The British Museum turns 250 years old this week. “In its lifetime, the museum has acquired some of the most important archaeological objects, including the Rosetta Stone and the world’s oldest glass – Egyptian, dating from 1460 BC. And as the home of the British Library, which grew out of the royal library and now receives a copy of every book published in the UK, it has nourished the minds of Charles Dickens, Karl Marx and Lenin, to name a few.”
Category: visual
Christo Project To Raise Money For Central Park
Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always raised money for their big projects themselves. But their Central Park project – due to take place in 2005 – might cost $20 million. And there are environmental concerns about protecting the park. “While the potential for marketing products related to these project is almost limitless, the artists have never allowed any licensing or taken any such initiatives themselves. Until now.” The artists have allowed a foundation to license worldwide marketing rights to the project, with all the proceeds going to protecting an restoring Central Park.
Selling Saatchi
“For many, this is a veritable freak show – one now worth an estimated £50 million – in large part due to the yBas, a group of young British artists who fought a frenzied fight for attention in the late 1980s and ’90s. It was a conflagration that Saatchi, advertising man to the core, had an instinct for uncovering and promoting. One suspects that Saatchi perceives himself as a kind of magus, someone whose primary motive is control. It seems quite possible that his pleasure comes from the manipulation of taste, the general public and art community.”
Go 2 R Museum
Trying to attract younger audiences, York’s railway museum is trying a new ad campaign. “Posters showing a pair of oily handprints on a woman’s denims went up yesterday in clubs and student bars across York to try to bring down the average age of helpers at the National Railway Museum. Heavily reliant on enthusiasts in the their 40s and above – a problem shared by scores of other museums and galleries across the country – the final home of hundreds of historic trains is also texting young people in schools and colleges in the city to tempt them into helping. Designers have created a locomotive-like logo using computer symbols from the asterisk to the double-dash, and added the message: ‘Ifu think trAns R ZzZz thnk x2.’ (If you think trains are boring, think again.)
A Place For Big Ideas
Suzaan Boettger writes that Dia’s new outpost at Beacon is a place where space could allow for the jumble and interplay of big ideas. “The Dia collection harkens back to a decade when the convergence of strong fiscal growth, the largesse of Great Society programs, increasing support for civil rights, anti-Vietnam war protests, and myriad forms of personal and sexual liberation made such artistic innovation on a large scale a cultural manifestation of the utopian belief that ‘anything is possible’.”
Royal Mail: Hands Off Queenie
Britain’s postal service is protesting an artist’s use of a picture of the Queen on stamps. The Queen’s face has been hidden by the addition of a gas mask. “A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: ‘We do take any breach of copyright very seriously especially in relation to the Queen’s image. We produce over three billion of these stamps every year and the images belong to the Royal Mail’.”
American Museums Discover Latin America
“American museums, long accustomed to regarding Latin American art as an appendage of other divisions or to ignoring it altogether, are bolstering their commitment to buying, showing, and studying everything from Mexican colonial portraiture to Chilean Surrealism. Two major institutions, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), have recently appointed their first chief curators for Latin American art. Others have held major Latin American shows. Museums across the country have established community groups aimed at drumming up support and interest for their Latin American programs, and dealers say the institutional push into Latin American art is adding momentum to the market.”
Sculptor of Heroes
Many of us have a distinct sense of what we think constitutes a fitting statue in honor of a great figure. That image comes from the 18th century, and “when we visualize one of these heroes, we are almost always referencing Jean-Antoine Houdon’s brilliant sculptural portraits. Between 1775 and 1789 he sculpted the men of letters and of the nobility of Europe and America.”
Protester Dumps Red Paint On Chapman
A man was arrested in London after throwing red paint on one of the Chapman brothers. “The unidentified man fought with the Turner Prize nominee after throwing the paint in an apparent protest at his alteration of work by Goya, the Spanish master. The attack came the day after Jake and his brother Dinos were shortlisted and strongly tipped for this year’s £20,000 prize.”
Mislaid Picasso Print Finds Its Way Home
Last week a man left a case with a rare Picasso in it in a subway station. “The man who found it is a mystery. But he, in turn, left it leaning against a wall on the Upper West Side, under a poster advertising bagels. The next man to find it, a sidewalk book vendor, took it home to Queens. He liked the portfolio. No idea there was a Picasso in there, and he would not have picked it out if he had looked. Just another drawing of two guys on a bench. But soon, it was all over the papers, and his wife figured it out first. He called the man who lost the portfolio and inquired about the reward. Next thing he knew, the police were waiting for him at his corner today when he showed up for work.”