Category: visual

For the $678 million project to go forward, the City Council has to sign off on it, as do the state and federal governments. The museum, of course, must raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build the project, which will include a performing arts center and public parks and plazas at three East River piers. – New York Times

The British Museum’s new £100 million Great Court was birthed in controversy. But the critics are raving: “My overall impression is that Norman Foster has given us the most surprising, and most sensationally beautiful, space in London.” But will success turn the venerable BM into a “recreational” museum like the Tate or Bilbao? – The Telegraph (UK)

An “almost 500-foot-tall tower rising above the old city that will have a restaurant close to the top and a synagogue for only 36 at the very top” is being planned for one of the world’s most historic cities. Why is it necessary to mar the view of the city with a modern monstrosity? – The Idler

“University of Chicago economist David Galenson charts the sea change from artistic tradition to reinvention, using the auction prices of paintings as his measure of value. Correlating the price of a work of art with the age of the artist at the time of the painting’s execution, Galenson mapped the patterns of success and innovation over the past century in art history. His essays describe French and American painting, but their relevance is much broader.” – Salon

The Guggenheim Museum has reached an agreement with New York City on the site for its new $678 million 520,000-square-foot Frank Gehry-designed museum complex in Lower Manhattan. The project includes 279,000 square feet of public parkland, an outdoor sculpture garden and a 1,200-seat performing arts center. NY mayor Rudolph Giuliani is “also expected to announce that the city will provide the museum with $67.8 million — 10% of its total cost — in capital funds.” – New York Daily News

Earlier this year the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art sued heirs to a $44 million Picasso, claiming that the trust that owns the painting reneged on a commitment to sell Picasso’s 1932 masterpiece “Nu au fauteuil noir” to the museum for $44 million. Last week, a San Francisco judge threw out the case. – San Francisco Chronicle

Sotheby’s and Christie’s have asked a judge to allow them to pay $100 million of the $512 million settlement against them with certificates good for buying art in the future. “Sellers, they said, could have up to five years to use their coupons and could transfer them through a jointly appointed certificate administrator, which they said would create a secondary market.” – New York Times

Controversy precedes the awarding of this year’s Turner Prize as it turns out one of the favorites – Glenn Brown’s canvas, “The Loves of Shepherds 2000,” appears to be “a stroke-by-stroke copy of Anthony Roberts’s jacket illustration for the 1974 Pan paperback edition of a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel.” – The Times (UK)

An Australian art collector puts up a painting valued at $1 million for auction, but then has a change of mind and decides to donate the work, by an important Aussie artist, to the National Gallery. The change of heart may cost him though – he’s still liable for Sotheby’s seller’s commission, estimated to be as mush as $200,000. – The Age (Melbourne)

Did Leonardo paint a saucy topless Mona Lisa? The Italian press has been hailing “the topless Gioconda”, a nude pastiche of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa that art historians now claim was copied from an original by the Florentine master himself. The painting is known as Monna Vanna, and experts argue that “Leonardo painted a lost saucy parody of the Mona Lisa for his patron Giuliano de Medici. – The Guardian