Category: visual

On Wednesday the French National Assembly takes up the question of making auctions an ordinary commercial activity. Up to now auctions have been a privilege granted to judiciary officers. Predictably, with no rational regulated system, the art auction market has not flourished in France.  ARTNewspaper.com

At London art sales last week, Old Master paintings followed Impressionists with a run-up in sales prices.  London Telegraph

Glasgow’s year-long celebration of architecture and design comes to a close. Some lessons and reflections.  The Guardian

If Thomas Hoving could have anything … Artnet.com

Ten years ago, as East Germany was dissolving, a long section of the Berlin Wall was turned into a canvas for 114 artists from 21 countries. Now Berlin’s famous open-air art attraction is in peril, and finding someone to bail it out financially has so far turned up empty.  Die Welt (Germany)

– soars with the stock market.  New York Times

“If architecture is an art – the greatest art, some have claimed – then too many buildings today look like the packing crate the art must have come in.”  Boston Globe

Paul Andreu is a designer of airports. But his design for an egg-shaped performing arts complex with an opera house, concert hall and two theaters will make a distinctive mark on downtown Beijing.  New York Times

“Art museums haven’t escaped the end-of-century urge to take things apart and sum them up. Most of the resulting shows exhaust you with good intentions, grand ambitions, murky thinking and too many things.” Boston Globe

Departing director of the Smithsonian reflects on his five years in charge.  Washington Post