“Longtime supporters Carl and Alice Bimel left a bequest of $11.75 million to the museum to establish the Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art. The endowment will enhance collections in the arts of South Asia, Greater Iran and Afghanistan.”
Category: visual
Bangladesh To Get Its First Major Contemporary Art Museum
And it won’t be in Dhaka, the country’s capital. The Srihatta-Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park is due to open in late 2018 in Sylhet, a relatively affluent city in Bangladesh’s tea-growing northeast. Though the museum will be privately funded by the couple who are the country’s most prominent art collectors, admission will be free.
How The Looking At Art Is Resembling The Experience Of Buying Organic Food
“Ironically, as if in a reversal of roles, many art galleries now act like museums did in the past. Their spaces now feel sterile and out of touch. For a time now, galleries have abided by the corporate business model, creating a corporatized art-buying experience. But the real issue facing art galleries today is this: Does the corporate model that has satisfied cultured people for decades still provide fulfillment? How can the art industry adapt to a consumer society in which everything is being turned into an event?”
Olafur Eliasson’s Venice Biennale Project Puts Refugees In The Art. Is This Social Practice Art Or Exploitation?
“Everything about putting refugees on display as exhibits in an art show feels wrong to me. Yes, they are consenting participants. But how many options do they really have? Are they in a position to turn Eliasson’s offer down? Why not organise a project with them off site instead of parading them in front of the public? Let people interested in the project seek it out. Let the others gawp at something else. This is not art in service of migrants but migrants in service of an artistic and curatorial vision.”
The 17th-Century Tapestries That Survived The St. John The Divine Fire Are Back After 16 Years
“After 16 years of conservation, the 1644-56 Life of Christ tapestries by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli that crown the art collection of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine [in New York] have returned to view. Unlike their previous positions high above parishioners’ heads, they’re temporarily installed in the Chapel of St. James, wrapping around the room at eye-level, as they would have been in the 17th century.”
The ‘Hamilton’ Of The Art Museum World: Yayoi Kusama Show Smashes Attendance Records At Hirshhorn
“Hirshhorn officials said about 475,000 visitors came to the [D.C.] museum and sculpture garden during the exhibition’s 11-week run. The crowds were double the normal attendance for that time of year … Still, two-thirds of those visitors were shut out of the show that they probably had come to see” – and those who got in had to wait in very long lines.
The Man Who Makes The Most Beautiful Books Of Photography
Gerhard Steidl prides himself on being a canny businessman: he has always wanted to make money, and funnels it back into the business when he does. But his admirers say that he is engaged in a loftier project than merely selling books. “Gerhard has an intense quest for making an encyclopedic, wide survey of the world of photography,” Polidori says. “It is almost a race with him—to get as much done while the money lasts, and while his life lasts.”
Using X-Rays To Find The Palimpsests Of A Young French Impressionist
At the National Gallery of Art in D.C., senior conservator Ann Hoenigswald has used the imaging technology to discover early works (including a major one thought lost) by Frédéric Bazille which, it turns out, he subsequently painted over.
Disembodied Head Sells For $57.4 Million At Christie’s
Okay, the head was a Brancusi – specifically, La Muse endormie. The second-highest price at this auction, which raised $289.2 million in total, was $45 million, for Picasso’s Femme assise, robe bleue.
Thousands Protest In Moscow To Save Constructivist Architecture
“Described by many residents as a property grab akin to the forced collectivisation of property under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,” the plan to demolish up to 4,500 buildings and relocate up to 1.6 million residents targets “Constructivist complexes built in the early Soviet years and still used as residential housing.”