Category: visual

You probably didn’t know you could find one of Michelangelo’s frescoes from the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in a museum in Naruto, Japan. The priceless pieces are among 1,074 artworks from 190 museums that have been reproduced for the new Otsuka Museum of Art, the world’s first “ceramic archive.” Why would you want to spend your time looking at a fake? For one thing, the works can be displayed under bright lights, revealing details that could never be seen in a traditional museum. – Daily Yomiuri (Japan)

A Bosnian artist is digging up dirt from minefields and selling it in what she calls a “special artistic performance.” “I’ve already sold one minefield for 500 marks. Mom and I sew bags that contain 10, 20, 30 and 50 kilograms. I sold quite a few bags the first day.” – New Jersey Online

The last and newest of Germany’s Federal State museums has just opened in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Coast. The Pommersches Landesmuseum will focus on its historic links with neighbors Sweden and Denmark. It’s Picture Gallery, housed in a converted Franciscan monastery, will also feature the works of Frans Hals, Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip Otto Runge, Max Liebermann and Vincent van Gogh. – The Art Newspaper

“There is no complaint that Robert Hughes left Australia more than three decades ago and established a successful niche as art critic for Time magazine in New York. Good luck to him. But Australians are entitled to ask why the ABC still sees value in airing the thoughts of Robert Hughes as an ‘intimate perspective’ on contemporary Australia. It isn’t.” – The Age (Melbourne)

At the Venice Biennale, US architects present the future. “The emerging generation of architects represented here uses animation software to study the effects of natural forces on different forms, and film- and Web software to produce virtual environments and atmospheric effects. Moreover, they say, they are among the first architects to respond to the way that digital technologies have altered people’s aesthetics, even their very sense of space.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

• The man doing the sophisticated computer modeling for the designs of Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria is a big fan of the museum. He’s also a prisoner. “Max” works on the project from prison. “I find it fascinating that a man who has been incarcerated for so much of his life has such an interest in space, and dimensions and images. I doubt it’s purely coincidental.” – The Age (Melbourne)

In the late 19th Century one of the greatest forgers of antiquities set up shop in Jerusalem. “The late 19th century was the beginning of modern tourism, following the invention of steamships, and it was also the beginning of archaeology. Wilhelm Moses Shapira was the first to recognize that archaeology could be a profitable business.” His career was derailed when he attempted to sell the British Museum what he claimed to be ancient Torah scrolls, and was exposed as a fraud. He killed himself soon after. – The Jerusalem Report

• UNESCO, the UN’s cultural and educational agency, is coordinating a $250 million international effort to rebuild Moscow’s 19^th-century Bolshoi Theatre, which is crumbling and close to collapse due to years of neglect. Theatres from around the world have already rallied around the cause by sending in contributions equal to one night’s earnings. – NPR [Real audio file]

Artist Garth Benton has sued Ann and Gordon Getty because, he claims, the San Francisco philanthropists and socialites painted over his $327,000 mural on the wall of their mansion, “violating a rarely used California law barring the destruction of fine art.” – San Francisco Examiner