Category: visual

With tough economic times, what art is selling? Surprise – contemporary art is hottest. “The Zurich-Art Market Research Art and Antiques Index reveals that contemporary art has been by far the best performer, with prices for a sample group of artists increasing by 126 per cent since 1995 and by 26 per cent during the past year.”

Dspite the small number of Leonardo da Vinci paintings there, they have never been studied with modern scientific instruments. So “the Universal Leonardo Project is being set up to coordinate the first scientific examination of all the artist’s paintings. Scholars are still unable to agree on which paintings should be attributed to Leonardo, with the number accepted by individual specialists varying from one dozen to two dozen. ‘Even the Mona Lisa has not been subjected to a sustained technical examination’.”

The state of Illinois has declined to purchase a house designed by Mies van der Rohe that changed the way people looked at architecture a half-century ago. Now the house is up for sale. “Designed by Mies as a weekend retreat for the late Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a Chicago
nephrologist, the house is one of the finest realizations of Mies’ philosophy that less is more – a one-story structure, raised on white piers that frame a single room sheathed almost entirely in glass. The proportions are exquisite and, as Mies’ biographer Franz Schulze has written, the house recalls a Greek temple, standing in perfect, manmade counterpoint to its wooded natural setting.”

The explosion of ‘blockbuster’ museum exhibits designed to draw in thousands upon thousands of art lovers has been well-documented. But what you may not know is that, more often than ever, the museum experience is little more than a bought-and-paid-for package distributed to your local gallery by giant for-profit corporations like the omnipresent Clear Channel. “Just as it changed Broadway theater roadshows and the concert business, so Clear Channel is changing the economics — some would say the soul — of a museum culture that traditionally has built its own shows or borrowed them from peers. It’s making some institutions look too much like theaters for hire. And it’s a trend that has many old-line museum people worried.”

The 15-year-old Melbourne Art Fair, one of Australia’s largest and most successful showcases of contemporary art, is in danger of being cancelled due to lack of funds. The problem is partly one of perception: the fair’s wild success over the past decade is seen as proof by many that it no longer requires public funding, but the truth is that the fair’s budget is quite tight, and disruptions to regular revenue streams could prove deadly. Such a disruption is currently underway in the form of an impasse on the city council, which has chosen not to make its usual contribution to the event.

“The time has come to make a fateful choice about the future of the devastated place in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center towers used to stand.” So says Benjamin Forgey, in making his official endorsement of Daniel Libeskind’s haunting yet elegant proposal. The New York authorities won’t issue their final decision for a few weeks yet, but Forgey says that while both finalists have created worthy (if flawed) designs, the Libeskind proposal “opens a path. It foresees meaningful public spaces shaped by moving architecture.”

Museums everywhere are facing funding crunches. But none so bad perhaps, as Copenhagen’s Royal Cast Museum, which holds “the world’s second-largest collection of plaster casts, and a rich selection of works representing the past 3300 years of art history from ancient Egypt to the 19th century.” The Royal Cast’s problem is not how to get more visitors, but how to keep them away – funding cuts have shrunk the museum’s hours to five a month – the “last Wednesday of every month between the hours of 10.00-15.00.”

“Art museums across the country are beginning to realize that they are the hip new version of a lonely hearts club. Scrambling to fill the role they didn’t know they had, they are increasingly open at night and making space for dining and dancing. In Seattle, all of the area’s major museums are open till at least 8 p.m. on Thursdays, and nearly all are trying to enlarge their piece of the seeking-soul-mates market.”

The Getty Museum in LA gave London’s Courtauld Institute $10 million towards its endowment. Then the Getty “asked the institute to lend it some of its world-class collection of old masters, Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings and sculptures.” Some of the paintings are covered by a bequest that prohibits lending them outside of London, so the Courtauld applied to change the bequest. “The request has upset many leaders of the London art world.” Some charghe that “the Courtauld was accepting cash for paintings. ‘There has to be a connection between the two things’.”

Officials in the English town of Walsall have ordered two artworks that reference Islamic themes to be removed from an exhibition. “The digitally manipulated images show a veiled Statue of Liberty clutching the Koran and the Houses of Parliament converted into a mosque. The authority issued a statement saying that, during a period of “heightened sensitivity”, and following the events of September 11, the artworks could be viewed as “reinforcing controversy, fear and prejudice”.