Category: visual

A group of 27 lecturers, art historians, and artists who provided services for the museum’s education department (until they were made redundant last October) “say that they were paid through the National Gallery payroll, taxed at source and wore staff passes. ‘We were required to attend staff training and team meetings and received formal reviews of our work,’ they write.”

These days, graffiti is having a renaissance and is used by fashion labels and major corporations in their ad campaigns. Rebranded as “aerosol art,” it has now become what it rarely was before: a marketable commodity. The law, however, is struggling to catch up with the change in taste and culture, especially when it comes to the issue of when graffiti — an ephemeral form of art — deserves the safeguards of a copyright.

“Untitled (Flag 2)” by German artist Josephine Meckseper was intended to serve as commentary on the deep divisions in the United States, according to a statement by the artist. Meckseper drip painted a rough illustration of the U.S. on the flag and a striped sock in the left-hand corner to symbolize children imprisoned on the border. Some are viewing the work as an affront to active military and veterans. Among them is Kansas governor Jeff Colyer, who called for the flag’s removal in a statement Wednesday.

“A mummification workshop and adjoining burial shaft as well as five mummies, their bejewelled sarcophagi, figurines, and a gilded silver and onyx mummy mask were all unearthed at the [Saqqara] site, which archeologists say provides a wealth of new knowledge about the mummification process.”

“As envisioned by the architect Michael Arad, who also designed the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, sections of the church’s parking lot would be transformed into two meditative spaces, one a stone memorial courtyard, the other a grassy survivors’ garden. Together they would speak to the suffering and resilience of a church that has outlasted two centuries of persecution through its practice of faith and forgiveness.”

“Despite many legal and bureaucratic challenges, Saudi women have been at the forefront of a growing cultural landscape. As a tsunami of government funding floods the Saudi Arabian cultural sector with the announcement this February of a planned $64 billion investment in the entertainment and cultural sector over the next decade, it is crucial that these waves of cash not wash away the legacy and achievements of these female pioneers.”

The question is whether architecture and design could do anything to alleviate walmartism. It is difficult because there is a kind of Heisenberg Paradox at work here: the moment designers try to intervene, even if they do so pro bono, the result almost inevitably becomes more expensive. Anything that differentiates, softens, or responds to the human body, costs money.

While Native and Indigenous artists remain underrepresented in mainstream institutions, academia, and museums in the United States, Canada’s efforts may be inspiring greater social awareness and responsibility from Denver to Montclair, N.J., and New York, according to arts leaders.

“One gets the feeling the patrons of this museum visit to prove how progressive they are. They do not care that the so-called art is the quintessence of bilge. They care only that it advances the ideology de rigueur. The March for Life has been going on since 1974, yet we find no “Abortion Is Murder” sign in the quite incomplete history of protest. That would get the museum shunned by high society. Indeed, there is no reason the Whitney should go on calling itself an art museum now that it has forgone artistic merit as its selection criterion. Let it call itself the Protest Shrine — at least then the unwoke will save their money.