Category: visual

Fort Worth’s Kimbell Museum has a stellar collection and reputation. But two of its board members have managed to pocket a rather large share of the museum’s money, paying themselves about $1.5 million a year for their board services. “At $750,000 and $747,000 each, as reported on the private foundation’s 1998 tax return, the Fortsons are paying themselves far more than they pay their museum director. They list their hours on the job as ‘full time’ even though they have a full-time and well-paid director in Potts, and Ben runs an oil business (albeit one that’s not doing too well these days).” – FW Weekly

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has seen a dramatic fall-off in attendance in recent decades and it’s been overshadowed by the city’s other museums. Now it’s being criticized for its plans for a dramatic £80 million extension designed by Daniel Libeskind. One critic likens Libeskind’s revolutionary design to “the Guggenheim in Bilbao turned on its side and then beaten senseless with a hammer” (it is nothing of the sort)” Other “stick-in-the-muds will feel all the more justified in their belief that the V&A will be, as Dorment puts it, ‘visually raped’.” – The Guardian

The Guerrilla Girls – those champions of getting women some power in the art world – come to Philadelphia. “There’s just one problem. More so than probably any city in the country, Philadelphia has an art world run by women.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

A garden that flourished 350 years ago when India’s Taj Mahal was built may be rebuilt as a way of protecting the Taj from development. The big question is: what exactly, did the garden grow? – Chicago Tribune (NY Times News Service)

A federal US judge has allowed the rejection of a decorated art cow proposed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The animal rights group wanted to enter its cow – bearing anti-meat messages – from New York’s art-cow parade currently on view in the city. – Yahoo! (Reuters)

A committee of MPs in the English Parliament proposed laws yesterday to make it a criminal offense to trade in looted artifacts and stolen artwork. The move is to combat the growing illicit market for illegally exported objects, estimated at between £150 million and £2 billion a year. Suggested measures included setting up a national database of stolen art, expediting legislation to facilitate the return of Nazi-looted art, and allowing museum trustees to return human remains on display in British museums. – The Guardian

• NEED HELP: “At present, there are no import controls on cultural property entering Britain unless they are subject to other controls, for example in relation to firearms – a position that many in the museums trade find untenable.” – The Independent (UK)

— north of Madrid has sixty of the master’s artworks – all of which were donated by Eugenio Arias, the Spanish barber who cut Picasso’s hair for 26 years while both men lived in the south of France. It pays to barter – Arias always took his payments in trade. – The Age (Melbourne) (AP)

“Most modern sculpture – and its sidekick, installation – occupies space in a quite aggressive way.” Historically, sculpture didn’t always do that. “From the Renaissance until the 19th century, statues tended to be placed flat against walls or in niches that neatly framed them. Viewers were expected to contemplate them from a relatively fixed position, as if they were pictures.” – New Statesman

Why do embassies have a way of always bringing out the worst in architects? Britain’s newest embassies in Berlin and Moscow are leaving critics (not to mention the Queen) numb. “What is it that makes these buildings second rate? Is it the architects’ failure of nerve, or the clients’ desire for nothing too difficult or arty? Is it a bout of poet laureate syndrome when faced with designing for Britain?” – The Guardian