Category: visual

This season a celebration of national cultural heritage.  Philadelphia Inquirer

When Malcolm Rogers became director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Art five years ago he inherited a $4 million operating deficit. Last year the MFA had a $437,000 surplus. He helped the museum complete a $137 million capital campaign. Last year’s 1.7 million visitors set an attendance record, and membership has nearly doubled in five years. Even so, his detractors are legion: “his acquisitions, his exhibition policies, everything that has to do with art is a disaster.”  New York Times

Twenty-eight paintings attributed to Georgia O’Keeffe in Kansas City’s Kemper Museum are declared fake by a panel of experts.  CBC

Behind a $60 million renovation, a battle for turf between the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art.  Washington Post

• Nasty business between two old friends Chicago Tribune 12/23/99

Tale of two DC Christmas trees says a lot in decoration.  Washington Post

1999 wasn’t a great year for new architecture. But from New York to London it wasn’t a stinker either.  Financial Times

“Twenty-four of the paintings and drawings which vanished from the great collection of the Rouart family, who are descendants of Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, have mysteriously turned up in the Swiss bank vault belonging to the Renoir expert, François Daulte, who died in April 1998.”  The Art Newspaper

And, let’s face it, also to sneer and feel superior. But the art in London’s Millennial Experience -supposedly by Britain’s best and brightest – is underwhelming.  The Guardian

The Millennial Dome is a mishmash more at home in the 70s. This is looking ahead? This is visionary? “Asking clever architects to do their bit here was rather like giving children boxes of very different glitterballs and fairy lights and asking them to decorate a Christmas tree.”  The Guardian

An ambitious $90 million makeover accompanied with some hard thinking about the center’s future. One of Paris’s top attractions, with 150 million visitors in its first 20 years, the Pompidou Center was undeniably a success. Now a rethinking of its creative spirit.  New York Times