Category: visual

The Guggenheim seems bent on being the Starbucks of the art world – one on every corner. “The combined Guggenheim collections now run to 8,000 paintings, sculptures and installations and the pace of expansion seems unstoppable, feeding on a barely tapped global appetite for democratic art in spectacular surroundings.” – The Independent (UK)

• AND MORE POWER TO THEM: Two of the most prestigious art institutions in the world, the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation of New York and the State Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg, have reached a conclusion that, until even a few years ago, would have seemed insane. Las Vegas, better known as a desert shrine to all that is base and gaudy, neon and greedy, is actually an ideal place to show fine art. – The Independent (UK)

Vienna’s controversial new Holocaust Memorial in the Judenplatz is a wonder. “The artist herself has consistently refused to explain or interpret her work, but it speaks for itself in a number of different ways. While from a distance, it is reminiscent of a temple, close up it looks more like a hermetically sealed library. Its walls are concrete casts of row upon row of books. Yet the books are facing the wrong way. Their spines, and titles, are facing inwards so we will never know what these books are called and what they contain. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“This year’s Turner prize show opens to the public at Tate Britain tomorrow. The shortlist for the £20,000 prize, which will be awarded on November 28, has already generated a small controversy. Only one finalist, Glenn Brown, is actually British, although the other three all live and work in Britain.” – The Guardian

Kenya’s $20 million wood-carving industry is booming, born of the initiative of the Wakamba people of south-central Kenya. “But it has reached a difficult juncture. Favourite woods for carving, such as African blackwood, also known as ebony, or mpingo locally, are rapidly being depleted. Carvers and conservationists are assessing the future of the industry that each year fells 50,000 Kenyan trees, even as it employs 80,000 carvers.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, one of the most prolific and distinctive British artists of the 20th century, is in a persistent vegetative state after collapsing at his studio. It is thought unlikely that the prolific Scottish-born artist will recover.” – The Age (Melbourne)

“Just last week, architect Daniel Libeskind suggested that contemporary museum designers could learn a lot from shopping malls. Contemporary experience is riddled with such categorical confusions. The commonplace becomes the aristocratic, an elite finds its values affirmed in the everyday. As much as debate on high and low culture seeks to affirm their difference, increasingly what emerges is a recognition of their equivalence.” – The Age (Melbourne)

One of Michelangelo’s early drawings, discovered recently, is being offered by Sotheby’s auction house for an estimated $8-11 million. “The drawing, dated to around 1505, lay entirely unknown to art historians since at least the mid-18th century. It is a striking work in ink, about 10 in. by 6 in., representing a draped figure in mourning. It has about it the solemn air of antiquity.” – Christian Science Monitor

“While Mayor Willie Brown and a force of volunteers armed with solvents gathered at Yerba Buena Gardens on Saturday for a city-organized effort to stamp out graffiti, San Francisco-based video-game maker Sega of America played host to an art show featuring some of the nation’s best taggers just a few blocks away.” – San Jose Mercury News

“The overriding message from the speakers was that this was a museum devoted to reconciliation, at a time when issues surrounding reconciliation occupy a great deal of our national consciousness.” – The Age (Melbourne)

Museums generally take great pains to protect and care for the artwork that comes to them. But what is their responsibility toward conceptual art in which the artist often intends its decay or obliteration to be part of the work? – Chicago Tribune