Category: visual

Artists and religious groups got together last week in London to create dialogue between contemporary art and faith. Twelve places of worship in and around London are hosting performances and exhibiting the work of contemporary British artists – including Damien Hirst’s “Last Supper.” “It consists of 13 unappetising silk screens of text mimicking pharmaceutical packaging but prescribing food to be taken like medicine.” – London Evening Standard

The latest in everlasting bliss: the Final Curtain cemetery theme park, where you can have a dance floor installed over your gravesite, or a video camera in your coffin to show time-lapse display of your corporeal decay. Too strange to be true?  Not to 39 newspapers, 19 radio stations, six TV stations, 10 magazines and 20 Web sites who fell for the story. Performance artist and media scammer Joey Skaggs strikes again. – Salon

Getting your museum noticed these days requires “surreal amounts of money” these days, not to mention the promotional instincts of PT Barnum. The Museum of Modern Art’s Glenn Lowry has been “resculpting” MoMA so that the museum gets its fair share (of money and attention). He has hired a crack marketing team at private-sector salaries and has chosen to oversee projects that include building a Philippe Starck-meets-Amazon.com art and design Web store, and renting part of the museum’s art collection to a billionaire Japanese real estate mogul. – New York Observer

Acid rain is eating the outdoor art of Venice. “Amputated arms, graffiti, and the black streaks caused by sulphur dioxide have marred the appearance of much Venetian sculpture, and everywhere there are examples such as Alessandro Vittoria’s statue of Saint Zaccaria on the central portal of the church, which remains faceless after its marble features disintegrated.” Some want to rescue the work by taking it inside and replacing it with copies. – The Art Newspaper

Architect Terry Farrell designed two of London’s most flamboyant buildings on the Thames in the 1980s – the MI6 headquarters and the redesigned Charing Cross Station – then promptly fell out of favor without a single London commission in the ’90s. Now he’s got seven major London projects in the works, all for prime sites along the river, and whether or not they’re loved, they’re sure to be noticed. – The Times (UK)

The Royal Canadian Academy of Art decided to do a millennial show and made an open call to artists. The idea might have worked 120 years ago when the Academy was formed. “Maybe it even worked 30 years ago, when the RCA’s annual exhibition finally died off. For better or worse, however, at the beginning of the 21st century it’s simply not how things work – as any truly vigorous arts organization would have understood right off. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

That maybe-Richard Diebenkorn-that wasn’t in that E-Bay auction that got everybody so excited a few weeks ago and forced a winning bid of $135,000? Well maybe it is real after all. Though the auction was nullified, experts are now looking at the painting to determine its patrimony. – San Francisco Chronicle

Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art gets a corporate grant to abolish its $12 admission charge. In the first four days since going free, attendance has doubled, and twice the museum has had to temporarily close its doors because of overcrowding. – Sydney Morning Herald

It’s been possible to tell what lies underneath the layers of paint of a painting for some time. “However, new technologies such as infra-red analysis – one of several methods used to determine the history and construction of paintings – makes the task more precise.” The technology is helping rewrite the histories of some works of art. – The Age (Melbourne)

Fifty years ago, Australia’s most important painting – thought to be by 15th-century Flemish master Jan van Eyck –  was declared a fake by experts in Brussels who ruled it was not by van Eyck and was probably not even Flemish. The painting was taken down from the National Gallery and put away. But new research shows the experts might have been wrong and now the painting may be returned to display. – The Age (Melbourne)