Category: visual

Yes, it was a Saarinen, but probably not the one you’re thinking of – and his influence was less through his own design than through the educational institution he founded.

“Q: Why did you decide to step down?
A: I think I’ve moved the museum forward in many respects. We’ve really modernised and come into the 21st century. …
Q: Was the speculation about your relationships with staff … the worse [sic] thing you’ve had to deal with as a director?
A: It goes with the territory. … There are charges of favouritism but quite frankly that is what leadership is all about. It’s about making decisions.”

The museum won “Art Fund’s prestigious, £100,000 first prize. The David Chipperfield-designed gallery in the Yorkshire town where the sculptor Barbara Hepworth grew up was competing in a strong field, which included London’s recently expanded Tate Modern.”

The Department of Justice filed a civil complaint in New York, and announced that Hobby Lobby had agreed to the fine and to forfeit thousands of antiquities including cuneiform tablets and clay bullae that prosecutors said were smuggled through the United Arab Emirates and Israel to the United States using deliberately false labeling practices.

In his resignation letter, dated June 12, Bonesteel protested what he called “abuse of Title IX protections. Overall,” he wrote, “it is my contention that I have been unfairly vilified and demonized by [a] small cadre of militant LBGT students with an authoritarian agenda.”

“Sometime after 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day, while fireworks were blasting and revelers carousing in the surrounding streets – a thief successfully carried out his plan to steal Paul Cézanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise from the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.”

Roy Lichtenstein died in 1997. What might he think of all this, if he were alive today? He was a Democrat; he created prints in support of Dukakis, in 1988, and of Clinton-Gore, in 1992. But his overriding drive was to bring qualities of high art into taut accord with motifs from commercial mass culture. There is a term for that kind of aspiration: American.

“Though it was originally an occupation that kept one behind the scenes, the appointment of curatorial posts is now fodder for news headlines, particularly when it comes to events like documenta or the Venice Biennale. More and more frequently, critics evaluate exhibitions based on how they are developed or formulated—thereby placing the responsibility of a show’s success directly upon the curator’s shoulders, and proving that they are no longer considered merely an overseer of collections or exhibitions. As the position becomes more high-profile, the crop of those aspiring to be curators grows, with more universities offering specialized programs in the field.”

“According to new research conducted in the Netherlands by the Dutch school inspectorate, the amount of time children spend drawing by hand both in and out of school has been reduced over the last 20 years; the study also found that their artwork has declined significantly in quality and complexity since a similar study was conducted two decades ago.”

“We asked several American curators to consider the controversy‘s lessons for the larger museum world. Their e-mail responses, which have lightly edited for clarity, set a new tone for how cultural institutions can work with local indigenous communities.”