and 18 will remain unfilled.”

Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art has a new young fan of its exhibits, although, truth be told, he was built for the purpose. ‘Charlie’ is “an unassuming robot-child with a sweet disposition, inquisitive eyes and a blue tricycle slung low to the ground… Stand and peruse the webs of multicolored and metallic paints in Jackson Pollock’s august 1949 drip-painting, ‘No. 1,’ and the little android with the prominent nose and the permanent grin might well pedal up silently behind you to join the fun. Then, with a twist of his head and a roll of his eyes he’s off, riding into another gallery to check out what might be going on.”

As the British public waits for the UK’s heritage lottery fund to make up its mind about whether it will try to purchase an important Raphael painting which is in danger of being sold to an American musuem, Tristram Hunt is wondering why exactly the government continues to play a game it can’t win. “There is a long, ignoble tradition in this country of wealthy aristocrats blackmailing the state for cultural funds… The priority for the NHMF must be to look after the broader public heritage – not just ‘British’ art, which could produce some very uninspiring galleries, but art which speaks to a national or regional identity.”

“A cash injection of £2m has been handed to museums and art galleries to improve public access and presentation, the government has announced. A total of 14 institutions will receive grants from the government, with payments ranging from £3,000 to £400,000. The biggest recipient is London’s British Museum, which will get £400,000 to improve major exhibition spaces and environmental conditions.”

The British Museum is facing yet another call to return an object that someone else thinks was illegitimately acquired, and this time, it isn’t the Elgin Marbles. The Egyptian government is requesting that the museum return the Rosetta Stone. “The artefact is one of the British Museum’s most prize pieces, helping to attract millions of visitors each year. The stone was discovered in 1799 at the mouth of the Nile and provided a key insight into hieroglyphics because it was accompanied by the Greek translation. The French yielded it to the British in 1801 and it has been housed in the British Museum since 1802.”

An exhibit of live cows, pigs, and sheep which had been painted head to hoof by a British graffiti artist has been shut down early after the animals, which had passed muster with the UK’s SPCA, became “hot and distressed” from the combination of the sultry weather and human attention. Organizers insist that the early closure had nothing to do with the animal rights protesters who had descended on the exhibit.

“Armed with nothing more than pencil sharpeners and baggy jumpers, Melvin Perry and Peter Bellwood plundered unsuspecting libraries across Europe, razoring thousands of priceless maps from medieval atlases.” How they did it, and why, is a fascinating and horrifying tale of grossly inadequate museum security, crooked dealers, and simple human greed.

“The National Gallery has taken a giant gamble in its battle to keep Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks in Britain, slashing by a third the amount it will offer to stop the picture going to the Getty Museum in California. Heritage lottery fund trustees must decide on the issue tomorrow… The gallery had become convinced that the heritage lottery fund would never meet its original bid for £20m. However, the gulf between the National Gallery’s potential £21m [with other funding sources included] and the Getty’s £29m still seems ludicrously wide.”

Regardless of the decison the heritage lottery fund makes in the Raphael case, the larger problem will remain: at the moment, there is nothing to prevent wealthy citizens who happen to own artworks with ‘national import’ from selling them to foreigners. For several decades, the high levels of inheritance tax, from which such art is exempt, forced the aristocrats not to sell simply as a matter of investment strategy. But in the last 25 years, “all tax rates have come down, and the dukes have changed their tune. It is once again worth their while to sell, so they want to sell.”