Category: visual

Cloud Column, a very shiny, 21,000-pound stainless-steel ellipsis by Anish Kapoor that has just been installed on the campus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It’s almost impossible to avoid thinking of Cloud Column as the vertical version of Cloud Gate (a/k/a “The Bean”), Kapoor’s popular sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

As Kapoor’s Cloud Column is being installed in Houston (and drawing inevitable comparisons to Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Chicago), the Chicago Tribune‘s Kim Janssen and the Houston Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray started throwing serious shade at each other’s public sculpture as the rest of the nation watched with amusement. (The Dallas Morning News chimed in with “Sorry Chicago, making fun of Houston’s ‘bean’ sculpture is our job.”)

“The Cimetière du Montparnasse is at risk of losing one of two of its most distinctive occupants. A famous Constantin Brancusi sculpture of a couple embracing, Le Baiser (The Kiss, 1909), has … been on view just inside the cemetery’s Rue Émile-Richard entrance since the very end of 1910 or early 1911. But, for at least six months now, the sculpture has been covered up and mysteriously concealed from public view.”

“Ken Simons has had his hands on Picasso paintings, moved Tracey Emin’s bed and manoeuvred an Antony Gormley sculpture though a third-floor window. For him, a famous painting or sculpture isn’t just a precious creation to be admired – it’s a practical puzzle. Will it fit through the door? How can it be carried? Which trolley is best to wheel it through the gallery? And, in the case of some outlandish modern sculptures – how does it fit together?”

The Art Newspaper compiles a list of shows by category. In top sport was Modern masterpieces from the Shchukin Collection—by Picasso, Matisse and Gauguin, among others—were seen by 1,205,000, a staggering 8,926 visitors a day in Paris.

“Quick quiz. Which of the following makes sense?
a) Three pirate ships on a river in a landlocked country in the Balkans;
b) A 47-foot-high bronze statue of an ancient warrior that is Alexander the Great and is also not Alexander the Great; or
c) A house dedicated to Mother Teresa, a saint known for her modesty, done up in an opulent style that can best be described as Miami meets the Flintstones.
Answer: None, unless you are in Skopje, Macedonia.”

American artist Michael Rakowitz, whose family were Iraqi Jewish refugees, made a replica of the lamassu (a winged bull with a human head) which stood at the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh until ISIS destroyed it in 2015. (The material: thousands of empty cans of date syrup, once a major Iraqi export.)

In 2008/09, the number of visitors to 15 museums funded by the central government was 39.7 million. This increased every year to a high point of 50.8 million in 2014/15. The numbers have dropped consistently since and will be around 46.5 million in 2017/18, the financial year that ended on 31 March.

Françoise Nyssen, France’s culture minister, made headlines when she suggested that the Louvre might send its best-known painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, on a “grand tour”. The museum, however, has politely rebuffed the proposal.

Earlier this month, French culture minister Françoise Nyssen announced that she would like to see the painting travel to different museums around the country as a way to counter what she called “cultural segregation.” Then Louvre director had to tell her that the Mona Lisa won’t even be going downstairs for next year’s big Leonardo show, let alone out of the building.