Category: visual

“Most museums celebrate centennials by trotting out their signature masterpieces, staging blockbusters, and campaigning for significant new acquisitions. [Boston’s] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum can’t do any of those things. The masterpieces are already up, displayed in the permanent installation dictated by the founder. There’s no room for a blockbuster. Mrs. Gardner’s will prohibits the museum from adding to the collections. So the museum celebrates its 100th year with ‘The Making of the Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner as Collector, Architect & Designer,’ a show that attempts to rebrand her as a pioneer in the museum world, as opposed to a loose cannon in Brahmin society.”

With the closing of Sothebys.com this week, art selling on the internet is deemed a failed idea. “What happened? With other Internet sales skyrocketing, why did no one – not even the powerful Sotheby’s – succeed in flogging enough Warhol paintings and Chippendale chairs on the World Wide Web to make a decent profit? Because it is a losing battle: Everything that makes art compelling is blunted by the virtual, one-click world of the Net.”

Did the Smithsonian move an exhibition of Arctic photographs to a less prominent gallery under political pressure? That’s the contention of the photographer and a US Senator. “Last month, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) displayed the photographs and book as part of her argument against approving oil and gas leasing in the refuge. ‘After Boxer spoke, I got a call [saying] that it was perceived by the Smithsonian that my work had a political side,’ says the artist. A spokesman for the Natural History Museum, said there had been no political pressure to move the photographs. ‘Our decision was not based on Senator Boxer, but it didn’t help. We do not want to become involved in a debate over standing legislation’.”

Guidelines are released for a memorial for 9/11. “The guidelines say that competitors may create a memorial ‘of any type, shape, height or concept,’ that includes five physical elements: a recognition of each victim of the attacks; an area for quiet contemplation; a separate area for visitation by the families of the victims; a 2,500-square-foot area for the unidentified human remains collected at the trade center site; and a way to make visible the footprints of the original twin towers.”

“Although it is difficult to track the extent of the black-market culture trade, several have tried to do so. According to Argos, a French insurance group, about US$10-billion worth of art treasures is stolen and traded around the world every year. It’s become the fourth-largest illicit activity – behind drugs, guns and fraud. The history of modern conflict is the history of mass looting – and not just the garden-variety filching of electronic goods; an educated few leap on wars as opportunities to take a nation’s cultural collections into private hands.”

Charles Saatchi’s new gallery is a big success. “More than 4,000 a day have passed through the wood-panelled monument to civic bureaucracy since it opened to the public on 17 April, turning one man’s fancy into one of the must-sees on London’s tourist map. It was always bound to be a hit. The Saatchi name is a bigger brand than any that Charles ever represented in his advertising days. The gallery is its latest, logical manifestation, embracing some of the most iconic objects of the end of the 20th century. All that remains to be resolved is whether it can live up to its own exquisite hype.”

Rosalind Nashashibi has become the first woman to win the Beck’s Futures Prize – one of the art world’s richest. Her entry was a black and white film of senior citizens rummaging through a jumble sale. “Her four 16mm films were billed as explorations of cultural displacement.”

Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum has been closed for an indefinite period after asbestos was found in the building during an inspection.

The director of Iraq’s National Museum goes to London to describe what happened to his museum. “The looting was the crime of the century, Dr Donny George told representatives from some of the world’s leading museums at a meeting in London. The meeting, at the British Museum, saw photographs of the vandalism and heard that many of the 170,000 items in the collection had vanished. The aim of the London summit was to decide what can be done by the international community to restore Iraq’s devastated heritage.”

“Unesco is to send a team of eight experts to Iraq to make an assessment of the situation and devise a plan for the next stage in the salvage operation. It is also calling on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution which would place an immediate embargo on all Iraqi cultural goods. This would also include the return of goods to Iraq that may have already entered the market. The UN organisation will then compile a database with all the archives, lists and inventories relating to Iraqi heritage.”