Category: visual

The plaintiffs argue that the controversial plan – much derided in the art world, but seeming to steamroll ahead – “would violate the statute that established the museum, which requires it to maintain any gifts it receives for ‘the people of Berkshire County and the general public.'” Besides, they say, the museum doesn’t need the money.

It’s a tangled web that led to vases – which had been in the possession of dealer Gianfranco Becchina, who was convicted in 2015 – being in London. “The lekythoi were on sale in London on behalf of the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt, which is seeking revenue it is owed after the liquidation of the assets of Becchina, a former resident. The canton says it received permission to sell the items from the carabinieri, who had sent back to Basel more than 1,000 pieces from the original seizure, stating they could not make a legal claim to ownership.”

Yes, Cézanne. Yes, Goodnight Moon. “This little book, which of course can be enjoyed without this sort of deconstructionist analysis, by those with tiny fingers and soft-closing eyelids, is a truly great work of Modernist art, its text as powerful an incantation of Modernist poetry as I know, and its illustrations richly in line with the tradition launched by Cézanne.”

You know you do – and there’s an “AirBnB alternative” that has you covered. No, really: PlansMatter is “a platform for the architecturally inclined traveler to explore new places while staying in modernist homes.”

It’s the brainchild of the evangelical Christian who owns Hobby Lobby and whose company paid a $3 million fine for intentionally mislabeling smuggled ancient Iraqi artifacts, and it’s opening soon. “Organisers contend that the museum is non-partisan, non-sectarian and educational rather than evangelical, appealing to people of all faiths or no faith. … But that is not how it began.”

Basically, with the three (so far) iterations of Pacific Standard Time, the Getty has spread out across the city and, says architecture critic Christopher Knight, “has threaded itself into the contemporary cultural life of Los Angeles and Southern California. The Getty has not only paid for and otherwise supported important scholarship on the cultural history of Los Angeles, helping topple cliches and complicate over-simplified narratives about its art movements in the process. It has also used the PST effort to redefine itself.”

Heidi Reitmaeir’s appointment marks the end of a long fallow period for the institution, which, after closing its doors in its previous Queen Street West location in 2015, has endured construction delays and high-profile changes in leadership along its path to reinvention.

The building is a giant dome that lets some light through. When tests were carried out in Stuttgart, Germany, and on a scale mock-up in Abu Dhabi, Nouvel found that even the 5 per cent of sunlight he intended to allow through was too much. In the finished museum, “Only 1.8 per cent of light goes through all layers of the dome,” Hala Wardé says. “We reduced the light to achieve the effect and level of comfort we were seeking.”

“Members of IS are definitely involved in sales,” says one scholar, “particularly now that the so-called state is rapidly unravelling.” However, there’s little independently verifiable evidence of the scale of the ISIS trade in stolen antiquities – not to mention the fact that there are plenty of fakes mixed in with the genuine artifacts.

The 2000-year-old piece was once part of an elaborate mosaic floor in one of the Roman emperor’s floating palaces on Lake Nemi south of Rome. Somehow it ended up in the Park Avenue apartment of an antiques dealer. “Last month, prosecutors seized the mosaic, saying they had evidence it had been taken from an Italian museum before World War II.”