Category: visual

More than 50 leading UK artists have signed on to relaunch the new Tate Britain as a home for exclusively British art. The renamed gallery “will hold the major collection of British artworks ranging from Elizabethan miniaturist Hilliard to contemporary artist David Hockney.” – BBC

The Whitney Biennial Exhibition, which opens tomorrow, is reminiscent of the Paris Salons of the 19th century – a smattering of collected art crammed under one roof.  With an added abundance of film, video, and Internet art, there’s no way any of the projects will get the attention they deserve, but the “Salons, both old and new, are about visual consumption — a breezy shopping trip for mind and eye in the art world’s megamall.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Back in 1983, London’s Marlborough Gallery was “at the center of one of the art world’s most spectacular scandals–the plundering of the estate of Mark Rothko,” for which the gallery’s founder was convicted of evidence tampering. Now Marlborough has been accused of cheating the late painter Francis Bacon of his financial due and systematically defrauding him and his heir of tens of millions of dollars. – New York Times

Chicago’s museums have been selling tickets at a record-breaking pace. The hottest ticket currently? The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Field Museum.  “At this rate, the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit will be “the biggest, certainly post-King Tut, in recent decades.” – Chicago Sun-Times

• San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum has put on display the three Dutch master paintings (now in desperate need of restoration) that were stolen from the museum in an infamous 1978 heist. Called a “great recovery story” by the museum’s director, the stolen art works – including Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Rabbi” – mysteriously turned up last year at a New York gallery in an anonymous unmarked box.  – NPR [Real audio file]

It’s been two years since the Boston Museum of Fine Art declared they would conduct an inquiry on works that may have been stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust…with what appears to be strong evidence that the MFA is in fact in possession of looted art, critics say the museum is purposely stalling. “‘If there is a good reason for not releasing those questionable works, the museum should present that. Disclosure is important here, and sometimes people lose sight of the importance of disclosure, even if they are pursuing the truth.'” – Boston Herald

Architect Michael Hopkins, responsible for some of London’s most startling modern buildings, including the stands at Lord’s cricket ground and the new Glyndebourne Opera House, is at work on an entirely bronze-facaded new office building for MPs adjacent to Westminster Bridge. Despite accusations of overspending, Portcullis House is set to be one of the best places to work on the Thames. “Not for him the polished marble or granite veneer used on so many prestige London buildings. This is a design 100 percent in the tradition of the great 19th-century engineer-architects; robust, muscular, and everywhere proclaiming the materials of which it is built.” – The Times (UK)

Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has received a donation of 84 works of art, including a vast collection of renowned 20th-century sculptures, from the heirs of the founder of Hallmark Cards. Pieces by Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, Alberto Giacometti, and Alexander Calder, among others, as well as 52 Henry Moores will find their new home at the Nelson-Atkins’ “17-acre sculpture park, then and now the largest of any museum’s in the country.” – New York Times

More than 1,500 demonstrators have shown up to protest an exhibit of contemporary portraits of Ho Chi Minh. Surprisingly, the colorful collages are the work of a former U.S. serviceman who says “we need to take a closer look” at the late North Vietnamese leader’s legacy. The growing throngs outside the Oakland, CA gallery – including many Vietnamese who fled N. Vietnam during the war and a strong showing of U.S. vets – have “called him a mass murderer. They’ve denounced him as a ‘lewd monster.’ But by the hundreds, demonstrators have made it clear that there’s one thing Ho Chi Minh shouldn’t be: art.” – CNN

When the cool modernist artwork leaves the old Tate to fill the new Tate Modern and the old Tate becomes Tate Britain, concentrating on British art, will anyone be interested? – The Times (UK)