Category: visual

The exhibition, titled “Queermuseu” in Portuguese, opened last year in a bank-sponsored cultural center Porto Alegre; it was shut down by the bank after religious conservatives loudly accused it of promoting blasphemy, bestiality and pedophilia. This past weekend, following what became the largest crowdfunding campaign in Brazil’s history, the show opened at an art school in Rio, where thousands lined up to see it.

The union overwhelmingly ratified the contract, which pushed back against many of the museum’s proposed takeaways – and even improved some things for the workers. “The museum initially fought against seniority step raises, but the union fought for its inclusion and eventually won.”

Artist Axel Klause expressed some quite conservative views on Facebook – and his gallery of 13 years said that it couldn’t continue the relationship. One of the Leipzig gallery’s partners: “I’m not a public institution or an institution of public interest. I have a commercial gallery where I organize and sell exhibitions, and I don’t have to represent every viewpoint that exists in society.”

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, is acknowledging the way the Italian Renaissance depended on – and exchanged ideas and goods with – Muslim countries. The exhibit is a “scholarly riposte” to a world in which, “today, Italians have little exposure to the Islamic world beyond the Muslims living in their midst — many of them recent immigrants — and media reports of Mideast wars and Islamist-inspired terrorism. That tense context has led some to associate Islam with violence and spawned anti-Muslim sentiments.”

The artist, Nico Avina, is trying to alert Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights to what it’s losing as rising rents drive out its Latinx population – people, murals, and especially paintings of la Virgen de Guadalupe. That’s why he brings a foldable, 7-1/2-foot tall Virgin Mary with him all over the neighborhood.

The pictures from above are truly amazing – but how do the players know where they are? “This project, ‘Art Courts,’ was spearheaded by the United States Tennis Association as part of a 50th anniversary celebration of the U.S. Open. Organizers hope to inject a dash of enthusiasm and color into community tennis courts in underserved neighborhoods — as well as enliven a sport that, to some, possesses a reputation for stuffiness and adherence to rules.”

The newly launched website, which was introduced at a ceremony in Florence last Tuesday, allows anyone with internet access to see and study the Uffizi’s world-class collection. Since the project was first announced in 2016, the Indiana University team recorded 3D scans of more than 300 artifacts, fragments, and sculptures under the direction of Indiana University informatics professor and virtual-archaeology expert Bernhard Frischer.

Hollein, who as of this August is the Met’s tenth director, strikes many people as being preposterously well qualified for the position. Forty-nine years old and armed with degrees in art history and business administration, he has already directed five museums and overseen the fund-raising and building of a new wing for one of them. He’s curated shows that range from old-master art to Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons, and delivered excellent admissions. He gets along equally well with artists, curators, board members, donors, and scholars. The only downside to his appointment is that he’s not a woman.

In the face of China’s repatriation campaign—and the recent robberies—museums are now scrambling. Some have stood their ground, arguing the legitimacy of their acquisitions or touting the value to the Chinese of sharing their culture abroad. Others have quietly shipped crates of art back to China, in hopes of avoiding trouble with either the thieves or the government.

While such “Concrete Utopias” are now getting attention in museums, it was actually the concrete Utopian city of Gibellina Nuova that became an open-air laboratory for assessing the healing capabilities of public art. Today, 50 years since the earthquake struck, many look back on Carrao’s radical experiment in civic engagement, rehabilitation, and unification as a cautionary tale. But new efforts are now underway to realize a more pragmatic version of that utopian dream.