Category: visual

A number of prominent artists have come out in support of striking workers in the four-month-long strike at the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA director Glenn Lowry had similar troubles at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, where he was director from 1990 to 1994. “During that time, labour unrest roiled the gallery as Lowry oversaw enormous cutbacks in the budget. After the provincial government slashed funding in 1992, Lowry laid off half the staff of 450 and extended a planned three-month closing for renovations by an additional four months. Many felt the gallery suffered afterward from his extreme approach.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

This year is the 200th anniversary of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, opened as the Nationale Konst-Galllerij in 1800. “Since the emphasis of the museum’s collections has always been on the art of the Dutch Golden Age, what more appropriate than a giant show to mark the millennium, the bicentenary, and the initiation of a major structural overhaul for the fabric of the museum itself?” – The Times (UK)

Damien Hirst has pickled cows to sharks. So what’s the subject of his latest artwork? “In a piece titled “Contemplating a Self Portrait (as a Pharmacist)”, Hirst has taken the trappings of the figurative painter; easel, canvas, smock, palette, brushes and tubes of oil paint, and encased them in a series of glass boxes.” – The Guardian

It’s looking like a large new monument marking World War II will be built on the the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. “Tearing down part of an existing, widely beloved national memorial and building a new one on the ashes of the old raises an obvious question. What does this project mean for the future of historic preservation in our nation’s capital?” – Los Angeles Times

A growing number of artists are incorporating scientific techniques into their work – everything from X-rays and MRIs to anatomical drawings and bacterial cultures. “Reductive science collects more data than we can perceive. We need new ways of looking at the world around us. This is essentially what artists do.” – ABC News

The trash hadn’t even been collected from the floor of last week’s Democratic Convention in Los Angeles when two curators from the Smithsonian Museum swept in to see what they could pick up. Trash that is – for the museum. “We’re looking for that one expressive object” that will help tell in a tangible way the story of the campaign and convention. – Yahoo! (Reuters)

North Adams, Massachusetts is a small town far away from major population, and who would think a contemporary art center would make it? But “by most measures, MASS MoCA’s inaugural year was a smashing success. More than 100,000 people visited its galleries. Another 25,000 turned out for performances, movies, or community dances and parties in the sprawling 27-building complex that once housed the Sprague Electric Factory. High-tech start-ups that set up shop on the site grew so quickly and spawned enough like-minded local enterprise that The Wall Street Journal last fall touted North Adams – a town that didn’t have touch-tone telephone service until 1990 – as a silicon village.” – Boston Globe

“There was a time when hotels did all they could to persuade us we hadn’t left home. Now they do all they can to show us how different they are from home and, paradoxically, the effect is to go on making everywhere look the same.” – The Observer (UK)

With artists, galleries and museums  exploring possibilities of the internet, there is a scramble to redefine who has the power and where the audiences are for art on the web. – The Sunday Times (UK)

“In some ways, Freud’s new painting is very close to his Cézanne, in other ways entirely different. For one thing, the Cézanne is tiny, just over 11 inches by 15, while the Freud is huge, with figures approaching life-size -so big, in fact, that it had to leave Freud’s studio by the skylight. And, while the Cézanne is a standard rectangular shape, at an early stage Freud’s grew an extension at the top left that contains the upper part of the maidservant.” – The Telegraph (UK)