Category: visual

Mies – Are You Fer or Agin’ Him?

A new retrospective of the work of architect Mies van der Rohe asks a critic to takes sides. How odd. “You can ask whether Mies was a good architect or a bad architect, an influential architect or not. You can ask whether he has been properly understood and whether he is still relevant today. But to ask whether you are for or against him seems strangely irrelevant, a harking back to half-forgotten battles of an earlier generation.”

Chinese Artist Owns Rights To Mao

Yes, China is still a Communist state. But the country’s leadership is anxious to show the rest of the world that it respects property rights. So that might explain a ruling by the Beijing Higher People’s Court, that ordered the Museum of the Chinese Revolution – a major landmark in central Beijing – to pay an artist’s family the equivalent of $31,000 for selling copies of a picture of Mao Zedong without permission. The court ruled “that while the museum is allowed to display Dong’s painting, reproduction rights are still held by his widow and children. The verdict would likely have horrified Mao, leader of the 1949 revolution that eliminated most private property.”

Toronto’s New Star Potential

Toronto is on the verge of a building boom – and billions of dollars are being spent. “After more than a decade of devastation, Toronto’s cultural institutions have regrouped into a position of civic leadership. By the time the cranes are down, Toronto will have works by some of the world’s leading architects, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Will Alsop among them. Already, controversy is swirling.”

The Picture That Started It all

The world’s first photograph was taken in 1826. Is it a great picture? “It’s all too easy to think that an interesting picture is a picture of an interesting thing—this is the power of photojournalism, some snapshots, certain forms of portraiture, and so on. But the truth is trickier: The quality of a photograph lies not in its subject matter but in the irreducible entanglement of photographer, apparatus, and image.”

Australia To Investigate National Museum

Is Australia’s National Museum too “politically correct?” The country’s government suspects so, and has appointed an academic to incerstigate and report back. “The review follows a recent decision by the board to reduce the term of museum director Dawn Casey – an Aborigine – to a one-year contract and brings to a head the conflict between the museum’s council and its curatorial staff over the institution’s direction.”