Category: visual

So much for art – even older art as financial investment. Dmitry Rybolovlev paid €54 million (then $85 million) for Gauguin’s Te Fare (La Maison) in 2008; this week the painting sold for £20.3 million ($25 million) at Christies.

And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling Baroness.

“Syrian government troops have retaken Palmyra from Islamic State forces, with help from Russian air support, the Syrian army said in a statement on Thursday.” (ISIS had been driven from the ruined city around this time last year, though the extremist militia retook it in December.) Few [eyewitness] details have emerged about the condition of the ancient site, where [ISIS] has previously wreaked large-scale destruction.”

It’s not the job of the Pritzker Prize jury to make identity politics out of the award. But right now, it’s hard not to.

“Part of the problem is that too much was done simultaneously, and too quickly. Even though the Met is a wealthy institution, this led to certain things being done less well and to a financial crunch. Nevertheless, it still remains difficult to understand how an institution with a large endowment, excellent attendance and large revenue could have so suddenly found itself in a crippling financial position.”

“What could revive it? Solvency would help, although I, who can’t balance a checkbook, can say nothing useful on that subject. What I can talk about is art, and how a museum can make people care about it. If historical art is now a hard sell, and it is, learn to sell it hard.”

Well, okay, Monet did all his own painting. But by his final years, he had become the world’s most expensive living artist – and his work was already viewed by some as a solid investment. Art historian Ross King recounts how American wealth, social aspiration, and showmanship (art auctions as theatrical events!) made Water Lilies more valuable than bullion.

“Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta, who founded their practice, RCR Arquitectes, in the small [Catalan] town of Olot in 1988, have built a reputation for projects that have an acute sensitivity to local context, taking great care with how they are sited in the landscape and masterfully using materials to play with light, shade, mass and fragility.”

In a slideshow at the top of the page and an illustrated list below, Dezeen offers a healthy sample of RCR Arquitectes’ projects, from a sun-splashed, oblique-angled winery to an airy, colorful kindergarten to a spotted-steel-clad museum.

In many ways, his resignation may be the most high-profile symptom of a paradoxical new age in which major museums are struggling with success.