Category: visual

“The decision last Wednesday by the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to put on hold its extensive $200 million-$300 million renovation and expansion plans at its Hancock Park campus is all but a death knell for the project, one of the city’s most important cultural initiatives.”

San Francisco’s highest-profile art museum? SFMuseum of Modern Art. “SFMOMA stands reinvented in its landmark – though not universally admired – downtown building designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta.”

Over the weekend they pulled off their heist at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. “Employing low-tech cunning against the hi-tech security features of a heavily protected modern gallery, the cat burglars thwarted CCTV cameras, alarms, motion sensors and 24-hour security guards by simply leaning a ladder against the back of the museum, climbing in through the roof and taking what they wanted.”

Directors of 18 major museums from around the world have signed a declaration that their institutions act as “universal museums” for the good of the world, and therefore they will not hand back ancient artifacts to their countries of origin. “The universal admiration for ancient civilisations would not be so deeply established today were it not for the influence exercised by the artefacts of these cultures, widely available to an international public in major museums.”

The new $50,000 prize for a young Canadian contemporary artist is meant to draw attention. “The Sobey Art Award is the new Turner Prize, the Giller of the visual art world. With only one award behind it so far, it’s not as prestigious as either yet, but give it time. It’s rich, it’s backed by a bona fide collector of fine Canadian art and it’s truly national in scope.”

Chicago – land of historically-significant skyscrapers – has a plan to preserve important buildings. Only one problem – the department that’s supposed to protect the buildings is so laughably understaffed, the system is unworkable. That’s how embarrassing mistakes are made…

Keith Tyson has won this year’s Turner Prize. “The 33-year-old former Cumbrian shipyard worker, dubbed the ‘mad professor’ for his fondness for exploring ideas from the outer limits of cod science and his outlandish proposals for giant neon dinosaurs and the like, had been the bookies’ favourite. As the artist with the best jokes, he was also the public’s first choice.”

“Though art critics were underwhelmed by Tyson’s submissions to the Turner Prize exhibition, describing him as being at the soft end of the conceptual movement, he will probably escape the hilarity and condemnation which greeted last year’s winner, Martin Creed, whose sole exhibit was a room in which the lights turned on and off every few seconds.”

Think being nominated for the Turner is the answer to an artist’s prayers? Not always. “The Turner Prize picks up little-known artists and throws them, albeit briefly, into the eye of a news storm. Unlike actors at the Oscars, artists tend to be among the least well equipped to deal with the sudden, intense attention.”

The new Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is a signature art building like most new museum buildings. But curators say the building ought to be a supporting player to the art. “My job is to represent the artist. If an artist makes a big painting, they want it to look big. What I want is small spaces where I can make small paintings look big and big paintings look big, without compromise.”