Category: visual

War fears loom over this year’s Maastricht Art Fair. “Traditionally this small Dutch city has been an annual mecca for serious collectors from all over the world. But officials here report that attendance at this, the world’s largest art fair, will be down about 10 percent from last year. There are far fewer blockbusters than in recent years. Not only are great works of art getting harder to find, but often when dealers do have something extraordinary, they tend to hide it away during bad economic times, afraid that if it doesn’t sell, it will become overexposed and therefore less desirable. Dealers definitely seemed to be holding back this year.”

Tax credits for preserving historic buildings and building low-income housing have resulted in the rehab of tens of thousands of buildings in America. “These credits help make historic rehab and low-income housing projects viable for profit-minded developers who might otherwise opt for less risky ventures.” But “despite the fact that they have helped stabilize neighborhoods, create businesses and jobs, and boost tax revenues in small towns and big cities alike, these incentives are in danger of being marginalized by a current White House proposal.”

Art crime is flourishing. “It is an area of crime that costs insurers £500m a year. The database Invaluable, a London private company, lists more than 100,000 stolen art and antique works. Among them, I discovered 26 Renoirs; eight Warhols unstrapped in transit from Heathrow to New York last year; 180 George III walnut clocks; Goyas, Gainsboroughs and Rubens. Unfortunately this activity is not matched by stories of thieves being collared, receivers incarcerated and “mad collectors” being sent up the river. Profits are high, punishment all too easily evaded.”

“For museum aficionados, the Internet can be a serendipitous joy but it can also be a tease. A number of sites provide directories that can reveal museums you’d never think of while putting together a travel itinerary, but which can end up as the cornerstone of a trip. This is particularly true of the sites with directories of domestic museums. But for travelers who speak only English, the Web is not as generous a place.”

This summer’s Vennice Biennale carries the subtitle of “The dictatorship of the spectator.” So what does it mean? “Is it that the spectator is the artist’s enemy, distanced by a different viewpoint? How important is the spectator anyway at the Biennale? Apparently not enough. One of the stated aims of this year’s show is to increase the number of visitors, which usually nose-dives after the initial crush of the opening week. The last Biennale attracted 243,498 in six months, 30,000 of whom were press who visited in the first three days.”

A few years ago trustees of Chicago’s Terra Museum, frustrated by what they perceived as the city’s lack of support, decided to move the m useum to New York. After a battle, a compromise settlement was reached in June 2001, “required that the Terra Foundation and a significant portion of the museum’s collection stay in the Chicago area for at least 50 years. It also called for the resignations of all board members and the installation of replacements last September.” But now Judith Terra, widow of museum founder Daniel Terra, “filed an appeal last month maintaining that some former board members were bullied into supporting a deal to settle the museum’s future.”

Last month the Autry and Southwest museums in Southern California decided to delay their plans to merge. But after lengthy negotiations, the two museums have decided to go ahead with the plan. “To cover costs of the merger, Autry officials say they plan to raise $100 million over the next five years, including $38 million to boost the center’s endowment and an estimated $15 million to restore and renovate the Southwest buildings.”

This week the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco opens in a new home. “The building – the old Main Library in Civic Center – has been deftly restructured inside by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, famous for having transformed the 1900 Gare d’Orsay train station in Paris into the tremendously popular Musee d’Orsay. The overall cost will be $160.5 million, and it gives the Asian Art Museum the kind of prestige and stature to which it has aspired.”

“At its crudest, ‘Asia’ as a concept betokens the ‘orientalism’ that Edward Said famously redefined in terms of Western colonizers’ need to understand themselves by contrast with a mysterious – potentially dehumanized – other. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has a collection deep and extensive enough to awaken glimmers of imagination for the complex material culture of Eastern societies across six millennia.”

“Modern architects need to develop a more imaginative bag of tricks when they are working alongside the ornate architecture of the past. The Asian Art Museum’s new glass-enclosed light courts are dramatic, but they shunt the grand beaux-arts spaces of the old building onto a sidetrack. The rhythms of the original structure are largely ignored by the new, when they should have blended.”