Category: visual

National Park Service studies show that the site of a proposed $100 million memorial to veterans of the Second World War on the Mall in Washington DC is part of the historic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. – Washington Post (Los Angeles Times)

The Bellagio Hotel may have closed its art gallery and sold the art, but maybe the peripatetic Guggenheim believes in the culture of Las Vegas? Reportedly, the Venetian Hotel is talking with the Goog about building a branch next to the hotel. The museum is already sending a show to Las Vegas next year. Meanwhile, the Philips Collection is negotiating with the Bellagio. “I think Las Vegas could use a little culture.” – Times of India (AP)

In recent years numerous museums and exhibitions commemorating the Holocaust have sprung up. But some argue that attempts to represent the Holocaust falsify it, making it an aesthetic rather than a history. “On the other hand, however uncomfortable academics may be with some of the popular representations of the Holocaust, few would question that films such as ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Life is Beautiful’ have done more to raise public awareness of the Holocaust than a thousand scholarly tomes.” – New Statesman

Arthur Danto ponders the meaning of modern and modernism. “The date 1880 cannot be defended as the beginning of modern art, nor is there any consensus as to when modern art began. Nor can that question be separated from the deeper question of how Modernism is to be defined. – The Nation

Collecting art for a museum is an “exhilarating, suspenseful, satisfying and frustrating” game. Some of the more interesting acquisitions come through unlikely means… – Chicago Tribune

The Denver Art Museum wants to add to its building. But the challenge is how to make the $62 million addition fit in between its neighbors – the aggressively-profiled Gio Ponti main building and the Michael Graves-designed addition to the public library. Three finalists for the job present their ideas this week. – Denver Post

People travel from all over to Houston to see the famed Menil Collection. But the museum has always thrived on being low-profile. Now a new director and a new attitude. “Cab drivers don’t even know where we are. What’s wrong with publicizing the place? Maybe we’ll get twice as many people in the galleries, which may mean 30 instead of 15.” – Dallas Morning News

What was it that made John Ruskin the greatest art and social critic of the Victorian age? A new book is great at exploring his life; less successful at capturing his rhetorical lightning. – Boston Globe

The rebuilding of Berlin is apace. But the new structures are directed to fit into tradition, not reach for grand contemporary gestures. “But this is not the city that the Prussian monarchs built with the help of Karl Friedrich Schinkel; it is the product of developers led by Sony and Mercedes stumbling to fill the vacuum left by 50 years of uncertainty.” – The Observer (UK)

Shanghai is in the midst of a massive rebuilding effort trying to regain its center as the intellectual capital of China. And what about art? “A prickly individualism means Shanghai artists never banded together like those in Beijing, so what ‘art scene’ there is lies on the fringes of a more generalized underground. – Artnet