Category: visual

A number of big American museums are closed or closing (sometimes for a couple of years) while major additions/renovations are undertaken. “The spate of temporary closings represents a new phase in the building boom that began in the go-go 90’s, when institutions found it relatively easy to raise large sums. Some museums are refurbishing old buildings; some are commissioning new ones. Others, like the Corcoran and the Aldrich, are doing both. For directors who shut down their institutions, consequences go beyond the obvious loss of revenue and the danger that the museum’s support will erode. The impact is felt most keenly by employees who are laid off, but also extends to scholars who are dependent on easy access to artworks.”

Australian aboriginal art is hot. “Thirty years ago Aboriginal work was hardly recognized as art. Painted tree bark and ritual stone and wood objects, spears and clubs tended to be lumped together with stuffed koalas and wallabies in the ethnographic sections of Australian museums; Aboriginal art was never displayed in the same spaces as work by white artists. Less than 20 years ago you could barely give it away. People just didn’t take art made by Aboriginal painters seriously. But at our sales in July we’ll have people from all over the world bidding hundreds of thousands of dollars for art you could have bought for hundreds in the 1970’s. We’re estimating a total sale value of more than $3 million.”

When it was first proposed, architect Daniel Libeskind’s post-modernist “spiral” addition to the Victoria & Albert Museum was derided as symbolizing all that is wrong with contemporary architecture. But now Libeskind’s been embraced in New York for the World Trade Center site, his idea for the V&A is seen as inspired. And now the fundraising gets going in a big way…

Over the past ten years half of Berlin has been thoroughly transformed. Do Berliners have any feelings for their older buildings? If so, they “never even raised their voices when a precious building was torn down by the wrecking ball to make room for a new one. There also was no outcry, just some rather quiet outrage, when the city senate approved the demolition of Admiralspalast, the last building on Friedrichstrasse – across the street from the train station – which still recalls the 1920s, when this street was home to one of the capital’s entertainment districts.” What is the point?

There are about 6000 archaeological sites in Italy. And artifacts are stolen every day. Combatting the ever-growing trade in stolen art is a special squad of Italian police. “In more than 30 years of activity, the squad has retrieved about 185,000 works of art and 456,000 archaeological objects. The original force of a few dozen police officers has grown to 300, with branches throughout Italy and liaisons throughout the world. Its database of stolen art, called Leonardo, catalogs more than two million objects.”

Some of the art stolen from Iraq’s National Museum is beginning to turn up after appeals in Baghdad. “Officials are using tips from citizens to hunt down stolen items, and trying to prevail on thieves to turn them in voluntarily. Muslim clerics, at the officials’ urging, have announced over mosque loudspeakers that anyone with looted items should return them to museum curators, no questions asked. U.S. reconstruction officials said they plan to air similar messages on Iraqi radio stations starting tonight. ‘It’s already working. I’ve heard from our friends that a number of objects were collected in mosques in the neighborhood after appeals from the imams of the mosques’.”

With revenues, donations and endowments down, museums are working harder than ever to lure visitors – meditation, singles nights, special membership offers… the marketing is only limited by imagination (and taste?)

“Museums love blockbusters and, judging by the lines, so does the public. But the lines themselves signify the difficulty museums have solving the blockbuster math: let too few people in and the show becomes impossible for everyone to see; let too many people in and the art becomes impossible to see. To some extent, museum officials regard gallery traffic as a problem to be coped with, not cured.”

The democratization of the American art museum has in some ways increased the visual insecurity of viewers. You’re standing there judging the work, but instead it feels like the work is judging you. If you’re stumped, you are less likely to blame the artist than yourself. You may even assume you are an indolent person who has failed to make the requisite intellectual effort, which in turn can unleash a chain of negative thoughts about straying from your diet, neglecting to send a sympathy card and other unforgivable failures of will.”