Category: visual

Newfoundland is building a huge new cultural complex in St. John’s that eventually will house the archives, museum and art gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. But in a strange move, the province has ousted the “well-regarded” director of the museum who’s had the job 20 years. She was told she could reapply for her job when a national search got underway, but in the meantime the government appointed the provincial archivist to run the place. “The institution has no real Crown corporation or arms-length status, and its day-to-day administration is being handled by someone without experience in the visual arts…”

The Smithsonian Museum has told Congress that it will stick to plans to rename its Imax auditorium after a large corporate donor. “Critics saw the move as one more step in the commercialization of the Smithsonian. Members of the House Appropriations Committee asked Smithsonian officials to reconsider the change,” but the Smithsonian says it won’t.

A surprising number of pop artists have also pursued second careers in visual art. “David Bowie, Ray Davies of the Kinks, and the late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia all pursued art before music. Joni Mitchell illustrates many of her album covers with Van Gogh-influenced self-portraits. The phenomenon is hardly limited to rockers. Crooner Tony Bennett has a second career as an artist. Jazz great Miles Davis began expressing himself visually late in life, but generated a compelling body of work.”

Norman Foster’s plans for the World Trade Center site have been all but rejected. “A team of architects rejected his proposal of two crystalline towers because they felt it would not be practical to construct or find tenants to fill. The architects’ recommendation will go to the panel which will make the final decision next week.”

Liverpool’s historic waterfront has been nominated to be a Unesco World Heritage Site. “Liverpool’s historic buildings are a proud reminder that this was a hugely important maritime and mercantile city on the world stage.” The nomination is also thought to boost the city’s chances to be chosen as the European Capital of Culture in 2008.

“The nation’s museums spent more than a billion dollars in 2001 to educate schoolchildren, according to a survey released Wednesday. The Institute of Museum and Library Services reported that the median museum expenditure on K-12 programs increased to $22,500 in 2001, from $4,000 in 1996. The survey showed that museums dedicate about 12 percent of their median annual operating budget on K-12 programs, up from 3 percent five years earlier.”

As New York City prepares to choose one of the many plans submitted by some of the world’s top architects to replace the World Trade Centers, Lisa Rochon says there’s no reason not to combine two of the plans, each of which stands out for a different, and important, reason. Daniel Libeskind’s design for the huge plaza would bring to the Ground Zero space “a carcass of stone that could become the most meditative public space in the world.” And the Think team’s design for two huge latticework towers could reach “beyond the security of a nation to a new security in our minds — to an architecture that invites intellectual curiosity and the possibilities for cultural humility.”

Researchers have discovered a Rembrandt self-portrait that was altered by an assistant 300 years ago. “The original portrait from 1634, painted when Rembrandt was 28, was later painted over, apparently by a student in Rembrandt’s studio. The student added earrings, a goatee, shoulder-length hair and a velvet cap to make it appear to be a Russian aristocrat. The restored portrait shows the Dutch master with medium-length curly hair, a slightly upturned mustache and a beret. In it, Rembrandt’s portrait has the familiar round chin and gentle eyes of many other self studies.”

The Art Institute of Chicago has canceled a show on ths history of Nazi art looting. Why? “We had hoped to present the topic in a way that would be informative and beneficial to the public, but we realized that if we couldn’t do it properly, given the importance of the subject, we should not proceed.”

For the first time in a century, in London’s National Gallery Rubens’ “Massacre of the Innocents” will be on a wall beside another Rubens, ‘Samson and Delilah”, dated by scholars as being from the same time, 1609-1610. “The juxtaposition enables visitors to play a ‘spot the same models’ game.” Rubens saved money by reusing models from one painting for the other.