Category: visual

“The Frick, which adds only sparingly to its collection, described the portrait” – a seven-foot-tall image of Prince Camillo Borghese (Napoleon’s brother-in-law) by François Gérard – “as its most significant painting purchase for nearly 30 years when it announced the acquisition last December.” Now the Italian culture ministry, saying that the portrait is important to the national patrimony, has canceled the export license for the work and is trying to get it returned.

“The Westervelt Co.’s Tuscaloosa Museum of Art, home to a world-renowned collection of American and Asian paintings, furniture and decorative art amassed by former CEO Jack Warner, will close Aug. 31 … Core pieces will remain in the collection, including some of its early American-themed art, and the ‘Wild Birds of America’ series by Basil Ede, commissioned by Warner, but others will be ‘prepared for shipment,’ and not available for viewing by the public.” In its current form, the museum has been operating for less than seven years.

Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave almost $8 million to political causes in 2016, with about 58 per cent of that total going to Republicans and conservatives. Perhaps less surprisingly, 89.5 per cent of contributions ($4.3 million) from Saint Louis Art Museum board members went to Republicans. However, in downtown LA – a mere limo ride from liberal Hollywood – trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art also favoured Republicans and conservatives with over 70 per cent of the money they donated, to the tune of $11.1 million.

In January, Peter Beck sent his Humanity Star (described by irked scientists as a three-foot-wide disco ball) into orbit, and in October, Trevor Paglen’s Orbital Reflector will follow. In an article headlined “Hey Artists, Stop Putting Shiny Crap Into Space,” George Dvorsky looks at the origin of these two pieces and gets some choice words from each side of the divide.

“Last year the Contemporary Austin and the Blanton Museum of Art announced that 700 works of art from Contemporary’s permanent collection would be transferred to the Blanton, a move that solidified the Contemporary’s focus on collecting outdoor sculpture for its Marcus Sculpture Park. … Today, the Blanton and the Contemporary announced that some 500 of the 700 artworks have now been transferred to 17 Texas art museums. The Blanton has formally acquired 200 pieces of the Contemporary’s legacy collection.”

“A Middle East historian and author who is president of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York will be the next director of the Smithsonian’s Asian art museums. Chase F. Robinson will begin his tenure on Dec. 10 as the director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art … He succeeds Julian Raby, who retired in December after 15 years.”

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority has terminated the $750 million (US) contract of Hsin Chong Construction Company on grounds of insolvency. The Authority, which has kept construction going for the past 18 months by paying subcontractors and workers directly, has halted work at the site for six to eight weeks – but it insists that there will be no further delay in opening the museum.

“Perhaps the most broadly established aesthetic preference is the one of curvature over angularity,” they write. “People like the appearance of otherwise equivalent shapes and objects more if those contours are round rather than sharp and angular, and this is the case in various cultures around the globe.”

So there it stood for the last decade: allegedly damaged, possibly devalued, definitely disowned, but still a boldly colorful presence on that busy corner and a landmark for the thousands of pedestrians who passed it daily. I wondered, the last time I saw it, why it was cordoned off with the familiar yellow construction-or-crime-scene tape; it didn’t occur to me that it might be coming down. Like the whitewashing of Bill Walker’s All of Mankind mural a few years ago, its disappearance is a reminder that the public doesn’t own or control the fate of some of the city’s most public art.

“In the first episode of Momus‘s ‘Criticism in Conversation’ [podcast] series, an art critic and an art journalist parse the differing responsibilities and approaches of their craft. Join Catherine G. Wagley (Momus contributing editor, and critic for ARTNews and L.A. Review of Books), and Julia Halperin (Executive Editor of artnet News, and former Museums Editor for The Art Newspaper) as they compare notes and find common ground.”