Category: visual

Only 366,000 people – or 11,000 per day – visited London’s much-mocked Millennium Dome in January. The publicly-financed Dome must attract 12 million visitors this year to break even financially. – BBC

The US Postal Service had to destroy 100 million stamps of the Grand Canyon because they placed it in Colorado instead of Arizona. Now, the corrected version is flawed…  – The Straits Times (Singapore) (AP)

• It was another great year for the museum blockbuster show. Record crowds everywhere, and the number of big-time shows increased. The numbers may be great, say some, but the challenge is to broaden interest beyond the wildly popular Impressionists and antiquities shows. – New York Times

• Police believe that the theft of a Cezanne from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum over New Year’s was a theft-for-hire job. Such art thefts aren’t unusual. Art is easily transported and convertible to cash, and the steal-to-order trade is flourishing. – New York Times

You’re an artist and you’ve worked all your life for fame, honor and sales. And you’ve had some success, selling a few important pieces to museums and collectors. But the vast majority of your works sit in storage racks in your studio, unsold and unloved, except by you. But if you die tomorrow, the IRS could assess devastating taxes against your estate, based on the proven market value of the few pieces you’ve sold. What’s an artist to do? In Cleveland, a plan. – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

“Hitler practicing his oratory in front of a bedroom mirror; the Ayatollah Khomeini being stripped by souvenir hunters at his funeral; Parisians caught in a bomb attack on the Metro” – these photos, never meant to be seen, are part of a new show in London. – London Evening Standard

Seattle rents are forcing out many of the city’s artists. A new set of evictions points up a much more complicated problem than the traditional greedy-old-developer-against-helpless-artists scenario. – Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Narrative,” has lately acquired an almost mystical significance in museum circles, especially those most concerned with what we used to call the history of modern art. Top directors of modern art museums gather to explain the future of the “modern” art museum. – New York Observer

Weekend oil-painting sales attract big crowds. The pictures sell for as little as $12. The Garden of Eden is big. So are purple mountains’ majesty. And whales. Abstract pictures used to sell but not any more. What people are buying for their living rooms. – Washington Post