Category: visual

“At a time when the Whitney Museum of American Art has opened a sleek new building and the Museum of Modern Art is also expanding, having just announced a $100 million gift from a single donor, David Geffen, the New Museum’s initiative might seem almost modest. But for an institution that began in 1977 in a single room and now has an annual operating budget of only $13 million (MoMA’s budget is $147 million a year), the campaign is a turning point, the largest fund-raising effort in its history.”

“It can do anything, but should it? There’s a lot of hype about this in the commercial sector, but this isn’t about a Star Trek notion of art — push a button, and the machine craps out a sculpture for you. Not at all. We’re asking questions about the nature of the medium — what does it mean to make a printed piece, or make one by hand? What’s the difference?”

“The discrimination lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court is no laughing matter. If the case were to be decided in court, it could be precedent-setting, affecting the ways that private foundations approach issues of diversity.”

“[A] 24-year-old man climbed onto the pedestal of the stone figure of Dom Sebastião, which stood in a niche flanked by large, ornately decorated horseshoe-shaped arches at [Rossio] station’s Neo-Manueline-style façade.” Of course the statue couldn’t support the man’s weight; it toppled to the ground and shattered.

“Owner Alvin Barr had bought the pot, decorated with six beast-like faces, at an estate sale in a barn in Eugene, Oregon, for $300. He was naturally short of breath when Antiques Roadshow’‘s bespectacled expert appraiser Stephen L. Fletcher (specializing in clocks, decorative arts, folk art, and furniture) revealed its alleged market value.”

“On Nov. 26, 2012, [Phani] Guthula, then 27 and working as an engineer for ICF International, was inspecting lighting fixtures in the museum when he fell. The suit contends that the Art Museum, which administers the Rodin Museum, and its security company, AlliedBarton Security Services, failed to protect him from harm when he stepped onto the unprotected glass floor.”

“Lyon resident Ahmed Ziani, who has been buying and selling art after losing his job as a mechanic, may have stumbled across a long-lost masterpiece by French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Browsing classifieds site Le Bon Coin, Ziani thought he was buying an unsigned piece by 18th-century artist Vernet, and offered €700 for the work.”

Megumi Igarashi – a.k.a. Rokudenashiko (roughly, “Little Miss Good-for-Nothing”) – made headlines worldwide in 2014 when she was arrested for making and showing a kayak modeled on a mold of her private parts. Now a judge has ruled that her bright yellow v-boat, as well as little figurines she sells, are indeed art (and thus protected under law), but distributing files for 3D-printing replicas of her vagina is “distributing obscenity.”