Category: visual

If Sotheby’s were a hospital, his department would be “the E.R. or a clinic.” One analysis is like an M.R.I., and another is like a CT scan. He described analyses as “noninvasive.” Mr. Martin tried to keep the discussion understandable to nonscientists, even comparing one device to a “Star Trek” phaser, but he also said things like: “Each one of the million pixels has its own spectrum.”

Noah Charney’s premise is fairly uncontroversial: He argues that our understanding of art history is skewed by survivorship bias and that to understand the art we still have, it’s critical to put it in the context of what’s been lost. “Many lost works were more important and celebrated than those that have survived,” he writes.

“Major event” exhibitions like the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirrors show and the traveling David Bowie Is show “achieve two important goals for any museum: They increase attendance, and they increase revenue. But … blockbusters effectively ratchet up expectations everywhere, to the point at which lower-budget affairs can no longer capture the public imagination. That’s bad for most museums, and it’s bad for the public, too, which will increasingly subsist on the cultural equivalent of junk food.”

Almost exactly one year ago, an unknown man jogged into the Opera Gallery in Aspen, walked up to Christopher Wool’s painting Untitled 2004, cut it twice with a knife, and jogged right out. Police now say that Nicholas Morley flew from London for the express purpose of damaging the artwork, which had been consigned to the gallery for sale by a holding company owned by Morley’s father. (Just days later, Dad tried to convince the gallery that news reports of the slashing had made the painting more valuable and that they should raise the price.)

“Anna Coliva, the well-respected director of Rome’s Galleria Borghese, one of Italy’s top museums, is to stand trial on charges of absenteeism and defrauding the public purse … In total, she was absent from the museum for 41 hours over 12 days, according to evidence reviewed in court. At a hearing, Coliva said that the overtime she had worked more than made up for her absences.”

Just last September, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) opened in a repurposed grain silo on the Cape Town waterfront. And just last week, the Norval Foundation, funded by real estate financier Louis Norval, opened in a new building on a suburban estate near Table Mountain. What’s more, both the executive director and the chief director of the Norval came from Zeitz MOCAA.

“As a system, art fairs are like America: They’re broken and no one knows how to fix them. Like America, they also benefit those at very top more than anyone else, and this gap is only growing. Like America, the art world is preoccupied by spectacle – which means nonstop art fairs, biennials, and other blowouts. … This art-fair industrial complex makes it next to impossible for any medium/small gallery to take a chance on bringing unknown or lower-priced artists to art fairs without risking major financial losses. Meanwhile high-end galleries clean up without showing much, if anything, that’s risky or innovative.”

The MFA in visual arts program at Columbia is by reputation one of the best in the country, and it’s almost certainly the most expensive, with annual tuition of $63,961. Yet the art studio building suffers from burst pipes, flood damage on the floors, crumbling ceilings and walls, and poor heat, and the star faculty members that lure students turn out not to be there. 51 of the current 54 students in the program have demanded their tuition fees back – and the university provost agrees that the program is a “disgrace” (though he won’t refund the money).

“The Menil Drawing Institute, which has looked so enticingly ready for months from Richmond Avenue, will open Nov. 3 with an exhibition of works on paper by Jasper Johns that has been almost as highly anticipated. The now-official date falls more than a year after the Menil Collection initially planned to open the world’s first building dedicated to modern and contemporary works on paper.”

Its latest online collection, “Open Heritage,” features digitized, 3D models of over 25 locations from around the world, from the ancient Mayan metropolis of Chichen Itza in Mexico to the protected Watangi Treaty Grounds in New Zealand. Each was created by CyArk, a nonprofit that has been engineering incredibly detailed 3D versions of heritage sites since 2003 with the intention of archiving and freely sharing the results with the public.