Category: visual

Sales by the 400 leading British art and antiques dealers declined by almost 10 per cent in 2001-02. Dealers blame the downturn on the aftereffects of 9/11.

The Dutch government has finally begun returning art that hed been stolen by Nazis. “For a long period, between the end of that war and 1997, a veil of secrecy had been drawn over the so-called “NK collection”, works of art that had been recuperated but had remained unclaimed when the date for submitting an application for restitution passed.”

A rare Egon Schiele painting that had been stolen by the Nazis has been sold at auction in London. “An anonymous telephone bidder who made the highest offer for the Schiele will pay more than £12.66 million once the buyer’s premium is included – a record auction sale for the artist and the most expensive restituted impressionist work ever sold at an auction.”

“The 250th anniversary of the founding of the British Museum has been a low-key affair. Three years ago the plan was to honor the occasion with the opening of a new $55 million Study Center in a nearby building. But lacking money the museum sold the property. So instead of a glitzy inauguration, this month’s anniversary festivities are built around music, dance, lectures and exhibitions. Yet for all that the mood inside the museum’s sprawling neo-Classical home in Bloomsbury is not glum. Credit seems due to Neil MacGregor, 56, who last year took over as the museum’s director.”

With the opening of its architecturally stunning new store in Tokyo, Prada has further blurred the line between art and commerce. In fact, the store, with all its accompanying hoopla, isn’t really about selling clothes at all. And of course, that’s entirely the point, at least in the minds of the Prada folks, who long ago realized that the best way to make people want to buy your product is to associate it with other impressive stuff, and then pretend that you don’t care if anyone buys it or not. Regardless of the capitalist aspect of the enterprise, though, the store is an artistic triumph, says Julie Iovine.

“Launched more than a century ago, the Venice Biennale should bring together the world’s best new art in a series of national pavilions. In recent years, it has been the Biennale director who has gathered together the most dynamic selection in the old shipworks and the rope factory of the Venetian republic. This year, however, the new director, Francesco Bonami, abandoned any attempt at curating the event himself or presenting a coherent vision of the state of art today.” The result? A mess.

The problem isn’t that the Venice Biennale is failing to reflect the true diversity of a vibrant and thriving 21st-century art scene, says Blake Gopnik. The problem is that there is no vibrant and thriving scene to reflect. “The show’s so huge, you’ve got to figure that it has its finger on the art world’s pulse. Or that it would, if only there were any pulse to find.” The art world is in a decided lull, and while such cycles of greatness and mediocrity are nothing to worry about in the long term, it seems a bit silly to blame Venice for the lack of good contemporary art. Still, it’s awfully depressing to wander through “room after room, building after building, neighborhood after neighborhood filled with dull retreads of art that’s come before.”

There was a time, not so long ago, when museums were as inactive during the summer months as most TV networks. But today, with global art fairs and insanely high-profile events like the Venice Biennale and Art Basel dominating the summer scene, curators worldwide have no choice but to leap into the fray. With everything from Picasso masterpieces to little-known pen-and-ink drawings waiting to be acquired in Europe, the summer festivals have become a way of life for the wealthy art-collecting elite, and by extension, for the museums who depend upon the generosity of such collectors.

Why is the art world more interested in the people who buy art and move it around than we are in the people who actually create it? It’s a dangerous progression, says Alan Artner. “Where the ’80s made stars of purveyors and acquisitors, the ’90s turned the spotlight on curators – and today we live with the consequences: pseudo-intellectualism replacing scholarship, an indifference toward the past, fashionability substituting for merit, the exercise of style instead of analysis, and an elevation of artistic stewardship over art.”

“When Los Angeles County Supervisors on June 3 approved a new insurance policy covering the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, they found that premiums had jumped 37% from the year before. Also, the new policy doesn’t cover most potential losses from terrorism – an exclusion many insurers have added since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”