Category: visual

Investing in interesting architecture and yoking it to an artistic purpose has become the preferred way of driving economic and cultural renewal in many a distressed community – can you say Bilbao? But a landmark building in southeast Britain is about to join the ranks of missed opportunities. It’s about to be wholesaled off by city councilors. “Offered the chance to transform the pavilion into the leading arts centre for the South-East, they prefer to turn it into a pub.” – The Telegraph (UK)

Someone is stealing Detroit’s outdoor bronze statues. In the past six months dozens of pieces of outdoor artwork have disappeared, probably to be sold by thieves overseas. – Detroit Free Press

The Indian army and the country’s State Archaeology Directorate have gotten into a battle over the discovery of rock paintings in Kaimur Hills of central Bihar. The army says it has discovered 52 rock shelters replete with prehistoric paintings, while the Archaeology Directorate rebuffs the claim as being “unprofessional, inadmissible and doubtful”. – Hindustan Times (India)

Archaeologists are planning a foray into Egypt’s Western Desert next month to try to solve an ancient mystery –  the fate of the lost Persian army of Cambyses. Experts think they may have discovered the place where the army of Persian King Cambyses, who finished off the 26th dynasty of the Pharaohs in 525 BC, ushering in two centuries of Persian rule in ancient Egypt, disappeared and perished in the desert. – ABC News

— to exchange artwork looted from one another during World War II. – CBC

British arts minister Alan Howarth announced the creation of a new panel to further investigate the Nazi provenance of art in British collections. But he also tried to defuse the recent publicity, declaring: “In fact, the museums and galleries were simply announcing findings about uncertain provenance. It does not follow that because there is a gap in the recorded history of a particular item it must have been looted. Whatever wrongs were done in the Nazi era, works of art held in our public collections were – we should start by assuming – acquired in good faith and have probably been held for the public benefit.” – The Guardian

In response to the recently filed civil suit alleging price-fixing, Sotheby’s officially denied conspiring with its rival auction house Christie’s to fix commissions and asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges. – New York Times

Five years after French President Jacques Chirac urged the Louvre to create a permanent place for “primitive art,” the museum has opened the doors to its first galleries of African, Asian, Oceanic, and American art. “The idea is that, from now on, the 112 works on display there should be treated as the aesthetic equals of the Egyptian, Greek or Renaissance art elsewhere in the building.” But “a good many unhappy curators” are are grumbling about the shift. – New York Times

About 300 union cartoonists in Los Angeles say they plan to picket KCET-TV, LA’s PBS affiliate, to protest what they claim is increased use of Canadian cartoons on public television. The cartoonists say their jobs are being lost to Canadians “This is sort of the last straw that PBS is giving tax dollars to foreign companies,” says one animator. But a PBS spokesperson says: “Of 17 children’s programs on the air at this point, I believe three are produced in Canada, and none of them have any federal money in them.” – Los Angeles Daily News

“Brixton Breakers was a rubbish-strewn, rat-infested junkyard in south London, over-run by bikers and drug dealers.” Then artists started working in its run-down Minet Road studios – including Damien Hirst, who made all his formaldehyde pieces there –  and “after the artists came the collectors, dragging their Gucci through the mire, and it became a compulsory stop-over on the international collectors’ circuit.” Now Brixton’s the cradle of one of the most exciting new art movements London’s seen in years.  – The Guardian